World-wide web of terrorist treachery
Piers Akerman – Thursday, October 06, 11 (05:50 pm)
IT would seem a huge fetch to tie accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, US-born terrorist recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, al-Qaeda propagandist Samir Khan and a renegade US army major in a web with a Sydney mosque, but there is a clear link.
Has anyone read ‘Portrait of a Spy’ by Daniel Silva. Quite amazing the number of similarities.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (06:43pm)
For every problem there is a solution.
Problem: Anwar al-Awlaki.
Solution: General Atomics MQ-1 Predator + AGM-114 Hellfire missile.
Generally I do not support this kind of solutions. But when someone wants to kill me, or my family, or my friends, or people of my country, or other people who are frinds to my country - then all bets are off. And the treatment should be applied without endangering a single soldier - if possible.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (06:52pm)
Thu 06 Oct 11 (07:50pm)
Agreed, Les. Then there is the personal touch, a 5.56 mm sniper rifle. I read recently that a reporter asked a Marine Corp sniper if he felt anything when he shot a terrorist. He replied “The recoil”. Gotta love those grunts. 
Thu 06 Oct 11 (08:47pm)
While I have no problem with this solution, I must point out Obama promised he wouldn’t do it this way. He promised transparent trials in the great tradition of US justice. Instead he seems to be doing what he falsely accused the Republicans of doing .. killing the enemy and not engaging in debate.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (09:29pm)
5.56 are for pussies its like stabbing someone with an ice pick bullet passes straight through no fragmentation no shockwave not much damage,Some hyped up enemies have taken up to 15 5.56 bullets with out seeming to feel them,303 thats a gun.one shot is all thats needed.massive damage.the main attraction of the 5.56 is it doesnt kick,and is pretty geeky..50 cal bullet passes within half metre of target shock wave will do the job.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (05:43am)
Tombrown, I understand NATO switched to 5.56 because it is lighter and cheaper than 7.62. Now THATS a bullet!
Fri 07 Oct 11 (08:52am)
Yep Mandrake it,s the metric equivilant of 30.06.hence the.02.The 5.56 makes it very hard to scavenge ammo on the field,as most if not all our enemies use chinese/soviet 7.62.There were reviews of 5.56 and in its ineffectivness after the “black hawk down"incident in Mogadishu.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (09:19am)
What would you rather carry Mandrake, SLR with 7.62 or Steyr with 5.62 in your pouches?
Fri 07 Oct 11 (10:30am)
DT as I said 5.62 are for pussies,ooh ooh sarge my gun is too heavy,the whole point of carrying a weapon is fire power.not convieniance.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (10:56am)
Simon tried to kill Diddums with a spud gun. Lefties are so alpha male.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (01:56pm)
I understand that Tom I was just joking with Mandrake, I have carried an SLR and other equipment.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (02:49pm)
DT,Remember when you could buy an SLR{$1600} or ww2 lee enfield{$40to $120} from aussi disposals?Along with german helmets for a few bucks,one of wich popped up at a clearing sale west of Bourke I was at a few months back it,looked like someone had used it to feed the dogs with,sold for $750.
Everybody hurts, but we’ve all got to eat
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, October 05, 11 (06:33 pm)
IT sounds very kind to swear off eating meat because you looked into the eyes of a cow, which former High Court judge Michael Kirby explains as the reason for his latter day vegetarianism.
Did not realise he was seriously involved with Susan Mitchell!
Wed 05 Oct 11 (07:53pm)
Thu 06 Oct 11 (01:42am)
Extracts from MD’s diary:-
Tuesday: Book released with Tony Abbott cooking sausages on cover.
Thursday: Must tell population to eat more meat - and vote Tony.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (01:21pm)
It is science fiction now, but it is possible to grow meat and not kill an animal. I don’t mean those old pigmy herders in Africa who used to cut meat from live animals. That sounds like torture. But it is possible to grow meat in a mixture of chemicals.
It took a few hundred years to change Newton’s theory of optics int laser light, but I am sure it will happen one day. So that no animal need be farmed. It will probably mean extinction for many common farm animals. But that is preferable, apparently, to killing.
