Headlines Thursday 20th August 2009

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'Letter names Lin family killer'
AN anonymous letter naming the killers of the Lin family and detailing how they died has been handed to homicide detectives.

Rape girl lured to nine-hour ordeal
A MAN offered a drunk 15-year-old girl safety when she could not protect herself, then led the teen into a horrifying gang rape.

Third death linked to self-help course
A STUDENT died from multiple stab wounds days after attending a Turning Point course - the third death linked to the program.

Swine flu pandemic invades cyberspace
TIME'S ticking, people are dying and a virus is sweeping the globe in the swine flu computer game.

Fashion slip-up haunts Jennifer Hawkins

The former Miss Universe was wearing a custom-made Swarovksi crystal bikini from her swimwear line Cozi for a Myer fashion parade when her top slipped, revealing a bit more than expected

Cadbury recipe choc-up leaves fans bitter
CADBURY caves in to pressure from outraged consumers to remove palm oil from chocolate.
=== Journalists Corner ===
A Republican Resurgence?!
Are White House policies pushing the country right?
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Boxer's Brouhaha
Sen. Boxer's book signing crashed by protestors. Bill has the details!
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Town Hall Tempers!
Has the White House misdiagnosed their health care strategy? Greta goes inside!
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Jammin' With Diamond Rio!
It's the All American Summer Concert Series, and we're heating it up country style!
=== Comments ===
Greens alternative is too much for too little
Piers Akerman
ACCORDING to Greens leader Bob Brown, Australia will be compensated for the loss of our coal industry with “job-rich alternatives” in renewable energy. - I confess I have contributed to this nonsense, and I regret it. I felt there was no foul when I signed up for a green energy producer. It was supposed to be the case that every dollar I spent would be directed to the green sourced energy producers, and not the coal based ones. However, Green electrons are just the same as the others. The only environmentally sustainable activity that my electricity provider engaged in seems to be buying DVD’s of Al Gore’s movie and offering them to schools. I was so disgusted that I .. did nothing but wait until the contract ended. Now, I feel less guilty for delaying paying my bills.
I am outraged at how schools have been recruited in this political activity. It has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with left leaning politicians. It is cynical and counterproductive. I will resist any attempt in the future to promote these charlatans. - ed.
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ONE-TERM ONE?
Tim Blair A big call from Gerald Warner:
President Pantywaist has been found out and it will get worse. The one glimmer of realism he displayed was when he recently told an audience in Montana that, with regard to health care, he was “not in favour of the British system”. Perhaps he had just seen the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics revealing that more than 30,000 people have died in England and Wales from hospital infections in just five years. Translated proportionately into American demographics, that would be 150,000 fatalities. Not the best advertisement for socialised health care.

There will be many more U-turns as reality overtakes Obama. His economic recovery plan, which cost nearly $1 trillion dollars and masked 9,000 pork barrels, has removed his halo for even quite gullible voters. This will be a one-term presidency.
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YOU GO, GIRL
Tim Blair
Prior to winning the 2009 Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship, white guy Mark McMillan received another positive-discrimination prize:


Black Women’s Action in Education Foundation Scholarship
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LET THE PEOPLE SHOP
Tim Blair
Western Australian readers often complain about their state’s primitive trading laws, which ain’t going away any time soon:


Western Australia will remain in the dark ages because of the Labor party’s opposition to extended trading hours, Premier Colin Barnett says.

The Labor caucus decided not to support an attempt by Mr Barnett to extend retail trading hours to 9pm on weeknights.

Some of us are barely awake by then. So much for those relocation plans.
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OOPS
Tim Blair
A tiny mistake is admitted:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.” Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030 … That may have been a mistake,” he said.

Click for video.

UPDATE. Further from Abe Greenwald: “Greenpeace is ‘proud’ to fudge data, to do violence to the scientific method and the tradition of empirical analysis. This should be one of those moments that sets a movement on a path to marginalization.”
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Oil to the rescue of the ice-bound warmist
Andrew Bolt
Eric Forsyth, captain of the eco-yacht Fiona, is alarmed:

Within the next generation two problems of global proportions threaten the way of life as we now know it in the United States. They are:

1. Global Climate Change
2. Global Depletion of Fossil Fuel

To alert the rest of us to this peril, he decides to sail through the fable North West Passage, highlighting the terrible ice melt in the Arctic.

