ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG is rejoicing at the slow downfall of Australia's Warmist laws






Rudd embroiled as tensions rise over racist attacks on Indian students

Despite the predictable official denials, these attacks are overwhelmingly by young African "refugees" that the government has kindly lumbered us with. Not only do the Africans contribute little themselves (they are mostly on the dole) but they attack those who do -- greatly damaging Australia's reputation in the process. Education is one of Australia's major export industries and it is under attack by these criminals. Letting moronic and useless thugs loose on the students concerned is disastrous. The thugs concerned should be relentlessly rounded up and jailed for long periods instead of being treated "sensitively" because of their origins. But that would depend on a sudden influx of honesty into the corrupt Victoria police and that is a big ask. The deliberately blind Victoria Police are letting the whole of Australia down at the moment

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has spoken to his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, amid growing anger in India over attacks on Indian students in Australia. The issue has raised diplomatic tensions between the two countries. In a telephone conversation, Mr Rudd congratulated Dr Singh on his recent re-election but the pair also discussed the recent series of violent assaults, sources told The Age. A statement released last night indicated Dr Singh spoke strongly to Mr Rudd about the attacks. The Indian Prime Minister had "suitably" conveyed his concerns about the vicious attacks, it said.

The Indian foreign ministry called in Australia's high commissioner to India, John McCarthy, yesterday to discuss the matter. "I told him that the Australia Government is also very concerned, that Australian ministers had expressed this, and that we are doing everything we can to address the issues," Mr McCarthy said. Mr Ravi conveyed to Mr McCarthy the Indian Government's "deep anguish and continuing concern" about the welfare of its students in Australia, a statement released last night said. It was the first time Mr McCarthy has been called in by the Indian Government since the 2007 arrest of Muhammad Haneef, an Indian doctor working in Australia, on terrorism-related charges.

As the diplomatic temperature rose yesterday, Indian Foreign Minister S.N. Krishna spoke to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about the issue. Mr Krishna said the Australian Government had assured him that steps were being taken to protect Indian students. "We hope these aberrations that have taken place will be dealt with," he said. "They said that they are going to take stern steps and they have assured us that every student from India will be adequately protected."

Meanwhile, agents in India who arrange student placements have warned that Australia's lucrative education industry could pay a high price for the attacks. "These attacks will definitely have an impact on the market because parents are calling me up and they are very concerned," said Bubbly Johar, who runs a Delhi education consultancy and is vice-president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India. "The media coverage here is encouraging parents to rethink whether they should send their children to Australia for studies. We can't assure them that they will be safe."

In Melbourne, India's high commissioner to Australia said Victorian police were insensitive towards some Indian crime victims. Sujatha Singh said many students felt insecure and some were unhappy with police treatment. Her comments came as Victoria Police again denied that the increasing attacks — which the Indian student community claims could be as many as 70 in 12 months — were racially motivated.

Mrs Singh said the Indian high commission in Canberra had received complaints from students about police. When an incident was reported, there was a perception that there was sometimes "a delay in reacting and … perhaps a lack of sensitivity dealing with the issues".

Mrs Singh flew to Melbourne from Canberra to meet Premier John Brumby and police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland following the attack on Sravan Kumar Theerthala, 24, last weekend. He was allegedly racially abused and stabbed with a screwdriver at a party at a house in Hadfield, near Glenroy. Last night he remained in a coma in intensive care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. A 17-year-old from Glenroy has been charged with attempted murder. It was the third serious attack this month.

In two of those, the victim or witnesses have told The Age of specific racial abuse. But Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe said yesterday he had "no specific data" on that. [He doesn't want to hear it] "They (Indian students) are seen as vulnerable soft targets … I don't deny it may have happened but my sense is that these are opportunistic crimes, not racially motivated crimes." Mrs Singh said she had told police about the racial element in some attacks. She did not believe Australia was racist but "some of these attacks have not been opportunistic".

Trauma psychologist Dr Michael O'Neill, who works with Indian victims of crime in Melbourne, said he saw on average one bashed student a week and about half of those attacks were racial.

