GREENS SHOP ALLIES
Tim Blair – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:50 am)
Marriqville resident Joe Hildebrand reports from the banned zone, which is now the scene of a Fatah/Hamas-style civil war between Labor and the Greens:
Greens leader Bob Brown said Labor should share some of the flak over Marrickville Council’s decision to ban Israeli products.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday slammed the boycott as “nuts” but Senator Brown said that it was not just the NSW Greens that had voted for it.
“It was four Labor councillors that made that policy possible,” he said. “Kevin Rudd’s Labor party is as every bit responsible for the outcome as the Greens were.”
Fine. Vote against both of them.
PEACE IN OUR TIME
Tim Blair – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:17 am)
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie agrees to meet his Nazi salute accuser:
An angry Mr Etches said last night Mr Wilkie also owed him an apology for suggesting yesterday he was part of a smear campaign by the pro-poker machine lobby to discredit Mr Wilkie.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
“I actually agree with him on poker machines. I just want him to come clean about what happened at Duntroon and make sure it won’t happen again.”
Today’s editorial:
So now we have pokies, a fractured Labor government, military mistreatment, Tasmanian independents and Hitler all in the one basket.
You wouldn’t read about it.
Goat rodeo, all the way.
SCOTT GOT
Tim Blair – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:06 am)
Frequently-arrested internet pervert Scott Ritter – the antiwar hero who “waged peace” on behalf of Saddam Hussein – is headed for jail:
A jury Thursday convicted Ritter of unlawful contact with a minor and five out of six other offenses, mostly felonies …
Ritter faces up to seven years in prison on the most serious of the charges.
Read the full account of Ritter’s trial for all of his astonishing lies. For a time, this story-shifting child hunter was the media’s go-to guy – particularly in Australia – for anti-liberation propaganda.
444 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S HOWES DESTRUCTION TAX
Tim Blair – Saturday, April 16, 11 (04:46 am)
Unions develop carbon fright:
The Gillard government has been warned that union support will be withdrawn from Labor’s campaign to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions if it looks like “one job” will be lost because of the proposed carbon tax …
As Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes prepared for a crisis meeting of union officials today to discuss the impact of the carbon tax, he said his union wanted to ensure that “this carbon price won’t cost a single job”.
The job Howes is most concerned about might be his own. Following Friday’s meeting:
The Gillard government’s plans to put a price on carbon have suffered a body blow, with key unions demanding exemptions for industry that are unacceptable to the Greens.
With his own job under threat from a hostile membership, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, demanded yesterday that the steel industry be given a complete exemption from the carbon scheme and that there be generous compensation for the aluminium, cement and glass sectors.
Both the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union supported Howes’s call (as did Tony Abbott). The Greens oppose it. Choose your side, leftoids.
PARTY MISSING
Tim Blair – Friday, April 15, 11 (12:47 pm)
In a piece on solar panel rebates hurting the poor, Lenore Taylor mentions “government policy”, “governments” that “didn’t think the policy through”, a “federal scheme”, “the government”, “state governments” and “the federal and former NSW government”.
Was any particular party running these governments?
The murder of Vittorio Arrigoni
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (08:30 am)
(WARNING: THIS PROPAGANDA VIDEO IS DISTURBING)
Remember the furious outcry when Rachel Corrie, an activist from the International Solidarity Movement , was accidently killed by an Israeli army bullodozer? I wonder if that international outcry from the Left will be repeated now that another ISM activist has been killed - but this time deliberately, and by Palestinians:
Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, was blindfolded and had been badly beaten before the broadcast. A hand was seen pulling his head up by his hair to face the camera....
Mr Arrigoni had lived in Gaza since August 2008 after arriving on a boat bringing humanitarian supplies. He was abducted by an Al Qaeda-linked Jihadist group, who were attempting to put pressure on Hamas, which runs the enclave, to release its leader Hesham al-Sa’eedni.
In the Arabic text that accompanied the YouTube video, his kidnappers described Italy as ‘the infidel state’ and said that Mr Arrigoni had ‘entered our land only to spread corruption.’
