Greece: the smell of smoke and tear gas

PP-boy Jeremy Sear finds fault with coverage of the Greek financial crisis:

Greece up in flames, eh?.

The country may not be razed but the Left's having a go.

Better dead than eat irradiated food

The "deadliest E. coli outbreak in history" could have been prevented but for organic food Luddites:

The bean sprout crop that was the source of the outbreak requires a warm and humid environment to grow, which increases the risk of contamination by E. coli and other disease-causing bacteria. The only certain means of reducing this risk is to irradiate the bean sprout seeds, which effectively kills 99.999 per cent of E. coli. There is no evidence that food irradiation is harmful to consumers, and also no evidence that it affects the nutritional quality of food.

Despite these facts, the organic industry continues to lobby against the use of irradiation. When President Bill Clinton's agriculture secretary Dan Glickman proposed including irradiation in the US National Organic Standards in 1998 - specifically to reduce E. coli risk - the US Department of Agriculture received over 300,000 petitions from individuals and organisations in the US and Europe opposing this move. As a result this provision was removed from the final legislation.

Better to risk sickness and death rather than subject foods to harmless radiation.

Loewsuit

Despite a history of dishonesty, embarrassing errors and wholly incompetent journalism, Antony Loewenstein continues to be good enough for Our ABC.

Clearly on the lookout for a new girlfriend since being mercilessly dumped, he's finally bought himself a suit, truly befitting a man of such unemployment. Alas Antony assumed from his vast media training that nobody would see below the desk and didn't think a quality pair of pants was as important. I'm sure CNN are banging down his parent's door looking for him.

I'd comment on what he said, but frankly I can't work it out. Something about Climate Change. Oh, and Israel. Of course.

Go west young woman

Australian husband-hunters should head in the direction of the setting sun:

New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that in WA there are now 33,346 more men than women in a record total population of 2.3 million.

But mind your Ps and Qs should you head west on AirBogan.

Pain is good

Elizabeth Farrelly enjoys the "good pain" of ever increasing electricity bills, so she'd no doubt be pleased with a WA parliamentary committee's recommendation that alcohol prices be bumped up to decrease irresponsible youth drinking. The committee's reasoning:

Government action in Australia to increase price has already proved important in controlling and reducing consumption in other sectors, such as tobacco products and the use of water and electricity.

Next on the nanny state's agenda: weight control via a tax on calories. Pain, learn to enjoy it.

Abbott embarrassment

Self-identified Greens voters respond to the ABC's solicitation of words describing Tony Abbott by labeling the opposition leader unintelligent, incompetent, ignorant, dumb and stupid also describing him as "embarassing".

The spelling error has since been corrected.

Pure Poison omniscient

PP boy Jeremy Sear didn't notice that police car behind him but knows exactly what's going on with the government's atrocious poll results:

I think we can see exactly what’s happening.

Yeah, it's all down to media bias. Really.

The caring Left

The lost jobs and shattered lives of workers and their families are unimportant:

There are about 11.5 million people working in Australia.
About 150 000 of them work in the mining sector.
If half of the miners lost their jobs, Australia wouldn’t notice a thing.
The added bonus would be that we might be able to find a plumber, electrician or mechanic without having to beg.

Yet a carbon tax, which will will make no noticeable reduction to global emissions, is of utmost importance.

Prominence proclaimed

Noted book reviewer and protest rally and literary festival-speaker Antony Loewenstein top notes himself:

In January, Reporters Without Borders and a network of exiled Sri Lankan journalists, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, issued an appeal signed by a number of prominent figures, including Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Ken Loach, Tariq Ali and me.

Oddly, Loewenstein's claim to fame was issued at less than prominent outlets: his blog, Overland literary journal and The Drum. Big-headed fish... small pond.

Prime Minister who?

Earlier today at the Sydney Morning Herald:

Traffic blocker booked

After years of holding up traffic, road-hog Jeremy Sear has finally been busted, by an "idiot", of course.

