Thousands gather to celebrate the opening of the world's tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — a structure that stands at least 160 stories high.
Obama's New Mess: Security
The president touches down in D.C. after Hawaiian getaway — and he's arriving to fury over the nation's security infrastructure
The New Terror War
Obama turns to counterterror tool that has allowed the U.S. to battle extremism outside war zones: cold, hard cash
2 Dead in Vegas Courthouse Gunfight
Court security officer, armed suspect killed in hail of bullets outside Las Vegas federal building
Sorry Ladies; Study Finds G-Spot May Be Myth
A sexual quest that has for years baffled millions of women, and men, may have been in vain. A study by British scientists has found that the mysterious G-spot, the sexual pleasure zone said to be possessed by some women but not all, may not exist at all.
NAB tipped to buy ailing UK bank
NATIONAL Australia Bank has emerged as the frontrunner to buy the first major casualty of the GFC.
Two young boys missing in floods found
TWO missing boys have been found after it was feared they had been washed away in floodwaters.
2009 was our second warmest year ever
LAST year proved to be Australia's second warmest year on record, marked by extreme heatwaves, devastating bushfires and low rainfall. Australian Bureau of Meteorology figures show numerous states, cities and towns all reached their hottest temperatures ever. - The information is clearly not true, and the data does not support this without being cherry picked. It must be of concern that politicians can influence what the bureau is reporting. - ed.
Death draws closer for video stores
FASTER broadband speeds are sounding the death knell for the doomed video rental industry.
Football star 'set man's pants on fire'
NRL comeback "bad boy" Todd Carney reportedly injured a man by setting his pants on fire.
Hollywood help rescues troubled Lara
HOLLYWOOD starlet Teresa Palmer is helping to boost her cricket WAG mate's spirits.
Biography of actor and director Warren Beatty claims he bedded 12,775 women "give or take"
HE'S famous as one of Hollywood's most prolific Lotharios. And a biography of Warren Beatty now claims the Oscar-winning actor/director has bedded 12,775 women, "give or take". The Bonnie And Clyde star gave a rare interview about his love-life to author Peter Biskind for the biography Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. - clearly more take than give, on Beatty's part. This is the guy Carly Simon sang Your so vain about. - ed.
Record snow brings misery to Asia
RECORD snow has disrupted air and road travel across Asia, grounding dozens of planes and forcing schools to close.
Teen's criminal drive for joyrides
A 14-YEAR-OLD boy has become the No.1 bane of highway patrol police in Sydney's east, leading police on high speed chases and notching up 26 charges.
Bushfire victims' new home destroyed
A FAMILY left homeless on Black Saturday has been devastated a second time after their new house was burnt to the ground.
Rail fare hike as queues rise
CITYRAIL commuters have expressed disgust after being forced to wait for up to 30 minutes to buy tickets yesterday, only to discover widespread fare rises.
Another asylum boat intercepted
ANOTHER boatload of suspected asylum seekers has been intercepted off Australia's northwest coast. It is the second vessel to be stopped by border protection command since the start of the year. - approximately half of all boat people die in transit - ed
=== Journalists Corner ===
Excessive? Outrageous? Irresponsible?
The Dems are pushing health care reform, but is their agenda what America really wants? Get the country's true temperature.
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America at a Crossroads
With all the critical issues we are facing, are the president's plans really putting us back on a path to recovery?
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'Factor' 2010!
It's an all new year and the 'No Spin Zone' is back! Get ready!
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Facing America's Problems
Sean exposes why some politicians don't want real solutions! Don't miss it
=== Comments ===
Is Obama the New Carter?
By Walter Russell Mead
Barack Obama might yet revolutionize America's foreign policy. But if he can't reconcile his inner Thomas Jefferson with his inner Woodrow Wilson, the 44th president could end up like No. 39.
Neither a cold-blooded realist nor a bleeding-heart idealist, Barack Obama has a split personality when it comes to foreign policy. So do most U.S. presidents, of course, and the ideas that inspire this one have a long history at the core of the American political tradition. In the past, such ideas have served the country well. But the conflicting impulses influencing how this young leader thinks about the world threaten to tear his presidency apart -- and, in the worst scenario, turn him into a new Jimmy Carter.