It is also possible Mitchell will write a book worth reading. That too, for the moment, is fiction.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (09:34am)
D Malfoy will surely rejoice about the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian and that Nazis were first to subscribe to Green dogma. The more they change the more they stay the same!
“Then came news that scientists had discovered plants have feelings too.”
And where is your evidence for this?? What an absurd statement! Another idiotic article by Miranda Devine.
Wed 05 Oct 11 (08:09pm)
Thu 06 Oct 11 (09:53am)
Oh dear Anna, you missed the irony.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (10:01am)
Try this: Researchers from Michigan State University have discovered that plants have a rudimentary nerve structure, which allows them to feel pain. According to the peer-reviewed journal Plant Physiology, plants are capable of identifying danger, signaling that danger to other plants and marshaling defenses against perceived threats. According to botanist Bill Williams of the Helvetica Institute, “plants not only seem to be aware and to feel pain, they can even communicate.”
But it does seem very silly, with the Swiss Government at one stage discussing a Plant Bill of Rights!
Thu 06 Oct 11 (01:22pm)
I watched 2 gum trees growing close to each other around 25 years ago. As they grew, their branches developed bends to allow for the other tree to exist with out rubbing the bark off. This demonstrates “Feeling and sense” in a life form. Not a lot of IQ but a lot more than a pebble or even an electric motor. I eat meat and talk to plants.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (08:53am)
I was floored when I read an article about cats being granted rights to receive benefits from a will. A rich widow leaving her estate to a cat. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the cat had not been neutered by its loving owner. And it really loved another cat, and had kittens. Would the kittens, who never knew the original owner also have property rights? What about the presumably unmarried significant other? What happens if another unrelated cat complicates matters, forming a triangle of affection and also providing kittens? Whose job is it to bell the cat?
Fri 07 Oct 11 (10:29am)
DD Ball: A job for a cat lawyer!
Time for a Bex and a good catnap!
One of his best ever (HT: RealClearPolitics). Masterful. Read the whole thing. It starts like this:
Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and former Obama administration regulator (for consumer protection), is modern liberalism incarnate. As she seeks the Senate seat Democrats held for 57 years before 2010, when Republican Scott Brown impertinently won it, she clarifies the liberal project and the stakes of contemporary politics.
The project is to dilute the concept of individualism, thereby refuting respect for the individual’s zone of sovereignty. The regulatory state, liberalism’s instrument, constantly tries to contract that zone — for the individual’s own good, it says.
It gets better. Read the whole thing.
A theoretical case can be made to justify trade protectionism on the ground that foreign governments are subsidising export industries. This case is based on overall international welfare grounds. However, the country receiving the subsidised products benefits from the subsidies. Furthermore, imposing retaliatory protectionist measures risks encouraging rent-seeking behaviour. In practice, it is impossible to define exactly what behaviour does and does not amount to the grant of subsidies by the government of an exporting country.
Jared Bernstein writes (HT: Mark Thoma and Brad DeLong)
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been collecting stuff on kids and their economic well-being. Here are a couple of figures that provide an intersection of a number of points I’ve tried to stress a lot in recent weeks.
It’s just a simple plot of real median income for families with kids, 1989-2010, followed by two bars showing the trough to peak of income growth in the two recovery periods.
The difference between how middle-income families fared in these two periods is really quite remarkable. I mean, when it comes to income growth, there are always lots of moving parts, but at first blush, if you’re a middle-income family with kids, you might want to keep these pictures in your mind when listening to the economic agendas of those who would be President.
That is, it’s hard to take seriously those who claim that “supply-side” tax cuts, as in the Bush years—large breaks tilted toward the top that are supposed to trickle down to the middle—will deliver for the middle class, compared to the more progressive tax regime of the Clinton years. It’s even harder to imagine how “shuddering the EPA” will make the difference.
There were important, real differences between these periods: the job market was much tighter in the former decade, job growth was about four times as fast on an annualized basis—importantly, the 1990s recovery lasted longer than that of the 2000s, in part because the only way for many families to get ahead amidst the flat income growth of the latter period was through cheap, easy credit. (In other words, there’s a linkage here between flat middle class incomes, the debt bubble, and the big crash.)
And then there’s a graph showing that the median family income fell between 1989 and 1992, grew steadily between 1992 and 2000, then fell or slumped between 2000 and 2010.
