BoltWatch

Dedicated to those who can tell the difference between A. Bolt and a nut.

Where Andrew Bolt's Deranged Polemic ... Gets What's Coming To It

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Bolt 31/5: East Timor vs Iraq
Note: the above isn't actually the heading to Bolt's piece; it's not on the website yet, and whilst I read his article a moment ago at lunch I can't remember exactly what he called it. Oh, the trauma of advancing age.

Andrew Bolt's piece today asks what, on the face of it, looks like a rather difficult question for the anti-war Left: why are we so forgiving of the situation in East Timor, when we're so scathing of the chaos in Iraq? Why don't we condemn the UN for taking steps in 1999, when we condemn the US for its invasion of Iraq in 2003? Is the real difference, Andrew suggests, just that the left HATES THE AMERICANS and wants to BASH EVERYTHING THEY DO?

One difference between East Timor and Iraq: we didn't invade East Timor in a war with its previous government. We didn't fight a war killing its present inhabitants. We didn't bomb it.

But that's not the real difference. The real difference is that East Timor was entirely about protecting the human rights of its citizens. That's what it was always about. It wasn't about special deals for oil - quite the reverse, we'd had those deals with Jakarta for twenty years, which is why we'd looked the other way for so long.

Our involvement in East Timor was on genuine principle.

The US involvement in Iraq wasn't. The US didn't sell its invasion on the "we must protect the human rights of Iraqis" line. It sold it on the dubious "they're GONNA GET US" line.

Worse, and the main reason I didn't support the war, the US had no plan for the peace. War is only justified, from a progressive point of view, in two circumstances: in self-defence; or in defence of a populace being abused by a tyrannical overlord (ie to restore human rights). It can only be justified on the second ground, therefore, if the situation after the war is going to be significantly better than it was before the war. In other words, the human cost of war (which is significant, and should never be downplayed so egregiously and dishonestly as it was by the Bush Administration) can only be justified if it outweighs a more significant human cost (the continuing oppression and murder of people). And you can only do this if you're confident you can fix things up after the bombing stops.

But Iraq? The US had, only a year or so previously, run a successful war to get rid of the regime in Afghanistan. And what was the state of Afghanistan in 2003, when the US turned its eyes to Iraq? Pretty bloody hopeless.

In simple terms - when you invade a country, you completely break it. And it's only worth doing when you can show you can repair the damage later. Had the US done this in the case of Afghanistan? Hell no. Afghanistan was a basket case. And if the US couldn't restore human rights and the rule of law in Afghanistan, then why did it think it could do so in Iraq?

What the Left was afraid of in Iraq was not the toppling of Saddam. It was the tremendous cost of a war ultimately being paid for nothing. It was the replacement of a brutal, human-rights-abusing regime with another brutal, human-rights-abusing regime. After all, who had set Saddam up in the first place? Not - the US? Oh, yeah, it was.

To be clear: the left does stand for the rule of law and the protection of human rights. This is why we're opposed to the abuses that continue in Guantanamo Bay; in China; in North Korea; in Zimbabwe; in Iraq... And, although there's a strong "no war at any cost" component of our side, there's also a strong realist contingency.

We'd argue that certain dictatorial regimes are not simply going to fall on their own. They'll need pushing. And if that ultimately, and as a last resort, requires force - then so be it. But if you're going to go the war route, you'd better be damned sure that you know how to make sure that the peace afterwards justifies the serious human cost entailed in war.

The US didn't do that in Iraq. It didn't know how to handle the peace, and it was obvious in advance that it wouldn't by virtue of its ham-fisted efforts in Afghanistan. We were sceptical of its ability to restore democracy and the rule of law - and, sadly, we were right.

Now East Timor is also, obviously, a basket-case. The difference is that we didn't break the place ourselves with bombs; it was already broken, and it was broken by others. We're just trying to help fix it.

But let's turn this little line of argument around on Andrew Bolt: Andrew, if you're in favour of war in Iraq on the basis that we should get rid of brutal dictators; do you also advocate us marching into Zimbabwe or North Korea? Or should we finish with our present war before we start on the next one? If so - congratulations. You're where the Left was in 2003.

