Friday, August 07, 2015

Fri Aug 7th Todays News

Tony Burke's use of $225k in travel expenses to wine and dine his new partner has offended some, who aren't natural ALP supporters, and maybe a few of them too, although they'd never vote against him. But another monster from the ALP domain that is gerrymandered South Australia has been sentenced for long term. The child molester worked for Families SA and side lighted as a photographer specialising in sex pictures for people younger than 12. He has had sex with infants. Some were children in his care. He will serve a minimum of 28 years and not life without parole because clearly someone, somewhere, is worse. Seen in that light, Burke's use of travel expenses as a Tinder App seems to meet community standards. Clearly the outrage over Bishop, which Burke led, was to do with the party she represented, and not the activity within the rules. 

 Hysterics are attacking Naplan because it works and doesn't only report good news. But, as a diagnostic tool, that is what we need from it. 
=== from 2014 ===
 Mike Carlton is not the sole dispenser of bigotry against Jews. Al Jazeera is not the worst. ABC and Fairfax Press have been promoting bigotry as normal behaviour. Who is to blame when six school kids invade a bus for a Jewish school and threaten the kids as young as five years old with having their throats cut while calling out slogans like 'Heil Hitler' and 'Free Palestine.' When apprehended, the perpetrators claimed they were too drunk to be questioned. Their parents must be proud. Thing is, I have seen people with parenting skills where this would not happen. How will 18c be applied? Will the school kid victims be chastised for being children of Jewish parents? It worked with Bolt. 

A comet is seen and it has a face on it. Nature is grand. God is great. Final arguments are being given in the Pistorius trial. Pistorius was offered the baton of truth in the event, and dropped it. He is without a defence or a leg to stand on. He shot his girlfriend for no reason and should serve a long term. $28k is how much Malaysian airlines was set to save in fuel costs for flying MH17 over Ukraine. I sympathise with them if it turns out Ukraine failed in her duty of care to warn of hostile activity. 

On this day in 322 BC the Athenian Democracy died when they failed to overthrow the Macedonians after Alexander died. In 461 the last great Roman emperor was beheaded by a rival who was supported by a jealous Senate. Which is why it was so hard to do anything worthwhile at the end of the Roman empire. In 626 the siege of Constantinople was abandoned after the besieging armies of Slavs and Avars began to believe the city had had divine help. In 1427 the Milanese attacked the Venetians and lost. In 1461 the Chinese Emperor's chair changed by coup. In 1714 the Russians had their first naval victory. In 1782 George Washington ordered the award of Purple Heart be made for wounded soldiers. In 1794 Washington ordered a crackdown on the Whiskey Rebellion. Fourteen years later in Sydney was to be the Rum Rebellion. Both rebellions involved the trade in liquor as currency. In 1858 the first AFL match was played between Melbourne and Scotch Grammar. In 1890 the last woman to be executed in Sweden was executed. In 1909 four women completed a road trip from NYC to San Francisco in 59 days. In 1930 the last confirmed lynching of blacks occurred .. in Indiana. In 1933, Iraqis slaughter some 3000 Assyrians. In 1944 IBM donated the first programmable calculator, called the Harvard Mark I. In 1955, Sony's parent company began selling transistor radios. In 1965 Hells Angels were permanently made part of organised crime at a Reyes Party. In 1970, in an effort to free a Black Panther, a California judge was taken hostage and killed. In 1998, Al Qaeda blew up two US embassies, one in Kenya and the other Nairobi. In 2008 Georgia fought Russia over territory. 
=== 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.
===
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. 
===
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.
===

