Friday, July 30, 2010
Greg's Greg-alogue: Who Won The Race-Baiting Olympics? - 07/29/10
The white house and the NAACP look stupid.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Headlines Thursday 29th July 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
John de Vere Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst KG, KCMG (5 February 1895 – 30 October 1970) was a British Colonial administrator and politician. After serving in the army, the Foreign Office, and as a Conservative MP in the House of Commons, Wakehurst was appointed as the last British Governor of New South Wales, which he held from 1937 to 1946. Upon returning to Britain he was appointed Governor of Northern Ireland from 1952 to 1964. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1962 and died in 1970
=== Bible Quote ===
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”- Philippians 3:14=== Headlines ===
Judge Blocks Portions of Ariz. Illegal Immigration Law
Federal judge grants partial injunction on the Grand Canyon State's immigration law, blocking some of the legislation's most controversial components.DOJ Accused of Ignoring Military Voters
Justice Dept. stalled on new law aimed at protecting the right of American soldiers to vote, according to two ex-DOJ attorneys who say states are being encouraged to bypass Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act
Religious Freedom on Campus Dealt a Blow
FOX NEWS RADIO: Court ruling that upheld student's expulsion over homosexuality views could resonate with public colleges across the U.S.
SEC to Deny Freedom Of Info Requests
EXCLUSIVE: In little-noticed provision of new financial overhaul, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with requests for information from the public, Fox Business News reports
Breaking News
Leak speculation dogs LaborPRIME Minister Julia Gillard will be campaigning in her adopted home town of Melbourne on Thursday as speculation about a leak continues to dog Labor's re-election efforts.
Organiser blamed for deadly Love Parade
GERMAN authorities have accused the organiser of last weekend's Love Parade techno festival of major security breaches which may have led to the crush that killed 21 people and injured more than 500.
Man spends $220K to park on own drive
HOME owner defends right to park truck in own driveway in two-year battle with housing body.
Parents held after eight dead babies found
FRENCH police detained a couple after the bodies of eight newborn babies were found in their house and garden in a northern village.
Nazi charged with death camp murders
GERMAN prosecutors have charged a 90-year-old former Nazi death camp guard with helping to murder 430,000 Jews in World War II.
Kenyan gets 14 years for sex with donkey
A KENYAN court has sentenced a 30-year-old man to 14 years in jail for having sex with a donkey.
Murder suspect TV host dies in Brazil
A BRAZILIAN television presenter accused of ordering murders to boost his crime show's ratings has died of an infection in hospital.
Boy wins $10,000 over chips theft claim
A FIVE-year-old Irish boy who was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of chips won €7,500 ($10,700) damages for defamation of character.
Hubby 'spent' Brittany Murphy's money
NEW allegations emerged that the husband of dead Clueless star Brittany Murphy had been emptying out the actress' bank accounts before his own untimely death, People magazine reported.
Britain's oldest Twitter user dies aged 104
BRITAIN'S oldest Twitter user Ivy Bean, who regularly updated her 56,000 followers, died today aged 104
NSW/ACT
Boy from the bush went badNATHAN Brodbeck has been revealed as the gunman shot dead trying to hold up a cash security van on Sydney's Northern Beaches.
Verity Firth feeling the heat
VERITY Firth's job is at stake after Kristina Keneally carpeted her for committing $400m for replacing school heaters without approval.
Juggling life and a world title
HE'S 15 and glows crimson when asked about female fans. But in the world of competitive juggling, Cody Harrington is a god.
Shrine's vandal still a puzzler
NEW photos of a man wanted over the senseless desecration of a war memorial at Rhodes have been released by police.
Procedure correct in bus explosion
THE driver of a Sydney bus who saw smoke coming from the vehicle was told by his company to continue "at a slow pace".
Fifty trips to the Moon every year
SYDNEY Buses are running empty buses 19.4 million kilometres a year - equal to 50 trips to the Moon, new figures have revealed.
Is this the best job in the world?
BROTHERS Rick and Scott Hayward love beer so much they could make it all day - in fact, they do. Is your job better than this?
Killed RSL armed robber named
THE man shot dead by a security guard in an attempted robbery in Sydney has been named.
Will ruled invalid after son's help
A WILL made after a dying man was taken from a nursing home by unfavoured son ruled invalid.
Crane hits house, woman in shock
A CRANE attached to a 35 tonne truck has damaged a house, leaving a woman in shock in Sydney today.
Queensland
Cop sniffs out drug haulA POLICE officer with a keen sense of smell uncovered a $150,000 stash of cannabis in a Queensland woman's car during a routine traffic stop.
Funeral ends in fight
A MASSIVE brawl erupted at a funeral wake south of Brisbane overnight which ended in police having to use pepper spray as they made up to 10 arrests.
Driver charged after crash
A 21-YEAR-OLD car driver is to front court charged with knocking a schoolboy off his bicycle in a hit and run incident in Bundaberg.
Police hunt attackers
POLICE are searching for two men who seriously assaulted an 18-year-old man and beat him unconscious in a Goodna carpark.
Secret Airport Link setup
PREMIER Anna Bligh helped create a private company to oversee the $5.6 billion Airport Link project knowing that it would be less accountable.
Mum tells of stab anger
THE mum of a teen stabbed last week has called for changes to the justice system after learning the alleged offender had been just released from custody.
Hospitals ignore fat food warning
HOSPITALS are still stocking vending machines and fundraising boxes full of fatty foods with many facilities ignoring a strategy to phase out treats.
Teen stabbing trial adjourned
A BRISBANE committal hearing for a 14-year-old boy charged with stabbing murder of another boy at a Brisbane private school earlier this year has been adjourned until next week.
Jessica Watson's rival to set sail
DUTCH judges have given the green light for a teenage girl's bid to become the youngest person to sail around the world solo.
Hunt for cat torturer
RSPCA Queensland has appealed for information after a female cat was tortured on Swallow Avenue at Paradise Point, on the Gold Coast, on Tuesday.
Victoria
Good Samaritans go after robberA DUO of selfless good Samaritans have foiled an armed robber in a West Melbourne service station.
Parents fear bloodbath
PARENTS fear a junior finals rematch will end in a bloodbath after a coach was suspended for threatening an umpire.
Ninjas reclaim streets
URBAN ninja mums are urging frightened women to take back the streets, feeding a revival of the ancient Japanese art of fighting.
Is Gazza a goner?
SOME Geelong fans have resigned themselves to life without Gary Ablett. Others hold out hope he will stick with the Cats.
I'm a goat and I vote
RAY Dyer goes nowhere without his two goats and cattle dog, Boss.
Fielding launch angers principal
FAMILY First senator Steve Fielding has been accused of using a Melbourne school as a political football.
$2m threat for x-rated air traffic
EMAILED porn and years of alleged sex harassment has sparked a $2 million claim by two female air traffic controllers.
Cheers as cops talk down man on roof
UPDATE 2.25pm: ONLOOKERS cheered as man talked down from rooftop after CBD streets blocked for more than two hours.
Car crush bid to thwart hoons
UPDATE 1.09pm: A CAR has been crushed in Dandenong today as a demonstration of tough new anti-hoon laws.
Humphrey B Bear ... uses F-word
A FORMER Humphrey B Bear was not such a funny old fellow when he assaulted a vice-principal in front of shocked students and parents.
Northern Territory
Nothing NewSouth Australia
Copper miners have struck goldA HUGE copper deposit discovered on the Yorke Peninsula is will lead to a jobs boom for the Ardrossan region, an exploration company predicts.
'State Bank' disaster looms - Master Builders
MASTER Builders South Australia fears pay blowouts on major projects could lead the state to a situation reminiscent of the State Bank disaster.
Two men arrested for rape
TWO southern suburbs men have been arrested for the alleged rape of two women.
Community infrastructure 'top issue'
COMMUNITY infrastructure requirements have been flagged as the top issue facing local government in the next 10 years.
Papps fined $100 for attacking wife
DRUNK, rejected and "crazed", Ron Papps smothered his wife with a pillow and then chased her down, vowing to "get" her like he had "wanted to do for a while".
Baby killer 'deserves to die in prison'
THE former husband of convicted baby killer Sarah Michelle Peters says she should not be paroled in December and she should die in prison for killing their daughter.
GST cut may gut state's AAA rating
A FURTHER $40 million cut in the state's share of GST revenue will put extra pressure on the State Budget, forcing even deeper spending cuts over the next four years.
Citrus restaurant closes its doors
HUTT St breakfast haunt Citrus has closed its doors for the last time.
Brolly up - here comes the rain
DAYS of wet weather are just hours away. Watch the clouds roll in our radar and check out the first entries in our Cold Snaps photo competition.
I'll be back... at some stage
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard says she "would love to get back to my home town" but is making no commitments to more SA visits.
Western Australia
Drunk hit-and-run driver jailedA DRUNKEN man who ploughed into a woman without stopping has been jailed for three years.
Ram raid Range Rover found
POLICE have found a Range Rover believed to have been used in a ram raid on a southern suburbs shopping centre earlier this month.
People smuggling witnesses 'unreliable'
DEFENCE lawyers for accused people smuggler Hadi Ahmadi have told a Perth jury to question the reliability of key witnesses before delivering a verdict.