- posted by Jeremy @ 1:42 PM |
Monday, May 29, 2006

Bolt and McCarthyism
This from Bolt's forum the other day, highlighted by Binns:
From: Richard Plumridge

Comment: Andrew Bolt turned movie reviewer, well I never thought I'd see the day. Muslims have been portrayed as 'bad guys' plenty. Look at the past seasons of 24 and extremist Muslims have been the 'baddies'.

Have you even seen 'Good Night, And Good Luck'? That film was not an attack on communism itself, but rather an attack on Senator Joseph McCarthy who harassed and falsely accused citizens of having communist sympathies. The Sum of All Fears was a different story as, according to the filmmakers, the original novel's politics and back-story was far too complex to condense into a feature film, so the writers took the easy road and just made the baddies 'Neo-Nazis' to make it easier for common-denominator audience to swallow.

Often, Andrew, there are multiple reasons as to why decisions are made in filmmaking. Perhaps you should stick to opinion writing and filmmakers will stick to filmmaking.

Andrew replies: "Senator Joseph McCarthy who harassed and falsely accused citizens of having communist sympathies" This is the problem. Such films are accepted as true by people like you who clearly do not know their history. As for "neo-Nazis" being "easier to swallow" as villains that Islamist terrorists - you really don't know your present either.

"This is the problem"? That McCarthy is remembered for running a divisive, destructive witch-hunt?

Is Andrew seriously now standing up for McCarthyism? Jesus. A defence of hypocrisy, rewriting history on Joseph McCarthy - what's next? A line in right-wing "Hitler was really a leftist" drivel?

- posted by Jeremy @ 7:24 AM |
Friday, May 26, 2006

Bolt 3/5: "Honestly, Count Bodies".
Guest post from Bruce, from earlier this month (contributions are always welcome; but sometimes MrLefty is also MrSlackBastard):

Interesting little piece from Andrew this third of May, entitled "Honestly, count bodies".

It's a short article, as are the other two published on the same day. Perhaps Andrew is experimenting with his writing style; Keep it short, cover more topics. Perfect for those readers short of attention span wanting wide ranging polemic. In short, Hun readers who want to know-it-all.

I'm being facetious of course. Well, actually, only half-facetious; newspapers are geared to particular literacies. Ask a chalky teaching high school English and they can usually confirm; tabloids write to a reading comprehension of around that of the average fourteen year old, broadsheets usually target between fifteen to seventeen with the occasional adult level article. The Hun is a money making enterprise and Andrew has a job working for a tabloid.

But let's put that little fact aside and get back to the meat of the article; counting the bodies killed by policy x. Quoting Tim Holden, Andrew writes;
Far better we be fined until we slowed down. "All of our evidence tells us that if we can get people to wipe off five, we can save lives."

But if we save lives by driving 5km/h slower, how many more will we save by wiping off 15? Or 25?

Good question actually. I'm only a South Australian though, so it's not incumbent upon me to dictate Victorian speed laws. Actually, I'd feel uncomfortable doing so because I also confess; Melbournian drivers are far better than Adelaidian drivers.
Still, you don't have to be a Victorian to see the statistical implications nor it's relevance to most Australians.

So don't take it the wrong way when I say that Andrew raises a good point when he says;
And that's the debate we haven't had in all this fuss over speed limits and the speed cameras which earned the Government a juicy $167 million in just the six months to January. How many lives are we prepared to lose before we reckon we're driving fast enough?

Just how many deaths is an acceptable level? Should Victorians stay perfectly still? What if they need to drive above 1km/h to save a life? Not really questions for a South Australian to answer, although the reasoning behind Andrew's questions still seems sound to me. Seems relevant to a South Aussie as well, although I can't speak for you Vics out there. Andrew continues;
How simplistic is all this stern talk of just forcing us to drive more slowly, when we have no idea how slow -- or fast -- is acceptable, given the dead. But perhaps we're no longer honest enough to calculate lives lost for benefits gained.

Very simplistic it seems. Or at least, from where I am sitting (maybe I should move to Melbourne). Furthermore, that Andrew recognises a basic epistemological problem in knowing what speed-to-mortality ratio is best is comforting, considering his track record with insistence on certain facts.

