Thursday, December 11, 2014

Thu Dec 11th Todays News

Memory challenged terrorist David Hicks has recovered some forgotten memories and heckled Attorney General Brandis. It follows Obama's divisive effort to release a report into CIA interrogation methods employed against terrorists. It seems as if, in the absence of Snowden or Assange, Obama is trying to engineer jihadist riots. 

 Collected failed arguments against Hal Colebatch's well researched "Australia's Secret War" has many journalists and academics lying to attack Colebatch. They aren't restrained in their abuse, and bad things could happen to Colebatch from the pile on. Bolt recounts how Australia's greatest historian, Geoffrey Blainey, was taken down by such a pile on in the mid '80s. But, unlike Colebatch, Blainey had said something stupid while getting involved with the culture wars. The lesson of Blainey is that reflexive left wing bigotry must be opposed. 

 Reflexive left wing bigotry is part of the wider media too. Australia is culturally and ethnically diverse, but that is not reflected in drama, which often features Aboriginals or monochromatic leftwing issues of being gay and afraid to come out, or being accepted for taking drugs. A child died from the left wing belief that drinking unpasteurised milk is desirable. It is Russian Roulette. Also, it is a good idea to be vaccinated. But, there needs to be a way forward. Drama needs to reflect Australian realities and discuss issues relevant to all Australians. There needs to be a lot of drama which has Asian Australian leads tackling issues that every day Australians deal with, being part of a diverse culture, with Greek run glass makers, Asian run small businesses and white trash hate mongers unwilling to work to feed themselves. Maxmum Choppage, to be shown on ABC in the new year, is a start. Set in Cabramatta, but fictionalised. Timothy Ly's brainchild. How the ABC implement it remains to be seen. 

 Australian, for citizens, is something to be proud of. A cultural asset. So why are there racists wanting to implement constitutional racism to dis-endorse being Australian? Reflexive left wing bigotry. Bill Shorten is promising money Australia does not have. Media are not questioning his honesty. However, his behaviour in government is known. He is not responsible. He endorses racism. Meanwhile Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has broken his first promise, but it won't be the last. 

 ABC is partisan and Herald attacks Peta Credilin and Joe Hockey .. and Tony Abbott. 
2013
Green ALP policy has meant a tourist was raped in inner Sydney recently, or that three drowned, including a toddler. It means that Australia's car industry will die. But it doesn't mean that the world is better off. It doesn't make it cooler around the world. It doesn't make it better for migrants keen to come to Australia. It doesn't mean that SMH readers are better informed. Instead we have the ludicrous situation where bad news is good for the ALP. Were there truth to Pickering's assertion about Borbidge, I'm sure the ALP in Queensland would have capitalised on it sooner. That they haven't says much. 

There was much misogyny surrounding Gillard. Entirely of her making, and her communication chief's style. Obama understands the gravity of the passing of Mandela. His selfie reflects that. Greens assault good manners. ABC asks BBC to whitewash her. Fewer fires means the world is cooling .. and it is! Greenpeace threatens Christmas. 
Historical perspectives on this day
In 220, Cao Pi forced Emperor Xian of Han to abdicate the Han Dynasty throne. The Cao Wei empire was established. The Three Kingdoms period began. In 361, Julian the Apostate entered Constantinople as sole Emperor of the Roman Empire. In 630, Muhammad led an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca. In 969, Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas was assassinated by his wife Theophano and her lover, the later Emperor John I Tzimiskes. In 1282, Battle of Orewin Bridge: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, in mid-Wales. In 1602, a surprise attack by forces under the command of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his brother-in-law, Philip III of Spain, was repelled by the citizens of Geneva. (Commemorated annually by the Fête de l'Escalade.) In 1688, Glorious Revolution: James II of England, while trying to flee to France, allegedly threw the Great Seal of the Realm into the River Thames. In 1789. the University of North Carolina was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly. In 1792, French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France was put on trial for treason by the National Convention.

 In 1815, the U.S. Senate created a select committee on finance and a uniform national currency, predecessor of the United States Senate Committee on Finance. In 1816, Indiana became the 19th U.S. state. In 1868, Paraguayan War: Brazilian troops defeated Paraguayan at the Battle of Avay. In 1905, a workers' uprising occurs in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), and established the Shuliavka Republic.In 1907, the New Zealand Parliament Buildings were almost completely destroyed by fire. In 1917, World War I: British General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem on foot and declared martial law. In 1920, Irish War of Independence: In retaliation for an IRA ambush, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in Cork city. Many civilians also reported being beaten, shot at, robbed and verbally abused by British forces. In 1925, Roman Catholic papal encyclical Quas Primas introduces the Feast of Christ the King. In 1927, Guangzhou Uprising: Communist Red Guards launched an uprising in Guangzhou, China, taking over most of the city and announcing the formation of a Guangzhou Soviet.

 In 1931, Statute of Westminster 1931: The British Parliament established legislative equality between the UK and the Dominions of the Commonwealth—Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland. In 1934, Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took his last drink and entered treatment for the last time.In 1936, Abdication Crisis: Edward VIII's abdication as King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, and Emperor of India, became effective. In 1937, Second Italo–Ethiopian War: Italy left the League of Nations. In 1941, World War II: Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declared war on them. Also, World War II: Poland declared war on the Empire of Japan. 1946, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established. In 1948, 1948 Arab–Israeli War: The United Nations passed General Assembly Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission to mediate the conflict. In 1958, French Upper Volta and French Dahomey gained self-government from France, becoming the Republic of Upper Volta and the Republic of Dahomey (now Benin), respectively, and joining the French Community. In 1960, French forces cracked down in a violent clash with protesters in French Algeria during a visit by French President Charles de Gaulle. In 1962, Arthur Lucas, convicted of murder, was the last person to be executed in Canada. In 1964, Che Guevara spoke at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York. In 1968, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, featuring the Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, the Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and the Dirty Mac with Yoko Ono, was filmed in Wembley, London.

 In 1972, Apollo 17 became the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon. In 1978, the Lufthansa heist was committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time. In 1980, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund) was enacted by the U.S. Congress. In 1981, El Mozote massacre: Armed forces in El Salvador killed an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the Salvadoran Civil War. In 1990, demonstrations by students and workers across Albania began, which eventually triggered the fall of communism in Albania. In 1993, forty-eight people were killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapsed near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 1994, First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops into Chechnya. Also, a bomb exploded on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, en route from Manila, Philippines, to Tokyo, Japan, killing one. The captain was able to safely land the plane. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol opened for signature. In 1998, Thai Airways Flight 261 crashed near Surat Thani Airport, killing 101. The pilot flying the Thai Airways Airbus A310-300 was thought to have suffered spatial disorientation.

