Again the cartoonist got the wrong people, Obama is a war monger, as his results show.
=== Bible Quote ===
“For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”- Psalm 33:4-5
===
New Mass. Sen. Scott Brown, the White House are already in a fight over the job-creating results of the stimulus.
Toyota Hitting the Brakes
Report says automaker will recall 270,000 Prius hybrid vehicles in United States and Japan over brake problems
N. Korea to U.S.: He's All Yours
State media in Pyongyang reports the country has 'decided to leniently forgive and release' detained American missionary Robert Park after he slipped in Christmas Day
Morning-After Pill' Ordered at Bases
For the first time, the Pentagon will require military bases worldwide to offer emergency contraception
India to Pull Back From IPCC, Create Independent Climate Panel
Recent scandals involving the IPCC have undercut its creditability to such an extent that the nation of India plans to look for an independent assessment. According to a report from the Hindustan Times, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh believes his country cannot depend solely on reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). India plans to create its own panel to do an independent analysis of climate change science. "There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism. I think people misused the IPCC report," Ramesh told an Indian news channel.
Hubble Spies the Faces of Pluto?
Spurned Pluto is changing its looks, donning more rouge in its complexion and altering its iceball surface here and there. Color astronomers surprised. Newly released Hubble Space Telescope photos show the distant one-time planet -- demoted to "dwarf planet" status in 2006 -- is changing color and its ice sheets are shifting. The photos, released by NASA Thursday, paint a Pluto that is significantly redder than it had been for the past several decades. To the layman, it has a yellow-orange hue, but astronomers say it has about 20 percent more red than it used to have.
Travel agents reveal the dark secrets of the business including charging you extra to fund their own lavish holidays and gifts as well as taking advantage of those in grief
School feud dad clings to life
A MAN is in a critical condition in hospital after a schoolyard feud involving his son turned violent.
Suicide waitress spat on, called fat
TEENAGE waitress committed suicide after relentless bullying by her co-workers, court is told.
Bird acquitted of second assault claim
NRL star Greg Bird is acquitted of attacking a woman with a glass bottle at a nightclub.
'There was a lot of blood in the water'
LIFEGUARD describes how he dragged an injured surfer from bloodied, shark-infested waters.
Facebook denies political censorship
FACEBOOK denies censorship claims after deleting a group that criticised Kevin Rudd.
'Killer' surgeon hides from court
DISGRACED brain surgeon Suresh Nair has remained in his cell instead of appearing in court to face new charges over the deaths of two young women.
Girl buried alive in honour killing
A 16-YEAR-OLD girl was buried alive by relatives in a gruesome honour killing because she reportedly befriended boys.
Cops 'use CCTV to perv on schoolgirls'
A MAN has been charged over the firebombing of the TIO Insurance and Banking office in Darwin that left 19 people injured. The 45-year-old was charged with nine counts of attempted murder, unlawfully setting fire to a building, intending serious harm by causing an explosion and recklessly endangering life, Northern Territory police said. Police allege he entered the TIO office in Darwin's CBD about 11am (CST) on Wednesday and lit jerry cans of fuel and fire crackers in a shopping trolley, causing an explosion and fire that injured 19 people. He then drove to the Darwin police station where he handed himself in, they said. The charges were laid as evidence emerged that security cameras which could have been used to stop the alleged bomber were switched off at the city's police station because officers had been using them to check out schoolgirls, The Northern Territory News reported today.
=== Journalists Corner ===
A powerhouse for 8 years!
Congratulations on being number one!
Greta reflects on her favorite moments.
===
Bonus Backlash!
Should the government set a limit for bank bonuses? Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg reacts!
===
Holy Smoke!
CA opens America's first Marijuana superstore! Is it a pharmaceutical need or cause for concern?
===
Is the world getting worse? No!
John exposes the facts & shows why our planet isn't actually in peril !
=== Comments ===
Jon Stewart in the No Spin Zone
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 3, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: Seems like just yesterday, but it was 2004 when Comedy Central guy Jon Stewart last entered the No Spin Zone. Well, this afternoon, Mr. Stewart somehow got lost in midtown Manhattan and wound up here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
O'REILLY: You know what I notice when I do your program, I go over and the audience, they love President Obama. Your audience, the guys who sit in the little bleachers…
JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": That's right.
O'REILLY: For them, it's like going to Lourdes to go on your show because they know they're going to get…
STEWART: Many have been healed.
O'REILLY: Right.
STEWART: There's no question.
