Enough already, Julia
Piers Akerman – Saturday, March 19, 11 (04:46 pm)
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard cannot be believed - on anything.
Sun 20 Mar 11 (12:01pm)
Yes Gillard has been caught lying, but when has she been found to tell the truth? On what issue has she done something that both benefits Australia but not herself? Australia expects everyone will do their duty.
Sun 20 Mar 11 (12:01pm)
I don’t care if she never fully comes to account for her time in government .. so long as it ends.
will those citizens who receive their carbon compensation be rewarded with a cash payment ?. That’s a good way to do it as it means some folk will be able to upgrade their plasma TV’s they previously bought with their stimulus freebies. Might be able to get the 3D.model. Go Australia !
Sat 19 Mar 11 (05:20pm)
Sun 20 Mar 11 (12:03pm)
I get it you are being funny, but the taxation amount will make the stimulus appear small. Also it won’t return money to people, but take less away from some than others .. but more than anyone should pay
470 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S PROGRESS TAX
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 20, 11 (11:09 pm)
Dear Prime Minister Gillard,
We the undersigned oppose your carbon dioxide tax.
The tax is unprincipled, because during the election campaign you lied about not introducing it.
The tax is unscientific, because it cannot possibly achieve its aim of reducing global temperature.
The tax is unworkable, because it will be drafted and administered by a government that cannot do anything properly except cut down its leaders. Speaking of which, watch your back.
Yours sincerely,
Voters
PS: See you on Wednesday.
NO MO ZONE
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 20, 11 (11:02 pm)
It could have been a beautiful friendship. Instead, Barack Obama is raining Tomahawks of justice down upon Muammar Gaddafi, who vows to fight it out:
“We are getting ready for a long, glorious war,” Gaddafi said in an audio message broadcast on state television.
Michael Moore is on your side, Muammar. Of course, the last tyrant he supported ended up being cruelly underpanted and then executed, so you might hold off buying any unripe bananas. Can Mo survive? Let’s put it to a poll:
UPDATE. A Barcepundit exclusive – Gaddafi’s plan to sway world opinion:
The human shields will be on their way to Tripoli aboard the next flight.
UPDATE II. Kevin Rudd in 2002:
There is no debate or dispute as to whether Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. He does.
Despite his belief in Saddam’s WMD possession, Rudd opposed the invasion. The bar is now set a little lower. Here’s Rudd in 2011:
This is a necessary and moral course of action against an individual who is a brutal, bloody dictator.
(Via Currency Lad)
PRESSURE DOWN
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 20, 11 (10:55 pm)
A certain situation appears to be easing:
The operator of a crippled nuclear plant in Japan said on Sunday that it was no longer necessary to relieve pressure inside its most troubled reactor by releasing radioactive gases, saying pressure had stabilized.
At an afternoon news conference, officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Company said venting from Reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station would not be needed.
Now maybe we can get back to covering the larger story: 8,000 dead, 12,000 missing, 360,000 homeless and a nation facing five years of rebuilding.
KARAOKE SQUAD
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 20, 11 (08:22 pm)
The big problem in Sydney right now is unregulated karaoke:
A squad of specialist police swooped on over 20 karaoke dens in Sydney’s CBD last night, issuing 85 enforcement notices for offences including breaches of the Liquor Act …
Superintendent Mark Walton said most karaoke establishments in the city were operating legally but some were not, and he warned last night’s raid would not be the last.
Sure, go after easy targets. You never see any cops raiding bus driver hangouts.
KNUT
Tim Blair – Sunday, March 20, 11 (04:33 am)
The real Julia no longer a socialist but a conservative
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (06:57 am)
Julia Gillard insists the real Julia, who a decade ago was still a leader of the Socialist Forum, is actually a very conservative person:
JULIA Gillard has revealed herself to be a cultural traditionalist, indicating she will oppose moves by the Greens for euthanasia and gay marriage laws and that she believes it is important for people to understand the Bible- despite the fact she is an atheist.
It’s true that the arguments she now advances - some for the first time that I can recall - are sound:
Asked about her attitudes on social issues, Ms Gillard harked back to her upbringing in Adelaide and agreed that she was a “cultural traditionalist”.“I had a pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in a sense of personal values. I mean we believed in lots of things that are old fashioned in the modern age,” she said.
“We believed in politeness and thrift and fortitude and doing duty and diligence. These are things that were part of my upbringing. They’re part of who I am.”
On euthanasia, Ms Gillard said while she could personally understand that people in the end stage of life might want that choice, she had never been satisfied that policy proposals from pro-euthanasia advocates had enough safeguards.
On gay marriage, Ms Gillard said: “I do find myself on the conservative side in this question.”
Declaring there were “some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future”, Ms Gillard said her view was that the Marriage Act - and marriage being between a man and woman - “has a special status”.
Ms Gillard said it was important for people to understand their Bible stories “not because I’m an advocate of religion - clearly I’m not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture”.