Before one can claim something to be a truism, they have to be able to verify their knowledge and it's good to see Andrew questioning what he can and can't know.

Still, determining what is acceptable may be more easy than Andrew suggests; "Hey Bob, is it acceptable for me to kick you in the nuts?", "No!". It is not acceptable to kick Bob in the nuts. Is X speed acceptable to Victorians? Ask Victorians. But that's Andrew's point isn't it? There has been no debate on acceptable speeds.

Listen only to the critics of the Iraq war who refuse to balance the lives lost against those we saved from Saddam, or who now imply that the death of just one Australian soldier there is a price too high to pay.

Those critics of Iraq who imply the death of "just one Australian soldier" is too high a price to pay are few and far between. I can think of thousands of reasons (each dead Iraqi) cited prolifically by Iraq critics. How simplistic indeed.

Inconsequential Iraq jab aside, Andrew finishes with:
Doyle is no more heartless than you . . . or Holding. He's simply asking if you'd like just a little more speed for just a few more bodies. Do the maths without the fuss.

Do the maths without the fuss. Well technically mourning dead loved ones counts as fuss and I doubt proponents of the Iraq war would make no such fuss over the late Jake Kovco. Nor would his family. Neither should anyone really. Dead loved ones invariably involve fuss. Semantics aside, as Andrew suggests, we should count the bodies with a sober mind. Jake Kovco's death alone is not enough to render the Iraq war untenable as Andrew's straw man, anti-war activist seems unable to grasp.

So why stop with speed limits. Sober statistical analysis shouldn't be so restrained, nor is it mutually exclusive with respect for those who have died. There are other policies that require a sober looking over based on mortality rates. Importantly, for example; terrorism. Let's have a look shall we.

In total, around five thousand Australians are killed by breast or prostate cancer each year. How many Australians are killed by terrorism? Around six thousand are killed by lung cancer every year. How many are killed by terrorism? Around three thousand, seven hundred Australians are killed by colon cancer every year. How many are killed by terrorism? We have the war on terror, where is the war on cancer?

One in five hundred Australians die of heart disease every year and a third as much die from cerebro-vascular afflictions (stroke or brain haemorrhage.) How many Australians are killed by terrorism? One in five thousand Australian's suicide each year. How many Australian's are killed by terrorism?

We give the war on terror such great attention but the war on poor cardio vascular health doesn't have the political gravitas it deserves. At least a war on the black dog has started, but that's just not enough.

We are told by many political conservatives, to fear terrorism more so than they tell us to fear cancer, or heart disease and the focus they give mental illness is still far too little (although a hat tip to Kennett is obligatory - sorry Victoria). In the face of terrorism (such as it is), contemporary Australian (and US) political conservatism has been rendered impotent by the simultaneous loosening of both its minds and bowels. Fear robs many of them of what ever Kantian enlightenment they may have possessed and renders them as children.

Children with knocking knees and arms flailing in fear. Not leadership material exactly, yet we let them run the show.

However, Andrew, in spite of the fear induced mental atrophy, has set a standard with his little piece in the Hun. We have to count the bodies with a sober mind. I'm wondering how many conservatives will adhere to this standard now that Andrew has stated it so plainly and concisely. Buses and Chernobyl come to mind for some reason, but that's just my leftist cynicism isn't it? ;-)

- posted by Jeremy @ 9:44 PM |
Monday, May 22, 2006

Bolt 19/5: "Save the children" and "What a bollocking" (UPDATE)
Andrew Bolt's first piece on Friday was rather revealing.

For those just joining the story, Bolt is a fervent "Stolen Generation"-denier. There was no such thing, he says. Aboriginal children weren't taken from their parents over the course of the last century, as part of any deliberate government policy. Never happened! And say sorry? What for? We'd never do anything like that.

Although, he says in "Save the children", it would be a good idea:
THE tragedy is not that there was a "stolen generation". It's that we won't "steal" some children today.

...Why can't we rescue such children now, and give them safety and some schooling?


It's a slightly confused article, because he's trying to argue both ways: that we didn't do it, but that a responsible government would have. That, hey, we wouldn't do a bad thing like that - although it's actually a good thing and I think we should do it.

