Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Tue Jul 28th Todays News

Children are special and those who don't like them, or can't be trusted with them, deserve contempt. The youngest cannot talk, or communicate clearly their needs. They may be hungry, thirsty or wet. Or maybe needing of stimulation and entertainment. Something older people can take for granted. Crimes exploiting young people can not be punished harshly enough, but then the state has to make choices when it does, and can always be criticised for doing so. So when an Islamic refugee molests a child in a park and the issue is brought before a court, the sentence of the judge will always be suspect. We don't have a death sentence in Australia as such a crime might attract such a penalty in any of many Islamic nations. And we don't want such a sentence in Australia even for offences which merit such a sentence. Because we have checks and balances which keep our nation running, or staggering into the future.

A young mother of two girls, one nine, the other seven, is a former refugee who runs her own business employing others. During the week, her two girls come to the retail business and do their homework while their mum supervises. Recently, a stranger, looking seedy comes to the business and tells the mum he is a regular, tells her about er daughters and their names. He tells he speaks her family's language, but says gobbledegook instead. It could be a joke. Or it could be a threat. Maybe the stranger knows a trusted love one and is playing a practical joke? Or maybe the creepy stranger is a psychopath. And the law, being balanced, cannot handle the situation. The police are powerless so long as the children weren't harmed, and powerless if they were, too. 

 We rely on the rule of law far more than we rely on the rules of law. People don't do the unthinkable because they don't. They choose not to. It is possible to cross that line, and it isn't really impeded by police, but by individuals themselves, answering to cultural artefacts. Australia will never be like ISIL. Not because our constitution wouldn't allow it, but because our people wouldn't. Such depravity has cultural equivalences, as with WW2 Nazism or Japanese imperialism or the French Revolution or any of many other instances. But, at heart of it, it comes down to how children are treated. In particular, the youngest. And it highlights who it is that must be resisted. 

 Pedophiles and family planners cannot have their behaviours taken on trust. Not when family planners have been known to have profited from abortion and the sale of body parts.  Not while pedophiles have demonstrated no understanding of the damage they do exploiting the young. The issue of Maddie McCann was raised recently when a body was found in a suitcase in South Australia recently. It could be hers, but it is too hard to positively identify at the moment. Pity her poor parents who have done everything to find her. It would not be what they want. But seven or eight years on, what they want becomes too unlikely. And think then of the creep who may be a prankster, rocking up to the business of a young mother and talking about her heritage and daughters. No hell is hot enough for such people. 

In 1364, Troops of the Republic of Pisa and the Republic of Florence clashed in the Battle of Cascina. 1540, Thomas Cromwell was executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day. 1571, La Laguna encomienda, known today as the Laguna province in the Philippines was founded by the Spaniards as one of the oldest encomiendas (provinces) in the country. 1794, French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

In 1808, Mahmud II became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam. 1809, Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera: Sir Arthur Wellesley's British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeated a French force led by Joseph Bonaparte. 1821, José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from Spain. 1854, USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, was commissioned. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops made a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia. 1866, at the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln). 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law. 1896, the city of Miami, Florida was incorporated.

In 1914, World War I: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after Serbia rejected the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 1932, U.S. President Herbert Hoover ordered the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. 1933, Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Spain were established. 1935, First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. 1938, Hawaii Clipper disappeared between Guam and Manila as the first loss of an airliner in trans-Pacific China Clipper service.

In 1942, World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issued Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders to do so were to be tried in a military court, with punishments including duty in a penal battalion, imprisonment in a gulag, or execution. 1943, World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that killed 42,000 German civilians. 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26. 1948, the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foiled a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport". 1955, the Union Mundial pro Interlingua was founded at the first Interlingua congress in Tours, France. 1957, heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Kyushu, Japan, killed 992. 1965, Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

In 1973, Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: Nearly 600,000 people attended a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway. 1974, Spetsgruppa A, Russia's elite special force, was formed. 1976, the Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattened Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851. 1984, the 1984 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad were opened in Los Angeles USA. 1993, Andorra joined the United Nations. 1996, the remains of a prehistoric man were discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains were to be known as the Kennewick Man. 2001, Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships. 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army called an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign in Northern Ireland. 2008, the historic Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare burned down for the second time in 80 years.
2014
It is ok to plan, it is necessary to prosper. But plans shouldn't treat peoples lives as pawns without care for their welfare. When it happens, a good person feels guilty. There are numerous stories of survivors from hard fought battles asking "Why them? Why not me?" But, some people don't have a conscience and they should be despised. None now can speak with certainty regarding the execution of Anne Boleyn. However, it is certain that Thomas Cromwell was involved. Anne's life was the price of Thomas's continuing career. Thomas may have found other options, but possibly he had been instructed and had few alternatives. He made a tactical mistake in getting Henry VIII to marry Anne of Cleves. But jealous courtiers manoeuvred against him and he paid the ultimate price, being executed on this day in 1540. Henry VIII probably regretted the execution as he married Catherine Howard the same day, and was to need an exit strategy. Leadership having been made a very high stakes game. Robespierre was another who cared little for the sanctity of life. He ordered over 17000 people executed for his revolutionary fervour. He was executed on this day in 1794. Robespierre was no different to any common terrorist. 

How do terrorists view people? How do they view rules? In Syria, in Gaza, in Iraq, in Iran .. atrocities are committed by people who treat people as pawns to be moved, whose very lives are vanquished on a whim. Secular administration was advocated by Christ, and if you believe in him you must pay a tax to the terrorist caliphate or be killed. Secular administration is particularly spurned by the terrorists. Girls have been killed for going to school. Families have been killed for watching soccer. But more, they also kill Islamic peoples. Lots of Islamic peoples. The largest killer of Islamic peoples in the Middle East is a terrorist who probably calls themselves Islamic. Anarchists of the nineteenth century were not as brutal. 

The fourteenth Amendment to the US constitution was certified on this day, 1868, guaranteeing due process .. something denied me in my issue with government, but also something which should deny favouritism given race or creed. Democrats opposed it bitterly as they tried to maintain slave states. In 1914, Serbia got precious about the need for Austria to investigate the death of her heir. So war began. In 1932, The Bonus Army was threatened with eviction if they marched in Washington DC. In 1942, Stalin issued order 227, authorising the execution of any Soviet soldier who retreated or left their post without orders. This kept the Soviet army young. In 1996, Kennewick man was uncovered. In 2001, Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a world championship.
Historical perspectives on this day
In 1364, Troops of the Republic of Pisa and the Republic of Florence clashed in the Battle of Cascina. 1540, Thomas Cromwell was executed at the order of Henry VIII of England on charges of treason. Henry married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the same day. 1571, La Laguna encomienda, known today as the Laguna province in the Philippines was founded by the Spaniards as one of the oldest encomiendas (provinces) in the country. 1794, French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just were executed by guillotine in Paris, France.

 In 1808, Mahmud II became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam. 1809, Peninsular War: Battle of Talavera: Sir Arthur Wellesley's British, Portuguese and Spanish army defeated a French force led by Joseph Bonaparte. 1821, José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from Spain. 1854, USS Constellation (1854), the last all-sail warship built by the United States Navy, was commissioned. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Ezra Church: Confederate troops made a third unsuccessful attempt to drive Union forces from Atlanta, Georgia. 1866, at the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue (of Abraham Lincoln). 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was certified, establishing African American citizenship and guaranteeing due process of law. 1896, the city of Miami, Florida was incorporated.

 In 1914, World War I: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after Serbia rejected the conditions of an ultimatum sent by Austria on July 23 following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 1932, U.S. President Herbert Hoover ordered the United States Army to forcibly evict the "Bonus Army" of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. 1933, Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Spain were established. 1935, First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. 1938, Hawaii Clipper disappeared between Guam and Manila as the first loss of an airliner in trans-Pacific China Clipper service.