O'REILLY: (INAUDIBLE) Obama. And it's going to — so it's perceived that you are a big fan of the president.
STEWART: All right.
O'REILLY: How is President Obama doing so far?
===
Garnaut fooled, too. Call an inquiry
Andrew Bolt
Here’s another reason the Opposition should demand an inquiry into the science behind the Rudd Government’s multi-billion-dollar global warming policies.
Kevin Rudd’s advisor on global warming, Professor Ross Garnaut, repeated in his influential report to the Government on its emissions trading scheme a wild claim on Himalayan glaciers from the green group WWF - a claim the IPCC has now admitted is fake:
Melting of the Himalayan glaciersAs we’ve learned, the claim that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 is utterly false, is unsupported by any research and was included in the IPCC 2007 report (from where Garnaut clearly picked it up) only for political reasons.
After the polar regions, the Himalayas are home to the largest glacial areas.Together, the Himalayan glaciers feed seven of the most important rivers in Asia—the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang. These glaciers are receding faster than any other glaciers around the world, and some estimates project that they may disappear altogether by 2035 (WWF Nepal Program 2005).
Rivers fed from glaciers are projected to experience increased streamflows over the next few decades as a result of glacial melt, followed by a subsequent decline and greater instability of inflows as glaciers begin to disappear altogether, leaving only seasonal precipitation to feed rivers (WWF Nepal Program 2005).
Glacial retreat can also result in catastrophic discharges of water from meltwater lakes, known as glacial lake outburst
Yet Garnaut not only fell for it, clearly without checking, but went on to discuss the purported catastrophic consequence of such melting at length, quoting from a paper by Grahan Pearman from the green activist Climate Institute and a security analyst Alan Dupont. An extract::
The melting of the Himalayan and Tibetan plateau glaciers illustrates the complex nexus of climate change, economic security and geopolitics. Well over a billion people are dependent on the flow of the area’s rivers for much of their food and water needs, as well as transportation and energy from hydroelectricity. Initially, flows may increase, as glacial runoff accelerates, causing extensive flooding. Within a few decades, however, water levels are expected to decline, jeopardising food production and causing widespread water and power shortages.This can’t be brushed aside as one trivial mistake in an otherwise carefully checked report. Garnaut has repeatedly shown he’s attracted to apocalyptic language and scenarios, and his report lavishly quotes those people and claims that suit his agenda - not least Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, whose predictions of warming disaster for the Great Barrier Reef have so far failed to come true, yet is quoted making yet another breathless claim:
Reef-building corals have already been pushed to their thermal limits by increases in temperature in tropical and subtropical waters over the past 50 years.The Rudd Government’s White Paper picked up Garnaut’s panic over Himalayan glacial melt, warning of “decreased freshwater availability to more than a billion people” in the region.
So how carefully have the Government and its advisors ever checked the claims of warming catastrophe, when even the Himalayan hoax could get accepted?
With the IPCC, Rudd’s other major source of global warming advice, now mired in allegations of bias, exaggeration, censorship, collusion, false claims and conflicts of interest involving its chairman, we now desperately need an inquiry into the state of the warming science before we spend a single million more.
===
Penny’s media tips: How to seem shifty and dangerous
Andrew Bolt
Here are just some of the questions Climate Change Minister Penny Wong refused to answer last night in her excruciating interview on Lateline
TONY JONES: The Prime Minister has spelled out that in the first two years of your emissions trading scheme, electricity prices would rise by 7 and then by 12 per cent in the second year; a total of 19 per cent by 2013. What happens after 2013?It’s hard to recall a worse performance by a federal Minister.
TONY JONES: I’ll just interrupt there because you put out some of the modelling. There’s no modelling, is there, that we’ve seen or that I’ve seen beyond 2013?
TONY JONES: Yes, understood. That’s the difference as you paint it. But let me ask you this: you say that the big question is about the two schemes, but actually one of the big questions is about the costs. So what happens after 2013? What does Treasury model tell you? For example, if your targets go from 5 to 10 per cent, does that mean automatically and exponentially you get a doubling in the cost of electricity from 20 per cent increases to 40 per cent increases?
TONY JONES: Yes, but the open question is: how much will you have to increase? You must have Treasury modelling which tells you what a 10 per cent reduction would be, a 15 per cent reduction, a 20 per cent, or even a 25 per cent reduction in emissions would cost in terms of cost-of-living increases. Do you have that modelling?