SOURCE







Nasty Health Dept. bureaucrat trying to destroy a popular and hard-working family doctor

Bureaucrat George Cerchez tried to get the doctor for wrongly treating 4 patients but when that failed Cerchez suddenly came up with another 19 allegations. No patients have complained and the other doctors in the area disown all knowledge of the complaints. It's just Georgy boy at work. A fine example of government regulation at work

PAUL McGinity is an old-style country doctor, so dedicated to his 3000 patients that he is berated by colleagues for working too hard, never refusing a home visit in the early hours and taking too few holidays. After 32 years of service to the rural community around Scottsdale, a timber town in Tasmania's northeast, Dr McGinity's career has come to a humiliating halt.

He has been linked to the death of seven patients after complaints to the Medical Council of Tasmania, which has suspended the general practitioner's registration pending an investigation. However, far from being treated as a pariah, Dr McGinity has the unwavering support of his patients, including at least one whose treatment forms the basis of a key allegation.

What's more, Dr McGinity is turning the tables on what he claims are "vexatious" accusers. He claims his chief accuser -- Department of Health and Human Services primary health adviser George Cerchez -- has a potential conflict of interest. Dr McGinity and his supporters claim his only crime is to be a thorn in the side of plans for a new $1.2 million clinic for Scottsdale.

A recording of a telephone conversation obtained by The Weekend Australian reveals DHHS secretary David Roberts saying Dr Cerchez was "not acting for the department" -- casting doubt on comments made in parliament by Health Minister Lara Giddings. While most politicians would run a mile from a doctor facing such serious allegations, the state Opposition said there was such a "stench" about the case that it should be subject to an independent review.

There are complaints against Dr McGinity relating to 23 patients, but unusually none is made by them or their families. Dr McGinity has been led to believe that all but four complaints were submitted by Dr Cerchez. Dr McGinity was notified of the further 19 cases at the same time his suspension over the first four was being successfully challenged on a technicality in the Supreme Court. The suspension was later reinstated.

Dr Cerchez, with whom Dr McGinity has a history of dispute, is also on the board of local doctors' group GP North. GP North has obtained federal funding of $500,000 to build a $1.2million medical complex in Scottsdale. Dr McGinity is not interested in joining the new clinic, preferring his old style of solo operation. The other four complainants are GPs at Scottsdale's other practice, despite their insistence yesterday that they had "nothing to do with" the allegations. It is expected the four will move to the new medical centre, which -- if Dr McGinity loses his registration -- will take his 3000 patients.

The 68-year-old told The Weekend Australian he was confident he had not made "any mistakes". And while accepting the medical council's obligation to investigate the complaints, he believed there should be an inquiry into the manner in which the allegations were made. He was "very concerned that there is an ulterior motive behind this" and that Dr Cerchez had a potential conflict of interest: "There are three factors: he is on the board of GP North; GP North wants to build a clinic; I've got lots of patients -- 3000; they haven't asked me to join the clinic but they need those patients." He said he also had a long history of "disagreements" with Dr Cerchez, including a dispute over the management of a case at the Scottsdale hospital in February last year. Dr Cerchez had transferred a patient against his direction, undermining his position, he said.

In the recording of his conversation with Dr McGinity, Mr Roberts says Dr Cerchez was "absolutely ... not" acting for the department in making the allegations. This appears to be a direct contradiction of advice given by Ms Giddings to parliament that Dr Cerchez "made the complaints as the longstanding medical adviser". Yesterday, Ms Giddings deferred to Mr Roberts, who said he had never meant to suggest Dr Cerchez was not acting for the department's primary health section. Instead, he had simply meant to convey that the "central department", which had to be divorced from such operational matters, was not involved. "The department is not trying to distance itself from Dr Cerchez ... I have been strongly supportive of the actions George has taken," he said.

Questions to Dr Cerchez were answered by DHHS deputy secretary Alice Burchill, who suggested concerns about a potential conflict of interest were "without foundation". "Dr Cerchez ... does not practise in the northeast and cannot personally benefit from the development," she said. "There is no underlying professional dispute between Dr McGinity and Dr Cerchez."