Aha! Trickle-down doesn’t work! When Republicans are in power, the middle class suffers! Democrats with high tax rates are good for the middle class!
There is a name for this kind of thinking: post hoc, ergo propter hoc–after this, therefore because of this. Understanding that this is a fallacy, that more than one thing is happening in the world is part of the economic way of thinking. Bernstein mentions this (“there are lots of moving parts”) but he keeps going anyway.
He also wants to sell this idea that we’re going to hear incessantly for the next 13 months that the middle class had to borrow a lot of money because they weren’t getting richer. This is a convenient story that removes any responsibility for the crisis from those who relentlessly encouraged government policies that encouraged debt artificially.
Another way to understand Bernstein’s mistake is remember that correlation is not causation.
I have an even better argument against tax cuts for the rich. According to Bernstein’s logic, they don’t even work for the rich.
If you look at the mean income for the top 20% of all families, it also shrinks between 1989 and 1992, grows between 1992 and 2000 and falls between 2000 and 2010. So those tax cuts for the rich didn’t even help the rich. Kind of ruins the class warfare story, doesn’t it? (I hope to get some graphs up on this in a later post.) The same results hold for the top 5%. Data are here–use the numbers corrected for inflation.
Maybe, just maybe, other factors than tax policy explain our financial well-being.
In my twitter feed, some of the same people who mindlessly bash the super-rich are praising Steve Jobs. It’s important to make distinctions.
Poignant brilliance from Jonathan Mak, a 19 year-old in Hong Kong:
MEDIA HAMSTERS
Tim Blair – Friday, October 07, 11 (12:40 pm)
The Chaser’s new program drew an audience this week of some 857,000. When you have a chance, please take a look. Reviews welcome in comments.
IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH HE’S TRYING TO MAKE A POINT ABOUT SOMETHING
Tim Blair – Friday, October 07, 11 (12:23 pm)
Kevin Rudd, currently negotiating with Balinese authorities over the Australian teenager facing drugs charges, would like to remind everybody that he is a parent who has children:
Obviously, this little bloke is, you know, 14 years old and I think anyone who’s a parent – and you are, I am – if you’ve got teenage kids, we all live in fear of them running into problems with the law – legal authorities at home or abroad through whatever behaviours. And therefore, both as a parent, but also as Foreign Minister, my job is to make sure we do everything we can.
“Anyone who’s a parent.” Ouch.
PEAK STUPID
Tim Blair – Friday, October 07, 11 (12:21 pm)
Any time you see a poll of, say, the best third basemen of all time or the best guitarists or the best presidents, you will notice a bias in favor of the modern. Even among the most knowledgeable of fans, few know how Eddie Matthews stacks up against Ryan Zimmerman or how Les Paul compares to The Edge.
Even so, I must say the Occupy Wall Street movement may be the most stupid ever to take root in America.
Big call – after all, America previously spawned a folk music movement. The New York Times isimpressed, however, and now the Occupation has spread to Los Angeles.
THE GUILTY PUPPY
Tim Blair – Friday, October 07, 11 (11:46 am)
Currency Lad emails: “When she blames Tony Abbott for the people smuggling mess (and authorises news ads to promote the notion), Julia Gillard reminds me of Tank the dog.”
POKIE GREENY WILKIE
Tim Blair – Friday, October 07, 11 (10:19 am)
Blair’s Law draws together a pair of political fringe-dwellers:
A campaign has been launched for anti-pokie MP and former Green Andrew Wilkie to be made Australian of the Year.
And the man behind the bid is a former One Nation candidate …
Bob Vinnicombe, who was the One Nation candidate for Blaxland at the last election, has bombarded newspapers from Coffs Harbour to the South Coast with form letters declaring his support for Mr Wilkie.
“Let me nominate Andrew Wilkie to be Australian of the Year,” the letter begins.
“He is a man of integrity ... not since Pauline Hanson has a member of parliament been attacked in such a ferocious way by vested interests.”
Voteless wonder Wilkie has a real winner in his corner:
Mr Vinnicombe said he was planning to nominate Mr Wilkie formally, although he wasn’t sure if nominations were still open.
“That was one thing I was going to check on,” he said.
