Is it a tattoo, or is it a Martian landscape? Spectacular shots taken by NASA's Mars orbiter blur the line between science and art.
Medical official reportedly told others he worried that if Fort Hood suspect was deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak covert military information to Islamic extremists.
Obama Rejects Afghan Plans
President reportedly won't accept any war options offered by advisers, instead emphasizing Afghan gov't role
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Obama leads ceremony to honor men and women who serve U.S. military missions
Did Fear of Being 'Crucified' Paralyze Hasan Investigators?
Charges fly that 'political correctness' prevented officials from probing Fort Hood suspect's e-mails, and is still used as a crutch in explaining the rampage after the fact - Obama is a lapsed Muslim. -ed.
Boatpeople offered resettlement
THE Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking have been offered resettlement in Australia.
China to keep Aussie exec 'spy' in jail
CHINA has will keep mining executive Stern Hu in detention for another two months over allegations of spying and bribery. - Rudd has washed his hands of a good man. -ed.
GOP Surges in 2010 Election Poll
New poll finds voters choosing GOP over Democrats, 48-44 percent, if House elections held today
Did Family in 'Child Rape' Case Also Kill?
Five men from same family are in custody in stunning case in Missouri as cadaver dogs hunt for bodies
We're having more babies than ever, but the trend towards having them later in life seems to have stalled, while parents are more relaxed about marriage with one-third born out of wedlock
PM visits troops in Afghanistan
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has paid a Remembrance Day visit to our soldiers in the Middle East.
Cancer victims 'could grow new breasts'
SCIENTISTS are poised to begin revolutionary surgery to help cancer victims regrow breasts.
Murder suspect said: 'I've done bad thing'
MAN wanted over Randwick killings alleged to have called friend before he disappeared.
Airline will allow you to jump the queues
QANTAS frequent flyer cards to be microchipped to become a permanent boarding pass.
No lights and lousy lookouts - inquest
A FATHER and son's failure to properly light their boat led to a collision with a ferry on Sydney Harbour that killed four of their friends, an inquest heard.
Courtroom killer sentenced to life in jail
A MAN who stabbed a pregnant woman to death in a courtroom in front of her husband and son is sentenced to life in prison.
RailCorp adds insult to injury for sexual assault victim
RAILCORP has quietly cut payments to a sexual harassment victim amid a court finding that it had only paid the money to keep its name out of the papers.
Racist fire bombing was staged - police
THREE Indian nationals who claimed they were victims of a racist fire bombing attack at a supermarket in Sydney have been charged with staging the incident.
=== Journalists Corner ===
We go inside the personal side of a soldier's life.
It's our 'Special Report' series: On the Frontlines — Tonight 6p et.
Plus, Fox Fans shared their personal photos with us and we've turned them into a tribute to our troops.
===
Guest: Chuck Norris
Obama's global go green initiative - the price tag could be staggering and he wants Americans to pay for it ... so where will your green go?
===
On the Job Hunt
Could Detroit's new jobs initiative be the model for other American companies? Go "On the Job Hunt"!
===
Tribute to the Fallen
How has President Obama handled the Fort Hood massacre? Dick Morris reacts!
=== Comments ===
Verdict rips nappies off our Nanny State
Piers Akerman
STORES selling fragile items such as glassware used to display signs which meant “You break it, you pay for it.” - I got tipsy, once, but never drunk. I don’t want to get drunk. I can’t see the fun in it. I had my wisdom teeth removed, in my late teens, and as I was going under general, I began joking and threatened the surgeon that if he amputated I would sue .. I never want to lose that control again.
But I can understand why the ALP champion the cause of irresponsible behavior. It lets them off the hook .. and it gives them an irritating wedge policy the conservatives won’t copy. And it can slip like moving goal posts. So that during the Cronulla riots the then police minister could decide to keep serving alcohol from his pubs even though prudence would have suggested he close them for awhile. Or that a smashed former attorney general who steals his own blood from testers doesn’t have to face any recriminations. Very handy, when you don’t want an individual to talk about what they know about buried skeletons. Hence the disturbing thoughts surrounding the picture of former premiers gathered around an incompetent incumbent. - ed.
===
Heartbreaking Memorial Service at Fort Hood, Texas
By Bill O'Reilly
Yesterday a memorial service was held for the 12 soldiers and a civilian murdered by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who remains in the hospital.
