Meet the real hacks behind media probe
Piers Akerman – Saturday, July 16, 11 (05:43 pm)
IF Julia Gillard and Bob Brown want to waste more taxpayers’ money on an inquiry into the media, bring it on.
It’s a political stunt, of course.
Unfortunately for the unpopular pair, should they launch a probe that begins looking into perceived bias, it may just make the reasons why they are so disliked across the nation front-page news.
I have long complained about the left’s argument problem. They don’t argue well. They are emotive. They are abusive. They are rarely factual. I posted an amateur series of videos on Che Guevarra a few years ago because lots of people don’t know who he is, but wear his picture on their T Shirts. They think that monster is some kind of hero. So I read from a lefty site (wikipedia) about the monster and collected pictures of his atrocities as well as his ‘achievements’ and posted the series in twelve parts. The abuse I got from people I believe to be Cuban sponsored is illustrative of the problem with argument from the left. They haven’t argued with the material. They have complained about my accent, my knowledge. My definition of monster. They have even argued the CIA did worse.
The truth is Gillard has not told us what she plans to do with the money she is taking from us. But we know it won’t help the identified issue of climate change.
Sat 16 Jul 11 (06:39pm)
Sun 17 Jul 11 (05:34pm)
I have long complained about the left’s argument problem. They don’t argue well. They are emotive. They are abusive. They are rarely factual. I posted an amateur series of videos on Che Guevarra a few years ago because lots of people don’t know who he is, but wear his picture on their T Shirts.
David, I have found all of the above to be absolutely true and correct when it comes to those of the left.
Sun 17 Jul 11 (09:29pm)
Dave Wane, it is sad. Rhetoric is taught and learned. The reason the left argue that way is because they have learned it is a valid way of arguing, and they have read and heard journalists doing it. Senior journalists.
Mon 18 Jul 11 (07:08am)
Very true DD. There is a book you can get called “Arguing with idiots”. Written for when you are debating a loony Left wing idiot. Even Stalin knew the fools who run around spreading the propaganda for the Communist scum are Idiots. He called them “Useful idiots”. And these Left wing nutjobs are just that, idiots. They worship murdering, racist scum like CHE and MAO. It is not known as ther lunatic LEFT for nothing. CHE even had a problem with music.
I confess to following only one sport passionately: American football (both college and the N.F.L.). I confess further to being what I have been since 1967: a black-and-gold bleeding fan of the New Orleans Saints. (The first thing I read in the morning ain’t the opinion sections of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, orBoston Globe; it’s not any economics tome or history volume; it is – always, daily – the Saints section of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. No joke. I get around to reading that less-important stuff only later.)
So as the N.F.L. labor lockout (apparently) draws to a close, the following question occurs to me:
Suppose that today a group of people form today the National Frisbee League (N.F.L.). They develop rules for a team sport played by really good Frisbee players. From the outset – July 18, 2011 – these National Frisbee League pioneering entrepreneurs list as among their league’s rules a prohibition on any team in the National Frisbee League to pay any player more than $100,000 annually – certainly a decent salary in modern America, but not remotely close to a princely sum.
Suppose the National Frisbee League becomes wildly popular – say, similar in popularity to the National Football League. Further suppose (hardly far-fetchedly) that, without the strict $100,000 per-player cap, many teams would compete for Frisbee talent by offering millions of dollars a year.
But no such competition is permitted by league rules. It has never been permitted.
Questions: Would the sport suffer much? Would this strict per-player annual-salary cap be economically unjustified (that is, should the National Frisbee League abandon – to promote its owners’ own best interests – the salary cap after the owners realize just how wildly popular the National Frisbee League has become)?
The above two questions are not rhetorical.
… is from Leland Yeager’s 1981 essay “Costs, Sources, and Control of Inflation,” reprinted in Leland B. Yeager, The Fluttering Veil (George Selgin, ed.; Liberty Fund, 1997), pp. 33-84; the following quotation is on p. 46:
… a decent restraint in clamoring for government action to redistribute income from others to oneself is a public, not a private, good.