Small problem:

AUGUST 17, 2009

Last night, 16 Aug, we got hopelessly trapped by the ice. Despite a favorable ice report we encountered 8/10ths ice, with many old, i.e. large, bergs. We spent the night tied to one of them but had to leave this morning when another ‘berg collided with us and tipped Fiona over. We got away but the space around us is shrinking. I called the Canadian Coast Guard at noon and they are sending an icebreaker, due here tomorrow. We are NOT in immediate danger. Watch this space for developments.

There’s a shock. Too much ice for this warming catastrophist, who now needs rescuing by a ship powered by that evil fossil fuel Forsyth rejects, in theory at least.

Of course, Forsyth sure isn’t the first alarmist to be nearly killed by the Arctic ice he felt sure wouldn’t be there.
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Even Labor now knows it was lying
Andrew Bolt
John Howard was right before the election, of course - Labor’s reregulation of workplaces would cost people their jobs. It’s a reality the Rudd Government is only now admitting and trying desperately to avert, at least in the bits of the economy that might get noticed:

JULIA Gillard is preparing to intervene in another industry facing spiralling costs from Labor’s overhaul of awards, after the horticulture sector warned the revamp would send thousands of fruit and vegetable businesses across the country to the wall.
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Shut up or leave
Andrew Bolt
The sooner the big men are robbed of this oppressive right, the sooner the stifling tribalism will break down - and the curtain of silence with it:

BEING partner to the local mayor’s cousin wasn’t enough to protect Daniel Bracegirdle when he challenged Aurukun Shire Council over calls to reopen its notorious beer canteen: after spending a decade in the remote north Queensland township, he was told to pack up and get out.

The expulsion order served on 40-year-old Mr Bracegirdle, a non-indigenous man who built a life and a successful video production business in Aurukun, has revived tensions that eased when the local licensed liquor outlet was shut down nine months ago.
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Crisis! Rain returns to normal
Andrew Bolt
The warming alarmists of the Bureau of Meteorology concede what I first pointed out three years ago: that our rainfall is doing little more than return to the levels before the usually wet post-war years:

Rainfall has decreased substantially since 1950 on the east coast, and in Victoria. This decline is less marked if measured from 1900.

“Less marked” is another way of saying rainfall levels are around what Australians lived with for decades, long before “global warming” got blamed for anything and everything. Check the graphs yourself on the second link above. Or here:

UPDATE

So how refreshing to finally hear a public official go against the warming alarmism and booga-booga predictions by the likes of Tim Flannery that we’ll all run out of water:

As speculation grows that consecutive years of dry conditions could be a permanent climate ‘’step change’’, Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief Rob Freeman has expressed confidence that wetter times will return.

Speaking at a water summit in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Freeman took aim at doomsday climate predictions that have followed the driest three-year period on record for the Murray-Darling Basin…

‘’We are always going to have droughts and floods, but to suggest the future is this, I think is misrepresenting the situation … while it’s nice to have a burning platform on which to implement reforms, we’ve also got to be very honest,’’ he said.

I hope his message sinks into the overheated mind of Climate Change Minister Penny Wong:

The Federal Government is well aware of the huge challenges posed by drought and climate change for rural and regional communities across southern Australia, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin.
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Forget complaining to the authorities
Andrew Bolt
Just another confirmation of who you must go for to drive trash off the air:

RADIO outcasts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O have had their show pulled from prime time in Melbourne after a backlash from advertisers.
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Judged by their politics
Andrew Bolt
A former judge says the Labor Government in particular is picking new judges more for their politics than their talent:

John Dee, QC, said some judges were not up to the job and were making costly mistakes. He claimed the judges don’t have the background or skills and were appointed for political reasons by Attorney-General Rob Hulls and his Liberal predecessor Jan Wade.

“These particular appointments have been classic jobs for the boys and girls,” he said. “There are, unfortunately, a lot of people there that Hulls has appointed, and to a lesser extent that Wade appointed, who just aren’t up to it…

“They have been mainly to the County Court and judges and the legal profession know who they are.”

I do not know which judges Dee means, and it’s unfortunately too dangerous for him - and me - to even speculate. But I have also worried about the way Hulls is stacking the courts with people who share his political views:

LIBERTY Victoria has become an unusually productive judge’s factory for our crusading Attorney-General Rob Hulls. Still, where else could he find so many activists who share his Leftist views?