Happy birthday and many happy returns Scott Carmichael, Eric Ma and Jovicic Nada. Born on the same day, across the years as Robert Dudley (1574), Mata Hari (1876), Stan Freberg (1926), James Randi (1928), Greg Chappell (1948), David Duchovny (1960), Jimmy Wales (1966) and Abbie Cornish (1982). On your day, Independence Day in Ivory Coast (1960)
1782 – The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great that serves as one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was unveiled.
1909 – Fifty-nine days after leaving New York City, Alice Huyler Ramsey, with three friends, arrived in San Francisco to become the first woman to drive an automobile across the U.S.
1933 – An estimated 3,000 Assyrians were slaughtered by Iraqi troops during the Simele massacre in the Dahuk and Mosul districts.
1938 – Prisoners from Dachau concentration camp were sent to begin construction of Mauthausen, which would later be part of one of the largest labour camp complexes in German-occupied Europe.
1998 – Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,500 others. That Bronze Horseman is a clue to your day .. freedom, mastery, planning. It isn't by accident you are here, your day is matched with love. Those horrors you face, you face with intelligence, and courage. You aren't fools, and today is your day
Deaths
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Nothing equal about this debate

Piers Akerman – Friday, August 07, 2015 (12:36am)

THE homosexual marriage lobby likes to claim it plants its rainbow-coloured flags firmly on the summit of the high moral ground.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Nothing equal about this debate'
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Halal good buy? I don’t know why

Piers Akerman – Friday, August 07, 2015 (12:34am)

AUSTRALIANS are asking what in halal is going on with religious food certification and demanding an end to being forced to pay for Islamic blessings on ordinary supermarket food items.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Halal good buy? I don’t know why'
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IT USED TO BE JUST A FOOTBALL LEAGUE

Tim Blair – Friday, August 07, 2015 (1:38pm)

Susie O’Brien identifies the problem: 
The AFL is one of the most powerful causes for progressive change in our society. 
===

BIG ISSUES AND LOW SCORES

Tim Blair – Friday, August 07, 2015 (9:17am)

This week’s podcast thoughtfully considers the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima’s bombing, Donald Trump’s presidential run, Tony Burke’s expenses and Australia’s first innings annihilation at Trent Bridge.

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UPDATE. Check the impeccable leftoid credentials of Tony Burke’s current partner and first-class travel pal:
Italy and Spain were the favoured destinations of Tony Burke when he embarked on a ministerial travel extravaganza that included first-class flights with senior staffer Skye Laris, who is now his partner …
Ms Laris joined Mr Burke’s staff in early 2008 after having worked in a communications role for the Climate Institute.
Before the Climate Institute, she worked as a radio journalist for the ABC and as a media adviser to a state minister ...
Ms Laris left Mr Burke’s office in March 2011 to join the activist group GetUp!, and in 2012 she moved into the role of director of digital for the ALP, based in Sydney. 
When she isn’t flying around the world with Tony Burke, Skye Laris enjoys tweeting about climate change and Bronwyn Bishop’s expenses.
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Trump flops

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (1:51pm)

Donald Trump got shown up badly in the Republican debate. All bluster and no detail, most cruelly exposed when he was asked what he’d do in response to Iranian General Qassem Suleimani travelling to Russia in defiance of UN sactions.
Trump had not a clue about the guy, the issue or the response, in contrast to the impressive Ted Cruz, who seemed the most authoritative, albeit at times perhaps too hardline on moral issues for uncommitted voters.
Jeb Bush looked safe, if foggy, and Marco Rubio looked like tomorrow in so many ways.
Trump got carved up neatly not just by the jovial Mike Huckabee but by one of the debate hosts, Megyn Kelly, who detailed his past positions - so at odds with the ones he professes today - and asked sweetly when precisely he’d become a Republican. She also challenged him on his vile tweets about women.
But overshadowing everything was Trump’s refusal to promise not to run as an Independent if he didn’t get the Republican nomination. This is a threat to split the Republican vote and get Hillary elected if he’s not given the Repubican prize. Me or nobody.
UPDATE
Krauthammer on Trump:
I think he had a bad night.
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On The Bolt Report on Sunday, August 9

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (12:01pm)

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On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm (NOTE: this week on ONE everywhere except Perth):
Editorial:  On Bronwyn Burke. Or is that Tony Perk?
My guest: Labor’s Anthony Albanese.
The panel: Bruce Hawker, former Labor campaign guru (and fellow admirer of John Peter Russell) and political scientist Jennifer Oriel.