 In 2001, the People's Republic of China joined the World Trade Organization. In 2005, the Buncefield Oil Depot caught fire in Hemel Hempstead, England, United Kingdom. In 2005, Cronulla riots: Thousands of Australians demonstrated against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese (and many who are not) in Cronulla, New South Wales, Australia. These were followed up by retaliatory ethnic attacks on Cronulla. In 2006, the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust was opened in Tehran, Iran, by then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; nations such as Israel and the United States expressed concern. In 2006, Felipe Calderón, the President of Mexico, launched a military-led offensive to put down the drug cartel violence in the state of Michoacán. This effort was often regarded as the first event in the Mexican Drug War. In 2007, Insurgency in the Maghreb: Two car bombs exploded in Algiers, Algeria, one near the Supreme Constitutional Court and the other near the offices of the United Nations. In 2008, Bernard Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. In 2012, at least 125 people were killed and up to 200 injured in bombings in the Alawite village of Aqrab, Syria.
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This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Douglas Sutherland-Bruce via David Daniel Ball
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed

Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.
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Happy birthday and many happy returns to those born on this day, across the years
The Old Well, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's most recognized landmark
There are three awaiting your throne. You have your charter. Your chicken is Kiev. You have done your job. They await your orders. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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ABC wasting our time on loudmouth David Hicks

Piers Akerman – Thursday, December 11, 2014 (7:10pm)

REVOLTING in their arrant hypocrisy, the luvvie crowd — well supported by our ABC — has resoundingly demonstrated its preference for self-confessed terrorist trainee and ­amateur poet David Hicks to good news about the release of children from ­immigration detention.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'ABC wasting our time on loudmouth David Hicks'
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COLLECTED ANTI-COLEBATCH ARGUMENTS

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 11, 2014 (4:05am)

First up, Wollongong leftist academic Rowan Cahill: 
In October 2013, the right-wing journal Quadrant published the book Australia’s Secret War, an account by Hal Colebatch of homefront industrial disruptions by Australian trade unions during the Second World War. Described as a secret history rescued from ‘folk memory’ – and one previously suppressed by leftists – it detailed ‘treacherous’ industrial actions by unionists that denied/delayed vital war materials to the frontlines between 1939 and 1945, resulting in the deaths of service personnel. These actions, the argument went, pointed to a deliberate and … 
Cahill carries on like this for some time. Anti-Colebatch pieces tend to be long on words and short on argument, so let’s cut to Cahill’s main points, such as they are: 
Wartime industrial actions by waterfront workers were primarily local in origin, variously based on local factors and understandings … 
They had one thing in common, however: they all delayed supplies to Australian troops. 
Colebatch fails to grasp the realities of a complex context and industry … 
Complex? We’re talking about loading ships here. That’s all there is to it. People have been doing this for thousands of years. The scale may be different, but conceptually it is no different from a child putting toys in a box. 
Each [port] had their own leaderships, distinct histories, cultures, politics, practices, port characteristics, infrastructures and work demands. 
But they all had the same simple job: putting stuff on ships. 
When Australia and Japan went to war, the Labor government thought it necessary to cajole a confused civilian population with a barrage of racist propaganda to counter complacency created by a decade of appeasement of Japanese militarism by previous conservative governments and profitable trade relations with Japan developed by Australian capitalists. 
Whatever this has to do with strike-prone commie-led waterside workers, I have no idea. 
Colebatch has form, as they say in the classics. He is the third son of the short-term (one-month) twelfth premier of West Australia, who accompanied strikebreakers onto the waterfront during the bitter Fremantle wharf crisis of 1919 … 
Colebatch doesn’t have form at all. He has family. Cahill lately reworked this piece for another publication, and added a new line: 
Despite the ‘war effort’ and people pulling together, in workplaces pre-war situations prevailed: employers still looked for profits … 
I think we all know where Cahill is coming from. Next up, Adam Brereton in New Matilda: 
The meat of the book is comprised of big block quotes from letters and interviews with soldiers … in one of the more neutral accounts, Sapper PJ McInnes recalled some trouble on the docks with wharfies who went on strike in 1942, and wrote:
“We had to load barbed wire which we put on steel posts. Two men carried these, two on each post between us, four at a time. We finished loading the ship about 5 o’clock and the seamen said they had never had their boat loaded so quickly. We loaded bags of cement — men were carrying two bags at a time, timber, sand-bags, etc. etc.”
Problem is, Sapper PJ McInnes wrote this when he was Mr McInnes, in 1996, in a letter. 
Why is this a “problem”? 
It rolls on and on like this; the history of the Secret War is told from the soldiers’ side, often at a great historical remove. 
That great historical remove being the enormous distance between people and the things that happened to those very same people. Which they recall. In detail. 
These accounts aren’t treated sceptically, but are quoted verbatim … 
So now leftists think scepticism is a good thing. Even when sources describe events they personally endured. 
… old buggers’ “war-y stories” … 
War veterans are dismissed as “old buggers” who tell “stories”. You’re scoring some serious points here, Adam. 
Some of the wharfies during the war were Stalinists, backed by Moscow. Others would have been petty thieves or corrupt. And many would have been genuine unionists who wanted the danger pay they were due. These were not voluntary enlisted soldiers, they weren’t conscripts – they were workers. Nonetheless, Colebatch doesn’t make the effort to treat them fairly. 
Brereton is welcome to write his own fair book. Suggested title: The Heroic Strikes of Australian Dockside Workers During World War Two. 
We also lack the cultural memory to deal appropriately with military violence against striking workers … 
Key word: “striking”. Next up, former ABC presenter Helen Razer – the “former” might be explained by this 2008 interview – addresses Colebatch’s book: 
According to [leftist academic Stuart] Macintyre, Colebatch’s assertion that Australian man-hours were needlessly haunted by the spectre of communism during World War II can be easily refuted by recourse to research. Industrial accidents were significantly more lethal to Australian wartime efforts than industrial action … 
Industrial accidents, by definition, are difficult to avoid. Industrial action, however, is voluntary, and further poisoned Australia’s war effort. 
… and there were “more hours lost in the US and the UK on a population basis” than that due to industrial action locally. 
Well, big damn deal. Last up, Mike Carlton in Crikey: 
Colebatch claims that a strike by wharf labourers in Sydney kept soldiers returning from Japanese prisoner-of-war camps away from their families. In October 1945, he says, these men were held penned-up on a British aircraft carrier, HMS Speaker, which had brought them home. The wharfies would not allow them ashore to meet their loved ones for 36 hours.
This is untrue. It simply did not happen. 
Yet the same account from which Carlton draws this information also records: “It was unfortunate for us that this period should have coincided with a wave of strikes ashore which put Sydney on a real austerity basis for lighting, cooking, transport and entertainments and made it difficult for many men to get away on leave.” Carlton continues: 
Colebatch gives his only source for this nonsense as a letter from one W.S. Monks, dated 1995, 50 years after the event and 20 years ago. He does not reveal who this Monks might be, but there was no soldier or POW of that name in WWII. 
According to Australia’s National Archives, a William Sackville Monks was a prisoner of war during World War II. (Via reader vlad.) Carlton continues: 
Colebatch alleges that a flight of 16 American Vultee Vengeance dive bombers returning from a raid on Rabaul crashed into the sea off New Britain because the radar station at their base on Green Island was not working …
This is sheer fiction. The Americans did not fly the Vultee Vengeance in combat, so they made no raid on Rabaul. 
Dumb Carlton mistake. Colebatch mentioned “American Vultee Vengeance” aircraft, as in built by Americans. Carlton took this to mean aircraft flown by Americans. Despite that error, Colebatch supporters – including me – must concede that his identification of the aircraft is incorrect. Overwhelming evidence points to this incident involving Royal New Zealand Air Force Corsairs.
This mistake is significant and regrettable, yet does little to damage Colebatch’s greater claim: that unionists – as admitted by almost all of his critics – did take substantial industrial action during World War II, thereby compromising Australia’s war effort and placing Australians troops at risk. Little wonder, then, that leftists are now so ashamed.
As they should be.
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Only in Australia