 In 1942, World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin issued Order No. 227 in response to alarming German advances into the Soviet Union. Under the order all those who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders to do so were to be tried in a military court, with punishments including duty in a penal battalion, imprisonment in a gulag, or execution. 1943, World War II: Operation Gomorrah: The Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg, Germany causing a firestorm that killed 42,000 German civilians. 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building killing 14 and injuring 26. 1948, the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad foiled a bullion robbery in the "Battle of London Airport". 1955, the Union Mundial pro Interlingua was founded at the first Interlingua congress in Tours, France. 1957, heavy rain and a mudslide in Isahaya, western Kyushu, Japan, killed 992. 1965, Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his order to increase the number of United States troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

 In 1973, Summer Jam at Watkins Glen: Nearly 600,000 people attended a rock festival at the Watkins Glen International Raceway. 1974, Spetsgruppa A, Russia's elite special force, was formed. 1976, the Tangshan earthquake measuring between 7.8 and 8.2 moment magnitude flattened Tangshan in the People's Republic of China, killing 242,769 and injuring 164,851. 1984, the 1984 Summer Olympics officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad were opened in Los Angeles USA. 1993, Andorra joined the United Nations. 1996, the remains of a prehistoric man were discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains were to be known as the Kennewick Man. 2001, Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships. 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army called an end to its thirty-year-long armed campaign in Northern Ireland. 2008, the historic Grand Pier in Weston-super-Mare burned down for the second time in 80 years.
=== Publishing News ===
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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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August https://www.createspace.com/4124406, September https://www.createspace.com/5106914, October https://www.createspace.com/5106951, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows the purchase of a kindle version for just $3.99 more. 
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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. They include Beatrix Potter (1866), Karl Popper (1902), Earl Tupper (1907), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929), Garfield Sobers (1936) and Richard Wright (1943). On this day, World Hepatitis Day; Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2014); beginning of The Nine Days (Judaism, 2014); Independence Day in Peru (1821)
1540 – King Henry VIII of England had his chief minister Thomas Cromwell executed for treason and heresy.
1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien de Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, architects of the Reign of Terror, were executed after having been arrested the previous day.
1932 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover ordered the eviction of the "Bonus Army"—a group of veterans who were occupying government property to demand immediate payment for money owed.
1995 – Two followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh were convicted for the attempted assassination of the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon.
2005 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army announced an end to its armed campaign to overthrow British rule in Northern Ireland to create a United Ireland. You help your friends, but try not to lose your head doing it. You make decisions, try to make them ones that won't have you before a tribunal deciding on the death penalty. You may be popular, but you still have to pay bills. Don't assassinate government figures .. Orange won't protect you if you wear it. Ask yourself, "Why were the IRA paid for the peace?"
Deaths
Vinnie Ream with a bust of Lincoln
Vinnie Ream with a bust of Lincoln
We are independent, with a Spanish accent. We are young and honoured. We fly high with big loads. We missed the shot. We announced the end of the campaign. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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THE FAMILY WORKS HARD AND IS KNOWN TO BE GENEROUS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 28, 2015 (12:54pm)

In Louisiana, the word of Officer Clay Higgins is law:



Lt. Higgins was recently profiled by the Washington Post.
(Via A.R.M. Jones.)
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EMOTION FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 28, 2015 (3:24am)

A couple of days before Labor’s National Conference, I briefly considered putting up a poll at my Daily Telegraph blog: which Labor identity is most likely to burst into tears over asylum seekers?
Eventually I ditched the plan because I couldn’t really foresee any likelihood of conference crying. After all, Labor leader Bill Shorten’s new policy of conditional boat turnbacks had already been announced, allowing plenty of opportunity for pre-conference tears.
Plus, the most likely candidates – Anthony Albanese and Stephen Conroy – had already indulged in their own public weeping moments. Conroy literally cried over spilt milk at the 2011 conference as he recalled the disposal of dairy products in England due to possible nuclear contamination.
“My family remembers when they came and took away all the milk for months because you couldn’t drink it,” Conroy said, between sobs. This happened more than half a century earlier, and six years before Conroy was even born.
And Albanese was brought to tears in 2012 over Labor’s Rudd-Gillard infighting, which was distracting him from his central mission of “fighting Tories”. Who, again, are in England. Something about the Old Country really touches these Labor tough guys.
Specification sheets for the manufacture of Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong deleted the emotions package, so they were never possibilities for a tearful outpouring. Indeed, the pair demonstrated their heartfelt commitment over the asylum seeker issue by declining even to vote against turnbacks, instead handing responsibility for that task to their proxies.
In the end, the only Laborite who came close to sobbing at the national conference was House of Reps Bronwyn Bishop botherer Tony Burke, whose choked-up contribution came as something of a surprise.

image
Tony Burke, left, votes to support asylum seeker turnbacks.

Even more surprisingly, Burke’s sorrow wasn’t over Labor’s loss of compassion or Labor’s tradition of caring or Labor’s history of helping the downtrodden.
Rather, Burke’s brief but emotional speech was mostly about the actual victims of Labor’s previous, fatally mistaken asylum seeker policies.
(Continue reading The Right Reasons.)
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ALSO, HE STAGES FOR FREE KICKS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 28, 2015 (3:18am)

Obviously, people shouldn’t boo Sydney Swans star Adam Goodes because he’s Aboriginal. They should boo him because he’s a wealthy heterosexual male whose physically confrontational vocation celebrates outmoded masculine ideals of brutal competitiveness and defeat-shaming capitalist triumphalism.
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UNION THINKS IT’S 1901

Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 28, 2015 (3:07am)

A draft version of the CFMEU’s new anti-Chinese trade ad.
And the final version:

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Charming government we have in Victoria

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (4:51pm)

All very ugly in Victoria’s Andrews Government:
Dumped minister Adem Somyurek says Daniel Andrew’s government is unduly influenced by Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union boss Michael Donovan and he should fire his chief of staff, Johnny McLindon.
In an extraordinary riposte to his forced resignation, Mr Somyurek also nominated Deputy Leader James Merlino as being in the thrall of the shadowy SDA boss, who he blames for the bullying claims lodged against him.
“This man has more influence in the Andrews Government than most members of the government,’’ he said of Mr Donovan, a publicity shy but powerful union leader.
The Premier this morning demanded Mr Somyurek quit after an investigation by Justice Michael Strong found he bullied and intimidated staff. His report said the upper house MP had had “physical contact” with a female member of staff, while another staff member was sacked for standing up for a colleague.
Mr Somyurek described former Judge Strong’s report as a “defamatory dirt sheet” compiled by someone who had a chequered history and was now dependent on government work for his living.
The former Trade and Innovation Minister says he was duped by the Premier into believing the report would be a fair investigation when it actually turned out to be stitch up.
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On your bike, orders Clinton from her private jet

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (9:59am)

Hillary Clinton preaches global warming, surrounded by the bicycles she suggest voters use:
image
This is one of the most urgent threats of our time, and we have no choice but to rise and meet it.
And then Clinton steps into her private jet:
image
Just hours after Hillary Clinton unveiled her presidential campaign’s push to solve global warming through an aggressive carbon-cutting plan, she sauntered up the steps of a 19-seat private jet in Des Moines, Iowa. The aircraft, a Dassault model Falcon 900B, burns 347 gallons of fuel per hour. 
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China shudders

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (8:48am)

Remember that if China slumps, Australia’s income will fall even further. And there’s no money in our kitty to stimulate the economy or save us from savage spending cuts:
Investors were coming round to the view that the [Chinese] government had succeeded in stabilising share prices after the central bank had pumped billions of yuan into the market in recent weeks… But on Monday the Shanghai Composite, the country’s main index, fell 8.5%, its biggest one-day fall since early 2007…
[Some analysts] pointed to a drop in industrial profits in newly published data, a reminder of China’s ongoing economic slowdown; to fast-rising pork prices, which threaten to push up Chinese inflation and lead to tighter monetary policy; as well as the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will soon raise interest rates, luring investment capital away from China and into America.
But if China does slump, the effect on our economy might not be the top of our worries. What it unleashes within China could be anything from more democracy to violence, massive civil unrest and a cranking up of ultra-nationalism. 
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Answer: global warming?

