Wednesday, September 26, 2007
WAHWAH PEDALS WAHABISM
Got ourselves a new crazy sheik down here:
The mysterious sheik behind the Australian chapter of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir has revealed the organisation’s support for military coups and revolutions to overthrow non-Muslim governments worldwide.
Ismail Al Wahwah, who was little known until last month when he was banned from a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference in Indonesia, spoke out on an Arabic radio program that revealed him as the “active member” of the group in Australia.
In an interview on SBS radio last month, he attacked the West’s lack of values and backed the use of suicide bombings in Iraq and Palestine, even if they killed Australians. “I say any occupied people have the responsibility to defend their country,” he told SBS’s Arabic radio program. “The victim should not be asked how he is defending himself.”
Sheik Wahwah is understood to be the unofficial leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Australia.
Hizb ut-Tahrir media spokesman Wassim Doureihi claims Sheik Wahwah isn’t the group’s leader. Then again, Wassim’s claims vary depending on who he’s talking to.
HERE’S TO MOTHERS
A curious sports statistic emerges from the past eight years:
Four of the biggest names in the history of football have won the Brownlow Medal, the AFL’s biggest individual prize, having grown up without a father.
On the one hand, I’m delighted for my fellow mother-raised Australians. On the other, I’m dreading the phone call: “Why haven’t you won a Brownlow Medal? Or anything else, for that matter? You know your little sister still competes in triathlons ...”
(She really does - at 41. I once followed her during a training drill, and was exhausted by half distance; and I was driving a car.)
PARK(ING) DAY MISSED
Damn. Why weren’t we told?
This past Friday was international Park(ing) Day. Thousands of people in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Seattle and other cities spent the day occupying street parking spaces by setting up lawn chairs or pingpong tables to prevent cars from parking. The stated purpose was a protest of car culture and lack of urban greenspace, but the primary impact of Park(ing) Day seems to have been to make drivers even more stressed out.
One assumes those pingpong tables and lawn chairs were transported by bicycle. By the way, I’m no expert or anything, but don’t non-parked cars consume more precious earthly liquids than cars of the parked variety?
PUSHING FOR AL
The Daily Telegraph’s Saffron Howden attends - briefly - Al Gore’s Sydney speech:
The world will hear just five minutes of his message - because that was all the journalists, invited by his hired PR flacks, would allow the media to hear of Gore’s speech before they were rudely pushed out the door.
And I mean pushed.
A certain flack physically placed her hand on my back at the Convention Centre when Gore was mid-sentence during his speech (you had to pay up to $2500 for the privilege of hearing it in full) and propelled me towards the exit ...
Well, that works. Here’s a man who’s made it his life’s mission to teach the globe about climate change and our doomed future but he won’t let us listen.
By contrast, the SMH’s Marian Wilkinson - usually outraged by media censorship - seems relatively relaxed about the whole deal.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
SOCIAL STRUCTURE RESPONDS
Former Liberal leader and dodged bullet John Hewson joins the carbon cult:
What we’ve got to do is make it a significant shift in the structure of our economy and the easiest way to do that, the most obvious economic solution to doing that is to put a price on carbon. Once there is a price put on carbon so that people are costed for the impact they have by way of carbon emissions on our atmosphere, then the whole industrial and social structure will respond ... I think it will be the single biggest economic and social revolution this country’s probably seen in its history.
That was a few days ago, on the ABC. Those views may not have been appreciated by certain groups connected to Hewson. Monday:
Dr John Hewson has resigned as Chairman of the Touring Car Entrants Group (TEGA), the body that owns 75 per cent of V8 Supercars Australia.
(Via Anthony L.)
UPDATE. Hewson, a budding biodiesel baron, could find this interesting:
A renewable energy source designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions may be contributing more to global warming than fossil fuels, a study suggests.
Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and corn have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.
MARK OF A LOSER
Mark Bahnisch should really put a little more thought into those bile-filled blog insults of his:
Spending your leisure time hurling bile filled insults on blogs is the mark of a sad fucking loser with no life whatsoever.
BLOOD UNCHILLED
As requested, Media Watch pursues Phillip Adams’ claim to have been chilled by an interview with Helen Demidenko/Darville/Dale:
One of my most chilling experiences on this program ever was a long interview I did with Helen Demidenko which made my blood freeze.