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (1:04pm)


Attorney-General George Brandis tells a Senate committee about being heckled by former al-Qaeda recruit David Hicks at a Human Rights Commission function:
You don’t expect to run into a terrorist at a human rights awards event.
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Why not simply say we’re all Australians instead?

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (11:34am)


Hundreds of treaties - and with tribes loosely defined? You must be kidding:

THE head of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council..., Warren Mundine....  said he supported a new native title system that did not ­require a continuous connection with land…
”A formal agreement or ­declaration between Australia and its first peoples would need to be between Australia and each Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander tribal group, nation to nation.”
He proposed that the federal government formally recognise each indigenous nation and enter into an agreement recognising each one as the traditional owner of a defined area of land.

I have a better idea. How about we stop insisting on these silly differences of “race” and just get on with being Australians together on this one parth of land, sharing a common law?
“In doing so, that nation’s ­native title claim should be recognised and concluded,’’ he said.
My own view on this matter are, astonishingly, too legally dangerous to express:

Mr Mundine said it was ­important to change the way ­Aboriginal identity was defined.
“Identity needs to be determined by a means that is simple, transparent, able to be confirmed through objective data ... and as non-controversial as possible. It’s time to move away from the requirement of community acceptance. We need to get back to the traditional nations. If a person can’t trace their ancestry to a first nation then there is no basis for them to regard themselves as a member of a traditional nation.”
(Thanks to reader brett t r) 
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On the hypocrites frothing against a book revealing union bastardry

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (11:32am)


Write books which describe “genocides” which didn’t occur or “stolen” children who weren’t and the Left applaud.
But write a book describing how far-Left unions sabotaged Australia’s war effort and cue the outrage.
Tim Blair has a fine takedown of the mega-frothing at the prize awarded to Hal Colebatch’s Australia’s Secret War (order here).
UPDATE
Former ABC presenter Helen Razer asks Professor Stuart Macintyre to help bag Colebatch’s book attacking the sabotage of Australia’s war effort by communist-infiltrated unions:
Macintyre, an academic who works within the margins of evidence, is far less inclined than Carlton, a journalist whose mood becomes freer with every tweet, to call the award for Australia’s Secret War a numb act of pure ideology.
Missing from Razer’s interview is this highly relevant fact:  Macintyre was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Communist Party of Australia, and at least six of his books are about Marxism and communism, including his paen to the party - The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia, from Origins to Illegality. Why wasn’t that disclosed?
Razer continues, using Macintyre to bag the idea that the Left hog academic positions and impose an intellectual orthodoxy in universities:
Macintyre puts it smoothly when he says, “The Right thinks there is this absolute orthodoxy within universities and historical scholarship.” “And in a sense it projects its own expectation of how matters are decided”.
This is grotesquely hypocritical. Razer fails to note Macintyre’s own role in one of the most shameful and sinister cases of the silencing of conservative academics. Keith Windschuttle describes the persecution of our greatest historian, Geoffrey Blainey:

Moreover, Macintyre himself played a prominent role in a notorious case of academic persecution ... This was the successful campaign that put an end to the academic career of one of Australia’s greatest historians.
On May 19, 1984, the Age newspaper published a letter signed by twenty-four staff members of the Department of History at the University of Melbourne. The letter dissociated its authors from public views recently expressed by Geoffrey Blainey, the Ernest Scott Professor of History and head of that department. Blainey, the signatories claimed, had framed a debate over government immigration policy in such terms that would invite others to “incite feelings of racial hatred”:
“As historians at the University of Melbourne we wish to dissociate ourselves entirely from the widely-publicised attacks which Professor Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent member of our profession, and a professor in our department, has recently made on the Government’s immigration policy with regard to Asians. Professor Blainey speaks and writes on this issue as an individual and not as a representative of historians at this university.
“We are particularly aware of the dangers of trying to channel debate on immigration policy into consideration of the suitability of certain ethnic and national groups as immigrants. We are also aware, from many historical precedents, that raising such an issue in racial terms (however much it is couched in the language of reason) becomes an invitation to less responsible groups to incite feelings of racial hatred. Framing debate in such racial terms can become a potent weapon to rouse public fears and prejudices and to direct hostility at certain groups in our society.
“We do not wish to limit debate and discussion by Professor Blainey or anyone else on such issues of public concern. But to raise discussion of immigration in terms of race will inevitably draw in and encourage racist groups to come forward and claim legitimacy from what has been said.
“Signed by Ian Robertson [Renaissance historian, chairman of the department] and 23 others”
Two weeks later, at the start of the next teaching term, a group of students at the University of Melbourne picketed Blainey’s lectures and demonstrated against him. Although university security personnel locked the doors to the building concerned, they were unable to prevent the demonstrators gaining entry. Blainey was forced to cancel the lecture and others he planned to give. After that, university security concerns made it impossible for Blainey to speak at any public function on campus. All his scheduled talks at the university for the rest of the year were cancelled. Even towards the end of 1984, when the Students’ Representative Council invited him to give a lecture, the Vice-Chancellor prohibited it on grounds of security.
After members of his family were subject to threats of violence, Blainey removed his name and address from the public telephone book and a friend organised private security to guard his home. The university installed a special machine to inspect all incoming mail. The most disturbing incident, not publicised at the time by police for fear of provoking copycats, occurred when someone planted a real bomb on the lawn of another person named Blainey who lived close to Monash University.
The immediate consequence of all this was that Blainey, easily Australia’s best and most prolific living historian, was effectively silenced from speaking at his own university. He reverted to an administrative role as Dean of Arts and did not lecture again in the history department until 1987. This violation of academic freedom, clearly the worst in Australian history, provoked no protest at all from the university’s academic staff association, nor from the university council, let along his own departmental colleagues. In 1988, Blainey resigned from the university. Once he was gone, Stuart Macintyre, one of the signatories of the original letter, succeeded to the now vacant Ernest Scott Chair of History.
How dare Razer not refer to this when quoting this same Macintyre denying a culture of Leftist orthodoxy in universities?
UPDATE
Link to Blair’s fine takedown fixed. 
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Bill Shorten must be called out for promising billions he will never find