Jobs the God
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (05:37 am)
It’s actually a bit freaky:
Steve Jobs has been mourned around the world through the very devices he conceived: People held up pictures of candles on their iPads, reviewed his life on Macintosh computers and tapped out tributes on iPhones.One day after his death, two days after Apple introduced the latest incarnation of a touch-screen phone that touched pop culture, sadness and admiration poured out - not for a rock star, not for a religious figure, but for an American corporate executive.
“He was a genius,” Rosario Hidalgo said outside an Apple Store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, while her daughter, 21-month-old Carlotta, used an iPhone to play an app that teaches children to match animal sounds to animal pictures.
Gavin Dunaway tries to resist the deification of Steve Jobs, with only partial success:
The deification of Jobs drove me nuts, symbolic of a disturbing trend of idolization driven by omnipresent media. The cult of Mac and the Apple worshippers still freak me out – it’s just technology, folks. Steve Jobs was a man — a brilliant man that led a company full of brilliant souls back from the dead to rule the field of consumer electronics.
Disagree if you must, but the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad are the standard models for their device fields. Sure, other digital music players, smartphones and tablet computers existed before, but Jobs & crew revolutionized the user interface/user experience. It wasn’t surprising as they did the same thing for personal computers with the Mac OS. Much of the functionality was there for such devices, only using them delivered migraines. That was Jobs’ true genius — fantastic insight into UX configuration.
Now you really can’t look at or use any (quality) portable MP3 player, smartphone or tablet without recognizing its roots in Apple products — and by extension, Jobs…
With Steve Jobs’ death, we’ve lost a beacon in the disorienting world of technological innovation, a visionary who made constantly evolving digital tools accessible to the masses. For better or worse, Apple’s innovations empowered consumers with the connectivity that had long been the stuff of science fiction.
It’s astonishing that Jobs, himself a very private person, is felt to have such an intimate connection with millions of people whose only interaction actually with him is to buy one of his gizmos.
I wonder what’s created this bond? I suspect one part of it is the almost intuitive way that his most memorable products - the iPhone and iPad - work. That intuitivity suggests that the products, and Jobs, “get” you, and they also make you more in command of technology that can seem otherwise utterly bewildering. Just the other night, I tried to play something on my too-long dormant stereo for a guest and couldn’t remember which of the nearly 40 buttons on the handset would play the bit of the machine I wanted.
Jobs would never made such a clumsy design flaw. He understood. He was on your side. He put you more in control.
And he could preach this message of self-creation and empowerment brilliantly, and especially to those who imagine themselves as geeks and nerds - not socially adept:
Yet this Jobs worship reminds me of his famous 1984 advertisement announcing the arrival of the Apple Macintosh - and a genuine challenge to IBM. Except, of course, it’s now Jobs up on that screen:
The leadership talk is now just routine
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (05:31 am)
The good news for Julia Gillard is that the reporting of Graham Richardson’s comments is relatively brief, as if of little account:
JULIA Gillard has dismissed the latest speculation about her leadership as insider gossip.
Fending off questions about former ALP powerbroker Graham Richardson’s claim on his Sky TV program that Victorian MP Alan Griffin was ringing around for Kevin Rudd, she said, ‘’I’ll let the ex-Labor politicians and the commentators all chatter about that.’’
Neither Mr Griffin nor Senator Mark Bishop, also named by Mr Richardson as a Rudd promoter, commented publicly. Mr Griffin has denied to associates that he has been doing a ring-around.The Rudd camp does not want to stir the leadership at this point; it believes the polls will remain bad for Ms Gillard, which will build the former PM’s support in caucus.
The bad news is that the reporting is brief because Richardson’s assessment - and the low-level plotting - is now a common-place. Still, if there’s space now left over for other messages…
Who we say we are
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (04:55 am)
What the High Court has ruled, I believe, is that identity trumps biology:
The transsexuals, whose identities remain anonymous, are now eligible for birth certificates declaring they are men, even though they have not undergone surgery to remove their uterus and ovaries, or penis-construction surgery, known as phalloplasty…
The pair told the tribunal they had identified as male from a young age and were diagnosed with ``gender dysphoria’’ or a desire to possess the body of the opposite sex.
