U.S., Afghan gov't launch initiative that offers jobs and protection to militants who choose to abandon their fight.
Three tiger sharks more than 4m long had been caught off Queensland this year, with more than 500 sharks snared in total.
Tiger 'in fight with wife over affair'
TIGER Woods crashed his car after allegedly fighting with his wife over reports of an affair.
Joe Hockey calls on Howard for advice
LIBERAL Joe Hockey visited John Howard at his home for advice on whether to run for party leader.
Schoolies week the worst ever - police
POLICE say this year's Schoolies was the most rowdy and drunken in the history of the event.
Make a change - reach out on RUOK? Day
THREE words may be all it takes. It's RUOK? Day, a national day of action for suicide prevention.
Guards fired shots to end riot at prison
PRISON wardens fired shots to quell a riot which was considered the "worst incident in 25 years". - what do you expect when the NSW Govt run jails like schools. - ed.
Mum elated to see Nigel Brennan
THE mother of freed kidnap victim Nigel Brennan has had an emotional and euphoric reunion with her son which has left them both speechless with hugs.
Bomb killed 39 on Russian train
A TERRORIST'S bomb derailed an elite passenger train speeding through the Russian forest.
=== Comments ===
Real grassroots fury putting heat on ETS
Piers Akerman
IT’S a matter of grave concern for stalwart rank-and-file Liberal Party members that Malcolm Turnbull’s number one supporter for his global-warming stance is now no less a figure than Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, while his number two supporter is the former union leader, Greg Combet. - I am very disappointed with Mr Turnbull for his support of the ETS. I want to hold him to his promise of not doing anything that is ineffective. I feel he should give the Australian economy a benefit of a doubt and reject the ETS. I get it that he is tethered to his constituents at Wentworth. Even so, leadership expresses itself, and Mr Turnbull is looking like Fraser or Hewson. I am very disappointed. - ed.
===
Reagan Still Points the Way for Republicans
By James Pinkerton
Today, conservatives and Republicans--not always one and the same, as we have seen recently in New York State--are feeling rightfully emboldened. Any notion that America had permanently shifted toward liberalism over the last few years was blown away on Election Day 2009. And yet it remains to be seen whether or not conservatives and Republicans (and also libertarians and independents) can work together, over the long haul, in the same partisan and ideological coalition.
===
A betrayal of science - and of you
Andrew Bolt
Frank J. Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, on the true significance of Climategate:
The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime — the real story of Climategate.
It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.
===
Beware a Tiger’s mate with club in hand
Andrew Bolt
It did seem odd to read that Tiger Wood’s wife rescued him from his crashed car by smashing in the window with a golf club. Seems the chain of events may have been the other way around.
===
The death of beauty
Andrew Bolt
How many more years of failure before we have a cultural awakening?
Although this year has been hailed as a strong one for Australian films, that $65 million cut of the box office is just 6.5 per cent of the roughly $1 billion Australians spend each year at the cinema.Once again there’s talk of better marketing and financing and the rest. But here’s the giveaway:
That’s better than the 10-year average of 4.4 per cent, but it’s a long way from the 41 per cent audience share French films enjoy at home or the 31 per cent UK films have in their own market....
If Australia ($38 million) and Mao’s Last Dancer ($14 million to date) are excluded from the take, the figures look decidedly anaemic - at best, about $20 million between all the other Australian films released.Only Samson & Delilah has made a profit at the local box office...
And even at the producers conference, there was much derisive talk of the Australian industry’s preference for ‘’depressing films about junkies in Darlingurst’’.The fact is, for a start, that the writing on so many scripts is just plain clunky and affected. The same is true of so many Australian novels. That’s not just a question of lack of technical skill, although that’s clearly a big factor. We’re also talking self indulgence here: too often the desire to express seems to overwhelm the imperative of the need to entertain.
But there is as well a great self-protective conceit and a culture of anti-beauty that affects almost every branch of the arts.
It is no coincidence that five of the world’s 10 ugliest buildings, as rated this year by Virtual Tourist, are cultural institutions such as theatres and galleries, or are home to them. It is no coincidence that opera as a living art form was virtually killed off by atonality. It is a crime that modern theatres have been stripped down into stark, no-glamor, determinedly egalitarian work-spaces, rather than the glorious chocalate boxes of the typically 19th century boxes and galleries kind of theatre you see throughout Europe. It is a tragedy that “gritty” and “confronting” are now seen as the ultimate accolade in black-skivvy circles, when you know that this is precisely what is sure to drive away the paying public. It was a dereliction of duty for the board of the Melbourne International Arts Festival to allow for four years its then director, Kirsty Edmunds, to stage the most anti-beauty, anti-charm, anti-canonical, anti-narrative shows she could find, and drive the box office to depths not seen since Jacques Cousteau went diving (and how refreshing to see the recovery this year under Brett Sheehy).