Forty-two people were wounded in the attack. Some of them attended the service, but eight are still in intensive care.
President Obama said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy, but this much we do know. No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice in this world and the next.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well said.
As we reported Monday, the assassin Hasan was known to the Army as a terrorist sympathizer. So now an investigation will take place to find out why the man was not discharged.
Apparently Hasan had e-mailed a recruiter for Al Qaeda in Yemen, perhaps as many as 20 times. The Washington Post reports the FBI did not believe that action warranted an investigation, but apparently the information was passed along to the Army.
For some reason, the media continues to have trouble with the Muslim-terror angle to this story:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS MATTHEWS, NBC NEWS: Apparently, he tried to contact Al Qaeda. Is that the point at which you say this guy's dangerous? That's not a crime to call up Al Qaeda, is it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Chris, hold on a second.
MATTHEWS: Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?
BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS NEWS: It's looking more and more like he was just sort of a religious nut, and you know…
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
SCHIEFFER: ...Islam doesn't have a majority or the Christian religion has its…
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A corner on that.
SCHIEFFER: ...full, you know, full helping of nuts, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it just inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nutcase.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It really is tragic that he was a Muslim.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When a Muslim enlists in the military, I have heard many stories that they've been harassed, that a lot of pressure has been put on them. They're just not made to feel welcome.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Here on "The Factor" we have reported this story straight. Hasan is a Muslim terrorist, period. He killed out of blind hatred. He is a villain and there is no excuse for his rampage.
We do, however, continue to believe that most Muslims are good people, and I understand they must be protected, but not to a ridiculous degree. The evidence was there about Hasan, but political correctness prevented action.
To a large extent, the media drives the PC insanity, and it's appalling.
Muslims are the source of much terrorism on this planet, so when an American Muslim begins sympathizing with jihad, as Hasan did, action must be taken. Let's stop the nonsense. People are dying.
===
REVIEW REVIEWED
Tim Blair
An email from the Columbia Journalism Review:
The Fort Hood Massacre: Be first or be right? Greg Marx measures the ripples of a story that a Texas paper ran with secondhand info that turns out to be wrong.A subsequent email from the Columbia Journalism Review:
Our earlier e-mail message about this story said that the secondhand information in question turned out to be wrong. That is not accurate.UPDATE. On the subject of Major Hasan, here is his 2007 PowerPoint presentation on Muslims in the US military. It may include one or two of those red flags said to have been missed in the years prior to the Fort Hood murders.
===
LOST CITY OF PERTHLANTIS
Tim Blair
Perth is dooooomed:
New figures have revealed that sea levels along the coast of Western Australia are rising at a rate double that of the world average.Yet sea levels on Australia’s east coast have only increased by 1.9mm per year. The bitch goddess that is climate change has singled out Perth for special punishment.
Statistics from Australia’s National Tidal Centre show levels have increased by 8.6mm a year off the coast of the state capital Perth.
That compares to a global average of just over 3mm.
Scientists have said that man-made climate change has played a significant role in the rise.
===
CANBERRA CARES
Tim Blair
Paul Connor (about whom more here and here) now describes his climate fast as a hunger strike. Start digging a grave – or maybe a slot. Meanwhile, the excitement builds at starvation central:
You’d think at least one of those thousands in the crowd would throw him a bread crust or something.
===
Join my global conspiracy
Andrew Bolt
Feel free to add your name to this letter in comments below:
Dear Mr Rudd,UPDATE
I am an Australian who respects reason and evidence, and who wants this nation to prosper - and not squander its wealth.
On Friday I heard you say there is now a group of ”opponents of climate change action ... active in every country” that is “powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond”.
I would like to join this group. Can you please tell me where I can enrol?
Signed....
Professor Ian Plimer - in London for the debate that warmist George Monbiot chickened out of - joins this fast growing list below. So do engineers, scientists, academics and one of the candidates in the Higgins by-election (signature 600 or so - and no, it’s not the Liberal). So does Jo Nova, the science communicator who wrote the excellent Skeptics Handbook. Pass this letter on to your friends. Sign them up!
UPDATE 2
I explain to Alan Jones the absurdities in Rudd’s speech which prompted this request that he supply the conspiracy’s address. (Link fixed. Go to highlights panel.)
