Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1905
January 13, 2011
A film you won't "enjoy" but be very grateful you saw
I've been reading a lot about the Holocaust and Nazism lately - incuding Victor Klemperer's diaries, Primo Levi's If This is a Man and Tadeusz Borowski's devastating This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - so perhaps I was particularly susceptible. But I found Sarah's Key one of the most emotionally exhausting films I've ever seen, and one that had me crying to the point of mortification.
That hardly sounds like a recommendation for a couple of hours in the cinema, yet I am so very glad I saw it.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT
One of the grim and rarely discussed truths it explores is one tackled by the tortured Borowski, too - that the evil of the Holocaust was so great that even its victims could be tainted by it in their struggle to survive. Borowski's guilt is different to that of Sarah, but I suspect each paid for it in the same way. I won't say more for fear of spoiling the film for those who plan to see it. But again, I may be rubbed too raw, having seen this.
My one reservation is that the characters of this film are all inventions. It seems almost an insult to the dead, or a deprecation of the authentic horror of the Holocaust, that we are moved by a fictional account when the stories of so many of the victims, all of whom deserve all these tears and more, are yet to be told. Is the truth not moving enough? But, again, I may have been rubbed too raw, having seen this room, covered with the drawings of Jewish children of the Terezin concentration camp, all more real that Sarah and yet now more unknown.
UPDATE
My wife says that last point of mine is wrong, and I think she may be right. How do you single out one victim and tell their "true" story in a film that inevitably won;t be exactly true, anyway?
January 11, 2011
Not what you might expect in Bendigo
In country Bendigo, a case which I believe will have a dramatic impact on local views on various social matters: SEVEN males have been charged with the gang rape of a woman in Bendigo.
Police allege the men unlawfully imprisoned and repeatedly raped the woman at a residence in Flora Hill early on Sunday.
Four of the men, Mohammad Zaoli, 21, Mohammed Elnour, 18, Aru Gar, 19, and Akoak Manon, 18, appeared via video link in the Bendigo Magistrates Court yesterday. They each face 17 charges, including 14 of rape. The other three accused are aged 14, 16 and 17 and cannot be named. They appeared in a children's court on the same 17 charges.
The men must be presumed innocent.
(No comments,)
All you need to know
(Thanks to reader Anthony.)
Now 30 believed dead
The disaster is extraordinary:
THE nation confronts its worst flood disaster in living memory, with 30 people believed dead and 90 missing in southeast Queensland.
The wall of water bearing down on Brisbane threatens to engulf thousands of homes and put more people at risk.
What I cannot understand is this: how was the possibility of such a danger not forseen, when climate experts and the Government claim they can predict the climate 100 years from now? How did this week's rain come as such a surprise, when we now spend billions more on computer models predicting the future?
Some of the stories are tragic:
A three-year-old boy drowned at Ipswich, after floodwaters pulled him from his mother's arms.
And:
Sarah Norman yesterday told how her brother Sam punched a hole in the laundry ceiling and pushed their sister Victoria, 15, to safety after water flooded the brick home at noon on Monday.
"He went back to get Mum and Dad, but they had just gone. Victoria heard Mum scream," Ms Norman said.
Steve Matthews, 56, an electrician and former pastor and his wife Sandy, 46, a teacher's aide from Spring Bluff near Murphys Creek near Toowoomba, were found dead downstream on Monday afternoon.
UPDATE
How amazingly fast the floodwaters rose in Toowoomba.
UPDATE 2
The global warmists claimed Queensland's rains would dry up, which is why the Labor Government built a desalination plant - now mothballed - instead of yet more dams:
(Premier Peter) Beattie said the effects of climate change on our region meant we could no longer rely on past rainfall patterns to help us plan for the future…
"My advice indicates if we continue to experience below average rainfalls it could take several years (anywhere from five to ten years) for our major dam system to climb back up past 40 percent even with purified recycled water, desalination and the other measures we're taking to supplement our water supplies.
