Monday, January 28, 2013

Mon 28th Jan Todays News


FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2013

Happy Birthday, Ava Gardner 1922-1990

Seen here in " The Killers" 1946
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Choudhry Rahmat Ali

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Events

[edit]Births


[edit]Deaths


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YOU’RE RE-WRITING HISTORY

Tim Blair – Monday, January 28, 2013 (7:36pm)

Paul Kent corrects Anthony Mundine, who simultaneously claims to have been rugby league’s highest-paid player and also to have been “gypped” by the game:

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START AGAIN

Tim Blair – Monday, January 28, 2013 (12:50pm)

As a general rule, beginning with a clean sheet of paper is a good way of avoiding problems. No legacy issues, no historical compromises, no ties to any difficulties from the past.
But it doesn’t always work that way.

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CAPITAL CITY GOOFBALLS

Tim Blair – Monday, January 28, 2013 (12:41pm)

Canberra is loaded with cashed-up public service hirelings, who – as Myles Peterson points out – are often loaded themselves: 
Nothing epitomises the current state of Canberra’s economy better than a pair of cocaine-addled public servants spouting unwanted, acronym-laden rants at anyone unfortunate enough to fall within hearing range.
This is not a bad-taste Chaser joke. It is a real and regular occurrence, repeated across Canberra’s bars and clubs on any given weekend. 
I’ve been cornered once or twice by Canberra cokeheads. It was so boring that my metabolism actually slowed. Chopper had these types pegged years ago. (Language caution on that link.)

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THEY DO SHOOTING ALL THE TIME

Tim Blair – Monday, January 28, 2013 (10:33am)

Shotguns keep you safe, says Vice-President Joe Biden:



He’s just following the example set by his boss
In a wide-ranging interview with the New Republic, President Obama tackles slew of issues ranging from gun control to football, including this little gem when asked if he’d ever fired a gun: “Up at Camp David, we do skeet-shooting all the time. Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.” 

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ITEM MISSING

Tim Blair – Monday, January 28, 2013 (10:12am)

Around 350 asylum seekers have been detained already since the start of 2013, a rate of 14 per day. If this continues we’ll have more than 5000 asylum seekers in our detention centres by year’s end, in addition to the many thousands already held
A curious report last week in the Northern Territory News indicated that certain asylum seekers arrive with impressive financial and technological support. The piece aimed to highlight the risk of theft faced by asylum seekers in detention, but of greater interest were the valuables allegedly being stolen or damaged.

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Explosion in Iranian nuclear facility. Good

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(8:02pm)

Can Israel take the credit?: 
Israeli intelligence officials confirmed that an explosion damaged Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, which is being used to enrich uranium, The Sunday Times reported.

According to the report, an Israeli official said the country is still in the “preliminary stages of understanding what happened and how significant it is.” The Times quoted the official as saying he did not know if the explosion was “sabotage or accident.”
The Times said the official refused to comment on reports that Israeli aircraft were seen near the facility at the time of the explosion…
According to the original report of the mysterious blast, penned by former Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Reza Kahlili, for the WND.com website, the explosion “destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground.”
The Jerusalem Post could not confirm the veracity of the report.

Iran denied the reports describing them as “Western propaganda”

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If Labor wants to ban free speech, let it start with Gibbons’

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(9:51am)

A LABOR MP has sparked outrage by describing Australia Day as “invasion day” and accusing Australians of celebrating “by throwing bits of dead animals on a cooking fire just like the people we dispossessed”.

Victorian MP Steve Gibbons, who has previously used Twitter to label Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop a “narcissistic bimbo,” Tony Abbott a “douchebag” and Kevin Rudd a “psychopath,” tweeted the remarks late on Australia Day.
This is a member of the same government with plans for the rest of us:
.... Labor’s plans to make it unlawful to offend or insult people under the proposed overhaul of discrimination law... 
If Labor is serious about making it a crime to offend people, shouldn’t it start with prosecuting Gibbons? Instead:

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You may well like it, too

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(9:45am)

 Some films and TV
I don’t think it showed here, but I watched the DVD last night - a gift from one of my Dutch aunts - and loved it. More importantly, so did my non-Dutch wife.
UPDATE
If this is what Sinclair Davidson recommended, now I do, too:
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On 2GB, January 28

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(9:35am)

On 2GB with Steve Price from 8pm. Listen live here.
Readers have asked why the podcast for last Friday’s show has not been put up. I’ll see if I can sort it out.