Green hip pocket pain

Here's one way to force down electricity consumption:

Households will be forced to pay up to 30 per cent more for electricity by mid-2013, with the Federal Government's renewable energy scheme responsible for 11 per cent of that increase.

The bottom line:

The document will add further weight to this week's warnings by the Productivity Commission that the renewable energy incentives being demanded by the Greens are pushing up costs for little environmental gain.

Pricey renewable energy can't be counted on, however:

As wind farm investment in WA gathers pace, Western Power has warned that an over-dependence on the technology could compromise the electricity grid's security of supply.

The State-owned utility's system manager Ken Brown said wind farms were unreliable and this could leave the network dangerously exposed to blackouts if peak demand coincided with a still day.

Save the planet? Jesus, someone please save us from the Greens.

College of Knollege

No sooner had I reported Antony Loewenstein's Tamil Totty, we now learn that the Dreamboat got Dumped.

No doubt devastated, newly single Antony has once again fled what he considers a "cultural backwater" (Australia) and travelled to New York. Unlike the sensible Australian media, Antony can dream that nobody there would realise how useless he is. Well, until they Google him.

Walking the streets of NYC, to find a nice Jewish Tamil girl, Antony snapped a billboard aimed at the Jewish Community, promoting a sabbath service at a local synagogue and posted it with one of his typical sneering one-sentence editorials.

A reader suggestion follows, giving considerable insight into the sort of brain-donor readership Antony Loewenstein attracts:

Could use some explanation for your less knollegable readers. [sic]

Antony could not actually explain it, of course, being about as Jewish as the bus stop on which he found the billboard.

I look forward to reading a JDate profile something like this:

"Wanted: Nice Jewish Princess for highly ineligible bachelor. Must hate Israel, love Noam Chomsky. Be attracted to barely literate, barely men of extremely limited earning potential. Please hurry, I need a place to stay. My family won't let me stay at their place any more and the local Starbucks have asked me to stop abusing their free WiFi and actually buy a coffee."

The good news: The Tamil gene pool just got a break.

Why Sri Lanka?

Regular readers will know that Antony Loewenstein has an unhealthy obsession with Israel. Actually, describing it as an obsession doesn't to justice to the sheer volume of polemic writing he manages to churn out (albeit mostly in the form of two or three word posts and tweets).

At some point , Antony started very occasionally blogging about Sri Lanka, and the Tamil conflict. Was he expanding his world view? Was Antony all of a sudden waking up to the reality that Israel wasn't in fact the most eeeevil place on Earth, and in actual fact there were human rights abuses taking place elsewhere? Not exactly. For the most part, Antony was (as might be expected from a hapless fringe-dweller) barracking for the terrorists. Again.

This blog has often pointed out his errors, stupid mistakes, embarrassing cockups, intellectual dishonesty and general awkwardness, in most cases for his 'commentary' on Israel and in some cases the US and Australia. It now seems there was a whole group of other people, familiar with the Sri Lankan conflict who also thought Antony was a clueless moron.

The Carthaginian Solution has a number of posts about our favourite bestselling author. In the above post, the writer notes Loewenstein's hypocrisy, demanding an independent state for the ethnic Tamils inside Sri Lanka, yet being the same guy obsessed with denying the Jews a state of their own.

Of course we aren't allowed to call him an antisemite for this double standard. Antony will always remind everyone that he's "a Jew" (a term most Jews don't actually use to describe themself, but he's not to know that, being so distant from them).

A number of other posts at that site hold Loewenstein to account for supporting a group which encouraged 12 year olds to die and whose previous achievements included suicide bombing. Sound familiar? Once again, in the battle between good and evil, Loewenstein chose badly.

CS notes Antony's efforts to see a Book Festival cancelled, presumably as they didn't invite him.

