Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1906

Some corporate donations are OK by Bob Brown, after all

It all depends who gets it:

Bob Brown in the Australian Financial Review April 15, 2000:

THERE is a growing wave of corporate largesse that is eating at the fabric of our democracy.





The Age January 21, 2006:

GREENS leader Bob Brown said yesterday the parties should return the money because it was tainted by the damning evidence before the federal government's inquiry into AWB's activities in Iraq. "This underscores the need for us to follow Canada's lead and get rid of corporate donations to political parties," he said.





Bob Brown moralises in The Sydney Morning Herald, August 14, 2009:

THE current political culture in Australia decrees that if you hand a minister $10,000 in a paper bag marked "for you" in return for a talk about your business plans, it is a bribe. But if you hand the $10,000 to a party official to sit next to the minister at dinner and discuss your business plans, that is OK. It is a sham. Democracy is being eroded by money. The ideal of one person, one vote, one value is eroding under the monetarist epithet that influence is there to be bought. Your power is directly proportional to your purse, and if you are out of the power circle your powerlessness is proportional to your poverty. All democracies in this age of materialism face the same degradation of the pivotal democratic ideal of equality.

The SMH on Saturday:

THE Australian Greens' campaign at the last federal election was largely bankrolled by wotif.com founder Graeme Wood who made the largest single political donation in Australian history. Mr Wood, whose wealth was estimated at $372 million in last year's BRW Rich 200 list, gave $1.6m to fund the Greens' TV advertising campaign, helping to significantly increase votes for the party in key states. The donation easily surpasses the previous record for a single private political donation, a gift of $1m to the Liberal Party during the 2004 election by a conservative British politician, Michael Ashcroft. Senator Brown said he would be "forever grateful" for Mr Wood's donation, which was both selfless and hazardous.





Bob Brown on Saturday:





GRAEME is an extremely thoughtful and long-sighted character whose sheer common sense has led him to success in business as well as becoming a leader in ecological wisdom in an age where that is badly needed. His donation to the Australian Greens gave us an ability to stay in the competition for public airspace before the last election in a way we have never been able to achieve in previous elections.

Monckton unfair

Warmist Mike Steketee says he was verballed by Christopher Monckton, who said he'd found 24 errors, exaggerations, misstatements and questionable assertions in a single Steketee piece.

And in several cases, Steketee is right.

UPDATE

No comments while I'm on holidays. I forgot to disable the comments facility, so have allowed on the comments that came before I remembered.

Column - The framing of Sarah Palin

IT took just hours for the media to finger the villain responsible for the shooting of US Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

It was Sarah Palin what done it, officer. And other Right-wingers just like that witch.

Such is the deranged hatred that so many on the Left feel for the former Republican vice-presidential candidate.

The New York Times was one of the first to smear her, even before the alleged shooter of Giffords - and the accused killer of six bystanders - had been publicly identified as 22-year-old Jared Loughner.

It implicated Palin because nine months ago she'd posted a "controversial" map on her Facebook page showing where Democrats were running for re-election.

Gasp: "Those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms Giffords was among those on Ms Palin's map."

Well, case closed. And so Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential Left-wing DailyKos website, tweeted, "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin." Jane Fonda likewise insisted Palin "holds responsibility", as did "the violence-provoking rhetoric of the Tea Party" movement she'd encouraged - a movement that's just a grassroots protest by middle class Americans against big government and record deficits.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman used his newspaper column to also smear Palin, saying Giffords "might be a target" because she was "a Democrat who survived" an election challenge from "a Tea Party activist" and "was on Sarah Palin's infamous 'crosshairs' list".

Fellow Leftists in the Australian media gobbled the bait, hailing Giffords as a martyr to Palin and the Right.

Here is the ABC's Jane Cowan on AM yesterday: "Political candidates, especially those aligned with the grassroots Tea Party movement, have increasingly invoked violent imagery.

A campaign website by . . . Palin put gun targets across several congressional districts including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' and urged voters to 'reload'."

The hunger to blame Palin and her political kind is palpable and no evidence is needed to proclaim her guilt.

