Headlines Friday 16th October 2009

Five guilty of 'mass' terror plot in Sydney

FIVE Sydney men have been found guilty of conspiring to plan a terrorist attack using high-powered guns and homemade bombs designed to cause mass death and destruction on Australian soil.

No sign of 'balloon boy', Falcon Heene, after landing

A SIX-year-old boy climbed into a small homemade helium balloon which floated thousands of metres into the air, but when it finally landed there was no sign of him.
'Balloon boy' found safe at home
POLICE find "balloon boy" Falcon Heene at home, hiding in a box in an attic after a bizarre search bid.

Asylum seekers in on-board hunger strike

THE Sri Lankan asylum seekers caught en route to Australia say they can live on boat "for months". - people suffer for Rudd's failures. -ed

Coles axes 40c discount petrol offer
A 40c-per-litre petrol discount is spiked after the consumer watchdog takes a look at it.

Qantas may ditch most first-class seats
FIRST-CLASS may become a luxury of the past with Economy bringing in more revenue.

Rising political star sorry for cleavage pic

MEGHAN McCain, whose dad lost to Barack Obama, regrets revealing Twitpic post.

Big boys do cry, but only if their dog dies
WHILE it's well known women cry more than men, blokes shed a tear about six times a year.

Cops paying for their own video backup
POLICE officers are shelling out almost $2000 of their own cash to pay for tiny video cameras to cover themselves if they are sued.

Backpacker dad rues rescue cash row
THE father of British backpacker Jamie Neale is desperate to reconcile with his son after a bitter falling-out over money.

Door-to-door salesman assaults teen girl
A 16-YEAR-OLD girl has been indecently assaulted by a salesman who forced his way into her home in Sydney's west, police said.

School principal on child-sex charge
A FORMER principal of a NSW Christian high school has been charged with the aggravated sexual assault of a teenage girl pupil.
=== Journalists Corner ===

Guest: Jeri Thompson
The former senator's wife speaks out on stopping the health care bill and backing conservative candidates. Watch as she lays it all out!
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The Battle for New Jersey!
Carl Cameron is live in the Garden State as the race for governor heats up between Christie and Corzine!
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Bacon Boy Blowout!
After a tot's TV tantrum, the culture warriors on whether the piggy product should be banned!
=== Comments ===
Russia and Europe Insult America Again
By Bill O'Reilly
Here's the no spin truth: If the European countries in NATO would supply combat troops to Afghanistan, that conflict would be over and the good guys would be victorious.

On Wednesday, Great Britain announced it is sending 500 more troops, but things are bleak on the continent. Only Holland and Denmark allow their soldiers to aggressively fight. Other countries like France, Italy and Germany do very little to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Of course, that makes no sense, but that's reality. No matter how popular Barack Obama is in Europe, we get very little help from those nations.

On Wednesday, our pal Vlad Putin announced he's against sanctions on Iran. He doesn't want to join with America, Britain and France and challenge Iran's nuclear weapons program by imposing economic penalties.

Vlad, a former KGB guy, says it's too soon and he doesn't want to frighten the mullahs. Of course that's insane, but it's consistent. Putin has been supplying Iran with military hardware, including missile components, for years. He does this to make life difficult for America and to pocket more than a few dollars himself.

So that's what President Obama is up against and there doesn't seem to be any reasoning with Europe and Putin. However, rather than being upfront with the American people, the Obama administration continues to live in Never-Neverland:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETAY OF STATE: I'm very pleased by how supportive the Russians have been in what has become a united international effort. We remain committed to preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power. Everybody hopes this succeeds, but we're also going to continue to look at the potential sanctions if we're not successful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Please. If Hillary Clinton is very pleased that Putin has publicly shot down sanctions, then it is all over. Iran will get nukes.

Secretary Clinton visited Russia to try and talk some sense into those people but their agenda is giving the USA a hard time, not protecting the world from crazy jihadists bent on getting nuclear weapons.

For years, Putin has been arming the worst elements on Earth, thumbing his nose first at President Bush, now at President Obama.

Many folks overseas despised President Bush because he acted without the world's approval. President Obama has vowed to change that philosophy. How's it going so far?
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Rudd all talk but no real action on migrants
Piers Akerman
KEVIN Rudd will not apologise for “deploying the most hardline measures necessary to deal with the problems of illegal immigration to Australia”.
That’s OK. He has nothing to apologise for, because he has not deployed any hardline measures.