This quotation beautifully capsulizes one reason for the heat generated by thedebate today over raising Uncle Sam’s debt ceiling. Those many non-creditors of Uncle Sam who, without disruption, would get $$$ from him if the debt ceiling were raised, insist that his ability to transfer $$$ to them from others not be hamstrung by something so bourgeois as a silly ol’ debt ceiling. (Oh – and I’m sure that the following question must have been asked at least 1,001 times during the past couple of weeks – but what’s the significance or purpose of a statutorily set debt ceiling if the expectation is that it will be raised without question to accommodate the need, or simply the desire, for government to borrow more than is allowed by the existing ceiling?)
By entering the income-’redistribution’ business, government – justified by so many ‘scientifically’ minded folks chiefly for its alleged capacity to ‘solve’ public-goods ‘problems’ – created a huge public-goods problem.
THE BEST THEY COULD COME UP WITH
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (11:25 am)
These carbon tax ads will fix all of the government’s problems:
Awful.
NOT VIV
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (03:08 am)
Memo to the New York Times: Viv Richards never wore a helmet. Not his style. The West Indian batsman you’ve mis-captioned appears to be former opener Desmond Haynes.
The film reviewed by the NYT looks sensational, however.
KATH AND TIM
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (01:51 am)
This sounds ominous:
ABC has announced that it will take a light-hearted look at life in The Lodge in a new comedy series,At Home With Julia.
Described as “part rom-com, part guaranteed lawsuit”, the series stars Amanda Bishop as our PM and Phil Lloyd as her partner, Tim.
“They’re just like any other busy modern couple, trying to balance their relationship with critical tasks like introducing taxes no-one voted for,” executive producer Rick Kalowski said …
At Home With Julia will debut later in 2011.
Not too much later, you’d think. Otherwise the premise might be gone. At Home With Julia could become 2011’s Rise of the Ruddbot.
(Via Waxing Gibberish)
UPDATE. Chris Uhlmann:
It’s perfectly reasonable for the Prime Minister to look to the horizon and say these poll numbers don’t matter, because the election’s two years off and that’s an eternity in politics. But Labor is plumbing unprecedented depths and her colleagues are deeply worried.
To get a sense of why, let’s convert the polls into politicians. Labor has 72 seats in the House of Representatives. An 11 per cent fall on the 2010 election result would cut that to 30. So there are 42 sitting Labor MPs staring into oblivion whose minds will be focused by this poll. That includes every single Labor member in Queensland and Western Australia. And eight ministers would lose their seats, including the Treasurer. In short, a repeat of these numbers at a general election would deliver Labor’s worst federal result since 1931, when it faced the dual challenges of the Great Depression and a party split. There’s plenty of blame to go around and the mildest of it is aimed at the carbon price sales pitch.
The response from AWU national secretary Paul Howes:
Well, look, it hasn’t been perfect, has it?
Depends on how you look at it, Paul.
INVESTMENT IN JOURNALISM
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (01:11 am)
The Wall Street Journal – taken over by News Corp in 2007 – defends former publisher Les Hinton and the parent company:
Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market’s, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America’s largest daily.
We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world …
The Bancrofts were admirable owners in many ways, but at the end of their ownership their appetite for dividends meant that little cash remained to invest in journalism. We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp.
UPDATE. Via Currency Lad, further on the ideological and commercial pile-on.
On speaking the strine of the Lodge
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (04:56 pm)
Interesting interview with Amanda Bishop, the Julia Gillard impersonator, who dicusses Australian accents and inflections - and not just Gillard’s. She has a great ear, and hears regional differences that have escaped me.
A lie, told often
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (01:52 pm)
It’s the Gillard Government’s one-word lie - calling carbon dioxide “carbon”, to fool the public into thinking it’s cleaning up soot and not an invisible gas. And look how many times that this lie is used in just half of one government web page:
(Thanks to reader Allan.)
Labor’s vote up .. to merely catastrophic
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (01:03 pm)
Essential Research has the Gillard Government’s vote at 44 per cent cent to the Coalition’s 56.
Ignoring the margin of error, that is an improvement. Last week Labor was at 43 per cent.