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (8:31am)

Warming alarmist Professor Clive Hamilton:

Here is a definition in search of a term: what do we call a calculated political strategy to confuse the citizenry in order to gain an electoral advantage?
Hamilton demonstrated the phenomenon in 2009:
Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown has today announced the Greens candidate in the Higgins by-election, Dr Clive Hamilton AM…
Dr Hamilton said: “With our country once again a laggard nation in response to global warming, and the government and opposition competing to vilify asylum seekers, never has a national and international standpoint been more sorely needed...”
Hamilton’s strategy back then:
There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are afraid they are not fearful enough given the science...Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.
Hey, presto:

(T)he implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes…
We can only avoid catastrophe—including millions dying in the Third World—if we radically change the way we in the rich countries go about our daily lives. Above all, we must abandon our comfortable belief in progress…
Australia, along with the rest of the world, must cut its emissions by at least 60% if we are to stabilise climate change and prevent dangerous disruption to our way of life…
So I think where we’re going is to begin to see a Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi, which will transform our attitudes to it away from an instrumentalist one, towards an attitude of greater reverence. I mean, the truth is, unless we do that, I mean we seriously are in trouble, because we know that Gaia is revolting against the impact of human beings on it.
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Mark Kenny turns on a dime: praises Shorten for what he damned from Abbott

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (8:20am)

Not the principle but the side.
2013: The Sydney Morning Herald’s Mark Kenny damns Tony Abbott for promising to turn back boats:
The same was so (evidently) with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison’s aggressively marketed asylum-seeker tomahawk sold under the label ‘stop the boats’. Some people bought it, many wanted to believe. Canberra would simply turn back the boats to Indonesia with the only caveat being, ‘when it was safe to do so’ ...
Australian voters will eventually wake up to the fact that they were sold a pup. If it were merely a case of sending boats back, it would have been tried years ago.
2015: The Sydney Morning Herald’s Mark Kenny praises Bill Shorten for appearing to promise to turn back boats:
Shorten’s argument was as sound as it was courageous. He concluded that stopping deaths at sea by stopping maritime attempts in unseaworthy boats via people smuggling, is the right policy setting. Politically, the policy is correct also…
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill. Via Quadrant.) 
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Conspiracy, cries conspiracist

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (7:45am)

The original story:
image
No but yes, insists a warming conspiracist:
The writer of this article, Ben Webster, phoned me up cold in my office at Cambridge University on Thursday 23 July, saying that he was writing a piece on the retreat of sea ice in the Arctic, and whether it was increasing or not. We discussed the scientific data, then he asked who else was working in this field in the UK, in order to contact them. I mentioned that there are not many others in this field, since three of the leading figures died within a short space of time in accidents in 2013. He asked for further details.I asked that this be completely off the record because of
(a) the sensibilities of relatives of the deceased (Prof Laxon’s partner was particularly upset by the subsequent publication),
(b) my own scientific reputation (I did not want to be made out to be a crazy person),
(c) the fact that these deaths were investigated and were very clearly simply an extraordinary coincidence.
He raised the question of whether they were murdered. I agreed that for a short time I thought that they were, since I had had the experience of being run off the road at the same time by a lorry, but that it was very clear afterwards that the three deaths were individually explainable accidents.
I did not make any of the statements enclosed in quotation marks by the reporter… The publication, subsequently picked up by the Sunday Telegraph and Mail on Sunday, has substantially damaged my reputation for scientific integrity, and I believe that this was the deliberate intention. 
Yet another conspiracy?
(Thanks to reader Dr Brian.) 
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Shorten no longer in charge of Labor

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (7:39am)

Simon Benson on the Left’s control over Labor - and Bill Shorten:

Any victories Shorten can claim to have achieved over the weekend — such as narrowly fending off a binding gay marriage bill and securing boat turn backs on asylum seekers — were pyrrhic victories at best.
His senior left-wing shadow ministers have sent a clear message to him: “We have the numbers, and you know it."…
Not since former NSW premier Morris Iemma was rolled at a state conference on power privatisation, and perhaps Calwell and Whitlam in the 1960s on US foreign policy, has an ALP conference been so hostile to a leader…
Shorten may have secured the numbers to allow him the luxury of adopting turnbacks, but it came with a very expensive price tag. His own faction was rolled on the Israel/Palestine issue, he lost the numbers for a conscience vote on gay marriage, and he has been forced to adopt a renewable energy target that would elevate Australians’ electricity bills to among the highest in the world.
To top it off, the conference voted to censure Martin Ferguson, one of the party’s last remaining voices of sanity.
The optics for Shorten are now clear. The Left is in control of the Labor Party, and if he doesn’t dance to the beat of their drum, he is gone.
It doesn’t get much uglier than this.
To that list of concessions add the doubling of the refugee intake to an astonishing 27,000 people a year.
(Thanks to reader brett t r.) 
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The high price of letting IS jihadists come home

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (6:46am)

There is a price for letting Islamic State recruits return:

MOUNTING round-the-clock surveillance on all 350 radicalised Britons who have returned from Syria and Iraq would cost £25million a week, it emerged last night…
Colonel Richard Kemp, former head of counter terrorism at the Cabinet Office, said: “...To track one person effectively takes at least 10, or more probably 15 people, which would cost at least £10,000 a day, not including other measures such as the monitoring of mobile phones and email traffic.
“Then you have to observe the people they speak to, so the network expands.”
The police and intelligence services are already keeping watch on more than 2,000 terrorist suspects and last year’s record number of 385 terror-related arrests – more than one a day – has already been exceeded this year…
Colonel Kemp added: “My view is that they should not be allowed to come back. It’s not good enough for Home Secretary Theresa May to say she is bound by human rights legislation and her hands are tied. What about the rights of innocent people?...”
And, of course, even with surveillance, mistakes can be made.
(Thanks to reader PJ.) 
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Better shake a leg than a spear

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (5:22am)

Once again, the race industry makes things worse by insisting we pick racial sides. But at least shaking a leg will be less inflammatory than miming the throwing of a spear at the white crowd:
Aboriginal footballers across Australia have been urged to “shake a leg’’ for Adam Goodes every time they kick a goal this weekend.
A better idea: how about we stop this black vs white nonsense that started it all?
UPDATE
At last some former football greats are defying the dangerous sanctimony of the AFL industry by cautiously suggesting it took certain actions to provoke this reaction.
Former West Coast star Karl Langdon:
I gave the crowd the up yours at Essendon when I played and that was the double finger salute and I got fined $1,500. So as far as I’m concerned, why don’t they get the same sort of thing for inciting the crowd? ‘Cause that’s all it’s done: it’s incited the crowd. Now, it starts to get taken down the race trail because individuals start to bring that sort of attention on themselves.
Former Hawthorn great Dermott Brereton:
People will boo, they will cheer, they will hiss, sometimes they will swear — it’s the behaviour of the player that can stimulate those responses… Adam Goodes would do well to look at what he’s done bad or good or indifferent and work out what he can do to change that.
UPDATE
But ABC commentator Francis Leach, like so many sports commentators, would rather abuse than understand and would rather preen than diagnose. For him, Australian sports fans - the ones who cheer so many athletes of so many colors - are actually just vermin:
What a redneck wonderland footy has become ...  an army of gutless drongos ... choir of clowns ... bigots ... obnoxious ... poor benighted souls ... Racism. Naked, loud, contemptible, pathetic and unashamed ... prejudice ... racism ... how feeble minded and self righteous you are ... your hollow howls...
Wow. Leach is certainly congratulating himself for being a cut above the crowd of animals he perceives in the stands.
To better contrast his own morality with that of crowd, Leach absurdly suggests football fans should somehow boo at social issues instead:

Where’s your sense of outrage at the appalling gap in life expectancy for indigenous people? The massive over representation of indigenous people in jail? The continuing scourge of deaths in custody? Your silence is deafening on those issues.
How that booing is to be arranged Leach doesn’t say.
But his implication that Australians don’t care about such issues, or that those issues all fit his theory of endemic racism, is clearly false.
Actually, the country spends billions of the crowd’s taxes trying to tackle that gap in life expectancy, which is actually influenced in large part by the cultural values and practices of Aborigines themselves. The overrepresentation of Aborigines in jail is actually in large part a function of the overrepresentation of Aborigines in crime - which I caution Leach against turning into a booing issue.  Aborigines in custody are in fact no more likely to die in prison there than non-Aboriginal prisoners - a fact determined by a royal commission and other inquiries which, again, were lavishly paid for by the taxes of the mob.