It'll be interesting in future "Stolen generation" debates with Bolt to see how he reconciles his new argument with the old one. Of course, in this article he craftily avoids making the contradiction too obvious, by not actually arguing the Stolen Generation point here at all, instead copping out with a shameless book plug:
For evidence the "stolen generations" is a myth, see my book still not sorry. To order, ring 9292 1234.

(That's not an endorsement from BoltWatch, by the way.)

As to the substantive and current issue, the recent revelations of outrageous abuses of aboriginal women and children in the Northern Territory - clearly police and authorities need to be stepping in. Authorities don't need to suddenly start a special "Aboriginal child-taking programme" - they simply need to apply the already existing child protection laws in a consistent and thorough fashion. This may need special funding, or a new division of DHS specially tasked with resolving this particular problem. (Which does, of course, require some consideration as the societies in which they'd be working have somewhat unique difficulties as a result of isolation, education, poverty, etc.)

They need to exert a real presence so that battered women know that they have real options. So that abuses are reported promptly and the offenders appropriately punished. What's needed is for the problem to be taken seriously, and "law and order" to actually exist in our remotest communities. Real "law and order" that actually reflects that crimes against other people are the most serious - not one that sees people punished similarly for drunkenness as for violent assaults. Prioritise, please. There need to be positive programmes to help victims report abuse; and to help potential abusers find other ways of dealing with their issues.

The "take them away" solution is no solution at all. What, we simply declare an entire region of the country hopeless and lawless, an unsalvageable basket-case, and try to rescue people from it by forcibly taking them away against their will? How is that solving anything?

Restoring the policies which lead to the "stolen generation" would be an incredible mistake.

(Although it would give Andrew Bolt's descendants of 2106 something to write about.)


UPDATE
I'll do Andrew's second piece here, while we're at it:
"What a Bollocking"
GIVE Rex Hunt a break. If he really was so bad, his adultery might not have been all over this week's papers.

(Sorry, have to interject here - which paper ran the investigation which forced Hunt to make a public statement about it? Which paper ran it as its lead front-page story for two days in a row? WOULDN'T BE YOURS, NOW, WOULD IT, ANDREW?)
He does in fact know right from wrong, but was just mad enough to preach it.

That cooked this goose. It's the fact that Hunt didn't just lie with prostitutes, but stands for morality that has the media now claiming he deserves public humiliation over his private life.

...See how many others have used this Hypocrite Hunt line to help explain, or excuse, the slavering coverage. The Age report, for instance, said: "Hunt has been known to have been morally harsh at times on colleagues who had transgressed".

A bit self-righteous, but at least it's an arguable justification.

...If only Hunt had made a point instead of claiming to be a lousy, faithless, lying bastard of a husband. If only he'd defended every footballer who'd tackled another man's wife, and every cricketer who'd stumped a stripper.

If only he'd recognised that the sexual morality he was preaching (if that's what he was doing - I don't know, I've never heard Rex Hunt talk about anything) was so empty that he couldn't live up to it himself, and talked about something in which he actually did believe instead.

Who'd then have cared if he'd paid $50,000 a year to sleep with some woman in a deal that suited both? Or, rather, which paper would have felt so free to report it?

Exactly. Why would it have been anyone's business?

After all, he wouldn't have been a hypocrite then, would he? And that would make him kind of . . . honest.

This surely can't be right. We can't really want to go easier on people who don't even pretend to be moral.

No, Andrew, that's exactly right.

People's private lives are their own business. Full stop. It's not up to us to "go easy" or "to hard" on people for what they do in the bedroom. (Provided it's legal, of course.) Who the hell do you think you and your newspaper are? What do you think you're doing? Public shaming? For sexual "immorality"? Do you want to bring back locking people up in stocks and pelting them with rotten fruit while you're at it?

The only way such a story could ever be remotely newsworthy would be, as you apparently realise, if they were total hypocrites. For example, if Herald Sun editor Peter Blunden, who chose to run the Hunt story on the front page TWICE last week, turns out to have had secret mistresses or some other sexual peccadilloes for which he's previously used his newspaper to attack someone else - then by all means. PLASTER IT ALL OVER THE FRONT PAGES. What a sweet, sweet come-uppance that would be.

PETER BLUNDEN: MY SHAME.