Toughen up, princess, says Downer
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (12:04 pm)
Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on the threats by the Labor-Greens alliance against the media:
Senator Bob Brown wants to investigate the print media and Julia Gillard is sympathetic to the idea. She herself has taken to abusing the media, saying they write what she has inelegantly called crap, so any inquiry into the purveyors of such material seems to her a good idea…
Well, welcome to the world of democratic power and toughen up!
Honestly, I know how they feel. In the nearly 12 years I was a Cabinet minister we were frequently excoriated by the media. Good news initiatives and announcements were consigned to page 5 and ignored by the ABC almost completely.
I and my colleagues were repeatedly accused of lying, cheating, sending our soldiers to death on a lie and aiding and abetting corruption… Well, despite all that, I won seven elections in my own seat and we won four elections as a government. We were able to reform the economy, stop the boats and build our profile and standing in Asia, reform the welfare system and start building a new framework for water management.
My point is this. Governments and the individuals in and around them are powerful people. They need to be challenged by the media and the community, and constantly…
For these reasons, we should be deeply concerned that Bob Brown and Julia Gillard want an inquiry into the media. Of course they do. They may hope to regulate the media into being kind; you know, like Pravda was to Brezhnev!
And as a PS, Downer asks the central question I’ve asked for months:
And the daddy of them all, how much will this $23 billion tax affect our weather? Will it abolish droughts, remove threats to the Great Barrier Reef and stop the sea level from swamping the western suburbs? Or are we paying $23 billion for nothing?
(Thanks to reader Arthur.)
Monckton rebuked
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (10:17 am)
Lord Monckton would find he’d be far more effective if he resisted the temptation to overstate his case. The Clerk of the Parliaments in Britain writes to him:
My predecessor, Sir Michael Pownall, wrote to you on 21 July 2010, and again on 30 July 2010, asking that you cease claiming to be a Member of the House of Lords, either directly or by implication. It has been drawn to my attention that you continue to make such claims…
I must repeat my predecessor’s statement that you are not and have never been a Member of the House of Lords. Your assertion that you are a Member, but without the right to sit or vote, is a contradiction in terms. No-one denies that you are, by virtue of your letters Patent, a Peer. That is an entirely separate issue to membership of the House.
UPDATE
Monckton’s commanding performance at the National Press Club today made the vast majority of journalists there seem:
- warmist group thinkers in a pack attack.
- under-researched
- ignorant of basic criticisms of warmist deceits, with one journalist even referring to carbon dioxide as “pollution” and another accusing Monckton falsely of denying “climate change”.
What was shown would have confirmed the suspicions of many about the bias of the media in reporting global warming.
After last week’s “please tell us what to report” Gillard love-in, the press club might consider not broadcasting further events to better protect the reputations of its members.
UPDATE
Monckton responds to this latest ad hominem attack on his credibility:
“The House of Lords Act 1999 debarred all but 92 of the 650 Hereditary Peers, including my father, from sitting or voting, and purported to – but did not – remove membership of the Upper House. Letters Patent granting peerages, and consequently membership, are the personal gift of the Monarch. Only a specific law can annul a grant. The 1999 Act was a general law. The then Government, realizing this defect, took three maladroit steps: it wrote asking expelled Peers to return their Letters Patent (though that does not annul them); in 2009 it withdrew the passes admitting expelled Peers to the House (and implying they were members); and it told the enquiry clerks to deny they were members: but a written Parliamentary Answer by the Lord President of the Council admits that general legislation cannot annul Letters Patent, so I am The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (as my passport shows), a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote, and I have never pretended otherwise.”
(Thanks to reader Bob.)
Trying to find Gillard’s fast-rising seas
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (10:08 am)
Scientists are not sure at all if the seas really are rising faster, thanks to man-made warming. Which rather undercuts one of the Gillard Government’s biggest scares:
JULIA Gillard has declared she will not “shirk the responsibility” of fighting climate change as a new study predicts $34 billion worth of homes, commercial property and roads in Victoria are at risk from rising sea levels.