It is no surprise that a disdain for the public’s preferences - and a failure to satisfy them - should match so closely the rise in the grants from arts adminstrators who apparently see the arts as a social marker rather than a socialising event, and thus insulate artists from their failure to please the uninitiated masses. And how comforting is it to an artist and their clique in the stalls to console themselves with the idea that mass rejection only confirms the superior tastes of the few.
Bring back beauty. Provoke, yes, but not without pleasing, too. All may die in Hamlet, but not before delivering the loveliest of lines.
===
Spin, spin and spin again
Andrew Bolt
Another small example of an overwhelming characteristic of this most bizarre Prime Minister:
THE mother of freed hostage Nigel Brennan says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was clueless about her son’s case when she asked him for assistance in freeing her son from his Somali captors earlier this year....
Mr Rudd told the media afterwards that he had devoted more personal attention to Mr Brennan’s predicament than any other case involving an Australian in trouble overseas.
But the reality, according to Mrs Brennan, was very different: ”He didn’t know my name, nor Nigel’s,” she told The Sunday Mail later, speaking on the basis that nothing would be published until her son was free
===
Rudd starts giving our our billions
Andrew Bolt
I’ve already revealed that the United Nations’s draft treaty at Copenhagen next month required Australia to pay $7 billion a year to the UN as its “climate debt”. Kevin Rudd still refuses to say how much he’ll actually hand over, but has already agreed this week to give away hundreds of millions of your dollars to countries such as South Africa, Jamaica, Kenya and Uganda:
The Commonwealth plan for the so-called “Fast Start” fund calls for developed countries in the 53-nation group to spend $10 billion a year until at least 2012.
How much did you just spend at CHOGM, Mr Rudd, and how many billions will you spend in Copenhagen?
He decline(d) to put a figure on the funding, saying it was still to be determined.
Such deceit. Be honest with the taxpayers whose money this really is, Prime Minister. Tell us how much of our money you’re giving away on this mad green crusade?
===
Why is this megalomaniac in charge of the Liberals?
Andrew Bolt
Malcolm Turnbull is clear on Channel 9 today: any Liberal Party not led by him is not worth voting for:
Now, if (Senate Liberal leader) Nick Minchin wins, if he wins this battle (to delay Rudd’s great green tax), he condemns our party to irrelevance, because what he is saying on one of the greatest issues and challenges of our time, one that will affect the future of the planet and the future of our children and their children, Nick Minchin is saying ‘do nothing’. He wants us to be the ‘do nothing on climate change’ party and he has been, he’s on the record about that, and when he talks about a delay or a deferral, what that means is denial…An utterly, utterly disgraceful performance by Turnbull. This prolongued rant cannot be dismissed as a mere slip of the tongue. Turnbull cannot even bring himself to endorse the Liberals if not led by him. He’d rather destroy the party than let it be led by anyone else.
Laurie, I will win on Tuesday and I am not interested in becoming a mouth piece or a Patsy or a tool for people whose views are completely wrong and are contrary to the best interests of our nation, our planet and indeed the Liberal Party…
Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews for that matter, ,,,didn’t object (to John Howard’s emissions trading plan), they went along with it and now they say “We didn’t ever believe in it”. What does that say about their integrity…
Joe Hockey has told me as recently as last night that I have his complete support… Now, if Joe were to become leader but - so if he was the cuddly friendly face of the Liberal Party but spouting Nick Minchin’s lines, that would destroy him and the party…
Joe believes that if this bill is not passed nobody in our party, including him would have the capacity to present a credible alternative climate change policy. Because Rudd will say, look, you guys took an ETS to the last election with John Howard, we put up an ETS, you presented some amendments, we agreed to them in large part, you said that’s great, a deal is done, you had the support of your party room, it was confirmed within 24 hours by a second vote in the party room, he would say, now you’re ratting on it and you expect us to believe you’re fair dinkum with an alternative climate change policy when you have got people like Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott there saying that climate change is bunkum and we don’t have to do anything about it…
LO (Laurie Oakes): But this is not just about climate change, this is also about Turnbull, there are people in the party who loathe your style, they say you’re autocratic? You don’t …
MT: Compared to who? Compared to John (Howard),. John didn’t …
If we put the party, doesn’t matter if it’s Joe Hockey or Billy Bloggs as the leader, if we put the party back together, in accordance with Nick Minchin’s wishes, then we will end up becoming a fringe party of the far right…
LO: Final question, I suppose if you’re right and if you lose, are you saying that if Liberal Party is not worthy of winning the next election?
MT: Laurie, I’m not going to make a comment on that.
The man always was more a creature of the Left than a genuine Liberal, and as leader suffers from an even more drastic flaw, that no stands starkly revealed.
He is a megalomaniac, who identifies his own interests with the party’s. As de Gaulle would has said: The party is me.
This interview alone should end what remnants of support Turnbull has left. This is a man who will never listen, and cannot lead.