This week, Greg Connellan became the third Liberty Victoria president—and its fourth senior official—to be appointed to the bench by Hulls.

Connellan, who has campaigned against increases in police powers and once warned that even police sniffer dogs on Russell St violated people’s rights, is now a magistrate… Chris Maxwell ... now heads our influential Court of Appeal, where he’s been joined by Marcia Neave, who was an academic lawyer with no judging experience before her promotion. And Felicity Hampel is now a judge of the County Court.

That’s quite some coincidence, so many judges being drawn from a small civil libertarian lobby group.
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Who stole what from the Arctic Sea?
Andrew Bolt
This hijacking always did seem fishy, especially since the cargo was - officially - a mere load of timber:

Russia on Tuesday arrested eight people on suspicion of hijacking the Arctic Sea off the Swedish coast and sailing it to the Atlantic Ocean, ending weeks of silence about the fate of a ship which has intrigued European maritime authorities. Limited information from Russian officials has failed to satisfy skeptics who voiced doubts about whether the piracy actually took place or was a convenient cover story to conceal a possible secret cargo of arms or nuclear material…

The Maltese-registered, Russian-crewed vessel and its $1.3 million cargo of timber disappeared from radar screens three weeks ago, prompting speculation ranging from an attack by an organized crime gang to a top-secret spy mission.

Here’s one theory:

The official version of events was questioned by Yulia Latynina, a leading Russian opposition journalist and commentator.

“The Arctic Sea was carrying something, not timber and not from Finland, that necessitated some major work on the ship,” she wrote in the Moscow Times newspaper on Wednesday… “To put it plainly: The Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and they were caught with it,” she said.

A lurid theory, yes. But who’d rule it out, when we’ve already seen even more bizarre hijackings ... such as this:

In the foggy dawn of Nov. 17, 1968, the German-built freighter Scheersberg A (gross tonnage: 1,790 tons) chugged out of Antwerp harbor with a Liberian flag flying from its mast and 560 drums of “yellowcake"—a crude concentrate of uranium—packed beneath its decks. The ship never reached its declared destination of Genoa, Italy. Instead, after 15 days at sea it docked at the Turkish port of Iskenderun on Dec. 2, riding high in the water. Its strategic cargo—200 tons of uranium, worth $3.7 million, that could potentially be used for nuclear weapons—had vanished…

Who had the uranium? And how did they get it? After several weeks of investigation by a team of correspondents, TIME has learned that the Scheersberg As voyage from Antwerp was part of a complex plot concocted by Israeli intelligence agents. Its purpose: to disguise a secret Israeli purchase of much-needed uranium for its French-built nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert; an overt purchase might have pushed the Soviet Union into supplying nuclear arms to the Arab states.

The question now: who hijacked the Arctic Sea and removed whatever it was carrying? Israel, or one of its Middle Eastern enemies?
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Plaque build-up
Andrew Bolt
Have other readers noticed at their child’s school what reader Davo saw at his?

As I took my kids to school the other day, I began to notice that there were numerous plaques around the place. So the next day I decided to read them on my way back.I counted 9 plaques, with the majority dated in the last 3-4 years. And that was just on the path I took. Every single one of them commemorated something ‘done’ by a Labor member of parliament (state, federal and local). Not one from ‘the other side’.However, before the last election, our seat had a Liberal member. He wasn’t much good at anything else, but he was a tireless worker for our school. He did many things worthy of plaques, but he chose not to ‘make his mark’ in this way. Two of those plaques were for things that the Liberal member did, but because they completed after the election, the new Labor guy has his name on it.
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Is “mistake” another word for a warming lie?
Andrew Bolt

Just an honest mistake, which purely coincidentally scared people into thinking we really are heating the world to hell:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”

Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming. Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.

Mistake? Leipold tries another form of weasel words:

We as a pressure group have to emotionalise issues.

I think the BBC reporter (and what a turnaround this is) is right:

Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present. [Clarification: Sackur was referring to the Greenland ice cap, within the Arctic ice area.] The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”

Standard operating procedure for warming alarmists actually, as Professor Steven Schneider once cheerfully conceded.

Amazing how green lies collapse once reporters actually do their job and subject them to scrutiny. But what hope that the ABC will do as the BBC at last has, given that its chief science broadcaster is Robyn “100 Metres” Williams?