Arrigoni did not deserve his fate - just as the victims of one of his heroes did not deserve theirs, either:
“Governments in the West are asleep,” said Vittorio Arrigoni, 33, the trucker, whose black cap featured the face of Che Guevara...
More on the dead man:
A peace activist, blogger and occasional freelance journalist, Arrigoni was a well-known figure in Gaza - and well-liked.
He was frequently seen clenching a pipe between his teeth and wearing a beret in a likeness to Che Guevara, as well as bracelets in the red, black, green and white colors of the Palestinian flag.
Arrigoni was an outspoken critic of Israel, but in an interview in 2008 he also also criticised Muslim extremists for trying to impose a hardline version of Islam in Gaza.
He noted the increase in the number of Gazan women wearing Islamic face veils and the fact that young women were barred from participating in public life.
Arrigoni had come to Gaza as a pro-Palestinian activist and worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which operates in the West Bank and Gaza
I’m not sure Arrigoni recognised the greater threat to his interests, if not his values.
(Thanks to reader Stanley.)
Brown: Labor voted for an anti-Israel policy, too
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (08:07 am)
The Greens have imported an intifada of their own against a party occupying their territory:
GREENS leader Bob Brown said Labor should share some of the flak over Marrickville Council’s decision to ban Israeli products.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday slammed the boycott as “nuts” but Senator Brown said that it was not just the NSW Greens that had voted for it.
“It was four Labor councillors that made that policy possible,” he said. “Kevin Rudd’s Labor party is as every bit responsible for the outcome as the Greens were.”
Very true, and a symbol of how witless and vacuous Labor now timidly adopts the policies of the extreme Greens. But at least Labor is ashamed of a policy that can only give comfort to anti-Semites and stir trouble between communities on our own soil:
But (Greens Senator-elect Lee) Rhiannon said she would not abandon the policy, which Greens leader Bob Brown recently condemned as a mistake which had cost the party votes at the NSW election.
“Yes, we have that position in New South Wales and I’ll support the New South Wales position. But it’s not something we’re taking to the federal parliament. There are clear priorities,” Ms Rhiannon told Sky News.
Rhiannon should make Brown’s leadership a misery when she gets to Canberra. Which one will control the party?
(Thanks to reader Grand Wizard.)
48 times Combet lied about “carbon pollution”
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (07:49 am)
Terry McCrann on the planned destruction of our economy by a government that refuses to speak honestly about the pointless harm it’s doing:
THE policy incoherence of the Gillard government was deliciously captured by successive speeches during the week from two senior ministers.
First, Trade Minister Craig Emerson gave a ringing, if at times somewhat schoolmasterly, simplistic recitation of the benefits of international trade and in particular its liberalisation.
The striking benefits identified by Emerson were the big price falls delivered by trade liberalisation, and the boost to domestic productivity.... This was Emerson and a minister of the crown at his best. Emphatic and accurate.
Then the next day we got the exact opposite. From Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency—his ministerial title itself a parody of truth.
Combet’s title commenced and captured the speech’s fatuousness and dishonesty. “Tackling climate change is in the national interest.” How exactly do we tackle climate change, when nothing—absolutely nothing—we do can make the slightest difference to tomorrow’s climate?
In sharp contrast to the clarity and accuracy of Emerson’s speech, Combet’s was littered with verbosity and the deliberate lies incumbent on campaigners like him.
From the 48 times he used the term “carbon pollution” to quite deliberately foster the false impression of bits of dirty grit, to the pretence that China is not embarked on dramatically increasing its absolute levels of emissions of carbon dioxide.
So on the one hand we have Emerson sounding the clarion call of the absolute imperative of boosting productivity and reducing business costs… While on the other we had Combet committing the government to quite deliberately increasing business costs and damaging productivity. Not as some byproduct but as its express intent.
For, as Emerson knows only too well, the absolute foundation of productivity and low business costs is cheap, reliable and plentiful power.
The real pollution is these lying words
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (07:42 am)
It’s not new, this weaseling with words. But it’s rarely been this bad, and so polluting of political debate.
We’ve always had wink-words, of course, words meant to act as code.
Take this relatively harmless example, from USA Today:
“Tom Jones is...singing for the first time about his reputation as a ladies’ man.”
