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Those cheers for PM’s speech miss the point
Piers Akerman – Saturday, October 13, 2012 (10:27pm)
ACCORDING to the ultra politically correct, Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered the speech of her career last week, shrilly attacking Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and branding him as “sexist” and a “misogynist”.
Wendy McCarthy, one of the founders of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, a Left-leaning group celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, said many women applaud her as they recognise how often they have to put up with bad behaviour to avoid being seen as feminist or troublemaker.
“The disrespect for the office of Prime Minister and the denigration of the first female in the job is having an impact on all of us,” she wrote in the Australian Financial Review on Friday.
There was no mention in McCarthy’s article about the real reason Gillard was speaking in the House on Tuesday, just as there has been no attempt to place her remarks in context in the void of cyberspace.
She was attacking Abbott to disguise the hideous fact that she was defending Peter Slipper, her handpicked now-former Speaker from a deserved and totally justified no-confidence motion.
Gillard, the fiery defender of feminists and arch-foe of misogynists, was standing in parliament to protect a man who repeatedly humiliated women in a series of text messages.
Not only did Gillard fail to address this gross insult of a human, she actually protected him and prevented his removal.
So, too, did every Labor MP, male and female, and so, too, did all the cross-bench MPs, excluding Bob Katter, who scurried from the chamber, and Tasmanian Andrew Wilkie, who voted with the opposition.
Former Labor heavyweight Graham Richardson said in The Australian on Friday: “What will be remembered from Tuesday’s debate is that Abbott sought to remove Slipper from office while Gillard sought to keep him in a post of which he is totally unworthy.
“To spend hours defending this slime Slipper and to win the vote 70-69 and then have him resign is about as dumb as it gets.”
As dumb as it gets, that’s right. Every Labor MP, and independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, and the disgraced Labor-voting self-exiled MP Craig Thomson, fit the description to a “T”.
Where was the condemnation of Slipper’s remarks from the Labor side on Tuesday? Nowhere. Not one Labor MP demurred.
I found being a participant in the ABC program Q&A was a revelatory experience. Not having met Kate Ellis previously, I found she demonstrated through her remarks why Labor has lost its way and where it is heading.
In response to a question on abortion, she introduced Abbott’s religion as a debating point and she made a false claim about the Howard government’s reason for not permitting the use of the abortifacient drug RU486 when Abbott was health minister.
“Why don’t you talk about the way he restricted access to RU486 for Australian women across the country because his religious views did not agree with that?” Ellis challenged Liberal MP Christopher Pyne, a former parliamentary secretary for health and now manager of opposition business.
Pyne set Ellis straight, pointing out that “the department of health’s advice, Kate, because I was the parliamentary secretary for health at the time with responsibility for the Therapeutic Goods Administration, was that RU486 was, and is, a dangerous drug and the recommendation is it should not be approved for use in Australia.”
The drug, recently released by the Therapeutic Drugs Administration (which has the responsibility for releasing drugs for use in Australia) will only be available for prescription by doctors who have completed a special course.
Former Labor finance minister Lindsay Tanner, another panellist on the ABC program, summed up the state of the ALP in a manner reminiscent of Kim Beazley Sr, a former education minister in the Whitlam government, who observed in the 1970s, around the time of his retirement, his deep regret for the degradation of a party that he believed once commanded respect and which he served with absolute honour.
“When I first attended the conferences of the ALP,” Kim Sr said, “I met the cream of the working class. Today, when I attend those same conferences, I meet the dregs of the middle class.”
He then added: “When is the ALP going to recognise that it has a right and a responsibility to ensure that it is not regarded as the cultural spittoon of the middle classes and go back to representing the working class?”
Not soon, if Tanner is correct in the opinion he gave on Monday.
“When I joined the Labor Party people joined Labor to change the world. Now they join Labor to run the world.”
Ellis may not wish a lecture from me on the women issue - she has voted to accept Slipper’s view.
But Labor cannot lecture anyone about sexism, feminism or misogyny having defended the indefensible.
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Gender card is a loser
Miranda Devine – Sunday, October 14, 2012 (6:01am)
WATCHING Julia Gillard desperately flail around last week in the last death throes of her government, you could wish her prime ministership had been different.
But as a woman I’m embarrassed, insulted and angry that the stocks of women in power have been brought so low.
Playing the gender card is the pathetic last refuge of incompetents and everyone in the real world knows it. It offends the Australian notion of the fair go.
Australians who were delighted, regardless of politics and the way she got the job, that a strong, agreeable, seemingly capable woman was in The Lodge, have been sorely disappointed, to the point of cynicism and despair, by Gillard’s self-indulgent performance “calling out” Tony Abbott on misogyny.
Misogyny is the Taliban shooting a 14-year-old girl in the face because she wants to get an education, not an Opposition leader directing legitimately forceful criticism against a government which, by its own admission, lost its way two years ago and has never found it since.
Gillard’s impassioned speech has been praised around the world, but her new international feminist fans don’t realise the confected foundation on which it was built.