(Thanks to reader Owen.)
Say sorry to Gillard
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (09:43 am)
A certain union official, believed to be from the CFMEU, needs to apologise to the Prime Minister for this disgraceful lack of respect, at 13 seconds in.
(Thanks to reader Gary and Homer.)
UPDATE
Later in the clip we see Gillard talking to CFMEU mining and energy division Victorian president Luke van der Meulen. He looks familiar. He was a former Greens candidate in the 1996 election, wasn’t he>
Taxing what they do not understand
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (07:11 am)
Jennifer Hewett:
The general mood in business is that this government is dominated by those with little experience of business and even less appreciation of its needs and its contribution to economic growth—or lack of it.
One event from a leadership change - probably to Simon Crean, with the backing of Martin Ferguson:
A week since details of the tax were launched, Labor MPs reported public panic over its impact on family living costs.
“I have never seen such rage in this country - ever,” a senior Labor MP said of the electorate’s mood.
Many caucus members contacted yesterday admitted to despondency about Labor’s chances at the next election, due in 2013....
Former Labor leader Simon Crean is being talked of as a possible replacement for Ms Gillard.
The head of BetStar, Alan Eskander, said that “eight out of 10” transactions on the ALP leadership were for Mr Crean.
The online gambling house suspended betting for him after his odds shortened from $101 to $13 in a week.
The Regional Development Minister invited colleagues to a “one-on-one drop-in information session” in his office last month.
UPDATE
More lack of understanding. Reader Victoria 3220 reports:
On ABC Adelaide yesterday, PM Gillard was asked if the price of European carbon permits was substantially below the $23 to be paid in Australia.
HOST: What is it at the moment? That’s not a gotcha question by the way, I heard a commentator say that it’s a lot cheaper in Europe at the moment. Is that correct?GILLARD: Its gone up and down, and there have been days when its been cheaper than $23....
If you look at the EUA trading history, and do a back of the envelope calculation to adjust the Euro to $A, it appears that the opposite is true. Doing a rough Euro to $A adjustment, it appears that there may have been only a few days in the past year where the cost of European permits touched A$23, not as PM Gillard claimed, there have been days when its been cheaper than $23. European permits are currently trading at around Euro 12.
UPDATE
Reader Jo writes in despair:
I am by no means an expert in the field of politics or policy, but have strong opinions how this Labour government impact small business owners. I am a single mother with 2 small boys, owning a small IGA in regional South Australia. I employ 3 full time staff, 5 senior casual and 8 junior casual staff and are the major employer in a small farming town. We are the only supermarket supplying the town, and we rely heavily on farming and tourism, and have a lot of miners living in our town travelling to for the mines for work. I endure heavy freight costs, high wages, a large electricity bill each month and all other costs assiciated with running a busy supermarket.
The new Fair Work Act impacted my business greatly, making me remove all part time staff and switching to all casual staff (excluding 3 full time management staff). The new leglislation is so difficult to follow and has already increased my annual wages by 10%. We still have phasing in penalties to endure and with the 3.4% increase this year to the minimum wage has made me cut back on hours for my employees, many of who rely on their employment with me to live their day to day lives. A senior casual check out operator gets $20.78 plus Super, plus Workcover. This increases to double time on a Sunday and double time and a half on Public Holidays. This is crazy for a small shop in a busy tourism town. I think eventually I will have to close the store and run Monday to Friday only, as i think a lot of other stores will end up doing. It will not be practical to open on such his wage cost days.
Just with the extra costs I am expecting to get with the increases in wages penalties, increased power, freight increases due to the ridiculous Carbon Tax, I already am feeling the pressure. We will need to pass on these costs to our customers, probably driving my customers to a near by town, where they can shop at Coles and Woolworths (still under their enterprise bargianing agreements so not subjected to the ridiculous wage rises we in small business have had), how am I to survive running this small supermarket.
Has Julia consulted the Small Businesses of Australia to ask our opinion. I believe small business employ around 70% of the Australian population. I know the Master Grocers Association (MGA) were extremely disappointed when the minimum wages increased by 3.4% this year, they asked for no increase as we already have high wage costs and additional penalties still being added. On one of my phone conversations with MGA, they told me the Government wasn’t listening.
