Close-Up Footage of Mavi Marmara Passengers Attacking IDF Soldiers

You can see it here. Okay, the result that organisers of the so-called "humanitarian" relief convoy for Gaza so dearly wanted has eventuated. Let's be quite clear here. This was a planned and manufactured event. Both Israel and Egypt had offered to the organisers the use of one of their ports with an absolute guarantee that, once checked for weapons, all the cargo would be transported to Gaza. But that didn't suit the real reasons why the flotilla was planned and the offers were rejected. And let's clear something else up here. It is not an "Israeli" blockade of Gaza. It is an Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Gaza's southern border isn't with Israel, it is with Egypt. There can be no Israeli blockade of Gaza as such for the simple reason that Israel does not control that part of the border and goods and services could pass into Gaza freely if Egypt wished it so. So a couple of questions for you: why does the media almost without exception persist in only referring to "Israel's blockade" when this is clearly not true, and why does Gaza's Arab neighbour also feel that a blockade is necessary? Dare I suggest that it may have something to do with the insane religious fascists and fundamentalists from Hamas? And indeed, as you can see from this YouTube video , large amounts of food, medical and other supplies actually move from Israel into Gaza all the time. Even the "blockade" is not much of a blockade. Now, apart from the disturbing growth of virulent anti-Semitism on the political Left, including even the revival of the Blood Libel* against the Jews, part of the reason for the totally biased and unbalanced treatment of Israel stems from the fact that the Left likes to see things in simplistic terms of good versus evil. It loves a "victim" that it can then lavish total devotion upon. The chosen victim can do no wrong and is absolved completely of responsibility for its own actions. So Hamas calls for the Jews to be driven into the sea, promotes the most vile of racist stereotypes about Jews and fires rockets at civilian targets in Israel and the reaction of the Left, (and thus most of the media), is to either ignore these things or to make excuses for them. You see, the Palestinians are the "victims," and thus must be protected from the consequences of what they choose to do. So the obsessive focus comes onto the other side that has been marked as "evil." This side of course can do no right and its motives are always malign. So we see again and again this scenario playing itself out - after endless violent and vicious provocations Israel strikes back at its attackers, only to be condemned by "enlightened" opinion in the West. A disturbing question lying behind all of this is why so many on the political Left have chosen to throw their lot in with religious crazies in the Middle East who stand against everything they say they believe in. Free and open societies? Forget it. Women's rights? What rights? A woman is effectively the property of her husband. Gay and lesbian rights? Well, they have a right to be stoned to death or have walls collapsed on them or to be thrown from the roofs of tall buildings. (So it is no surprise that so many young gay and lesbian Palestinians try to enter Israel to escape this fate because - let's just think about this shall we - it is against the law in Israel to persecute homosexuals.) So there is a country in the Middle East that protects even the rights of Palestinians living illegally within its borders, is a genuine democracy that lets its Arab citizens vote and which is a free, modern and open society more like ours, and yet which is subject to the most remorseless and dishonest vilification by so-called progressives here. Something doesn't quite add up here does it? *Traditionally the Jews were falsely accused of killing Christian children so that their blood could be used to make matzah, despite the fact that Judaism strictly forbids the consumption of blood, which is of course one of the chief concerns of kosher butchering, ie that not only is the blood drained from the animal, but that as many blood vessels are removed as possible. Today, this lie has been revived with lurid stories about how Israel, that is the Jews, traffics the organs of Palestinian children. This absurd fabrication even made its way onto Swedish television.

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Eating Processed Meats May Raise Risk of Heart Disease and Diabetes?

Dr John Ray comments: This is rubbish. You can get anything you want out of a meta-analysis and the fact that the conclusions below were based on only 20 out of 1600 relevant studies certainly facilitates that. Biased selection of what to include is the bane of meta-analyses. I have seen it at work in my own field -- where "awkward" results were ignored. Furthermore, a meta-anaysis of epidemiological conclusions is just tells you what the usual assumptions are, nothing more. They do have the grace below to admit that they have NOT established cause and effect but then go on to talk as if they have! I wonder how many of the studies they used controlled for social class? That is the big blind spot in most epidemiology Another huge blind spot that certainly applies here is the decision to look at just one or two diseases in isolation. Something that increases one sort of disease may decrease the risk of another disease. So overall mortality is what we need to know and that is seldom looked at. And it would seem likely that the researchers DID have data on many diseases among meat-eaters. Did they just pick out the diseases that suited their demonization of processed meats? Were some other diseases REDUCED among eaters of processed meats? What a crock! The rest here

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Michelle Grattan praises Liberal backbenchers for supporting failed policies!

When Grattan’s highest admiration is reserved for just that handful Liberals who attack their own party, I think we know where she stands. It’s also telling that she apparently considers “outspoken” to be a praise-word reserved for Liberals who defy Liberals, rather than Liberals who defy the collective mindset of the Canberra press gallery. And why is this analytical template almost never applied to Labor? Where is Grattan’s fuming against the “incorporated” Labor frontbenchers who would “sell their grandmother for the chance of office” and are “saying what they (presumably) don’t believe” about global warming, Rudd’s mad super tax, or the damage Rudd has done to our bonds with Israel? Why doesn’t the silence of Martin Ferguson, Steve Controy, Gary Gray, Craig Emerson and the rest have Grattan “assaulting the TV set”?

