The morally blind "Amnesty" organization

They think in terms of race rather than in terms of harm done to people. So who are the racists? Article below by Australian columnist Andrew Bolt

AMNESTY International has a lethal dose of our new intellectual disease - the racism of the anti-racists. It's got it so bad that what was once the world's most admired human-rights group can no longer tell the moral difference between a democrat and a dictator. At least, not when the democrat is as white as - yes! - John Howard, and the genocidal despot is not.

Amnesty's secretary-general, Irene Khan, last week released its 2007 report, and in its foreword listed what to her were the greatest threats to human rights. "Today far too many leaders are trampling and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears," trumpeted Khan, a Bangladeshi Muslim whose own country, by the way, is under military rule. And she named four leaders - no one else - who demonstrated to her this kind of "myopic and cowardly leadership".



The Muslim and morally blind Ms Khan above. Not an unusual combination of attributes. Muslim respect for human life and their love of Western civilization is well-known

First, was our own Prime Minister Howard - prime evil for stopping boats of illegal immigrants. Second, was US President George Bush, for invoking "the fear of terrorism" just "to enhance his executive power". (I know, that fear was invoked not by Bush, but by terrorists on September 11, 2001, and ... but we're interrupting Khan's lecture.) Trailing in third place, in Khan's pantheon of evil, was Sudan's Islamist President, Omar al-Bashir, behind a genocide in Darfur that's killed some 200,000 people. Last was Robert Mugabe, who has turned Zimbabwe into a cemetery for the starving, although Khan merely accuses him of grabbing land for his supporters.

This grouping of two leaders of free democracies with two genocidal thugs is bizarre, but does have supreme virtue for the modern anti-racist racist. See? Two whites were "balanced" by two dark-skins. Two Westerners by two Third-Worlders. Two Christians by a Muslim and an old Communist. What could be fairer? And that fake balance - so kind to the cruel - ran right through Khan's essay. A typical line: "The politics of fear has been made more complex by the emergence of armed groups and big business that commit or condone human rights abuses." How about that? Al-Qaeda (which Khan never mentions by name) is no more deadly than a big business like Nike.

Here's another: "If unregulated migration is the fear of the rich, then unbridled capitalism, driven by globalisation, is the fear of the poor." Perfectly balanced. The capitalism that actually makes poor people richer, is thought by Khan to be as scary as the race riots and no-entry immigrant enclaves of France, or the bomb plots of jihad-minded sons of immigrants in Britain.

Nowhere does she note that the West is swamped by migrants from the East precisely because the East has too little capitalism. And, of course, too many dictators. Nor does Khan acknowledge that the fears expressed by her hated Western politicians have very real causes, often originating in lands ruled by Muslim theocracies and autocrats.

You might think I've read too much into one article, but Khan has form in likening the worst to the West, and seeing an equivalence between those defending the West and those trying to destroy it. Three years ago, for instance, she said that of all the horrors of the world, the US-led "war on terror" (her scare quotes) was "the biggest attack on human rights, principles and values". Honest. To Khan, defending ourselves against Islamist terrorists is deadlier to human rights than, say, the brutalising of Zimbabwe, the mass murder in Darfur, the state oppression in China, the civil wars in Algeria and Sudan, the withering of democracy in Russia, the Islamist fascism of Iran, and the open jail of North Korea.

The following year, Khan even called Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our time" - this time making a prison for 400 suspected terrorists seem as terrible as the vast Soviet network of forced labor camps in which millions of innocent civilians were jailed in conditions so brutal that countless of them died. This outraged Pavel Litvinov, a former Soviet "prisoner of conscience" adopted by Amnesty, who warned: "By using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty's spokesman put its authority at risk."

I wish. In fact, Khan's anti-racist racism and consequent likening of white democrats to black totalitarians has made her a hero. In 2004, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize and invited to give the University of South Australia's annual Hawke Lecture, broadcast across the land by the ABC. How the audience at that lecture cheered Khan as she cried there was a "feeling in many parts of the world that the West has lost its moral high ground to advocate human rights" - an irrational feeling she has tried harder than most to whip up. Those cheers confirmed that Khan simply reflected a suicidal tendency among the West's intelligentsia to see the worst in the West and the best in the totalitarians pledged to destroy it.

Want recent examples? There are our prominent Leftists - ABC host Phillip Adams, propagandist John Pilger, columnist Jill Singer, Islamist Keysar Trad - who've invited Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez to visit and "inspire" us. That is, when he's not too busy closing down TV stations that criticise him, rigging laws to stay in power and calling George Bush a "devil".

There's Age cartoonist and National Living Treasure Michael Leunig, who similarly draws Bush as a devil, Howard as a murderer and Israel as Auschwitz, but demands we treat terrorist chief Osama bin Laden as our "relative" and "consider (his) suffering". There's the Melbourne University Press boss, Louise Adler, who two weeks ago likened al-Qaeda recruit David Hicks to Nelson Mandela.

There's University of Technology Sydney's Islamic law lecturer, Jamila Hussain, who this week called visiting author Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "extremist" who should stay "where she came from" when real extremists - Muslim ones - have forced this liberal Sudanese-born feminist and critic of misogynist Islam to bring her bodyguard to ensure she doesn't suffer the fate of her former colleague, director Theo van Gogh, assassinated in 2004.

Or take the Global Peace Index released this week by The Charitable Foundation of local IT millionaire and philanthropist Steve Killelea. It rated Australia at 25 in its ranking of countries most at peace - and the US at just 96, below even Syria, China, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia and Libya. Democratic Israel was rated the least peaceful of all, apart from Sudan and Iraq. Not one report I saw of that survey drew the obvious conclusion: that this was madness. That this was a manifestation of a moral blindness among our elites.