This is the usual pure rubbish. There is no such construct as illegal immigrants-how many times do you need to be told this? People have a right to seek asylum.
Rudd himself has said that economic refugees would be sent back. What would you do? Resort to the Pacific solution? Resort again to the horrendous detention camps? Interestingly, the Liberals nake a lot of noise but not a peep out of them as regards what they would do.
The only apology required is from you-for deliberately trying to mislead. But the Akermaites will be dribbling their usual bile of course.

John of Adelaide

John, you are misleading and hyperbolic in your criticisms. The Pacific Solution worked well, and meant that many who might otherwise spend more time in dangerous refugee camps around the world were able to come to Australia than otherwise may have. You draw a false dichotomy in saying one might support Rudd or detention camps, because supporting Rudd is increasing the time spent in camps around the world for many people. Rudd’s ‘leadership’ has meant that to come to Australia is expensive and dangerous (note people are dying for Rudd’s policy that wouldn’t have under the Pacific Solution). I want more immigrants. I want them to come to Australia in safety and security, knowing they will have the basic freedoms of maintaining loving relationships with their family and having the ability to prosper through their own initiative. But the Ruddites will be dribbling their usual bile of course.

Hey Oddball these people are back dooring our immigration system. They are not refugees they are illegal immigrants.If they can muster US$20,000 to pay people smugglers for a one way trip to Christmas Island then why cant they spend that money going through the correct channels in their country of origin? Send a message , send them back - S Lick

. - S Licker, I thought you’d approve of the backdoor entry. My own view is that I prefer refugees to illegal migrants, much as was formally provided for by the Pacific Solution. But I don’t hate migrants. Many friends of mine were boat people, mainly Viet, but others too. I also have friends who were refugees and who had languished for almost a decade in camps. I despise Rudd’s policy. It hurts people I like. Both the refugees who miss out on placements and the illegal migrants who endure greater hardship and danger. Rudd’s policy is immoral and cruel, helping only those who profit from such cruelty, like the ALP.- ed

Didn’t Rudd recently pass an Act of Parliament to abolish the fees charged to certain illegal immigrants in detention centres?

I think there were a number of Liberal politicians who cross the floor to vote with the Rudd Labor Govt. One was a female who is about to retire on the gravy train of taxpayer funded pension and was quite happy for taxpayers to pay the additional costs of some detainees.

Reggie

Reggie, is your badly made point trying to assert that Rudd is secretly supported by members of the Liberal party? That is absurd. What may have happened is that some Liberal party members may have voted on their conscience, as is allowed for members of that party, but not for the ALP. The issue was political grandstanding by Rudd who has no problems with giving tax payer money away so long as he has access to substantial pork barrels. The press would have crucified the opposition had none of them made the same point as Rudd, without the profit that Rudd gets for the hypocrisy. But soon it won’t be Rudd who people will see in charge of the ALP, because if he can’t secure an early election he will have to resign before bills have to be paid .. and we still have no discussion about what creature will succeed Rudd in the ALP.- ed
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PRESBYTERIANS PENALISED
Tim Blair
Following a similar trial in Melbourne, five Sydney jihadi boys have been found guilty of conspiring to plan a terrorist attack:

A Supreme Court jury took four weeks and three days to find Mohamed Ali Elomar, 44, Abdul Rakib Hasan, 40, Mohammed Omar Jamal, 25, Moustafa Cheikho, 32, and his uncle Khaled Cheikho, 36, guilty of conspiring to do acts in preparation for a terrorist act or acts.

The men, all from Sydney’s south-west, were accused of stockpiling weapons and chemicals for use in the pursuit of “violent jihad’’ in accordance with their extremist Muslim beliefs.

They’ll be sentenced on December 14.
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MAGIC MOMENTS
Tim Blair
The Nation‘s Mark Hertsgaard:

They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an “Oh, shit” moment – an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself.

I’m more familiar with the “Oh, bullshit!” moment when you realise global warming is a joke. Such moments are occurring with greater frequency of late; feel free to describe your own in comments.

