Black Armband retaliation

From Janet Albrechtsen in today's Australian:

Windschuttle undertakes the long overdue task of returning to primary source material. He destroys the central thesis of genocide with reams of cold hard facts. For example, he reveals that the “small numbers of Aboriginal child removals in the 20th century were almost all based on traditional grounds of child welfare”.

In other words, most indigenous children placed in state Aboriginal settlements were orphaned, abandoned, destitute, neglected, subjected to violence, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse or went there with their parents.

More here.

Janet Albrechtsen - Seeing through hoax of the century

This is worth a look, particularly to see that many of the first comments are from people agreeing with Janet - I haven't read them all, give me time!

Janet Albrechtsen Blog November 04, 2009 288 Comments
INCREASINGLY, the road to Copenhagen resembles a suburban street on Halloween with the number of climate change freak shows and stunts reaching a nadir in recent weeks. Nicholas Stern says we should turn vegetarian in order to combat climate change. If you must eat meat, eat kangaroos, says Ross Garnaut, because marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane. And that champagne you drank on Melbourne Cup day? Scientists scolded us with a report that a 750ml bottle of bubbly could produce 100 million bubbles, releasing five litres of carbon dioxide.

Yet far from rallying people to the cause of immediate action on climate change, every new cri de coeur may be turning people away. Could it be that those derided as the great unwashed are beginning to ask more questions than their smart political leaders or the bastions of intellectual curiosity in the media?

Janet Albrechtsen - Human rights platitudes

THE Left has a gift for using clever language to push its causes. The trick is to start with a literal truth, a platitude so steeped in emotion it tugs on the heartstrings of human nature, something that just about every sane person will agree on. But what makes the use of a literal truth so seductive is the way it is used to hide a substantive untruth. A bit of intellectual rigour lifts the cloak on these dishonest word games. Just a few quick examples before we move to something far more serious.

Last Thursday evening I was a panellist on ABC1’s Q&A program. On the left side sat Todd Sampson, a successful advertising executive who appears on The Gruen Transfer, also on the ABC. Like any good advertising executive, Sampson, who is also the co-creator of Earth Hour, knows how to use an emotional platitude to get a response.

More.

Janet Albrechtsen

Socialising in cyberspace, is it a good thing?

You sure feel old when you try to figure out why young kids spend hours each day on social networking sites, not to mention playing computer games. No doubt, the fast developing world of information technology is a sign of progress. Information at our fingertips. Instant communication. Friendships forged online. Interactive games, full of noise and colour, that test our responses and build vivid imaginations.

And yet intuitively, parents wonder how healthy it is for their children to spend hours enthralled by a two-dimensional world of computer games and cyber relationships.

More here.

Update:
Oh noes, Miranda Devine already beat Janet to the punch, thanks to Splice!

You know how the previous regime stifled dissent....

Ain't a patch on the current one.

THIS week the Greens did something out of the ordinary. They expressed concern that the Rudd government is spending too much money. Not famous for their economic credentials, it is a refreshingly fine idea from the Greens. We do need debate about whether it’s time to pull back on stimulus spending that threatens to leave the country in massive debt for decades to come. So let’s hear from the head of Treasury to reassess Australia’s economic position, says Bob Brown. The Treasurer says the unanimous decision of the G20 finance ministers in London is to continue the stimulus. In other words, the debate is over. The government has spoken.

It is a curious and chilling notion that a debate, any debate, can be over. But this seems to be the way the Rudd government likes it. Seen through the prism of politics, you’d expect the ruling party to espouse the idea that their word is the final word. But from an intellectual stance, it’s about as bone-headed as you can get.

Check it out, Janet Albrechtsen's column...

Everyone has to grow up, don't they?

Garrett may well be a political liability for the Rudd government and he may grow tired of the humiliations. But, inadvertently, Garrett has already performed a great service for Australian public life. By his actions, he has issued a resounding warning to Midnight Oil fans and like-minded romanticists to abandon their childlike pieties and touching simplicities in favour of recognising that the world is a complex place where good policy depends on ministers having less passion and more rationality.

It doesn't excuse the fact that his idealism is, to a certain extent, what made him an electable commodity for the ALP when they popped him in to contest the seat he won.

Read more of Janet Albrechtsen's piece in the Australian here.