A similar instance where an originally biological definition is being replaced with a social one :
The Government is considering the option of “parent 1” and “parent 2”, in addition to mother and father, on Australian passport application forms.
Gay rights groups applauded the potential for gender-neutral forms when a new electronic passport application system is introduced, but family groups expressed concern…
The UK will make a similar change by December after pressure from gay lobby groups.
The US this year dropped mother and father from passport applications.
There is a third instance, in my opinion, but one now too legally risky to discuss.
Abbott is against the pokies reforms … for now
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (04:51 am)
I’d be nervous if I were Clubs Australia:
THE Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, will not pledge to unwind restrictions the Labor government may place on poker machines, despite the Coalition being in lock-step with the clubs and hotel industries in their fight against the proposal…
‘’Please don’t try to put me on the spot for something that hasn’t happened,’’ he said yesterday under repeated questioning.
‘’We haven’t seen the legislation, we don’t know the mechanics of how it’s supposed to work, it hasn’t gone through our formal Liberal Party and Coalition processes.
‘’I don’t think it’s going to happen.’’
Mr Abbott’s refusal to commit to unwinding reforms, should they proceed, has raised speculation he is trying to stay on side with the Tasmanian independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, in the event Mr Wilkie decides to abandon the government.
Reach your own conclusions
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (04:43 am)
Yes, there is much one could say about my argument and whether this spread from the Green Left Weekly rebuts it, but that could now be in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act, as interpreted in last month’s finding.
So no comments, either.
The Governor finally goes home
Andrew Bolt – Friday, October 07, 11 (04:33 am)
Much as I am suspicious of the institutionaling of what’s too often a particular ideological caste, it’s important that we don’t denigrate the symbols of what is meant to unite. So this small reversal of what’s been a dangerous “democratisation” is welcome:
Premier Barry O’Farrell will today announce that he will reverse the decision of former Premier Bob Carr in 1996 to have the governor live outside the residence on Macquarie St, arguing “a lot of people believe the governor should live at Government House, that’s what it was built for.”
Mr O’Farrell said he has been speaking for months to Ms Bashir about her returning to the residence and she and her husband, Sir Nicholas Shehadie, are set to move into the grounds before Christmas, living in an adjoining chalet before a proper refurbishment can be done to make government House a permanent residence.
But the public will also still be allowed access to Government House, the Premier will announce, to quell fears that a return of the governor’s office to the historic residence could stop tens of thousands of people from visiting the living monument.
Piers thank you for writing on these timeless issues.There is no honour in misleading the young and those that do so know nothing of honour and courage. They are invariably found to have feet of clay the shame is that so many innocents are prey to their vileness, spirits crushed and lives destroyed. There should be nowhere to hide.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (06:26pm)
Thu 06 Oct 11 (07:16pm)
Poor Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, it looks like they’re going to miss out on those 70 virgins.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (08:40pm)
One other distinguishing factor that should not go unmentioned. They all get about while wearing women’s clothing. Not because they are enlightened. Possibly they like the feel of it.
Thu 06 Oct 11 (10:32pm)
Laura, you are short-changing the terrorists! I believe it’s actually 72 virgins.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (07:29am)
Jim,
The 2 missing virgin were the share of the Unions or the deal is off.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (07:59am)
Oh Jim, I apologise. A couple of screws short of an orgy would just not do! Shame on me!
Fri 07 Oct 11 (08:38am)
Laura I always wondered what the Virgins did to deserve what THEY get. Yuk, a dirty little smelly unshaven eww, I can’t go on.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (11:17am)
Cav,
Why anyone would be a suicide bomber for the sake of circumcised virgins I would not understand, can you imagine spending the night with girls with no thrills?
Fri 07 Oct 11 (12:23pm)
And Poppy, all his bits and pieces would be in bits and pieces! EWWW again! And another thing apparently suicide bombers wet themselves and sh#t their dacks just before they blow themselves to virgin heaven.
Fri 07 Oct 11 (12:45pm)
Aquarian
I am not into one-sided tangoes -
Fri 07 Oct 11 (12:52pm)
‘Wet themselves and sh*t their dacks?!! Too funny!
If they don’t soil themselves before the event then they probably will when they see their virgins!
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blosamavirgins.htm