Jakarta hotel bombing: nine killed, 50 wounded
Indonesia's security minister says nine people have been killed and 50 wounded in hotel blasts in central Jakarta. And a health official says 11 foreigners are among the injured after neighbouring Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels were hit a few minutes apart this morning.
Gordon Nuttall jailed for seven years
Former Queensland government minister Gordon Nuttall has been sentenced to seven years in jail over the receipt of $360,000 in secret commissions.
Australian response to Hu case 'timid'
Australia's response to the continued detention of a Rio Tinto executive in Shanghai looks "extremely timid and weak" compared to that of the Chinese government, the opposition says.
US doing our job in Hu crisis: Turnbull
The US government is doing what PM Kevin Rudd is afraid to do by raising the issue of detained.....
Australia suffers Ashes 'stage fright'
Wicketkeeper Brad Haddin said Australia suffered a bout of stage fright at Lord's before clawing their way back into the contest at the home of cricket.
Booze ban to hit sport revenue hard
Australia's top sporting codes could lose millions of dollars, if the Rudd government goes ahead with an alcohol advertising ban.
Cops search for pair after Syd shootings
Police are looking at whether the shooting of a man at Campsie is linked to two armed robberies nearby.
Video of first moon walk gets touch-up
NASA on Thursday unveiled restored video footage of man's first steps on the moon, 40 years to the day after Apollo 11 blasted off on its historic voyage into space.
ALP still popular, but history against it
Here's something for Labor to think about as it contemplates the allure of an early election: no first-term government has managed to improve its parliamentary majority the second time around.
Technical problem blamed for Iran crash
A technical problem is believed to have caused the crash of an Iranian airliner which burst into......
Man charged over hit-run
A man has been charged over a hit-run accident that has left an elderly woman fighting for her......
=== Journalists Comments ===
Michael Murdered?
Geraldo uncovers shocking new details in the criminal investigation! Plus, Body Language looks at Sotomayor’s non-verbal signals!
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Guest: Newt Gingrich
The dems want their healthcare bill stat! But is the rush to reform worth the trillion dollar price tag? Newt Gingrich weighs in!
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Guests: Fred & Jeri Thompson
The rush to reform! As dems push their healthcare plan, will they make the deadline or is the bill in critical condition? The Thompsons weigh in!
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Inside the Unemployment Rise
Stimulating the workforce isn't working, and unemployment is on the rise! Has the president lost control?
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'Apollo 11: One Small Step to Our Future'
On the Record" host Greta Van Susteren will host"Apollo 11: One Small Step to Our Future" on FOX News Channel.
This hour-long exclusive FOX News documentarycommemorates the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing and man's first steps on the moon. Greta interviews Col. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, about that mission and about his vision for the future of space exploration.
The special also looks at what it took for America to beat the Russians to the moon following President Kennedy's famous challenge to go to the moon and return safely within a decade.
Aldrin tells Greta that going back to the moon is a "dead end" for America -- our goal should be Mars; that's the only way to inspire people. Aldrin and our other guests the space program’s most important benefit is "inspiration." That's what led to over 1,500 "spinoffs" from the technological innovations of the Apollo-era that contribute to improving national security, the economy, productivity and lifestyle. It is almost impossible to find an area of everyday life that has not been improved by these spinoffs.
But, America does have a plan to return to the moon. [...]
=== Comments ===
BUSY DAY FOR PRESBYTERIANS
Tim Blair
Another attack in Indonesia:
Two people have died after a car exploded near a shopping complex in the north of the Indonesian capital.
The toll from today’s earlier attacks now stands at nine:
An Australian man is among 50 people injured in explosions that have rocked two international hotels in Jakarta killing at least nine foreigners - six years after the Marriott Hotel was the scene of a deadly terrorist attack.
UPDATE. An unexploded bomb found at the Marriot.
UPDATE II. The previously reported “car bomb” is now said to have been caused by a faulty battery.
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IT’S A MYSTERY
Tim Blair
With which political party was Gordon Nuttal affiliated? - ALP - ed.
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AS JOE THE CAMERAMAN WOULD SAY …
Tim Blair
Can’t field, can’t throw.