And now Amnesty International is as blind as the rest, flailing at the very societies that most protect the freedoms it claims to defend. How defenceless we are, when even this once-great defender of human rights now treats us as one of the deadliest enemies of all.

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Another gross bungle in a Melbourne public hospital



In the photo above the former patient is holding the plum stone the careless public hospital doctors could not see -- plus the X-rays they could not see either

A PROFESSIONAL opera singer performed eight shows with a plum stone stuck in her throat after doctors failed to see it in an X-ray, even though it was "clearly visible". Soprano Tania de Jong could not eat solid food for six days after the emergency department bungle. The Alfred hospital later admitted it had misread the X-ray and vowed to review its procedures.

"I underwent the most excruciating pain," Ms de Jong said. "It felt like I was being strangled. "The stone was sitting between my mouth and vocal cords, and it really hurt to do anything - eat, drink, sing."

After the April 2005 debacle, Ms de Jong was forced on to a diet of baby food, painkillers and anaesthetic sprays for a week until she sought advice from a different hospital. X-rays revealed the object in her badly swollen oesophagus, and the stone was removed in an urgent operation.

The Herald Sun has seen letters in which the Alfred admitted its mistake and agreed to reimburse Ms de Jong's medical expenses on condition the law graduate did not sue. The hospital's emergency department head, Prof Mark Fitzgerald, wrote in an email sent in May 2005 that the stone was "clearly visible" and "should not have been missed". On July 7, the hospital apologised to her in writing, saying it would introduce a system of "double checking" X-rays.

Ms de Jong is satisfied the hospital has reviewed its systems. The accomplished performer founded singing group Pot-Pourri and runs entertainment consultancy Music Theatre Australia. "It could have been life-threatening, and with me being an opera singer it could have affected my whole livelihood," she said. "I was told I may never sing again because they'd have to stretch my vocal cords so much to get it out. "It was very, very frightening."

Her story follows the Herald Sun's report this week about nurse Bernadette Ireland, who says the Alfred sent her packing after she swallowed part of a mussel shell. Prof Fitzgerald last night said such cases were common. "Often the symptoms resolve and then people aren't sure whether they still have something in their throat or whether it's a scratch on the surface of the oesophagus that's caused in the passage of the object," he said. Some objects did not show up clearly on X-rays and it was easy to overlook them because of "variation in light and shade". He said he was still investigating the case of Ms Ireland, who had not lodged a formal complaint with the hospital.

Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said yesterday an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report showed Victoria's emergency departments were the nation's best. Half of all patients were seen by a doctor five minutes faster than the national average. [So the other half weren't! Meaning no overall difference!]

But Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said the same report revealed median elective surgery waiting times had increased by four days - more than for any other state.

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PM wants diseased migrants and refugees kept out

PRIME Minister John Howard says he wants procedures in place to stop migrants and refugees with contagious diseases from coming to Australia. The Australian National Audit Office found that the Immigration Department knowingly approved visas for migrants with serious communicable conditions, despite authorities' inability to monitor them.

Mr Howard said today that a review of the situation was imminent and the best outcome would be a ban on migrants and refugees who were HIV-positive or who had leprosy. "My view is the best result is that no one with those sort of ailments is allowed into the country," Mr Howard said on Macquarie radio. "I'm going to review the current position, and I want procedures put in place that see as far as possible that that doesn't happen. "We are looking at it the next week or so."

Fairfax newspapers reported today that HIV-positive migrants could be forced to report to health authorities within a month of arriving or face losing their visas. Health Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews had advised Mr Howard to adopt the policy. The report said the Federal Government could also advise state health authorities of new HIV-positive migrants, but was weighing up the policy against privacy considerations. The federal Health Department would also audit state and territory guidelines for dealing with people who knowingly expose others to HIV.

Last month, Mr Howard said he did not believe HIV-positive people should be allowed into the country, but would seek advice on the matter. Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike last month partly blamed HIV-positive migrants and residents from interstate in a rise in HIV infection numbers in Victoria.

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Widespread parent dissatisfaction with Australian schools

AUSTRALIAN parents are largely unhappy with the quality of school education, says a new Federal Government report. The survey of 2000 parents, conducted earlier this year, found many believed their children were receiving a substandard education. Only 58 per cent of parents said primary schooling was up to scratch, and less than 40 per cent said secondary schooling was acceptable. Dissatisfaction has jumped since the last Parents' Attitudes to Schooling survey in 2003, where 61 per cent of parents said primary school education was good or very good, and 51 per cent said secondary education was good or very good.

Those with a child in a non-government school were happier with both education and teacher quality than those with a child in a state school.

Just over a third of parents surveyed this year said they believed their child would leave school with adequate literacy and numeracy skills. Only one in five thought their child had learned enough about Australian history, and less then half said they had received adequate science lessons. However, more than 72 per cent were satisfied with the quality of teaching at their child's school.

Premier Steve Bracks yesterday defended the state's schools, saying Victoria has the best-performing education system in the country. "Our completion rates for year 12 education and its equivalent is going up, our literacy and numeracy levels are going up, we have the lowest teacher to student ratios ever in Victoria's history," Mr Bracks said. "Also, we have committed to rebuilding or modernising every school in the state. "The survey was done before the Budget where we committed $1 billion to . . . education."

Australian Education Union Victorian president Mary Bluett said the survey did not accurately reflect parents' attitudes. "In terms of their child's school and teachers, parents say they have high satisfaction; however, when asked . . . how they think education is going, their attitudes change and that reflects a general talking down of schools. "There has been a relentless attack on standards and the quality of teaching from the Federal Government, and parents have picked up on that."

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