The question is why it’s only now that we hear of this Julia.
The Julia of the Socialist Forum may have explained why when she wrote this for the comrades:
For the Left to make any real advance all these perspectives on the relationship to Labor in government need to be rejected in favour of a concept of strategic support for Labor governments. We need to recognise the only possibility for major social change is under a long period of Labor administration. Within that administration the Left needs to be willing to participate to shape political outcomes, recognising the need to except (sic) often unpalatable compromises in the short term to bolster the prospect of future advance. The task of pushing back the current political constraints by changing public opinion would need to be tackled by the Left through government, social movements and trade unions.
Fukushima being stabilised. The real tragedy lies elsewhere
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (06:49 am)
The death toll from Japan’s tsunami reaches truly terrible proportions, yet our media hyperventilates about a nuclear emergency that has killed no one and probably never will:
THE number of people confirmed dead or listed as missing in Japan has topped 21,000.
Meanwhile, the danger at the Fukushima reactor recedes:
Workers on site have succeeded in increasing the stability of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor units with units 5 and 6 now in cold shutdown. Pressure built up within unit 3 but a more significant venting does not seem necessary now.
External power has now been connected to unit 5 and 6, allowing them to use their residual heat removal systems and transfer heat to the sea. This has been used to cool the fuel ponds and bring the units to cold shutdown status, meaning that water in the reactor system is at less than 100ºC…
An extended operation to refill the fuel pond took place at unit 3, with the Hyper Rescue crew spraying for over 13 hours. Radiation levels 500 metres north of the reactor showed a decrease from 3.44 millisieverts per hour to 2.75 millisieverts per hour, indicating a measure of success in refilling the pond. A similar operation is planned for later today at unit 4 and the surface temperatures of the buildings appear to be below 100ºC.
It’s astonishing that these reactors could have so well withstood a catastrophe that was unimaginable when they were designed:
The Fukushima power plants were required by regulators to withstand a certain height of tsunami. At the Daiichi plant the design basis was 5.7 metres and at Daini this was 5.2 metres.
Tepco has now released tentative assessments of the scale of the tsunami putting it at over 10 metres at Daiichi and over 12 metres at Dainii.
The plant sites were inundated, causing the loss of residual heat removal systems at both sites as well as emergency diesel generators at Daiichi.
It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.
Libya: but what next?
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, March 20, 11 (06:15 pm)
l’m all in favor of preventing a massacre of civilians, but what is the end game here?
THE immediate goal of the coalition’s intervention in Libya is to protect civilians with a no-fly zone, not to try to oust strongman Muammar Gaddafi, the top US military officer says.
US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as other Western leaders, had been saying Gaddafi must go, but since the UN authorised military action last week those calls have been dying down.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said initial air and sea strikes by US, Britain and France had stopped Gaddafi’s forces in their tracks and… military action was limited - for the moment at least - to protecting civilians, particularly in the rebel bastion of Benghazi...
“The focus of the United Nations Security Council was really Benghazi specifically and to protect the civilians,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
Are the allies happy if Gaddafi staying in control of Libya, apart from the rebel’s enclave around Benghazi? How long will this no fly zone be imposed?
There seems to have been little of the debate about effectively declaring war on Gaddafi as there was about declaring war on Saddam. And there are much fewer Western security interests at stake, too - no WMD programs, no funding of terrorists, no history of invading neighbors.
UPDATE
Tim Blair:
Kevin Rudd in 2002:
There is no debate or dispute as to whether Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. He does.Despite his belief in Saddam’s WMD possession, Rudd opposed the invasion. The bar is now set a little lower. Here’s Rudd in 2011:
This is a necessary and moral course of action against an individual who is a brutal, bloody dictator.
UPDATE
Greg Sheridan:
The US will want desperately to limit its involvement, and yet anything which ultimately leaves Gaddafi in power will look like a defeat. Soon enough progressive opinion in the West, and paranoid opinion in the Arab world, will turn against the intervention.
Already Gaddafi is running out the familiar lines - the intervention is colonialist, it is the work of Western crusaders.
The politics within the Arab League will be critical here.
In that case, we’re in trouble. Having first called for the no-fly zone, the Arab League now denounces the West for the consequences:
Arab League chief Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group of 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report into the bombardment, which he said had ”led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians.”“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” Egypt’s state news agency quoted Moussa as saying.
UPDATE
It may mark success, or the West being gamed again by the Arab world:
LIBYA has announced a new ceasefire in the campaign against an uprising, as a second night of international air strikes on the country appeared imminent…
Following a meeting in the Mauritanian capital, the African Union’s panel on Libya called for an “immediate stop” to all attacks and asked Libyan authorities to ensure “humanitarian aid to those in need”, as well as the “protection of foreigners, including African expatriates living in Libya”.
Hopeless and no change
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, March 20, 11 (01:32 pm)
Remember when Barack Obama attacked an American president for sending in the military to help topple a Middle Eastern tyrant?
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