Pluto workers face $43m in fines
MORE than 1500 workers who went on strike at Woodside’s Pluto gas project have been urged to settle rather than risk being fined more than $40 million.
Four charged in Perth drug raids
FOUR men have been charged following police raids that netted 172 grams of heroin in two Perth suburbs yesterday.
Endeavour sets compass for Perth
THE Endeavour is returning to WA, and the port where it was built, as part of a circumnavigation of Australia.
WA facing aged care crisis
MORE than half of WA's aged care providers are running at a loss and many are on the verge of collapse, Aged and Community Services of Western Australia says.
East Perth's $1billion gateway
THE eastern gateway into the city is a step closer to becoming a mixed residential and commercial area with calls today for developers to step forward.
Gays call for marriage equality
WA’s gay and lesbian community has lashed out at the Federal Government over its opposition to gay marriage.
Bricks, handgun used in robbery
POLICE are hunting a pair of violent bandits who robbed two men at gunpoint in Osborne Park early this morning.
Tasmania
98-year-old battles blaze with water potTHE quick actions of a firefighter saved the life of a woman who was staunchly battling a blaze in her kitchen with a pot of water.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Senator John McCain Weighs InChallenging Arizona! As the Feds continue their fight against the state's immigration law, how much is the case costing you?
===
Don't Miss Gov. Jan Brewer Tonight!
Tick Tock ... Tick Tock .. Arizona's immigration law is on the clock! Will it take effect on schedule? Governor Jan Brewer talks time tables on Hannity! Plus, Arizona PD preps for the worst! Greta looks at how law enforcement is stepping it up.
===
On Fox News Insider
Obama Heads to the Jersey ShoreUPDATE: Arlington National Cemetery Scandal
The Gulf Oil Spill: 100 Days of Disaster
=== Comments ===
Bill O'Reilly Stops by 'Jay Leno' THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT FROM "THE O'REILLY FACTOR," JULY 27, 2010. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LAURA INGRAHAM, GUEST HOST: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight: The No Spin Zone invades L.A. Not only am I hosting "The Factor" from L.A. this week, but Bill O'Reilly himself showed up on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno last night. Here now some of the highlights of his chat with Jay.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": You were spotted at, was it Yankee Stadium with your entourage?
BILL O'REILLY: Yes.
LENO: We have a picture. Show that picture. I'll tell you why this -- I'll tell you why this fascinates me.
O'REILLY: Yes.
LENO: Who do you have more in common with: Geraldo or Glenn Beck?
O'REILLY: Neither.
LENO: Neither?
O'REILLY: No. They paid me a lot of money to go with them to the game.
LENO: OK. So you don't actually hang with them.
O'REILLY: No.
LENO: You don't hang with them.
O'REILLY: This is like a corporate date. You know, you get those? They pay you a lot of money, you go to the game with them.
LENO: It looks like Tony Hayward is out now or he's out…
O'REILLY: This pinhead, unbelievable. He's the head of BP, right? So he screws up everything and then says, "When am I going to get my life back?" I would have just jammed him in the hole right then. Then -- then, it gets worse. Then they pull him out, the Brits pull him out of BP, send him back to London. And where is he the next day? On his yacht.
LENO: A yacht race.
O'REILLY: On his yacht.
LENO: So who would you like to have as a guest on your show you have not been able to get? Maybe I can help you. I can make a phone call.
O'REILLY: Would you, Jay? You're such a kind man.
LENO: Who are you trying to get?
O'REILLY: Lady Gaga.
LENO: Lady Gaga. What is her position on Afghanistan? Have you heard?
O'REILLY: I don't know.
LENO: Why?
O'REILLY: But she is an unbelievable marketer. I mean, here's somebody -- and she has some catchy tunes. I mean, but she's basically Madonna lite.
LENO: Catchy tunes?
O'REILLY: Catchy tunes. You know what I mean?
LENO: You sound like a dad. You sound like a dad.
O'REILLY: I'm an old guy. Man, that's far out. She's pretty groovy. All right.
LENO: Now you're really an old guy.
O'REILLY: She's -- that's me. Not pretending. No Botox. She's an unbelievable marketer. She's basically Madonna lite, all right? She's almost the same kind of thing. Couple of catchy tunes, couple of shock things thrown in.
LENO: Yes.
O'REILLY: But she -- she's got to be very intelligent underneath the Lady Gaga-ness.
LENO: Let me ask you about Lindsay Lohan. Does she deserve jail time?
O'REILLY: Look, this is a woman who's on a Marilyn Monroe tract. Monroe died at 36. And she's from Long Island where I'm from. Very talented actress.
LENO: Oh, yes. (more at the link)
===
ROADRUNNER
Tim Blair
Just a kiwi on a treadmill:
The little guy is recovering from broken legs – quite an issue when you’re flightless. A new career awaits.
===
ENEMY WITHIN
Tim Blair
“The simple fact that some within the ALP camp are dedicated to bringing down the government is astonishing in itself,” writes the Age‘s Shaun Carney. “Australian politics has rarely, if ever, seen anything like it.” It’s a party divided:
There is at least one well-connected person on the Labor side who is tailoring information designed to destroy Gillard and then farming it out to selected journalists. The truth is that the government has no effective way of combating this.Amusingly, ABC TV just accompanied an item on Labor’s leaks with file footage of Kevin Rudd – who wasn’t named during the report.
The next piece of information, or disinformation, could come at any time. When it does, the PM will be obliged to pull her campaign to a stop and then disavow the accusation.
UPDATE. “Someone, perhaps he’s from Queensland, is out to punish Julia Gillard.” Whoever could it be?
UPDATE II. Gillard is more animated when fighting her own party than when fighting the Opposition.
UPDATE III. An excellent idea from Arthur Sinodinos:
If Labor is re-elected the Greens will dictate much of the parliamentary agenda. Abbott should debate Bob Brown to put his policies in the spotlight. The Coalition cannot afford to win the election only to be frustrated daily in the Senate. Can Julia Gillard resist participating in such a debate?UPDATE IV:
Julia Gillard has threatened her ministers with the sack if they leak from cabinet as her government reels from a series of damaging disclosures …===
“If there’s anyone in my government if re-elected that does not respect the confidentiality of cabinet, then they will no longer be a minister,” she said in Melbourne this morning.
Man-made warming of Australia detected
Andrew Bolt
JoNova notes a little overheating at the Bureau of Meteorology:
The BOM claim their adjustments are random and neutral. Yet when Ken looked at the raw data from Australia’s 100 high quality rural sites, the adjustments increased the trend in the raw data by 40% — from a 0.6°C rise over 100 years, to 0.85°C over 100 years.===
In an email to Ken, Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, made a clear claim that the adjustments had no real effect:“On the issue of adjustments you find that these have a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature because these tend to be equally positive and negative across the network (as would be expected given they are adjustments for random station changes).”Perhaps there are good reasons for all these corrections. But if Ken’s analysis is right, the adjustments themselves account for a third of the reported warming trend in Australia.
Another boat arrives as Gillard’s plan sinks
Andrew Bolt
The 81st for the year, and third of the campaign:
A SUSPECTED asylum seeker boat carrying 85 people and found in distress off Christmas Island has been rescued by Australian authorities.Which can only add to the squeeze for accommodation:
A SECRET Federal Government plan to transform a barracks and an army club named after a Victoria Cross winner into a processing centre for boat people has been slammed by relatives and Diggers.So how is Julia Gillard’s “solution” - a new processing centre in East Timor - getting on, now that the East Timorese Parliament has opposed it?
The Government is believed to have been working for months on a plan to transfer several large buildings at the Broadmeadows Defence Barracks to the Department of Immigration so they can house asylum seekers.
The Government says the plan has been scrapped. But on Tuesday about 100 regular soldiers and army reservists at Broadmeadows were briefed by Lt-Col Laureen Grimes.
“We were told to prepare for the worst by our commanding officer,” a reserve soldier said.
THREE weeks after Julia Gillard announced a plan to send asylum seekers to East Timor, the government in Dili says it is still waiting for details.Sounds like a dead duck. So why not talk to Nauru’s foreign minister, who has flown here specifically to offer us the use of his island’s detention centre, which we actualy paid for:
”So far we have not received any concrete proposal from the Australian government,” East Timor’s Foreign Minister, Zacarias Albano da Costa, told the Herald yesterday.
Mr da Costa said no negotiations or meetings were scheduled. “It is up to Australia … we are hearing about this mostly through the Australian media."…
Mr da Costa confirmed that Australian officials who travelled to Dili a few days after Ms Gillard’s announcement only flagged her government’s preference to build the centre in East Timor and provided no details. The officials did not meet any government minister or the President, Jose Ramos-Horta, who was overseas.
The only contact Ms Gillard has had with East Timor’s leaders to discuss the plan was one telephone call to Dr Ramos-Horta, who holds a largely ceremonial position.
Foreign Minister Kieren Keke, briefly visiting Brisbane this morning, dismissed claims by Prime Minister Julia Gillard the Nauru Government was too fractured to make a decision on a revival of the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution.
Mr Keke said there was bi-partisan support for the centre across Nauru’s political spectrum and even if there was disagreement, the constitution allowed the president to enter into an agreement with Australia to open the centre immediately.
``There are no constitutional barriers, it could be done today, it could have been done three weeks ago,’’ he said.