This was the best her enormous stable of spin-doctors could do to justify the accusations of misogyny they have been throwing around;
it boiled down to five charges:
THAT Abbott did make sexist remarks in 1998, during a roundtable discussion with then-NSW Treasurer Michael Costa about the under-representation of women in positions of power.
Costa: “I want my daughter to have as much opportunity as my son.”
Abbott: “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?”
Abbott “completely” wants his three daughters to have equal opportunities to take powerful jobs, but he asks whether men might have an innate advantage. He wasn’t asserting it as fact, but as a discussion point, and it’s well worth pondering.
For instance, voice is very important to demonstrate authority. A man with a booming baritone will command attention.
Height is another issue. Men are usually taller than woman, and height generally correlates with high office.
But we all know people who command authority, whether male or female, just by the power of their personality. What qualities do they have that help them transcend any physiological deficits, and how can we learn from them?
In any case, the dearth of women in high places is hardly because of sexism any more than it is because they lack talent.
It is mainly because of individual women’s choices. Many have passed up opportunities offered to them, in some cases ahead of equally deserving male colleagues, because they preferred to nurture their families. That’s the real silent conversation.
Charge number two against Abbott:
THAT in 2004 he did say: “Abortion is the easy way out.”
The line comes from a nuanced speech which Abbott gave in 2004, in which he concluded: “Even those who think that abortion is a woman’s right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year.”
Any reasonable person would conclude that he was no extremist, was respectful of different views, and compassionate about the plight of women with unwanted pregnancies.
This is the line which so offends the Prime Minister, in context:
“To a pregnant 14-year-old struggling to grasp what’s happening, for example, a senior student with a whole life mapped out or a mother already failing to cope under difficult circumstances, abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.”
Abbott’s offence is that he holds different views on abortion to those of most women in the Labor party.
But is that a crime?
Abbott’s colleague, Opposition Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop, declared last week that she, too, disagrees with Abbott on abortion, “but I respect his views. They happen to be different to those that I hold. That does not make him a sexist at all.”
And she pointed out “when he was the Health minister, at no time did he seek to change the laws in relation to abortion in this country.”
So what Gillard objects to is that Abbott holds a different opinion to hers. That is a worrying trait in the most powerful person in the country.
Charge Three against Abbott:
THAT he did make a throwaway remark about “housewives” doing ironing. Big deal.
Charge Four:
THAT he did say: “If the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make an honest woman of herself”.
Whether he intended or not to use a turn of phrase associated with marriage, Abbott certainly has made the prime minister’s honesty a central criticism, and one which bites electorally because of her broken promise on the carbon tax.
Charge Five:
THAT he did stand next to a sign that read: “Ditch the witch.”
Abbott didn’t know the sign was there when he addressed that carbon tax protest. He didn’t create the sign or organise for it to be there. For sure it was offensive. But it’s dishonest to pretend he was responsible. The elderly protesters that day behaved properly otherwise. They didn’t smash down the doors of parliament house like unionists had done, and they were offended at being branded a “convoy of incontinence” by Gillard ministers.
So there it is, Labor’s entire case of misogyny against Abbott.
It’s a joke, and yet all week long, ministers hit the airwaves to claim Abbott hates women.
Nicola Roxon, when pressed, could only recall one instance of Abbott’s misogyny, complaining he “would refuse to acknowledge me and turn his back at functions”.
Even if that’s true, all it means is he has difficulty feigning regard for someone who has constantly taunted him.
For instance in 2010, Roxon stood in parliament with a box of golf balls and made raunchy “balls” jokes at Abbott’s expense.
Sexism cuts both ways and if anyone cared to assemble a dossier of “mincing poodle” and other jibes from the government the game could go on forever.
But to what end?
With unemployment rising, the non-resources economy flatlining, the mining industry having peaked, carbon tax biting and superannuation under threat, the electorate views dimly the people who are supposed to be running the country running around playing gender politics instead. Especially on the tenth anniversary of the first Bali bombing.
We don’t care if the prime minister is a woman or a man. We just want rational, prudent, even boring government. We want to be “relaxed and comfortable” again.
===
Skyfall reviews: The best of Bond
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(7:13pm)
Celebrate! Rave reviews for Skyfall, although I have one tiny fear about the film being described as a kind of Christopher Nolan take. Should Bond have depth? And I hear no reference to the theme music returning, although Q at least does.
The title song is terrific and the second trailer, above, looks great. Much is expected of Javier Bardem, and we’ve told the great man delivers.
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Murdoch unloads on Biden; warns on China’s future
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(7:02pm)
Rupert Murdoch has one of the most interesting Twitter accounts in the news business. I just wish my boss would stop tweeting stuff that I agree with, because it will just feed the cynics. May I say I wrote tomorrow’s second column (including the phrase “under the bus") before I saw his stuff on Biden and Benghazi. . I think Benghazi could be the killer blow, representing not just a terrible failure on its own terms but a deadly symbol of what’s wrong with Obama’s Middle East policy generally:
It’s not working
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(2:36pm)
Let me repeat: Nauru has failed...
On Saturday, ACV Hervey Bay intercepted a vessel with 49 people northwest of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, while HMAS Bundaberg intercepted another boat with 104 passengers off Christmas Island.
