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Murderer smuggles sperm out of jail
It's been revealed that a murderer has fathered a child from behind bars after smuggling his sperm out of jail in a serious breach of the NSW prison security system.
Australian shot dead at Indonesian mine
An Australian has been shot dead, possibly by a sniper, near a gold and copper mine in Indonesia's Papua region, police say.
Sex offender Dunn dies in NSW jail
Convicted pedophile Robert "Dolly" Dunn has died in jail aged 68. - he might still vote for the ALP next election. - ed.
Father sees 'foul play' in Jackson death
Michael Jackson's family prepared on Friday to attend a memorial service in his hometown of Gary, Indiana, as investigators said they could not definitely rule out homicide in his death. - MJ is probably glad to be dead. He never had to live as an old man, or be responsible. Plastic Surgery wouldn't have benefited him any more. - ed.
Hard slog ahead of climate change pact:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says world leaders face a "hard slog" as they race to overcome huge hurdles he fears could stop them from signing a new climate change pact. - actually, Rudd was upbeat, saying the conference would lack only detailed programatic specificity. - ed.
Deep grief marks international student's funeral
A Chinese woman had to be sedated after being overcome by grief at the Hobart funeral of her slain student daughter.
=== Comments ---
Change out of your sharkskins instead
Andrew Bolt
Florida lawyer Bill Bone files a motion against the footwear of Michael Robb, the opposing counsel in his case:
3. It is well known in the legal community that Michael Robb, Esquire, wears shoes with holes in the soles when he is in trial.
4. Upon reasonable belief, Plaintiff believes that Mr. Robb wears these shoes as a ruse to impress the jury and make them believe that Mr. Robb is humble and simple without sophistication. . . .
* * *
6. Part of this strategy is to present Mr. Robb and his client as modest individuals who are so frugal that Mr. Robb has to wear shoes with holes in the soles. Mr. Robb is known to stand at sidebar with one foot crossed casually beside the other so that the holes in his shoes are readily apparent to the jury . . . .
7. Then, during argument and throughout the case Mr. Robb throws out statements like “I’m just a simple lawyer” with the obvious suggestion that Plaintiff’s counsel and the Plaintiff are not as sincere and down to earth as Mr. Robb.
8. Mr. Robb should be required to wear shoes without holes in the soles at trial to avoid the unfair prejudice suggested by this conduct.
Motion denied.
UPDATE
Hmm. If it worked for Adlai Stevenson (picture), then let’s see if it could work again:
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Rudd privately admits: climate deal a dud
Andrew Bolt
An open mic, and a caught-out Kevin Rudd, have exposed the fantasy that the world is on the brink of a deal to slash the emissions we’re told are heating the world to hell.
Until yesterday, media reports tended - typically - to oversell the G8 claims of a breakthrough this week in agreeing to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees. Downplayed this time by many was that the G8 leaders made no firm promises, agreed to no sacrifices, excluded giant emittors China and India, and came up with a wording that Russia promptly seem to disown.
So you tended to see shiny-eyed reports like this:
President Obama and other leaders backed historic new targets for tackling global warming last night in an agreement designed to pave the way for a world deal in the autumn.
And this:
THE world’s biggest economies have called on developed countries to slash greenhouse gas emissions, putting pressure on Australia to beef up its target… Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who is in Italy for the Group of Eight climate talks, welcomed the G8 statement that the world should restrain global warming to two degrees.
But if many in the media could not see just what a complete failure the G8 deal was, Kevin Rudd sure could - well, at least privately:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has been overheard pouring cold water on world leaders’ chances of hammering out critical climate change limits in Copenhagen - just hours after US President Barack Obama called for global optimism.
In an embarrassing gaffe, Mr Rudd’s comments were picked up by Australian TV microphones that had been allowed in briefly to film bilateral talks with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who is to host the Copenhagen summit in December. This is the vital meeting at which world leaders aimed to hammer out a united agreement with developing nations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
“Right now I don’t think we are on track to get an agreement at Copenhagen,” Mr Rudd told Mr Rasmussen. “There are too many problems.”
So if there is no real agreement in Copenhagen, why Rudd’s rush to pass laws before then to set up our own colossal emissions trading scheme, to slash gases that are insignicant?