But if Greenpeace now admits it was a “mistake” to claim the Artic would be ice-free in 30 years, what would you call a scare-claim at wild as this one:

Tim Flannery also warned ”this may be the Arctic’s first ice-free year”

And this, from Al Gore:

… the entire Arctic ice cap may totally disappear in summer in as little as five years...
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China sees red with Rudd
Andrew Bolt
This doesn’t seem to be going as well as Kevin Rudd one suggested it would:

AUSTRALIA’S ambassador to Beijing rushed back to Canberra yesterday for meetings about reviving the China relationship, as the glow of Australia’s biggest trade deal vanished in China as quickly as it came…

An editorial in the China Daily, the Communist Party’s English-language mouthpiece, said Australia’s “Sinophobic politicians” were leading the world’s “anti-China chorus” and “siding with a terrorist” - a reference to the recent granting of a visa to the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer…

Last week the Global Times, owned by the People’s Daily, said 87 per cent of 14,000 respondents believed China should take reprisals through “practical measures” such as boycotting tourism and study in Australia.

Rudd once boasted he could be the West’s ”intermediary” with China. Now he badly needs an intermiadry of his own.
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Obama Under Siege From Far-Left Radicals
By Bill O'Reilly
As we reported Monday night, the Obama administration signaled last weekend that it might take the so-called public option on health care off the table. That means the government would abandon a federal insurance program funded by billions of tax dollars.

Well as soon as the far left heard that, they went nuts, besieging the White House. As we've stated, the goal for radicals is to redistribute income from corporate and affluent America to the poor and low-wage earners. You do that by giving folks with not a lot of money entitlements like health care, housing, food and guaranteed incomes. That is the goal of the far left. That is why they want the feds to control health care.

In the coming weeks it will be interesting to see if President Obama caves in to the radical movement, because there is no question most Americans reject the far-left philosophy. A new study by Gallup says conservatives significantly outnumber liberals in 47 states. Only Hawaii, Vermont and Massachusetts have an even split. Liberals don't have a majority anywhere.

But the media is heavily left, and liberal voices dominate the national conversation on television and in the newspapers. That has emboldened the far left, Netroots folks, who held a convention last weekend in Pittsburgh. They don't much like America:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We kidnapped people. We disappeared people. We tortured people, and we even killed people in U.S. custody. Torture is a war crime. Murder, last time I checked, is a pretty serious crime.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are we in Afghanistan? Why have we invaded a country? Why are we spending millions and ultimately a trillion dollars in pursuit of what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a limit to what we can really do at FOX. CNN putting Lou Dobbs on the air — every time that Lou Dobbs would go on the evening, you know, regular broadcast during the elections, I would be thinking, what are they doing? This guy's an avowed racist, right, being put in with mainstream journalists.

Now that kind of hate defines the radical left, and President Obama would be smart to distance himself from it. But in the health care debate, left-wing loons are insistent that the government run the health care system. They call it social justice.

"Talking Points" believes the Obama administration is intimidated by the far left and fear their zealotry. But if the president governs in their direction, he will fail dismally. The United States is a center-right country with a strong tradition of self-reliance. Mr. Obama would be wise to consider that.
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How white men are now black women
Andrew Bolt
The University of Technology, Sydney helps another Australian facing discrimination just because of the color of her skin:

Since 2002, the Monika Law Scholarship has assisted Indigenous women studying at UTS. Rebecca McGrath is the latest recipient...

That’s Rebecca, on the left:

Think that’s stretching definitions a bit? That’s nothing. Now meet once more another Australian who has been given special help to overcome the discrimination he faces because of mere appearance:

Mark McMillan has received the 2009 Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship… He also won the ... Black Women’s Action in Education Foundation Scholarship.

And, yes, this really is the winner of a scholarship meant for black women:

Before you criticise, arguing that surely a foundation meant to help black women shouldn’t be helping white men instead, know that people more sensitive than you to the complexities of racial identity help run this Black Action in Education Foundation. Here is one, Professor Larissa Behrendt, who - hey! what a coincidence! - is also director of the Indigenous House of Learning at University of Technology, Sydney that has employed both McGrath and McMillan. And surely Behrendt, an Aborigine herself with many jobs in (and prizes from) the Aboriginal industry can spot someone who could sure use a scholarship meant for Aborigines, too?

Will there be any Aboriginal scholarships left for children like these?