On Friday:
THE Australian navy has gone to the assistance of a suspected asylum seeker boat carrying up to 200 people.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said patrol boats HMAS Bundaberg and HMAS Wollongong, operating under the coordination of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), rendered assistance to the vessel north east of Christmas Island last night.Initial indications suggest there were 188 people on board, he said.
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Joe vs Joe
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(2:35pm)
Now we can all smirk.
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Gillard gets the perfect endorsement
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(2:28pm)
A perfect endorsement of a political smear campaign by hypocrites:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard’s scathing speech against sexism won unlikely backing from controversial former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson, who said history was on her side.
Tyson, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 1992 for raping an 18-year-old woman, said he watched Ms Gillard’s speech against misogyny on television in Australia, where he is on a speaking tour and thought she had a point.
(Thanks to reader Dani.)
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The Bolt Report today
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(10:42am)
Gillard cries sexism. The real story.
Political pollster and campaign genius Mark Textor on the Gillard speech - will it work?
Amanda Vanstone and John Della Bosca debate:
And thanking Indonesia, plus the AWU scandal:
On Channel 10 again at 4.30pm.
(This is the only open thread today.)
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How Labor lost its men
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(5:39am)
JULIA Gillard doesn’t have enough men in her life. Male voters, that is…Since the 2010 election, according to Nielsen polling, Labor’s primary vote has been 3 points higher, on average, among women than among men (32 to 29 per cent)…Gillard’s approval has been an average of 7 points lower among men than women (36 to 43 per cent). Her man problem also comes through when people are asked who they prefer as Labor leader out of Gillard and Kevin Rudd: in September, Gillard’s rating among men was 31 per cent compared with 42 per cent among women, while Rudd was supported by 60 per cent of men and 49 per cent of women…Gillard is the country’s first female PM. And her arrival in power saw the re-emergence, in different form, of a gender divide that had disappeared…From the 1970s, the gender gap started to close. In 1967, it was 9 percentage points - meaning women were 9 per cent less likely than men to vote Labor.By the 1990 election (Bob Hawke versus Andrew Peacock), it was only 2 points.... But then along came PM Paul Keating and it jumped to 6 per cent in 1993…When you bracket Abbott and Keating together, it is easy to see what turns off some women voters - aggression…Once Keating had been dispatched, the gender gap fell to 2 per cent in the Coalition’s favour in the 1998 election, and then declined to nothing in 2001, 2004 and 2007. In 2010, it opened up again - to 7 per cent - but now it was in Labor’s favour, the first time that had happened in Australian federal elections…One big issue coming through from males in the groups is the two-speed economy, and whether enough help is being given to sectors that are suffering, especially manufacturing…
In general, Huntley says, it is hard to disentangle attitudes to Gillard as a female prime minister from people’s disappointment in the Labor government. The former emerged as a negative only after people felt she was not doing a good job.
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Not so fast in the labelling
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(4:56am)
I think it’s often unwise for the wives of political leaders to express political views, but “divisive” seems harsh when she’s actually reacting to the divisive
The divisive retweets by Cathy Stoner included: ‘’A MESSAGE TO ALL MUSLIMS THAT THREATEN AUSSIES?! If you don’t like our freedom/democracy GO BACK TO WHERE U CAME FROM!!!!’’Another stated: ‘’Muslims can have 4 wives, stoning, beheading, genital mutilation, honour killings all in the name of Allah? Yep, religion of peace, I get it.’’
A separate message on her Twitter feed declared the ‘’Multiculturalism experiment is dead’’.
Is it really “anti-Muslim” to want those Muslims who threaten Australian and oppose democracy to leave? Is it really “divisive” and “anti-Muslim” to want the divisive program of multiculturalism scrapped?:
We should debate more and label less.
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Rudd comforts Slipper, who one day…
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(4:49am)
That vote could prove vital to Kevin Rudd:
But the Queensland MP could not stomach the idea of handing over his seat to the Liberal’s Mal Brough, even though retiring would reduce the pressure on his family.The long-standing and deep friendship between the former Speaker and Mr Rudd, who like Opposition leader Tony Abbott attended Mr Slipper and wife Inge’s wedding, was again on display on the night he quit his post.
Despite the venom across the political divide over the Speaker and the decision of the independents to force his resignation, MPs from all sides of politics rushed to counsel Mr Slipper after his tearful resignation speech on Tuesday night, including Mr Rudd and Liberal MPs Patrick Secker and Mal Washer, who later praised the former Labor leader’s compassion.
Legal costs are outrageous in this country, when simply defending your name can drive you broke, win or lose. Parliament should at least arrange indemnity insurance for all MPs, because Slipper is likely to get far more punishment than he merits if he loses:
A shattered Mr Slipper has told parliamentary colleagues of his fears of a crushing legal bill, amid fears the court case involving staffer James Ashby could send him bankrupt…Federal Court judge Steven Rares last month ruled that Mr Slipper was liable to pay for an indemnity costs order which will require him to pay a substantial legal bill incurred by Mr Ashby.
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Great skills from McTernan again
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(4:18am)
Women’s Weekly was convinced Julia Gillard’s furious speech last week “has the whole world talking”. It was particularly struck by praise from one source:.