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (11:07am)


Niki Savva on the need to hold Bill Shorten to account:
Shorten’s tactic, to get Abbott both coming and going, while presenting no solutions, is paying off in the polls. But the time will come, if not before the election, certainly after if he wins, when Shorten will have to take responsibility, as Abbott has, for problems he has exacerbated and for the many implicit or explicit promises he has made.Whether it’s more money for health, education, the ABC, SBS, the CSIRO, pensions, new sub­marines or superannuation, Shorten has to come up with more plausible answers for the missing billions than the “growth strategy” he says is absent from the government’s economic agenda.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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It won’t be Andrews’ first

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (9:55am)


Not two weeks after his election, new Victorian Premier Dan Andrews breaks his first promise:
THE release of the business case and contract for the East West Link has been pushed back to next week, past the deadline Premier Daniel Andrews set before the election.
On the eve of last month’s state poll, Mr Andrews promised that if he won government he would show Victorians the full details of the toll road plan within a week.
But Mr Andrews has revealed the timing had changed.
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Murdoch papers tell Abbott to defy warmists and to join them. Only one paper is right

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (9:54am)


Rupert Murdoch’s Australian says Tony Abbott should stop trying to please sceptics:
Mr Abbott should place himself in the middle ground on climate change policy. Yet he is too eager to please the rabid elements of the conservative base, who do not accept the science of climate change. But in the political world, voters want to see action to abate emissions… Mr Abbott should change his rhetoric, ramp up the symbolism and worry less about the urgers on the far Right — the way centrist Mr Howard would have.
Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph says Tony Abbott should stop trying to please warmists:

By pledging $200 million over four years to the international Green Climate Fund, the Prime Minister has not only gone against his stated position on contributing to the fund, but he risks alienating the core support that saw him elected last year as an opponent of Labor’s carbon tax.
As well, announcement of the contribution has done little to appease environmentalists… Coalition supporters may be justified in wondering why the government went to the trouble of dismantling the carbon tax only to sign up for such an expensive climate change program — a program once described by the Prime Minister as a “Bob Brown bank on an international scale”. Abbott should have resisted pressure. This is a win for nobody except those receiving our money.
Some confusion in the Murdoch camp, then.
In fact, the Australian is wrong, and most worrying is that its language sounds disturbingly like slogans from a GetUp rally. 

- Abbott has been heeding “urgers on the far Right”? Seriously?  “Far Right”?
- “Rabid elements of the conservative base ... do not accept the science of climate change”?  What a ludicrous straw man argument.  The case against warming alarmism is in fact rooted in science - the science that unambiguously says the atmosphere has not warmed for 16 years and the deep ocean for nine. It is rooted in the science and the economics which shows massive spending on global warming schemes will make little difference to temperatures, and is likely to hurt more than help - an argument repeatedly put in the paper by one of The Australian’s favoured climate commentators, Professor Bjorn Lomborg.
- “But in the political world, voters want to see action to abate emissions”? Really? Didn’t we just have an election in which public support for scrapping the carbon tax was so strong that even Labor in a panic promised to “terminate” the tax?
- “Mr Abbott should change his rhetoric, ramp up the symbolism”? Abbott has in fact paid lip service for years to global warming. Only yesterday he dropped another $200 million into a global warming fund. And what good did that do? It merely encouraged the Left, dismayed Abbott’s supporters, legitimised the warming scare and made the Government look clueless.
- “The way the centrist Mr Howard would have”? Has the writer forgotten the history? Howard long resisted the alarmists, even more than does Abbott today.  Only with polls predicting his final defeat did Howard in desperation promise to move towards an emissions trading scheme. It did him zero good. No one thought his commitment genuine, and he merely signalled that Labor and the Greens had been right all along - so why vote Liberal instead? No wonder Howard has since backtracked.
I don’t know who wrote that editorial in The Australian, but wonder how they managed to sneak into the editor’s office and pinch his password.
UPDATE
Julie Bishop and Andrew Robb actually seem to be telling the Lima global warming conference a few home truths (albeit not on the failure of the world to warm as predicted):
Trade Minister Andrew Robb declared Australia will not sign up to the next global climate deal in 2015 if it will put the country at a disadvantage to trade competitors…
The hardline stance taken by Mr Robb and supported by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reflects the continued importance of plentiful oil, gas and coal to Australia’s economy…
Mr Robb’s tough negotiation position was spelled out on the same day Australia tried to gain leverage in the current negotiations in Lima by ­agreeing to a surprise $200 million donation to an international fund to help ­developing countries combat climate change.
“We will make a particular effort to ensure that they are as ambitious as we will be,” Mr Robb said. “If we are not convinced they are doing what they should, it will influence whether we sign up or not. Outcomes must be comparable. We are not going to get it in the neck and increase our costs for nothing."…
Ms Bishop said Australia objected to a wording in the draft Paris agreement that the world should aim to end net carbon emissions completely by 2050.
“How could one possibly commit to having a fossil fuel-free world by 2050? At best it is an aspiration. I am interested in grounding our text in fact and reality ... We would not sign up to targets that would damage our economy, would send jobs offshore, would close down manufacturing. It is in no one’s interest for Australia to be damaged economically.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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The Government should have checked that this mad Senate would play ball

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (9:01am)


ER, did the Abbott Government actually check that it had the votes for its rejigged Medicare package?
It is bad enough that its first proposal — a very modest $7 co-payment for a doctor’s visit — couldn’t get through the Senate.
But worse would be if the Senate destroyed this second effort, too, which effectively makes doctors charge only $5 per visit but exempts eight million Australians, including pensioners and children.
(Read full article here.) 
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Shouldn’t truth matter more than seeming good?

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (8:07am)


SOME stories are so politically or emotionally useful that facts don’t matter. Take the story of a student called Jackie.
Rolling Stone magazine reported last month that Jackie was raped in September 2012 by seven men at the University of Virginia.
She’d gone to a social event at a prestigious fraternity house with a frat member working at the university’s pool.