"Given the current uncertainty about the likely impact of climate change on rainfall patterns in SEQ over coming years, it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower than usual rainfalls could eventuate.
But Heather Brown, a Toowoomba resident, says locals made other bad choices in the same mistaken belief that floods would not come:
Tragically, it seems some of the most basic rules of survival - and certainly the most elementary rule of town planning - were forgotten in the case of Toowoomba, a city that is dissected by East Creek and West Creek, two deceptively innocent looking little creeks that seem to run as much water as a decent suburban gutter for most of the year.
Admittedly, Toowoomba - Australia's Garden City - has been battling drought for almost a decade… Along the way, the creeks have been prettied and preened and slotted into your typical modern urban plan. And the breadth of their flow - and their seminal right to a small flood plain - has been gradually stolen away.
At the intersections of Victoria, Margaret and Russell streets - where the boiling muddy tsunami was its fiercest and most graphically filmed - the city council had embarked on an ambitious beautification plan to turn the creek into a pleasing urban feature, complete with boardwalks, gardens, illumination and seating. Everyone thought it was wonderful, except for cynics such as my husband and me. In fact, every time we drove past the feature we would say to no one in particular: This little creek is going to make them sorry one day. Tragically, we were right.
Early yesterday morning I went back to the bruised and battered Margaret Street to support any local business that still had the heart to open. My coffee shop was handing out free coffees to the battered owners of the local businesses who had lost so much. When I went to buy my newspaper, the newsagent told me he was devastated, not because of what had happened but because the engineer who had worked on the beautification project told him he couldn't make them listen when he pleaded for bigger pipes - "18-footers" he called them - to let the water through, because it simply didn't suit the aesthetics of the architects and landscapers.
So that's what happened to my city, folks, the same as happened to so much of flooded Queensland. We did stupid and really, really dumb things because we thought we could get away with them. We built the wrong sort of houses and the wrong sort of bridges. We built towns and suburbs on flood plains. And we ignored at our peril the forces of nature and the history of the great floods that have shaped this continent for thousands of years.
The CSIRO's global warming models in 2007 certainly predicted less rain, not more:
5.2.1 Median precipitation change by 2030
Best estimates of annual precipitation change represent little change in the far north and decreases of 2% to 5% elsewhere. Decreases of around 5% prevail in winter and spring, particularly in the south-west where they reach 10%. In summer and autumn decreases are smaller and there are slight increases in the east…
By 2050, under the B1 scenario, the range of annual precipitation change is -15% to +7.5% in central, eastern and northern areas, with a best estimate of little change in the far north grading southwards to a decrease of 5%.
The range of change in southern areas is from a 15% decrease to little change, with best estimate of around a 5% decrease. Under the A1FI scenario changes in precipitation are larger. The range of annual precipitation change is -20% to +10% in central, eastern and northern areas, with a best estimate of little change in the far north grading to around a 7.5% decrease elsewhere.
UPDATE 3
An animation showing how a 3.5 metre flood will affect Brisbane.
(Thanks to reader Michelle. No comments holiday break.)
Reading into the murders exactly what they want
When Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim extremist who'd preached that "Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor", murdered 13 soldiers at Food Hood while shouting "God is great", it was too soon to wonder if he was motivated by his faith:
(The ABC's) first substantial report, by correspondent Lisa Millar, failed in eight minutes to even note the killer was a Muslim, hinting only that Hasan may have suffered harassment because of his unspecified "family background".
At midday, ABC correspondent John Shovelan filed another long report, which did fleetingly note that Hasan "had been a Muslim all his life", but only after painting him as one more suicidal soldier traumatised by American's war-mongering.
Hasan had "spent years dealing with troops suffering post-traumatic stress after returning from war zones", said Shovelan, and already 75 soldiers at Fort Hood had killed themselves.
Small problem with this theory: Hasan had not actually committed suicide and had never been to war.