“Ladies’ man”, as we all know, actually means adulterer. But you use it both to avoid being sued, or - less creditably - to avoid seeming a prude.
“Ladies man” sounds happy-happy, even if there’s a wife crying her heart out in bed alone.
Here’s another wink-word, used this time by The Sydney Morning Herald:
“Freeman, about to feature in the new Underbelly series, was Sydney’s original ‘colourful racing identity’. . .”
By “colourful identity”, reporters always mean “crook”. “Colourful racing identity” means the crook likes horses.
Again, there are two reasons for being so coy: to protect the writer from a writ or to protect him from seeming distressingly moralistic about blood on the floor and a dead junkie in the lane.
Then there are those others, so familiar from the obituary pages. “Loved his mother” means he loved no one else. “Cheeky” means a ratbag.
This list of wink-words has expanded as we’ve discovered new variants of sin. Take this one, in a report on former boxing champion Mike Tyson:
“He also amassed over $300 million over the span of his career but he had more than a few expensive habits.”
“Expensive habits”, of course, increasingly refers to the ability to pack thousands of dollars up your nostrils.
But in these examples, the worst we could say of their authors is that they were coy. These words aren’t lies, since in most cases it’s presumed we know what the author means with his wink.
But then there are words used not as a wink but to blind people to the truth.
Again, it’s not new. In his Lingua Tertii Imperii (Language of the Third Reich), Professor Victor Klemperer, who as a Jew in Dresden miraculously survived World War II, compiled many pages of lying words used by the Nazis.
He notes how “fanatical”, an insult, was turned by the Nazis into a compliment of someone’s fervent devotion to the cause. “Special treatment” now meant “murder”.
These weren’t wink-words any more, but words twisted completely to make people think well about things which, if frankly named, they’d think badly.
Relax. I’m not about to liken someone to the Nazis. I’m just giving an extreme case of using words to make things not clearer, but more obscure, to subvert people’s judgment.
It’s a trick British propagandists also played, leading George Orwell to warn: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” And how clearly we see that right here, right now.
US now so weak in arms and will that even Gaddafi need not fear
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (07:10 am)
This war is turning into a humiliating farce for the allies, who are stepping up their campaign in ways not authorised by the United Nations Security Council - a detail that once was anathema to the Left when in came to Iraq:
BARACK Obama has added his name to a commitment from David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy tosupport military action in Libya until Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown.
In a joint article published in The Times, The Washington Post and Le Figaro, the US, British and French leaders say the world will be guilty of an “unconscionable betrayal” if the Libyan leader is left in place, putting the fate of citizens who have rebelled against his rule in the hands of a merciless militia intent on revenge....
As the Libyan conflict approaches the end of its first month, there is still no sign of a breakthrough. In the capital, Tripoli - again hit again by NATO airstrikes yesterday in a show of fresh Western resolve - a defiant Gaddafi drove through the streets in a cavalcade, standing up through the sunroof of the lead vehicle and punching the air triumphantly. His daughter Aisha also made a public appearance, addressing crowds from the second-floor balcony of her father’s Bab al-Aziziya compound - first bombed by the US 25 years ago.
We have long known that Europe can no longer be counted upon to defend its interests with much force. Until now that has seemed to many as not much a problem, since Europe could always call in the US to do its fighting for it - whether confronting the then Soviet Union, removing Saddam and bombing Serbia.
But in Libya we see evidence of a terrible new truth: that the United States is in fast decline, running out of money, confidence, will and even military power.
A Libya is not an Iraq, let alone a Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. The dead in the civil war there number each day in the tens, not tens of thousands. Moreover, the US is not engaged there alone, but is backed by the forces of France and England in particular, all under the cover of the mighty United Nations.
Yet look: a Libyan army that has no air cover, few tanks that dare move and troops that must catch a bus or utility to the front is still winning a war against rebels backed by US and its allies.
Back in the US you can see this is part of a much bigger pattern. The US is broke, drowning under a $14 trillion debtthat it has little hope of slashing or covering with greater growth. It is fractured racially and ethnically like never before, which erodes the sense of community that is needed to make the kind of joint sacrifices the US would need to claw its way out of debt and assert its power. And it’s led by a bumbling neophyte who gives no sign of confidence in his country’s special virtues and responsibilities, but seems rather to have an exaggerated sensitivity to the opinions of its rivals.
