One man has faced court and several more could be charged over an alleged suicide plot to kill Australian soldiers in what police say would have been the deadliest terror attack on Australian soil.
Media was unfair to Hanson and Hollingworth, says Howard
Pauline Hanson and former governor-general Peter Hollingworth were treated harshly and unfairly by the Australian media, former prime minister John Howard says. Lecturing on the role of the media in Australian politics at the University of Melbourne on Tuesday, Mr Howard said the media's pursuit of Dr Hollingworth was a "character assassination". - While I agree that the largely atheist media appallingly treated Dr Hollingworth, I feel that the press appropriately treated Ms Hanson. But I think with Hanson it wasn't 'fair' or 'even handed' because the press are often way too forgiving of ALP behavior. We cannot accept as representative of our views someone with Hanson's views on immigration. They sound bad when ALP supporters say them too. Australia needs migration to grow and migrants are often very giving people. However, migration cannot be lawless, as ALP seem to desire. - ed.
Grech is to blame for Utegate: Turnbull
Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is defending his handling of the OzCar scandal, insisting he was misled by treasury official Godwin Grech. - it needs to be remembered that Turnbull has done the right thing in exposing this important issue. It is confirmed that Swan has done the wrong thing and that Rudd, Gillard and Tanner have lied to parliament to cover it up .. as well as making false accusations against Turnbull and using the AFP as their personal account settlers. - ed.
Girl killed by bus outside her home
A nine-year-old girl killed by a school bus was just metres from her Ingleburn home when she was hit.
Lucky escape for kids as ceiling collapses
STUDENTS were working away from their desks when part of a classroom ceiling collapsed.
'KFC wrap took 30 years off girl's life'
A Sydney court has been told a little girl allegedly brain damaged and crippled after eating a KFC meal will be robbed of at least the last 30 years of her life.
Five dead after dance class rampage
Five people are dead after a gunman walked into a gym and sprayed bullets into a dance class.
Lovers help wife glue husband's genitals
A wife has taken revenge on her unfaithful husband, inviting three of his scorned lovers to help her teach him a lesson.
Lotto winner wants 'easy' Macca's job
Forget travelling the world. A Kiwi lottery winner has revealed his big plan now he's rich is to get a job at McDonald's.
Rudd is a serial killer: US reporter
Rudd has been labelled a serial killer on US TV.
Placenta trade booming in China
The trade in human placentas is thriving in China, despite a government ban on their sale.......
Advertisers pull plug on Austereo
THE Kyle and Jackie O scandal is hitting Austereo where it hurts most - its bottom line.
Corporate Australia's top job filled
FORD'S ex-chief has been named BHP Billiton's new chairman, filling corporate Australia's most prestigious role.
Crash victim left behind triplets
A ROAD traffic controller who was allegedly killed by a speeding BMW has left behind devoted triplet daughters.
'Rape was game of chicken with stripper'
A MAN naked and on all fours when allegedly raped by a stripper was behaving like someone "playing chicken" with moving cars, a defence lawyer has claimed. - someone willfully naked, on all four and with lubricant on their bum has hosed down any defense of non consent, IMHO - ed.
=== Journalist Corner ===
Best Way to Learn ...
Best way to learn solutions to a giant problem is to explore how others are avoiding it. As you know, On The Record at 10 pm jumps at the chance to go out and explore or investigate solutions. We just spent the day at the very successful Cleveland Clinic -- successful in quality of care and financially. We took our camers so that we could bring this clinic to you to add to the debate on what we can or should or might do to fix or improve our health care system. I hope you watch tonight at 10 pm
===
A new Obama Senate seat scandal?
What ties does this candidate have to Blago, Rezko & the mob?
Sean gets explosive answers on this latest political powder keg!
===
Who Will Be Next?
Housing rebates, cash for clunkers ... who's next in line for the Fed's helping hand, and what will it cost you?!
===
The Right Prescription?
The Cleveland Clinic offers top quality care at a fraction of the cost! How do they do it? Greta investigates!
===
Unraveling the Case!
A brutal killing spree, orchestrated by a sick & twisted mastermind! Forty years later, Greta Van Susteren sheds new light on the Manson Murders!