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NewsWatch: Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs editor of The Australian and author of the engaging new memoir, When We Were Young and Foolish, which includes fascinating material on his old friend, Tony Abbott. We’ll discuss the old Abbott, even watch some fascinating old vision, and show how his past explains his latest media woes.
Plenty to get stuck into: Building dud subs, Labor hypocrites, Trump vs Bush, the expenses uproar, greens killing a mine, the price of the “stolen generations” exposed and more.

The videos of the shows appear here.
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I thought I was finished. So how can I be such a threat?

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (11:12am)

Media

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I’m confused. According to ABC presenter Virginia Trioli, who still claims she’s not of the Left, I am a great monster who has directly inspired tens of thousands of my millions of minions to boo Adam Goodes (despite repeatedly saying they shouldn’t):
Age-old catcalling the enemy is one thing, but this vilification is the result of a dedicated, long-running campaign to focus angry criticism upon this man, a campaign run in some of the best-selling newspapers and most-read blogs in the country. And guess what? It’s worked.
I don’t know what AFL management has been reading – or not reading over the past couple of years – but millions of Australians have read heavy, and sometimes really terrible, criticism of Goodes by Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun...
But what is most surprising is that commentators of the Left persist in portraying me as this colossus - this Sauron commanding countless legions of Australian orcs - when many have simultaneously assured their audience for years that my power is broken, in decline, fading fast.
What’s happening? Is this like the Left’s continual predictions of a global warming hell that never arrives? Or is it deliberately promoting a falsehood - portraying me, this broken wreck of a journalist, sobbing for his long-lost audience, into some fantasy villian who threatens the nation’s unity? A kind of Emmanuel Goldstein?
Excuse my curiosity on this point. It’s not just vanity that has made me wonder whether the repeated assurances that I’m finished are to be believed, since I do have a family to feed, after all.
ABC host Jon Faine in 2008, grilling my then editor:
Have things moved on and have some of the staples of the media in the Howard era worn out their usefulness as we enter a Rudd era? ... I’m going to talk in particular about columnists… and Bruce you have some notorious ones of your own?  ... so you’re not going through a cleansing process?
Crikey in 2011:
After a phenomenal peak, is Andrew Bolt in decline?
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tim Dick in 2011:
The most interesting aspect of the first instalment [of The Bolt Report] is whether there will be a second.
Sociologist Mark Bahnisch on the ABC in 2011:
... Bolt’s influence might be on the wane
Crikey in 2011:
...the news is worse for Bolt, the nation’s pre-eminent conservative crusader, with more than half of respondents to an Essential Research survey not knowing who he is
Crikey in 2012:
Bolt’s influence has declined
Crikey in 2015:
Why the Oz has abandoned Bolt and the populist right… Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine and Rita Panahi talk in a language no one understands anymore.
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Closing down Australia to please the Greens and a skink

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (10:59am)

We don’t have much of a future if such a project can be stalled over a technicality involving a skink and a snake:
Tony Abbott has declared that the overturning of the proposed Queensland Carmichael mega coalmine means courts can be used to “sabotage” worthy projects, in his strongest defence yet of coal production in Australia. 

“As a country we must, in principle, favour projects like this,” the Prime Minister told The Australian last night.
“This is a vitally important project for the economic development of Queensland and it’s absolutely critical for the human welfare literally of tens of millions of people in India.”
An exasperated Mr Abbott said the federal government ­approval for Indian company Adani to develop the $16 billion coalmine in central Queensland, which was overturned by the Federal Court on Wednesday, was a vital project.
He said if Australia did not allow such developments, “we have a problem as a nation”.
“Lets face it: this is a $21bn ­investment of which some billion dollars has already been spent,” Mr Abbott said.
Should governments perhaps scrap a hospital or school for every project that greens block, denying us the money to pay for them? We need some reminders of the connection between effort and income. 
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Even more Labor pain for no climate gain