TONY JONES: That’s not the only policy question. The policy question that is on a lot of people’s minds at the moment is what this is going to cost. And so I’m asking you: do you have Treasury modelling that tells you what the additional costs will be to electricity and cost of living if your targets increase from 5 to 10 per cent, from 10 to 15, or even to 25 per cent, as you’ve canvassed, if the rest of the world moves?
TONY JONES: Alright, but before the voters go to an election with an emissions trading scheme, potentially, as a virtual referendum on how to deal with climate change - before the voters go to election, are they entitled to know what your modelling is telling you about what different targets would do to the cost of electricity and the cost of living?
TONY JONES: OK, but what happens? Is there an exponential change to the cost of electricity? Does it double from a 20 per cent increase with a 5 per cent reduction in emissions trading to a 40 per cent increase in electricity costs with a 10 per cent and so on, up to 80 per cent with 20 per cent reductions? Does it work like that, or is it somehow different? What does the modelling tell you?
TONY JONES: OK. But before people vote for this in an election, as they are likely to do this year, do you commit to giving the complete Treasury modelling to the public so they can see what happens at the different targets that you’ve proposed?
TONY JONES: Will you release the full Treasury modelling about the potential cost to electricity and cost of living with the different targets?
TONY JONES: But they won’t know prior to the election, based on what you’ve just said, what the potential economic impact is of higher targets.
TONY JONES: Yes, but you’ve already told the rest of the world that you’re prepared to go to 25 per cent if the rest of the world moves. You’ve also set a target for 2050 of 60 per cent, so there has to be large reductions over time, and don’t the public have the right to know what the cost of those increases will be?
TONY JONES: Well, no, we don’t have to, I was just trying to get to the bottom of whether you’re prepared to release that modelling. I think the answer is no.
TONY JONES: If that is the issue, let me ask you this: is it now standard practice to pass confidential departmental briefing documents to the press, or to sections of the press, I should say, as part of a media strategy to undermine the Opposition’s position?
TONY JONES: No, no, I’m not talking about honesty. I’m talking about the way in which this information was released. And isn’t it precisely the sort of thing that infuriated you about the previous government: the use of confidential departmental material to undermine the Opposition’s case?
When I say Wong didn’t answer Jones’ questions, I don’t mean that she simply failed to give an answer that was full or frank. I mean exactly what I say: that she did not supply any kind of answer to these specific questions, leaving every viewer with the clear impression that she had something very ugly to hide.
Fact is, of course, that she does. The clear message last night was that Rudd’s warming plans will cost you more than you’ve been told - or will be told, either.
===
Whatever it takes
Andrew Bolt
Tom Switzer:
Looking at Rudd’s political career since 1998, it is also difficult to identify anything he seems genuinely to believe other than his own political success.
===
How many more before Rudd says “oops”?
Andrew Bolt
The boatloads seem to be getting bigger, too:
Another boat carrying 89 asylum seekers arrived in Australia’s northern waters yesterday and those on board are being taken to Christmas Island.At this rate Kevin Rudd will smash his record of last year by August.
===
How cartoonishly evil did they think us?
Andrew Bolt
Mad to have even thought them worth checking, but such is the reluctance to disbelieve the “stolen generatiions”:
IT made frontpage headlines and prompted the Rudd Government to order an investigation that cost taxpayers more than $100,000, but it now appears there was no evidence to support claims authorities forcibly tested drugs on members of the stolen generation.
===
Manne still can’t find those 10
Andrew Bolt
Extraordinary. Five years after my challenge, Robert Manne still cannot come up with even 10 names of the 25,000 children he claims were stolen just for being Aboriginal.
Manne has just published a long, dust-in-the-eyes defence to Keith Windschuttle’s allegation that he deceived readers into thinking the Commonwealth Government had adopted a proposal to wipe out the Aboriginal race.
This was Windschuttle allegation:
Manne said this remained the government’s position for most of the remainder of the 1930s:Manne’s defence, laced with his trademark abuse and insinuations of racism in his critics, is that the Government nevertheless “encouraged” half-caste girls to marry outside Aboriginal tribes, which apparently was evil of them.the policy of breeding out the colour received the full endorsement of the Commonwealth for at least another five years.In an article in the Weekend Australian (January 30-31, 2010), I pointed out that Manne’s account is far from the truth. It even runs counter to evidence readily available in the archives Manne cited himself. In the House of Representatives on August 2 1934, J. A. Perkins, the Minister for the Interior in the Joseph Lyons government, denounced the proposal. He said:It can be stated definitely, that it is and always has been, contrary to policy to force half-caste women to marry anyone. The half-caste must be a perfectly free agent in the matter.