=== Comments ===
NO DIFFERENCE
Tim Blair
Green claims slammed:
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has asked a state government agency and energy suppliers to stop telling customers that using GreenPower will ‘‘make a real difference’’ to the environment. Almost a million households now buy GreenPower, paying extra on their power bills to support renewable energy and shrink their carbon footprint.
But they will no longer be told it leads to ‘‘significant results for our environment’’.
Those who signed up for the more expensive “environment saving” plan may now consider their options.
UPDATE. Further green deception in the UK.
===
SYSTEMS UNSATISFYING
Tim Blair
Writing in the Age, Berhan Ahmed reveals the root cause behind yesterday’s terrorism arrests:
African Australians and Muslim Australians stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their countrypeople in rejecting terrorism and in supporting a fair and just society. We have come to this country in the hope of finding a land of peace and freedom.
But in the present economic climate, some young people become marginalised and disaffected.
===
PRAY TO MACCA
Tim Blair
Greenism’s religious component is explored by Jeff Young and Mahmoud Akef (organiser of something called the “seven year Muslim Action Plan on global warming"):
AKEF: We started by establishing an organization called MACCA. MACCA is Muslim Association for Climate Change Action.
YOUNG: Uh-huh.
AKEF: And this organization would be responsible for implementing the plan.
YOUNG: And that acronym sounds a lot like Mecca, the holy site.
AKEF: Yes.
It sounds much more like the nickname of another holy site.
===
MEAT OF MEANING
Tim Blair
David Thompson – who is skilled at locating this sort of nonsense – posts an announcement from the Meet Animal Meat international conference, organised by Uppsala University’s Centre for Gender Research:
Informed by feminist investigations of embodiment and bodiliness, we ask: How do we understand our bodily relationship to other animals? How do we embody animals, and how do animals embody us? How are carnal modes of incorporation, intimacy, and inhabitation kinds of contacts forged between “HumAnimals” … ?
What is the meaning of meat, and the meat of meaning?
Meat means food, you idiots. And “meat of meaning” contains oysters.
===
JUDGMENT JUDGED
Tim Blair
The SMH’s Peter Hartcher asks:
The hue and cry over Godwin Grech and the fake email left the Australian electorate with one big question: does Malcolm Turnbull have the judgment to be prime minister?
No, he doesn’t, but that’s more to do with his call on climate change than anything Grechy. Another big, and possibly more interesting, question: do journalists who supported Labor disaster Mark Latham in 2004 have the judgment to decide who should be prime minister? - I'm disappointed that Tim has taken the position he has on Turnbull. The problem with climate legislation is the government, not Turnbull. When will Rudd pass the mantle? We know he won't stay for the bill .. - ed.
===
WHO AMONG US HAS NOT WRITTEN LESBIAN FICTION IN AN ELEPHANT SUIT
Tim Blair
It’s chilling how closely certain events in Achewood mirror those in my own life.
===
KID PITCHERS
Tim Blair
I can’t believe I missed the festival of the falling babies again.
===
Nup, can’t see that flashing light
Andrew Bolt
The alleged terrorists arrested in Melbourne yesterday were all Muslims, from either Somalia or Lebanon. They weren’t Baptists or Greenlanders, Buddhists or Swedes. In fact, if you wanted to confirm a stereotypical profile of a modern terrorist, this pretty much fitted the bill.
But Paul Coglan seems to be one of the few people in Australia surprised by the news that a hunt for terrorists should turn up people like these, rather than the ones he’d have thought:
One of the most disturbing things about this morning’s counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne is the profile of the suspects, who were allegedly planning a Mumbai-style machine-gun attack on Australian Army barracks. They were, The Australian reports, construction workers and taxi drivers of Somali and Lebanese descent, living in suburban Melbourne.
Combine this with the admission of Anglo-Australian terrorist Shane Kent that he was part of a terrorist organisation and it’s clear terrorists don’t look like anything in particular and could be living in your street.
It’s now clear that racial profiling – using ethnicity to determine whether someone is likely to commit a certain type of crime – is an increasingly blunt tool for authorities seeking to avert an attack by “home-grown” terrorists.
Question: if Coglan is astonished that yesterday’s terror suspects turn out to be young Muslim men from Lebanon and Somalia, who precisely would he have predicted instead? Anglican school girls from Canada? It seems to me that Coglan is ignoring the most screamingly obvious fact that an investigator would seize on in building a profile of likely terrorists - and, no, it’s not race.