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (10:04am)

Labor’s global warming scheme shows an even bigger contempt for taxpayers’ money than does Tony Burke:
Bill Shorten faces a renewed Coalition attack over higher electricity prices from his 50 per cent renewable energy goal, after Environment Department analysis found achieving it by 2030 would cost a “ballpark’’ $85 billion…

The Environment Department finds that if Labor legislated a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, consumers would pay $70bn in subsidies in addition to the subsidies they pay under the current RET…
Separate analysis commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia and conducted by economic consultancy Principal Economics found the renewable energy sector received subsidies (including the RET, feed-in tariffs and other green policy costs) worth $2.8bn in 2013-14.
The renewable subsidies translated into almost $412 per megawatt hour (MWh) for solar technologies, $42 per MWh for wind and $18 per MWh for all other renewable sources (including hydro). By comparison, coal-fired power received less than $1 per MWh and natural gas less than 1c per MWh delivered.
Principal Economics found that in 2013-14 these renewable energy subsidies added between 3 per cent and 9 per cent to the average household bill and up to 20 per cent for some industrial users..
And the ultimate obscenity? All this spending will actually make no difference to the temperature of our atmosphere, which, by the way, has essentially not risen for 18 years anyway.
This is just politicians pretending to fix something politicians are pretending is a problem.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Say no to save yourselves from such holy terrors

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (9:51am)


The day is fast approaching when there will be only one safe place left to say no to the red guards of the new racism:
That one safe place will be the ballot box, come the referendum to change the constitution to divide us by race.
That could be your one last chance to say no without fear of losing your job and being hounded out of public life.
The Age continues the witch-hunting and vilification:

A push to remove Alan Jones from the SCG Trust has followed the Sydney shock jock’s heated public commentary over Adam Goodes in which Jones accused Goodes of always playing the victim.
Fellow trustee and former Swans chairman Richard Colless is behind the push, telling Jones his stand on Goodes places him at conflict with his role as a trustee of Sydney’s home ground. Goodes is an SCG Trust ambassador, the only AFL player to hold that role.
The divisions between the powerful and political management group of the SCG emerged after Jones last week delivered a heated rant on Channel Seven about Goodes.
“They (the booing crowds) just don’t like the fellow. And Adam Goodes can fix all this by changing his behaviour. But what’s he say today? ‘Oh I’m going to leave. I may have to resign. I can’t hack it.’ Ask the little 13-year-old girl how she handled that?
“… someone’s got to ask the question: why are they booing Adam Goodes and not the other 70 indigenous AFL players. Adam Goodes can fix this by changing his behaviour. He again today plays the victim.” Jones also said of Goodes that “every time he speaks Australia is a racist nation.”
Susie O’Brien in the Herald Sun:
SAM Newman is a pathetic, ridiculous dinosaur who belongs in the prehistoric age. 

His time is up, and he demonstrated this clearly on The Footy Show last night.
The AFL is one of the most powerful causes for progressive change in our society. And yet Newman took aim at the league for leading the way in combating sexism, racism and homophobia.
First, he took aim at viewers who objected to his comments about Swans player Adam Goodes last week.
Patrick Smith in The Australian:
This was the final humiliation for a commission that could not detect racism or articulate a response to it. Commissioners, don’t ever again boast about your work with indigenous footballers and their communities. The Adam Goodes affair makes it look like your interest in Aboriginal matters is not much more than tokenism. You should all resign.
Incredible. To deny we are racist now proves you are racist. No dissent can be tolerated. No good deeds can be held to your credit. Not even a 13 year old girl is safe from a public monstering by journalists, none saints themselves but now inflamed with their holy sense of self-righteousness.
Say no in the referendum and save yourselves from even worse.
(Thanks to readers Martin and Polly.) 
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Yes, but back to Bishop… The shameless Age

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (9:31am)

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(Thanks to reader Josh.) 
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Bye bye, Tony Perk

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (8:40am)

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke on flying his children to Uluru in business class at taxpayers’ expense:
While I am completely confident that the questions in particular relating to Uluru and Cairns have been 100 per cent within the rules, they have also been completely beyond community expectations.  No-one can satisfy an argument that says that kids should have been flying business class and [I] accept that argument absolutely.
And then he said he’d still keep the cash. Wouldn’t pay it back.