But this isn’t actually about stealing 25,000 children, of course, which is the claim I most looked for Manne in this article to finally back up. In particular, could Manne at last name just 10 children stolen just to “breed out the colour”.
Manne spins his typical web of quotes from letters, out-of-context remarks, expressions of unachieved aims and unexamined assumptions and generalisations to insist there were indeed these thousands of racist child thefts by “genocidal” officials. But check, in so far as we can, the instances he actually gives.
Manne actually gives fewer than 10 names, actually, which makes this difficult. But let me try to do what he does not, and identify the children he does mention en bloc, like here:
Protector Walter Roth ... pointed out in his 1905 report, in the past five years 167 “half-caste” children in Queensland had been removed to missions… Windschuttle is aware that under a Queensland law of 1865 having an Aboriginal or half-caste mother was in itself legal proof of “neglect”.So did Roth, as Manne clearly suggests, just steal Aboriginal children simply because they were Aboriginal, in line with a law that Manne wrongly argues was intended for just that purpose?
Well, first, of course, you’d have to say he must have been slack in his duties to have found just 167 part-Aboriginal children in all Queensland in five years. Maybe he wasn’t looking hard, or just maybe, he removed only those children who actually gave him so other reason for rescue. Maybe when the courts declared these (almost inevitably fatherless) children “neglected”, it actually meant it.
Manne has not publicly identified the individual circumstances of any of those 167 children (with the partial exception of one) to show precisely why they prove his case. But I have indeed looked into the individual circumstances of those children I could trace and found only children it would have been a crime not to rescue and send into care.
They included a fatherless 12-year-old girl with syphilis, a 13-year-old who was seven months pregnant and working for no wages on a station, and a boy who was kept chained up in a back yard by white employers when he was bad. Shirleene Robinson says Roth also rescued children kept as virtual slaves: “These children were extremely vulnerable to exploitation because of their position as members of a colonised population and because of their youth. During the period from 1842 to 1902, large number of Aboriginal children were kidnapped and removed from their families and traditional localities for employment, received no remuneration and suffered abuse by their employers.”
Or as Professor Gordon Briscoe (an Aboriginal academic) has written of some of the children Roth saved::
Children suffered in almost all locations in which Aborigines lived, as the Chief Protector reported to his Minister when he advised that many Aboriginal children were suffering from syphilis. The dilemma Roth faced in providing health care was that he lacked the legislative power to act. This remained a difficult issue. For example, Topsy, ‘a little girl, twelve years of age, from Magoura Station, suffered with syphilis. The station owner brought her to Normanton where [she was] joined by her sister in the local camp’. Roth reluctantly sent the children directly to Mapoon mission. His report to the Minister indicated that he asked Protector Galbraith toBe clear about Manne’s deceit here. He counts Topsy and children like her - sexually abused, diseased, enslaved and kidnapped - as children that were not saved by Roth, but as ones he stolen to “breed out the colour”. This is not such a cheap semantic trick by the professor. It is a gross moral error.report as to the ability of the sister to provide Topsy’s wants....[Roth explained to the Minister about how he] did not care to trespass too much on the kindness of the Mapoon Mission people, to whom we have already sent diseased half-caste children; and if, ultimately, it may be desirable to send her there, I think it only fair that the Superintendent be consulted beforehand.
There in no way these children could be said have have been stolen, as Manne claimed, just because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help. If these children were “stolen” then every single child we save from rape and violence is “stolen” too and the term is meaningless. Or a lie.
But let’s go to the few names Manne does give, clearly suggesting - without openly saying - that these are examples of children who were stolen for racist reasons:
===
IPCC goofs again: now Holland is drowned
Andrew Bolt
Yet another blunder in that IPCC 2007 report which Kevin Rudd uses to justify his great green tax to “stop” global warming:
A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.Funny how every mistake now coming to light is of the kind that tended to make global warming scarier. You know, that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, the Amazonian rain forests were extremely vulnerable, the Antarctica would become too fragile even for dirty shoes. And funny, too, how the IPCC boss cadged so many grants, directorships and business deals as his IPCC hyped the dangers. (Just read a fuller list of IPCC controversies here.)
In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.