As Michael Tomasky of Britain's Left-wing Guardian exulted, the shooter "went to considerable expense and trouble to shoot a high-profile Democrat, at point-blank range right through the brain. What else does one need to know?" That was sufficient "to see some kind of connection between (Right wing) violent rhetoric and what happened in Arizona on Saturday".

But there's a few things wrong with this narrative. It's false, it's foul; and it's savagely hypocritical.

For a start, there's zero evidence that Loughner, the alleged shooter, is a Palin supporter or took any notice of what she said about Giffords or anyone else.

ON his MySpace and YouTube pages he never mentions Palin or health care, the issue on which she attacked Giffords.

Both sites suggest he's simply deranged, raving about bad grammar, thought control, "conscience dreaming" and a "third currency".

A typical post on MySpace - on December 30 - gives the temperature of his mind: "With every day on torture, the hours are my painful isolation; these dreams, which are realistic, vehemence feelings of greatness—finally!"

Just add a gun to that explosive mixture of megalomania and angry failure and . . . boom.

Still, if you think it worth trying to detect a political orientation in Loughner's shattered thoughts, you'd have to conclude it's sure not Palin's.

He was not a Christian, and his favourite film clip is of an American flag being burned. He denounced the US Constitution as full of "treasonous laws".

Simon Mann, of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, led his report yesterday by implying Loughner was a neo-Nazi, noting his victim was Jewish and he'd listed Mein Kampf on his YouTube page as one of his "favourite books".

What Mann failed to add is that Loughner also loved A Communist Manifesto.

Another problem for the blame-Palin brigade is that Loughner's hatred of Giffords seems to pre-date Palin's rise to fame.

Caitie Parker went to school with Loughner, and played in the same band with this "loner" she describes as "Left-wing, quite liberal".

She claims: "He was a political radical and met Giffords once before in '07, asked her a question and he told me she was 'stupid and unintelligent'."

So Giffords was allegedly shot by a madman with Left-wing notions who disliked her long before Palin hit the scene. Yet Palin is to blame?

Still, are her critics right to deplore the violent rhetoric of political debate in the US today?

Perhaps, although we should be clear there's no proof this rhetoric affected the deranged Loughner, who is far more likely to have been influenced by violent movies and violent music.

We should also accept that politics is properly a contest of ideas and has long invited the language of war by all sides, which is why I have on my blog not just Palin's "crosshair" graphic but examples of similar Democratic Party maps with bullseyes over Republican candidates.

But does this alleged culture of trash-talk really date from Palin's rise, and who are the worst offenders?

In fact, no president has been more vilified than the Republican George W. Bush, who was even shown being assassinated in one gloating film.

And guess which president said this: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"?

Whoops, that was Barack Obama? And which of Palin's critics objected?

Palin herself seems more sinned against than sinning. The kind of commentators now accusing her of a nasty tone are the kind who falsely accused her of calling Obama "Sambo", and of only pretending to be the mother of her disabled son to cover for her eldest daughter.

They sat by when TV host David Letterman joked that Palin's 14-year-old daughter was "knocked up" by a baseballer during a game. They said nothing when Leftist comedian Sandra Bernhard warned Palin she'd be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she entered Manhattan.

Now these people demanding a more civilised discourse accuse Palin of inspiring a murder, when all the evidence suggests she's guiltless.

So Palin's accusers lie, and so foully that they commit the very hate speech they piously claim to deplore.

Rid us of Rudd

My latest column for the Herald Sun iPad edition: Sack him. The latest four signs that Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is not just a joke and and irrelevance, but a danger.

(No comments on the blog during my holiday break.)

The ABC's vilification of Sarah Palin

The ABC's 7.30 Report devotes an entire report tonight to the "toxic" political rhetoric that reporter Michael Brissenden suggests inspired the shooting of Democrat congresswomen Gabrielle Giffords.

That rhetoric, Brissenden implies, doesn't just date from the rise of Sarah Palin two years ago, but came with her. She is, after all, the only politician he singles out, and her political arrival is assumed as the date the trouble started.