UPDATE
Talking about “completely beyond community expectations”, what of this example of Tony Burke’s monstrous sense of entitlement?:
Italy and Spain were the favoured destinations of Tony Burke when he embarked on a ministerial travel extravaganza that included first-class flights with senior staffer Skye Laris, who is now his partner.
Is this first-class romancing? Paid for by taxpayers?
Mr Burke’s expense claims show that in 2008-09 he racked up $225,000 in overseas travel costs. The Australian understands he was accompanied on most of these trips by Ms Laris.
In January 2009, Mr Burke travelled with Ms Laris in his role as agriculture minister to attend a forum in Barcelona known as “Food Security for All”. The two travelled in the first-class cabin while senior departmental advisers flew business class.
In first class? Even business not good enough for Romeo?
Shortly afterwards, Mr Burke promoted Ms Laris from adviser to chief of staff and stipulated that she accompany him on all of his domestic and overseas trips.

Yes, I am sure they travelled for business and not for personal reasons.  But why first class? Was Laris’s travel always necessary or just desirable?
To be fair, there is another side:

A spokesman for Mr Burke ...  denied that any travel directive about Ms Laris had been made, the travel requirement went with the chief-of-staff role.
“No such stipulation was made. It was standard for Mr Burke’s chief of staff to travel with Mr Burke unless the chief of staff delegated the ­responsibility to another adviser,” the spokesman said.
And the Barcelona trip occurred years before Burke separated from his wife, so we must assume the relationship with Laris then was strictly professional:
Mr Burke separated from his wife, Cathy Bresnan-Burke, in 2012. His relationship with Ms Laris became public two years later.
But, gee, doesn’t Burke choke on his hypocrisy?

Ms Laris also accompanied Mr Burke in April 2009 on a 14-day trip to China and Italy to attend the Boao Forum for Asia and the “G8+G5 Outreach session” of the G8 agriculture ministers’ meeting....In the same year, Mr Burke travelled to the US and the Middle East at a cost of $81,000, and again to Italy at a cost of $47,286.
In his capacity as finance spokesman, Mr Burke has led the attack on former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop, but a close examination of his expense claims reveals a host of excessive and questionable items.

When will he resign, as he demanded Bishop do?
But different rules for members of the Labor-green-ABC Left?:
Ms Laris joined Mr Burke’s staff in early 2008 after having worked in a communications role for the Climate Institute. Before the Climate Institute, she worked as a radio journalist for the ABC and as a media adviser to a state minister. Mr Burke then promoted her to chief of staff in 2009 when she was 33 years old.
Ms Laris’s marriage broke down in late 2009… Ms Laris left Mr Burke’s office in March 2011 to join the activist group GetUp!, and in 2012 she moved into the role of director of digital for the ALP, based in Sydney.
UPDATE
Reader PSFR would like Tony Burke to expand on this defence he gave for flying his family business class to Uluru during the school holidays:
In each of these, I had senior members of my staff and departmental officials with me. You don’t go on a holiday with the public servants from your department.
UPDATE
The art of boozing on the taxpayers’ shout:
TONY Burke’s department spent more than $50,000 throwing lavish functions across the nation in his first six and a half weeks as arts minister during the final year of the Labor government.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Mr Burke attended eight “stakeholder functions” in six different cities at a cost to the taxpayer of $54,312.69, not long after then prime minister Julia Gillard had announced the election date.
The beverage bill alone was almost $20,000 for the events in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart...The functions, for as few as 20 arts industry stakeholders to more than 200, were held between March 26 and May 8, 2013.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Waleed Aly vs Waleed Aly: recognition is meant to divide us and make us “types”