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Head of the Royal Society now admits that case for man-made global warming exaggerated

Andrew Bolt: Very, very belatedly we see scientific bodies now endorsing what sceptical non-scientists have tried to warn of for years. In Australia: Australia’s former chief scientist, Professor Robin Batterham, is embroiled in a bitter dispute over climate change within one of the nation’s elite science academies. As president of the peer-elected Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Professor Batterham faces demands by members to drop plans for the academy to issue a policy statement supporting climate sceptics… A two-page draft, posted on a password-protected section of the academy’s website, said the academy ‘’does not believe the science is settled’’ regarding climate change. In Britain: The most prestigious group of scientists in the country was forced to act after fellows complained that doubts over man made global warming were not being communicated to the public… Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, admitted that the case for man-made global warming has been exaggerated in the past. He emphasised that the basic science remains sound but agreed to issue guidance so that it better reflects the uncertainties. “Climate change is a hugely important issue but the public debate has all too often been clouded by exaggeration and misleading information,” he said… The Royal Society will look again at the public communications on climate change after 43 fellows complained that so far the message has not reflected the uncertainty in the debate. (Thanks to reader elsie.) UPDATE The (Royal Society) appears to have conceded that it needs to correct previous statements. It said: “Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect — there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements.” This contradicts a comment by the society’s previous president, Lord May, who was once quoted as saying: “The debate on climate change is over.” ... Sir Alan Rudge, a society Fellow and former member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee, is one of the leaders of the rebellion who gathered signatures on a petition sent to Lord Rees, the society president. He told The Times that the society had adopted an “unnecessarily alarmist position” on climate change.

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Why Man-Made Global Warming is a load of cobblers; Pt 1

The irrepressible James Delingpole unloads: Just been reading Climate: The Counter Consensus (Stacey International) the new book by Bob Carter – that’s New Zealand’s Professor Robert M Carter to you, mate: he’s one of the world’s leading palaeoclimatologists – and it’s a cracker. By the end, you’re left feeling rather as I did after the Heartland Conference, that the scientific case against AGW is so overwhelming that you wonder how anyone can still speak up for so discredited a theory without dying of embarrassment.   All the same, it’s good to be reminded now and again why the “consensus” thinking on AGW simply doesn’t stand up.

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Oh, I'm missing him alright :(

Andrew Bolt

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The maddest thing about Palin is her critics

Palin Derangement Syndrome is detected yet again. Sarah Palin is now monstered by the Left for failing to have “used her children to launch a p.r. campaign against Oxford House” - the place next door which once housed recovering alcholics and addicts. Oh, and she should put up with a creepy writer who has now hired the house so he can spy on his latest subject and her children from the verandah. Andrew Bolt

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Rudd on advertising "you have my absolute guarantee that will occur - 100 per cent guarantee"

Not just the most incompetent government in recent memory, the most dishonest and deceitful as well. Barrie Cassidy holds a liar to account for deciding to spend $38 million on taxpayer-funded ads arguing for his super profits tax: In opposition, in an interview with Kerry O’Brien (video here), Kevin Rudd promised he would ban all publicly funded advertising within three months of an election - “unless explicitly agreed between the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition. O’Brien: “Is that what you will promise to do in a Labour government?” Rudd: “That is an absolute undertaking from us. I believe this is a sick cancer within our system. It’s a cancer on democracy.” Then in a later doorstop interview, he guaranteed he would have a process in place run by the auditor-general to vet these advertisements. A journalist asked: “Would you resign if you didn’t deliver that in your first term?” Rudd: “… you have my absolute guarantee that will occur - 100 per cent guarantee. And each one of you here can hold me accountable for that.” Well he did put the auditor-general in charge in his first year; then replaced him in his third year. Now the advertisements are flowing thick and fast... It’s a few months since I described the Rudd Government as the most deceitful in living memory. Many of those who didn't believe me then will believe me now. Yes, the most deceitful. And now corrupt. Much more here.

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Cave data shows long term temperature trend over past 5,000 years

As the author says, "we are currently at the cold end of the Holocene (the current interglacial)." And that I think is the real worry. More here.

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Greek crisis probably sounds the death knell for the European social model

Moreover, the introduction of a common currency was meant to lead to the United States of Europe, a federation of a peculiar kind. What European elites chose to ignore was the fact Europe is not a nation, a demos, in a way that its member states are. European politicians calling now for more European solidarity are trying to engineer a European welfare state that is bound to fail. In fact, the inescapable, if not imminent, collapse of the eurozone is the harbinger of the collapse of the widely celebrated European social model. The crisis in Greece has exposed its electorate's excessive reliance on a paternalistic state, a phenomenon not limited to Greece. If it proved difficult to finance the European social model within nation-states, it is even less likely to succeed through a massive Europe-wide redistribution.

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You cannot lead from your table at the pub

Proof of a government culture of process, not leadership - and I’d doubt it’s limited to these individuals: AS Victoria burned on Black Saturday in Australia’s worst peacetime disaster, none of those who were in command showed any real leadership, but instead were passive, as though they were “powerless, behind the glass, unable or unwilling to influence or attempt to influence the tragedy that was unfolding”. There was a bewildering and lamentable lack of leadership, said counsel assisting the bushfires royal commission Jack Rush, in a brutal final submission that eviscerated the reputations of former police chief Christine Nixon, Country Fire Authority chief Russell Rees and the state’s senior emergency services personnel. No one at the top level distinguished themselves, Mr Rush said, as communities were engulfed by fire, often without warning, leaving 173 people dead. Not Ms Nixon, who knew when she went out for a pub meal that the state was facing a disaster; nor Mr Rees, who was divorced from fundamental aspects of his responsibilities. Ewan Waller, chief fire officer of the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and senior CFA officers Geoff Conway and Steve Warrington all failed to ensure clear and timely warnings reached communities, he said. Mr Rush said those who oversaw the disaster at the Integrated Emergency Co-ordination Centre adopted a passive management style, lacking in initiative, almost without exception, and took the position that “it was not my responsibility”. Rush gives a rather good lecture on leadership: In comments clearly directed at Ms Nixon, Mr Rush said: “Command demands a presence both to inform and, if necessary, reassure and inspire. Leadership and command is not exercised by a retreat to so-called co-ordination, or to broad oversight. Leadership and command is not exercised by being available, if necessary, at the end of a telephone. It is unacceptable, in the submission of counsel assisting, that at the height of the fire and emergency, as people sought refuge in CFA sheds, at ovals, on main streets, as others fought, many in vain, to save themselves and their families, that those at the apex of the legislative structure in this state were not present, actively on duty, exercising and showing leadership by their presence at this critical time. “This removal of responsibility and accountability is heightened by the fact that there was a clear knowledge of the disaster that was to come. “In our submission, no excuse or spin can justify what we say is a removal from the responsibility at the very hour of crisis.” Andrew Bolt