No, this really is about Goodes himself, Francis. Check your ego and your sanctimony at the door, and go back to the moment the booing began.
It really is about Goodes demanding we pick racial sides, damning the side of the non-Aborigines in offensive and grossly exaggerated terms, publicly humiliating a 13-year-old white girl by reducing her to the part of a vile racial stereotype in front of millions of viewers, and demanding we treat Goodes himself, a grown man showered with honors, as just a poor racial victim of a country he insists is steeped in racism, oppression and genocide.
This is not about Goodes wanting “to confront racism and its uncomfortable truths”, but about him playing the racism card, inviting us to racial combat and demanding we surrender to his own bitter view of the country - a view at angry odds with the Australia most of us actually know.
This demand that we subscribe to Goodes’ race war is what some many football fans resent, and what some, unfortunately, may even accept.
Please, just stop it.
UPDATE
But screaming “racist” is just so much easier, especially for football commentators and others in the AFL orbit.
Mark Robinson, usually reliable, lets himself down badly:
I’ll give some unwanted credit to the racists. At least they tell the truth about why they boo Goodes.
It’s because of what he did to the 13-year-old girl at the MCG and it’s because he was an undeserving Australian of the Year and proceeded to highlight Australia’s history of “invasion’’ when he received the honour.
I don’t agree, but knock yourself out.
Robinson is right to say the booing of Goodes is mean and that some comes from racists.
But he is wrong to suggest that rejecting Goodes’ lurid version of our history is racist.
And he is very wrong indeed to dismiss those - like me - who were appalled by the public trashing of a 13-year-old as the “face of racism” as just people searching for excuses to be racist.
This is how that vile game of pick-your-race reduces people into mere racial stereotypes and limits our capacity to see them just as individual human beings. Sometimes, Mark, people really can feel sorry for a horribly humiliated girl without having a secret hatred for Aborigines. 
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A lecture from the CFMEU on abusing women?

Andrew Bolt July 28 2015 (5:15am)

Good on Cut & Paste for outing the sanctimonious hypocrites:

Do as I say. CFMEU WA state secretary Joe McDonald on violence towards women, ALP national conference, Sunday:

Do something about it!
Not as we do. The Daily Telegraph, October 8 last year:

One of the union officials named and shamed in the royal commission for intimidating Fair Work inspectors … Luke Collier … subjected building inspectors at the Barangaroo casino hotel site to repeated intimidation and abuse … A female inspector was called a “f. king slut” as 40 building workers surrounded her and a male colleague.
The Sydney Morning Herald, May 25:

On July 24 last year, (Collier) harassed another female Fair Work inspector, and played the song Who Let The Dogs Out on a loud hailer when she entered a worksite.
The Sydney Morning Herald, July 22:

Only eight people were in court 5.3 at the Downing Centre at 9.30 on Monday morning but the sense of shock in the room was clear. The magistrate was clearly surprised … The solicitor for the prosecution advised the court that all charges against … Luke Collier had been withdrawn, “without admissions”. She named a detective inspector who had made the decision. The decision had been made that morning, after the victim was a no-show … Earlier this year, Collier pleaded guilty to a charge of assault. His victim was a woman. He was scheduled to appear in court on Monday on multiple charges, including aggravated assault, involving the same woman … An obvious inference can be drawn that the witness felt intimidated. Even if there was not overt coercion or inducement to drop her complaint, she felt sufficiently intimidated, or compromised, or exhausted to proceed … The turn of events … served as another reminder that the criminal law operates very poorly on building sites.
More from the same story:
The royal commission into union corruption … has published evidence of Collier’s intimidation of women on work sites on several occasions. He has been accused by a female government official of spitting at her on a work site last year … His conduct is part of a pattern of harassment of women by CFMEU officials.
Do something. Collier’s current job? Update to his now-deleted Facebook page, May 5:

Started working at CFMEU, WA.
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Posted by Dr. Joseph Atto on Monday, 27 July 2015

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Dickens? Austen? Yes! These writing legends made it acceptable to break those grammar rules you've been taught your entire life: http://huff.to/1MuNzG5
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Monday, 27 July 2015

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=== Posts from last year ===

MINING BOOM

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (12:37pm)

Quote of the week, buried in an otherwise straighforward Fairfax mining report: 
Goulburn Mulwaree Council economic development officer Debbi Rodden said the industry needed to educate young school leavers about solid, ongoing careers, including for professional people such as surveyors, geologists, environmentalists and engineers.
‘’Quarrying may not be seen as a desirable industry for some people, but young people need to realise they get to blow stuff up,’’ Ms Rodden said. 
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MOMENT OF TRIUMPH

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (11:15am)

Wind farms. The carbon tax. Large-scale solar power. “Humanitarian” asylum seeker policies. The Senate. As is well established, leftists love things that don’t work.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'MOMENT OF TRIUMPH'
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CARBON FOOTPRINT REDUCED

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (11:08am)

Due to the failure of NSW road laws to accommodate my velocity requirements, I will not be participating in any active vehicle control applications until November.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'CARBON FOOTPRINT REDUCED'
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GRIEVOUS BLOW

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (10:56am)

Australians are over the carbon tax repeal, but it’s all they’re talking about in Manhattan. Following Julia Baird’s sobbing in the New York Times, here’s weepy Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker: 
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Liberal Party (as these Antipodean conservatives style themselves) won final legislative approval for repeal of Australia’s carbon tax on major polluters, which had been enacted under the previous Labor government and had set a price of more than twenty dollars a ton on carbon-dioxide emissions.
This a grievous blow.
Carbon taxes are the most efficient and effective way to put a dent in uncontrolled spewing of greenhouse gases. Australia’s was exemplary, and it was part of a long-term strategy that would have eventually joined Australia with the European Union in a globe-spanning alliance of emissions trading. By repealing it, the Australian government has deserted the front lines of the climate struggle and skedaddled to the cowardly rear. 
So now we’re being lectured on emissions by New Yorkers, of all people. President Ford was right.
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TRUE BELIEVER

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (10:37am)

Yet again, the ABC’s Jonathan Green believes a prank is genuine.
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JUNIOR LABOUR UNITS UNMOURNED

Tim Blair – Monday, July 28, 2014 (10:24am)

Hamas kills children by using them to shield tunnels, and Hamas kills children by making them build tunnels in the first place: 
The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths.
“At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials”
The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, “much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies”. 
And not much else. Other atrocities are similarly ignored, writes Mark Steyn: 
Given what is happening to Christians across the Muslim world, from Nigeria to Sudan to Iraq to Pakistan, when an obviously outrageous case comes up, it’s incumbent upon free nations to raise hell about it …
Just to reiterate what happened here: A barbarian regime seized an American’s family and jailed them – and throughout their imprisonment no one in the United States Government did anything and neither the President nor his Secretary of State said a word. 
Read on.
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On 2GB tonight - Peter Slipper, Shorten’s sledge and boat people already suing for compo

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (6:21pm)

On with Steve Price from 8pm. Listen live here. Talkback:  131 873. 
Listen to all past shows  here. 
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One day here and boat people already want compo

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (6:14pm)

Boat people policy

One day on our soil and already into us for the rent?
ASYLUM-seekers brought to the Australian mainland will seek compensation after being detained at sea for three weeks. 
And to think these are people “fleeing” from free, safe and democratic India:
IMMIGRATION Minister Scott Morrison has ridiculed as “absurd and offensive” suggestions that 157 asylum-seekers who sailed from India could be genuine refugees, insisting they must be “economic” migrants. 
What a farce. You’d almost get the impression that a lot of people advising the asylum seekers really want our border controls destroyed. 
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Slipper found guilty

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (6:09pm)