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Top 10 travellers’ boasts
Andrew Bolt
Travel + Leisure rates the best cities for 2009. If Udaipur is first and Paris nowhere, we need hardly trouble ourselves further with this list.
That Cape Town, Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Chiang Mai - Chiang Mai! - rate above Florence, while Luang Prabang outpolls New York and Rome
just adds to the joke. It’s all evidence of the great weakness of travellers, whether backpackers or five-star celebrities - to outdo each other by boasting of the most out-of-the-way places they’ve seen, each of which is a flyless Shangri-la you must, must, go visit before you die.
Far more constructive to compile a list of the world’s cities and great sites that don’t live up to their billing:
Borubadur
Kathmandu
Amsterdam
Fiji
New Delhi…
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China’s new offer: a better deal or jail
Andrew Bolt
It’s becoming a confrontation over not just principle and national pride, but economic interest:
AUSTRALIA is directly challenging China’s claims of espionage against detained iron ore executive Stern Hu, setting the Rudd government on course for its most serious foreign policy crisis since taking office in November 2007.
As Australian consular officials gained access to Mr Hu for the first time since his arrest last Sunday by Chinese secret police, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith suggested Mr Hu had been conducting normal commercial negotiations…
It also emerged yesterday that Mr Hu’s detention coincided with a Chinese government crackdown against iron ore officials across the country… An official Chinese government website said yesterday Mr Hu had bribed staff of Chinese steel companies during fraught negotiations over this year’s iron ore prices… It is now clear that the issues surrounding the arrests of the four Rio employees are focused on the iron ore negotiations and nothing to do with Rio’s about-face on its deal with Chinalco. But the arrests come against a backdrop of increasing resentment in China of the fact that it does not have a stronger hand in world ore negotiations...
Welcome to our future in the new Chinese century, which Paul Keating last month thought was ”altogether positive” and nothing really to worry about. Now we see just how ready China is to use state power and flout the rule of law to intimidate foreign businesses, and even governments.
UPDATE
This incident shows that Kevin Rudd was fooling himself to think personal relationships could even count with China, no matter how much he touted his role as an intermediary between China and West, or how hard he pushed China’s chase for a bigger say in the IMF, acting almost as China’s foreign minister. In the end with China, as with all such paranoid, one-party regimes, it’s about power, and not friendship or principle.
In fact, Greg Sheridan shows just how far China has gone to deliberately offend Australia - and to warn:
There are several reasons for concluding that this is a deliberate political move by Beijing aimed at intimidating and disciplining the Australian government…
First, there is the fact that Hu was arrested on Sunday. But the Chinese chose to determine that his detention began on Monday, so that under the terms of a consular access agreement Beijing and Canberra signed in 2000, they did not need to allow him consular access until yesterday.
Australian officials had sought consular access from Sunday and asked the Chinese for full information, but they got nothing. Canberra officials, including the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers, had to wait until the Chinese made public statements yesterday before they got any indication of what Hu had allegedly done wrong. Nor were they initially told where he was being held…
The fact that the Chinese went out of their way to humiliate and rebuff Australian officials, and more broadly the Australian government, shows their clear intent to send a message to Canberra.
UPDATE 2
Stern Hu’s former boss at Rio, John Dougall, demands more action from Rudd to protect a “trade hero:
I just want to speak out strongly and say ‘here is a great Australian that we need to get behind’. Mr Rudd has to do more than sit back and let Stern be thrown to the wolves.
I’m actually sure Rudd is doing plenty behind the scenes. It’s just that China will do what China wishes to do, and the only criticism to so far make of Rudd is that he ever thought he could persuade it to act otherwise.
UPDATE 3
Rudd throws the book at China. Sadly, it seems to be a thesaurus:
AS I said before, we the government will take every representational opportunity to put an appropriate position to the Chinese at whatever level, based on the best advice of our consular officials on the ground.
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Just pay the best more. Period
Andrew Bolt
A welcome step to introducing performance pay to teachers in state schools, but too small and a bit confused:
(NSW’s) best teachers will be paid almost $100,000 a year to help struggling children in disadvantaged schools under a landmark performance pay deal… Teachers applying for $98,000 positions will need to demonstrate superior skills and will be judged on their students’ results, by their peers and by external “examiners” who will observe them in the classroom.