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CEI files suit on GISS (NASA) regarding FOIA delays

From The American Spectator: CEI Suing NASA Over Climate Stonewall By Chris Horner This morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is filing suit against NASA, calling the erstwhile space agency to account for its nearly three-year stonewall of access to internal documents exposing an abuse of taxpayer funds to advance the global warming agenda. Along the way to this point, we have begun revealing how NASA is running a third-party advocacy website out of NASA facilities, at taxpayer expense, to assail “skeptics” and promote the highly suspect basis for a specific policy agenda. Full post here

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Royal Society to review climate consensus position

“I don’t think they were very pleased. I don’t think this sort of thing has been done before in the history of the society.” Society to review climate message By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst, BBC News There is debate over “feedback” effects on the climate. The UK’s Royal Society is reviewing its public statements on climate change after 43 Fellows complained that it had oversimplified its messages. They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood. From Watts Up With That?

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Oh, so it's kinder to entice 160 refugees to drown at sea? Your "kindness" is killing people!

This is the problem with witless moral poseurs who think their emotions are facts. Andrew Bolt: Oh, the outrage at Tony Abbott’s new plan to stop the trade in boat people: Immigration Minister Chris Evans has described the Coalition’s asylum seeker policy as a ”grab bag of prejudices” that will punish those seeking refuge and not stop people smuggling… The return to a policy similar to the Howard government’s so-called Pacific solution has also been attacked by refugee advocates as well as Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry… Senator Evans has accused the Coalition of wanting to punish people seeking asylum and of “whipping up public fear”.  He also described the promise to return to temporary protection visas as “a cruel hoax"… Amnesty International’s Australian director, Claire Mallinson, says the Opposition’s policy shows political self-interest is being put above human rights. But, oh, the silence at the deaths of those lured here by Kevin Rudd’s more “humane” policies: SENIOR government officials have privately conceded that a refugee boat that disappeared late last year en route to Australia probably sank, resulting in the loss of more than 100 men, women and children. Speaking to a Senate estimates committee, Customs and Border Protection chief Michael Carmody said authorities had “credible information” the boat set out for Australia from Indonesia about October 2 last year. The boat, if it existed, has not been seen since. Mr Carmody said it was possible the boat had returned to Indonesia. But privately officials have told The Australian it is far more likely the boat sank, resulting in the loss of all aboard. Relatives of those on board the vessel have so far heard nothing, suggesting those on board are dead. Add those deaths to the 59 I’ve counted already, with refugee activists saying next to nothing about the great lure that had these people taking again to the boats. In fact, the argument for temporary protection visas has never been stronger. The Rudd Government itself has made the case for them by freezing asylum seeker applications from Sri Lankans as it became clear that they are fleeing from not much any more, now that the civil war ended a year ago. Circumstances have changed, and many of the Sri Lankans now in custody find their chances of staying here - even under Rudd - are now much less. That’s the argument for TPVs, right there.

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Australia has a long-standing tradition of providing passports to overseas intelligence agencies

Andrew Bolt: As if anyone doubted the bleeding obvious: AUSTRALIAN security agencies use false passports issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs to allow covert operatives to function overseas, intelligence sources have admitted. Following the admission by the Deputy Opposition Leader, Julie Bishop, about Australian use of fake passports, sources confirmed Australia has a long-standing tradition of providing passports to overseas intelligence agencies. These countries are within the ‘’Western intelligence club’’ - specifically Britain, the United States, New Zealand and Canada, sources confirm. While the government has leapt upon Ms Bishop’s comments, accusing her of a grievous breach of national security, sources within the intelligence community have confirmed she merely made public an inconvenient truth. The question is, if we supply fake passports to the spies of friendly countries, why not supply some to Israel? [Especially if they are using them to do good things like killing the human garbage that is Hamas?] But what a fake outrage we’ve seen from Labor and its friends over Biship’s “gaffe”. Now back to the real point: why the Rudd Government’s massive overreaction to the use by Israel of fake Australian passports? How much has this to do with wooing Muslim nations for votes for Kevin Rudd’s bid for a UN Security Council seat?

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Reasons Not To Be Fearful - Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist

From Greenie Watch: Dominic Lawson reviews a book: What can the publishers of this book have been thinking? Surely everyone knows that the surest path into the bestseller charts for popular-science writers has always been to prophesy imminent doom for humanity. Fifty years ago bookshops couldn’t sell enough hysterical potboilers about how we would all starve as a result of overpopulation; then, in the 1970s, the fad was for tomes on how we would run out of energy resources; in the 1980s “acid rain” was the overhyped danger, complete with artists’ impressions of annihilated forests. In the last decade of the 20th century, the “millennium bug” was the publishers’ bogey du jour. Now global warming is the latest apparently existential threat to every man, woman and child on earth, born or unborn. Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, in glorious contrast, tells us what we really should want to hear: that the human species, through our unique ability to exchange ideas and thus innovate at the speed of thought, has overcome all the challenges that have ever confronted us, and will do so in future. Ridley’s particular contribution is to combine the insights of Adam Smith (how all benefit through trade and the specialisation of functions) with those of Darwin (how species evolve through breeding). Ridley calls this “ideas having sex” and the characteristic of the modern interconnected world is that ideas are having it away with each other with ever-increasing frequency: “The telephone had sex with the computer and spawned the internet.” There are many important people who don’t want to hear the good news, who see globalisation and uncontrolled trade as a threat to everything they hold dear. They include our national Eeyore, Prince Charles, and his landowner chums of the Soil Association, who say that what they call “sustainability” can only be achieved through self-sufficiency and a rejection of agricultural science. As Ridley observes, based on a whirlwind tour of every sort of society at every point in history, self-sufficiency is just a posh word for poverty: the two are inseparable. It is, of course, those furthest from starvation who find this fact hardest to appreciate. More HERE

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Chomsky and Holocaust Deniers, Again