Never happened, according to Helen:
I’ve never been on Late Night Live. I’ve never been interviewed by Phillip Adams.
Alerted by Media Watch, Adams offered this excuse:
I’ve been involved in so many interviews and so many radio studios over so many years that I got it wrong. I found on checking the encounter was not on this program.
But that interview was chilled - chilled! - into Phil’s memory. Host Monica Attard:
Surely Phillip Adams isn’t seriously saying that an interview he remembered so clearly just a few days ago now may have been just a chance encounter?
But Phil isn’t the main villain of this piece. Media Watch’s crack research team dug further and deeper, and discovered – buried several comments deep in this Catallaxy thread – remarks supportive of Helen from Howard-appointed ABC board member Ron Brunton. This development rated its very own segment on last night’s Media Watch, with Attard concluding:
Well if Ron Brunton is brave enough to rely on the word of Helen Demidenko/Darville/Dale, given her rather colourful history of storytelling, well that’s one thing.
What? Adams has already said he was wrong. (Incidentally, Adams himself has a rather colourful history of story-telling, not that Media Watch ever notices.) Do continue, Monica:
But for a non-executive board member to rush to public judgement of ABC journalists on the basis that he’ll fix it some time later if he’s wrong is worrying.
A non-issue. Brunton was right; Adams was in error. The producer and host of this ridiculous program should resign immediately. Oh, wait …
UPDATE. Outgoing Media Watch executive producer Tim Palmer chats with his journalistic colleagues at The Australian:
He used an unprintable profanity to describe one journalist, and called the editor an “idiot”.
“Your paper ...” he said, before trailing off. “You want me to talk to you?”
Palmer refused to speak further unless his conversation was off the record.
Imagine the pressure of producing 15 entire minutes of television every week. No wonder the poor guy is about to snap.
FAREWELL TO RAZZ
A beautiful labrador killed in the line of duty.
Monday, September 24, 2007
ADELE UPDATED
The SMH’s Adele Horin, 2001:
More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week, the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, 2007:
I am at the head of a state that is in a position of bankruptcy.
I am at the head of a state that for 15 years has been in chronic deficit. I am at the head of a state that has not once passed a balanced budget in 25 years. This can’t go on.
It can – if you believe in Horinomics!
UNDERBELLY OVERRULED
How might a Labor government view Israel?
Barry Cohen, the last Jew to serve as a federal minister, is still “very concerned” about Labor’s anti-Israel underbelly. “There are sections of mainstream Labor branches that are quite viciously anti-Israel,” he says.
Not so much at the higher levels, though, where the current leadership is the most pro-Israel since Bob Hawke. Not that it has much to do with Israel, being more an issue of general decency, but this is noteworthy:
In the mid-1990s, Jeremy Jones, who compiles an annual report on anti-Semitism in Australia, received a call from a woman in Brisbane about a giant swastika. He told her to go back, photograph it and remove it. “When she returned, there was someone whitewashing over it,” Jones recalls. “He introduced himself; it was Kevin Rudd.”
Good on him.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
PROPERTY CRASH
Nothing like a catchy name to lure investors:
Australia’s largest property developer wants to build a new suburb the size of Shepparton 30 kilometres to the north of Melbourne that would controversially stretch the city’s boundaries.
The scheme, known as Lockerbie …
GULF BRIDGED
In his list of reasons to vote for Kevin Rudd, Robert Manne includes:
If Rudd is elected, the gulf between the government and the country’s creative artists will be bridged.
No more dissent! Government and artists united as one! Everybody kissing and painting the big giant heroic portraits!
Our nation’s artists will be pleased to know they’re seen as so compliant. Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden takes a look at an inventor, artist, engineer and student.
FEWER CORRECTIONS THAN RESIGNATIONS
Age media expert Matthew Ricketson:
Media Watch today, aided by the internet’s capacities, is far more transparent in its methods and in correcting any of its own errors.
Check the number of corrections offered by Media Watch this year. Ricketson hasn’t.
GOT TO GET HOT TO PLAY REAL COOL
An intriguing question:
Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for ... an ice age?
Read on.
MARCEL MARCEAU
A moment of silence, please.