There she was then lured into a room and raped so brutally that she was left bleeding.
The magazine said Jackie eventually called a friend, “Andy”, who with two other friends found the devastated student in a bloodied dress. They debated “the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape” before deciding against it.
As Rolling Stone reported it, the crime perfectly illustrated a dominant narrative of the Left. Here was another state institution with a rape culture that didn’t take the oppression of women seriously.
Sure enough, activists enraged by the article denounced the misogynist hyper-masculinity of the fraternity, which was picketed, defaced and suspended by the university.
Rolling Stone, meanwhile, showed all the extreme sensitivity demanded in this age of the victim, even agreeing to Jackie’s request that it not distress her by approaching the alleged rapists for comment.
Big mistake.
(Read full column here.) 
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Activist Broadcasting Corporation

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (7:49am)


Of course the ABC isn’t biased. If ABC Radio National actually had the phone number of a climate sceptic - a Professor Bob Carter, say, or a William Kininmonth or a Professor Michael Asten or a Professor Judith Curry or a Professor Nir Shaviv or a Professor Richard Lindzen - I’m sure it would also given them the kind of lengthy soft-ball interview it this morning gave to Erwin Jackson of the Climate Institute.
But I am puzzled. Why did host Fran Kelly treat Jackson as an independent expert rather than evangelical spruiker from an outfit sponsored in part by green businesses which profit from the warming scare? 
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How can you trust the Herald’s coverage?

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (7:30am)


The language used by the editors-in-chief of Fairfax newspapers - allegedly “quality” papers - is one thing.
Worse is the vindictiveness towards Treasurer Joe Hockey that’s revealed in emails between Darren Goodsir of the Sydney Morning Herald and Andrew Holden of The Age:

The court documents also revealed that Mr Goodsir had complained that Mr Hockey’s press office had called him at 2am on the day of the publication of the first article to demand an apology [for falsely claiming Hockey had to return a donation to the Australian Water Holdings].
“I got called at 2.15am by hockey presser. They have a F***ing hide!” a text message from Mr Goodsir to Mr Holden on March 21 stated.
Mr Goodsir then instructed his political reporters to “drop all other work” and concentrate on Mr Hockey’s alleged links with the [Liberal fundraiser] North Sydney Forum.
An email about the progress of the alleged defamatory story [claiming Hockey was “Treasurer for Sale"] from Mr Goodsir to Mr Holden on March 27 stated: “F---ing brilliant! ... but please let’s keep this tight as a drum for now ... Given what Andrew and I endured last week with Hockey I want to have this nailed to the cross in more ways than one ... I have long dreamed (well, actually only since last Friday), of a headline that screams: Sloppy Joe!”
Remember this as you check out today’s political coverage from the Sydney Morning Herald home page, overwhelmingly hostile to the Government:

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The tyranny of the warmist few

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (6:46am)


United Nations secretary-general Ban-ki Moon tells delegates at the Lima global warming conference to listen to the public (as reported by The Age):


From Manhattan to Mumbai to Melbourne, hundreds of people marched for climate action.
The population of the planet: 7 billion.
Strange that The Age didn’t pick up on the idiocy of having mere hundreds determine policies for billions.
But the correct quote is only marginally better, and still risible:

From Manhattan to Mumbai to Melbourne, hundreds of thousands of people marched for climate action.
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Picking on Peta. In fact, Abbott needs more just like her

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (5:32am)


I don’t believe some of the rubbish being written lately about Peta Credlin, one of the engines of the Abbott Government. Would that some of her Liberal critics worked as hard or effectively. Would that some of the criticism of her didn’t sound misogynistic or the bleating of men intimidated by a strong woman.
Yet Paul Sheehan is right:


Sitting in the hairdresser on Tuesday morning I was confronted by Peta Credlin at every turn. She featured in two front-page news stories. She was in both Fairfax and the News Corp press. She was even attacked by a conservative female columnist in The Spectator.
In the ensuing days, the Credlin phenomenon has simply become bigger. She is exactly where you don’t want a chief of staff to be: in the media. Frequently…
The problem with the Credlin phenomenon is that the very existence of the Credlin Phenomenon is a problem.
The problem isn’t Credlin, though.  The problem is that Abbott doesn’t have more Credlins, not least one working on media and strategy - the area of maximum weakness for the government. I’m thinking of a kind of Peter Mandelson figure, the highly effective Minister without Portfolio for Tony Blair - both a strategist and liaison with the backbench. 
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Dream bidding

Andrew Bolt December 11 2014 (5:23am)


If money were no object… The three pieces I’d buy first at tonight’s Menzies auction:

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meh, I don't care that much ..
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Post by Blak Prophetz.

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=== Posts from last year ===

A darker shade of green

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, December 11, 2013 (10:06am)

THE rape of a Belgian tourist in a dark alley in Potts Point last month is a warning that environmentally sensitive street lighting will take a terrible human toll.
The 25-year-old was walking down a dimly lit Victoria Street from her serviced apartment to buy food at 8.30pm when a man forced her into the alley between two terrace houses.
It was so dark that the traumatized woman could not give police a description of her assailant, or even tell them the color of his clothes.
The alley where she was attacked is at the northern end of Victoria street in a residential enclave just a block from the bright lights and fleshpots of Darlinghurst Road.
And yet the lighting was like something out of the backblocks of St Ives: completely inadequate as a deterrent to crime. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'A darker shade of green'
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McTERNAN REVEALED

Tim Blair – Wednesday, December 11, 2013 (12:41pm)

This is hilarious: 
Thousands of emails from Julia Gillard’s powerful media adviser John McTernan have been leaked to the ABC …
The emails show he frequently used vulgar language in professional communications with junior staff, with Mr McTernan employing obscene language to describe journalists, critics and even US president Barack Obama’s digital strategist, Harper Reed, over his prediction that Labor would lose the 2013 election.
When Ms Gillard’s chief of staff declared a “war on crap’” and ordered staff to tidy their workstations to make the office one befitting a prime minister, a colleague jokingly referred to “McTernan’s office” as one needing attention.
Mr McTernan replied: “C***, you will be c**ted too” in a reply-all email to the office. 
That’s misogyny talk, that is. Labor luvvies who shrieked with horror over alleged sexism towards Gillard will be appalled. 
The emails show he encouraged Labor staffers to mobilise so called “Twitter armies”’ to ridicule the Tony Abbott-led opposition and attack individual Coalition MPs online, which he would later point out to journalists as proof of public opinion. 
And didn’t that work out well.
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PARTY TIME

Tim Blair – Wednesday, December 11, 2013 (10:59am)

Barack Obama, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt and UK Prime Minister David Cameron demonstratesolemn dignity at Nelson Mandela’s memorial:

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The UK Telegraph‘s Iain Martin: 
What on earth is going on? Why do world leaders now behave like this? And at a memorial service? I saw that selfie picture and my response was simple and from the gut: what the hell do you think you’re doing man? Whatever it is stop it. 
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GLOBAL COLDING