From Harry's Place: Chomsky famously defended the neo Nazi Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, by describing him as “a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort”. He did so, despite the fact that Faurisson’s drift into extremism and racism was no secret, and had been explained to him by Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Now, Chomsky has found himself in another pickle. Asharq Al-Awsat reports that he attended the inauguration of a Hezbollah Museum. At that inauguration, Hezbollah supremo Hasan Nasrallah denied the Holocaust: After Sunday’s visit to Sojod, the students were taken to a newly inaugurated Hezbollah war museum in the nearby village of Mlita, replete with war booty captured from Israeli soldiers and their Lebanese militia allies and a memorial for the group’s dead. “We hope this tourist jihadi center will be a first step toward preserving the history of our heroic resistance,” Nasrallah told supporters via video link at Friday’s inauguration of the Mlita museum. In a nod to Hezbollah’s rivals, Nasrallah cited Israeli Holocaust museums to stress the importance of preserving history. “Everywhere you go there is a Holocaust museum, regardless of (the Holocaust’s) authenticity, accuracy or magnitude,” he said. What’s the bet that, if challenged, Chomsky will defend Nasrallah too?

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Paris, Berlin Join Revolt Over Unilateral Climate Targets

France and Germany yesterday joined the growing ranks of European countries opposed to making further unilateral moves on climate change, as the European Commission today plans to make the case for raising the EU’s greenhouse gas reduction goal from -20% to -30% by 2020. Speaking at a joint press conference in Brussels on Tuesday (25 May), French industry minister Christian Estrosi and his German colleague Rainer Brüderle said other nations would have to make similar commitments before Europe makes the move. "We have taken an ambitious commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020," Estrosi explained, adding that Paris and Berlin would back a move to -30% only if other nations made "comparable commitments". Full article here.

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Denmark clears forests for wind farms

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t read this message of a Danish group opposed to the plan. Greens clear-cutting trees in a national park and evicting people, whoda thunk? Seems like a case of “we had to destroy the village to save it“. Here’s the description of the park from the Danish National Parks website: The west of Thy has been designated as the first Danish national park. The National Park, Thy stretches for an up to 12-kilometer-wide belt along the Jutland west coast from Agger Tange in the south to Hanstholm in the north. It is an enormous and unspoiled natural area totaling 244 km2 – almost the size of the Danish island of Langeland. In the National Park you can go between outstretched, wind-swept wilds and aromatic pine trees. You can also throw yourself into the sparkling waves of the North Sea or bike through cool dune plantations. The rest here.

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It’s the Sun, stupid

Solar scientists are finally overcoming their fears and going public about the Sun-climate connection. Four years ago, when I first started profiling scientists who were global warming skeptics, I soon learned two things: Solar scientists were overwhelmingly skeptical that humans caused climate change and, overwhelmingly, they were reluctant to go public with their views. Often, they refused to be quoted at all, saying they feared for their funding, or they feared other recriminations from climate scientists in the doomsayer camp. When the skeptics agreed to be quoted at all, they often hedged their statements, to give themselves wiggle room if accused of being a global warming denier. Scant few were outspoken about their skepticism. No longer. Full article here

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Mining industry's real effective tax rate is 41.34%

From Andrew Bolt: UPDATE Professor Sinclair Davidson checks the student’s paper on which Treasurer Wayne Swan relies in claiming the miners pay an effective tax rate of as little as 13 per cent: Either Swan doesn’t understand what it is Treasury are telling him, or Treasury (and the Henry Review) don’t understand the underlying paper that they are quoting… The evidence does not support the argument the Henry Report, Gillard and Swan have made. Go here for Davidson’s full analysis. Davidson also checks the real effective tax rates paid, and find they are much higher than the Rudd Government claims: I had a look at the ATO Taxation Statistics, specifically tables 8 and 9 of the corporate tax statistics. I calculate two measures of effective tax rate. First just the Net Tax to Net Income and second Net Tax plus Royalty expense to Net Income. Results are shown below in the table. Note that Mining has the highest effective tax rate after accounting for Royalty payments.

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Mukhtar's birthday - something happy

Via Andrew Bolt Mukhtar is a bus driver in Copenhagen. By the look on his face this is, despite being elaborately planned and filmed, a total surprise for him.

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And his wife is "deeply socialist"

Deep thinking from Jeremy Irons: The world is becoming so overpopulated that nature will one day wreak its revenge, claims Jeremy Irons, the actor. Launching himself as a green campaigner, Irons has revealed plans to make a documentary about sustainability and waste disposal, likening himself to Michael Moore, the controversial film maker, although “not as silly”. The increasing global population would put an intolerable strain on the world’s resources, Irons said, and the gulf between developing countries and westerners living a bountiful “pie-in-the-sky” existence must be addressed … Irons, who owns seven houses, including a pink castle … According to Irons, his wife is “deeply socialist”. But of course. Tim Blair

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Who is the better family man, David Campbell or the reporter who outed him?

This leaves me with a tough decision at 6pm. I like to watch one of the commercial stations' news before switching over to SBS's World News. I'd already taken a vow not to watch the Channel 9 news ever again after it was used as an extended advertisement for its crappy Underbelly series, with the only "news" footage being 30 to 40 year old vision of Robert Trimboli. Now it looks like I'm going to have to boycott Channel 7 as well. As Andrew Bolt has pointed out, the journalist involved may have had a vendetta against Campbell relating to his own run in concerning the use of a ministerial car and driver. (I think it is worth while pointing out again that a minister of the Crown in New South Wales is perfectly entitled to use his government car for private purposes, as long as he drives it himself.) Finally, it's funny the number of times that lefties have solemnly advised me that they can't abide conservative commentators like Bolt or Miranda Devine, partly because they are such anti-gay homophobes. Only problem being though is that clearly they are not. It's obvious in reading what they write. One can only conclude that their critics haven't bothered to take the time to find out for themselves and are relying on what others have said to make up their minds and form their opinions. But such is our brave and free-thinking intelligentsia! I’m entirely with Miranda Devine about Channel 7’s tawdry excuse for outing Roads Minister David Campbell as gay: Under attack yesterday for its reporting, one justification offered by Seven is that Campbell was hypocritically posing as a family man. “He’s represented himself to the people of Keira as a family man,” Walters told the ABC, “even going to the extent of sending Christmas cards to his constituents highlighting the fact that he is a man of family values. This is about pretence, it’s about integrity, it’s about character.” But why can’t Campbell have a picture of his wife and children on his Christmas cards, like any other father? Married in 1977 at the age of 19 to Edna, with whom he has two sons, now in their late 20s, Campbell grew up in the blokey blue-collar Wollongong suburb of Corrimal, where even in the swinging ‘70s a gay lifestyle was not an easy option for a man who liked to fit in. And at 19, perhaps he loved Edna so much he could not bear to lose her despite any conflicts he might have felt sexually. No one knows what personal temptations he has had to overcome in his life, and that is entirely his business… Since Channel 7 has declared it fine to moralise publicly about the private lives of people, here’s one measuring stick that puts Campbell way out in front of Adam Walters, the journalist who so viciously exposed him, in what may possibly be a personal get-square. Campbell fathered two children with his wife and raised them in a stable, and we presume loving, family. Waters, however, has fathered three children with three women and has not stayed with any of them. That, in my opinion, is much more reprehensible than Campbell sneaking off to a gay bathhouse, and of far graver consequence. Andrew Bolt