Nor is that the only sceptical news from the Netherlands:
Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed.Surely Cramer’s demand now for a review of the climate science by her scientists is exactly what’s needed here, too. I mean, shouldn’t Climate Change Minister Penny Wong be saying exactly this sort of thing herself:
Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday.Here’s Tony Abbott’s way out of the pinch of claiming to still believe in dangerous man-made warming, yet blocking Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. Surely there’s now so many scandals engulging the IPCC and its science, that it’s mad for us to spend a single dollar more until an inquiry - with sceptical scientists on board too - reviews all the science we were once falsely told was “settled”.
Demand an inquiry now.
UPDATE
India goes even further:
India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it “cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri…(Thanks to readers Tony, Steve, Wand and Carlyle,)
In India the (IPCC’s) false claims (on the Himalayas) have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government… In Autumn, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming…
(L)ast night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further. He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s “third ice cap”, and an “Indian IPCC” to use “climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. ...” he said.
===
Sceptical scientists now speaking out
Andrew Bolt
More scientists cast doubt on the IPPC (and Rudd) theory that man has heated the world to dangerous and unprecedented levels.
From Sweden, more evidence that the world was warmer just a 1000 years ago (and thrived):
Sundqvist et al. write that “the stable isotope records show enriched isotopic values during the, for Scandinavia, comparatively cold period AD 1300-1700 [which they equate with the Little Ice Age] and depleted values during the warmer period AD 800-1000 [which they equate with the Medieval Warm Period].” And as can clearly be seen from the figure above, the two ?18O depletion “peaks” (actually inverted valleys) of the Medieval Warm Period are both more extreme than the “peak” value of the Current Warm Period, which appears at the end of the record.From Australia, Professor Peter Ridd tells Alan Jones that warmist scientists have grossly exaggerated the danger to the Great Barrier Reef. He’s too nice to name you-know-who as one who’s made these “wild” predictions and made scientists “look like used-car salesmen”:
I actually have quite a lot of faith in the voter. They can look through the hype and almost the advertising that’s gone on at the moment to sort of push these stories.(Thanks to reader Steve.)
UPDATE
JoNova notes the biggest seven “errors” in the poor-me whinge of warmist Professor Andy Pitman. Robyn “100 metres” Williams may take note.
UPDATE 2
Senator Cory Bernardi nails the Labor MPs still repeating discredited IPCC material. The video is on the new Menzies House website, worth a visit.
UPDATE 3
The Spectator also notes that bloggers were covering the climate scandals long before most of the mainstream media deigned to notice.
===
Rudd is very productive … if strikes are what you want
Andrew Bolt
From the same government that now preaches productivity comes these utterly predictable results of its strangling new workplace laws:
MINING giant Rio Tinto has warned that growing industrial unrest in Australia’s booming resources sector could spread to its critical iron ore mines, as it prepares to start bargaining with unions over workers’ pay and conditions for the first time in 15 years.And another consequence of the Rudd Government’s meddling:
The warning came as Fair Work Australia deputy president Brendan McCarthy was last night locked in a meeting with Woodside Energy in a last-ditch bid to stop workers building its $12 billion Pluto gas plant in the Pilbara from walking off the job again as early as today.
In an internal memo obtained by The Australian, Rio Tinto Iron Ore chief executive Sam Walsh warned staff that the ramp-up in industrial activity under the Rudd government’s new workplace laws could serve as an omen for Rio Tinto and other companies in the Pilbara…
WA Premier Colin Barnett has urged federal Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard to “roll up her sleeves” and help settle the growing number of crippling disputes in the Pilbara, which last week saw members of the Maritime Union of Australia secure pay rises of up to $50,000 in exchange for no productivity gains.
MATTHEW Spencer, 17, wants to keep his after-school job at his local Victorian hardware store and his employer, Charlie Duynhoven, wants to keep him on as well.UPDATE
But Matthew and five other youths, all aged between 16 and 18, have been sacked from the Terang and District Co-operative, 210km southwest of Melbourne, because the Rudd government’s Fair Work Act won’t let them work less than three hours a day.
Rudd would rather take their job than let them choose one he doesn’t like:
Asked why the youths couldn’t be allowed to work for 1.5 hours, Mr Rudd continued to defend the system.Rudd knows best what such workers want.
“We’ve got to be very careful about industrial relations systems which enables people, incrementally, to be exploited,” he said.
===
How Jaspreet made Australia toast, too
Andrew Bolt
IT’S because so many people want to believe Australians are racist that Jaspreet Singh became the latest fake example of our evil.