“No matter what you think of her politics, there’s much to admire in the manner in which Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, sets about Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition,” columnist Alex Massie wrote.
How important those few paragraphs in a Spectator blog proved to be in persuading journalists that everyone from American feminists to British conservatives were cheering Gillard.
Michelle Grattan:
Michelle Grattan:
On The Spectator blogs, Alex Massie directed readers to the video of Tuesday’s House of Representatives, writing: ‘’Anyone who admires the cut and thrust of parliamentary theatre and debate will enjoy these 15 minutes. Mr Abbott does not look best amused. But then he’s just been carved to pieces, so he wouldn’t would he?’’
Jacqueline Maley:
Gillard’s thunder clap of lady-rage echoed east to west across the interwebs,from the tweedy corner of the conservative British magazine The Spectator, to the hip US femmo website Jezebel (who anointed Gillard a ‘’badass motherf---ker’’).
Same with Stephanie Gardiner at The Age, who went on to quote Massie at length:
Under the headline ‘’More than just a man’s bitch’’, in reference to part of Ms Gillard’s speech, the website for the British conservative magazine The Spectator also lauded the Prime Minister.
Reality check. So how did Massie come to take interest in Gillard’s speech? Did someone alert him? Why was he disposed to like it and to write about it? Who then alerted journalists here to Massie’s praise?
Well, one clue may lie in the fact Massie is actually friends with fellow Scot John McTernan, Julia Gillard’s chief media adviser:
McTernan is a most excellent spinner and strategist. Journalist should be a little more alert.
(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.)
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Bishop blasts
Andrew BoltOCTOBER142012(12:01am)
Julie Bishop has been a powerful advocate for the Liberals these past few weeks, especially in the past one - and the reaction from the Liberal women she addressed suggests Julia Gillard did not speak for all women, as many in the Twitterverse bubble claim:
“It is a vile slur, she should apologise to the women in Tony Abbott’s life, and she should withdraw it,’’ Ms Bishop said in a speech to the Liberal Party’s Victorian State Council in Ballarat today.Ms Bishop opened her speech - in which she accused the Prime Minister of hiding behind her gender - with an address directly to the party’s female members and candidates.
“You are here because of your qualities, you are here because you’ve been judged on your merits, you are not (here) because you’re part of a quota system, and the Liberal party is proud of you,’’ she said, drawing rapturous applause.
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Romney-Ryan ticket hits Obama admin on Ohio made tanks
LANCASTER, OHIO – The Romney-Ryan campaign has seized on Vice President Joe Biden's assertion during Thursday's debate that Ohio-made M1 Abrams tanks are no longer needed. The GOP ticket began running radio ads and making automated phone calls in Ohio on Friday featuring the vice president's quote, according to Republican state communications director Chris Maloney.
"The military says we need a smaller, leaner Army. We need more special forces. ...We don’t need more M1 tanks. What we need is more UAVs,” Biden said while he sat opposite of Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, at the debate in Lexington, Ky. The vice president's words, which broke no new policy ground, were a reminder of the Pentagon's decision this year to halt the production line from 2014 to 2017 as the vehicle is redesigned.
Ohio is home to the only tank production site in the country, and M1 tanks were spotlighted during Ryan's first joint appearance with Mitt Romney after the vice presidential debate.
"When you say it's OK to impose these devastating cuts on our military…that we don't need any more Lima-built M1 tanks, what we are doing is we're projecting weakness, and when we project weakness abroad our enemies become more brazen," Ryan said to a crowd of thousands in the town of Lancaster. The critique, made in conjunction with more blistering remarks about President Obama's handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, tied Ohio jobs with U.S. foreign policy.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who introduced the two candidates, made M1 tanks the central focus of his remarks.
"Joe Biden said a lot of interesting things, one was at a time of increasing danger all around the world," he said. "He said we ought to be cutting our military. Specifically, he said that we don't need any more M1 tanks. Did you hear that? Guess where those tanks are made, folks -- right here in the state of Ohio. We need M1 tanks because they're part of the greatest military on the face of the earth. They will ensure that we have a military second to none so that we can keep the peace. We need M1 tanks."
When Ryan campaigned in Lima, Ohio, in September, he called the Pentagon's tank proposal a "budget gimmick." The military has calculated that idling the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center would save up to $3 billion, but General Dynamics Corp. and Ohio members of Congress say it would cost more money to idle production than to keep it going at a slow click. House and Senate committees have passed measures to restore funding but critics accuse lawmakers of falling prey to political donations, pointing to the thousands of tanks being stored in California and their vulnerability to IED attacks.
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Do angels speak to us?
The current issue of Newsweek features a cover story by the neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who endured a seven-day coma after bacterial meningitis attacked his brain.
Contrary to the assumptions of medical science, Alexander claims to have been fully conscious during this period—but conscious of another place. He says he visited heaven and reports several things from the experience, including hearing angels sing and speak.
Do angels speak with us? Leaving aside those who disbelieve, the Judeo-Christian tradition resounds with a loud yes. As I discovered while researching my book "Lifted by Angels," the point is deeply ingrained in the thinking of the early church.