Yeah, it has a ring to it. And do you know why? Because Blunden has made a point of arguing that private lives are public. So he could hardly complain if that was applied to him, then, could he?

For everyone else, though, lay off. Frankly, I don't think Hunt's reported bland pronouncements on "morality" justified the coverage, either - hence my piece the other day. So he might have made some sanctimoniously prat-like remarks about someone else's adultery: that's not the same as publicly exposing it. It's not the same as bringing in some kind of freaky Old School Fire And Brimstone Morality legislation. If he's a hypocrite, he's a fairly minor one.

What's more disturbing is that in Andrew's view, apparently, offending Joe Public's personal version of "sexual morality" is a more serious offence than blatant hypocrisy!

Hence:
It's time we remembered hypocrisy is an under-rated good. It shouldn't be punished but praised because, as the French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld said long ago: "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."

Well, there you are. Andrew is pro-hypocrisy. (Explains a lot, doesn't it?)

In Andrew's world, we should be less concerned with the hypocritical politician whose public words (on which we elect them) are found to have nothing to do with what they actually believe and do, than with the politician who has a kinky sex life!

Andrew, hypocrisy is serious because it reveals that the words a person says are hollow. That is indeed a relevant consideration if that person seeks to influence us in public life on those issues. When someone's trying to justify intrusions in other people's private lives for matters which they themselves need to keep private in their own lives, then yes, it could make sense to help them get the point by applying their own logic back at them. Anyone who's profited from exposing someone else's private life could well be argued to deserve to have the same done to them.

But it should be the exception rather than the rule - only applied in instances of really serious hypocrisy. You know, like if the Pope was revealed to be, whilst bullying HIV-infected Africans not to use condoms under the guise of some bizarre, ancient and misinterpreted version of "sexual morality", out bonking everyone he could find. Or - to give an example Bolt might appreciate (if it'll help him get the point, I'm willing to suggest something he'd like) - if a hardcore anti-logging environmentalist were revealed to have just bought a huge block of land in pristine rainforest and be clearing out ancient heritage trees to build a - um, what's a conservative stereotype about environmentalists? - giant hippy tofu paddock.

But, generally, what people do in bed - news? Do you really want to live in a world where what you do lawfully with another adult is anyone - everyone - else's business?

I don't. And I suspect that only the most prudishly prurient killjoys really would.

UPDATE #2
Actually, I will give Bolt one thing. That column did show some, how shall I say this, "balls". Okay, so he avoided including his own boss in his condemnation of the Hunt story, preferring to concentrate on reprobates like THOSE BASTARDS AT THE AGE - but, meh, that's pretty standard for Andrew. No, I'll nod my head in his direction because, daft though it was, he had the lower body fortitude to actually write a piece defending hypocrisy. Whilst his columnist compatriots chose to either defend Hunt's privacy or attack his hypocrisy; Andrew took the incredibly ballsy route of trying to portray hypocrisy as if it were a good thing. Knowing that the piece was in print, and would stay on the record forever.

Sir, for your huevos grandes*, we salute you.

*I don't speak Spanish. That was from Stephen Colbert. I'll assume it means what I think it means.

- posted by Jeremy @ 4:40 PM |
Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Bolt 12/5 and 17/5
THERE have been demands. "Where's BoltWatch got to?" "I want more BoltWatch!" "What the hell is BoltWatch?" etc.

But, come on, it's not like he's written anything particularly worthy of comment since the last entry, is it?

Let's see:
May 12 - "Just try to analyse this".
Obvious article about some of the rather appalling regimes who now happen to be on the UN's Human Rights Council. Andrew notes that the US and Australia are sitting out. His conclusion: "There is a fault line between the free West and much of the often unfree rest, and it runs right through the UN's main human rights agency. Expect little help from it."

The problem is that whilst the countries Andrew cites are rightly deserving of condemnation for their abuses of human rights, he doesn't suggest what we should be doing instead. He seems to look at their faults as excusing our own. "Hey, sure, we don't prioritise human rights either - *cough* David Hicks *cough* - but at least we're not as bad as China!" (It's a bit like his "at least we're not as bad as China" defence of our environmental policy last week.)