If only this were a moment of crisis for the US alone. But the terrible truth is that it is a crisis for all countries, such as ours, which have shielded so complacently under America’s wings. Our protector is sickening fast.
More Labor infighting
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (07:01 am)
Bill Ludwig is right, of course, but the problem is that he’s ... er, right. Oh, and speaking out:
FACTIONAL warlord Bill Ludwig has vented growing Labor frustration with Kevin Rudd, questioning the former prime minister’s loyalty…
Mr Ludwig’s attack ... reflects growing concern in the ALP that Mr Rudd’s courting of media attention and his determination to speak out as he sees fit on his time in office is destabilising the government.
Mr Ludwig, the veteran national president and Queensland secretary of the powerful Australian Workers Union, said ... Mr Rudd’s admission on national television last week that shelving the emissions trading scheme was a mistake, for which he was responsible, was “typical Kevin”.
Asked to elaborate, Mr Ludwig said: “Geez, he’s out there and everybody can see him. Kevin’s Kevin. Kevin comes first, second, third and fourth.”
Howes steps away from Gillard and her poisonous tax
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:43 am)
I’ll say it again, Julia Gillard is finished and can no longer rely on the support even of the union leader who did most to install her:
Mr Howes, one of the so-called faceless men who helped elevate Ms Gillard to the prime ministership by removing support for Kevin Rudd last year, hardened his approach, declaring himself “agnostic” about whether a carbon tax was the best way to deal with climate change.
Or put it this way:
With his own job under threat from a hostile membership, the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Paul Howes, demanded yesterday that the steel industry be given a complete exemption from the carbon scheme and that there be generous compensation for the aluminium, cement and glass sectors.
Mr Howes issued the demand after a fiery crisis meeting with nine union branch secretaries from across Australia. It is understood Mr Howes, who is up for re-election before the next federal election, faced being dumped if he did not issue the demands.
The AWU is influential in the Right faction of the ALP and was instrumental in Julia Gillard’s coup against Kevin Rudd last year.
Immediately after Mr Howes’s announcement, he was backed by the powerful Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, which influences the party’s Left…
Tony Maher, from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, said Mr Howes has ‘’got a very good argument and I would urge the government to consider it’’.
The union leaders must now choose: do they represent the Gillard Government to their members or their members to the Government? Specifically, do they back the Gillard Government’s useless, unwanted and job-killing tax or do they fight for their members’ jobs?
It really is as simple as that, and what you are slowly seeing is union leaders belatedly realising this as their members mutiny.
UPDATE
Reader Mick:
I have just resigned from the C.F.M.E.U.(mining), after being a member for 32 years. The leadership of this union is betraying its members.It has not consulted the members on what direction should be taken concerning the carbon (DIOXIDE) price(TAX).
They are promoting and pushing the stupid ALP/GREENS tax. They are not concerned with job security. They are not concerned that power stations may close down. They are not concerned on the costs of living for all Australians.
I have chosen not to be a defacto greenie.
What’s wrong with Wilkie’s memory?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:39 am)
Strange that Wilkie can’t remember when Newman can:
FEDERAL Independent MP Andrew Wilkie may not be able to recall forcing Duntroon cadets to salute Hitler’s rise to power but LNP leader and fellow military college graduate Campbell Newman can.
Mr Newman attended the Royal Military College at Duntroon from 1981 to 1984 as a cadet, at the same time the alleged incident involving Mr Wilkie ordering junior cadets to salute the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power is said to have taken place…
“Like many people who were at Duntroon almost 30 years ago, I can certainly recall hearing about this after the event,” Mr Newman said…
When one defiant junior cadet refused to stand at attention in honour of Nazis, Mr Wilkie allegedly let other senior cadets to abuse and punish him.
“Let me start by saying I can’t remember anything about that specific allegation...,” he said.
UPDATE
Will Newman’s superior memory make Wilkie forget again their friendship?