Tim Blair – Wednesday, December 11, 2013 (10:55am)

That carbon tax is really kicking in: 
A new look at NASA satellite data says the earth has set a new record for lowest temperature recorded.
Scientists made the discovery while analysing 32 years of global surface temperatures recorded by satellites. 
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ABC asks BBC if its bum looks biased

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (1:18pm)

Good:
ABC chairman Jim Spigelman has sought to defend the national broadcaster against attacks from “conservative” critics, announcing a number of external audits to assess any bias in its reporting. 
Mr Spigelman said he took complaints about bias seriously and was addressing complaints of an “alleged systematic lack of impartiality by certain [ABC] programs and content makers”.
Bad:
He said BBC journalist Andrea Wills was preparing a report to “assess the impartiality” of all ABC Radio interviews with then prime minister Kevin Rudd and then opposition leader Tony Abbott during the recent election campaign. 
That is a joke. 
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Sorry, sweetheart. This cash isn’t just for the union

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (10:39am)

Another dodgy Labor deal unpicked: 
THE minister in charge of the childcare sector has labelled Labor’s $300 million wages increase a “slush fund” aimed at boosting wages for union members and has called on some providers to pay back $62.5m earmarked for low-paid workers. 
Despite claims from Assistant Minister for Education Sussan Ley that the Coalition was honouring all pay-rise contracts, The Australian understands the federal government is committed only to funding the first instalment—$60m—of the $132m contract to the nation’s biggest childcare provider, Goodstart Early Learning… (A) PricewaterhouseCoopers report...found the pay rises Labor wanted were only for about 14 per cent of the entire sector and only for workers who signed on to an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement and became members of the United Voice union.
Reader Peter adds:
Marius Benson called it straight on The Drum last night (31:58): 
“I reckon there are few more deserving people than childcare workers, but this looks like a sweetheart deal between a Labor government and a Labor union.”
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Three of the ABC’s “difficulties” drown

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (10:20am)

Congratulations to Edward Snowden, the Guardian and the ABC: 

People smugglers are telling asylum seekers that bad diplomatic relations between Australia and Indonesia mean the route by boat to Christmas Island is once again open for business.
New evidence obtained by Fairfax Media shows asylum seekers are being told not to fear arrest by Indonesian police because co-operation has been suspended in light of the phone-tapping affair. “Nowadays it is a safe time to go to Australia because my country and Australia have a bad diplomatic relationship,” one smuggler’s agent in the West Java town of Cisarua told a potential client. 
He’s right:
[A] spokesman for Djoko Suyanto, Co-ordinating Minister for Politics Security and Law, confirmed yesterday no action was being taken to prevent boats leaving… 
“This is our stance while waiting for the new arrangements (with Australia)—it depends on the new roadmap."… Policing co-operation with Australia against people smuggling was suspended last month, in the wake of the Defence Signals Directorate controversy.
Result?:
THREE asylum seekers including a toddler died when their Australia-bound boat sank in rough seas off Indonesia’s Java island...
Add three drowned people to the “difficulty” the ABC admits it caused:
ABC managing director Mark Scott said the broadcaster’s publishing details of Australian spying on Indonesian leaders “caused some short-term difficulty but we felt it was in the public interest.” 
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Rudi.) 
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Why do Greens feel licensed to be vicious?

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (10:12am)

Jim Casey, secretary of the NSW Fire Brigade Employees’ Union, is a Greens member with what seems to me a nasty streak that’s regrettably common in the far Left.
Take some of his recent tweets in which he wishes Tony Abbott was pushed into a burning building and disparages his service (and that of all 70,000 RFS members) as a volunteer fire fighter:
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Once again I marvel how people who noisily pride themselves on having superior compassion feel licensed to act as savages.
(Thanks to reader TruthBeTold.) 
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Fewer fires. But check the headlines of Flannery’s Climate Council

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (9:50am)

Tim Flannery, the professional alarmist, is at it again. The headlines from the Climate Council Bushfire Report:
Climate change is already increasing the risk of bushfires. Extreme fire weather has increased over the last 30 years in southeast Australia.
But here’s what the report actually finds:

The high level of background variability in fire frequency and extent in Australia means that detecting significant trends in fire activity Australia-wide may not occur for at least many decades, regardless of the significant trends in fire danger weather (Clarke et al., 2011). Furthermore, few datasets on fire activity spanning multiple decades are available in Australia (Cary et al., 2012), so our ability to measure long-term trends is limited. Analysis of the Global Fire Emissions Database over the period 1995-2011 showed that the amount of area burned in Australia decreased from 2001 to 2010 by about 5.5 million ha per year, but in 2011 there was a major upsurge in burning that exceeded the annual area burned in at least the previous 14 years. This was interpreted as being mainly a response to a previous La Niña event in the arid centre and north (Giglio et al., 2013).
And this:
Recent analysis of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) shows that in the period 1997 to 2011, the area burned globally decreased (Giglio et al., 2013)
Isn’t the real headline: Less land burned by fire in 14 years of “warming”?
(Thanks to reader Howard Juno.) 
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Warning given

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (9:48am)

Reader Sam:
The left-wing panda is rapid Andrew.
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Why the West wants to make flawed Mandela a saint

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (9:17am)