Not once does Brissenden try to establish the truth of the claim that gunman Jared Loughner was driven by this political climate to kill, or, indeed, that he was a Palin supporter or had paid any attention to anything she'd ever said.

The reason for that, of course, is that no such evidence exists. Indeed, the evidence points to very opposite - that Loughner, a madman, was if anything of the Left, and had met and disliked Giffords a year before Palin rose to fame. None of his writings on the Internet mention Palin or any of her causes.

Brissenden's entire segment - that Palin and her supporters were in some way to blame for the shooting - seems based on a false hypothesis that could have been disproved by the most basic inquiries,

Here's what's also missing from Brissenden's report - some background to this "toxic rhetoric". Like this:

The mayor of West Hollywood has condemned a Halloween display resembling Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hanging by a noose.

And this joking over the imagined rape of Palin's 13-year-old daughter:

And this vile accusation that Palin was actually the grandmother of her young disabled son:

And this "slutty" sneer:

And this threat of "gang-rape":

And this from Keith Olbermann:

And this kind of vile abuse of Bush, Palin and her daughter, so common in showbiz:

(Added Brand: "I had John McCain gags pulled. And they asked me to tone down the gags about Sarah Palin. I wanted to say she was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion. But also, as a Republican she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for being a little slut.)

And this:

And these attacks on Palin's womanhood - attacks which are perhaps best described as "rape-speech":

Heather Mallick, of the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, accused her of just going after the "white trash vote" with a "toned-down version of the porn-actress look". Salon.com's Gary Kamiya sneered: "The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the (Republican) base yearned to drill her." Author Cintra Wilson called her a " giving Republicans a "hardcore pornographic centrefold spread". And radio host Randi Rhodes, of America's Nova M, portrayed her as a slave to an illicit sexuality: "She's friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, 'Can we sleep over at the Palins'?"

And, earlier, this fantasy of murdering George W. Bush:

And this mocking of General "Betray-us":

And this charge, endlessly repeated, that Bush was a war criminal:

And again:

None of this or any of the many, many other examples I could give - including Democratic Party pamphlets with bullseyes over their Republican enemies - were mentioned or otherwise acknowledged by Brissenden. That might have complicated that picture of the extraordinary "toxic rhetoric" of Right-wingers inspiring a Right-wing gunman to kill a Left-winger, might it not?

But wait. Brissenden does give one example of "toxic" political rhetoric from the past - the Right-wing trash talk he claims likewise inspired Timothy McVeigh to commit the ghastly Oklahoma bombings 15 years ago, killing 168 people.

Get it? McVeigh then, Loughner now, and vile Right-wing politicians behind both.

It's not often that the ABC stoops this low, forgoing the most basic journalism to perpetrate instead a truly disgusting - and utterly false - blood libel.

Transcript to come here.

(No comments during holiday break.)

UPDATE

This careful coaching is working: The ABC asks:

Is America's right-wing political 'hate speak' responsible for the Arizona massacre?

Answer: 72.9 per cent say "yes".

UPDATE 2

Michelle Malkin has many, many more examples of political hate-speech of the Left, including a museum display showing a a gunman aiming a rifle at Palin's head.

(Thanks to reader Bart.)

"Trivialises": warmists toss Flannery overboard

Alarmist of the Year and warmist guru Tim Flannery on the ABC's Science Show on January 1:

I think that within this century the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest. I do think that the Gaia of the Ancient Greeks, where they believed the earth was effectively one whole and perfect living creature, that doesn't exist yet, but it will exist in future…

With our technology now, particularly computer based surveillance systems in agriculture and in the oceans and whatever else, we're developing a sort of nervous system that allows us to convey that message to the planet. We'll never be able to control the earth, there's no doubt about it. We can't control its systems. But we can nudge them and we can foresee danger. Once that occurs, then the Gaia of the Ancient Greeks really will exist. This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and a nervous system. That will make it act as a living animal, as a living organism, at some sort of level.

Warmist scientists Roger M. Gifford, Will Steffen and John Finnigan ditch Flannery and try to repair the damage:

Tim Flannery's recent interview with Robyn Williams on The Science Show has generated some interesting debate (and a little confusion) about the Gaia hypothesis (see editorials in The Daily Telegraph, and The Australian).