(Via Crikey deputy editor and political expert Sophie Black, who suffered an “Oh, shit” moment earlier this year when a DJ asked her what a double dissolution was.)
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SUN SHUNNED
Tim Blair
Some – perhaps many – within the Federal government are quietly dismissive about solar power, so this doesn’t come as a complete surprise:

The Rudd government’s $480 million “national solar schools” program was quietly suspended yesterday afternoon via a notice posted on the popular scheme’s website.

“The National Solar Schools Program has been suspended to any new claims in 2009-10. This suspension takes effect as of 3:00pm 15 October 2009,” the notice said.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Peter Garrett, who did not formally announce the program’s closure, said 1300 schools had been approved under the program last year and 500 had already been approved this financial year, with another 700 “still in the pipeline for assessment” …

The suspension is the latest in a series of changes and cuts to government solar programs, including the introduction of a means test on the household solar panel rebate and the ending of the remote solar program.

UPDATE:

Carbon dioxide emissions at One National Circuit, Barton, the home of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, went up by 17.4 per cent in the past 12 months, the period in which the Government was beating up political opponents of its climate policies …

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IT’S OVER
Tim Blair
First we had over-exaggeration. And now the Climate Prediction Center admits:

In recent months some models, including the NCEP CFS, have over-predicted the degree of warming observed so far in the Niño-3.4 region.

Strange, isn’t it, how these people never under-estimate climate possibilities.

UPDATE. In other envirostupid news, the ABC’s Margot O’Neill asks:

Have scientists failed to cut through because they’ve been too cautious or too inaccessible?

Any scientists urging caution instead of panic are usually labelled “denialists”. According to O’Neill, global warming hysteria is actually under-publicised:

Perhaps they need marketing advice from Mr Nasheed.

Mr Nasheed?

Maldives President, Mohamed Nasheed, recently announced plans to hold an underwater cabinet meeting to plead for global action to slash greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right - he and his ministers will don scuba skins to meet six metres under the ocean using hand signals and a whiteboard to communicate.

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UNSAFE AT ANY SOUND
Tim Blair
The New York Times reports:

Safety experts, worried that hybrids pose a threat if pedestrians, children and others can’t hear them approaching, want automakers to supply some digitally enhanced vroom. Indeed, just as cellphones have ring tones, “car tones” may not be far behind — an option for owners of electric vehicles to choose the sound their cars emit.

Certain safety experts hit on the same solution three years ago. Here’s a suggested hybrid car tone.
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Obama wins prize for most soldiers in the field
Andrew Bolt
Even socialists wonder what Barack Obama has done to warrant a Nobel Peace Prize:

The combined US troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have now reached a higher level than existed at any time under the presidency of George W. Bush.

The numbers here.
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School is the cultural festival Aboriginal kids need
Andrew Bolt
Helen Hughes and Mark Hughes are right to wonder: why are Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory given weeks off from school for cultural festivals, when their school results are so terrible? Why not schedule festivals such as Garma on school holidays? And why are outback teachers given almost eight weeks a year of courses in school time, when their students so clearly need their fullest attention?

We really, really need to get serious about education outback Aboriginal children, or they’ll have no choice but to stay where they are, likely as not on character-destroying welfare.
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Yet more of that small minority
Andrew Bolt
Yet another reason to worry that violent extremism is too compatible with Islam - as is preached by one strand of the Muslim community:

FIVE Sydney men have been found guilty of terrorism offences after one of the longest criminal trials in Australian history.

Mohamed Ali Elomar, 44, Khaled Cheikho, 36, his nephew Moustafa Cheikho, 32, Abdul Rakib Hasan, 40, and Mohammed Omar Jamal, 25, were today convicted of doing an act in preparation for a terrorist act…

And it can now be revealed that Mirshad Mulahalilovic, 33, and Khaled Sharrouf, 28, pleaded guilty last year to various terrorism offences before they were due to stand trial with their five co-accused and were sentenced to jail terms…

Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment SC admitted it was a circumstantial case in his closing address to the jury… But the jury was convinced that there was sufficient evidence that the men were involved in a conspiracy to prepare for a terrorist act that according to authorities, was intended to create “maximum damage”.

The group were, according to the Crown, motivated by “a perception that the participation of Australia in the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan ... were acts of aggression against the wider Muslim community"…

It was alleged that the men had sought to obtain, in significant amounts, chemicals for the purpose of making explosive devices. It was also alleged that they had attended paramilitary training camps together, and were in possession of extremist material including a document titled “The Terrorist Handbook”.