I asked Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor on MTR 1377 today why the Government has not put a concrete plan to East Timor, or even bothered to speak to Nauru’s Foreign Minister this week. He failed repeatedly to answer the question.
Meanwhile, Greg Sheridan says Gillard, unlike Abbott, will not stop the boats, even if East Timor ever agreed to her plan:
Gillard’s proposal for a regional processing centre in East Timor is entirely different from Abbott’s proposal for Nauru. Her insistence that the centre has to be located in a country which is a signatory to the 1951 convention is nonsensical. Most of the refugee camps from which Australia took Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and 80s were located in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which were not signatories to the convention…
Moreover, any centre established in East Timor would become a plaything in East Timorese domestic politics, and inevitably a point of leverage for any East Timorese government in its relationship with Australia.
But most significantly, as this column has previously pointed out, it would be positive magnet of enormous power, attracting boatpeople from far away. In the joint press conference between Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and Australia’s Stephen Smith, it was clear the Indonesians have absolutely no enthusiasm for this crazy idea at all.
===
The campaign explained
Andrew Bolt
(Thanks to reader Colin.)
===
Swan calls Rudd an honourable man
Andrew Bolt
Shakespeare would have known exactly what Treasurer Wayne Swan meant by his praise of the leaking, smirking Kevin Rudd:
Mr Rudd released a statement today denying he was the source of a story alleging Ms Gillard spoke out in cabinet against parental leave and a pension increase when she was deputy prime minister.UPDATE
Asked if Mr Rudd was an honourable person in the affair, Mr Swan, who is now deputy prime minister, endorsed his fellow Queensland colleague.
”I do believe that he’s an honourable person,’’ he told ABC Television today.
Gillard and knives then:
Three weeks ago, Julia Gillard knifed Kevin Rudd ...Gillard and knives now:
WEAPONS such as knuckledusters, flick knives and stun guns would become much harder to import under a re-elected Gillard government....(Thanks to reader Clay.)
Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor told the Herald Sun it would help make streets safer. “It will mean fewer fatalities and injuries by knives and other weapons,” he said.
===
Robb cashes in
Andrew Bolt
Strong performance by Andrew Robb on Lateline last night. Mind you, Chris Bowen didn’t have much to work with.
This line was good:
ANDREW ROBB: Tony, I thought, contrary to what Chris is saying - I found there was absolutely no credibility in what the Prime Minister had to say today (about the Cabinet leaks). She said - and I’ve got the quote here, if I could - she said, “I looked at the pension increase and the paid paternal leave scheme from every angle. I held them up to the light. I examined every possibility. I asked every question because I wanted to satisfy myself that they were affordable - affordable today and affordable tomorrow.”Or as I put it yesterday, the “cash for clunkers” is just pink batts on wheels.
How does that stack up with a Prime Minister who, over the last three years, has had responsible for programs such as the school halls program. Where did she hold those programs up to a light?
She has wasted $6 billion plus - $6,000 million plus this Prime Minister has wasted. And what about the program announced even on Saturday? This cash for clunkers. You know, it’s a nonsense scheme.. This will go like the green loans. I’m just telling you, this is not credible.
One thing is becoming increasingly likely, reading again between the lines: the Coalition is desperately trying to find ways to get rid of the embarrassing levy imposed on big business to pay for Tony Abbott’s absurdly generous parental leave scheme. It does not want to go into this election as a party proposing a new tax, Stand by for an announcement.
(Thanks to reader Student and others.)
===
Worst government in Australia
Andrew Bolt
What a very strange ggvernment has NSW - dysfunctional even in deciding what to do about heaters that endanger students:
THE Education Minister, Verity Firth, has been hung out to dry over an embarrassing backdown by the Premier, Kristina Keneally, one day after the minister committed the government to replacing 55,000 unflued gas heaters in schools.
The Herald was told Ms Firth was ordered into the Premier’s office yesterday and reprimanded. It is understood a furious Ms Keneally was critical of Ms Firth for not following proper procedure in announcing without the approval of cabinet a plan that is expected to cost between $170 million and $440 million…
On Tuesday the minister said the government would replace the heaters after the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research found the toxic fumes they emitted caused ‘’increased respiratory symptoms’’ in students.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Headlines Wednesday 28th July 2010
=== Todays Toon ===
Admiral Sir David Murray Anderson KCB, KCMG, MVO (11 April 1874 – 30 October 1936) was a naval officer and governor. Anderson served in the Royal Navy from the age of 13 and served in many Colonial wars and was given various Empire postings, rising to the rank of Admiral in 1931. He retired a year later and took up the posting as Governor of Newfoundland, where he also took up the role of Chairman of the Government following the suspension of self-government in the Dominion of Newfoundland. Leaving Newfoundland in 1935, he was appointed as Governor of New South Wales but served only briefly due to his ill health. He died while in office aged 62.
=== Bible Quote ===
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”- Hebrews 12:1=== Headlines ===
Spewing Oil From Another Gulf Well Hampering CleanupPressurized natural gas and oil blasts into the air after boat strikes another oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama 'View' of History Skips Scouts
Obama will make history as the first sitting president on a daytime talk show when he visits 'The View,' and to do it he'll miss the Boy Scouts' Jamboree marking the group's 100th anniversary
Cops Called Terrorists Over Billboard
Police officers in Bay City, Mich., are being criticized after renting billboard space to oppose the layoffs of five cops, which they say could lead to more shootings, robberies and beatings
Rangel Looking to Cut A Deal in Ethics Flap?
Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel meets with head of House ethics committee amid rumors he may try to work out agreement rather than face ethics charges
Breaking News
Castro to release biographyFIDEL Castro unveiled plans today to release a book in August that includes stories from his childhood and explains how he became a revolutionary.
France declares war on al-Qaeda
FRANCE has declared war on al-Qaeda, and matched its fighting words with a first attack on a base camp of the terror network's North African branch, after the terror network killed a French humanitarian worker it took hostage in April.
Man swallows 85 cocaine condoms
A NERVOUS man boarding a flight in Texas who drew suspicion from customs agents turned out to have swallowed condoms filled with cocaine.
Vatican bans scantily clad tourists
TOURISTS in skimpy summer clothing were being told to cover up before entering Vatican City today.
'No change' to war strategy despite leaks
THE US military's top officer today said information in leaked documents on the war in Afghanistan did not call into question US strategy or Washington's relationship with Pakistan.
Landslide leaves 21 missing
A LANDSLIDE in southwestern China left 21 people missing overnight as torrential rains forced officials to shut boat traffic through the Three Gorges Dam as they braced for a new flood crest.
Apple launches 'magic trackpad'
APPLE overnight unveiled the "Magic Trackpad," a touchpad which allows users to operate a desktop computer with finger gestures, eliminating the need for a mouse.
Facebook helps nab murder suspect
PHILIPPINE police tracked down a suspect in a series of grisly robberies and killings with the help of his Facebook account, officials said overnight.
Bush, Blair slammed over Iraq war
EX-UN weapons inspector Hans Blix questioned overnight the judgment of Britain and the United States in invading Iraq on the basis of evidence of weapons of mass destruction that was clearly "poor".
Swede Larsson sells 1m Kindle books
SWEDEN'S Stieg Larsson is the first author to sell more than one million books in Amazon's Kindle electronic bookstore, the online retail giant said today.
NSW/ACT
Put the dogs on jail staffSNIFFER dogs should be used to search corrective services officers and their lockers, an ICAC report has recommended.
Drug-banned Sydney doctor appeals
A SYDNEY doctor banned for abusing drugs and contributing to the death of a patient is fighting to become registered in Victoria.
Teen shattered at twin's death
THE twin brother of a teenager killed after being mistaken for a deer on a hunting trip is struggling to come to terms with the accident.
$400m fix for school heaters
CHILDREN have been exposed to a poisonous cocktail of gases belched from school heaters, the State Government admitted.
Meagher exits lobby register
FORMER Health Minister Reba Meagher has taken herself off the State Government's lobbyist register after just two months.
Second gunman ruled out
A MAN shot dead while attempting to hold up an armoured van may have been working alone, police said yesterday.
Eat Street's ban on cars
PARRAMATTA'S main street will be closed to traffic this summer, for a new al fresco dining paradise.
Carpark birth for baby Destiney
A WOMAN was forced to give birth to her daughter in the front seat of her car at a hospital carpark after staff failed to quickly respond.
Grand Final now in the big league
THE NRL will turn this year's Grand Final week into a celebration to rival the AFL's showpiece game.
Police hunt teen girls' sex attacker
A MAN who indecently assaulted two teenage Sydney girls remains at large.
Queensland
Stoppages loom for sugar millsSEVEN sugar mills are likely to again grind to a halt as 1300 workers threaten stop work action.
Milk fight could push up prices
QUEENSLAND dairy farmers fear a bitter dispute with a Japanese-owned buyer over the price of milk will lead to consumers paying more.
Airport Link firm pays up
THE companies behind the $5.6 billion Airport Link project have been repeatedly fined by Brisbane City Council for violating environmental standards.
Man stabbed five times
A MAN has been rushed to hospital in a serious condition after being stabbed five times at a caravan park on the Gold Coast.
Rail pledge a problem for state
A $1.15 billion federal election promise aimed at winning over crucial marginal seats is set to cause a major infrastructure headache for the State Government.