Has he considered that judging ourselves by comparison with the worst countries in the world is not exactly taking the issue seriously?

May 12 - "Rob of the jungle"
In which Andrew has a go at Rob Hulls for calling Ted Baillieu "the toff from Toorak". Hulls' jibe is based on the obscene amounts of wealth that Baillieu has inherited, and how the fact he's never had to work a day in his life might warp his perspective. Andrew's retort is to call "hypocrisy" because Hulls went to a private school.

From Andrew's description, I can see a considerable difference between Hulls' background and Baillieu's, but anyway. Bolt suggests that Hulls' "non old-school tie" appointments to the judiciary are shots in an imagined class war rather than, as Hulls would argue, trying to restore some balance to a legal system still overwhelmingly white, male and middle class.

But that's a debate for another time. I do like it when Andrew Bolt, opera-loving snob (see, picking one attribute of a personality and using it to sum up the entire person can be a pretty powerful technique - if completely unfair), pretends to be a mate of the battlers, while he does everything in his power to get them to swallow some pretty unpleasant conservative medicine, week after week.

May 17 - "My God! A Bible"
Andrew tries here to compare those metaphorical apples and oranges - the hospital which decided not to let religious missionaries leave their bibles in hospital rooms, and the TV commercial taken off air (because it joked about "Indian call centres"; and an apparently bizarre, Islamist terrorist handbook which remains available for sale in bookshops.

The latter of these things seems a bit bizarre. Is there any restriction on what can be published, then? Of course, I haven't read the DPP's explanation for its decision not to prosecute, and I'm wary of jumping on board bandwagons like this on nothing more than Andrew Bolt's historically not-very-credible columnist word. Same with the second one - who exactly makes up the "Advertising Standards Board", anyway, and what are the criteria on which they judge which ads should be banned or not?

As for the first one - well, as usual, Andrew misses the point:
It seems the real racists -- the real troublemakers -- are the multiculturalists who assume Muslims are so intolerant they can't safely be shown a Bible, or denied their own books that preach such violence.

Rubbish. It's not "multiculturalists", it those of us who object to religious people forcing their faith down our throats all the time. Put some bloody decent reading material by hospital beds, not religious recruiting tools. (And stop implying it's some "multicultural" war on Christianity; we don't want any religious books there. Not the Koran, not the Bible, not the Scientologists' Guide To Gullibility.
And once more we should heed the warning -- especially in Victoria, where we prosecute two Christian pastors who warn against jihad but tolerate the most radical imams who preach it.

Point: the book cleared by the AFP and Commonwealth DPP; has it been referred to the Victorian DPP? Because you'd think that the same laws that were used to prosecute the Catch The Fire nutters could be used against the purveyors of that book.

(Apples and oranges again; the Government (state) which prosecuted the Catch The Fire people was NOT the Government (federal) which appears to have decided to let the terrorist book through.)

And lay off the "War Against Christianity" stuff. The Christians are doing pretty well, Andrew.

May 17 "Envy rears ugly head over miners"
Christ. Are we there yet?

Andrew cites some remarks during the week (from LETTERS TO THE EDITOR! and THAT NASTY DAVID WILLIAMSON GUY!) from people suggesting that the miners should share some of their supposed upcoming financial windfall with the family of the miner who was killed and, I don't know, hippy elite lattes for the poor or something (Sorry, I've just worked my way through four Bolt articles; it's getting to me).

Andrew tries briefly to suggest that this is somehow typical of, what, his typical targets - but doesn't press the point too hard. He simply notes they deseve the money and don't seem to have been in any way greedy at this point - and, really, I agree. (There's no way I'd stay down in that hole for two weeks for $3 million, anyway.)

AND that's Bolt for the last week. It wasn't exactly fun, was it?

- posted by Jeremy @ 4:22 PM |
Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Bolt 10/5: "Thanks be to love"
In which Andrew profoundly reveals that LOVE and MATESHIP are GOOD THINGS.

TWO lives saved. But Sophie Delezio still to be spared – please God – for these past days to have all the meaning we need.

When did this country pray so hard for the lives of three people? And why now?

Ooh! Ooh! Don't tell me.