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New record set for boat people arrivals

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(9:22am)

The Gillard Government has all but stopped boat people from Sri Lanka by belatedly agreeing to send most arrivals right back on next plane. But for other arrivals it’s still an open door:

While the government believes its policy of turning people back to Sri Lanka has stemmed the flow of boats from there, there had been hopes a slowdown over summer was due to policy and not simply monsoonal weather conditions.

Two boats were intercepted over the weekend with the first carrying 15 people picked up north of Christmas Island and the second carrying 59 found east of Christmas Island.
(Thanks to reader Hmmm.)

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Time Flannery said sorry

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(9:03am)

 Global warming - dud predictions
POOR Tim Flannery, our chief climate commissioner, must have thought the ABC was pulling his leg.
“Many parts of Queensland are on flood alert this weekend, as torrential rain from ex-tropical cyclone Oswald drenches much of the state,” ABC radio reported on Saturday.

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We don’t need to be instructed who to admire

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(8:57am)

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IF we must have an “Australian of the Year”, I guess Ita Buttrose is as good as anyone else.
Nice woman. Speaks sense. Great career in publishing. Doing fine work on dementia.

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Labor has spent our savings - and its credibility

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(8:50am)

Henry Ergas says Labor went on a massive spending spree that’s destroyed its fiscal credibility:

Here is what [Julia Gillard] said in the lead-up to Australia Day last year: “… My firm conclusion is that handing down a budget surplus in May is the right call in the present economic circumstances.”
Having now abandoned that commitment, the government, instead of putting any alternative in its place, has focused on finding excuses for its backflip.
Spending, it claims, has been squeezed so hard you can hear the pips squeak, but slow world growth has held back revenues....
That explanation doesn’t stand up to scrutiny… In 2008-09 and 2009-10, Labor massively increased government spending, taking it to a higher share of GDP than at any time since 1993-94. That surge was meant to be wound back once the economy recovered; but though growth was well above trend by 2011-12, the increase was never reversed, with new spending programs being ramped up as stimulus measures were phased out.


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If insults must be banned, why not start with Gillard?

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(8:20am)

How dare this Government try to muzzle its own people: 
FORMER High Court judge Ian Callinan has called for widespread community opposition to the federal government’s proposed changes to discrimination law, which he says are “outrageous” and a threat to community cohesion.

But what hypocrites:
No wonder. The Gillard regime which wants to stop other people from saying stuff that “offends” or “insults” feels perfectly free to itself offend and insult in the most viciously personal way. Some examples: 
Tony Abbott is a hack. A dog. An aggressive, carping, bitter, mindless, deceptive, dodgy, mendacious, rancid, negative, nasty, muck-raking, untruthful, obstructionist, opportunistic, sexist, political Neanderthal. He is unfit for high office. He cannot control his temper. No trick is too low for him. No stunt is too wild. He is a bully. A thug. A snake oil salesman. A poster child for vile bully-boy values. He has repulsive double standards. He hates women. He stands for nothing. He has unhealthy obsessions. He is nuts.

Abbott behaves like Jack the Ripper.
He is Gina Rinehart’s butler.
He is Nancy Reagan without the astrology. He is a douchebag.

I’m quoting here, mostly from Hansard. These are not comments from media figures, or feral demonstrators, or dredged up from 10 or even 30 years ago. These are insults delivered this year, by federal Labor MPs, directed at one person, and orchestrated by Julia Gillard. The level of personal insult has been on an industrial scale.
Hypocrites. Just hypocrites.
Question: if the Government thinks insults are so evil that they must be banned, why does it so freely use insults itself?
UPDATE
State Governments are in revolt against the Gillard Government’s attack on our freedoms to call someone an overbearing, hypocritical sneak with fascist leanings. Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark:
The draft law proposes dramatically to extend the definition of discrimination to include conduct that “offends” or “insults” another person, based on 18 specified attributes including age, gender, political opinion and “social origin”.