Tell Rudd you want this address, too. Sign up!
UPDATE 3
I’ll talk to 4BC’s Michael Smith about this letter shortly after 6pm.
===
Hold the scaremongers accountable
Andrew Bolt
Five years ago, the WWF warns the ever gullible Sky News:
‘Five Years Left To Save The PlanetFive years are up, and even the fellow warmists at NASA concede:
Our planet is just five years away from climate change catastrophe - but can still be saved, according to a new report.
Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012So was WWF’s warning five years ago just an honest mistake - or a grossly deceptive bit of scaremongering? And will Sky News now treat WWF with the derision it deserves?
UPDATE
Liberal MP and physicist Dennis Jensen wants to hold another scaremonger to account:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently delivered one of the most outlandish speeches ever uttered by a senior politician in Australia. In that speech, he made all sorts of bizarre allegations that anthropogenic climate change sceptics were being driven by vested interests, were out to destroy the future of our children and grandchildren (the typical refrain of those who do not have facts on their side, and therefore resort to emotive terminology), had a lack of logic, and were cowardly. On the cowardly aspect, I will debate Kevin Rudd on the science of climate change anywhere, anytime.Hands up the people who think the public interest would be served well by a debate between the PM who proposes one of the biggest taxes in history to “stop” global warming, and the MP who perhaps best understands the science that’s cited as the excuse?
===
If NZ is fined $2.3 billion, how much will we pay, Mr Rudd?
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd still refuses to say how much he’ll pay of the $7 billion a year the United Nations wants from us under the draft Copenhagen treaty. Nor will he say how much power he’ll give the UN’s proposed new global authority to fine us.
New Zealand now discovers how high those UN fines could be, even for a tiny country:
Kyoto requires New Zealand to take financial responsibility for any increase in its emissions over 1990 levels during the five years from 2008 to 2012 inclusive. Current estimates are that we will exceed that target by 76 million tonnes, which would cost $2.3 billion (at the carbon price of $30 a tonne the report assumes).UPDATE
Terry McCrann warns that even Kevin Rudd has no idea what his colossal tax on emissions will actually cost:
Didn’t Treasury engage in the most exhaustive modelling of the economic consequences it had ever done, according the ‘modeller-in-chief’ and Treasury head Ken Henry’s right-hand man David Gruen?It’s insane. Rudd bases his estimate of the cost of his colossal tax on an assumption that other countries will join us (they won’t) and we’ll soon switch to less gassy techologies (we can’t). Wake up, people - this is your country that’s being wrecked.
Yes, bar one not exactly incidental detail, as ANU economist Alex Robson reminded me and everyone else at the (IPA) conference yesterday.
The one thing that Treasury did not model is the outcome that we will actually face, if Rudd gets his way. That we lock in mandatory cuts to our carbon dioxide emissions and the rest of the world does not.. (It failed to model) what Rudd specifically demands we do ahead of the big Copenhagen meeting: lock in the mandatory cuts of the ETS, the Emissions Trading Scheme, irrespective of what happens or does not happen at Copenhagen…
All the treasury modelling assumes the rest of the world joins in mandatory cuts - most ludicrously of all, that China, currently building a new coal-fired power station every two weeks or so, comes into agreement to start cutting emissions from 2015.
Ah, but those emission cuts will be achieved with CCS - carbon capture and storage - won’t they?
The total unreality of the Treasury modelling goes beyond the surreal. For as Robson also pointed out, CCS - what will purportedly allow us to have our emission cuts and still get to eat our coal-fired power cake - is assumed by treasury to be adopted sometime between 2020 and 2025.
In fact, it’s a total fantasy. CCS is a completely unproven technology, which is looking more and more ‘unprovable’ by the day. Yet Treasury assumes it will be up and running everywhere! in 10 to 15 years.
===
Turning off such TV preaching will save even more
Andrew Bolt
America’s NBC thinks its audience needs its brains washed:
NBC gives new meaning to the phrase “green screen” next week, spreading a pro-environmental message across five of its prime-time entertainment programs.I’ve never thought propaganda makes great entertainment, and I doubt these efforts will prove me wrong:
“30 Rock,” where Al Gore takes a cameo role, leads the way. Environmental themes were also added to the scripts of “The Biggest Loser,” “The Office,” “Heroes” and “Community.”