===
Scientists warn: humans aren’t heating the planet
Andrew Bolt
An open letter from 67 German scientists (translation here):
To the attention of the Honorable Madam Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany…
History tells us time and again that political leaders often have made poor decisions because they followed the advice of advisors who were incompetent or ideologues and failed to recognize it in time....
A real comprehensive study, whose value would have been absolutely essential, would have shown, even before the IPCC was founded, that humans have had no measurable effect on global warming through CO2 emissions. Instead the temperature fluctuations have been within normal ranges and are due to natural cycles. Indeed the atmosphere has not warmed since 1998 – more than 10 years, and the global temperature has even dropped significantly since 2003.... According to the IPCC, it was supposed to have gotten steadily warmer, but just the opposite has occurred.
More importantly, there’s a growing body of evidence showing anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role. Indeed CO2’s capability to absorb radiation is already exhausted by today’s atmospheric concentrations. If CO2 did indeed have an effect and all fossil fuels were burned, then additional warming over the long term would in fact remain limited to only a few tenths of a degree…
In the meantime, the belief of climate change, and that it is manmade, has become a pseudo-religion… The German media has sadly taken a leading position in refusing to publicize views that are critical of anthropogenic global warming… It is indeed unfortunate how our media have developed - under earlier dictatorships the media were told what was not worth reporting. But today they know it without getting instructions.
A consensus is growing.
===
If it’s bad, it must be man-made
Andrew Bolt
More hurricanes? Blame man:
Global Warming Fueled Record 2005 Hurricane Season Conclude Scientists
Fewer hurricanes? Blame nature:
After one of the calmest starts to the hurricane season in a decade, the experts from Colorado State University said the development of an El Nino effect in the Pacific had caused them to scale back their projections for the Atlantic. The El Nino phenomenon, which involves changes in atmospheric pressure in the southern Pacific, occurs every three to six years, disrupting global weather patterns.
UPDATE
Dr Roy Spencer:
So, where are all of the news stories about the fact we’ve had no tropical storms yet this year? As can be seen in the following graphic, as of this date in 2005 we already had 8 named storms in the Atlantic basin. And tomorrow, August 4, that number will increase to 9. In 2005 we were even told to expect more active hurricane seasons from now on because of global warming.
Of course, even though it is interesting that the 2009 tropical season is off to such a slow start, it may well have no significance in terms of long-term trends. But the lack of news coverage on the subject does show the importance of unbiased reporting when it comes to global warming. Let me explain.
Let’s say we really were in a slow, long-term cooling trend. What if the media decided they would only do news stories when there are record high temperatures or heat waves, ignoring record cold, and would then attribute those events to human-caused global warming? This would end up making the public fearful of global warming, even if the real threat was from global cooling.
The public expects – or used to expect – the media to report on all sides of important issues, so that we can be better informed on the state of the world. There have always been high temperature records set, and there have always been heat waves. In some sense, unusual weather is normal. It might not happen every day, but you can be assured, it will happen. But reporting on heat-related events while ignoring cold temperature records or events that do not support the claims of global warming theorists, will lead to a bias in the way the public views climate change.
===
Tell the sponsors you care
Andrew Bolt
To repeat, go for the sponsors, and don’t rely on the regulators:
THE scandal which cost Kyle Sandilands his $1 million Australian Idol job is hitting his radio bosses where it hurts the most - the bottom line.
Two key advertisers yesterday pulled the plug on deals with the Austereo network… Austereo sales staff were in crisis yesterday, as American Express and Optus joined Qantas and Channel 10 in pulling advertising dollars from the show. Optus is understood to have cancelled its sponsorship after customer threats of a boycott.
American Express also pulled its online advertising, telling Austereo to remove a banner campaign running on the 2DayFM website by close of business yesterday. An American Express spokeswoman said community outrage forced a review.
===
Save the rainforest! Pee in the shower
Andrew Bolt
And if you don’t wash, either, even more water saved!
New TV ads are encouraging Brazilians to save water - by urinating in the shower.
Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica says the campaign, running on several television stations, uses humour to persuade people to reduce flushes.