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (7:54am)

The politics of race

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The “recognition” campaign is based from the very start on a wish to divide us permanently on the grounds of race. To turn “we” into “them and us”, based on racial qualifications.
It is a campaign to treat us all not as individuals but as racial types, each type to get a different citizenship status on the basis of the “race” of some of their ancestors, and then have them war over the spoils. It is a campaign which ultimately leads to apartheid.
That is no longer a hidden objective, or some wild and hostile interpretation from some “far Right extremist”, as Labor now claims.
It is in fact the no-but-yes analysis of Waleed Aly, the pet of the Left and the ultimate symbol of identity politics in the media:
Tony Abbott [this week] rebuffed Noel Pearson’s suggestion that the path to Indigenous constitutional recognition goes through Indigenous Australians.
It’s a simple idea, really: you can’t come up with a form of recognition that will mean anything to Indigenous people until they have figured out exactly what that is themselves. The government needs to afford them the chance to thrash this out without the rest of us being in the room. So, Indigenous-only conferences – this is the kind of consultation Indigenous Australia is crying out for, and which is routinely denied…
And yet. “It jars with the notion of finally substituting ‘we’ for ‘us and them’,” declared Abbott.  “It might produce something akin to a log of claims”. If [Aboriginal leader] Pearson is offended – and he said as much this week – it’s because the theme is about as old as it gets. It’s the vision of an Indigenous Australia relentlessly making demands, seeking rights the rest of us don’t want to bear; an Indigenous Australia that can’t be trusted to be consulted properly because it “will go completely feral”, in Pearson’s exasperated phrase. It’s the logic that insists we are all simply citizens: individuals, the same and undifferentiated.
This is a kind of pious liberalism that rigorously ignores entrenched disadvantage; the same one that is implicitly why John Howard refused what became Kevin Rudd’s famous apology, and is explicitly why he rejected any suggestion of a treaty. The trouble is, it sits entirely at odds with the whole project of Indigenous recognition: 
Of course, Pearson himself does not suffer “entrenched disadvantage” - not compared to, say, many unemployed or disabled people, or refugees, or victims of violent parents or partners. Nor do many of our numerous Aboriginal academics suffer “entrenched disadvantage” compared to an unskilled child of a welfare family unable for months to find even the meanest job. The only way such prominent or well-paid people can be said to suffer “entrenched disadvantage” is to ignore their individuality and see them only as some racial type.
But note the critical passage in that extract - and of Aly’s entire article.
Aly seems to implicitly accept “recognition” opponents make a powerful and honorable point when we insist on treating people not a members of a “race” but as “all simply citizens: individuals”. I say that because Aly then sneakily adds to our argument a clause that no sensible conservative in truth advances - that we also believe individuals are “the same and undifferentiated”. That we are blind to poverty and “disadvantage”.
That is exactly the opposite of the truth.  Conservatives who reject the racial politics of the recognition campaign in fact believe in the infinitive variety of individuals and of the social forces that shape them. We reject crude categories of race, class and tribe. We reject the identity politics that reduce us to types.
But Aly’s claim is more than simply false. It is in fact the critical objection to his own tribalism - the race-based divisions pushed by the recognition campaign.
It is actually the recognition campaigners - not their opponents - who treat individuals as the “same and undifferentiated” - faceless members of racial stereotypes.
It is only by seeing, say, Adam Goodes as above all Aboriginal, not an individual, that this successful, admired, intelligent, honored and wealthy Australian of the Year becomes an undifferentiated type that’s suffering “entrenched disadvantage”. It is only by insisting that some girl is above all Aboriginal that she becomes not saved from a violent father or chronically drunk mother but an undifferentiated member of the “stolen generations”, another stereotypical victim of racist Australia.
Aly has in fact exposed the failing of his racial theorising while confirming my critique.
This recognition campaign will ultimately rob us all - Aborigines and non-Aborigines - of our sense of our common humanity. It will erect foul barriers of race. It will set us at each other’s throat.
We are playing with fire.
UPDATE
Reader DionysusOz:
And a correction for Waleed.Tony Abbott didn’t deny or prevent a convention for indigenous people to determine a unified position. He simply didn’t agree that the community should fund it.
And made the point for doing so quite reasonably.
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This team does not seem happy

Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (7:14am)

Awful:
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Cross:
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England bowled only 114 balls (including 3 no balls). Ten balls took wickets, only 104 didn’t. Just eight balls were on the stumps.
This does not look a happy team, and I don’t mean just because it is losing.
Is this Clarke’s last Test or will he be given the next - and only the next - for a farewell lap?  
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The Camp of the Saints, now for real

Andrew Bolt August 06 2015 (11:47pm)

I’ve written before about Camp of the Saints, a brilliantly prophetic novel on the invasion of Europe.
Now check the news.
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School bus outrage shows dark force we must defeat

Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (7:26pm)

THERE is an ageless Arabian proverb which says: “Once the camel gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” The truly revolting racist attack on a busload of Jewish schoolchildren in Randwick on Wednesday afternoon demonstrates that the anti-Semitic camel is well and truly ensconced in the Australian tent.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'School bus outrage shows dark force we must defeat'
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VOICES HEARD

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:48pm)

Tony Abbott and his government have gravely underestimated the commitment of Australians to free speech: 
Free Market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs raised $10,000 an hour for three hours after emailing supporters asking for cash to fund an attack ad on Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
IPA Director John Roskam on Wednesday warned the government not to “underestimate the white-hot anger” of Liberals dismayed by the Prime Minister’s decision to back down from repealing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Now it appears that anger has been converted into cash with the appeal topping $45,000 as of this morning, according to Mr Roskam. 
This is similar to the conservative uprising that followed Malcolm Turnbull’s embrace of an emissions trading scheme. He shortly became an ex-leader. There’s a lesson in that.
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STILL CRAWLING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (2:32pm)

America’s weakest President grovels once more: 
Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, has called on Western powers to recognise Hamas as a legitimate “political actor” …
“Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.” 
This from someone who is frightened by bunnies.
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UNITERS ARE DIVIDERS

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (5:23am)

A sure sign that Tony Abbott has made a dreadful error:

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STUPID AWARDS

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (4:08am)

American college degrees cost a whole bunch of money. And this is what you get.
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DISLIKED MIKE

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:58am)

Former SMH columnist Mike Carlton thanks his supportive colleagues: 
“I’d like to thank my colleagues at the Herald for the massive support they’re giving me right now.” 
Don’t be too sure of that, Mike: 
It was Mike Carlton’s own colleagues who sealed his fate, complaining about his abusive behaviour towards readers to Fairfax Media’s news and business publisher, Sean Aylmer.
Despite Carlton claiming he had vast support at The Sydney Morning Herald, and his downfall was a result of the “Israel lobby”, The Australian can reveal a number of Fairfax employees went to Aylmer with evidence of Carlton’s abusive comments, including one where he told a reader to “f. k off”.
Carlton’s abusive correspondence with readers was well-known, and for all to see on Twitter, but Aylmer became aware of the extent of the problem only on Tuesday afternoon …
The Australian can reveal that discussions about replacing Carlton began in June … writer John Birmingham is understood to be a trial option for Carlton’s regular Saturday column. 
Shouldn’t solidarity-minded leftists refuse to cash in on Carlton’s departure? And shouldn’t the SMH look for a replacement who isn’t equally toxic as Carlton?
UPDATE. Today’s column:
According to Mike Carlton, his downfall was brought about by a sinister conspiracy led by Australia’s Jewish lobby.
“That was twinned by a campaign by News Corp - because they hate my guts, but also because it destroyed a rival columnist,” Carlton claimed yesterday. “And now, Fairfax has handed News Corp that present, gift-wrapped.”
As usual, Carlton is wrong. His misfortunes are entirely self-inflicted.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'DISLIKED MIKE'
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LUVVIE MONEY