UPDATE. In superior sporting news, Luke McIlveen reviews the third State of Origin match:
There are certain things you’re supposed to say when people ask what makes you proud of your home state. Nice things like the shimmering Harbour, the Opera House, the SCG or the Olympics.
I would trade them all for the bloodied grin that Brett White gave Justin Hodges in the moments after knocking out Steve Price on Wednesday night.
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SCREEN DOMINATED
Tim Blair
Pro-Australian actress Toni Collette:
We don’t want Australian kids to grow up with American accents. We don’t want a country of clones wondering why their world is so different from the one they watch on TV or see at the movies. And that’s what will happen if we allow our screens to be dominated by American product. We have to prevent a diet of vacuous American fodder, which will spoil their, and in turn, our true potential.
That was five years ago. Now Toni is playing an American with four American personalities in the one American television series – which will be broadcast here by the ABC.
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If they played baseball like they play the law…
Andrew Bolt
It sounded so good, the way the Police Minister sold his new laws:
“And if a person is found guilty of three hoon-related offences inside three years, their vehicle can be permanently forfeited by the Court.
“In other words, three strikes and the vehicle’s out: sold by the State of Victoria, which will keep the proceeds.”
But there are promises and there is performance. “Three striikes and you’re out” turns out to be “22 strikes and still in”:
A MOTHER’S plea prevented police from stripping a Box Hill South man of his expensive car after he was convicted 22 times for driving while his licence was suspended.
Mercy is a terrific thing. So is respect for the law, of course.
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The other harmony walk
Andrew Bolt
Five days after the Harmony Walk, an honest insight into a phenomenon that’s generated so much commentary about our “racism” that isn’t:
The Harmony Walk on Sunday was designed to show Melbourne at its multicultural best… Yesterday’s parade delivered a message of its own.
At 10.48am, three men walked into the dock of Courtroom One. From left to right were Sioeli Seau of Sunshine North, Fostar Akoteu of Burnside and Jacob Palute of Seddon.
Each was charged with murdering Cain Anthony Aguiar last Saturday, the day before the Harmony Walk…
Mr Akotreu, a giant of a man in a black T-shirt, had tattoos down one arm. His hair was half-shaven, half-Mohican, and the mullet at the back had a bright orange fringe…
At 2.18pm, the second part of the parade began with Konstantinos Kontoklotsis of Brunswick in the dock… He was up on eight charges, beginning with affray, over events at Prahran last Friday involving the bashing of Luke Adams, two days before the Harmony Walk…
At 3.45pm, two more men paraded into the dock to face similar charges as Mr Kontoklotsis. The court was told Mark Bogtstra of Camberwell and Nathan Karazisis of Burwood East surrendered at Prahran police station yesterday. Both men were bulky, broad-shouldered, and wore tight T-shirts that emphasised their biceps.
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Warming turns out nice
Andrew Bolt
Bad news for alarmists, good for humans:
It has been assumed that global warming would cause an expansion of the world’s deserts, but now some scientists are predicting a contrary scenario in which water and life slowly reclaim these arid places....
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned recently that rising global temperatures could cut West African agricultural production by up to 50% by the year 2020. But satellite images from the last 15 years do seem to show a recovery of vegetation in the Southern Sahara…
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Clinton in chains
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama didn’t so much invite Hillary Clinton into his Cabinet, but into his shadow:
Despite being well received overseas, and travelling more than her predecessors, Mrs Clinton has had to assume a back seat to a President determined to remake America’s world image through high-profile appearances abroad.
Joe Biden, the Vice-President, has visited Iraq and waded into the Middle East arena, while special envoys in the State Department were the lead negotiators on the most contentious issues while Mrs Clinton nursed a broken elbow. She has also failed to get her choices into plum ambassadorships, notably Japan, which went to a fund-raiser for Mr Obama.
Her diminished presence, followed by her criticism of the White House this week for delaying the appointment of the US Agency for International Development chief, prompted speculation that her influence would remain at a low ebb during her tenure.
Or put it this way: Clinton is to Obama what Stephen Smith is to Kevin Rudd.
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Blog Rudd right back
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd is blogging (or at least a Rudd staffer is). And his first topic is global warming.