If this becomes law, merely expressing a view that others find objectionable because they (or their friends) have such an attribute could constitute an act of “discrimination” for which the person expressing the view may be liable to pay compensation.
The prohibition would not even be based on what a reasonable person might consider insulting, but on whether the person complaining felt offended or insulted....
Current law regulates specific groups that might discriminate, such as providers of employment, education, goods and services, clubs, and sporting associations.

However, the draft new law covers the conduct of any person “connected with any area of public life”. This means the law will regulate the conduct of any employee of a business, any student at a school, any customer in a shop, any volunteer in a community organisation, any blogger - and so forth. 
NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell is also alarmed by this draconian attack on our free speech:
Ms Roxon’s draft bill proposes to declare unlawful conduct that merely offends or insults…

That would change fundamentally the ability for political debate in this country,” Mr O’Farrell said.

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The campaign to make LA Latino again

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(7:52am)

Los Angeles is being reclaimed for Latinos, in the great demographic shift that poses questions about how the multi-"racial" US maintains its culture - and peace:
The black family—a mother, three teenage children and a 10-year-old boy—moved into a little yellow home in Compton over Christmas vacation.

When a friend came to visit, four men in a black SUV pulled up and called him a “nigger,” saying black people were barred from the neighborhood, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. They jumped out, drew a gun on him and beat him with metal pipes.
It was just the beginning of what detectives said was a campaign by a Latino street gang to force an African American family to leave.
The attacks on the family are the latest in a series of violent incidents in which Latino gangs targeted blacks in parts of greater Los Angeles over the last decade.
Compton, with a population of about 97,000, was predominantly black for many years. It is now 65% Latino and 33% black, according to the 2010 U.S. census....
Federal authorities have alleged in several indictments in the last decade that the Mexican Mafia prison gang has ordered street gangs under its control to attack African Americans. Leaders of the Azusa 13 gang were sentenced to lengthy prison terms earlier this month for leading a policy of attacking African American residents and expelling them from the town.

Similar attacks have taken place in Harbor Gateway, Highland Park, Pacoima, San Bernardino, Canoga Park and Wilmington, among other places.
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The mob vs Morsi

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(7:46am)


Tens of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of the restive Egyptian city of Port Said on Sunday for a mass funeral for most of the 37 people killed in rioting a day earlier, chanting slogans against Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Violence erupted briefly when some in the crowd fired guns and police responded with volleys of tear gas, witnesses said. State television reported 110 were injured…
There was also a funeral in Cairo for one of two policemen killed in the Port Said violence a day earlier. Several policemen grieving for two colleagues heckled Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the force, when he arrived for their funeral, according to witnesses… Ibrahim hurriedly left and the funeral proceeded without him.
The violence in the city, about 140 miles northeast of Cairo, broke out on Saturday after a court on Saturday convicted and sentenced 21 defendants to death for their roles in a mass soccer riot in a Port Said stadium on Feb. 1, 2012 that left 74 people dead. Most of those sentenced to death were local soccer fans from Port Said....

The riots stemmed mostly from animosity between police and die-hard Egyptian soccer fans, known as Ultras, who have become highly politicized. The Ultras frequently confront police and were also part of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime two years ago.
And now they are against Morsi...
PRESIDENT Mohamed Morsi has declared a state of emergency in three provinces hit by rioting which has left dozens dead, warning he was ready to take further steps to confront threats to Egypt’s security.

Emergency measures will come into effect in the provinces of Port Said, Suez and Ismailia “for 30 days starting at midnight” (0900 AEDT Monday), Morsi said in an address on state television on Sunday.