Yet this "war-is-hell" angle was too handy an excuse, leading reporter Kim Landers to next suggest on PM: "This attack raises new questions about the toll that continuous fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking on the US military and individual soldiers."
It did? Let me repeat, Kim: Hasan is a psychiatrist. He never fought anywhere, until the day he decided to fight America....
SBS that night claimed that investigators were still searching for a motive for the massacres, only to have newsreader Lee Lin Chin then suggest the one SBS preferred: "And later in the program we'll be examining some of the problems faced by Muslim soldiers in the military."
The Sydney Morning Herald likewise reported only that Hasan had faced "harassment" from the army for being Muslim and merely opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "after hearing the stories of returning servicemen".
But with the shooting of congressman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six bystanders, it was not too soon for the ABC to instantly speculate about the (purely imagined) ideology driving the killer (above), actually a madman who'd conceived a hatred of Giffords long before the rise of Palin and the Tea Party movement.
Gerard Henderson:
On ABC News Breakfast yesterday the co-presenters Mary Gearin and Waleed Aly made it clear early in the program that they saw the hostility to Barack Obama's program - as exemplified in the Tea Party and Palin - as providing a spark which could ignite a murderous rage against the likes of Giffords.
This became evident in the segment reviewing the morning newspapers shortly before the 7am news bulletin. The guest commentator was the academic and Herald Sun columnist Jill Singer. It was one of those ABC discussions where everyone essentially agrees with everyone else.
Eventually Gearin put the leading question: "Can we blame Sarah Palin?" Singer had a bit each way and concluded: "I don't know."
The proper answer was - wait for the evidence.
Soon after the co-presenters read from the program's message board. Gearin cited the view of "Purple Tomcat" that it was Palin's fault. And Aly referred to the position of "Mark", who commented: "I notice Republicans are saying 'let's not politicise this' and then it's always Democrats that end up getting shot or killed." Aly acknowledged that perhaps the comment was "generalised". You can say that again. The targets of the previous two political assassinations in the US were Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. Later in the program both Gearin and Aly acknowledged that all theories about Loughner's motives were speculative.
On ABC metropolitan radio Philip Clark expressed concern about the "extreme opinion" in the US political debate by what he termed the extreme right-wing. He mentioned Fox's Glenn Beck. And a listener phoned in criticising, you've guessed it, Israel.
UPDATE
Exactly the same phenomenon is observed at the New York Times.
UPDATE 2
Michael Gerson notes an historical parallel:
WHEN president John Kennedy visited Dallas in November 1963, he was greeted by a full-page newspaper ad accusing him of being a communist fellow traveller.
To his wife he observed, "Oh, you know, we're headed into nut country today." The city, according to historian William Manchester, was a mecca for "the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies".
In the hours following Kennedy's assassination, aides assumed a right-wing radical was responsible. When Robert Kennedy informed Jacqueline about Lee Harvey Oswald's leftist background, she felt sick.
"He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights," she said. "It's - it had to be some silly little communist." Eventually, the Warren commission found no direct connection between Kennedy's assassination and the city's "general atmosphere of hate".
UPDATE 3
One of the sanest takes is from Megan McArdle:
Many of the people who rushed to blame this on their political opponents made themselves look like first class jerks, an impression that was not improved when we got more information, and they doubled down rather than simply admit that they had perhaps jumped to conclusions.
At this writing, it seems as though the violent rhetoric this guy was listening to came from the voices in his head, not the radio or cable TV. There is no evidence that his ideas were significantly influenced by anyone, left or right, or that saying mean things about Giffords made his fixations worse; we're talking about someone whose main grievance seems to have been that she wouldn't address his concerns about a conspiracy to control the grammar of American Standard English.
This never looked much like an assassination, which usually targets a single politician, not nine-year-old girls who happen to be standing near them. And after reading his ramblings, it's pretty clear that he was some kind of crazy, and that his community turned away from his craziness rather than trying to intervene. But even that judgement may be premature.
(Thanks to reader Michael. No comments during break.)