The Weekend Australian has a document naming the four GPs from Scottsdale's Victoria Street surgery who raised allegations against Dr McGinity: Linda Clow, Jim Wilson, Natalie Burch and Gretchen Stone. However, when asked to comment yesterday, Dr Clow said on behalf of the practice, they had "nothing to do with" the issue. "I don't know where you got that idea from, but we've got no comment," she said. "On behalf of the whole practice, we have not and will not make any comment. We've got nothing to do with this and we want to stay out of it." She would not say whether she and the other doctors at the surgery intended to shift to the new medical centre.

GP North chief executive Phil Edmondson would not say whether the four Victoria Street doctors had indicated a willingness to join the new medical complex. Nor would he say how many patients the new centre required to be viable. When asked whether he was confident the allegations against Dr McGinity were not related to plans for the new centre, he said: "I have no knowledge of the nature of the complaints against Dr McGinity. From the perspective of GP North, there is absolutely and categorically no link whatsoever between the matters."

The medical council, negotiating with Dr McGinity on conditions under which he might be allowed to return to practise while the allegations are investigated, could not be contacted yesterday. However, it has previously insisted its handling of the case has been appropriate.

Opposition health spokesman Brett Whiteley said Ms Giddings should address the "possible conflicts of interest" and order an independent review. "They came up with 19 new allegations -- they didn't say they came from one bloke, and they said 'they include seven people who died'," he said. "How alarmist is that? Who are these dead people? When did the first person die? Were there inquests? And if there were, why didn't the coroner report them? This whole decision needs a new set of eyes cast over it."

SOURCE






Moronic NSW education department

Banned heaters still in NSW schools. Is someone getting a kickback? Using heaters that need the windows wide open is amazingly counterproductive. Most of the heat flies right out the windows. Greenies would have a fit!



THE NSW Government will continue to fit out public schools with gas heaters that have failed World Health Organisation tests, as it awaits further tests taking place in schools this winter. The unflued gas heaters, which emit carbon monoxide, nitrous dioxide, carbon dioxide and formaldehyde fumes, can only be used safely if classroom windows and doors are left open.

Michael Coutts-Trotter, the Director-General of the Department of Education, said he had been told by NSW Health that the heaters were safe. That contradicts the results of a 2004 Health Department study.

In the meantime, the department has authorised a new $2 million study, despite existing Australian and international research which has led to the heaters being banned in other states and many other nations. "We're looking for research and evidence on which we can base our decisions," Mr Coutts-Trotter said. "My judgment was that we did need to do more research … we did need to fill that gap."

Mr Coutts-Trotter said public school students who had to have windows open in winter had it no worse than his own experiences as a child at school in Britain. "There was snow outside a lot of the time, and the windows were open. We wore a jumper," he said. [Mr Trotter should trot off into the sunset -- and take his cooties with him]

Parents of some students are fighting to have the 51,000 heaters in NSW replaced, a process that would cost $400 million, which the Education Department says is the equivalent of building 20 new schools.

They also raised concerns that the latest government study, being undertaken by the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, would not be truly independent. It is being co-ordinated by a senior NSW Health official, Dr Wayne Smith, who has previously advised the Government that the heaters pose no risk. "I can't see how the process could be called independent," said Richard Kalina, who is part of a concerned parents group. "They are really hiding behind another study when there have been 35 years of studies, and most of the rest of the world has already banned these heaters," Mr Kalina said. "I just want my daughter, my children, and anybody's children, to be safe when they are dropped off at school. They're not safe."

Mr Coutts-Trotter said Dr Smith was a recognised expert in environmental health and would be completely impartial. He said the department was listening to parent's concerns but wanted to reassure people that there was no risk. "Low emissions heaters, properly maintained and properly operated, are perfectly safe," he said.

Teachers have complained to the department about the heaters several times over the past two years, but say their objections are yet to be heard. A spokesman for the NSW Teachers Federation said the issue was symptomatic of a lack of public school funding. Unflued gas heaters are generally not used in private schools, on the recommendation of NSW Health.

A spokeswoman for the Education Minister, Verity Firth, said the minister was unable to comment because she was visiting schools in rural NSW.

A government study undertaken in Blackheath Public School last year found that 30 per cent of the classroom areas tested returned nitrous oxide levels above World Health Organisation guidelines.