The confusion comes in this: these are not just the “best” teachers, but the teachers who’ll be paid extra to go teach in tough schools.
Much as I think the tough, badly-performing schools need extra help and good teachers, it’s also true that great teachers are needed to get the best of the brightest and most motivated students, who are at least as likely to attend well-performing schools. Why aren’t their best teachers paid more, too?
I’m also dubious about the role of “peers” and external examiners in helping to decide which teacher deserves the extra pay. It would be a mistake if judging excellence becomes too influenced by the collective and by unions in particular. Their criteria for excellence may not be yours.
It would be far better to adopt the model of so many private schools - to leave such decisions largely to the principal, on whose head it is if the school thrives or withers. - To my mind this looks like an extra layer of examiners keen to ensure corrupt practice isn’t removed from the profession. Like the practice of selling socialist ideology and campaigning against conservative policy even as the rhetoric claims even handedness. Or the rort of ensuring golden haired teachers don’t miss out on the spotlight. Until the government can show clean hands over the case of Hamidur Rahman their ability to fairly govern must be questioned.The sliming of Barry O’Farrell over his correct stance regarding premiership details is a case in point. It misrepresents Barry’s position to say that he wanted to deny parents information. It also beggars belief that we might trust government assurance of fairness when it is not evident on earlier issues. - ed.
Hermit replied to DD Ball
One of the great strengths of the inspector system in the “old days” was that the inspectors generally could REALLY teach.
I can remember as a student teacher having a feral class that I dreaded and watching the inspector at work. He had them eating out of the palm of his hand.
The government system has deteriorated to the point where there are very few “inspector” class people in the system.
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Down, not up
Andrew Bolt
Both the UAH and RSS statellite data show the globe cooled in June. Lucia now plots the temperature trend since 2001, and contrasts it with the trend you’d expect from the IPCC’s gloomy warning of a temperature rise of 2 degrees by the end of the century (brown line).
Meanwhile, a reporter goes to a far more authoritative source on global warming than a lousy satellite:
UPDATE
Yet Prince Charles says we’re just eight years to sayonara:
Delivering the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture, Charles said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.”
If he flew less, we might have one year more.
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God, Global Warming and President Obama
By Bill O'Reilly
On Friday, President Obama will meet with the pope in Rome, near where the president is attending the G8 economic conference. Wouldn't you like to be in on that meeting?
As you may know, the president is a secular guy, a strong pro-choice advocate who dodged the question on when life begins by saying it's above his pay grade.
Well, the creation of life is above everybody's pay grade, but if you don't know, it seems to me you have an obligation to protect as many lives as you can, right? I bet the pope sees it that way as well.
There is no question President Obama is a secular leader, and that message has been well received in Washington. For example, for more than 40 years the Air Force has flown over the "God and Country Festival" in Idaho, but not this year. Nope, the Pentagon says it cannot provide planes because the festival endorses religion. Again, the Air Force cooperated with the patriotic festival 42 years in a row, but will not this year.
On May 7, the annual National Day of Prayer was held, but the president attended no events for it. When Mr. Obama spoke at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, a religious symbol behind him was covered by some plywood.
Are you getting the picture here?
Also, after worshiping for 20 years in Rev. Wright's Protestant church, the president is now no longer affiliated with a specific church.
To be fair, Ronald Reagan was not an outwardly religious man. Neither was Thomas Jefferson and other great American presidents. We should be electing problem-solvers, not Bible-thumpers.
But to diminish spirituality by denying the good folks in Idaho a flyover is simply stupid. There is no specific religion in play at that festival. This is another example of secularists being disrespectful to people of faith.
The secular culture which President Obama embraces is mainly concerned with things of this world like global warming. They reject public spirituality and embrace political activism, most of it of the liberal kind. But where exactly is that getting us?
On Thursday we found out that China and India are not going to help on global warming. They are not going to cut back emissions or do anything else to clean up the planet. These countries want to make money, and heavy industry does that.
So right now, the only global warming strategy that might work worldwide may be prayer. That's how difficult it will be to convince emerging nations to clean up their acts.
The USA has become the strongest, most prosperous country on earth largely because of its Judeo-Christian traditions. I hope Pope Benedict reminds President Obama about that.
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