Labor fear vengeful Rudd
LABOR is petrified that ousted PM Kevin Rudd may be behind embarrassing Cabinet leaks including that Julia Gillard voted against paid parental leave.
Mine faces environment charges
A COPPER mine in northwest Queensland has been charged with 19 offences of failing to meet its environmental obligations.
Taxi fares to rise
TAXI fares in Queensland are set to rise 4.2 per cent at the end of the month following a review by the Department of Transport.
Gillard exploits WorkChoices fears
LABOR has continued to exploit voter fears over industrial relations, with Julia Gillard ramping up the rhetoric against Tony Abbott.
Teen in court over stabbing murder
A COURT has begun hearing evidence in a case against a 14-year-old boy charged with the stabbing murder of a 12-year-old at a Brisbane private school.
Victoria
Masked bandit's golden gunA MASKED bandit threatened a shopkeeper with a gold-coloured gun this morning before snatching cash and cigarettes.
Roberta wants compo
ROBERTA Williams wants crimes compensation over the jailhouse slaying of her former husband Carl.
Over sized school shock
SCHOOL uniforms are getting larger as children's waistlines expand with some manufacturers now making XXXL shirts.
No train, no pain for soccer visitors
FIFA chiefs enjoyed a hassle-free police escort through Melbourne yesterday as the city's public transport woes hit rock bottom.
Pokies creche for kids
CHILDREN will be able watch parents gamble after a pokies venue was allowed to build a play area with a view of the action.
New freeways lead to boom in housing
THE completion of EastLink and the first home buyers' grant has seen property prices boom in our eastern and south-eastern suburbs.
Explicit sex ed hits schools
AN Education Department booklet encourages students to "brainstorm" lists of explicit sexual practices.
Workers, students too late for excuses
WORRIED workers feared they would be sacked because of Tuesday's train chaos.
Turmoil costs the community $12m
VICTORIA'S economy lost at least $12 million in productivity yesterday because of the train chaos.
Six more months of chaos
UPDATE 6.50am: COMMUTERS should brace for another six months of chaos on the train system as Metro races to replace frayed overhead wires.
Northern Territory
Nothing NewSouth Australia
Early starts translate wellREADING foreign fables and cooking international cuisine is teaching children as young as five crucial literacy skills and helping them get a head start.
Remote control heart surgery success
DOCTORS are performing heart surgery from outside the operating room with a remote robotic system installed at Flinders Private Hospital.
Media banned from SA planning talkfest
ONLY paying customers were allowed to hear updates on SA's major projects from state and local government representatives yesterday.
Unlocking fish love
LOVE is in the air in the Lower Lakes - and the Government is playing Cupid. The Goolwa Barrage will be opened to allow an endangered fish to breed.
Corruption law review 'secretive, rushed'
THE Government's review of anti-corruption laws by Attorney-General John Rau is secretive, rushed and biased towards second best, the Opposition says.
Tooth decay rise in kindies
VOLUNTEER dentists involved in kindergarten visits have found a third of pre-schoolers need some form of dental treatment.
Council battles rezoning
PLANNING Minister Paul Holloway is facing yet another planning backlash - this time by a council in the Supreme Court over his rezoning of the Gawler Racecourse.
Death fear over nailgun attacks
A NAILGUN used in two attacks on northern suburbs buses may have been modified to turn it into a weapon, police believe.
Murder suspects' identity a secret
THE identities of two men accused of murdering Sturt mother Karen Hodgson have been suppressed to allow police to continue their investigations.
Regulators on Peek's trail
POLICE and corporate regulators are circling 80s rockstar Kevin Peek, the man accused of defrauding mostly SA investors of about $90m.
Western Australia
Cops seize three hoon carsPOLICE targeted an underground car club over the weekend, resulting in the seizure of three cars.
Rural Baldivis a distant memory
IF there was ever doubt that the Perth metropolitan area would soon stretch from Two Rocks to Mandurah, it is rapidly being laid to rest.
Today Show gives precious gift to family
A WUNDOWIE mother, whose son is a quadriplegic, is celebrating after winning $25,000 on the Channel 9 Today Show in the Great Cash Giveaway.
'Uncontrolled rage' fuelled attack
THE brutal bashing of a young father was today described as 'uncontrolled rage' just moments after one of his attackers was found guilty of grievous bodily harm.
Two charged over train station brawl
POLICE have charged two people over an assault at the Kenwick Train Station which left a 16-year-old boy in hospital with serious injuries.
Road rage attacker jailed
A 27-YEAR-OLD man has been jailed for almost three years for a hit-run road rage attack which left a grandfather in hospital with serious injuries.
WA hopeful missed the PM change
A WEST Australian Labor candidate has blamed a campaign volunteer for letterboxing material containing photos of former prime minister Kevin Rudd and a glowing endorsement.
Injured woman airlifted to RPH
A WOMAN has been airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital after being freed from a wrecked car near Williams, 160km south of Perth, this morning.
Govt rejects $5.3b 'hoarding claim'
THE West Australian government has denied claims that it is hoarding $5.3 billion from taxpayers while they struggle with record price hikes.
Call for Aboriginal justice probe
FEDERAL Fremantle MP Melissa Parke has called for a Royal Commission into conditions faced by Aboriginal people in the WA justice system.
Tasmania
Elderly woman pulled from house fireFIREFIGHTERS have rescued an elderly women from her burning house in Hobart's north.
Girlfriend 'too in love' to report murder
THE girlfriend of a Hobart man who murdered a Chinese university student told police she did not report the slaying because she loved her boyfriend too much.
Jet bangs caused by engine surge - report
A SERIES of bangs heard on a passenger plane, which forced it to turn back, were the result of an engine surge.
=== Journalists Corner ===
Marco Rubio Joins Neil on 'Your World'Out of control spending, soaring debt and unemployment ... Senate candidate Marco Rubio reveals his strategy to get Florida back on track!
===
Countdown to Conflict?
With only days left before Arizona's law takes effect - Greta investigates its impact on the war over immigration!
===
On Fox News Insider
A New Oil Leak in the GulfPolygamist Warren Jeffs to Get New Trial
Sen. John Kerry's Tax Troubles?
TOMORROW, July 28th, is the last day for Senators to sign the letter to Secretary Clinton calling for a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity in Burma!Senator Lautenberg has signed the letter thanks to the phone calls and letters from constituents like you. However, Senator Menendez has not signed on, and we need your help!
Please call Senator Menendez and ask him to sign on to the letter. If you have already called, please call again!
The more Senators who sign the letter, the stronger the message to Secretary Clinton.
Senators do listen to their constituents -- please call and tell your Senators that you want them to support this letter.
Support for an investigation into the regime's crimes against humanity is the first step towards ending sexual violence, forced labor, and the killing of innocent civilians. If we don't shed light on the regime's crimes they will continue with impunity.
This is why Senators Feinstein (D-CA) and Gregg (R-NH) have sent a letter to their fellow Senators asking them to join them in sending a letter to Secretary Clinton to support UN action to investigate the Burmese regime's crimes against humanity.
Democratic governments such as the United Kingdom, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia already support the call for a UN-led Commission of Inquiry on Burma. Now, we need the United States government to get on board and be a strong voice supporting the establishment of an investigation into crimes against humanity in Burma.
Without the backing of the United States, the Special Rapporteur's call will go ignored! Tell your Senator that the U.S. must support a UN Commission of Inquiry into the regime's war crimes and crimes against humanity. Do not let this opportunity pass by!
With your help, this would be an important step in holding Burma's generals accountable for their crimes against humanity.
Please call Senator Menendez to ask him to sign this important letter.
The Senators only have until July 28th to sign the letter so please call now!
Burma's regime is attacking, killing, raping, and destroying the homes of ethnic minorities. Although these crimes have persisted for decades, the situation has received almost no international attention because the military regime keeps media and international observers away from the areas of attack. These crimes perpetuated by the military have gone on for too long. (Read more about crimes in Burma here.)
Online Instructions
=== Comments ===
Is President Obama Losing Mainstream Americans?THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT FROM "THE O'REILLY FACTOR," JULY 26, 2010. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LAURA INGRAHAM, GUEST HOST: Now for the top story tonight: President Obama sent a message to liberal activists at one of their conventions in Las Vegas this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Change hasn't come fast enough for too many Americans. I know that. It hasn't come fast enough for me either. And I know it hasn't come fast enough for many of you who fought so hard during the election. What I'm asking you is to keep making your voices heard, to keep holding me accountable, to keep up the fight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Joining us now from Washington is Brit Hume, Fox News senior political analyst.
So, Brit, first of all, you can tell me where I went wrong on the "Talking Points Memo." Did I capture what's going on in the country? Am I being too harsh on the president? Take a swing at it.
BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, so the resistance to this president and his policies has been growing. It was a subset of the American electorate in the beginning, which was -- which didn't like his -- the liberalism it detected, which they thought was too far to the left to suit them. This is, after all, still a center-right country.
But the results of his policies are what has really made the difference, Laura, and the unemployment rate is the key figure here. It remains persistently high, and as long as that was the case, he was destined to lose more and more public support, and that's exactly what's happened. And so he's now in a situation where his policies have not really been strong enough medicine to please his left. And the right and center are alienated by their results as well. And he's in a, politically, in a very bad spot, indeed.