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Three papers to add to scepticism

Andrew BoltJANUARY282013(7:26am)

 Global warming - general

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” [President Barack] Obama said on Monday at the start of eight sentences on the subject, more than he devoted to any other specific area. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”


It was an appeal using rhetoric and not science because the most severe impacts of these natural disasters come from the challenge of managing increased population or changed population demands, not changes in the events per se…
I note three recent papers that find evidence for long-term cycles influencing the Earth’s climate.
Weichao Wu of the Peking University and colleagues studied sea-surface temperature records preserved in deep-sea sediments near Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean, and found evidence for multiple cyclic temperature variations over the past 2700 years.
The most interesting temperature peaks correspond to medieval, Roman and possibly Minoan warming periods of about 900, 1800 and 2500 years ago.
The paper is significant in that it concludes that the current rate of global temperature change lies in the same range as that of those historical warming periods.
This suggests we have evidence that challenges current climate orthodoxy on two grounds, first by suggesting that such warming events were global not local European phenomena, and second that current warming is not unprecedented in the historical record.
While we read many claims by oceanographers of an increasing rate of rise in sea-levels associated with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, an alternative interpretation of observed data is made in a recent analysis by Don Chambers of the University of South Florida and colleagues.
Chambers poses the question: “Is there a 60-year oscillation in sea-level?” and shows evidence that the answer is probably yes.
I read his data and find it is arguable that the upswing of that oscillation is responsible for about half of the current 3mm/year rate of rise, leaving the background rate of rise at about 1.7mm, where it has been for 110 years…
I would add that if Chambers is right, the accelerating rate of increase in sea-levels has topped out about now, and the 10mm a year rises needed to reach the feared “1 metre rise by 2100” are not going to happen.
A third work ... is a study by JA Abreu of the prestigious Swiss university ETH, with co-authors including Australia’s 1995 Australia Science Prize winner Ken McCracken.

Abreu reconstructs a history of solar sunspot cycles over the past 10,000 years… These records show a series of cycles ranging from 88 years to 504 years with longer cycles of 974 and 2300 years evident ...
Asten fondly dreams of politicians demanding to reach such evidence that challenges the media consensus:
It is my hope that scientists advising our politicians will include the rich literature represented here in their briefings to politicians - or alternatively, that politicians will demand it.
Not in election year, they won’t,

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Australia Day from space
TWITTER sensation Commander Chris Hadfield sent us a beautiful birthday treat to mark Australia Day: an incredible set of images shot 410km above Australia.
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We will be delivered from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence, because our protection is not of the world, but of the Lord (Ps 91:3)! Check out today's devotional. Be sure to click "like" to help spread the word! Thanks, all! http://bit.ly/SD5wb9
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If you're in a part of Australia being bucketed down on right now, get cosy with one of these! (even if you're not in these areas, this is still probably a good idea)
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Gowrie Creek just below KR Bacon Factory at it's peak on the 27th of Jan 2013. Much lower than 2011 but still a fairly raging torrent and all that water is heading out through the Murray Darling to South Australia. All of the rivers west of the Great Divide that have sene major stream rises will add an immense amount of water to this great river system and of course this is the land of droughts and flooding rains. Always has been and always will be.
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My Country

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

******©Dorothea MacKellar


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its been raining today
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Beloved, God’s wisdom will give you good success. It will cause you to succeed as a student, employee, parent or spouse. And it’s not difficult at all to operate in His wisdom—all you need to do is to ask Him for it! 

The Bible tells us that “if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally" (Jas 1:5). So ask, and God will bless you liberally with divine wisdom to cause everything that you touch to prosper. His wisdom always leads to promotion and good success.
http://josephprince.com/
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Maureen O'Hara
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There's a certain magic about Winter-
Perhaps it's the snow everywhere.
Could it be the chuckle of children
Enjoying the crisp, chilly air?

The stately pines offer a scent of mint
As sleds tumble down the valley.
Snowdrifts pile high, roads are blocked.
Yet kind folks with their shovels rally.

We mustn't forget the sparrows need a nest-
Seems each home has a birdhouse or two.
Warm chicken soup, a kettle of tea.
And a cozy fire help men muddle through.

During Winter months remain an optimist-
Watch as good times appear on the scene;
Snow balls will roll, snowflakes will fall.
The earth unfolds like an artist's dream.

Look for the wonder in Winter
And reach out, don't you shy away.
Discover the harvest that Winter bestows-
Not barren branches, but a "snow-bountiful" day.