South African academic and author RW Johnson on this dangerous yearning to see in Nelson Mandela a saint:
The beginning of wisdom is to realize that there has, for a long time now, been an enormous Western longing to find and celebrate a Third World leader and saint. Lenin, Stalin and Mao enjoyed such acclaim at various stages, but so did Nkrumah, Ho Chi Minh, Amilcar Cabral, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez ,and various others. In every case, they were found to have feet of clay or worse. In the modern era, two men have enjoyed uncritical acclaim: Gandhi and Mandela. Yet Gandhi was a failed lawyer who had to leave India for South Africa to make a living. He denounced railways, doctors, modern medicine, hospitals and most other elements of modern life. He also regarded South African blacks as mere savages and defended the Indian caste system. Similarly, Nelson Mandela had his full share of failings. But in the case of Gandhi and Mandela, none of that seems to matter. This canonization seems to depend on a bottomless well of guilt about slavery, colonialism, and the mistreatment of people of color down the years, allied to a pursuit of the “noble savage” and a longing to discover that somewhere, somehow, the Third World has discovered a new model, a new way which will transcend our fault-riven capitalism and our dead-end communism. It is as if by devoting oneself to one of these superheroes, one can receive absolution from that crushing burden of guilt.
I’ve written about Mandela’s embrace of terrorism and - even as president - his lauding of autocrats and men of violence. Johnston notes also Mandela’s troubling record in office:
What no one can take away is that Mandela showed extraordinary courage and fortitude through twenty-eight years in jail, and he adopted a generous attitude of forgiving his enemies when he emerged from jail.... 
Otherwise, people exhibit an extraordinary amnesia. His presidential term started with the Shell House shootings, when ANC militants on the roof of the ANC’s headquarters used AK-47s to gun down Inkatha marchers in the streets of Johannesburg. Mandela simply refused to hand over either the murderers or their weapons, and attempted to justify this wholesale murder. Then, early in his term, the government laid off all the country’s most experienced teachers, a blow from which the school system has never recovered. Mandela’s administration also saw the passage of perhaps the most extreme labour laws in the world and radical affirmative action laws which saw the ruination of the civil service by the mass replacement of skilled whites and Asians by mainly unskilled Africans. The civil service has also never recovered.
His administration also presided over a scandalous and extremely corrupt arms deal. We do not know whether Mandela profited personally from this; the presumption is that he didn’t. Near the end of his administration he gave probably the most extreme speech given by any South African president when he suggested that there was a vast conspiracy of opposition parties, NGOs and criminal gangs, all trying to overthrow the government. The object of the speech, quite transparently, was to lay out the rationale for highly repressive measures.
On top of that Mandela was quietly told that his mentions of HIV/AIDS were unpopular with black audiences so he shut up completely about the subject thereafter. Thus, it was under his administration that the disease grew to epidemic proportions in the country… Similarly, when the press criticised the ANC government he attacked it for being “white-controlled”, even though most editors were already black. So, despite his reputation for reconciliation, he was not slow to play the race card when it suited him.
Beware the sanctification of Mandela. The good he did will be used to license evil.
(Thanks to reader Tom.) 
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Greenpeace tells children lies to ruin Christmas

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (8:58am)

 Greenpeace isn’t content with lying about global warming. It now wants to destroy Christmas for children:
Greenpeace is warning children the world over Santa Claus might not be bringing gifts to them because of global warming. 
A “Save the Arctic” video released by the environmental group shows a sullen and dirty Santa – played by Jim Carter of “Downton Abbey” — in a dark, concrete room with water dripping from the ceiling. “Dear children, I regrettably bring bad tidings. For some time now, melting ice here in the North Pole has made our operations and our day-to-day life intolerable and impossible and there may be no alternative but to cancel Christmas,” Santa warned in the Greenpeace video.
Carter also reveals himself as the hammiest of actors.
What makes the Left such killjoys? The totalitarian streak?
Children, the North Pole is fine:
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Photographing their tears for Mandela

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (8:48am)

No class at all, but, then again, the whole point of Mandela’s funeral service was to be seen there:
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Yes, there is a budget emergency

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (8:35am)

The Abbott Government should have spent the past couple of months warning of the Budget emergency. Every day should bring more revelations like this:
GOVERNMENT spending rose almost 50 per cent faster than growth in the economy under the Labor government, even after excluding its stimulus spending, a study by the Parliamentary Budget Office has found. 
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Mandela’s funeral service: a celebration for dictators

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (7:15am)

Nelson Mandela’s memorial service yesterday was a disgrace - a showcase of tyrants to honor a man who preached freedom.
I’ve already written that Mandela’s noble record as a reconciler is being used by the Left to sanctify his darker deeds - his use of terrorism and his embrace as president of corrupt dictators and men of violence, including Libya’s Gaddafi, Cuba’s Castro, the PLO’s Arafat, Nigeria’s Abacha and Indonesia’s Suharto.
Yesterday’s memorial service went even further - explicitly honoring dictators and former terrorists.
Here is the list of national leaders invited to speak: 
President Barack Obama (USA) 
President Dilma Rousseff (Brazil)
Vice-President Li Yuanchao (China)
President Hikepunye Pohamba (Namibia)
President Pranab Mukherjee (India)
President Raúl Castro Ruz (Cuba) President of the Republic of South Africa: His Excellency Jacob Zuma
Mandela is honored for leading black south Africans to freedom and for bringing reconciliation with white South Africans. But speaking at his funeral was the Marxist co-dictator of the Cuban regime, a vice-president of the unelected Chinese communist regime and the president of Brazil, who’d once served jail for being a member of a Marxist guerrilla group.
The sole speaker from Africa other than Zuma was the socialist president of Namibia, who was one of the few heads of state to congratulate brutal Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe for winning the rigged elections in July, even attending Mugabe’s inauguration.

This white-washing of tyrants and revolutionaries worked brilliantly, thanks in part to Barack Obama letting himself be used as a dupe:
But something unexpected and extraordinary happened before Obama even reached the podium–he stopped to shake hands with Cuban President Raul Castro, leader of America’s long-isolated Cold War rival… Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who publicly clashed with Mandela and faced a barrage of sanctions from western governments, was also present, and he also shook hands with President Obama.
And the scattered but noisy crowd in the rain-lashed stadium signalled its sympathies were with the men of hate and oppression: 
In contrast to reaction to Zuma’s name being mentioned, there were big cheers when Mugabe’s was read out.... China’s vice president Lee arrives, and he welcomes president Cuba’s president Raol Castro to massive applause.
The stars, almost all from the Left, were there to sprinkle the pixie dust of celebrity onto this laundering of brutality:
Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey and singer Bono, as well as British billionaire Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel are also expected to be among the celebrity mourners… Charlize Theron talks to Bono. 
True, the crowd did boo one man there:

If you’re watching on TV and don’t understand the boos - the FNB crowd is booing every time South Africa’s President Zuma appears on the big screens up in the stadium. 
Now why would they have booed Zuma, the heir to Mandela and the polygamous husband of four wives?
Zuma is facing a corruption investigation for allegedly using $20 million in state funds for the renovation of his residence in KwaZulu-Natal province, including the building of a swimming pool. The ANC is facing growing criticism for being ineffective, corrupt and out of touch with the hardships faced by South Africa’s poor.
And who mentored Zuma, refusing to cut him loose even after he’d been sacked over other corruption allegations? Who placed party loyalty over the national good?
Jacob Zuma ...  just been fired as deputy president of South Africa, his financial adviser had been convicted of fraud and corruption and now Zuma himself was facing charges. In a month from hell, he was also mired in debt. 
Rescue came in the shape of Nelson Mandela, who bailed out Zuma with a cheque for 1m rand (then worth about £80,000). It was June 2005. Two years later Zuma came back from the political dead to beat Thabo Mbeki for the presidency of the governing African National Congress (ANC)… “Nelson Mandela gave him the money to pay off all his debts as a personal favour,” said William Gumede, author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. “It was in the hope that he would walk away from all those dubious benefactors. The idea was to say: ‘You know what, I’m seeing and hearing all this stuff and it doesn’t look good. There are no strings attached but I want you to clean up your act.’”
Really? Well, that didn’t work, did it?
There was, however, one cheering sign of good judgment at the funeral service - or there would be, if I didn’t suspect a racial element to it:
China’s Vice-President Li Yuanchao was booed.
UPDATE
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On the very day that Cuban co-dictator Raul Castro was guest speaker at the funeral service for freedom fighter Nelson Mandela: 
Cuban government agents have detained about 20 dissidents arriving for an International Human Rights Day march, halting the demonstration before it started… 
Cuban authorities consider the island’s small community of outspoken dissidents to be counterrevolutionaries and charge they accept foreign money to try to undermine the Communist system.
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Spend enough on “job-creating” and you’ll go broke. Look at South Australia