The carbon Tax is going to have a huge impact, my prices across the store will rise, my customer base will most probably decline (I am already experiencing a 6% decrease from the same time last year), I will need to reduce my staff, ordering etc etc. What should I expect for my future in small business, especially, what should I expect for my 2 small boys.
Green jobs, she cried, as she flew to a foreign playground
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (07:05 am)
Gerard Henderson on the green destruction of Tasmania’s economy by people rich enough not to care:
In 2010, the timber company Gunns Limited changed its management following pressure from environmentalists to alter its ways. The new managing director, Greg L’Estrange, announced that the company would cease native forestry and only log plantation timber. Gunns hopes to establish a pulp mill at Bell Bay on the Tamar River based on plantation logging. This, too, is opposed by the Greens and environmentalists.
Last week, L’Estrange said that Gunns has decided to sell the Triabunna pulp mill, on Tasmania’s east coast, to two millionaires who hail from outside the state - namely, Jan Cameron, who made her fortune after establishing the Kathmandu clothing chain, and Graeme Wood, the founder of travel business Wotif.com. Cameron is semi-retired and lives in Tasmania. Wood donated $1.6 million to the Greens before the 2010 federal election…
The intentions of Cameron and Wood are pretty obvious. They plan to close the Triabunna pulp mill in about three years…
The purchase of the Triabunna pulp mill underlines the developing divide in society. It is essentially between wealthy or well-off people with solid educational qualifications and secure incomes, and less well-off, less well-educated people whose incomes are insecure or relatively low....
In a sympathetic profile of Cameron published in The Australian last August, journalist Matthew Denholm wrote that the “Kathmandu retail chain founder has no taste for jets, yachts or private villas in Tuscany”. Maybe not. But, on Friday, Cameron was interviewed by the ABC’s 7.30 program at Hobart Airport before jetting out of Tasmania for an overseas holiday....
Logging operator Michael Woods had a different story. He told The Mercury newspaper that the previous uncertainty about the future of the Triabunna mill had forced him to sack his sons. Woods declared his hatred of Gunns for having sold out its loyal employees and contractors. He added that he was seeking psychological help as his small business collapses around him due to the successful tactics of green activists.
MP’s house shot at
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (06:57 am)
Disturbing:
The Age has learned that police recovered spent bullet casings near the house after the incident two weeks ago. It is believed the MP, whose identity and seat are unknown, found windows and a car damaged.
It has not yet been established if the incident was a case of mistaken identity.
No wonder the pub’s got no beer
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (06:44 am)
Australia sure has changed:
A MAN who was whipped 40 times in a home invasion said his Muslim attackers were punishing him for drinking alcohol, prohibited under Sharia law.
The man, 31, was lashed with an electrical cable by four heavily bearded men who broke into his bedroom in outer western Sydney about 1am on Sunday.
Three of them, in their late teens or early 20s, held him on his bed while a fourth, aged 40-50, lashed him with a cable about 40 times over 30 minutes.
The victim, a recent Islamic convert known only as Christian, told Auburn police he recognised the Wahabi Muslims from his local mosque.
“Christian”?
The attack lasted about 30 minutes and left the man covered in welts, the Seven Network reported today…
The victim has moved out of his home but hopes what happens to him will not distort people’s view of his adopted religion, the network said.
Define “distort”.
Can Rudd and Gillard focus on the war?
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (06:38 am)
The subtext is that a Government consumed with the folly of a carbon dioxide tax and the vanity of a United Nations sinecure has no time for what matters more:
AUSTRALIA is pursuing “half a strategy in Afghanistan”, with one of the nation’s most respected army commanders warning there is confusion over its mission and what it wants to achieve in the decade-long war.
Peter Leahy, who served as chief of army from 2002 to 2008, told The Australian yesterday that time was running out to get the strategy right....
Professor Leahy - now a director of Canberra University’s National Security Institute - suggested a key role for Kevin Rudd as a senior minister with broad responsibilities embracing more than defence to oversee development of a wider strategy.