I am not surprised in the slightest. I wonder only how many other politicians have escaped this scrutiny:
FORMER speaker Peter Slipper has been found guilty of dishonestly using parliamentary taxi vouchers to travel to wineries... 
The former federal member for the Queensland seat of Fisher was accused of dishonestly using taxi vouchers to visit wineries near Canberra on three occasions in 2010, and of filling out multiple taxi dockets to hide the fact he had not been on parliamentary business. The trips cost $954 in total.
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The ancient Jew-hatred returns

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (12:02pm)

The anti-Semitism behind the rallies against Israel is unmistakable.
Here are protesters in Melbourne last weekend:
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Note the caricature of Abbott on the right:
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This cartoon, used by the Sydney Morning Herald to advertise more poison from Mike Carlton, trades on some dangerously familiar stereotypes, too:
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UPDATE
Why does the Left only protest when Muslims killed by Jews?
After all, Muslims are killing Muslims far more horribly:
Newly-released video footage shows the ISIL Takfiri terrorists summarily executing at least 50 Syrian government soldiers in the troubled northern Syria. 
Muslims are killing Muslims in far greater numbers:
More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date.
Muslims are eradicating Christians:
ISIS, which recently changed its name to Islamic State, gave Christians in Iraq’s northern city an ultimatum last week to convert to Islam, pay a religious tax or be killed, forcing hundreds of families to flee and tearing apart a community that has existed since the earliest days of Christianity. The militants spray-painted Christian houses with the Arabic letter “N” for “Nasrani,” or “Christian,” to identify them. 
Yet the only killing in the wide world that protesters in Australia condemned last weekend was Jews fighting back against the terrorists who have fired more than 2000 rockets at Israeli civilians.
Why this so-selective outrage? I can think of only one credible explanation, and it’s deeply sinister.
(Thanks to readers Daniel and J.) 
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Israeli army: we didn’t kill the 16 people in the school

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (11:55am)

I do not know who is telling the truth, but if I had to choose between Hamas and the IDF…
An Israeli army inquiry into fighting at a UN facility in Beit Hanoun Thursday found that IDF mortars did not play a role in the killing of 16 people in the school courtyard, dismissing claims that the military was responsible for their deaths. 
The army admitted that an IDF-fired shell did hit the UN-run school’s yard, but at a time when there were no people in the area.
“A single errant mortar landed in the school courtyard, injuring no one,” Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Sunday in a conference call.
Lerner described a scene of “intense fighting” in the vicinity of the school last Thursday afternoon, including volleys of anti-tank missiles fired at soldiers, who responded with live fire. The militant fire, Lerner said, came from the areas “adjacent to, and in the vicinity of, the school.”
Palestinian accounts said 16 people were killed in the school as a result of the fighting, with initial reports blaming Israel for the deaths.
Lerner suggested that the 16 dead and dozens of wounded could have been caught in the crossfire and brought into the courtyard, perhaps for treatment, or may have been hit by rockets or mortars fired by the militants themselves. He said he had “no idea” where the dead had come from, and stated that it was “extremely unlikely” that anyone had been killed by the single mortar round that fell in the empty yard.
UPDATE
Israel’s Ambassador to the US tears into CNN - on CNN - for so grossly slanting its coverage:
CNN latest finds it did briefly mention in passing what the Ambassador in hours of listening had not heard. And then attacks Israel again.
(Thanks to reader asuebell.) 
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All sides of politics Fairfax can see with its left eye

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (11:34am)

The Sydney Morning Herald headline:
image
The story:
The politicians, from federal and NSW Parliaments, representing the Greens and Labor parties, said Australia should support a United Nations inquiry into alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.
UPDATE
It is worth pointing out a chronology and causality that much of the media will overlook in the rush to condemn Israel:
THE ISRAELI army is to resume its raids on Gaza after Hamas rejected an extension to the 12 hour truce and continued firing rockets. 
“Following Hamas’ incessant rocket fire throughout the humanitarian window, which was agreed upon for the welfare of the civilian population in Gaza, the IDF will now resume its aerial, naval and ground activity in the Gaza Strip,” an army statement said.
UPDATE
Fairfax actually claims the conflict started when Israel fought back:
The conflict began when Israel launched an operation to stamp out rocket fire from Gaza.
Astonishing.
(Thanks to readers James, Mel and Gab.) 
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What would Labor do with police files?

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (9:13am)

I wouldn’t trust these Labor jokers with any access to any confidential information - like the information they’d access to in government:
A senior Victorian ALP member has admitted accessing a missing dictaphone recording made by a journalist for The Age. 
Victorian Labor assistant secretary Kosmos Samaras on Monday morning said he listened to the recording, which contained private conversations between The Sunday Age’s state political editor Farrah Tomazin and several politicians including former premier Ted Baillieu…
As The Age can reveal, the dictaphone was handed in to lost property by security at Labor’s state conference in May, before being taken back to ALP headquarters and listened to by Mr Samaras.
The private conversation between Tomazin and Mr Baillieu was then copied, and listened to by a small group of senior party operatives, including state secretary Noah Carroll and Mr Andrews’ chief of staff, John McLindon.
A decision was made by Mr Samaras not to release it after legal advice was provided by Slater and Gordon lawyer James Higgins. Despite the advice, and against the wishes of Mr Samaras, the recording was forwarded to a third party, before being emailed to hundreds of Liberal Party members.
UPDATE
You expect honest people to return lost property and not to destroy it - after exploiting it:
OPPOSITION Leader Daniel Andrews admits it was the “wrong call” to destroy a dictaphone and tape belonging to a Fairfax reporter, but denies the ALP leaked its contents involving a conversation between former premier Ted Baillieu and the reporter. 
Mr Andrews spoke publicly about the crisis for the first time today, saying that “it’s a dirty mess” on 3AW radio, as ALP State Secretary Noah Carroll and Assistant State Secretary Kosmos Samaras admitted to listening to the tape’s contents. Mr Andrews said that the dictaphone was destroyed and the tape cut with scissors.
UPDATE
Remind me to be very, very careful about talking to any Age reporter on the phone: 
A SENIOR Labor official in Victoria has admitted obtaining a journalist’s lost dictaphone and says it reveals numerous apparently unauthorised recordings with senior politicians on both sides of politics… 
Labor Assistant Victorian Labor secretary Kosmos Samaras says ...  he was “shocked and angry” to hear a conversation he had with the journalist had been recorded without his knowledge… “...I listened to numerous senior politicians on both sides of politics and others whose private conversations which I presumed had also been recorded without their knowledge...”
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Abbott should say it’s mad to spend billions to make no difference to the climate

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (8:54am)

Henry Ergas says Tony Abbott needs to be blunt and say policies to cut our emissions will make no difference to the climate and must be scrapped:
What conceivable purpose is served by policies which have no effect whatsoever on global emissions but damage our prosperity? And were dangerous climate change indeed in prospect, how could making us poorer facilitate the adjustments Australia will have to undertake?
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Abbott leads fight against evil … and a superpower

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (8:44am)

Politics - federal

 TONY Abbott is leading the West into a confrontation with nuclear superpower Russia over the downing of MH17.
The stakes are incredibly high, as the Prime Minister organises, effectively, a small army to move into Ukraine.
Abbott’s role in galvanising international action has been almost unprecedented for an Australian prime minister.
The media from Tokyo to Washington have reported it.
Dutch journalists at media conferences last week admiringly contrasted Abbott’s calls for action with their own leader’s calls for calm.
And Russia has noticed, too, first blasting Abbott’s criticisms as “unacceptable” and then — government sources say — subjecting Australian diplomatic communications to intense surveillance.
Abbott, as a Catholic and student of past battles with totalitarianism, understands evil.
(Read full article here.) 
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How did we develop a new export of suicide bombers?