One of those (Wilkie) pushed away was the best man at his first wedding, Campbell Newman, who is now hoping to topple Anna Bligh as Queensland premier in the upcoming state election. Wilkie says he and Newman had been best friends, yet they had no contact for years after the Iraq affair. Wilkie blames himself for their estrangement. “I was worried about what he would think, because he is a very conservative Liberal Party man, and a friend of the Howards’. It was probably an assumption that because I had been critical of John Howard that he would disapprove of it.”
The two men only re-established their friendship in February this year, after they ran into each other by chance in the corridors of Canberra’s Parliament House. Newman says he was thrilled to reconnect with Wilkie, who he says was his closest friend during their time together in the army.
(Thanks to reader Spin Baby, Spin.)
After a long pause, another bombing in Indonesia
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:36 am)
A worrying development in our northern neighbour:
A suspected suicide bomber has attacked a mosque in Indonesia, killing himself and wounding 28 people. Most of the wounded are police officers, as the attack happened during Friday prayers at a mosque in a police compound in Cirebon, West Java.
(Thanks to reader Grand Wizard.)
I’d rather a Namatjira
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:17 am)
To be frank, I thought much of the interest in traditonal Aboriginal art was driven by politic fashion and self-advertisement rather than aesthetics, which made the market as fickle as it’s proved:
Prices are falling. From a peak of $23.9 million in 2007, up from $16.5m the previous year, the value of Aboriginal art sales at auction dropped to $13.4m in 2008, $12.5m in 2009 and $10.1m last year, according to figures compiled by Australian Art Sales Digest.
I may be wrong about the cause, since I have a prejudice against primitive arts of all kinds, from gangsta rap to Dayak carvings, and prefer more highly developed and intellectualised expressions of the human spirit.
Indeed, others blame part of this fall in prices on the “unintended consequences” - but so predictable even so - of government meddling with the market:
CALL it the law of unintended consequences.
Five years ago, The Weekend Australian shone a light on the Aboriginal art world, exposing a nest of unscrupulous operators, exploiting and profiteering at the expense of artists.
The reports prompted a Senate inquiry from the Howard government. And in June 2007, to general applause, it recommended a code of conduct, greater scrutiny from authorities and increased support for indigenous art centres…
But these well-intentioned interventions into Aboriginal art have had a mixed effect. In fact, there is increasing evidence they are contributing to the deep malaise afflicting the entire indigenous art market.
The effects of the global financial crisis, personal disputes, confusion over superannuation investment rules and a new resale royalty should not be underestimated. But critics say the attempts to regulate the market, particularly the empowerment of arts centres, are shutting private dealers and artists out of the market and contributing to a glut of art that is driving down prices.
No comment
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (06:09 am)
I can’t comment on Chris Kenny’s comment for legal reasons. Nor can you.
UPDATE
I know, it sounds extraordinary that I should be so fearful, but I cannot comment on this news story of tremendous public interest either.
Who trusts Combet on anything to do with this ludicrous tax?
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, April 16, 11 (12:03 am)
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said under CPRS-level assistance and a $20 a tonne carbon price, the steel industry faced a $2.60 hike in the cost of making a tonne of steel, which currently sells at $800.
He said the aluminium industry would face an additional cost of $18.70 a tonne, out of a price of about $2500 a tonne.
Bluescope Steel chief Paul O’Mallley says Department of Environment data shows the Government will collect more then three times the figure Mr Combet presented in his climate change speech yesterday.
“We are at a loss to explain how Minister Combet has calculated a year-one carbon cost of $2.60 per tonne of steel,” Mr O’Malley said, arguing that calculations the company undertook using Environment Department data showed a carbon cost of more than $8 per tonne of steel....
“If you include costs passed through from suppliers, including inputs such as coal, this figure would rise to more than five times the Minister’s calculation for year one”.
Wrong, says the Australian Aluminium Council:
AAC executive director Miles Prosser said Mr Combet’s analysis was misleading....
“(Mr Combet’s) simple calculations miss many of the costs of a carbon pricing regime, including higher pass through of electricity costs, higher domestic gas costs and any caps or constraints on permit allocation to industry.”
I think the Gillard Government is now in a credibility hell, where no one believes any longer a word it says.
(Thanks to reader Matt.)
No comments:
Post a Comment