How dare these people preach now against hate
Listen to them now gleefully blame the "hateful" rhetoric of the "Right" for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by a madman of the - if anything at all, and if it mattered anyway - Left:
Former Democratic congressman Paul Kanjorski now:
As far as we know, her attacker had no grand political point; I doubt we will ever really understand his motives. What the shooting does tell us, however, is that it is impossible to eliminate the risks faced by elected officials when they interact with their constituents.... Therefore, it is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation.
Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Florida governor] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman now:
You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we're going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOP's leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
Paul Krugman on December 17, 2009:
A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. . . .
Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein now:
. . . today's shooting was a reminder of what real political violence in this country could look like, and the awful recognition that it could've easily fit with comments made by trusted political figures should stop us cold. We're lucky to live in a country where political violence is rare. We're lucky that that doesn't appear to have changed. But that may be dumb luck that we're benefiting from. It is hard to look through those statements and believe that we're doing enough to keep our political system peaceful.
Ezra Klein on December 14, 2009:
To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill's failure that much more. And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.
Daily Kos founder Marcos Moulitsas now:
The right is blind if they don't think their words have consequences… Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin
Markos Moulitsas on April 1, 2004, on the murder of American contractors in Iraq:
I feel nothing over the death of merceneries [sic]. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.
.But perhaps the most glaring examples of hypocrisy in this debate are all the commentators - every single one of them - who claim that Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, Rush Limbaugh and (insert a pet hate-figure of the Left here) is to blame for inciting the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords with their reckless hate-speech. The charge is plainly false, which makes the vile accusation precisely the kind of hate-speech the speakers purport to condemn.
(In part via Pejman Yousefzadeh. No comments during break.)
January 10, 2011
Toowoomba drowns
An astonishing flash flood in Toowoomba kills at least four people. Rods are turned into raging rivers:
Cars are swept away like boats:
The costs are astonishing:
THE financial toll of the Queensland floods -- predicted to cost $6 billion and leave a $5bn clean-up bill -- is expected to soar further.
Yesterday's flash floods engulfed the urban areas of Toowoomba and Gympie and threatened to hit Brisbane.
One lesson - dams don't just harvest water cheaply but help protect from floods:
A BODY of floodwater larger than Sydney Harbour threatens Brisbane, with only the Wivenhoe Dam's 2.3km-long earthen wall standing in its path…
Wivenhoe was rising fast, but it had the potential to go past 200 per cent capacity before overflowing. Cr Newman said the dam was doing its job but could not fully protect the city because of the dimension of the floods.
Premier Anna Bligh is grateful for the dam:
Without a doubt the Wivenhoe Dam has already saved Brisbane from a catastrophic flood in the next 48 hours but we have to keep releasing water from it so it can keep doing the job it's doing.
UPDATE
Police cannot tell if this family survived the wall the water that swept through Toowoomba:
Last night, four people were confirmed dead, taking the death toll related to the Queensland floods to at least 15.
Up to four children are also missing from Toowoomba and surrounding townships after West Creek burst its banks, pouring a cascade of brown, debris-laden water into the city centre. Up to 2m of water gushed through the streets, sweeping up cars, washing off the facades of Federation-era buildings, tearing up roads and blowing out shop-fronts.
UPDATE 2
Gympie is flooded by the Mary River:
The Mary was the site of a proposed dam banned by Environment Minister Peter Garrett:
Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Wednesday said he made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species…
"The project would have serious and irreversible effects on national listed species such as the Australian lungfish, the Mary River turtle and the Mary River cod - both of those endangered.
Gavin Atkins quotes a Queensland Government document showing a dam on the Mary could cut the flooding by four metres - enough to save all but four of the shops in Gympie's main street:
A numeric hydraulic model for the Mary River has been developed. The numeric model has been calibrated to ensure good correlation between measured historical data and simulated modelled behaviour with regards to peak flow, peak water levels, total volume and flood timings. The reduced outflow hydrograph for the 1999 flood event as determined above was input into this model.