It’s all very well for us all to keep stressing that this kind of thing is just the work of a minority of Muslims. But this minority, which seems rather too numerous, can cause all Muslims dreadful harm with just one single bomb, and more needs to be done not just to repudiate this fringe, but to whip them out of every mosque in the land.

Given recent controversies I should add what should not need saying: that any comments by readers below express no one’s opinions but their own.
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Check the map. Why must Australia take in these people?
Andrew Bolt

The ABC’s AM program sums up the popular case for Australia letting in the 255 Sri Lankan illegal immigrants who are refusing to leave their boat, held by the Indonesian navy off Java:

The ethnic Tamils say they can’t go home and would rather die than wait years for resettlement… The asylum seekers are acutely aware that any decision to get off the boat will mean entering an asylum assessment process which could take up to nine years to resolve.

There are in danger, they can’t go home, they don’t want to wait nine years in the queue. And thus Australia must take them.

Let’s examine.

First, they are not in danger - because they are in Indonesia, not Sri Lanka (presuming Sri Lanka is even dangerous), and do not face deportation.

Second, in complaining about a nine-year wait, they are confirming that some real refugees are indeed waiting up to nine years in the queue for resettlement. Yet these Tamils say they must get the quick resettlement that has been so far denied millions of others. They are pushing in.

But third, and most importantly, check the map and see where Sri Lanka lies. So far away is it, in fact, that Australia isn’t even on the map. Let’s presume (on little proof) that these educated and monied Tamils could not stay in Sri Lanka, and let’s ask where they could go instead. Well, just across a narrow strait from their island is the Tamil Nadu state of India, which is safe. On route to Australia, these Tamils stopped in Malaysia, which is safe. Now they are in Indonesia, which is safe. Precisely why must they now demand that Australia, of all these countries and more, is the only one that must take them? Why is it our duty to agree?
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If even Rudd can’t do as he preaches…
Andrew Bolt
What Kevin Rudd says:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has called on world leaders to make bold decisions in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What Kevin Rudd does:

Carbon dioxide emissions at One National Circuit, Barton, the home of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, went up by 17.4 per cent in the past 12 months, the period in which the Government was beating up political opponents of its climate policies…

The stumbling block was Mr Rudd’s penchant for racing around the country - and the world. The year-on-year jump in emissions, according to the department’s annual report, is largely due to a 64 per cent increase in the number of kilometres flown - more air travel, in other words.

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Even Hillary now beats Obama
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have been helped much by the Nobel Prize gee-up, with a record low number of voters now having a favorable impression of him:

In January, just before Obama took office, 78 percent of those surveyed by Gallup had a favorable impression of him, with just 18 percent having an unfavorable impression. By March, the favorable number had fallen to 69 percent, where it would stay virtually unchanged for four months: 67 percent in May, and 66 percent in July. Now, it has tumbled ten points to 56 percent…

Gallup points out that in this latest survey, Hillary Clinton is now more popular than Obama.
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Rudd’s Tampa
Andrew Bolt

IT’S Kevin Rudd’s Tampa - a boat of illegal immigrants turned back at gunpoint and sent to a foreign island.

Hey, where’s the media outrage now? Or is that reserved just for prime ministers called John Howard?

If this didn’t involve the lives of 255 Sri Lankans, now bobbing off Java and refusing to leave their boat, you’d laugh.

It’s spin overboard, as the Prime Minister’s rank opportunism finally catches up with him, along with the fourth-biggest flood of boat people that we’ve seen since the fall of Saigon.

Already some 1700 people have landed here this year, 10 times more than in 2008 and rising fast. Another 25 people have died in the attempt.

But not until 255 Sri Lankans boarded Rudd’s Tampa, scaring the Prime Minister into asking the Indonesian navy to catch them, did the spin hit the fan.

You remember the original Tampa, of course.
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Does Labor truly want its mega-tax?
Andrew Bolt
I keep wondering lately whether the Rudd Government sincerely wants to impose its colossal tax on emissions, when it won’t lower temperatures but could cause political disasters such as this:

Victoria could face widespread power disruptions due to the closure of two of its four brown coal power stations in the next decade as Australia reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, according to high-level advice before the State Government.