INGRAHAM: Well, I want to get to the Netroots speech he gave via video in a second. But, Brit, he's losing support among pretty much everyone, including some in his own party. Young people are leaving him. Independents in droves are leaving him. White voters, we already know that story. Even Latino support has eroded a little bit. So now he moves on to the Netroots convention, and he addresses the left-wing activists who are kind of getting restless a little bit on the edges. But yet, that is going to simply alienate the very people he needs to bring back in, which are those independents, isn't it?
HUME: Well, you know, it's not clear to me how many people are going to be alienated by the fact that he spoke to them and by the things that he said to them. The people who were going to be alienated by his appeal to the left will be -- are going to be alienated, if they haven't already been, by the policies that the left has desired from President Obama and which in considerable measure he's tried to deliver them. And those people, I think, started to get turned off as, I mentioned early on. That was the birth of the Tea Party movement, really was the spending involved in the bailouts, which were not popular when President Bush started them. They remained unpopular when President Obama continued them. And on top of that, you had the massive stimulus bill, which was promised was going to restrain the unemployment rate, which it has manifestly failed to do, at least not at the levels that were promised. So, you know, you put together the policies that were a little bit too far to the left for the country with results that were appealing to nobody, and this is what you get.
INGRAHAM: Well, Brit, yet, he continues to go back and hit the campaign trail, which is basically what he's doing this week in Detroit and in New Jersey. And it seems like someone in the White House is saying, look, you need to be with your people. You need to talk to them. You need to go on "The View." You need to get in front of the people more and sell your successes.
But in the end, as you said, it's the results. If we have joblessness where it is, if we have public confidence where it is, if we have the sense that America is in kind of a permanent state of decline, as is developing, then no amount of shirt sleeves campaign appearances is really going to change that, right? I mean, you've got to deliver eventually.
HUME: I agree with that. I think that results are always the critical factor in any president's popularity. Ultimately, it's the results that count. But if you're a political adviser to the president, or the president himself, looking for somewhere to start to try to help make matters better, the first thing you might want to do would be to try to stir up some interest in the part of your base.
The enthusiasm of this president's base and the Democratic Party broadly speaking was a tremendous asset to Barack Obama in 2008. That element -- that political element was far more enthusiastic than with the elements that were supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin, despite the fact that Sarah Palin did have a galvanizing effect on a major part of the Republican electorate. The president is simply trying to restore some of that enthusiasm, and that's why you see him at the Netroots convention. That's why you see him out touting the achievements that he has made in the area of health care and certain other areas where he has accomplished some liberal things for liberal causes. You know, I don't know that it's going to work or make that much difference in the end…
INGRAHAM: Yes.
HUME: …but it's probably from his point of view worth trying.
INGRAHAM: I should say that the straw poll, Brit, of the Netroots folks, 87 percent of them generally support the job the president is doing. That's pretty strong, obviously. But only 32 percent say they strongly support what he's doing.
HUME: There you go.
INGRAHAM: And I think that could very well go to the enthusiasm gap that you pointed out.
HUME: Exactly right. That simplifies the problem perfectly. They all still support him, but their enthusiasm for him has diminished, which translates in normal political circumstances into a weaker turnout election. And that is the last thing this president and his party need in this midterm.
The people who support the right, the people who support -- who are angry at President Obama on the right and in the center are highly motivated to vote. The president needs his people to be highly motivated to vote as well. And that Netroots poll gives you a sense of just how many of them are not.
INGRAHAM: Brit, one other point before we let you go. I think there was also a massive miscalculation a year ago about the Tea Party movement. You remember it was kind of a fringe movement? They were very angry, and this -- but this isn't going to last. You can't keep up this emotion for this long. I mean, that was the refrain we heard pretty much everywhere.
I've been in 15 cities in the last, you know, two weeks, basically. And the enthusiasm, the energy, a lot of Tea Party folks showing up in Memphis and Birmingham, New Orleans, these people are not losing their enthusiasm for their kind of change at all.
HUME: Well, that's, Laura, I always thought of the Tea Party movement, whatever its fate, was a token, a sign of intensity in the resistance to President Obama. And nothing that has happened since then has changed my mind about that. I think that's clearly what it is. If the unemployment rate had dropped sharply and times were better, the Tea Party movement might have petered out, but it didn't and the movement hasn't.
INGRAHAM: Brit, great to see you. Thanks a lot.
HUME: Thanks, Laura.
===
HAUNTING CONTINUES
Tim Blair
A magazine makeover turns Julia Gillard into … Cate Blanchett:
Blanchett fanboi Kevin Rudd will be dreadfully conflicted. The leak-denying former Prime Minister spent yesterday campaigning, after a fashion, as Jayne Azzopardi reports:Kevin Rudd just can’t resist. He’s going to haunt Julia Gillard throughout this campaign, but with such an innocent look in his eye that no one will be quite sure just what he’s up to.He’s loving this. Gillard, not so much:
On Tuesday I spent a full hour of my day just following him around a hospital. Nothing new in that - when he was PM I did it all the time, watching as he “had a yak” with patients and staff, and told stories about the time he and his family members had spent working in hospitals over the years. But this time was different. It was just plain weird …
I cornered him in a lift and managed to get him to voice the words, “I support the re-election of the Labor party and the election of Prime Minister Gillard”, but only after asking the question three times.
Asked whether her team had enough discipline and unity to govern in the face of continuing leaks, Ms Gillard said: “Give me a break; I’m opposing the third Liberal Leader in this period of Government ... who won his position by one vote.”That’s one more vote than Gillard received:
A ballot had been called for 9am but Mr Rudd withdrew at the last moment. There was no vote.
===
FROM GERALD TO GILLARD
Tim Blair
Today’s front page pays tribute to a famous line from the Daily News:
===GANG OF FOUR
Tim Blair
A leftist Fairfax journalist chats with a leftist Labor politician on the leftist ABC, before a hooting leftoid audience:
Highlights: Senator John Faulkner declares (beginning at 37:00): “I think the Prime Minister has worked very, very hard to ensure that his government is re-elected … Kevin Rudd more than matches the alternative Prime Minister in Tony Abbott.” Just a couple of months later – the interview was recorded in May – Faulkner’s party threw Rudd out. Says Faulkner, presciently: “Don’t forget what happened to Gough Whitlam.”
Highlight II. Faulkner: “I reckon Rudd will win.”
The SMH’s Alan Ramsey: “I agree with you. I think he will win.”
Highlight III. Faulkner: “You said on the Saturday of the [2004] election that you thought … Latham could get there.”
Ramsey: “Yes, I did. Absolutely.”
Faulkner: “You had a lot riding on that, didn’t you? You really backed him in …”
Ramsey: “I thought he could win. My word I did … I thought he gave the Labor party some hope. I thought he gave Labor supporters some hope …”
John Howard won with an increased majority.
Highlight IV. Faulkner: “Do you think you lost objectivity?”
Ramsey: “No. I don’t.”
===
OLDSTERS OPPOSED
Tim Blair
Nine Network veteran and Daily Telegraph columnist Laurie Oakes exposes claims that Julia Gillard opposed paid parental leave – and the alleged reason why:
Oakes said Ms Gillard, who was then deputy prime minister, argued that the idea that paid parental leave would be a political winner was being misconstrued. She said people beyond child-bearing age would resent it, as would stay-at-home mothers, Oakes said.Who on earth might have leaked such information?
She also allegedly questioned the $14 billion cost of the pension increase on the grounds “elderly voters did not support Labor”.
UPDATE. The SMH’s Peter Hartcher:
In public, Ms Gillard has been happy to share credit for the decisions to give more cash for age pensions and parental leave.This is potentially election-wrecking. Who in the previous cabinet would reveal these details? What would be the motive?
But in the inner sanctum of the government, she tried to cut the size of the pension rise and wanted to kill the idea of paid parental leave altogether, telling cabinet colleagues it was being pursued because it was politically correct, according to figures familiar with the debates.
UPDATE II. Michelle Grattan:
Pro-Rudd forces [are] suspected of leaking damaging claims that [Gillard] argued in cabinet against paid parental leave and questioned the size of a pension rise …Evidently not.
Ms Gillard did not deny the claims last night … ‘’Cabinet discussions are confidential.’’
UPDATE III. The Courier-Mail:
Senior Labor sources have pointed the finger at ousted former Labor leader Kevin Rudd, and are concerned he has moved from denial to revenge.You only got one finger left, and it’s pointing at the door …
===
All the Age’s correspondents agree on bad Israel. Or are made to
Andrew Bolt
What very committed staff the Age has on its foreign desk, busily inserting telling words in wire copy:
Britain’s The Daily Telegraph on July 5:(Thanks to reader Michael.)NETANYAHU will come under fierce pressure from Obama to extend a 10-month freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank.The Age reprints the story on July 7 with two extra adjectives:NETANYAHU was last night expected to come under pressure from Obama to extend a 10-month freeze on the building of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.Bloomberg reports:NETANYAHU, whose Likud party supports Jewish settlement in the West Bank . .The Age version on July 10:MR Netanyahu, whose Likud party supports illegal Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank …
===
Hirsi Ali on culture
Andrew Bolt
An excellent interview on Lateline with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who reminds us that people may be equal but ideologies and cultures are not. Islam, for instance, is an ideology that threatens what the West best defends.