For most scientists working in the relatively new area of Earth System Science, talk of the earth "growing a brain" trivialises the growing body of knowledge about the functioning of the whole-earth system.

(Thanks to reader Steve.)

All this water may wash away our dam madness

Finally, there's a chance that these floods will wash away the mad green bans on dams:

TONY Abbott will develop a plan to build a series of dams around the nation, as part of the Coalition's policy platform for the next election.

The policy is aimed at reducing the impact of floods and boosting food security.

The Opposition Leader yesterday told The Australian he would announce a taskforce of senior Coalition frontbenchers charged with preparing a dam plan within 12 months… "I just think it's a bit odd in a country with as many water issues that we've got that there have been virtually no dams built in the last two decades," Mr Abbott said yesterday…

Mr Abbott's comments came as his water spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, urged the state and federal governments to consider building three dams on the Fitzroy River at Rookwood, Nathan and Eden Bann, near the waterlogged city of Rockhampton. To mitigate floods around his home town of St George, he suggested a new dam be built on the Balonne River at Barrackdale, south of Surat…

Nationals leader Warren Truss ... said the flood strengthened the case of those arguing that more water storages could relieve the pressures of the next dry time…

Queensland Deputy Premier Paul Lucas, who criticised Senator Joyce for opposing the Traveston Dam, which was blocked by the Rudd government, said the Labor government would consider building more dams when the flooding emergency was over.

Not a single new dam has been built to supply an Australian capital city since Melbourne's Thomson Dam was hooked up in 1984 - with the sole exception of South-East Queensland 's Wyaralong dam, completed just in time for these recent rains to start filling it.

In that time:

- Every capital city on the mainland has been subjected to water restrictions

- NSW banned the Welcome Reef dam in 2002 in on environmental grounds.

- The Rudd Government banned a mega-dam on Queensland's Mary River to "save" the lungfish.

- The Victorian Labor Government turned a dam reservation on the fast-flowing Mitchell River into a national park instead to stop any new dam.

- The Queensland and Victorian Labor Governments claimed global warming would dry up the rains anyway, making a new dam useless.

- Queensland built instead a $1.1 desalination plant, now mothballed because of the rains.

- Victoria built instead a $5.7 billion desalination plant, costing four times the price of a new dam for a third of the water.

With luck, these rains will be the cold shower we needed to snap out of this insanity.

Sing of blood, children

It's not quite Laugh, Kookaburra, Laugh.  And 20 years from now we'll see how well these songs have socialised the children.

(Thanks to reader Nathan.)

One of the things on this screen is wrong

A wonderful moment on the ABC this week, when a report on eco alarmist Tim Flannery was accompanied with subtitles he failed to predict three years ago:

We're already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we're getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that's translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That's because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush.

This quote comes from ABC television, too. Now for the ABC to run both it and the subtitle together to fully hold this veteran alarmist to account.

(Thanks to reader Lloyd.)

Save the planet! Poison China

China no longer feels it needs to poison itself to please Western greens:

Rare earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy—from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear.

China's rare earth industry each year produces more than five times the amount of waste gas, including deadly fluorine and sulfur dioxide, than the total flared annually by all miners and oil refiners in the U.S. Alongside that 13 billion cubic meters of gas is 25 million tons of wastewater laced with cancer-causing heavy metals such as cadmium, Xu Xu, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters, said at a Beijing conference on Dec. 28.

"China supplied the world with very cheap and good-quality rare earths for more than a decade at the cost of depleting its resources and damaging its environment," Wang Caifeng, who heads the government-affiliated China Association for Rare Earths, said at the conference. "The world should thank China."

With China now shutting down unregulated rare earth mines and slashing exports, users from Toyota Motor Corp. to Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's biggest maker of wind turbines, are concerned that supplies may be constrained. China provides more than 95 percent of global shipments of the 17 rare earth metals, also used in mobile phones, catalysts to reduce automobile exhaust emissions and energy-saving electronics.

(Thanks to reader Mike.)