Winter Wonders story, by © Linda Grazulis

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Certainly want to work with friendly people
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Bass for the Abominable Snowman
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A MEDIA MALAISE Larry Pickering

Fairfax aspired to objectivity when I worked there... well, sort of, but now it is badly listing to the Left and taking on serious water.

The previous SMH article says more about Fairfax than Gillard and crystallises the financial and digital-age problems management seems incapable of even embracing.

Irrelevant Gillard-doting dolts like Carlton, Summers, Grattan, Pasco, Fitzsimons and an array of other Left wing loonies is turning readers away in droves and they still don’t get it! Or maybe they do.

Were my eyes deceiving me this morning or was Carlton joshing about another 72-all draw for this year’s election?

The previous SMH article (published in 1996 when Gillard was unknown) shows the Herald leading the way in wanting to expose the AWU fraud. Now Gillard is Prime Minister it is of no interest to them.

The soon-to-be-charged Bruce Wilson said then, and Gillard and the Left say now, “it’s old hat”. Some people have a nasty surprise coming.

The Herald article encapsulates the extent to which the Left has now infiltrated Fairfax. And do you think they jump up and down about the share price? Of course not, they are more concerned that Gina might curb their daily drivel.

With Fairfax's market capitalisation now below $1 billion, it posted a $2.7bn statutory net loss last August after a write-down on the value of its mastheads of $2.8bn. Its share price is reeling below the cost of its papers.

Some of its decisions lately, particularly regarding radio, are inane and appear to have had political motivation. Rinehart is merely taunting them like a cat playing with a mouse before it kills it.

As with all aggressive Left wing rags, the SMH will slowly sink into the sunset and their journos will slither off to become ALP media advisors or something, and that’s a shame.

How did Fairfax reach such a parlous state? Because it allowed journalism to infiltrate management where, logically, journalism should have no place any more than a spray painter should have a place the board of GM-H.

The board is obsessed with its cornerstone covenant of “Journalistic Independence” (lunatic scribes must be allowed to continue to run the asylum) and it sees the pragmatic Rinehart and Singleton as enemies, not saviours.

So, shareholders run a long last, and it shows. In the real world that system is not commercially viable.

As surely as a paedophile gravitates to the priesthood and Scouts, the Left will gravitate to the media and in doing so it degrades the institution.

The US mainstream media has suffered similar infiltration from the Left with a lone Fox News defending against the onslaught.

Unfortunately Fox News is equally biased to the Right and that’s not good either because it serves to further galvanise the Left, leaving Fox pointlessly preaching only to the already converted.

Once upon a time you kept your voting intentions to yourself, it was a private matter. But the current polarisation caused by bad politicians and overt media bias has left no secret as to how your dinner guests vote.

The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times and others in the stable all now share the same news and were once influential, not any more.

Even the reasonable Financial Review is underperforming as readers turn to the net.

Physical hard copy news is finished. The future of news provision and dissemination is on-line and if executives believe readers will pay for their “quality journalism” then they are playing with their dongers.

Cut and paste any Australian headline into Google and you are presented for free with what they expected you would pay for. That shows how far out of touch they really are.

Something must give. Fairfax must be broken up to allow its few genuine earners to survive and one of those few genuine earners is an on-line dating site, RSVP for Christ’s sake.

Mmmm, oh well, back to the drawing board.

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Home schooling?
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Apologies Janet we missed your thoughts last night. Well written too
Janet O'Brien
I have long had a 'healthy' cynicism of both sides of politics and in previous Federal Elections would often vote independent or minor party. Having said that, I also recognise that someone needs to govern the country and our system and processes have up till now served Australia well. Decisions need to be made that some will applaud and some will condemn, but I never doubted that overall our representatives were doing what they thought would be best in the long run, and our system was robust and healty enough to weed out those who put their interests ahead of that of the country. There was also the confidence that we had a robust
media who would keep politicans honest and hold them to account.

Under this Government, I don't believe in our system or our media anymore.