NBC Universal’s three-year “green” campaign has largely focused on off-camera issues like making company facilities more eco-friendly.
This year on “30 Rock,” corporate boss Jack Donaghy tells the late-night show’s staff it has to cut its carbon footprint by 5 percent.... In the comedy “Community,” the college is renamed “Environdale.” College students think they’re hiring the band Green Day for a gig, and instead gets the Celtic combo Greene Daeye. Dwight in “The Office” takes the role of “Recyclops” in that comedy. “Heroes” features cast members filling a truck with recyclables and talking about the importance of giving back to the earth. Trainers on “The Biggest Loser” will instruct their clients to buy organic produce and bring their own mugs to the coffee shop.
===
Hasan warned: such killings are for Islam
Andrew Bolt
The Washington Post shows the slides shown by the Fort Hood jihadist before he acted on his beliefs:
Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood, was supposed to discuss a medical topic during a presentation to senior Army doctors in June 2007. Instead, he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.Go through those slides here.
Mark Durie, a priest and scholar, describes what Hasan said:
He is saying that Muslims can experience problems in the military for two reasons.Hasan warned that Muslims soldiers could not be trusted to fight a Muslim enemy, and could turn their guns on their countrymen instead. He then did just that himself. Question: why did the army not remove this man from his post? And how can anyone still doubt the role of Islam in this massacre?
One reason is the prohibition against Muslims killing other Muslims (’whoever kills a believer intentionally, his punishment is hell’ – slide 12).
The other is the requirement that Muslims wage war against non-believers in both defensive jihad (slides 37-41) and aggressive jihad (slides 42-48). This command, he is saying, can be expected to be followed by devout, God-fearing Muslims (’Allah expects full loyalty’ – slide 49), especially if they are persuaded that in so-doing they would be ‘fighting against the injustices of the “infidels,”’ (slide 48). His point is that if US Muslim soldiers can be persuaded that fighting against fellow-Muslims is an injustice, this could trigger a deadly attack against fellow US soldiers instead, e.g. by means of ‘suicide bombing, etc’ (’We love death more than you love life!’ – slide 48).
The Major was explaining that when Muslims in the military are ordered to fight against other Muslims (such as in Iraq or Afghanistan) this can trigger their religious convictions to such effect that they will seek to be discharged from their combat duties. Otherwise they could feel compelled to attempt to kill fellow US soldiers in a personal jihad. Major Hasan refers to this possibility as ‘adverse events’. He cites the case of convert to Islam and US soldier Hasan Akbar (slide 13), who killed two US officers in a grenade attack during the Gulf War, and had written prior to the attack: ‘I may not have killed any Muslims, but being in the Army is the same thing. I may have to make a choice very soon on who to kill.’
===
Symbol crashes
Andrew Bolt
There’s sure some souring of all that hope-and-change thing:
As for Democrats generally:
===
Paying more to please the Left
Andrew Bolt
Michael Stutchbury nails Kevin Rudd’s backdown over book imports as yet another hard decision dodged:
KEVIN Rudd’s cultural protection sends a clear message that his government does not have the policy backbone to reject the special pleading of even a minor industry and a gaggle of local authors.
It signals that Rudd Labor is no Hawke-Keating government and that it is open season for rent-seekers to plunder the general interest.
Don’t worry about making Australian consumers pay an extra third or more for books. Don’t give a fig about maintaining a textbook tax on underprivileged Australian kids. Don’t care about “social inclusion”. Forget about Julia Gillard’s “education revolution”. Forget about the competition agenda pushed by Craig Emerson. Don’t think about the bookshop jobs that will be lost as consumers turn to importing online themselves.
Instead, listen to the well-organised publishing and printing special interests and the “progressive” cultural protectionists.
Don’t care that, as the Productivity Commission points out, the higher prices supported by the book import restrictions will mostly benefit foreign authors and publishers. “This is a popular consumer issue and they can’t get it through,” says Allan Fels, price and competition regulator under Labor in the 1980s and 90s. “What will happen with harder issues?”
Indeed.
===
Tampa no great help, Oceanic Viking no great hurt
Andrew Bolt
Poll watcher Andrew Catsaras says it’s a myth that the Oceanic Viking fiasco has hurt Kevin Rudd in the polls - a myth that’s based on another myth that the Tampa let John Howard steal the 2001 election.