A. Love
B. Mateship
C. Courage
D. Faith

Mateship?
With Todd Russell and Brant Webb now freed from the Beaconsfield mine, we can say it's mateship that saved them.

Awesome. My Andrew Bolt Predictinator 2000 is working perfectly.

Wait a sec - that's what "saved them"? Well, I was going to go for their union-based training and the courageous efforts of the rescuers, but "mateship" is much easier to toss meaninglessly about, so let's go with that.
Of course, we could have made the 14 days that Russell and Webb spent entombed by a rock fall a symbol of many other things.

We could have said it epitomised the courage of miners, the greed of bosses, the earth's treachery, the love of the families, the skill of the rescuers, the power of faith, or the will to survive.

Labor leader Kim Beazley even thought its moral was the wickedness of Prime Minister John Howard's workplace laws.

But we settled on mateship.

Uh, who's "we"? News Ltd? The Prime Minister? (Yeah, funny that he didn't think the miners' survival symbolised the effectiveness of the union training they'd received that's now prohibited by his IR legislation.)

ps nice passing Kim Beazley bash, mate.

Anyway, we're not there yet. Andrew's got a page to fill.
Russell and Webb mates homily platitude homily powerful homily homily platitude Sophie Delezio homily homily homily homily "pray for our little girl" platitude platitude homily homily homily homily so dignified homily homily platitude love homily struggle platitude beautiful homily homily platitude.*

*Paraphrase of the rest of the article.

Wow, Andrew, you're completely in touch with all our feelings. We're happy the miners are out and we feel really sorry for little Sophie. Thanks for being there to put our unremarked-upon feelings into print. You're the most insightful columnist EVER!
We need Sophie to live because only alive will she show us best what she's shown us already in her short life -- the power of love. The power to reach us all, tunnelling even to those trapped alone in the deepest dark.

She must live, for the past two weeks to mean the most.

...And such a poet!

- posted by Jeremy @ 5:23 PM |
Thursday, May 04, 2006

Bolt 3/5: "Dam, China shows us up"
Strange articles from Andrew yesterday (I'm not going to touch his bizarre lemming rant).

He tries to have a go at the Greens, and China, on the subject of dams - but ends up so confused that it's impossible to figure out what he's trying to say.

In denouncing nuclear power as a "toxic waste future", [ALP environment spokesman] Albanese praised China for ordering three wind farms from Tasmania, and damned Australia for not trying as hard to get such clean power.

"China's renewable energy target of 15 per cent by 2020 puts the Howard Government's 2 per cent target in perspective," he sniped.

Greens Senator Christine Milne likewise enthused that "China has moved swiftly" in tackling global warming when it last year doubled its target for renewable energy.

Sounds reasonable to me. There's a catch of course -
But almost all China's lovely green electricity will come not from solar power, which is too costly, or the wind, which is too unreliable.

It will come instead from dams -- and not just any damn dams. China hopes its massive Three Gorges project on the Yangtze will by then be producing nearly 10 per cent of the country's electricity.

Green groups fought this land-drowning project so furiously that the World Bank pulled out. Yet now we're told this is green power to envy.

Andrew's trying to portray this as inconsistent for the Greens. The Greens apparently are not allowed to commend one positive action from a Government if they've previously criticised other negative actions from that same Government.

Note that even if you take out the dams' 10%, Bolt's figures leave the Chinese government with a target of at least 5% non-destructive Green power, which is still two and a half times the Howard Government's 2%. Even with all its horrible environmental problems, China seems to be taking the issue more seriously than we are. FIVE percent from wind or solar power, not TWO. So is it so unreasonable for the ALP and Greens to damn* Howard with the contrast?

Meanwhile, who knows what Andrew thinks about hydro-electricity. Whilst you'd guess from his "land-drowning" crack that he's opposed to the dams, he ends with this -
So there's little the Chinese can teach us, other than the joy of building new dams. Which, of course, the Greens and Labor stupidly oppose.

Your guess is as good as mine.

*Sorry.

- posted by Jeremy @ 9:47 AM |

Portions of any work of Andrew Bolt are taken from his webpage at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/, are copyright Andrew Bolt, and are reproduced on the basis of the "fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review" section 41 of the Copyright Act 1968. Other material is copyright by its various authors, which sort of goes without saying really.