Never in my adult voting life have I ever felt so strongly that our system is being corrupted, aided by a compliant media, and, as a woman myself, I am deeply saddened that this has happened under our first female Prime Minister.
I have been appalled at the happenings in the House of Representatives; accusations of misogyny, Peter Slipper, Craig Thompson, the Carbon Tax lie, the AWU scandal, just to mention a few. To me these events (among others) have really tarnished our Parliament and I cringe wondering how the rest of the world perceives Australians through the lens of this current Government.
Even worse is our media (with a few exceptions) allowing this to happen without calling those responsible to account.

I remember a statement that someone once told me: 'A persons perception is their reality'. Your perception may or may not be correct, but it does form the framework of your reality. At the moment my perception, and consequently my reality (until proven otherwise) is that this Government is treating the Australian population with contempt, has leaders that need to answer some serious questions regarding their integrity, and as far as I am concerned is technically illegitimate as it only gained power on the basis of the Carbon Tax lie.

FEDERAL ELECTION NOW!!

As Tony Abbott previously said, 'this is not about gender, it's about character', and I agree with him that the Prime Minister has dismally failed the character test.

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"Your hands shaped me and made me" (Job 10:8). 

We are all unique and different in the way that God created us. We each have our own shape. 

S- piritual gifts
H- eart
A- bilities
P- ersonality
E- xperience

We are all shaped to serve one God. Our shape is what makes us who we are.

Source: The Purpose Driven Life

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Don’t focus on your lack. Focus on God’s abundant supply (Phil 4:19), and expect to experience it.
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" There are those that say the Holocaust never happened, whilst panning a sequel to the original .

We must fight the forces of darkness ,and expose them to the light of facts and evidence , even when the last survivor (of the Shoah) is no longer with us " : David Green.https://www.facebook.com/david.green.3538
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A prayer from women's concentration camp Ravensbrueck.
Since 1938 the SS deported numerous female prisoners to Ravensbrueck in Mecklenburg, Germany, where they were forced to work for the weaponry of the Nazis. Between 1938 and 1945 132000 women and children had been registered in Ravensbrueck.
I continue my series "Stop War" with an experimental track about a prayer which has been passed on from there.

Music, Vocals, Instruments, Production: Andreas Herrmann (dirigent)
Artwork: Maria Hiszpanska (who had been a prisoner in Ravensbrueck)

Thanks to David Daniel Ball (ddball) for providing an English translation (see the "Lyrics" below). It's highly recommended to read the lyrics while listening ...