Is wedging the Coalition really worth the retribution and shame that may well follow?
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The readers or my safety?
Andrew Bolt
ON Sunday I went on the ABC’s Insiders for something I always enjoy - a debate with Sydney journalist David Marr.

No wonder I like it. Marr is a prominent and intelligent representative of the Left who nevertheless makes me look reasonable and wise by his increasingly frantic failures to knock me down.

This time was no different. Just minutes into the show he literally buried his head in a newspaper rather than consider evidence that the world may in fact be cooling.

As I said, pointing at his hidden head, he was a symbol of so many don’t-want-to-know journalists of the Left. His rudeness needed no comment.

So I was pleased - even smug - until Marr two days later rang me in hot fury. And now I face one of the hardest moral decisions of my career.

For years I’ve run a blog that’s been unusually popular, attracting up to 13,000 replies from readers each week.

And among the hundreds of readers’ comments on my blog discussing my Insiders appearance appeared one that abused Marr vilely, and in homophobic terms. Marr is gay. I was horrified, as you would expect. Appalled by the comment, and that we made such a mistake.

I won’t repeat the many things Marr said in that conversation, or later when I rang back to apologise again.

But if he suspected or, rather, chose to believe that I personally authorised or encouraged such a thing, you would not be surprised, perhaps. Or put it this way: you might guess that perhaps he thought - or chose to think - that this comment on my blog defined me, my journalism and my audience.
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Frozen explorer still claims warming
Andrew Bolt

North Pole to lose its ice by 2020! The latest global warming scare electrifies the ever tingly media.

AFP’s report is typical - in its complete credulity and failure to check the most basic of facts:

The Arctic ice cap will disappear completely in summer months within 20 to 30 years, a polar research team said as they presented findings from an expedition led by adventurer Pen Hadow.

Actually, this is great news, since only last year we were told the Arctic would be ice-free not in 20 years but just four years from now:

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.:

Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery even warned of a possible ice-free Arctic this year, only to find ice cover actually increased.

But here’s something worse that AFP - and the ABC in its own report on radio last night - failed to say or even check before reporting this latest scare. Hmm, that name “Pen Hadow” sure sounds familiar. Why, wasn’t he the global warming preacher who had to be rescued half way through his expedition when he found the North Pole far, far colder than he’d expected?:

Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels, are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions.

In fact, Anthony Watts has listed the Top 10 Reasons why Hadow’s findings cannot be trusted, from incomplete research to the publication of false data. But which reporter worries about such things as credibility when a doomsayer preaches?

UPDATE

A correction in ocean warming data shows the temperatures have not cooled since 2004, but remained steady.
===
Italians bribe the killers they should be fighting
Andrew Bolt
Paying your enemies not to attack you? Italy sure has a suicidal way of waging war:

TEN French soldiers killed in Afghanistan failed to realise the risks in the area because Italian officials had secretly paid the Taliban to desist from violence.

The Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taliban commanders and local warlords to keep the Sarobi area near Kabul quiet in the months before French forces moved in.

The French had been in charge of the area for just a month when the 10 soldiers were killed in an insurgent ambush in August 2008, in one of the biggest single losses of life for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Stories like this make me wonder if Europe could now win any war. What did the Italians think the Taliban would actually do with their money?

The Italians have done precisely the same in Iraq, of course - for example, to rescue a communist propagandist.
===
Just two Socialists gave Obama his Nobel
Andrew Bolt
War breaks out among the committee for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Three of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama, the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported Thursday…

In a surprise move last Friday, the Nobel committee attributed the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama less than nine months after he had taken office.

Moreover, nominations for this year’s prize closed just 11 days after Obama took office.

“The committee was unanimous,” its influential secretary Geir Lundestad told AFP on Friday.

But Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, who represented the right-wing populist Progress Party on the committee, led the way in objecting to the choice of Obama because she questioned his ability to keep his promises, the newspaper said.

Well, yes.

It also said the representative of the Conservative Party, Kaci Kullmann Five, and Aagot Valle, the representative of the Socialist Left, had objections.

The choice for Obama was however strongly supported by committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland and Sissel Roenbeck, both representatives of the Labour Party.

Jagland’s background?

Thorbjørn Jagland (Chairman) - President of the Storting, former Labor Prime Minister, vice president of the Socialist International, named by the KGB as a “confidential contact”.

A bigger joke by the day.