Take, for instance, these words from the monk and theologian, John Damascene. Angels, he said, “take different forms at the bidding of their master, God, and thus reveal themselves to men and unveil the divine mysteries to them.”
And these from Isaac the Syrian: “[Angels] are our teachers,” he said, adding that our “development and illumination cannot come to pass without the divine vision received of angels.”
Using words like reveal, unveil, teachers, and divine vision cast the angels in the job of messengers. This is fitting, since that’s exactly what the word angel means.
According to the tradition, angels have other functions as well, but their primary task is to reflect the knowledge and glory of God upon creation and point us to the source of that knowledge and glory. And so we find the biblical stories of angels mostly concern passing news, explaining mysteries, giving warning, or encouraging the fearful.
Many of these stories are familiar to us:
*Abraham hears from an angel about the unlikely birth of his son, Isaac, just as Manoah and his wife hear from an angel about their boy, Samson.
*Jacob hears from an angel in a dream that he should return to his family.
*Moses hears from an angel speaking in a burning bush.
*Gideon hears from an angel who promises that God will deliver his people.
*And jump ahead to the greatest of all revelations, when Mary hears from the archangel Gabriel about the coming of Christ.
What does it mean to hear from an angel?
Angels are bodiless and spiritual, so how do they deliver their messages to people of flesh and blood? One answer is noetically—that is, through our thoughts. Angels can in a sense whisper, maybe even shout, to our spirits, minds, and hearts. That’s why in several biblical stories angels speak through dreams.
It can and does happen in waking hours, too. People talk about having certain passing impressions, moods, and imaginations. The early Christians knew that some of these thoughts were in fact angelic suggestions.
“The angel of righteousness is sensitive, modest, meek, and mild,” according to "The Shepherd of Hermas," an early second-century book. “[W]hen he rises up in your heart, he immediately speaks with you about righteousness, purity, reverence, contentment, every upright deed, and every glorious virtue. When all these things rise up in your heart, realize that the angel of righteousness is with you.”
Similarly, Clement of Alexandria dwelled on this a bit in his "Miscellanies." “[T]he thoughts of virtuous men are produced through the inspiration of God,” he said, adding that “particular divine ministers” contribute to “the divine will being conveyed to human souls.” By “divine ministers” he meant angels.
These are all examples of noetic communication, angels speaking directly to the soul of a person.
But angels are not limited to noetic communication or speaking directly to our souls. While bodiless and invisible, angels can condescend and make their presence palpably and tangibly known. They, said Basil the Great, become “visible, appearing to those who are worthy in the form of bodies proper to them.”
And so in Genesis we see Abraham and Lot offering water for angelic visitors to wash their feet while also carrying on conversation—and Jacob not only talking but physically wrestling with an angel.
How is this? It’s a mystery.
Augustine admitted difficulty in understanding how angels can speakinside us intellectually and spiritually and also to us audibly and bodily. But he nonetheless believed it. Scripture records too many moments in which angels have visibly, physically interrupted human life.
It’s impossible to speak to all of Alexander’s vision, but Christians should know that angels speak to us. As messengers of God, it’s one of their primary tasks, and the scripture and teaching tradition of the early Christian church testify to the fact.
Joel J. Miller is the author of Lifted By Angels: The Presence and Power of Our Heavenly Guides and Guardians
, which explores the stories of angels in the scripture and early Christian writings. Visit his website,JoelJMiller.com.
, which explores the stories of angels in the scripture and early Christian writings. Visit his website,JoelJMiller.com.===
Prehistoric man ate pandas, Chinese scientist says
BEIJING – A Chinese scientist says that humans used to eat pandas.
In a newspaper interview, Wei Guangbiao says prehistoric man ate the bears in what is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.
Wei, the head of the Institute of Three Gorges Paleoanthropology at a Chongqing museum, says many excavated panda fossils "showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man."
The Chongqing Morning Post quoted him as saying: "In primitive times, people wouldn't kill animals that were useless to them" and therefore the pandas must have been used as food.
But he says pandas were much smaller then.
Wei says wild pandas lived in Chongqing's high mountains 10,000 to 1 million years ago.
Pandas don't eat much apart from bamboo.
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Texas grandfather reportedly exposed as man behind Reddit's 'Creepshot' forum
A Texas grandfather with an affinity for cats has reportedly been exposed as the man behind a creepy Internet forum where users post unsuspecting shots of women and underage girls.
Gawker.com reports that Michael Brutsch, 49, was the main moderator for Reddit’s “Creepshot” forum, which sparked outrage last month for encouraging users to post “covert photos they had taken of women in public,” typically close-ups of body parts for voyeuristic sexual thrills.
A computer programmer for a financial services company in Arlington, Texas, Brutsch used the handle “Violentacrez” and has been dubbed the “biggest troll on the web,” establishing several forums on reprehensible topics like rape, incest and misogyny.
Brutsch, who told the website he stands by the content he posted, lives with his wife, a diabetes sufferer who is also an avid Reddit user, his son, two dogs and seven cats. Brutsch, who also has a granddaughter, has a son who is about to join the Marines, Gawker.com reports.