===
She’s dancing harder now
Andrew Bolt
Rare footage of Gillard dancing to Joan Kirner’s tune.
(Thanks to reader Spin Baby, Spin.)
===
Who in Labor could possibly be leaking against Queen Julia?
Andrew Bolt
Are you keeping up with the leaks since Kevin Rudd was sacked?
Leak one: Julia Gillard went back on her deal to let Rudd stay on for a couple more months to see if he could turn around the polls. Leaked to Laurie Oakes to hurt Gillard.Is there a pattern here? Any common thread which could help us to identify at least one of the leakers?
Leak two: Rudd has been sounded out for a top job in the United Nations, working on climate change. Leaked to make Rudd seem too important to ignore.
Leak three: Gillard went back on an offer which Rudd “understood” meant he’d be appointed straight away to another Cabinet ministry.Leaked to the Australian’s Dennis Shanahan to hurt Gillard.
Leak four: A confidential diplomatic cable from the New Zealand high commission in Canberra to the New Zealand government, based on a briefing based on “those close to the conversation which occurred between the Prime Minister and Kevin Rudd MP on Sunday (June 27)” claims Rudd “has apparently conveniently forgotten that the ‘deal’ struck in advance of the leadership spill was that he would stand down immediately”. Leaked to the Australian’s Dennis Shanahan to hurt Rudd.
Leak five: Rudd skipped meetings of the powerful National Security Committee, which includes the heads of defence and spy agencies and discusses security threats, and even sent a 31-year-old staffer to fill in for him. Leaked to the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann to hurt Rudd.
Leak six: Childless Gillard actually opposed Rudd’s parental leave scheme in Cabinet and questioned giving more cash to pensioners on the grounds that they were Coalition voters. Leaked to Oakes to make Gillard seem a hypocrite and out of touch.
One prediction, though: the last four weeks of the campaign could become very, very vicious within Labor’s own ranks.
UPDATE
Former Labor leader Mark Latham had a theory about such leaks to Oakes - one he even tested:
After Laurie Oakes dropped his bomb at the Press Club yesterday, well-thumbed copies of The Latham Diaries were taken off shelves all around Canberra… Political power players turned to page 280 to refresh their memories of the former Labor leader’s account from April 14, 2004, of how he used Rudd’s fondness for the media to set a trap.UPDATE 2
“I’ve had a suspicion for some time now that Rudd has been feeding material to Oakes,” Latham wrote. “Decided to set him up, telling Kevvie about our focus groups on Iraq.”
No focus groups had been held. All the then-Labor national secretary, Tim Gartrell, had done was quantitative polling. Yet Labor focus group research was cited in Oakes’s column on April 14, 2004.
“Today, right on cue, Jabba has written in the Bulletin: ‘The Labor Party’s polling firm has been busily running focus groups to test the public mood following Latham’s troops-out announcement.”
“Trapped him,” Latham wrote.
Reader Agnos Tick:
She’s Welsh. Got to accept a few leeks.UPDATE 3
Can you imagine what the latest leaker thought when watching the leaders debate on Sunday:
The claim that (Gillard) opposed paid parental leave in cabinet emerged just two days after she used Sunday’s televised leaders’ debate to talk up the government’s scheme, which will offer primary carers 18 weeks’ paid leave at the minimum wage of about $570 a week.And cue the bitch-fight:
Her allegedly negative stance on the pension boost was also at odds with her positive reference to it during the leaders’ debate, which elicited a positive movement in the ‘’worm’’ meter that tracked TV studio audience responses. ‘’We did a major increase in the pension to help older Australians,’’ she said.
Some in the Labor Party were last night blaming Mr Rudd or his supporters for the leak.Burrow, never the smartest rabbit in the hutch, might be well advised not to shoot this particular messenger. His gun is much, much bigger.
Campaigning yesterday in his electorate, where he has removed references to Labor from promotional posters, Mr Rudd said: ‘’I fully support the re-election of the government and I fully support the election of Prime Minister Gillard.’’…
NSW Labor senator Steve Hutchins said last night’s allegation was a ‘’mischievous disgrace’’ and ‘’smacks of sour grapes....’’ He said he did not believe the content of the leak…
Former Victorian Premier Joan Kirner dismissed the story as rubbish. ‘’Julia and Jenny Macklin argued for paid parental leave, Julia did the tactics and strategy,’’ she said. And former ACTU boss Sharan Burrow said: ‘’I never saw anything other than total support [for paid parental leave] from Julia Gillard … Laurie Oakes must be suffering some sort of relevance deprivation syndrome.
UPDATE 4
Watch, in Oakes’ report, the clip from the leaders’ debate in which Gillard exploits what she actually questioned.
UPDATE 5
Education and workplace minister Simon Crean gives Rudd a whack:
Mr Crean said yesterday he had repeatedly told Mr Rudd before he was dumped to run a more effective cabinet process.UPDATE 6
Mr Crean, who Mr Rudd considered standing against in the Labor leadership ballot in late 2003, was also the first cabinet minister to say publicly that Mr Rudd’s proposed resource super-profits tax was mishandled.
A spokesman for Mr Rudd said yesterday that the former prime minister “does not intend to provide an ongoing response to Mr Crean’s series of remarks"…
On Sunday, Mr Crean issued Mr Rudd another pointed message, telling him his future depended on whether he was prepared to be a team player.
“He can’t be leader. He’s got to accept that,” Mr Crean told the ABC’s Insiders program.
“He’s got to move on and he’s got to play as part of a team,” he said.
Gillard admits the latest leaks are right (although she’s silent on having dismissed pensioners as Coalition voters) but says her role is to question big spends:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard was forced to respond to claims she opposed Labor’s paid parental leave scheme and a cash increase for aged pensioners in a news conference in Adelaide…Did she also query the sheer scale, waste and rorts of the stimulus spending?
“On the question of paid parental leave, I have devoted my adult life through what I have advocated, through who I am, and of course I want to see a pensioner increase and a paid parental leave scheme.”
“I want to make it very clear ... between the pensioner rise and paid parental leave scheme we are talking about expenditure of more than $50 billion over the next 10 years. That’s a lot of money. The question (then) at the forefront of my mind was ‘Are they affordable?’,” Ms Gillard said.
“I believe that is the appropriate approach to take. I understand that some might say if you don’t sign on the dotted line that somehow you lack passion for it. Frankly, that analysis is ridiculous and absurd. So, if people want a prime minister who has $50 billion spending put before them and sign it without question, I am not it. The central thing to ask is: are they affordable?” she said.
UPDATE 7
Gillard is asked directly if she jibbed against the pension increase on the grounds that they voted Liberal. She flat out denies it.
She is asked whether she resisted the parental leave scheme because stay-at-home mums resented it and older women no longer wanted it. She mocks the idea without directly rejecting it.
UPDATE 8
Apologies. Oakes wasn’t the only one to get the latest leak. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher was handed the identical information with the identical spin, clearly by the same source or his agent:
JULIA GILLARD privately argued against the generosity of two of the Rudd government’s major increases in welfare payments.Mark Latham has had something to say about Hartcher’s most popular source, too:
In public, Ms Gillard has been happy to share credit for the decisions to give more cash for age pensions and parental leave.
But in the inner sanctum of the government, she tried to cut the size of the pension rise and wanted to kill the idea of paid parental leave altogether, telling cabinet colleagues it was being pursued because it was politically correct, according to figures familiar with the debates.
As deputy prime minister, Ms Gillard argued that a big rise in the age pension was excessive because ‘’old people never vote for us’’, the sources said.
She was overruled and 3 million aged pensioners received the rise in last year’s budget.
And she was happy to boast about the decision in the televised leaders’ debate on Sunday. ‘’We did a major increase in the pension, to help older Australians particularly, with the pressures that are on them,’’ she said.
A DEFINING feature of Rudd’s prime ministership was his constant briefing of Hartcher on the behind-the-scenes processes behind big decisions, invariably to glorify his own contribution. As one caucus wag told me earlier this year, “Kevin doesn’t change his underpants these days without telling Hartcher about it.”UPDATE 9
Whoever is leaking has Labor MPs paranoid and at each other’s throats. Tony Wright makes clear that retiring Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, a Left winger disgusted with Gillard’s supporters, is now under suspicion:
While many suspect an embittered Kevin Rudd or his supporters are somehow behind the leaks, senior Labor MPs and officials privately believe this is far too neat and convenient…===
One theory is that enemies of Rudd are working far behind the scenes to place him in the frame - and thus destroy any chance he might have of returning to a senior frontbench position, as promised by Gillard. The theory continues that two or more ambitious Labor MPs are planting leaks that would appear to come from Rudd… One current minister and one less senior Labor MP are suspected by those who place credence in this theory…
The other conspiracy theory under quiet inquiry is that a very senior minister wants to expose Ms Gillard as hypocritical, arguing positions behind closed doors that are far from her old leftist views, and then publicly embracing social policies that others fought for.
The strength of this theory is that only a very senior minister would be privy to conversations during high-level decision-making on such issues as paid parental leave and pension increases.
Its weakness is that such a figure would hardly put in jeopardy the government they serve. It could destroy their own career.
But what if such a figure was so unimpressed by Ms Gillard - and perhaps didn’t mind if Kevin Rudd got the blame - that they had decided their political career was no longer worth pursuing, anyway?