Obama's long deliberation over the war in Afghanistan is a case study in presidential schizophrenia: After 94 days of internal discussion and debate, he ended up splitting the difference -- rushing in more troops as his generals wanted, while calling for their departure to begin in July 2011 as his liberal base demanded. It was a sober compromise that suggests a man struggling to reconcile his worldview with the weight of inherited problems. Like many of his predecessors, Obama is not only buffeted by strong political headwinds, but also pulled in opposing directions by two of the major schools of thought that have guided American foreign-policy debates since colonial times.
In general, U.S. presidents see the world through the eyes of four giants: Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. Hamiltonians share the first Treasury secretary's belief that a strong national government and a strong military should pursue a realist global policy and that the government can and should promote economic development and the interests of American business at home and abroad. Wilsonians agree with Hamiltonians on the need for a global foreign policy, but see the promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy. Jeffersonians dissent from this globalist consensus; they want the United States to minimize its commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state. Jacksonians are today's Fox News watchers. They are populists suspicious of Hamiltonian business links, Wilsonian do-gooding, and Jeffersonian weakness.
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Wicked jolt for Wikipedia boss
Piers Akerman
WITH every breakthrough in communications technology optimists promise an era of greater international understanding. Sadly, human nature prevails and despite oceans of best wishes the newest new thing inevitably becomes corrupted and used as a tool for the same bunch of intellectual thugs and bullies who want their will to prevail.
As Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was saying recently, despite the irrevocable expansion of the ways we connect and communicate with each other through the growth of the World Wide Web over the past 20 years, the recognition that people need to engage in civil dialogue has not kept pace with the technical innovation.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Wales noted that social networking sites, blogs and online forums host behaviour ranging from carelessly rude to intentionally abusive.
Reading the unexpurgated comments sent to various columnists at The Daily Telegraph and other Australian newspapers, I can attest that this incivility is universal.
It has taken some time for Wales, who has permitted Wikipedia entries to be open to seemingly arbitrary editing by anonymous but often biased moderators, to wake up but he, like a number of others who have been beneficiaries of the internet, did not see the problem looming because he could not recognise he was a major part of it.
Like plenty of other wealthy soft-Left supporters, Wales seems to have been all for a broadly-based “people’s” information sharing site, so long as the information shared was aligned with his own philosophy.
We now know more than 5000 entries on climate change were edited, altered or removed because they didn’t fit the flawed premise of anthropogenic global warming, but no one blew the whistle on this massive attempt to deceive the internet public because AGW was, received wisdom had it, backed by the science. It has now been revealed the so-called science was as fraudulent as a two-headed penny.
In politics, the Left was quicker to seize on the internet as a marketing tool than the conservatives. US groups such as MoveOn.org spawned counterparts like GetUp.com.au in Australia, espousing motherhood goals such as bringing “ordinary people into politics by taking stands on policy issues” and “building a progressive Australia” by bringing “together like-minded people”.
So many like-minded people in fact that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pointless 2020 rear-vision conference was overloaded with GetUp’s stooges. But being able to Tweet or jam FaceBook’s pages has not saved GetUp or MoveOn from the intrinsically negative and retro policies of their members.
The label “progressive” has been so debased it now signifies a desire to restore primitive industrial relations conditions in a nation with a pre-Hawke government economy, complete with strikes and recurrent energy crises.
What is welcome, if a little perplexing, is Wales’s call for protocols to restore cyber civility where he and others have opened the cyber gates to those who wish to wage war in cyber space. Indicating surprising na adivete, Wales expressed some amazement that the “comments sections of online gossip sites, as well as some national media outlets, often reflect semi-literate, vitriolic remarks that appear to serve no purpose besides disparaging their intended target”.