===
Climate hype drowns in Tasmania’s rain
Andrew Bolt
I’m sorry, but I can’t keep up. Is too much rain in Tasmania - or too little - that’s proof of global warming?
Persistent rains have prompted the Weather Bureau to declare 2009 the 11th-wettest year on record in Tasmania.I can’t say the Bureau predicted these past two months to be quite this wet:
The chances of exceeding the median rainfall for October to December are between 25 and 40% over northeast Queensland, parts of Victoria, southeast SA and Tasmania (see map).Still, even though the Bureau can’t predict the weather three months ahead, we must believe it can predict the climate 100 years from now.
But back to the question: is the rain proof of global warming, or is a dry? After all, it wasn’t long ago that the Bureau thought it ominous that there was little rain:
Figures released today by the Bureau of Meteorology in its Tasmanian annual climate summary for 2006 show that many sites in northern, eastern and southeastern Tasmania have had their driest year on record. The summary gives many details for sites across the state, including summaries and extremes for the year.But here’s what the CSIRO predicted Tasmania would get, thanks to global warming:
The research model predicted that annual rainfall in Tasmania will increase by seven to eleven percent in the west and central areas, and will decrease by around eight percent in the north-east. Increased rainfall is expected in all areas of Tasmania in winter and early spring.That was three years ago. Yet the evidence until now is that Tasmania has been getting less rain, contrary to the CSIRO’s model - confirming a National Technical University of Athens study which concluded such models were in fact useless:
===
It’s not who you rape but who you know
Andrew Bolt
The President of France helps a child rapist on the reported grounds that his wife’s artistic friends liked him:
Polish director Roman Polanski’s family is thanking French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being “very effective” in helping to win his release from a Swiss prison.How to tell the public that there’s one law for them, and another for the President’s mates. Even the ones that would drug, rape and sodomise a protesting 13 year old.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is thanks to the President that Roman has been freed, but he has been super,” Polanski’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Seigner, told Le Parisien newspaper. “The President has been very effective.”
The London Times speculated that Sarkozy’s wife, ex-model Carla Bruni, may have pressured her husband to intervene because she used to hob nob with Paris’ artistic community, which includes Polanski and wife Emmanuelle Seigner.
After initially balking at his release, Swiss authorities agreed to let Polanski move from a cell to his luxurious Alpine chalet once he puts up $4.5 million bail.
===
Powdering the moll’s face
Andrew Bolt
A shockingly amoral line in novellist Adrian McGinty’s review of the alleged autobiography of gangster’s moll Roberta Williams:
Williams sees herself as a victim persecuted by the media and the criminal justice system and she portrays Carl as a gun-toting, loveable rogue. She shows no sign of remorse that Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were shot in their car in front of five young children, including Moran’s twins. Indeed, she mocks the family members who appeared shocked and grief-stricken that night on the TV news.McGinty is criticising the publisher for not disguising the fact that the sociopath who wrote this self-serving defence of a criminal career career is in fact, well, a sociopath.
There’s no denying Williams’ charisma or toughness or love for her own children, but a kinder editor might have made her temper such sociopathic statements.
This is not only mistaking the difference between fiction and autobiography, which purports (so often falsely) to give the reader a true insight into the mind of the storyteller - an insight McGinty apparently suggests should have been obscured.
It is also to become culpable in the glamorising - or at least normalising - of a criminal and the despicable crimes of her husband. Roberta Williams is a nasty person, and it’s dishonest and anti-social to wish her to appear otherwise. It’s terrible enough that she profits from her book.
===
The pain is whole idea of Rudd’s great green tax
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann says analysing the details of the “compromise” the Rudd Government made on its great green tax on everything is missing the big picture:
Getting lost in the detail is utterly pointless. All the compensation in the world can’t avoid the ETS destination: which stripped to its essentials is to close some at least of our power stations. When in the context of surging population we should be building more.
Further, the greater the compensation—in the short run—to some sectors of the economy like the power industry and minerals exporters, the greater the burden that will have to be borne by the un-compensated.
This in turn has led, as detailed by Alan Wood on Thursday, to the return of the rent-seekers: the greatest sucking at the taxpayer teat since the dismantling of tariffs. This was a week that will live in infamy and insanity.
===
Climategate is what it’s called - and called too often to ignore
Andrew Bolt
The news that many Left-wing journalists refuse to cover is now exploding all over the Internet. “Climategate” now gets 10.6 million mentions on Google, even though Google won’t offer the term on its auto-suggest.
The public is not just learning of Climategate, but learning of media censorship as well.
UPDATE
Google now has “Climategate” on autosuggest - and it returns more hits even than “global warming”. Ask your local media outlet why this scandal is not getting the coverage it deserves.
UPDATE 2
Via Watts Up With That, this video of who’s-who in Climategate:
UPDATE 3
If governments around the world weren’t punting trillions of dollars on the reliability of these scientists’ work, you’d laugh:
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.No sane Government can now commit themselves to spending their national wealth on science so shady.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.
In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.
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