If you’ve joined Rudd’s blog to use this opportunity to ask the Prime Minister to explain why, for instance, the world is actually cooling, and what measurable difference to the climate we’ll make if Australia cuts its gases by even half, please let me know what response you got.
===
More fever than flu
Andrew Bolt
Tim Black contrasts the media and political panic-mongering with the public’s good sense:
But now it is here, swine flu is likelier to be the object of jokes than panic among the public.
The bare facts after all the warnings of apocalyptic doom:
THERE have been 11,194 confirmed cases of swine flu in Australia during the past couple of months. The total number of people to have suffered swine-flu related deaths since is 24. Of these, all have been described as suffering from other health related conditions.
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Labor’s new Hilali
Andrew Bolt
What is it with Labor and radical imams? Paul Keating had his Jew-hating, jihad-preaching Sheik Hilali:
Chris Hurford, immigration minister in the Hawke Labor government, tried in 1986 to have him deported after Hilali had overstayed a tourist visa in 1982 ...because his reported utterances were dividing the Muslim community. But Hilali had two powerful Labor supporters on his side - Paul Keating and Leo McLeay - who would ultimately help him win his quest for permanent residency.
Now Robert McClelland has a Hilali of his own:
THE federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, supplied a glowing character reference for a Sydney sheik accused of spying for Iran just months after learning ASIO had rejected his residency application on national security grounds.
The Australian can reveal that Mr McClelland wrote two character references in 1997 for controversial Iranian cleric Mansour Leghaei, who is accused by ASIO of engaging in “specific acts of foreign interference”. Sheik Leghaei has been fighting to stay in Australia for more than a decade, despite ASIO issuing two adverse security assessments against him.
Leghaei’s spying isn’t the only issue. His notebook could have been written by Hilali himself.
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Stern rebuff
Andrew Bolt
So much for Kevin Rudd’s special “in” with the Chinese leaders. China is now telling him to keep his nose out of its business:
CHINA yesterday warned Australia to stay out of the Stern Hu case… The topic was raised at the (foreign) ministry’s twice-weekly press conference where spokesman Qin Gang said “noise” coming out of Australia on the case was an interference in the legal system of China.
”We are firmly against anyone stirring up the case and interfering with the independent judicial authority of China. This is not in the interest of Australia,” he said.
And the US Commerce Secretary is having more luck putting Hu’s case to the top than is our Prime Minister:
US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has called for more transparency and better legal rights for Mr Hu as he met with Premier Wen (Jiaboa) in Beijing...He is the most senior politician from any country to have addressed Mr Hu’s case with China’s most senior leaders.
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“You are condescending to me”
Andrew Bolt
Quote a black mayor against a black business leader to defend your party’s ludicrous “green jobs” claims and you get this protest:
It’s true that it is playing offensive identity politics to assume that a black businessman should pay particular attention to the counter view of someone of his own race. That said, I’d be a little more impressed if the protest came from someone who wasn’t head of a blacks-only group.
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Just confess, Pete
Andrew Bolt
PETER Garrett must wish his fans just took his old CDs and dropped them down a mine shaft.
A coal one, perhaps. Or maybe the biggie he’s just allowed uranium miners to dig north of Adelaide.
How tired the Environment Minister must be of having his own lyrics quoted back at him by people stupid enough to still believe the denunciations the old Midnight Oiler once screeched against everything nuclear.
Like this, perhaps:
In the wind
The ashes fly
The poison crown
The charcoal ground
Mind you, Garrett’s old press releases and news cuttings would have to be tossed down that fast-filling shaft, too. For instance:
“(The nuclear industry means) all we will be handing to our offspring is a scarred wasteland . . . Some bloke up in the NT will sink a bore into the ground and wonder why his sheep are dying.”
And we would especially have to forget his excitable hyping of the dangers of nuclear power, like his bizarre claim, as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, that the 1986 explosion at the shambolic nuclear reactor at Chernobyl had “caused the deaths of more than 30,000 people”.
Wait, shouted his ACF acolytes, waving another paper that needs deep-sixing, too: “250,000 people have died as a result of the Chernobyl tragedy”.