Why, he wrote: “Some sites exist solely as a place for mean-spirited individuals to congregate and spew their venomous verbiage.” Strewth! Where has this bloke been hiding? In the 16 or so years since I first placed an email address on the bottom of a column, a clutch of mean-spirited and venomous individuals have chosen to submit an extraordinarily revealing stream of invective in the vain hope it will be read by someone other than themselves.
If Wales really wishes to be taken aback he should visit some Socialist Left sites, or Islamist sites that survived on contributions of scurrilous authors such as Keysar Trad.
That aside, Wales wants an online culture in which every person can join in a rational exchange without fear of unwarranted abuse, harassment or lies. One would have thought that would rule out Wikipedia.
Second, he wants those who are disgusted by the degeneration of online civility to indicate that this type of behaviour will no longer be tolerated. He then wishes that people would be able to know the difference between information on legitimate sites that follow defined standards and that posted on sites with no such ethical guidelines.
He may need help here, as Wikipedia’s own defined standards demonstrably fall far short of what is needed. Wales also says adult targets of online hostility deserve a national support network, a safe place to “congregate online to receive emotional support, practical advice on how to deal with transgressors, and information on whom to contact for legal advice when appropriate”.
Finally, he suggests some governmental intervention may be necessary to prevent cyber-bullying. Whether we need more nanny-state intervention to provide a counselling service for those who cannot hit the “delete” button is arguable, but there are arguments to support government action against those who abuse and harass others on the internet, just as there have been laws to protect individuals from other forms of harassment and intimidation.
The internet’s problem is also its great virtue. It is accessible to almost everyone.
Those who wear their good intentions on their sleeves always believe a greater good will prevail if people are only given a chance. The more worldly know that is baloney.
A victory for commonsense
THE Malaysian High Court has ruled that the nation’s Roman Catholics can resume using the word “Allah” as their translation for God.
This is a significant victory for the Catholic Church, which had been prevented by a government ban from using “Allah” in its publications, and for the principles of freedom of speech and religion which had been under pressure from increasingly militant Islamist forces in Malaysia.
Effectively, civil law has triumphed over those who had hoped that the Muslim religious law would prevail.
This signal victory should weaken the hands of Muslims in the West, particularly in European nations, who maintain pressure on their host nations to adopt shariah law or variations of Islamic law, and permit the Muslim communities to deal with Muslims according to the tenets of religious writings rather than the laws of the land.
Weak politicians in Australia who preach tolerance should take note of this case and also last week’s attempt to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who has been living under protection since he drew a cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed, sparking a spate of riots three years ago.
Police shot and wounded the axe-wielding Somali attacker before he was able to reach 74-year-old cartoonist or his five-year-old granddaughter, who was at home with him at the time. The Danes have been extremely tolerant to their Muslim minority, and now Danish law will deal with this religiously inspired attacker.The Malaysian High Court’s decision should provide them with inspiration. - I regret now that my involvement with wikipedia involved attempting to put forward my viewpoint on AGW (that it wasn’t happening) by taking the moderate position that it had not been proven and was worth debating. In taking the position I did I conceded too much. I was still ignored by the editors who have a vested monetary interest in promoting the myth of AGW on Wikipedia. I was a lone editor when numbers had advantages and I was not willing to compromise my principles to argue my case. I was aware that their arguments were debased. So when one of the editors called for only verified scientific articles, and I produced some, they were sidelined anyway by a cabal of editors who also smeared me and then made my work in any article difficult. Even now the vested interests are preventing the advance of the articles on climate change and global warming. In politics, no conservative politician can lean enough to the left to be taken seriously by lefty voters. But they cannot be right wing either .. they need to be conservative. A brilliant example of the conservative position is that ascribed by Mr Howard to fox news recently. Mr Howard did not deny that AGW was a myth, but he didn’t endorse the AGW lie either. Instead, he pointed out what a pragmatic response would be, and it contrasts sharply with Rudds hysterical response. I won’t reprint Mr Howard’s response here, it can easily be searched and found. But I challenge anyone to produce a comprehensive description showing what Rudd is actually doing (and not merely claiming). - ed.
doc replied to DD Ball===
DD, keep it up. The more they act like nazis the more people believe they are trying to hide something, protect payments somewhere or protect themselves from agencies - government or otherwise.