Singh, a 29-year-old Indian “student”, turned up last month burned to a crisp, with a tale of having been attacked in Essendon by four racists with a can of petrol.
The story smelled from the start, and not just of premium unleaded. Police even warned it sounded suss, starting with this notion that gangs roam Essendon late at night with cans of petrol, looking for Indians to burn.
But what followed is a golden example of a phenomenon that’s made this country seem like a madhouse lately. If people really want to believe something they will, and facts barely matter. Indeed, facts are then evil.
That’s why so many millions believe in the “stolen generations”, for instance, especially when no one can name even 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal.
That’s why millions more are sure man is heating the world dangerously, even when the planet has cooled for more than eight years.
And that’s why so many of our preacher-teacher class, from academics to ABC broadcasters, have so eagerly insisted that every Australian (except themselves, funnily) is a racist redneck - a smugly self-regarding lie they’re now shocked to see is believed of them, too, by an Indian media only too happy to pander to its own chip-on-the-shoulder xenophobes.
It’s the wanting to believe that counts. So here’s what we read last month about the bizarre barbecueing of Jaspreet Singh from Indian journalists and Australian cause-pushers.
Sindh Today, January 9: “Days after India asked Australia to take urgent action against those behind the murder of an Indian student a week ago, a 29-year-old Indian was set ablaze Saturday by four unidentified attackers in Melbourne, putting bilateral ties under strain.”
The New Indian Express, January 11: “Victoria Police say ... there is no reason at this stage to consider this (attack) racially motivated. If the statement had been calculated to enrage, it could hardly have been more provocatively phrased. Perhaps, in Australia, opportunist crimes also involve setting the victim ablaze. In any other country, this would prima facie be considered a hate crime, in this case racist.”
===
How to define an Australian
Andrew Bolt
We often have trouble defining what the Australian character is, but I can safely say that I know what a real Australian would say in response:
IT’S a symbol of Australia’s fighting spirit. Now the Boxing Kangaroo is at the centre of an international incident, with the International Olympic Committee ordering it taken down from the Winter Games athletes’ village in Vancouver.And the athletes have done what any Australian would.
It can be revealed that IOC officials ordered the green and gold flag be removed just 24 hours after it was draped over a balcony - because it was deemed to be “too commercial”.
===
Code Red may actually kill
Andrew Bolt
THE Code Red bushfire warnings brought in since Black Saturday are going to get someone killed.
They are not just confusing and impractical, but blur the lesson learned in almost every past bushfire.
That lesson? The safest place when a fire is close is a well-prepared home.
But see the makings of a new tragedy in the surveys released this week by the CFA, which show a quarter of people in fire-prone areas would consider leaving their homes on Code Red days - but only when the fires actually threatened their property. Too, too late.
Before Black Saturday the CFA advice, backed by countless studies, was clear. In you live in a fire zone, prepare your house. And then either leave early on fire days or stay and fight.
As the Royal Commission on the Black Saturday fires has been told, research on 552 civilian bushfire deaths in Australia over the past 100 years showed that just one in 12 occurred inside homes, and most of those dead were people too old, sick, drunk or unprepared to fight the flames.
“Only one person is said to have died while defending a defensible shelter,” said counsel assisting, Peter Rozen.
A 1984 Melbourne University study of deaths in the 1983 Mt Macedon fires explains why: you just need your house to save you long enough for the fire front to pass, and “conditions (outside) are thought to remain unbearable for no longer than 15 to 20 minutes”. Just make sure your house is built and defended to last that long. If you flee, you just risk being caught in burning forests on roads choked with smoke and crashed cars.
But Black Saturday’s fires were fiercer than almost anything before. And this time 113 of the 173 victims died in their homes, most of them fighting the flames they’d thought they could beat.
There are lessons to be learned. Should we burn off more fuel around vulnerable bush towns? Should bush houses be better fire-proofed?
But the commission and the State Government chose first to change our fire warnings - to change what had worked as a rule, because of a freak exception.
===
But Woger is still not weleased
Andrew Bolt
Biggus Dickus lives:
A high-ranking Pakistani diplomat reportedly cannot be appointed ambassador to Saudi Arabia because in Arabic his name translates into a phrase more appropriate for a porn star, referring to the size of male genitals, Foreign Policy reported.(Via Instapundit.)
The Arabic transaltion of Akbar Zeb to “biggest d**k” has overwhelmed Saudi officials who have refused to allow his post there.
No comments:
Post a Comment