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Trashing Australia - Labor's new history curriculum

Of course the Bolter is being a tad ironic below. It's no surprise at all. Indeed, it was not only a totally predictable outcome, but was predicted. An similar effort to drag down Anzac Day is also being mounted as we approach the centenary of the landings at Gallipoli. What a surprise, from something produced by Stuart Macintyre for the Rudd Government: HISTORIANS say the new national modern history curriculum for schools reads like a Marxist manifesto that ignores popular aspects of our past and neglects Australia’s role in world politics and war. The course, designed for years 11 and 12, is heavily focused on revolutionary struggles, colonial oppression and women’s struggle for equality. It neglects Australia’s British roots and institutions and its military history, with no mention of Gallipoli, Tobruk or Kokoda, the experts say. The draft lists World War I as a potential case study in “investigating modern history”. It lists “controversies surrounding ... memorial sites and commemorative events” as an area of study but does not mention Gallipoli or the battle of Fromelle. In a topic headed “Australia 1880-1945”, the draft lists “the formation of organised labour”, “White Australia” and “wartime government controls, including conscription, control of the labour force, rationing, censorship and propaganda”. But it does not mention the settlement of Australia or the deeds of the first AIF in World War I. The draft history course was released this week for public discussion, divided into five units: The nation state and national identity; Recognition and equality; International tensions and conflicts; Revolutions; and, Australia and Asia. Historian Andrew Garvie said the course agenda should be altered to give a more balanced view of history. “This appears to be a very trendy, right-on curriculum. It looks heavily influenced by a Marxist view of history - there’s lots about about revolution and struggles against oppression,” Mr Garvie said. How could this happen? Well, what else would you expect if you get Professor Stuart Macintyre, the former long-time communist and dean of Arts and Melbourne University, to help write the wretched thing? Here Macintyre explains the history curriculum he helped to design, and in every coded word you can see the agenda to distance students from the centralising narratives of Australia, and to reorientate them from the country’s essentially British cultural and institutional traditions to anything but: The great challenge in devising the history curriculum is to make it a curriculum that works for a wide diversity of students, that needs to be engaging for someone who might have arrived with their parents from Sudan two years ago or someone whose ancestors came here five generations ago and feel a strong attachment to particular parts of the country ... This is a curriculum which pays substantial attention to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and I think it’s important that it does and that it gives all Australians a sense of those people, their place within Australian society, and their historical experience… It gives greater attention to Asian history than is the case in most schools at the moment… One of the big themes of the history curriculum is the question of sustainability. We’re working with history from the earliest times to the present and we see an extraordinary increase in human population and in human capacity but we also see consequences that raise questions about sustainability. This is history being rewritten to destroy one of its essential roles - to give us a sense of a common past, even common myths, to build a sense of community. This is a curriculum not to unite us but to divide; not to build loyalty, but cynicism. The introduction of “sustainability” - the green agenda - suggests that the cynicism isn’t only aimed at our British and colonial past, but at capitalism as well. In the gentlest possible way, of course. Keith Windschuttle predicted the curriculum would reflect Macintyre’s ideology: In (Macintyre’s) volume on the period 1901 to 1940 for the Oxford History of Australia (1986), the first chapter compares the lives of five Australians: • a fat, greedy and ruthless pastoral and mining entrepreneur who makes a fortune creating paper companies and manipulating stocks and shares; • a poor, starving farmer who watches his wife and two children die while his surviving son becomes an embittered rural labourer and poet; • a skilled tradesman ruined by unemployment who becomes a workers’ representative on the Arbitration Court; • the wife of a farmer and coal miner who plays “a subordinate and domestic role” as she endures her husband’s disability and penury in Western Australia and New Zealand; • a part-Aboriginal man who becomes a drover after pastoralists destroy his people’s way of life, and their ceremonies and customs fall into disuse. Writ large, this political caricature of the Australian experience is the curriculum we can expect Macintyre to deliver to the Rudd government. It is no wonder that schoolchildren who have tasted earlier offerings from the same left-wing menu regard Australian history as dreary and uninspiring. Macintyre also harbours a deep distaste for this country’s British heritage. In the concluding chapter of A Concise History of Australia (1999), he is comforted by the prediction that, just as the Romans were displaced in Britain, Aborigines and Asians will eventually supplant the colonisers of British descent in Australia.

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Mark Steyn on the essential vacuity of Barack Obama

Mark Steyn on the essential vacuity of Barack Obama - and a refusal to even see what he must confront: (Daniel) Pearl was decapitated on video by jihadist Muslims in Karachi on Feb. 1, 2002. That’s how I’d put it. This is what the president of the United States said: “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving, and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence. Instead, he delivered the one above. Which, in its clumsiness and insipidness, is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none. Andrew Bolt

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11 Surprising Natural Lessons from Mount St. Helens

Thirty years ago, on May 18, Mount St. Helens lost its top—3.7 billion cubic yards of mountain, to be exact. The peak of the Pacific Northwest icon dropped by about 1,300 feet in a matter of seconds, taking down with it enough trees to build 300,000 two-bedroom houses. Gone, too, were 200 homes, 57 human lives and most of the visible wildlife across 230 square miles. "The first reaction for many of us was that what remained was a moonscape," recalls Jerry Franklin, professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington. "But that proved to be very wrong." Those initial bleak impressions were based on aerial views. As scientists got a closer look at the ash-laden ground, they discovered that the devastating losses had made room for remarkable gains—in terms of both ecosystem productivity and scientific progress. The rest, including slide show, here.