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (8:42am)

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AUSTRALIA now boasts an amazing new export: suicide bombers and men who hack off the heads of infidels.
Adam Dahman, 18, a graduate of Northcote High, this month reportedly became our second suicide bomber, killing three people in Baghdad. (His family denies it.)
He joins a Brisbane man believed to have blown himself up at a Syrian army checkpoint last September.
Also starting in this new export drive are Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar, whose Twitter accounts last week showed them mugging with the severed heads of Iraqis.
Elomar, a Sydney boxer, grins as he holds up two severed heads — which his wife’s lawyer claims were just “Photoshopped’’.
Sharrouf, who served time in an Australian jail over a terrorist plot before moving to Syria, meanwhile brags: “Few more heads how lovely bludy amazing stuff abuhafs u keep on cutting those infidel throats but the last 1 is mine!”
So far this industry has been purely for export.
(Read full article here.)   
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Hanson-Young likens India to ISIS head-hacking terrorists

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (8:39am)

How insanely lacking in proportion are the Greens, to liken democratic India to a terrorist group that cuts off heads and orders women to be genitally mutilated? 

GREENS Senator Sarah Hanson- Young [claimed] India had no legal right to assess asylum seekers in Australia for possible return to India, despite many precedents. “What’s next? Will we allow the Sri Lankan ­government to come in and interview the Tamils? Would we go so far as to allow ISIS to interrogate those who have fled Iraq?” Ms ­Hanson-Young said yesterday. 
How did this moral hysteric become a Senator? Why do the Greens let themselves be represented by children? 
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Right of entry = right to spy for a competitor

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (8:21am)

Grace Collier alleges:
Toll Holdings and the Transport Workers Union have a contract until 2017 that requires the union to spy on, harass and extort money from five of Toll’s competitors a year, for a union-owned entity to earn $50,000 a year. The royal commission into union malfeasance has the contract and the confession that it was entered into for anti-compet­it­ive reasons… 
The ACCC will not confirm or deny anything and everyone I talk to in industry and government says the ACCC people will do nothing, are useless and should all be sacked.
(Thanks to reader WaG311.) 
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Labor lead shrinks, but public still can’t see Abbott the MH17 leader handling local stuff, too

Andrew Bolt July 28 2014 (7:24am)

Tony Abbott is getting marks for leadership on the MH17 disaster, but not enough yet for popularity: 
The Galaxy poll revealed that 48 per cent of people ­believed Mr Abbott had shown the most leadership, compared with 17 per cent ­citing Mr Obama and only 7 per cent recognising the ­efforts of the British leader… 
On a two-party-preferred basis, Labor leads the Coalition 52 to 48 — only a one point improvement for the government since the last Galaxy poll after the May Budget...
Still, I believe the public has now been given an ineradicable impression of Abbott as a cool, firm and capable crisis manager. Now the challenge for the Liberals is to show some of those qualities to domestic political leadership - without the crisis. Abbott will also need soon to show he is not just preoccupied with the MH17 issue but is indeed dealing with something local. 
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Fatah & Hamas are given billions of dollars in aid to take care of the Arab Palestinians, yet they do nothing and sit silent as the people they are charged to take care of are slaughtered
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Stephen E Hughes
In this book, Tadros ties the story of the Copts to that of their motherland, Egypt. In providing a clear understanding of who the Copts are, including their long history, he sheds light on how the Coptic community’s struggle to modernize is inevitably intertwined with Egypt’s quest for modernity. In Egypt’s ongoing struggle to reconcile the Islamic faith with modern ideas and practices, Tadros explains that the Copts have been secluded from the public sphere even under Egypt’s most liberal order. The hopes unleashed by the fall of the Mubarak regime have come to naught as the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power posed a colossal challenge to Copts. Now with the fall of President Morsi, Egypt’s Copts continue to face enormous challenges because they are being held responsible by the Islamists for their fall from power.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
When the mountain seems to tough to take, I just smile and remember that God made the mountain and can move it or give me the strength to climb it.
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A symbol of hope in Africa
Niankoro Yeah Samake (About this sound Pronunciation (help·info)) (born February 27, 1969) is a social entrepreneur and politician from Ouelessebougou, Mali. Samake is the executive director of the Empower Mali Foundation, the current mayor of Ouelessebougou, Vice President of Mali's League of Mayors, and is a candidate in the coup-interrupted 2012 Malian presidential election.
File:NiankoroYeahSamake.JPG
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This woman is incredibly brave, and the sad and pathetic discrimination she faced 40 years ago disgusts me. It did make my heart go pitter-pat when at 1:30 Mr. Jerk Face gets the most epic STFU from a NOOB ever.
It reminds me that it would improve the sport to allow women to compete in Rugby League - ed
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Bess Nungarrayi Price MLA :: Member for Stuart'

Here's the speech I delivered to LNP Lady’s Convention, Brisbane 18th July 2013

I was born under a tree near Yuendumu about 300 kilometres north west of Alice Springs. I was my mother’s ninth child. My parents were around ten or eleven years old when they first saw a white man. In the ten years before I was born my mother lost four sons in infancy. The nineteen fifties were a hard time for mothers in the desert.

A baby daughter had also been taken from her. Mum was told that her daughter had died. We think she was taken because she was one of twins. Twins were not welcome in the old days in the desert. Sometimes my people left one of them to die because two babies could not be cared for by one mother at the same time. My mother would not have done that but she wasn’t asked. The baby was taken to the Santa Teresa Mission and given to an Arrernte family to raise. I didn’t meet her until I was seventeen. The Arrernte told us that she was still alive and she came to us to meet her family when she was about thirty years old.

Mum told me that she left me on the ground for a snake to take because she didn’t want me. My aunt was there as the midwife. She took me and cared for me. Then my older sister looked after me until my mother was ready to take me and care for me. They all lived in the same camp. Now I understand what had happened to Mum. She would have had what is now called post natal depression. She had a lot of reasons to feel depressed. In later years my Mum apologised to me. I never stopped loving her and she never really stopped loving me.

I survived meningitis when I was six years old. I lived my childhood in a traditional humpy – we call them yujuku – that my parents built for us. Yuendumu was a happy place when I was a kid. Everybody was clean, everybody worked, life was organised and predictable. I got my first job when I was fifteen and I have worked ever since.
The missionary was a tough old Baptist. He was a survivor of Changi prison of war camp. He didn’t try to destroy our old ways but tried to build on them. If a fight started in the camp he would march into the middle of it ignoring the spears and boomerangs and axes and tell every body to go home. And they would put down their weapons and go home. He was loved and respected by everyone.

I was supposed to go to my promised husband when I was thirteen. He was already married to my older sister. I refused and my father and promised husband let me get away with that so I could finish my education. This was very rare in my community. It was normal for young girls to be badly beaten if they didn’t want to go to their promised.

I married another and was a mother by the time I was fourteen. My first marriage was very violent. My husband would beat me badly when he was drunk in front of my in laws who did nothing to help me. I left him to marry my present husband when I was eighteen. Then I lost my son to leukaemia when he was only ten. Mum died five years ago now. When she died she had outlived eight of her eleven children and another has died since, the one who was taken away from us. We Aboriginal women know what hard times are.

We got our freedom in the sixties and seventies. We got the right to vote, the freedom to drink alcohol. We got bilingual and bicultural education. We got self-determination. That was like giving us a car without teaching us how to drive. We were not ready for it. We also got unemployment, boredom, unearned sit down money and the grog – then after that ganja.

We got feuding and domestic violence and we started getting very sick. My kidneys collapsed completely in 1986. My brother saved me by donating one of his kidneys to me. He is now on dialysis himself. My people’s health has just got worse and worse since then. Too many of my close relatives now have diabetes, heart disease, or kidney failure. Far too many of my loved ones have died from avoidable diseases. I have lost three brothers to alcohol. I have lost a 21 year old niece to alcohol.

Too many of my loved ones have been murdered. Three of my sisters died from heart disease or cancer within three weeks this year. Two of my nieces – both young mothers – were killed by their husbands this year alone. One of my nephews, an orphan whose father died from renal failure and mother was stabbed to death – was arrested and locked up last week.

Another of my nephews was hospitalised with renal failure last week as well. I could tell you about problems like this for the rest of the day but I hope you get the point already. It is very painful for me to talk about all this.

Many of these health problems can be solved if my people made the right choices but there are many that are a mystery to me. When my kidneys collapsed I was a teetotaller, I didn’t smoke, I ate a healthy diet and was very fit. I have played sport all of my life. It is all very complicated and hard to work out.