Flannery forgets to add he’d gain from what he’s selling
Andrew Bolt
The Age chooses warming alarmist Tim Flannery as one of 10 “leading Australians” to lead “an informed debate about our future”. So Flannery writes:
I have long argued that we should develop a city in the Cooper Basin — a Geothermia — as a hub for minerals processing dependent entirely on clean renewable energy.There are two things that, yet again, are missing from Flannery’s spruiking of geothermal power and this particular site. First, he is an investor in the geothermal test plant in the Cooper Basin, and, second, his plant has been crippled by technological difficulties. As I noted when I interviewed him on MTR:
Bolt: You’re an investor in geothermal technology , aren’t you?===
Flannery: Yeah, I am. Indeed.
Bolt: How come you don’t declare that.
Flannery: Well, I’ve just done it.
Bolt: You just did because I told you. You said that geothermal , which you are in investor of, you’ve got a plant, you’ve invested in a plant in Innamincka and you said the technology was really easy. How come that plant....
Flannery: Not really that easy.
Bolt: Well, yes. It’s actually had technological difficulties and it’s been delayed two years because it’s not that easy, after all, is it?
Abbott trumps Gillard’s tax cut
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott knocks out Labor’s best economic pitch of the campaign - which was that the Labor, unlike the Liberals, would cut business tax.
Abbott today says he’ll cut business tax not by Labor’s 1 per cent, but by 1.5 per cent.
He’s on a roll this week.
UPDATE
TONY Abbott has emphatically moved to underline the Coalition’s claim to be the party of small business by trumping Labor with the promise of a company tax rate cut.===
The 1.5 per cent cut would take the company tax rate to 28.5 per cent as at July 1, 2013, half a percentage point less than that being promised by Labor, and would cost $2.55 billion…
Coalition sources said the timing was partly designed to show voters that while Labor unity was crumbling, the Coalition was moving ahead with new policy plans.
Women’s Weekly campaigns for Gillard, despite its one admission
Andrew Bolt
Women’s Weekly, headed by the Left-leaning Helen McCabe, gives Julia Gillard a 13-page advertorial:Julia Gillard has a welcome free kick in the election campaign today, gracing the cover of the August edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly and making a direct appeal to the magazine’s estimated 2.2 million readers.McCabe’s writer makes clear the magazine’s collective position from the start:
It’s handy timing, hitting the newsstands on the same day newspapers are reporting of damaging leaks emerging from within Labor, claiming the Prime Minister was opposed to parts of Labor’s paid parental leave scheme…
But enough of all that - the Weekly has a 13-page spread and 4000-word article featuring Ms Gillard chatting about her politics and her personal life.
So, while we wanted to rejoice (at Gillard becoming prime minister) and while we wanted to mark the moment and support the sisterhood by celebrating her promotion, first of all, we wanted to know just a little bit more about her.And everyone who’s anyone in the Gillard fan club is interviewed - her parents, sister, best friend, former lover and friend, and Cheryl Kernot. (Boyfriend Tim Mathieson is yet again mysteriously absent.)
The photos are gorgeous, and, despite McCabe’s protests that they are untouched, a naughty cleavage has been workshopped out and some skin tones have been balanced.
The single negative for Gillard comes only on the very last of the 13 pages, when the Weekly mentions what almost every journalist will not - that Gillard had a two-year relationship with fellow Minister Craig Emerson, even though he was married with three children:When asked if Craig was still married when their relationship began, Julia replies: “That’s really a set of issues between Craig and his wife that I really wouldn’t want to canvas...”A very significant issue for many women, I’d have thought, but the Weekly buries it as deep as it can in what’s otherwise a paen of praise.
The state of Craig Emerson’s marriage at the time, specifically whether he was separated or otherwise estranged from his wife prior to starting the relationship with Julia, is not known.
Compare that effort to the much shorter and less lovingly illustrated profile of Tony Abbott written for the Weekly by McCabe herself back in February, well clear of any election campaign, and stuffed with quotes from critics to make the Liberal leader seem anti-female:
But let’s begin with the Women Weekly’s opening message to readers. Editor-and-Chief Helen McCabe types (p.9):UPDATESo, does he [Abbott] have a problem with women? I don’t think so, but there are certainly women who have a problem with him. I suspect the profile (see page 18) won’t change anyone’s opinion about Tony Abbott, but I hope it sheds some light on the alternative prime minister, as we prepare to go [sic] the polls again this year.Apparently, Rudd is loved by all.
Still, the article is suspiciously political for a supposed neutral magazine. Just listing Abbott’s various positions on (a) abortion – a controversial topic; (b) contraception – a controversial topic; (c) sex before marriage – a controversial topic; (d) “gay marriage” – a controversial topic; (e) IVF for same-sex couples – a controversial topic; (f) piercings – a controversial topic; (g) alcohol – a controversial topic; (h) drugs – a controversial topic….and so on….looks like Catholic-baiting.
Now I’m not certain if The Australian Women’s Weekly is The Labor Party’s Women’s Weekly, but I wonder if Rudd’s various positions have been scrutinised in a similar fashion. So have they?
Bizarrely, the negative words of an unnamed blogger and comments on other so-called women’s websites are used to stress the point: Catholic Abbott is a divisive figure. And we read some anti-Abbott points from the seasonal vegetarian, Mia Freedman, a politically-correct blogger.
Do you think McCabe, given 13 pages to play with, might have found room for just one mention of our Prime Minister’s record? Just one mention, for instance, of the rort-riddled Building the Education Revolution spendathon?
UPDATE 2
Meanwhile, over at the ABC’s taxpayer-funded website The Drum, a pro-Labor outlet edited by Howard-hater Jonathan Green, it’s the same matey group-think:
THE ABC has admitted it should have disclosed links between members of a judging panel and Sustainable Population Minister Tony Burke.(Thanks to reader Max.)
The broadcaster used the panel to assess the televised leaders’ election debate
A seven-person panel of debating experts scored the debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott 7-0 for the Prime Minister.
Two members of the panel that rated the debate for the ABC’s commentary website The Drum, Ray D’Cruz and Ben Richards, founded a public speaking consultancy, Aticus Pty Ltd, with Mr Burke in 1997.
Mr Burke acknowledged Mr D’Cruz and Mr Richards in his maiden speech in parliament in 2004.
===
Another Labor “stimulus”: too late, too much and too rorted
Andrew Bolt
Last year’s recession threat was actually just an excuse for yet another Labor splash-up:JULIA Gillard has been forced to defend her government against allegations of pork-barrelling after a damning audit report found a key part of its stimulus program favoured Labor electorates and was delivered too late to protect the economy from the global financial crisis.Much as Gillard’s rort-ridden Building the Education Revolution spendathon is still spending billions to stop a recession which was meant to hit last and is now long gone. But the bottom line here:
The Auditor-General’s report on the $550 million strategic projects part of the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program ...(shows) the approval rate for these projects in Labor-held seats was 42.1 per cent, while the corresponding figure for Coalition seats was 18.4 per cent.UPDATE
Back to rorts over which Gillard herself directly presided, and finally stories of massive waste in the Building the Education Revolution are being uncovered in Victoria, too - this time involving rorts to benefit union:
BUILDERS, architects, councils and school principals have delivered a damning report card on Julia Gillard’s school building program in her home state, including allegations of rorting, long delays, inflated costs and inept management.Then there’s this accident - which can’t be blamed on Gillard, yet seems dangerously symbolic:
A Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the implementation of the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution program has revealed for the first time the extent of the discontent among Victorian principals.
More than 50 submissions were made to the Education and Training Committee inquiry—initiated by opposition parties in the upper house—in which schools raised complaints about being kept in the dark, extensive delays over projects, and not knowing whether they were getting value for money, because the Victorian government has refused to release project costs to the public…
Building companies and architects raised concerns about the program failing to use local tradesmen and stimulate regional economies, management of the projects being taken out of the schools’ hands and builders losing thousands of dollars while construction sites lay empty waiting for planning permits… (A) major building company hired to carry out works on 33 schools told the inquiry that construction costs were inflated and the building permit fees were “considerably higher than we normally pay”.
BDH Constructions managing director Henry Bongers said: “The designs of most of the templates would be some of the most expensive we have been involved with on a square-metre basis mainly due to the shapes and structural design."…
Another builder, Vaughan Constructions, described as “rorting” the practice of bundling individual projects into a single, large contract to enable workers to be paid an additional hourly site allowance....
The Masters Builders Association of Victoria also expressed concerns about the cost of building permits, which it says blew out to four times greater than normal in Western Victoria....
Bannockburn Primary School council president Les Rowe wrote in his school’s submission: “Our building is to be the same size as a school portable yet is costed at least three times this amount.”
A building frame for a $1 million outdoor learning centre in southern New South Wales has come tumbling down.===
The structure collapsed at Kooringal Public School in Wagga Wagga yesterday. The building project is funded under the Federal government’s Building the Education Revolution (BER) scheme.
Why does being green hurt so much?
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann on the mad greening of Victorian Premier John Brumby:
John Brumby has declared war on every Victorian.===
He now wants to triple your power bills to go with the soaring cost of your water. The first, thanks to the promise to close part of the Hazelwood power station. The second, because of the government’s decision to go for high-cost - and energy-intensive - desalination over a new dam.