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ABC bans whites; claims it's "equal opportunity"

From Andrew Bolt: How can the ABC ban whites, Irish and Jews from applying for this nice job: Administrative Assistant Job No.:491663 Department:ABC International Location:Southbank Work type:Ongoing Full Time ABC International $46,638 - $58,368 p.a. This vacancy is open to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people only, which reflects the objectives of the ABC’s Equity and Diversity Management Plan and the Equal Employment Opportunity (Commonwealth Authorities) Act 1987. And how can it at the bottom of this very same blacks-only ad make this boast: The ABC is an equal opportunity employer. Clearly it’s not. Something must go: either the racist restriction or the boast of being non-racist. Or are these people liars as well as racists? No wonder so many ABC staff now insist on an Aboriginality that’s hard to detect with the naked eye:

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Andrew Bolt - Channel 7's shame: excuse for outing "scummy"

Channel 7 news director Peter Meakin’s scummy excuse for outing NSW Transport Minister David Campbell as a gay: He sent out family Christmas cards that would suggest to the people who receive them here’s one big happy family devoted to each other … now there is another side to the story. I’m not saying they are not a happy family, I’m not saying they don’t love each other, I’m saying there’s another side to this man’s life which has been kept under wraps for 25 years. Are the electorate entitled to know it? Disgusting. Meakin even concedes he has not the slightest evidence that Campbell had an unhappy family life, and that the Christmas cards he sent were a lie. For all we know Campbell loved his wife and children, and for Meakin to suggest otherwise is a gross impertinence. Who appointed him judge, anyway? And what a hypocrite. He pretends to outrage that Campbell’s family life isn’t as happy as a Christmas card suggests, and then does his absolute level best to ensure that it isn’t. UPDATE Speaking of hypocrites, here’s David Marr, fulminating over the outing of a Labor politician: As of now, Campbell has been destroyed for one reason alone: being gay. Yet here’s the same David Marr, trying to justify his own role in outing - and smearing - a conservative broadcaster: The rest here

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Statins: The side effects 'are worse than feared'

From the Food & Health Skeptic: I have been saying this for years. That they send you blind I did not know, however. Appalling The side effects of statins can be far worse than previously thought, a study suggests. For the first time, the level of harm posed by the cholesterol-lowering drugs has been quantified by researchers. They found some users are much more likely to suffer liver dysfunction, acute kidney failure, cataracts and muscle damage known as myopathy. For some patients, the risk is eight times higher than among those not taking statins. Overall, the risk of myopathy - which may be irreversible - is six times higher for men on statins and three times higher for women. The scientists from Nottingham University stressed the benefits of statins in stopping heart disease outweigh the risks for most patients. However, the study will put the brakes on calls for statins to be given to the healthy for prevention, where there are no classic risk factors or symptoms. Full post here.

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The Washington Times: more evidence it was hotter when Jesus was alive

National Academy of Science study: Ancient times were warmer The planet has never been warmer than it is right now, if you believe what global warming alarmists have to say. Mankind's selfishness in producing "excessive" amounts of carbon dioxide has set us on a path toward global cataclysm, they insist. The problem with this tale is that it neither fits with the historical record nor with a growing body of scientific evidence. The alarmists must imagine that 50 years before the birth of Christ, men like Julius Caesar spent their summers strolling the streets of Rome wearing sweaters to guard against catching a chill - instead of abandoning the sweltering capital in favor of temperate seaside villas. A study published in the March 8 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science casts further doubt on the warmist premise by concluding that the sun beat down more harshly on the Caesars than it did on anyone else in the past 2,000 years. Instead of using tree rings as a proxy for air temperature, the study's authors extracted data from sea shells preserved in deep sedimentary layers, using them as a proxy for sea temperature in the North Atlantic over the course of two millennia. According to the study, the "reconstructed water temperatures for the Roman Warm Period in Iceland are higher than any temperatures recorded in modern times." The heat lasted from approximately 230 B.C. to 140 A.D. After that, temperatures rose and fell over time with a second peak taking place during the better-known Medieval Warm Period. Full article here. Via Greenie Watch

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Brumby’s desalination plant will cost three times as much as a dam for a third of the water

Ah, typical green economics - where you get less for more!   A brilliant explanation by Topher of the deceits behind the Victorian Government’s “solution” to Melbourne’s water crisis - a crisis caused by Labor’s bungling. Left unsaid is that Brumby’s desalination plant will cost three times as much as a dam for a third of the water.

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Oiled birds desperately wanted by green carpetbaggers

For the sake of clarity here, nobody likes to see any animal covered in oil and suffering a terrible death. So I am including the photo Andrew Bolt used with his blog post. It's horrible. And with the current spill there will be effects on life and the environment. The trouble is the effects of such things are always over hyped by the media and environmental groups. SBS news the other night carried a report from an excitable American reporter who clearly wanted the person he was interviewing about oil reaching some wetlands to say it was a disaster. Her honest answer that we really don't know what the long term effects of such things will be was simply ignored by him. That's not what he wanted to hear and he was just as clearly determined not to let such inconvenient uncertainty get in the way of his narrative of looming ecological destruction.   Green groups hungry for cash just love those iconic pictures of sea birds covered with oil - the classic image of Nature vs Man. But, as I’ve written recently, oil spills turn out to be less dangerous to wildlife than is usually hyped, even when the spills are as big as the Exxon Valdez disaster. Which proved embarrassing for Barack Obama: Barack Obama’s media advisers were quite distressed when the President travelled down to the Louisiana coastline last week to make his first on-the-spot statement about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Their distress was caused by what they didn’t discover, rather than what they did. Despite their frantic requests, no photogenic dying oil-covered birds could be found to form a backdrop for the Presidential tirade as he weighed into BP. Even a month after the great Gulf of Mexico spill, the wildlife toll is pathetically small: Government officials said Tuesday that they have documented 156 dead sea turtles, 12 dead bottlenose dolphins, and 35 oiled birds—23 of them dead—since the spill. The number of dead sea turtles is significantly above historical levels, they said, though they haven’t yet determined whether the deaths resulted from the oil spill, which started April 20. How disappointing for the usual suspects: In a region teeming with wildlife, so far there have been few signs of significant animal die-offs attributed to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.. Federal officials acknowledged in a conference call Tuesday that the numbers of affected wildlife appeared low so far, with the exception of sea turtles.