Wikepedia about the Life in the camp:
When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrueck they were required to wear a color-coded triangle (a Winkel) that identified them by category, with a letter sewn within the triangle indicating the prisoner's nationality. Polish women wore a red triangle, red denoting a political prisoner, with a letter "P". By 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp. Jewish women wore yellow triangles, but sometimes, unlike the other prisoners, they wore a second triangle for the other categories or for "race defilement". Some transports had their hair shaved, such as from Czechoslovakia and Poland, but "Aryan" transports did not. For instance, in 1943 a group of Norwegian women came to the camp. (Norwegians/Scandinavians were ranked by the Nazis as the purest of all Aryans.) None had their hair shaved. Between 1942 and 1943 almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports following Nazi policy to make Germany "Judenrein" (cleansed of Jews). Common criminals wore green triangles, Soviet prisoners of war, German and Austrian Communists had red triangles and members of the Jehovah's Witnesses were labeled with lavender triangles. Classified separately with black triangles were prostitutes, Gypsies, lesbians, or women who refused to marry.
Based on the Nazis incomplete transport list "Zugangsliste" consisting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that inmates of Ravensbrück ethnic structure was the following: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Russians 15.0%, French 7.3%, Gypsies 5.4%, other 12.4%. Gestapo categorized the inmates as follows: political 83.54%, anti-social 12.35%, criminal 2.02%, Jehovah Witnesses 1.11%, racial defilement 0.78%, other 0.20%. The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by courageous members of the Polish underground girl guides unit "Mury" (The Walls). The rest of the camp documents were burned by escaping SS overseers in pits or in the crematorium.
One of the forms of the resistance were underground education programs organized by prisoners for their fellow inmates. All national groups had some sort of program. The most extensive were among Polish women where various high school level classes were taught by experienced teachers.
Inmates at Ravensbrueck suffered greatly. Living in subhuman conditions, thousands were shot, strangled, gassed, buried alive, or worked to death. Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them. At first, "selected" prisoners were shot. Beginning in 1942, they were transferred to "euthanasia" killing centers or to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The SS staff also murdered some prisoners in the camp infirmary by lethal injection.
Starting in the summer of 1942, medical experiments were conducted without consent on 86 women; 74 of them were Polish inmates. There were two types of the experiments done on the Polish political prisoners. The first type tested the efficacy of sulfonamide drugs. These experiments involved deliberate cutting into and infecting leg bones and muscles with virulent bacteria, cutting nerves, introducing substances like pieces of wood or glass into tissues, and fracturing bones. The second set of experiments studied bone, muscle and nerve regeneration, and the possibility of transplanting bones from one person to another. Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Króliki, Kaninchen, Lapins or Rabbits by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed and the rest survived, with permanent physical damage, due to the help of other inmates in the camp. Four of them -- Jadwiga Dzido, Maria Broel-Plater, Władysława Karolewska and Maria Kuśmierczuk -- testified against Nazi doctors at the Doctors' Trial in 1946.
Between 120 and 140 Gypsy women were sterilized in the camp in January 1945. All of them, unaware of the consequences, signed the consent form after being told by the camp overseers that the German authorities would release them if they agreed to sterilization.
All inmates were required to do heavy labor, ranging from heavy outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for the giant German company, Siemens AG. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components.
The bodies of those killed in the camp were cremated in the nearby Fuerstenberg crematorium until 1943. In that year, SS authorities constructed a crematorium at a site near the camp prison. In the autumn of 1944, the SS constructed a gas chamber near the crematorium. The Germans gassed several thousand prisoners at Ravensbrueck before the camp's liberation in April 1945.


Lyrics:

Friede den Menschen, die bösen Willens sind,
und ein Ende aller Rache
und allen Reden über Strafe und Züchtigung.

Die Grausamkeiten spotten allem je Dagewesenen,
sie überschreiten die Grenzen menschlichen Begreifens,
und zahlreich sind die Märtyrer.

Daher, o Gott,
wäge nicht ihre Leiden auf den Schalen
Deiner Gerechtigkeit,
fordre nicht grausame Abrechnung,
sondern schlage sie anders zu Buche:

Lass sie zugute kommen allen Henkern,
Verrätern und Spionen
und allen schlechten Menschen,
und vergib ihnen
um des Mutes und der Seelenkraft des andern willen.
All das Gute sollte zählen, nicht das Böse.

Und in der Erinnerung unsrer Feinde
sollten wir nicht als ihre Opfer weiterleben,
nicht als ihr Alptraum und grässliche Gespenster,
vielmehr ihnen zu Hilfe kommen,
damit sie abstehen mögen von ihrem Wahn.

Nur dies allein wird ihnen abgefordert,
und dass wir, wenn alles vorbei sein wird,
leben dürfen als Menschen unter Menschen,

und dass wieder Friede sein möge auf dieser armen Erde
den Menschen die guten Willens sind,
und dass dieser Friede auch zu den andern komme.

English Translation by ddball:
Peace to all those who are full of evil intent
and an end to taking revenge
and an end to speeches about punishment and scolding.

The matchless cruelties defy description,
they exceed anything that may be learned,
and the martyrs are numerous.

Henceforth, o God,
don't weigh their sufferings on the scales
of your justice,
Don't ask for cruel reckoning,
but weigh it in a different way:

Let the hangmen,
traitors and spies,
and all evil peoples benefit from their crime,
and forgive them
for the sake of courage and the sacrifice of the others.
All good shall be reckoned, but evil spilt and lost.

And in the remembrance of our enemies
we shall not live as their victims,
not as their nightmares and terrible monsters,
but rather come to their rescue,
that they abstain from their delusion.

Only this will be claimed from them,
and that we, when all this will be over,
may live as humans among humans,

and that peace may again reign on this poor earth
for all with good in their heart
and that this peace shall extend to the lost ones, too.

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