Andrew Bolt December 11 2013 (6:52am)

Nick Cater on South Australia, the showcase of Holden-style subsidy economics:
IF the Rolling Stones play in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne, it is known as a concert. If the Rolling Stones play in South Australia it is known as “a coup for Adelaide.” 
In other states, the promoter hires a venue, charges the baby boomers a small fortune and ensures the Stones turn up at the appointed time. In South Australia, the government builds the venue, the baby boomers still pay through the nose, but the premier has to bung the Stones a wad of cash to convince them to turn up at all.
The state government is keen to spend on subsidies not just for Stones concerts but for manufacturers like Holden, so why are manufacturing jobs actually shrinking? Here’s one hint:

Payroll tax is up by 47 per cent in real terms since 2002.
Here’s another:
Cheap power used to be one of SA’s competitive advantages, yet power bills are three times larger than they were in 2002.
(One reason for that, of course, is that no state has erected so many wind farms, producing so much expensive power.)
Rather than cut business costs, South Australia’s Labor Government has relied on state “investment” in jobs - including Stones concerts. It’s preferred to spend rather than cut:
State public servants now outnumber manufacturing workers. Labor’s employment record ... is a net loss of 23,000 manufacturing jobs and a net gain of 20,000 bureaucrats… When Labor came to power, the public service salary bill ate up 43 per cent of the government’s income. Now it accounts for 47 per cent, the largest figure of any state in Australia. 

And after “creating” all these jobs and lavishing the private sector with more job-creating subsidies, the state should be flying. But the sums haven’t quite worked out:
The budget deficit last year was an uncomfortable $1.3 billion.
UPDATE
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill demands more federal support for Holden: 
Our car industry creates spillovers for the rest of our economy, which even the Productivity Commission says are significant, in fields such as robotics, defence, food and beverage manufacturing, clean tech and business services… 
The ball is now in Tony Abbott’s court. If he reverses his $500 million cut to industry support, and commits to continuing to support it, Holden will stay. If he refuses to do that, Holden will go. The choice could not be clearer.
Samuel J at Catallaxy Files issues a challenge:
If Weatherill thinks taxpayers should continue to throw good money after bad at Holden, he doesn’t need the Federal Government. The South Australia Government can equally hand out subsidies, and increase taxes on SA taxpayers. 
It is Weatherill who thinks that the subsidies pay back many times over – let him test the waters by throwing money at all sorts of manufacturing industries. South Australia can become the experiment state – and SA taxpayers can reap the rewards of a manufacturing subsidy bonanza.
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Leaked emails reveal aggressive approach of Gillard's spin doctor
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-11/leaked-emails-reveal-aggressive-style-of-john-mcternan/5149158
Thousands of emails leaked to the ABC reveal the aggressive approach adopted by Julia Gillard's spin doctor.
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Mamma creativa - giungla
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4 her

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“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.”Deuteronomy 18:15 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"So shall we ever be with the Lord."
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Even the sweetest visits from Christ, how short they are--and how transitory! One moment our eyes see him, and we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, but again a little time and we do not see him, for our beloved withdraws himself from us; like a roe or a young hart he leaps over the mountains of division; he is gone to the land of spices, and feeds no more among the lilies.
"If today he deigns to bless us
With a sense of pardoned sin,
He to-morrow may distress us,
Make us feel the plague within."
Oh, how sweet the prospect of the time when we shall not behold him at a distance, but see him face to face: when he shall not be as a wayfaring man tarrying but for a night, but shall eternally enfold us in the bosom of his glory. We shall not see him for a little season, but
"Millions of years our wondering eyes,
Shall o'er our Saviour's beauties rove;
And myriad ages we'll adore,
The wonders of his love."
In heaven there shall be no interruptions from care or sin; no weeping shall dim our eyes; no earthly business shall distract our happy thoughts; we shall have nothing to hinder us from gazing forever on the Sun of Righteousness with unwearied eyes. Oh, if it be so sweet to see him now and then, how sweet to gaze on that blessed face for aye, and never have a cloud rolling between, and never have to turn one's eyes away to look on a world of weariness and woe! Blest day, when wilt thou dawn? Rise, O unsetting sun! The joys of sense may leave us as soon as they will, for this shall make glorious amends. If to die is but to enter into uninterrupted communion with Jesus, then death is indeed gain, and the black drop is swallowed up in a sea of victory.

Evening

"Whose heart the Lord opened."
Acts 16:14
In Lydia's conversion there are many points of interest. It was brought about by providential circumstances. She was a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, but just at the right time for hearing Paul we find her at Philippi; providence, which is the handmaid of grace, led her to the right spot. Again, grace was preparing her soul for the blessing--grace preparing for grace. She did not know the Saviour, but as a Jewess, she knew many truths which were excellent stepping-stones to a knowledge of Jesus. Her conversion took place in the use of the means. On the Sabbath she went when prayer was wont to be made, and there prayer was heard. Never neglect the means of grace; God may bless us when we are not in his house, but we have the greater reason to hope that he will when we are in communion with his saints. Observe the words, "Whose heart the Lord opened." She did not open her own heart. Her prayers did not do it; Paul did not do it. The Lord himself must open the heart, to receive the things which make for our peace. He alone can put the key into the hole of the door and open it, and get admittance for himself. He is the heart's master as he is the heart's maker. The first outward evidence of the opened heart was obedience. As soon as Lydia had believed in Jesus, she was baptized. It is a sweet sign of a humble and broken heart, when the child of God is willing to obey a command which is not essential to his salvation, which is not forced upon him by a selfish fear of condemnation, but is a simple act of obedience and of communion with his Master. The next evidence was love, manifesting itself in acts of grateful kindness to the apostles. Love to the saints has ever been a mark of the true convert. Those who do nothing for Christ or his church, give but sorry evidence of an "opened" heart. Lord, evermore give me an opened heart.
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Today's reading: Hosea 1-4, Revelation 1 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Hosea 1-4

1 The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel:
Hosea’s Wife and Children
2 When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the LORD.” 3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
4 Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel....”

Today's New Testament reading: Revelation 1

Prologue
1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
Greetings and Doxology
4 John,
To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen....
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