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Why did the CSIRO leave last 20 years of methane data out of its State of the Climate report?

Andrew Bolt: Tom Quirk is puzzled. Why, in its State of the Climate report, did the CSIRO leave out the last 20 years of data of methane concentrations? Is it because the concentration of this greenhouse gas has barely increased since, against the warmists’ theory?

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Leaked document proves Spain's green policies an economic disaster

Christopher Horner reports that Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal document confirming Spain realizes its green failures, just as Obama pushes the American Power Act based on Spain’s program. Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. The assessment confirms the key charges previously made by non-governmental Spanish experts in a damning report exposing the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives. On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America. The rest here.

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"Healthy" school meals give Scottish pupils a growing taste for junk food

A “draconian” healthy eating regime in Scottish secondary schools may be encouraging pupils to go in search of junk food, it has been claimed. The uptake of school lunches has plummeted since national policies were introduced to determine fat and vitamin content. In Glasgow, the biggest local authority area, uptake has dropped from 61 per cent of children in 2006 to 38 per cent this year — a fall replicated across Scotland. Now the managing director of Cordia, the company that provides school meals to Glasgow City Council, has called for a re-examination of the “draconian” policy, which he says is propelling pupils towards deep-fried pizzas and burger vans. More here.

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Which billionaire is missing from Paul Howes' class war attack ad?

Paul Howes, the AWU boss, has let his old Trotskyist Resistance past get the better of him by running class-war ads attacking rich mining bosses for “taking” minerals “out of Australia”, like they were, you know, stealing them: The ads, which began airing on Foxtel yesterday, target the sizeable profits made by the heads of the three behemoths of the Australian mining industry: Clive Palmer, BHP’s Marius Kloppers and Rio Tinto’s Tom Albanese. “For decades the mining industry has been taking things out of Australia,” the ad begins, before running shots of the men. “Along the way it’s made some mining bosses very, very rich.” The commercial concludes with the exhortation: “Let the mining bosses know: It’s time to put something back”. (What’s Howes saying: that the crime is to export the minerals? And the solution is to put them back?) But the oddest thing about his choice of villainous fat cats - the South African Kloppers, the American Albanese and the fat guy Palmer. Someone’s missing - the billionaire who’s been about the most vocal in fighting the super-profits tax. The miner who’s long seemed a friend of Labor, and campaigner for Aboriginal employment. Why isn’t Twiggy Forrest in your ad, Paul? Or would attacking a dinki-di miner like him make you[r] ad seem even more stupid? The rest here.

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Damian Aspinall's extraordinary gorilla encounter on Gorilla School

Via http://twitter.com/Colvinius Amazing stuff.

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Why I am a Constitutional Monarchist

Jai Martinkovits explains why he is loyal to the Crown. The Australian Republic debate is nothing new. There have been four clear waves of Republicanism in Australia, all attempting to remove the Crown from our Constitutional system. Republicans today try not to remember their predecessors who brought little honour to their cause. The first republican campaign, in the nineteenth century, was to form a sort of “White Racist Republic” free of the liberal immigration policy of the British Empire. With Federation this faded away, Australia was now able to establish its own national immigration policy. Full article at Menzies House

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Faiths compared - birthers, truthers and warmers

The world is filled with wacky ideas. Some are much more dangerous than others. A tiny minority refuses to believe that President Obama has a U.S. birth certificate. Another fringe group holds that 9/11 was an inside job. And then there's the conviction that man-made climate change threatens life on earth and demands vast new restrictions on wealth and freedom. This latter belief is preached by the same governments and supranational organizations that led the world into the current regulatory and sovereign debt morass, and are responsible for the even greater threat implied by unfunded welfare commitments. Climate catastrophism is also enthusiastically embraced by virtually all giant corporations (including the currently much-troubled BP and Toyota) and by state-funded and UN-promoted eco NGOs. So let me see, where should we concentrate our political concerns: the "Birthers," the "Truthers," or the "Warmers?" Full article here. Via Tim Blair

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Now a new bear sub-species - Ursus bogus maximus

Tim Blair: Instead of running that image of Ursus bogus, why didn’t Science magazine choose this shot instead? It’s by the same artist, and is far more heart-wrenching on account of the tragically immobile wind turbine. (Via Shub Niggurath.) Meanwhile, the original photoshopped poley is causing grief for warmenist Peter Gleick, as Bradley Fikes reports: When blogs (including this one) pointed out Science’s photo blunder, Gleick got quite irate — not at Science for its carelessness — but at those who pointed out the mistake. Warmies are always sensitive to the pointing out of mistakes. So would you be too, if your worldview was based on them. Speaking of worlds, please enjoy the global travels of our peripatetic poley. I like to think of him as the people’s poley.   UPDATE. The NYT’s Andrew Rivkin: Polar bear pictures, particularly, have proved problematic. Remember the image of the bear struggling in the waves circulated by an environmental group awhile back? The waves were from the prop wash of the helicopter overhead. We also remember the NYT’s polar bear problems. They went on for quite some time.