I’m not so sure at all about that. I’m actually a fan of the notion of the “Holy Trinity” in shaping perceptions - that one event is a random fluke, a second a coincidence and a third the confirmation of a pattern - and that the damage done by the first event is only realised by the third and confirming one. (It’s why my columns are usually bloated by trinities of evidence or anecdotes to back a point.)
But I always find Andrew’s analyses fascinating, so read on for this latest:
===
Dear Mr Rudd: The opposite of sceptical is gullible
Andrew Bolt
Science writer JoNova savages - in a most magnificent polemic - Kevin Rudd’s extraordinary Lowy Institute speech, in which he slimed sceptics as corrupt, dangerous, reckless members of a conspiracy that endangered Australian children:
In 6000 words Rudd uses ad hominem attacks, baseless allegations, argument from authority, mindless inflammatory rhetoric and quotes not a single piece of evidence that carbon drives our climate. He repeats quote after quote of sensible, ordinary points from his opponents as if it shows they are confused. Yet he can’t point out how any of them are wrong. It shows the depth of his own delusions—that he thinks merely questioning “the UN committee” is a flaw in itself.Please read it all. It’s quite outstanding. There’s a donations link at the top right of her page.
It’s as if being a sceptic is a bad thing, yet the opposite of sceptical is gullible.
Rudd throws baseless innuendo when he claims vested interests are at work. The truth is the exact opposite. Exxon spent $23 million on sceptics, but the US government spent $79 billion on the climate industry. Big Government outspent big-oil 3000 to 1. Worse, carbon trading last year was $126 billion dollars. That’s for just one year. The real vested interests stand in the open like signposted black holes hidden in plain view by a legal disclaimer. The singularities at the centre of the climate change galaxy have names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, ABN Amro, Deutche Bank, and HSBC....
The UN bureaucrats soak in their fame and their junkets. Why wouldn’t they? Two weeks and ten thousand people in an exotic locale every year. Nobel prizes for just doing their jobs, and the promise that they might be at the centre of new world financial market: dinner with Obama and tea with Gordon Brown. Status knocks, and everyone is home.
This global gravy train got rolling in 1988 and when the evidence turned “180”, the train ran off the tracks. Now it levitates above the real world on a cushion of snarling spite and intimidation. It’s as if calling someone a “denier” replaces 100,000 radiosonde readings, 6,000 boreholes, 30 years of satellite results and ice cores that go back to a time before homo sapiens was sapien. These things are evidence, but a manufactured “consensus” from a self serving committee is not. “Denier” is an insult, a cheap attempt to bully dissent into submission.
Rudd offers up our nation to global bullies and giant bankers because he’s swallowed a UN committee report… Rudd claims sceptics “play with our children’s future”, but if a nations leader just obediently accepts a foreign decree without checking it, isn’t he the one who lets our children down?...Kevin Rudd gambles with our economy. He wants sweeping changes based on the science, but he hasn’t spent ten minutes checking the evidence…
Rudd will come to regret his Lowy Institute speech. It’s a sad indictment of what intelligent discourse in Australia has been reduced too. The nation that invented the bionic ear considers trashing its economy because someone thinks “denier” is a scientific term?
UPDATE
I yesterday gave the wrong link to Gavin Atkins’ post showing global warming won’t hurt the countries (like ours) that are told must pay most to stop it. Right link here.
UPDATE 2
I like Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne. In fact, we’d probably say we were friends. So I say this more with a smile than with anger: Robert, you great, applause-seeking hypocrite:
I was part of a group of Australia’s capital city lord mayors who lobbied Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in August about this issue. Our mission was to reinforce with our Federal Government counterparts the crucial role that cities play in combating climate change, and ask the Prime Minister to take that message to the Copenhagen conference… I see climate change as one of the greatest international issues of our time and as Lord Mayor I take very seriously my responsibility to make sure the people of Melbourne are protected from the impacts of climate change.It’s sad, how sane men now worship gods they must know are false. Have courage, man! When this battle is won, we’ll remember those who did not dare fight.