One thing that would be easier to stop now is violence and sexual abuse. I decided to get into politics to do something to help protect our women and kids and to help improve their lives. Not all Aboriginal men are violent. I am not a feminist. I am not interested in what whitefellas call gender wars.

My father, my old promised husband and my brothers were not violent towards their wives. They loved their kids and tried their best for them. I have been happily married for over thirty years. But violence against women and abuse of kids is so common that it is a crisis. I have been a victim of it and too many of my young female relatives have gone to an early grave because of it.

Ending the violence against women is the best thing we can do for our men as well. A man who beats his wife is no man at all. I want to get our young men out of jail as well. Too many of them are in there because of the way they treat their women.

The one thing that makes it so hard to do something about all of this is what you call political correctness – the unwillingness to admit the truth and the attempt to close down those, like me, who want to tell the truth.

You will hear people who call themselves human rights activists trying very hard to avoid the truth. Tom Calma who was Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner said that a promised wife had the right to refuse to go to a promised husband. I was a promised wife and can tell you that this is nonsense. I got away with it because my father spoiled me and my promised husband was a good man who wasn’t interested in violence. He gave me permission to marry my present husband and told me that he would be happy to marry me if I wanted to come back to him. He was a gentleman and a philosopher. But most of the young women I knew did not have the easy way out that I had. Many were seriously beaten and I was told as a girl that some were killed.

Mick Gooda, the present Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, has told the world that violence against women was never part of ‘our culture’. I have the scars to prove him wrong. He is not talking about my culture. Violence against women has been part of all traditional cultures. It was part of whitefella culture until very recently. But whitefellas have admitted they had a problem and tried to do something about it. I am asking that we need to do the same. That’s all I’m asking.

Some of our men have admitted that. At a conference on Aboriginal Men’s Health in Alice Springs in 2008 from all over northern Australia issued a media release apologizing for violence against women and abuse of children. They told us that they needed our love and support. They asked for support from the rest of Australia and from governments to turn that apology into action.

It seems to me that these brave and caring Aboriginal men were ignored by the Aboriginal organisations, by governments, by human rights organisations and by the media. They were not being politically correct. They were supposed to act like victims and find a way to blame whitefellas and governments for all the problems not apologise for the wrong done in their names and ask for support to fix the problems.

I supported the NT intervention because I was sick of burying my loved ones. I saw the results of the sexual abuse of kids in my own extended family. I was so sickened by all of this that I was thrilled when Mal Brough and John Howard said that they would do something about it. Since then a lot has been watered down. The Intervention has not solved our problems although it has done some good.

If my people had supported it and then advised the government how to go about it properly much more would have been achieved. Instead we have had all of this opposition to it from people who know absolutely nothing about the problems we face and what is going on in the Northern Territory. The protestors have made it much harder to achieve its objectives.

I was nicknamed ‘the Intervention Woman’ in my own country. During the election campaign for the NT Legislative Assembly my nephew, the then Labor member for Stuart, told the electors that the Intervention was still going because of me. He used the slogan ‘No more Intervention’. He didn’t mention that it was a Labor government that had passed the Stronger Futures Legislation extending a watered down version of the Intervention for several more years.

Even with this campaign I beat my nephew with an 18 and a half per cent swing in an electorate that has a 73 per cent Aboriginal population. In three electorates, including my own, only Aboriginal candidates representing three different parties stood for election. I beat two Aboriginal men to win my seat. Those who vilify me ignore all this. And they have not been elected by my people to represent them.

The CLP won the election because of the votes of the bush Aboriginal people. Around 30 per cent of the Territory’s population is Aboriginal. We brought the CLP to power with five Aboriginal members of our Government. Three of us are women. Four of us speak an Aboriginal language as a first language. Our Chief Minister is a Koori from New South Wales, the first Aboriginal leader of any government in our history.

But we are not there to divide the Northern Territory. We are one community. I am a proud Territorian and an Australian as well as a proud Warlpiri. We are there to make sure that our people benefit from the balanced and sustainable development of our country. We want the benefits that all other Australians enjoy because they are Australians. We want our kids to prosper and have choices.

Even though we Aboriginal Territorians are so powerful politically, even though our people voted for us, our views are ignored by those who think they know better than the Aboriginal voters of our electorates. Because I want to be part of one community with all other Territorians, because I want to tell the truth about my people’s problems, because I want to tell the truth about violence against women and sexual abuse of kids, because I want it all to stop I have been vilified by white radicals who want to control us and Aboriginal activists on the east coast who want my people to blame whitefellas for all their problems.

One of them is your very own Tiga Bayles who is an Aboriginal broadcaster based here in Brisbane. He calls me ‘Best Price’ because he wants everybody to believe that I am in politics only to make money. He calls me a ‘head nodding Jacky Jacky who says only what the government wants me to say’. He has influence. The Indigenous Support Unit at Griffith University refused to allow me to visit there with Malcolm Cole the LNP candidate for Moreton while I was in Brisbane. A taxpayer funded institution of higher learning is apparently so afraid of me, a Warlpiri grandmother, that it won’t allow me to come and talk to the students and staff.

Is that what Aboriginal freedom fighters fought for all these years? Well I have news for Mr Bayles, as long as our women are being murdered, as long as our kids are being abused, as long as our young men are filling the jails, as long as all of our people are dying of avoidable disease I will speak out. And I will not be asking for his permission to do it. I don’t nod my head to everything the government says. I joined the government along with four Aboriginal colleagues and our people voted for us. I am part of the government. The likes of Mr Bayles can’t accept that.

I want to keep the best of our culture but not at the price of political separation from the rest of Australia. I want to keep our language but not at the price of ineffective and sub standard education for our kids. I want our kids to have the same choices as other Australian kids. I want our people to live good, healthy and happy lives.

I want the killing of our women and the abuse of our kids to stop and I want to do that with the support of the rest of Australia. I don’t hate whitefellas and blame them for all of our problems. After all I’m married to one and I know that they aren’t supermen – they have problems too. I don’t hate men, I am not a feminist. My father was the best father a young girl could have. My brothers were good non-violent loving men. My promised husband was a good, wise, non-violent, loving man.

But if you want to know about the problems that women have then talk to women, give us a voice. Don’t ask men even if they are Social Justice Commissioners. Don’t trust men who try to speak for us or who try to shut us down. And never accept excuses for violence and abuse.

Racism, colonialism, frontier violence, unemployment, low education levels, poor health - none of these are excuses for the victimisation of the most vulnerable in our communities. Ending the violence is the best thing that we can do for all of us, women, kids and men.
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Hollyscoop: Beyoncé made headlines after PepsiCo Inc. hired the diva to endorse the soda company in a multi-year deal for an estimated $50 million.
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<Can't even get the bribes right. The lowlight was a ham-fisted attempt by Kevin Rudd to splash $100 million around the state as pre-election sweeteners which was actually previously budgeted forestry compensation funding.

Glaringly, this "jobs and growth package" was so quickly cobbled together that nobody at the launch knew how many jobs it was likely to create.>
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Pastor Rick Warren
Humility isn't denying your strengths; it's being honest about your weaknesses.
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July 28: World Hepatitis Day; Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2014); beginning ofThe Nine Days (Judaism, 2014); Independence Day in Peru (1821)
Vinnie Ream with a bust of Lincoln
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“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,”Hebrews 12:1 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Exceeding great and precious promises."
2 Peter 1:4
If you would know experimentally the preciousness of the promises, and enjoy them in your own heart, meditate much upon them. There are promises which are like grapes in the wine-press; if you will tread them the juice will flow. Thinking over the hallowed words will often be the prelude to their fulfilment. While you are musing upon them, the boon which you are seeking will insensibly come to you. Many a Christian who has thirsted for the promise has found the favour which it ensured gently distilling into his soul even while he has been considering the divine record; and he has rejoiced that ever he was led to lay the promise near his heart.
But besides meditating upon the promises, seek in thy soul to receive them as being the very words of God. Speak to thy soul thus, "If I were dealing with a man's promise, I should carefully consider the ability and the character of the man who had covenanted with me. So with the promise of God; my eye must not be so much fixed upon the greatness of the mercy--that may stagger me; as upon the greatness of the promiser--that will cheer me. My soul, it is God, even thy God, God that cannot lie, who speaks to thee. This word of his which thou art now considering is as true as his own existence. He is a God unchangeable. He has not altered the thing which has gone out of his mouth, nor called back one single consolatory sentence. Nor doth he lack any power; it is the God that made the heavens and the earth who has spoken thus. Nor can he fail in wisdom as to the time when he will bestow the favours, for he knoweth when it is best to give and when better to withhold. Therefore, seeing that it is the word of a God so true, so immutable, so powerful, so wise, I will and must believe the promise." If we thus meditate upon the promises, and consider the Promiser, we shall experience their sweetness, and obtain their fulfilment.