SOURCE






Writers festival gags student critics

They can't stand being laughed at. Since most of them will have been Leftists, the solution was obvious

Since 2004, UTS [University of Technology Sydney] journalism students have, for the few days the festival, produced a free daily, Festival News. Last year, the festival confiscated the first issue, declaring itself unhappy with both the students' behaviour and the content of their organ which was, the director, Wendy Were, wrote, "riddled with disparaging content about the festival and its supporters". In particular, the festival rejected a report that the arts minister, Frank Sartor, had been "booed" (the current online wording is "greeted with grudging applause") in presenting the Premier's Literary Award. There was passing mention of Morris Iemma's conspicuous absence and some gently gleeful discussion of Macquarie banker Bob Carr's declaration he didn't read Australian books.

Pretty mild stuff. Refreshing, compared with the usual pap, if perhaps a little undergrad. Given that both Arts NSW and Macquarie Bank are major funders, it makes you wonder. Was the festival just another "be nice to sponsors" week?

This year, it happened again; students and others had their paper impounded and their persons allegedly threatened with arrest. Excuse me, what? Are we suddenly transported to Burma? The festival's droll manager, Ben Strout, may argue "free voices does not mean freedom to blurt … whatever … wherever". The Walsh Bay precinct manager, Luke Mead, who apparently gave the order, may yell down the phone at any who ask that "it's private property and we'll stop people handing out papers if we want to". But in truth, they're both wrong. Free speech does mean pretty much whatever, wherever, and the festival wharf - unlike much of Walsh Bay - is still public domain.

The students, understandably, claim harassment and censorship. They point out the paper was wholly UTS-produced and funded, and a disclaimer distanced its views from the festival's. More importantly, they defend their independence. "We're journalism students," writes one, "not public relations students".

The UTS humanities dean, Theo van Leeuwen, attempted to make peace, posting an apology on the festival website, but only poured kero on the embers. The students felt betrayed. Their professor, Wendy Bacon, defended them, and free speech, only to find herself promptly banned from a panel on radicalism, when she'd simply been polishing her credentials. The festival denies the ban, but emails make it clear her presence was not acceptable.

All looking strange indeed, until the explanation emerged that puts both parties in a bizarre light. A contract - titled "Education Partner Agreement" - signed in 2006 by van Leeuwen (for UTS) and the then festival director, Caro Llewellyn, commits UTS journalism students to produce Festival News at UTS's cost. The contra for UTS includes their writers' involvement in festival panels, the festival launch of a UTS student anthology and the UTS logo on the festival website. Neither the staff nor students producing News knew of the contract's existence.

What are two supposed bastions of intelligent and unfettered debate doing colluding in the first place, in a covert sweetheart deal that leaves the university looking like a PR firm and the festival like some tacky trade fair?

They need their heads knocked together if they cannot see that teaching journalism students to think like copywriters is quite as dangerous and more insidious than fettering them to a military junta.

Postmodernism loved to blur boundaries - between disciplines (viz neurogeography), between races and cultures (Eurasian, Spanglish), between genders (metrosexual, retrosexual) and also between journalism and PR.

More universities are merging journalism into PR and "communications" faculties, as though who pays the piper matters not a jot. This is almost as ugly, and parochial, as a writers' festival stifling criticism.

SOURCE







Warmism: A vitriolic climate in the academic hothouse

By Ian Plimer, emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne. Plimer once again has the temerity to mention some of the "missing facts" that Warmists ignore

It is well known that many university staff list to port and try to engineer a brave new world. The cash cow climate institutes now seem to be drowning in their own self-importance. In a wonderful gesture of public spiritedness, seven academics who include three lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a former director of the World Climate Research Program wrote to Australian power generating companies on April 29 instructing them to cease and desist creating electricity from coal.

In their final paragraph, they state with breathtaking arrogance: "The unfortunate reality is that genuine action on climate change will require the existing coal-fired power stations to cease operating in the near future. "We feel it is vital that you understand this and we are happy to work with you and with governments to begin planning for this transition immediately. "The warming of the atmosphere, driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, is already causing unacceptable damage and suffering around the world."

No evidence is provided for this statement and no signatory to this letter has published anything to support this claim.