Asked if he had regretted anything he posted in light of being exposed by the website, Brutsch said: "I would stand by exactly what I've done.”
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Estampidas reales del manuscrito real de ParÃs, siglo XIII, interpretadas por HESPÉRION XXI y Jordi Savall.
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Was Mossad behind massacre of British family in French Alps?
THE house that once echoed to the giggles of two bright, fun-loving little girls is silent now. The cream curtains are tightly drawn, the Home Counties-Tudor facade needs painting, and the lawn - freshly mowed just before the family left for their caravanning holiday - is overgrown and sprinkled with withered bouquets.
In the French Alps, time has also moved on. Bathed in glorious sunshine on the September afternoon when Saad al-Hilli and his wife Iqbal went for that fateful drive with their young daughters and their grandmother, this week the peaks were eclipsed by heavy autumnal rain.
Great torrents swept through the hilltop layby where the three adults were trapped in their burgundy-coloured BMW station wagon and massacred in a hail of expertly-directed gunfire, washing away any lingering traces of blood from the leaves and twigs on the ground.
To anyone outside the French police, it always appeared that the murder scene was re-opened to the public with incautious haste. Yet it still seems odd that, barely five weeks since the atrocity occurred, the embers and beer-cans left by mawkish sightseers are the only reminders of a crime that sent shock-waves through Europe.
More disturbing still is the recent admission by Eric Maillaud, the prosecutor leading the ‘joint investigation team’ that it could take ten years to bring the killer (or killers) to justice.
It has left friends and neighbours in the affluent village of Claygate, near Kingston upon Thames, fearing they might never know why this outwardly contented, and universally popular, British-Iraqi family were slaughtered.
‘It seems the police are just as bemused as we are,’ Julian Stedman, Mr al-Hilli’s accountant and neighbour, told me this week, after detectives finally got round to interviewing him a few days earlier. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, and the Surrey police certainly don’t, though it seems to have been left in their hands, predominantly. I haven’t seen anything from the French authorities; it seems they’ve given up, more or less.’
Together with a team of Mail reporters, however, I have spent the past week probing the mystery — talking to people who knew the al-Hillis, and the French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45, who was shot dead alongside them, seemingly because he saw too much — and uncovered some compelling clues.
Police at the home of murdered scientist Saad al-Hilli whose family was gunned down in the French Alps in September.
Three theories for the shooting
Mr Maillaud thinks the truth probably lies in Britain, and he has identified the three most plausible theories, each of which holds that 50-year-old Mr al-Hilli was the primary target.
One centres on an alleged feud said to have been simmering between him and his older brother, Zaid, 53, over the terms of the will left by their father, Kadhim, who died last year aged 91. Zaid, however, is not considered a suspect by the police.
The second concerns Saad’s employment as a design engineer sometimes working on potentially sensitive projects (for the past year, he had been contracted to a Surrey-based satellite company).
The third possibility is he fell foul of someone, perhaps over a business deal, in his native Iraq.
Mr Maillaud has said the ‘familial lead’ is no more deserving of interest than Saad’s job or the fact his family came from Iraq. But it doesn’t take a skilled investigator to tell us there are many more conceivable motives.
The murders might have stemmed from a random robbery or kidnap attempt, for example (though that hardly seems likely, given the chilling precision with which the victims were dispatched), or the family might have stumbled on something.
Flowers at the crime scene where four people have been shot to death in a British-registered car, in a forest in the Alps, near Chevaline in the French Alps.
Experts in the ruthless machinations of Middle Eastern espionage have also presented an increasingly plausible scenario which has not been explored. We will return to this later.
Theory 1: The feud
First, though, let’s examine the supposed fraternal feud.
Once a wealthy gypsum factory owner and privileged member of the Iraqi elite, family patriarch Kadhim al-Hilli fled to Britain in the early Seventies to escape Saddam Hussein’s purge of prominent Shia Muslims.
Though his business was reputedly sequestered, he salvaged a sizeable chunk of his fortune and settled with his wife, Fahisa, and their two teenage sons, in Pimlico, West London, later moving 20 miles south to the more tranquil Claygate.
According to Gary Aked, who became one of Saad’s closest friends in the early Nineties when they worked together as young engineers, the brothers were very different characters.
Zaid, a trained accountant, was ‘serious and more solitary’, and ‘into making money’; Saad was ‘an outgoing, laugh-a-minute’ type who could turn his hand to any task and loved making things for the sake of it.
Gendarmes block access to a killing site near Chevaline, French Alps, where a British family and a cyclist were gunned down.
For many years they lived harmoniously in their parents’ house, pursuing separate careers but occasionally buying up properties together to renovate and sell; but Gary Aked recalls that Zaid lost money on an ill-starred investment in an ostrich farm.
In 1992, when he was in his 30s, Zaid married a nurse named Geraldine O’Reilly and had two children. Saad remained a stay-at-home bachelor until nine years ago, however. Then, profoundly saddened by the death of his mother, he went to work in Dubai, where he fell for Iqbal, an attractive Iraqi working as a dental nurse.