Evening

"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?"
Romans 8:33
Most blessed challenge! How unanswerable it is! Every sin of the elect was laid upon the great Champion of our salvation, and by the atonement carried away. There is no sin in God's book against his people: he seeth no sin in Jacob, neither iniquity in Israel; they are justified in Christ forever. When the guilt of sin was taken away, the punishment of sin was removed. For the Christian there is no stroke from God's angry hand--nay, not so much as a single frown of punitive justice. The believer may be chastised by his Father, but God the Judge has nothing to say to the Christian, except "I have absolved thee: thou art acquitted." For the Christian there is no penal death in this world, much less any second death. He is completely freed from all the punishment as well as the guilt of sin, and the power of sin is removed too. It may stand in our way, and agitate us with perpetual warfare; but sin is a conquered foe to every soul in union with Jesus. There is no sin which a Christian cannot overcome if he will only rely upon his God to do it. They who wear the white robe in heaven overcame through the blood of the Lamb, and we may do the same. No lust is too mighty, no besetting sin too strongly entrenched; we can overcome through the power of Christ. Do believe it, Christian, that thy sin is a condemned thing. It may kick and struggle, but it is doomed to die. God has written condemnation across its brow. Christ has crucified it, "nailing it to his cross." Go now and mortify it, and the Lord help you to live to his praise, for sin with all its guilt, shame, and fear, is gone.
"Here's pardon for transgressions past,
It matters not how black their cast;
And, O my soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come here's pardon too."
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Today's reading: Psalm 43-45, Acts 27:27-44 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 43-45

1 Vindicate me, my God,
and plead my cause
against an unfaithful nation.
Rescue me from those who are
deceitful and wicked.
2 You are God my stronghold.
Why have you rejected me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?
3 Send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 27:27-44

The Shipwreck
27 On the fourteenth night we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors sensed they were approaching land. 28 They took soundings and found that the water was a hundred and twenty feet deep. A short time later they took soundings again and found it was ninety feetdeep. 29 Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. 30 In an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea, pretending they were going to lower some anchors from the bow. 31 Then Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, "Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved." 32 So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it drift away....
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John

[Jŏhn] - jehovah hath been gracious.
  1. A kinsman of Annas the High Priest (Acts 4:6).
  2. A son of Mary, sister of Barnabas, and surnamed Mark (Acts 12:12, 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37). See MARK.
  3. The son of Zacharias and Elisabeth, who appeared as the forerunner of Christ, and who was beheaded by Herod ( Matt. 3:1, 4, 13).

The Man Who Was Plain But Powerful

With the appearance of John the Baptist we have the burial of the Old Dispensation and the emergence of the New. We seem to see his rugged figure standing with arms outstretched, as with one hand he takes the Old Testament, and with the other holds the New, and who, through his ministry, makes the transition from Law to Grace. He was the foreclosure of the old and the forerunner of the new. Perhaps we can helpfully gather the witness of John around these salient features:
I. His parentage. John came as the child of promise and was born in a city of Judah when his parents were old, and his mother long past conception (Luke 1:7, 13, 39). His parents were of priestly descent, his mother being a kinswoman of Mary the mother of our Lord (Luke 1:36).
II. His ascetic affinities. John, as a man of the desert, knew what it was to practice self-denial (Matt. 3:4 ). A Nazarite from his birth, he developed self-reliance and spiritual strength as he communed with God in the desert solitudes he loved (Luke 1:15). He was a plain man in every way, akin to Elijah whom many took him for.
He was plain of dress. He dressed simply, his raiment consisting of camel's hair, that is, either a robe of camel's skin or cloth woven from camel's hair. What a humble habit compared with the luxurious robes of soft wool worn by the fashionable and great of his time!
He was plain of food . No sumptuous dishes for this Elijah-like prophet. It was on rough food he thrived. Vegetable honey exuding from fig-trees and palms, and edible locusts, classed among the flying, creeping things the Israelites were allowed to eat (Lev. 11:22), formed his diet (Matt. 3:4). John the Baptist could subscribe to the words of a devout Englishman of a past century:
I shall be spare of sleep, sparer of diet, and sparest of time that, when the days for eating, drinking, clothing, and sleeping shall be no more, I may eat of my Saviour's hidden manna, drink of the new wine in my Father's kingdom, and inherit that rest which remaineth for the people of my God for ever and ever.
He was plain of speech. Living near to nature, he heard God's voice in solitude as well as in Scripture. Familiar with the Old Testament, he made frequent use of its picturesque language (Luke 3:17; Isa. 66:24; with Amos 9:6 ). After his sojourn in the desert, brooding over the need and peril of his time, he came forth to speak of barren trees fit only for burning - vipers fleeing before the flaming scrub. John saw in his desert surroundings much that symbolized his nation's calamity and which lent color to his solemn warnings of impending doom.
There is a great deal we would like to say about this man sent from God who had the privilege of acting as the forerunner and then as the baptizer of Jesus, who said of him that he was greater than a prophet. Space, however, forbids a full exposition of this mighty character in the Bible's portrait gallery. The preacher might be able to expand the following features: his self-denial (Matt. 3:4); courage (Matt. 3:7; 14:4); powerful preaching (Mark 1:5); humility ( Mark 1:7); holiness (Mark 6:20); burning zeal (John 5:35); honor (Matt. 11:11); ministry of witness (John 10:41); preparatory work (Matt. 11:10); testimony ( John 1:29-36); results (Matt. 9:14); death ( Matt. 14:10), of which Spurgeon said, "John was the first Baptist Minister to lose his head through dancing."
4. John, the son of Zebedee and Salome, the fisherman who became the beloved disciple, The Apostle of Love.

The Man Whom Jesus Loved

This younger brother of James has the rare distinction of being known as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." The original of his name means, "whom Jehovah loves" and John's experience corresponded to his name. From the many references to this honored disciple we can gather these facts:
He was a native of Bethsaida in Galilee.
His godly parents were probably cousins of Christ, and John was their youngest son.
His mother followed Christ, ministered unto Him, was at the Cross and among those who went to anoint the body of Christ with sweet spices.
His father was a fisherman owning his own vessel and prosperous enough to hire servants.
John himself was also a successful fisherman.
He was called to discipleship while plying his nets.
He was the youngest of the disciples, the Benjamin among the Twelve.
He was one of the select triumvirate, Christ's inner cabinet of three, Peter and James being the other two.
He was surnamed by Christ as a son of "Boanerges" because of his prophetic zeal and resolution to witness for Christ.
He was treated by Christ with greater familiarity than the others enjoyed.
He sat next to Christ at the Last Supper.
He was intrusted with the care of the mother of Jesus.
He died when he was almost one hundred years of age.
He wrote the gospel and three epistles bearing his name, and also the Book of Revelation. How true are Wesley's words of John the Beloved:
A Caesar's title less my envy moves
Than to be styled the man whom Jesus loves;
What charms, what beauties in his face did shine
Reflected ever from the face divine.
From manifold references in the four gospels, the Acts and Revelation, the preacher can develop these traits in John's character: his natural energy (Mark 3:17); his intolerance (Mark 9:38); his vindictiveness (Luke 9:54); his ambition (Mark 10:35-37); his eagerness to learn ( John 13:23; I John 2:9); his sympathy (John 19:26); his love (1 John 4:7-21).
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