The results of which demonstrate that had the dam been in existence at the time of the 1999 flood, the dam would have reduced peak water levels through Gympie by approximately 4 metres.
UPDATE 3
Shocking news: 72 people are still missing in the floods.
UPDATE 4
Premier Bligh says she holds "very grave concerns" for the safety of those 72 and expects the known death toll of eight to rise dramatically.
No wonder Sheriff Dupnik wants to blame a politician instead
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has done more than almost anyone else to blame the heated political rhetoric (hint: Sarah Palin and the Right) for inspiring Jared Loughner to shoot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
But it's not just inappropriate for an investigator to leap to such conclusions, but also against all the evidence. What could be his motive for doing something so extraordinarily unprofessional?
Blogger The Cholla Jumps suggests the sheriff needs a scapegoat:
Jared Loughner, pronounced by the Sheriff as Lock-ner, saying it was the Polish pronunciation. Of course he meant Scott or Irish but that isn't the point. The point is he and his office have had previous contact with the alleged assailant in the past and that is how he knows how to pronounce the name.
Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff's Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation…
Every victim of his threats previously must also be wondering if this tragedy could have been prevented if they had been more aggressive in pursuing charges against Mr. Loughner. Perhaps with a felony conviction he would never have been able to lawfully by the Glock 9mm Model 19 that he used to strike down the lives of six people and decimate 14 more.
Megyn Kelly gently picks up the Sheriff - a Democrat - on his evidence-free "speculation" and political "spin", and he confirms the shooter was actually in contact with Giffords since before Palin's rise and the Tea Party's emergence. He also confirms he actually has no evidence Loughner was motivated by the political debate. He refuses to discuss the investigation of an earlier complaint that Loughner had threatened to kill someone else, but says that complaint was not to "this department":
I'm not sure this man should be in charge of this investigation.
Why does the ABC so want to believe the lie?
More ABC staff leap on the blame-Palin-and-the-Right bandwagon, ignoring all the evidence that the loner who shot Gabrielle Giffords was some a madman - of the Left, if anything - who never mentioned Palin and had met and hated Giffords before Palin became famous.
:
On ABC News Breakfast yesterday the co-presenters Mary Gearin and Waleed Aly made it clear early in the program that they saw the hostility to Barack Obama's program - as exemplified in the Tea Party and Palin - as providing a spark which could ignite a murderous rage against the likes of Giffords.
This became evident in the segment reviewing the morning newspapers shortly before the 7am news bulletin. The guest commentator was the academic and Herald Sun columnist Jill Singer. It was one of those ABC discussions where everyone essentially agrees with everyone else.
Eventually Gearin put the leading question: "Can we blame Sarah Palin?" Singer had a bit each way and concluded: "I don't know."
The proper answer was - wait for the evidence.
Soon after the co-presenters read from the program's message board. Gearin cited the view of "Purple Tomcat" that it was Palin's fault. And Aly referred to the position of "Mark", who commented: "I notice Republicans are saying 'let's not politicise this' and then it's always Democrats that end up getting shot or killed." Aly acknowledged that perhaps the comment was "generalised". You can say that again. The targets of the previous two political assassinations in the US were Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. Later in the program both Gearin and Aly acknowledged that all theories about Loughner's motives were speculative.
On ABC metropolitan radio Philip Clark expressed concern about the "extreme opinion" in the US political debate by what he termed the extreme right-wing. He mentioned Fox's Glenn Beck. And a listener phoned in criticising, you've guessed it, Israel.
Tim Blair rounds up more of the guilty.
(No comments during my break.)
Marr will be cross, just you wait
Labor since:
LABOR is a far more ferocious prosecutor of whistleblowers and leakers than the Howard government, with Kevin Rudd overseeing a doubling of leak referrals to the federal police in his time as prime minister.
Andrew Bolt's Blog
- Andrew Bolt's profile
- 5 followers