These university staff are unctuously understanding about the plight of those who face employment extinction in the smokestack towns of Australia. They write: "We understand that this will require significant social and economic transition that will need to be managed carefully to care for coal sector workers and coal-dependent communities.". This love for fellow workers brings tears to the eyes.

The electricity generating companies should reply by cutting off the power to academics' homes and host institutions, forcing our ideologues to lead by example. Some 80 per cent of Australia's electricity derives from coal, large volumes of cheap electricity underpin employment and our self-appointed concerned citizens offer no suggestion for alternative unsubsidised base-load power sources to employ Australians.

The Emissions Trading Scheme legislation poises Australia to make the biggest economic decision in its history, yet there has been no scientific due diligence. There has never been a climate change debate in Australia. Only dogma. To demonise element number six in the periodic table is amusing. Why not promethium? Carbon dioxide is an odourless, colourless, harmless natural gas. It is plant food. Without carbon, there would be no life on Earth.

The original source of atmospheric CO2 is volcanoes. The Earth's early atmosphere had a thousand times the CO2 of today's atmosphere. This CO2 was recycled through rocks, life and the oceans. Through time, this CO2 has been sequestered into plants, coal, petroleum, minerals and carbonate rocks, resulting in a decrease in atmospheric CO2. The atmosphere now contains 800 billion tonnes of carbon as CO2. Soils and plants contain 2000 billion tonnes, oceans 39,000 billion tonnes and limestone 65,000,000 billion tonnes. The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of the total carbon in the top few kilometres of the Earth.

Deeper in Earth, there are huge volumes of CO2 yet to be leaked into the atmosphere. So depleted is the atmosphere in CO2, that horticulturalists pump warm CO2 into glasshouses to accelerate plant growth.

The first 50 parts per million of CO2 operates as a powerful greenhouse gas. After that, CO2 has done its job, which is why there has been no runaway greenhouse in the past when CO2 was far higher. During previous times of high CO2, there were climate cycles driven by galactic forces, the sun, Earth's orbit, tides and random events such as volcanoes. These forces still operate. Why should such forces disappear just because we humans live on Earth?

The fundamental questions remain unanswered. A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored? Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this ignored in catastrophist models.

Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable thermometer measurements used? Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 really due to human activities? Ice cores show CO2 increases some 800 years after temperature increase so why can't an increase in CO2 today be due to the medieval warming (900-1300)? If increased concentrations of CO2 increase temperature, why have there been coolings during the past 150 years?

Some 85 per cent of volcanoes are unseen and unmeasured yet these heat the oceans and add monstrous amounts of CO2 to the oceans. Why have these been ignored? Why have there been five significant ice ages when CO2 was higher than now? Why were warmings in Minoan, Roman and medieval times natural, yet a smaller warming at the end of the 20th century was due to human activities? If climate changed at the end of the Little Ice Age (c.1850), is it unusual for warming to follow?

Computer models using the past 150 years of measurements have been used to predict climate for the next few centuries. Why have these models not been run backwards to validate known climate changes? I would bet the farm that by running these models backwards, El Nino events and volcanoes such as Krakatoa (1883, 535), Rabaul (536) and Tambora (1815) could not be validated.

In my book, I correctly predicted the response. The science would not be discussed, there would be academic nit-picking and there would be vitriolic ad hominem attacks by pompous academics out of contact with the community. Comments by critics suggest that few have actually read the book and every time there was a savage public personal attack, book sales rose. A political blog site could not believe that such a book was selling so well and suggested that my publisher, Connor Court, was a front for the mining or pastoral industry.

This book has struck a nerve. Although accidentally timely, there are a large number of punters who object to being treated dismissively as stupid, who do not like being told what to think, who value independence, who resile from personal attacks and have life experiences very different from the urban environmental atheists attempting to impose a new fundamentalist religion.

Green politics have taken the place of failed socialism and Western Christianity and impose fear, guilt, penance and indulgences on to a society with little scientific literacy. We are now reaping the rewards of politicising science and dumbing down the education system. If book sales, public meetings, book launches, email and phone messages are any indication, there is a large body of disenfranchised folk out there who feel helpless. I have shown that the emperor has no clothes. This is why the attacks are so vitriolic.

SOURCE