If there was a Darwin Award for ‘human rights’ activists, this year’s front-runners would be Antony Loewenstein and his backers Reporters sans frontiers and JDF. They promoted the boycott of the Galle Literary Festival, (the only international literary festival in Sri Lanka) on the grounds that since there were problems with free speech in a post-war environment, the best way to improve the situation would be through a boycott, thus preventing free speech.

We hadn't discovered the site until now, as Antony in typical fashion never engaged his critics, no doubt convinced he was right and they were all part of a conspiracy to silence him. Geez Antony, would it kill you to throw us a link once in a while? We're not nearly as famous or successful as you.

The big question however, is why did Loewenstein care about the Tamils? Of all the trendy causes in the world, why would Antony choose that one?

We can now reveal, for the first time, that Antony has been dating a Tamil girl for quite some time. Next time you hear Antony demanding greater transparency from the media, feel free to remind him that he never bothered mentioning that. Sure your comment will be deleted from his blog and never see the light of day, but that's transparency for you...

When Mango called Loewenstein a "Tamil Fluffer" I'm sure that's not what he had in mind.

Update: Via comments to this post: Antony's Tamil Temptress dumped him. Apparently there are women who can withstand his intellect and looks. See related post.

Local Council Official Screws 100 Year old Lady

Channel Seven have reported the appalling incompetence of a local council, which promised a 100 year old lady that she'd get a telegram from the Queen. And then failed to deliver.

100 years seems about the same amount of time it takes many councils to issue Development Approvals and perform other basic council tasks. Indeed, it seems the only thing most councils are very good at, is writing parking tickets, collecting tens of millions of dollars above and beyond rates revenue. Oh, and solving the Middle East conflict.

When Barry O'Farrell came to power in NSW, he promised to abolish Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, return planning powers to local councils. Previously, the Minister had the authority to approve certain projects despite council objection. The NSW Labor Government had corrupted this process, like so many others.

In theory, returning planning to local communities is a good idea. In practice however, most local councils are completely hopeless and should simply be shut down and amalgamated into super-councils. Not given more power. You don't reward incompetence.

Death to Dylan

Lefties have decided they now hate Bob Dylan. Mainly for his song the "Neighborhood Bully", which is almost certainly about Israel.

Check out the comments on that post. Nobody does hate, like the Left.

Never Press 3

From Belgium, a great prank on a phone company.

Save the World

From the same Taiwanese animators who do those wonderful news clips, comes the best environmental message I've seen in a while.

Catch-22

With the sad death of two more Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, comes the predictable bleating that the war is "unwinnable" and an unmitigated disaster.

While the death of coalition troops is unquestionably tragic, some perspective is required. 22 deaths, over an entire decade in heavy combat, is fewer than the number killed on Australian roads over a single long weekend. Put very bluntly, as wars go, 22 isn't bad.

I'm not saying we should stay there no matter what. Continual, serious analysis is required (and Greg Sheridan makes a compelling argument for leaving Afghanistan here). However the total lack of stomach for causalities in war, has sent a clear message to Islamists. Kill a small handful of diggers and the people back home will surrender.

That is not the sort of message you want to be sending to these animals.

It does seem however that Afghanistan is now a useful rallying point for those who previously cried that Iraq was "unwinnable", a "quagmire" and "Vietnam all over again". They do seem to have gone quiet, haven't they?

Palin Prediction Proven

A few days ago, I tweeted that due to Sarah Palin naming her tour of America "One Nation", we could look forward to entirely predictable sneers about Pauline Hanson and a whole lot of incredibly lazy political 'observations'.

So a letter in today's SMH comes as no surprise:

Palin or Pauline

I see Sarah Palin is off on a "One Nation" bus tour of the US as a possible precursor to running for president ("Palin gets her motor running for 'patriotic tour' ", May 31). I didn't realise Pauline's influence was so strong. Drop the "u" and "e" and they are identical. Be afraid, America, very afraid.

Gavin Williamson Narrabeen

I suspect Palin and her supporters are more familiar with the Pledge of Allegiance, than some Australian politician.