After a whirlwind courtship, they returned to marry at a Surrey register office, had their daughters, and settled in the Claygate house. Meanwhile, the brothers’ widowed father Kadhim moved to the Costa del Sol to live out his days in warmer climes.
It was soon after he died, in August last year, that the brothers fell out, according to several people close to the family — though this week a French police source told the Mail that Zaid ‘still completely denies any conflict with Saad’.
As yet, we do not know the contents of the will. Assuming Kadhim adhered to cultural tradition, however, he would have instructed his estate — which may have been worth £4 million and included the Claygate house, his apartment near Malaga, and property in Iraq — to be divided equally between the brothers, with a portion going to charity.
If that is the case, Zaid might conceivably have asked Saad to sell his prized, mock-Tudor home, where he had lived since the mid-Eighties and raised his family, and share the profits.
And who would have blamed him? There was no mortgage on the house, and its value has multiplied, so this would certainly have made hard financial sense.
Hearses leave the the site of a shooting rampage that left four adults dead and a 7-year-old girl hospitalized near Chevaline, French Alps, Thursday Sept. 6, 2012.
So did Saad fear his brother might try to seize the property while he was in France? It would explain why, as was revealed this week, he changed the locks shortly before leaving.
It might also be the reason he kept an illegal Taser gun hidden in the house, though Mr Stedman believes he bought it on eBay for protection on a trip to Iraq, where he returned in 2010 to view the family’s estate.
Whatever the truth, I have uncovered new information that appears to highlight the deep enmity between the brothers.
It was to be found at the vast, multi-faith Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey, where Mr al-Hilli’s parents are buried and the three murder victims will be laid to rest together any day now, in a plot already staked out beside his father.
When the mourners file into the jasmine-scented graveyard they may wonder why, while most of the other tombs are elaborate, those of wealthy Kadhim and his wife do not have even simple headstones. Until a few days ago, when cemetery workers were told to scrawl their names on scraps of paper nailed to wooden stakes, their graves remained anonymous.
Why had they been treated with such indignity? Quite simply, I am told by a well-placed source, the brothers couldn’t agree on who should pay for the memorial stones, which can be bought for as little as £300.
I have repeatedly tried to contact Zaid for comment on all of these matters, but he has been unavailable.
Gendarmes at the CHU Hospital, in Grenoble, French Alps, shortly after the killings.
Zaid, it must be said, is not regarded as a suspect by the police, and a friend of his father in Spain says he sounded genuinely ‘devastated and very distressed’ when he phoned to break the news, 24 hours after the murders.
Nor do Saad al-Hilli’s grieving in-laws appear to believe he was in any way involved — for last Sunday, Iqbal’s brother, Dr Ahmed Al-Saffar, accompanied Zaid on a visit to the Imam Khoei Islamic Centre in Queens Park, North-West London, to discuss the funeral prayer ceremony.
Theory 2: Sensitive information
What, then, of the other two central police theories: that Mr al-Hilli might have been passing secret information gleaned from companies he worked for to some malign regime or terror group; or been embroiled in some nefarious business activity?
Merely examining his CV suggests they can’t be ruled out, for his engineering acumen — much of it self-taught — has taken him into sensitive establishments, including the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory nuclear research department in Oxfordshire, where he reportedly worked in the Eighties.
If we accept the wisdom of expert colleagues, however, he was a never more than a small cog in any wheel, and information to which he was privy could be found on the internet.
‘He worked on Airbus, radiation equipment to kill cancer, and lately on satellite systems; but as far as I know he never worked on any top-secret projects,’ says Gary Aked, who spent four years at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston.
French Annecy's prosecutor, Eric Maillaud (2ndR) gives a press conference next to French gendarmes at the courthouse of the southeastern French city of Annecy on September 7, 2012, after four people were shot dead in or close to a British-registered car that was found in a forest.
Several years ago, though, when visiting his friend for dinner, Mr Aked did see something that may prove to be of great significance.
Mr al-Hilli took him to the study, showed him a bank of four desk-top computers, plus a laptop, and told him how he used them to air his stridently anti-Israeli views in Arab chatrooms.
"Saad was a very passionate guy and this was something that concerned him,’ he says. "He thought the Jews were taking over America and the world, and tried to get me interested in a book about the atrocities committed by the United States on Arabs.’
After 9/11, he recalls, his views became still more extreme. In one breath he would say it was ‘pay-back time’; in the next he would venture that Israel had blown up the Twin Towers to provoke the U.S. into waging war on the Arab world.
The new theory: Mossad and the nukes
All of which brings us to the theory advanced by a respected Middle East security analyst, who declined to be named. He believes the al-Hillis and the French cyclist could have been conspirators in a plot to supply nuclear material to Iran — and been eliminated by state-sponsored Israeli assassins.
At first blush, this may sound the stuff of conspiracy theorists and spy thriller writers. But one commentator who thinks it is plausible is Roger Howard, author of several authoritative books on Middle Eastern affairs, the next of which will examine a chilling assassination programme carried out on European soil by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
A member of the Royal Logistic Corps bomb disposal team walks with a police officer close to the home of Saad al-Hilli, in Claygate, England.