That’s of course if you could actually get the power and water. Because a Brumby future will guarantee brown-outs and black-outs, as the state’s traditionally safe and cheap power is sacrificed on the Dark Green altar of ‘climate change’…
Brumby has committed his government to the utterly pointless task of cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent in just 10 years.
Apart from the rather basic fact that is literally impossible unless he was prepared to actually cut off power - to turn the state ‘North Korean dark’. There is no way you could build ‘alternative’ energy in that time…
A 20 per cent cut in the state’s emissions is actually a 40 per cent cut in our per capita emissions, given our likely population growth.
How is this supposed to be achieved? By closing a quarter of Hazelwood and ‘providing’ all our future power growth with wind and solar. Especially, it seems solar - Brumby wants Victoria to become the ‘solar state’.
Now solar is even more useless and at least four times as costly as wind. Indeed in comparison it makes wind look almost like reliable base-load power.
Wicked witch
Andrew Bolt
There’s a lot more of them about, as we retreat from reason. This latest witch is from Geelong:A “WITCH” told a traffic cop she was above the law because she was “from another world” before dragging him at high speed down a busy street…(Do not comment on this case, please. De Avalon has pleaded guilty to various charges, including recklessly causing serious injury, dangerous driving and driving while suspended, but still awaits sentencing.)
De Avalon, 40, a marriage celebrant who is also a self-confessed witch from the Geelong suburb of Highton, had initially been stopped after she was seen using a mobile phone.
“When asked to produce her driver’s licence, De Avalon replied that she did not have one,” Sen-Constable Lamb said.
“When asked why not, she said, ‘I’m a being from another world and don’t require one.’ When asked to state her name and address De Avalon replied, ‘I have a universal name that is not recognised here’.”
Sen-Constable Lamb said that when asked for ID, De Avalon said, “Your laws and penalties don’t apply to me. I’m not accepting them, I’m sorry, I must go, thank you.
So many witches do we now have that a local newsagency stocks two magazines to cater to them:
===The real car wreck is Gillard’s bucks for bombs
Andrew Bolt
ALL you need know about Julia Gillard’s “cash for clunkers” promise is that it’s another green scheme.
Forget for a second the preposterous details of the Prime Minister’s plan to pay motorists $2000 for their junk-on-wheels if they promise to buy a new green car instead.
No real need to know more, since you’ve been bitten so often by such green pets that you must know you’re about to be chomped again.
After all, with every government it’s the same. If it’s sold as green, it will cost more than they say, deliver less than they promise, and will probably be riddled with rorts to boot.
Think of the Rudd Government’s insulation batts fiasco, sold as a green fix to global warming, only to become a honey pot for every con artist from Karachi to Bondi.
Think of the Green Loans scheme or the solar hot water rebates - both scrapped, too, after being rorted until we bled.
Same deal at a state level. Think of those monstrous wind farms, producing less green electricity than advertised, and so spasmodically that the nation’s entire wind-generated power supply at times falls to near zero.
Or think of Victoria’s desalination plant, sold as the green alternative to a dam, yet costing taxpayers not the first-advertised $3.1 billion but since-admitted $5.7 billion - four times the price of a dam for just a third of the water.
Or take the collapse of the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme, drained of millions by carpetbaggers who pushed boxes of free low-energy light bulbs and low-flow shower nozzles on to don’t-care customers to cash in on the fists full of over-priced abatement certificates they got in exchange.
Just why green schemes are so prone to flop or be fleeced is no coincidence. The word “green” - or “sustainable” - is like holy water. Sprinkle it on a sinner and even the greatest con man becomes redeemed.
It then becomes almost evil to question the sales pitch, or do the most basic value for money check.
And so we now see, with Gillard’s cash-for-clunkers, a promise so absurd that this one election promise should disqualify her from the management of our $1 trillion-a-year economy.
Let’s check it out, so you can gain an insight into the irrationality of the green faith, and the tragic idiocy of our times that such things become key election promises.
===
The return of DIY moralism
Andrew Bolt
THERE is, thank God, one promise in this dead-hearted election to lift the heart of every serious moralist.
By “serious”, I don’t mean the kind of moralists who now plague us in their tens of thousands, demanding more from others than they give themselves.
You know the sort. They’re the ones who go to free Make Poverty History concerts to demand taxpayers give to Africa what they themselves wouldn’t even fork out for the band.
They’re the ones who paid nothing for the Live Earth concerts where they screamed for the rest of us to cut down on the petrol they wasted to get there and on the electricity the musos needed by the megawatt for their amps.
These are the “awareness raisers” and finger-waggers whose fast track to sweatless goodness lies in denouncing everyone else as evil.
So it was with relief I heard Opposition Leader Tony Abbott make a small offer to noisier elements of this damn-everyone-else-but-me crowd.
The refugee activists so keen to deplore fellow citizens as heartless and racist will, under the Liberals, be given the chance to prove how morally superior they truly are - not by mere words, but louder deeds.
Abbott will let them sponsor the entry of an extra 1250 refugees, provided they stump up a bond to guarantee their guests will pay their own way.
Now that would make such moralisers serious indeed. Or show them not to be.
Abbott isn’t the first to think of such a wheeze, of course. Queensland’s Bligh Government last year called out the kind of greens who blithely demand the rest of us light our homes with nothing more than fireflies.
From now on, Premier Anna Bligh sweetly suggested, such noble people could, if they wished, demonstrate the way to utopia by making the tiniest of sacrifices of their own.
===
Another job for the First Bloke?
Andrew Bolt
Experts claim Julia Gillard’s $277 million mental health package, unveiled yesterday, won’t help that many people:The Rudd government’s former mental health adviser John Mendoza called it “a scattergun approach that will not really change the fundamentals"… Australian of the Year and mental health advocate Patrick McGorry said Ms Gillard “just seems to have contacted the same old advisers and rolled out a policy that is just a drop in the ocean”. University of Adelaide professor of psychiatry Jon Jureidini said the plan to send outreach teams to schools affected by suicide could be harmful.But one person, at least, may get something out of it - Gillard’s boyfriend, Tim Mathieson, the hairdresser who has already been appointed a men’s health ambassador by Labor’s Health Minister:
Later, after Ms Gillard announced her mental health policy, The Australian asked if Mr Mathieson would have a role in its implementation, considering the focus would be on men’s health.Would any hairdresser in this country not married to Gillard be considered for such a job?
“Tim’s in a position to give an ordinary person’s perspective about these issues,” she said.
“You can get a man who is not a doctor or a researcher or someone with a big title but (you need) someone who can go along and get some other men talking about health issues.”
But Ms Gillard said the mental health policy had not been “put together because I see any role for Tim”.
===
Talking themselves into a dislike of Gillard
Andrew Bolt
The more they talk about the new Prime Minister on talkback, the more fault they find:
Gillard’s popularity among listeners, her “favourability” as measured by Media Monitors, has been falling since early this month and the chart here indicates it could be something of a leading indicator to the reversal in the polls witnessed in Newspoll this week.Gillard isn’t helping herself on talkback, either. Alan Jones and Gillard on 2GB yesterday:
”After a brief two-week honeymoon on talkback radio, the overall favourability of calls has been steadily dropping for the Prime Minister, from a neutral 50/100 down to a moderately unfavourable 45/100 within three weeks,” says Media Monitors analyst Patrick Baume.
JONES: Tell my listeners when the company tax rate will go, for business, to 28c in the dollar?===
Gillard: Alan, just one second, I’m describing it to you --
Jones: No, I don’t need a description. I just want to know when it will go to 28c in the dollar?
Gillard: It will go to 29c in the dollar in 2012 and then what we’ve said --
Jones: No it won’t. I’ll answer the question for you so that we can get on to something else. Your budget papers say, quote, “taxing mining super profits fairly through the resource super profits tax means we can afford to cut the company tax rate in two stages to 29 per cent in 2013-14 and 28 per cent in 2014-15.” That’s what it says.
Go play with your child instead
Andrew Bolt
Most forms of harm minimisation seem to condone what they should condemn. Take this latest:
CHILDREN will be able watch their parents gamble after the regulator gave approval for a pokies venue to build a special play area with a view of the action… The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation has given the Pink Hill Hotel permission for the children’s playroom to “be fully enclosed with soundproof glass so that children are visible to parents from the gaming room or bistro”.I had no idea they were the only two options.
VCGR executive commissioner Peter Cohen said it was better to have children inside the venue than being left outside in a car.
The soundproof glass is a nice touch. Wouldn’t want the gamblers distracted by cries for Mummy.
===
Better late…
Andrew Bolt
Nine years after the September 11 attacks, Frances declares war on al Qaeda:
FRANCE has declared war on al-Qaeda, and matched its fighting words with a first attack on a base camp of the terror network’s North African branch, after the terror network killed a French humanitarian worker it took hostage in April.
The declaration and attack marked a shift in strategy for France, usually discrete about its behind-the-scenes battle against terrorism.
“We are at war with al-Qaeda,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said today, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau…
On Friday, the French backed Mauritanian forces in attacking an al-Qaeda camp on the border with Mali, killing at least six suspected terrorists. Experts confirmed it was the first attack outside Algeria on an al-Qaeda base, and the first known time France has taken part.
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