If Garrett seriously believed all his past rantings against an ore he seemed sure would give us two heads and fry our gonads, I would join all his furious fans now damning him as the most brazen hypocrite since . . . well, at least since global warming preacher Tim Flannery started flogging tickets for Virgin Galactic entrepreneur Sir Richard Brazen’s new flame-roaring joy rides into space.
I mean, how could this former Nuclear Disarmament Party candidate in good conscience permit the development of the new Four Mile uranium mine - one that must surely kill our sheep, scare our women, char our land, blot out the sky and feed explosions that will wipe us out by the tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands, even.
===
Al gored
Andrew Bolt
WHAT a shame Al Gore has left town, trailing gassy contrails, without us again catching up.
But, alas, I see the old fraud has got wilier since the days he still took unscripted questions from the floor.
What a mistake that was, as he found one day in California when the question he took was from . . . me. What fun.
These days the former US vice-president and now Nobel Prize-winning guru of global warming no longer lets just anyone ask him tricky questions, if he can help it, and he avoids debates.
For instance, he never did find the time he said he’d look for in his diary when Family First Senator Steve Fielding asked after his Melbourne speech for a quick briefing on why the world had cooled over the past eight years, rather than warmed.
I guess there were just too many sponsors Gore had to chat to instead - the green carpetbaggers of wind power, solar schemes and carbon trading who’d paid for him to come scare up more business of the kind that’s made Gore so rich.
So when the Great Green Profit sat down on Tuesday with the 7.30 Report’s Heather Ewart, he must have figured he’d get yet another easy ride.
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Too much like pay to play
Andrew Bolt
This sounds red-hot to me, especially in the wake of the Gordon Nuttall bribery verdict:
HI-TECH firms and corporate governance experts are concerned about a fundraising dinner at which companies hoping to gain National Broadband Network contracts will be asked to donate to the ALP.
Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett will attend an ALP fundraising dinner in Hobart tonight with information and communication technology company executives.
===
'Evil White Men'
By Bill O'Reilly
Evil white men, that is the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo." As you may know, if you criticize a minority group in America, you will be labeled a bigot. If you criticize a woman, say Helen Thomas, you might be labeled a sexist. But if you hammer white men, you could wind up with a great media job.
Enter "New York Times" columnist Maureen Dowd, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her columns excoriating President Clinton. Ms. Dowd is one of the few "Times" columnists who actually writes interesting stuff, whether you agree with her or not . Her vision usually embraces the politically correct left-wing point of view. It doesn't make her a bad person. It's just what she believes.
Well, today, Ms. Dowd did America a big favor by writing a column entitled "White Man's Last Stand" in defense of Judge Sotomayor. The column basically says exactly what "The New York Times" believes. White men have screwed up America. They need to get out of power to be replaced by minorities and liberal women.
Now three years ago, I wrote a book called "Culture Warrior," which hit number one on "The New York Times" bestseller list. "The Times" book review hated "Culture Warrior" because I predicted exactly what's happening now, that the left wing media would promote minority candidates and causes because they despise the white man power structure.
One aside: Americans should always support the best, most honest candidates, no matter what color they are. In her "White Man's Last Stand" column, Maureen Dowd writes, "President Obama wants Sotomayor naturally to bring a fresh perspective to the court. It was a disgrace that [President Bush] appointed two white men to a court stocked with white men."
Well, that may come as a shock to Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And didn't President Bush want to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Last time I looked, she is not a white man.
By the way, here's what Ms. Dowd wrote about Ms. Miers: "I hope President Bush doesn't have any more office wives tucked away in the White House. There are only so many supremely powerful jobs to give to women who are not qualified to get them."
Interesting. So it sounds like Ms. Dowd has a problem with nonliberal women as well as with white men. She writes today, "Sarah Palin is the definition of irrational, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music."
So the hits just keep on coming. White men are bad, conservative women are stupid, and country music should not be heard in the Supreme Court, or something. I hope everybody reads Maureen Dowd's entire column which I posted on billoreilly.com. It clearly demonstrates what the left wing media is doing, marginalizing all with whom they disagree, and demonizing entire groups of people they see as evil or dumb. White men, conservative women, country music fans. Are we going to take this?
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