Though the French police have declared themselves open to the possibility that Sylvain Mollier, not Mr al-Hilli, was the intended victim, no one has openly suggested that they might have been associates, and therefore jointly targeted.
Mollier was not merely a keen mountain bike rider. He held a senior post with Cezus, a company based in the nearby small town of Ugine and owned by Areva, the giant multi-national that leads the way in the research and development of nuclear power.
A spokesman told us he had been employed for many years as a senior production manager specialising in nuclear fuel cladding made from zirconium — one of the metals Iran wishes to amass for its feared nuclear programme.
‘Iran is unable to produce certain key materials and metals that are critical to its nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes,’ says Mark Fitzpatrick, of the ISS defence think-tank. ‘Export controls and sanctions have made it difficult to procure them, but Iranian agents are trying to exploit black-market niches — and access to advanced research and development work on speciality metals will help advance Iranian [nuclear] capabilities.’
Sylvain Mollier undoubtedly enjoyed such access, and given his professional contacts, Mr al-Hilli would surely have known where to find him. The Iraqi Shia Muslim would also have been aware of the Frenchman’s potential value to a cash-rich Middle Eastern power — though, as Roger Howard says, given the hatred he vented towards Israel in those chatrooms, money may not have been his motive.
Just supposing al-Hilli’s hastily-arranged family holiday was a cover for a meeting with Mollier, the reason why he had stashed up to £1 million in a secret bank account, 40 miles away in Geneva, would begin to make sense.
And such is the sophistication of Mossad’s intelligence, it is highly likely the tryst would have come to their attention of the agency, which has a track record for murdering perceived Israeli state enemies, among them Canadian scientist Gerald Bull, gunned down outside his Brussels flat in 1990 after developing the Supergun for Iraq.
Police personnel search the home of Saad and Iqbal al-Hilli in Claygate, in south-east England, on September 12, 2012. Detectives probing a shooting in the French Alps were still waiting Wednesday to interview a seven-year-old survivor, a week after the unexplained attack that left four people dead. AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS
Given that Mr al-Hilli’s elder daughter, Zainab, was pistol-whipped, shot in the shoulder, and left for dead (but is happily now recovering at a secret location), while her sister only survived by hiding beneath her dead mother’s skirt, there is one big flaw in this thesis.
Howard says targeting women and children has never been Mossad’s style, and it strains belief they would risk repercussions were they proved to have wiped out an entire family.
But he contends: ‘It is possible something went badly wrong, forcing them to make a snap decision between abandoning the operation and killing innocent bystanders.’
The author also asks an interesting question: is this suggestion any more far-fetched than the notion that the paths of two men, of similar professional backgrounds — one capable of supplying high-level nuclear secrets, the other sympathetic to a regime keen to acquire them — should cross by sheer chance, at the precise moment when the assassin struck?
Whether or not the truth behind this terrible mystery is stranger than fiction, the fear is that the French and English investigators will never unlock the answer.
But the Annecy massacre cannot be left unsolved for ever — if only because two orphaned girls will need to know one day what really happened on that mountain road.
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Investment property sell-off as Peter Slipper's legal bill tops $450,000
FORMER Speaker Peter Slipper and his wife Inge-Jane Hall are desperately trying to offload two investment properties as the MP faces a mounting legal bill estimated at $450,000.
A shattered Mr Slipper has told parliamentary colleagues of his fears of a crushing legal bill, amid fears the court case involving staffer James Ashby could send him bankrupt.
This could force him to leave parliament early, paving the way for Opposition leader Tony Abbott to pick up another Liberal National Party MP, former Howard Government Minister Mal Brough.
The Labor Party has ruled out paying any of Mr Slipper's legal costs as it did for suspended ALP backbencher, Craig Thomson, who faces potential criminal charges.
Federal Court judge Steven Rares last month ruled that Mr Slipper was liable to pay for an indemnity costs order which will require him to pay a substantial legal bill incurred by Mr Ashby.
Despite a downturn in the housing market, Ms Hall has been seeking to sell two of the couple's eight investment properties on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
A house and a flat, only three minute's apart, near the top of leafy Buderim both sit vacant as Ms Hall and her family's Hall + Hall Realty urgently try to lure prospective buyers.
They have dropped $100,000 from the sale price of the three-bedroom house, owned by the Slipper family trust (Lyniter Pty Ltd), which is a stone's throw from the suburb's main street.
The couple, who want $445,000 for the non-descript low-set property are not expected to make much profit after buying it for $395,000 in 2007.
The 759 sq m property, marketed by Mr Slipper's mother-in-law Bev Hall, had been fetching about $350 per week in rent before tenants vacated.
Their advertisement on a real estate website claims the house, which has been listed since November, will be put it back on the rental market if it does not sell within two weeks.
"Opportunities abound with this quaint home on top of Buderim," the advertisement said. "2 weeks left until it goes back on the rental market."
Meanwhile, less than 2km up the road; a low-set two-bedroom brick unit Ms Hall purchased for $158,000 in 2003 has been on the market since May.
But they have since dropped the price from $280,000 to $269,000 for the unimpressive unit which sits in a complex of four.
Mr Slipper did not respond to News Limited enquiries.
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