Saturday, December 06, 2008

Headlines Saturday 6th December

Dear Pakistan: protest this
Andrew Bolt
Thomas Friedman has a frank word to Pakistan about the Mumbai slaughter:

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?
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Idealists powered by wind
Andrew Bolt
Some youthful idealism is so shiny eyed that it’s frightening ... or comical:

OVER the past five weeks, Jack Fuller has jumped from a moving train in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, handed in a university assignment from Beijing and written a proposal for his honours thesis in Warsaw.

With four mates, he has travelled through 10 countries — from Singapore, through south-east and central Asia to Moscow and across to Poland — by bus, train and tuk-tuk. They cut the carbon emissions involved in getting from their living rooms across Australia to the UN climate change conference in Poznan by 40 per cent — and paid about twice as much for the privilege.

Hang on! Why go in the first place? Why not, say, teleconference instead?
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linked to above article .. the greenshirts looking like brown shirts from 2:06
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Crunch still coming
Andrew Bolt
This could really hurt:

One in 10 American homeowners fell behind on mortgage payments or were in foreclosure during the third quarter as the world’s largest economy shed jobs and real estate prices tumbled.
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Globe still refusing to warm
Andrew Bolt
Global cooling has raised fears:

This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office…
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Pumping out a plot
Andrew Bolt
Age columnist Tracee Hutchison smells a conspiracy - or, or something:

ISN’T it ironic that when the Government wants us to spend more money to keep the economy from stalling completely, somehow — miraculously — petrol prices come down? It will tell you it has no control over petrol prices, but to me they always seem to be a litmus of the times, working in mysterious ways like a teller of our fortunes.
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Ruining a good spaghetti
Andrew Bolt
Ah, the smell of new money:

TUNA tycoon Tony Santic has parted with a gold mine of cash, luxury cars, mansions and penthouse apartments in the split with his ex-wife, Christine.

The carve-up of Mr Santic’s bulging $200 million empire included a fleet of BMWs, Lexus 4WDs and a prized convertible red Mustang with the number plate MAKYBE, referring to his champion race mare Makybe Diva…

And it’s been revealed Mrs Santic, the family’s former cleaning lady, ... allegedly used a $1000 bottle of Grange to cook spaghetti bolognaise.
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Children aren’t museum exhibits
Andrew Bolt
There are good reasons that the official language of British-settled Australia is not Saxon, or Jutish, or Norman French, or Celtic, or Old Danish or the tongue of the Angles. And one of the best is that learning a common tongue has helped us to break out of ethnic ghettos and make our way in the wider world. It’s also helped us to create a wider community than that of our own tribe, and to assimilate into it.

But there are still ideologues who demand that some languages should be preserved long after their usefulness has passed, and that their speakers should live as museum exhibits - set apart rather than joining in
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The only summit idea worth much
Andrew Bolt
At last one idea from Kevin Rudd’s 2020 ideas summit is now being investigated:

A PRIME Ministerial staffer has been interviewed by the Audit Office about the awarding of a contract to a company owned by Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon’s media adviser…
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New victims invented
Andrew Bolt
The problem with paying people big money to detect discrimination is that they have a vested interest in finding it even where it does not occur. In fact, they have a vested interested in inventing even new victims unknown even to nature:

THE Federal Government’s human rights arm plans to invent a new official status called “intersex” adding it to male and female as a legally recognised gender.

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But if the killer is black…
Andrew Bolt
The crime seems straightforward, but the punishment is complicated by race:

Here’s the crime:

The brother of a “good bloke” killed by a single punch outside an Adelaide suburban football club says he is relieved the assailant has been found guilty of manslaughter…
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Three times too many
Andrew Bolt
The criticism isn’t that Kevin Rudd has broken another election promise, but why Labor was so stupid as to make this promise three times:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has formally abandoned the plan for a massive new department of homeland security that Labor took to the past three elections.

And why didn’t such a turkey of an idea get canned long ago by the media collective?
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Ours is not to reason why
Andrew Bolt
Columbia Journalism Review’s Curtis Brainard isn’t:

There has been a notable trend in global-warming skepticism among meteorologists; it’s unclear exactly why that is...

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