”With the Prime Minister consumed by the carbon tax, perhaps it is time for the Foreign Minister to step away from Africa and provide strategic leadership on a whole-of-government approach to Australia’s future strategy in Afghanistan and how it contributes to our overall national security,” Professor Leahy said.
As if there weren’t enough conspiracy theories already
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (06:20 am)
It just gets worse and more florid by the day:
Sean Hoare, who made claims in a New York Times article about British Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief, was discovered at his home in Watford, Hertfordshire, after concerns were raised about his whereabouts…
The showbiz journalist was dismissed from NOTW for drink and drug problems.
UPDATE
Everyone’s paranoid:
The entertainer said she called a technician in when she was having a problem with her home telephone and not receiving calls.
“I got the Telstra people out and my phone wires had been cut,” she told 3AW.
UPDATE
Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International.
The Guardian has learned that a bag containing the items was found in an underground car park in the Design Centre at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour development on Monday afternoon.
The car park, under a shopping centre, is yards from the gated apartment block where Brooks lives with her husband, a former racehorse trainer and close friend of the prime minister David Cameron.
It is understood the bag was handed into security at around 3pm and that shortly afterwards, Brooks’s husband, Charlie, arrived and tried to reclaim it. He was unable to prove the bag was his and the security guard refused to release it…
David Wilson, Charlie Brooks’s official spokesman, told the Guardian that Charlie Brooks denies that the bag belonged to his wife. “Charlie has a bag which contains a laptop and papers which were private to him,” said Wilson.
“They were nothing to do with Rebekah or the [phone-hacking] case.”
UPDATE
Some context from the Wall Street Journal:
At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself.
It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler.
The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician…
We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur
(Via Tim Blair.)
The pirate industry
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (05:55 am)
Big prize,inviting a big cleanout of the new Barbary Coast:
PIRATES have hijacked a petrol tanker belonging to the United Arab Emirates in the Indian Ocean and are sailing it to the Somali coast, the EU’s anti-piracy body announced overnight…
There were 266 cases of piracy at sea in the first six months of 2011, compared to 196 the previous year. Sixty per cent of these involve Somali pirates, who at the end of June were holding 20 ships and 420 hostages.
Of course, he US is no longer strong enough or resolute enough to send in the marines, as it did in its first big overseas action against pirates.
Oprah’s happy, but our cash is gone
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 19, 11 (12:13 am)
Clive Dorman says Tourism Australia seems to have done our dough when it paid Oprah Winfrey to come here to film her shows:
I’d say we took the $5 million it cost us to the toilet and flushed it… US arrivals for the first five months of 2011 fell by 0.8 per cent, compared with the same period last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
ABC slimes Monckton again, but slips on the stuff
Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 18, 11 (05:27 pm)
Wendy Carlisle of the ABC’s Background Briefing devotes an entire program to smearing Lord Monckton and his backers, focussing on such irrelevancies as who paid for his air fares. (Who pays for Al Gore’s? Tim Flannery’s? Has the ABC ever asked?)
There are just a couple of attempts to rebutt Monckton on the science. They turn out to be embarrasingly lame and ill-informed.
This report simply confirms Monckton’s most important point on this tour - a furious refusal by the Left to engage in a genuine debate, with the ABC a prime offender. Indeed, Carlisle spends some time quoting Naomi Oreskes - see post below - on why debate should not even be entertained.
Oh, and Wendy? No, I have not “supported” the Monckton tour. I have had nothing at all to do with it, other than report on it and, in particular, the extremist reaction against it.
When you got that bit wrong about me, right at the start, I was pretty sure the rest of the report wouldn’t be much better. The attack on the distinguished environmental scientist Professor Fred Singer was close to defamatory, among other things misrepresenting him as disputing the link between smoking and cancer, rather than in disputing the strength of the link between passive smoking and cancer as asserted by the EPA.
Now, where’s Background Briefing’s equally hostile examination of the record of Tim Flannery, his dud predictions, his conflicts of interest, his alarmism and his hypocrisy?
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