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New Scientist and what is and isn't being denied

From Climate Skeptic: The implication I guess is that climate skeptics are somehow trying to silence real scientists.  This is enormously ironic.  With a couple of exceptions, including the unfortunate legal crusade by the Virginia AG against Michael Mann, it is climate alarmists rather than skeptics who have generally taken the position that the other side of the debate needs to be silenced. By the way, as I said in the intro to my last video, I have chosen to embrace the title of denier – with one proviso.  Being a denier implies that one is denying some kind of proposition, so I am sure thoughtful people would agree that it is important to be clear on the proposition that is being denied.  For example, I always found the term “climate denier” to be hilarious.  You mean there are folks who deny there is a climate? I don’t deny that climate changes – it changes all the time.  I don’t deny there is global warming – global temperatures are higher today than they were in 1900, just as they were higher in 1200 AD than they were in 900.  I don’t even deny that man is contributing somewhat to the warming, not just from CO2 but from effects like changes in land use. What I deny is the catastrophe — that man’s actions are leading to catastrophic changes in the climate.  I believe many scientists have grossly over-estimated the sensitivity of temperatures to CO2 by grossly overestimating the net positive feedback in the climate system.  And I think much of the work assigning consequences to even small increases in global temperatures – from tornadoes to hurricanes to lizard extinction – is frankly crap.  While I think the first mistake (around sensitivity) is an honest error, some day scientists will look back on the horrendous “science” of the consequences of warming and be ashamed. It strikes me that a real scientific magazine that was actually seeking truth would, if it wanted to dedicate a whole issue to the climate debate, actually create a print debate between skeptics and alarmists to educate its readers.  If the alarmist case is so obvious, and its readers so smugly superior in their intellect, surely this would be the most powerful possible way to debunk skeptics.  Instead, the New Scientist chose, in a phrase I saw the other day and loved, to take a flamethrower to a field of straw men. For those who want to watch the straw men go up in smoke, The Reference Frame has an index to the articles in this issue.

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IPCC Cites an Unpublished Journal 39 Times

I'm equally certain there's no connection whatsoever between the fact that Jørgen E. Olesen was a lead author for the IPCC's Chapter 12 and that a paper he co-authored in the May 2007 issue of Climatic Change got cited four times in that chapter. (That abstract is here. Cited as Olesen et al., 2007 four times on this page.) Welcome to the strange world of the IPCC. Whenever one turns over a new rock there's something shady beneath. Coming soon: the research paper that wasn't accepted for publication until May 2008, yet got cited seven times in the IPCC's 2007 report SOURCE (See the original for much more) Via Greenie Watch

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What the missionaries damned as child "stealers" actually faced

So men taking very young girls - only 5 years old in this case - for sex is not a recent phenomenon. (Okay, there is a legitimate cultural issue here, even if the proponents of the stolen generations myth wont face it themselves, preferring rather to find some way to always blame 'whitey.' For instance, the practice of taking 'boy brides' was not unknown in several aboriginal tribes. One in the east had a separate word to describe a boy taken by a man for sex if he was older than 11 to that used for a boy younger than 11. Aboriginal men offering their womenfolk to be used by visitors for sex was recorded by the very first British settlers of the continent.) At some stage we are going to have to face the truth about the state of aboriginal society during the 20th Century and give up on the naive white middle class myth of the noble savage. Certainly many mistakes were made and racism was real, but this shows that many so-called "stolen" children in fact were removed for their own safety and that, (just as today), the sad reality was that one of the chief threats to the health and well being of aboriginal children were their own families. We've just seen the jailing of a woman over east for prostituting her 12 year old daughter. Sadly, this was apparently not uncommon in a number of aboriginal communities in the early 1900s, and surely the crime would have been for the state not to have intervened and removed these children from being exploited by their own parents in this way? But these are the kinds of children that people like Robert Manne insist are proof of the Stolen Generations. Indeed, one of the children he cites by name was a 12 year old abandoned girl who had syphilis. Another, of a similar age, was seven months pregnant when "stolen" by the authorities. The language and attitudes of the writers are problematic for us today, but this shouldn't blind us to the terrible and shocking reality they faced and recorded. Here’s a few examples of what actually worried the missionaries: - A five-year-old half-caste girl was ‘taken’ by the Chief Protector in 1905 from the upper Fitzroy River. The local telegraph operator C.J.Annear had reported: A few days ago she was out with the old woman, Mary Ann, when a bush black took her away for two nights during which time the blacks here said he made use of her. Such actions as that of Polly and the man are very common among the natives. - In 1900 at La Grange Bay, another postmaster F.W. Tuckett reported how girls under ten years had been cohabiting with Asiatics for many months. The half-caste girls commanded the best prices and enabled the mother and so-called father to live without any exertion whatsoever on the proceeds of tucker received fortnightly in the creeks, where from 20 to 40 boats come in for food and water. - Anglican lay missionary Mary Bennett in 1934 testified: “The practice to which I refer is that of intercision of the girls at the age of puberty. The vagina is cut with glass by the old men, and that involves a great deal of suffering…If they (the girls) get wind of it they come to the mission till the danger is passed…I remember my old aboriginal nurse speak with horror of the suffering which she had been made to undergo.” - In 1929 at Drysdale River, Pallotine monks were still appalled by families prostituting their daughters. One couple had been trafficking with their young daughter ‘in a big way’; she “must go wherever the father calls her. If only we had Sisters (nuns), she and the other girls could be saved from this life of perdition!” - A constable at La Grange Bay reported that a quarter of 400 Aborigines in his remit had venereal disease caught from Asian lugger crews, and of one group of 30, 17-18 had died – mainly young women. - Boys of 10-12 were being lured or forced onto Malay pearling boats for sexual use. - In one graphic account, postmaster Tuckett reported in 1904 that at Cowan Creek mooring grounds, more than 50 Aboriginal females were mating with Asian crews on elaborate beds in the sandhills. He complained this was just one of many such mooring grounds, and VD was rampant. The Protectors, far from being obsessed with ‘stealing’ children, were in fact obsessed for decades with the health crises. For example, annual reports in 1928 and 1935 spent 30-40 times as much space on health as on removals. Windschuttle comments drily: “It is very difficult to reconcile this with the purported objective of eliminating the Aboriginal race.” Follow the link above for more.

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