The group says if a household avoids one flush a day, it can save up to 4,380 litres of water annually…
Narrated by children’s voices, the ad ends with: ”Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic rainforest!”
===
16 of 17 terrorist groups are Islamist
Andrew Bolt
The Rudd Government’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations doesn’t yet include al-Shabaab, the group said to be linked to the men arrested in Melbourne yesterday for allegedly plotting terrorist acts.
As Cameron Stewart notes:
But the alleged inspiration for these home-grown extremists was none of the usual suspects such as Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida, Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiah or Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba. Instead it was a little-known militant group, barely three years old, which is waging a war against an obscure government in a distant and chronically dysfunctional African state that has long been abandoned by the international community. The rise of Somalia’s al-Shabaab and the influence it seems to have on foreign fighters, including the Melbourne group of would-be-jihadists, has taken Western intelligence agencies by surprise.
The rise of yet another Islamist terror group suggests there is something in Muslim or Arabic culture peculiarly susceptible to the call to violence. Just check again that list at the first link: even without al-Shabaab on it, 16 of the 17 terrorist groups listed there are Islamist. The remaining one is of the far Left, but is headquartered in Muslim territory.
While false, there is yet a grain of truth in the maxim that while not every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist is a Muslim.
===
The price of stupidity just went up
Andrew Bolt
STUPIDITY can be expensive. In fact, we’ve just been told it’s cost us another $400 million.
That’s how much the price of Victoria’s desalination plant went up last week - even before a single brick has been laid or strike called.
Ah, if only that were all this State Labor Government cost us by deciding purely for religious reasons we could never get another dam, no matter how close we got to running out of water.
But, no. With Premier John Brumby announcing last week he’d signed a deal to build his desalination plant near Kilcunda for $3.5 billion - rather than the $3.1 billion he’d promised two years ago - we know the full catastrophe.
We know Brumby is in fact paying three times as much for a third of the water he’d have got from a new dam on Gippsland’s fast-flowing Mitchell River, which in 2007 had more water flow to waste in just one flood than Melbourne uses in a year.
We know, of course, that the reason this Government refused to even ask for a cost-benefit analysis of a dam that Melbourne Water admitted would cost just $1.4 billion was that just to think of damming a river was a green sin.
===
Why Do Conservative Republicans Continue to Hurt Themselves?
By Bill O'Reilly
First of all, we believe that two vibrant political parties are necessary for a strong America. Competition almost always leads to good ideas. When one party dominates, you tend to see arrogance and foolish policies creep in, and that may already be happening to the Obama administration.
According to Real Clear Politics, President Obama's job approval rating is falling faster than any modern president except for Bill Clinton. Since his inauguration, the president has lost 16 points in about six months.
Now, that should bolster Republicans, especially conservatives who dislike the president's policies. But here's the interesting deal: Many conservative Republicans are acting foolishly. Instead of concentrating on better ideas for the country, they are frenzied over the president's birth certificate, that kind of dumb stuff.
As we discussed last week, Mr. Obama loves that because it makes his opposition look irrational. Why would he ever release his birth certificate when those demanding it look unhinged?
Some conservatives also personally attacked Judge Sotomayor. That was not smart. You can disagree with the woman, but to malign her character offends many Americans, including the vital Hispanic voting bloc.
And then there's talk radio, a lifeline for many conservatives which has angered centrist Republicans like John McCain, Colin Powell and even Michael Steele, the head of the GOP. The Obama administration has attempted to brand the Republican Party as extremist, and points to the hot rhetoric on talk radio to make its case.
The truth is that President Obama's belief system is so far away from the conservative-traditional point of view that the two will never agree. However, everything the president says and does is not wrong, stupid or un-American.
If the Republican Party wants to regain power, it must come up with better programs than the Democrats do. It's that simple. Ideological rhetoric does not persuade voters. It's preaching to the choir.
Finally, the far left lost all credibility when elements of it like Rosie O'Donnell began saying America attacked itself on 9/11. The fanaticism of Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo and Sean Penn, among others, hurt the liberal movement.
The same holds true for the far right, and the Obama people understand that. Every crazy theory, like the birth certificate deal, actually helps the president by marginalizing his most bitter opponents.
The GOP needs a uniter, not a divider. Where have I heard that before?
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