AGW cannot be science. It breaks all codes of open and researched debate, it even ignores acceptable levels of statistical proof being required before an hypothesis can be accepted or rejected.
There is something more sinister driving all this whether it be something to do with fossil fuel pollution, blackmail avoidance of states by producing states, such as we saw with Russia last european winter, a move to centralise world governance by the UN driven by ex leaders with nothing to do, or whatever. I am not a fan of plots but this stinks like a plot especially when something as was so formerly august, the CSIRO, is shown to be blatantly following the government line and banning its scientists from doing what is their function in life.
Beware of the financing of the arrogant green movement. The funds must come from somewhere and there seems to be a lot of people without real jobs but still able to travel the world, end up in gaol, pay fines etc with no hazard to their travel arrangements to anywhere or whatever.
That smells of politics.
THINGS SCIENTISTS SAY IV
Tim Blair
Yet another episode in this site’s popular series of scientifical statements from the New York Times:
• 1947: “Time is running out and unless the ‘imperative problem of international control of atomic energy’ is solved, ‘the alternative is the death of our society,’ the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists warned here today.”
Time ran out. You are reading this from beyond the grave.
• 1951: “Seven men, including three University of Wisconsin experts, said today they believed they had heard corn grow.”
They also said that they’d “seen music”. Then they all moved to the Village and established the first-ever line for Bob Dylan tickets.
• 1958: “Asia’s increasing population engaged the attention of some of the world’s leading social scientists today in the opening business session of the ninth International Conference of Social Work. The problem was described as ‘explosive.’”
RAAACIST!
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SAY IT WITH WORMS
Tim Blair
Commie councils de-gift Christmas:
Councils such as Warringah, Kuringai and Tamworth urged residents to think “green” over Christmas, telling them to wrap gifts in tea towels, scarfs and handkerchiefs and to put worm farms or compost bins under the festive tree.Well, of course. But they’re still cashing in:
Sutherland Council went as far as urging: “Instead of buying someone a physical present, treat them to an experience like a massage, tickets to the theatre or even a day out with you.”
The councils’ pleas appear to have been largely ignored.
State government-owned waste dumps and councils are making millions from our green guilt, slugging families twice as much to recycle organic waste than it costs to dump it.That’ll buy a lot of tickets to the theatre.
A Daily Telegraph investigation has found mulching garden waste boosted state-owned waste corporation WSN Solutions’ profit by 94 per cent.
The waste company made a $25 million profit from recycling last financial year - up from $12 million the year before.
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JEB’S CHRISTMAS
Tim Blair
A guest post by Imre Salusinszky:
Once it was a rare experience to be confronted by a fraudster seeking to fleece us of our savings. Nowadays, we have to fight off an army of them whenever we log on to our email.
The only precedent I can think of – assuming Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves is an accurate historical document – is the American wild west:
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OVER TO YOU, KEV
Tim Blair
A letter from Lord Monckton to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. James Delingpole summarises.
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DREAD MEAT
Tim Blair
Tonight’s steak was marinated in Levi Roots’s excellent Reggae Reggae Sauce. I recommend it, although lately it has become a sauce of controversy.
There was also a crayfish, but that was just to score some easy Climate Justice Feast! points.
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HIGHEST, LOWEST, CHANGIEST
Tim Blair
December 15:
Viet Nam’s Rich Mekong and Red River Deltas Face Severe Flooding from Climate Change. December 31:
The Red River that divides Hanoi is at its lowest level in more than a century, and global warming could be a factor, a Vietnamese official said on Thursday.Thus nature balances itself: climate change brings the rain, and the warmening takes it all away. As usual, however, one group is hardest hit:
Global warming affects Viet Nam’s women hardest(Via Chris Scott-Orr)
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IF ONLY CIGARETTES WERE INJECTABLE
Tim Blair
New York City banned smoking in bars and nightclubs four years ago, and imposes the highest cigarette taxes in the US. But if you’re a junkie, the city will spend $32,000 teaching you how to shoot up:
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