UPDATE 3
Miranda Devine, appalled by Kevin Rudd’s “hysterical, undergraduate piece of ad hominem hyperbole”, suggests he read the latest book questioning his “science”:
Against the apocalyptic rhetoric pushed by Rudd comes a cool-minded new book which unpicks the science underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports. Global Warming, False Alarm by Ralph Alexander, an Australian-born US scientist with a PhD in physics from Oxford, is subtitled ‘’The bad science behind the United Nations’ assertion that man-made CO2 causes global warming”. Alexander wrote the book, “because I’m a scientist. Because I’m offended that science has been perverted in the name of global warming.”Alexander has three main objections. Read on… Or buy the book, much praised by Lord Monckton and theoretical physicist Lubos Motl:
Dr Alexander determines that the “ring” and the international character of the IPCC, the climate panel of the United Nations, are the main drivers of the hysteria so the IPCC, its process, and its reports are the main players investigated by this text. He analyzes the history and structure of the IPCC and finds out that this panel is just a particular and heavily funded group of loud partisans and activists that is meant to defend a predetermined conclusion and that doesn’t reflect the scientific opinion of the world’s scientific community, at least its financially and otherwise unbiased part, and certainly not the available body of data. Lots of numbers about the percentages of the scientist who agree and disagree with various statements are included.
===
How the Tamils are being bribed
Andrew Bolt
Brilliant! The way to stop fake refugees from coming in by boats is to let more come in by planes:
THE Rudd Government is considering allowing more displaced Sri Lankans to emigrate to Australia legally in a bid to reduce the incentive for them to turn up on boats.When I first heard this suggested, I laughed it off as clearly too crazy to be believed.
That wasn’t my only underestimation of the desperation of this bungling Government. In fact, two days ago I got an email from an anonymous reader claiming to be a member of the crew of the Oceanic Viking. He or she told me the the Tamil boat people on board were being offered an extraordinary deal to get off the ship - a deal so extraordinary that I suspected I was actually being set up.
But today I read this:
THE 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking have been offered resettlement in Australia in as little as a month, as well as homes, jobs and social security payments once in the country, in an unsuccessful effort to end the boatpeople standoff…Now I realise that the email I received is almost certainly genuine - and that the deal being offered the Tamils is even more extraordinary, if my reader’s recall of it is entirely accurate. Here is what he or she heard - a deal that should tempt people smugglers everywhere:
The written offer, made by Australian government negotiators to the Sri Lankans on Sunday and Monday, included “lessons in the Australian way of life”, help in tracking down family members and “assistance in . . . accommodation, medical help and advice, income benefits, English lessons and help with seeking employment”.
It promised the boatpeople daily contact with Australian officials during their remaining time in Indonesia, provided they left the Oceanic Viking…
.
The failed offer, written on Immigration Department letterhead in Tamil, was tossed overboard along with a handwritten note on the back of the second page. The note read: “This letter has given by Australian government so please translate from Tamil to English and expose to world medias and press. Please help us Plz Plz.”
-All those who have been assessed by UNHCR as being genuine refugees will be resettled in Australia or other country prepared to accept them in no more than 6 weeks.The reader continues:
-All those who have not yet started the assessment process will be processed and be resettled in Australia or other country prepared to accept them in no more than 12 weeks if they are found to be refugees.
-Guaranteed subsidised rental housing on arrival in Australia
-House to be furnished
-Refrigerator
-Television (Not sure why the fridge and TV are not considered furniture but they were specified separately)
-No time limit on having to gain employment
-When they are ready to work, special assistance in gaining employment
-Ability to immediately sponsor family members from overseas
-Daily visit from Australian DIAC Officers while in detention in Tanjung Pinang until resettled
===
Hamilton damns his fear-mongering ways
Andrew Bolt
Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton complains:
The Right has jettisoned science in favour of deeper beliefs.Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton preaches:
So I think where we’re going is to begin to see a Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi, which will transform our attitudes to it away from an instrumentalist one, towards an attitude of greater reverence.Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton complains:
In Australia and the US, climate change is the most important arena for the long-running culture war of the neo-conservatives. In pursuit of their goals they have tapped into primitive fears.Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton preaches:
Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.Question: is Hamilton a fool or a hypocrite?
===
Save the world! Put us all on rations
Andrew Bolt
This green faith sure appeals to the inner totalitarian:
Everyone in Britain should have an annual carbon ration and be penalised if they use too much fuel, the head of the Environment Agency will say.David Southwell looks forward to this new green world.
Lord Smith of Finsbury believes that implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
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