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:10am)

First, grab a government-funded gig at the ABC. Second, score government-funded speaking deals: 
ABC presenters are scooping up many of the tens of thousands of dollars in celebrity speaking contracts being dished out by the federal public service …
IP Australia paid $10,800 to bring in ABC science commentator Dr Karl Kruszelnicki to give a talk in June …
Austrade spent $14,300 to get [Lateline presenter Emma] Alberici to host its 51st Australian export awards a year ago.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics spent $18,132 to have Dan Gregory, a panelist on The Gruen Transfer, as the keynote and dinner speaker at the NatStats conference in early 2013. 
Your taxes at work, friends.
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FINNBILLY ROCKERS

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (2:19am)

An excellent AC/DC cover from some kind of Finnish tractor band:

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Liberal blame game: colleagues blame Brandis; Hockey blames everyone else

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:37am)

Lots of blaming of George Brandis:
George Brandis’ infamous defence of the rights of bigots has been cited by his own colleagues as the cause of the government’s capitulation on changing race-hate laws. Liberals said the Attorney-General’s comments in April had torpedoed what was a move to uphold free speech. 
This is altogether too easy.
Brandis, to his credit, was on the side of the angels in pressing for freer speech and was undermined by Liberals kowtowing to special interests and ethnic voters in their seats.
Brandis, unlike most of his colleagues, argued publicly for these changes against a hostile Leftist media.
Brandis, unlike almost all his Cabinet colleagues, wanted to stick with these planned reforms to the very end.
And, of course, Brandis argued for free speech when every single Labor politician wouldn’t.
In looking for politicians to blame for this retreat I would look last at Brandis, who at least fought.
UPDATE
Odd that so many Liberals go on the record to attack Brandis.
Meanwhile, Joe Hockey blames everyone else for the failure to sell his Budget:
Treasurer Joe Hockey has hit out at a lack of bipartisan support for tough economic reform, weak business advocacy for change, and the media for attacks against him personally.
Hockey may well be right, but it just doesn’t do to complain:
...he has rounded on business saying that, “I think interest groups are quite weak, and the ­business community is weaker than it has been over many years, as a voice."… 
“There is a weakening of public commentary. Therefore in the personality battles that the media engages in – and in my case everyone is against me at any rate .?.?. they’re abandoning the argument for good reform”, Hockey said. 
This is starting to look shambolic. 
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Let Tony Abbott go free

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:31am)

Good advice from Greg Craven: 
Abbott has been so careful and so measured in most of his public utterances that he seems to be channelling a funeral director at a chancy burial. 
But it does not work. The genuine spontaneity becomes strain. The quirkiness becomes awkwardness. The deeply held convictions become potential traps to be avoided.
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Rudd and Gillard cause security shambles. Abbott blamed

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:09am)

The first two paragraphs of the Fairfax report would make you think this stupid Abbott Government was to blame:
Rampant visa fraud and migration crime involving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to secret government files detailing entrenched Immigration Department failings. 
Hundreds of pages of leaked confidential departmental documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that Australia’s national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa rorting and migration rackets operating with impunity, including some with links to terrorism or organised crime.
In fact, read on and you find it was actually the Rudd and Gillard Governments that were asleep at the wheel between 2007 and 2013:
In 2013, [Immigration] department chiefs were warned in a confidential report that the agency’s investigations arm had collapsed, risking ‘’the integrity of its programs and ultimately national security’’… 
The leaked documents cover a period between 2008 and 2013 and consistently show far greater rates of migration fraud than has been publicly revealed, along with warnings that the department was failing to combat it.
A 2010 report states that ‘’evidence uncovered to date indicates that fraud within the General Skilled Migration program is extensive with estimates at around 90 per cent [or] more than 40,000 suspect visa applications lodged per year for the last three years’’.
The report warns that ‘’resourcing constraints presently restrict’’ the department’s ‘’ability to adequately address these issues’’.
In 2012, immigration officials assessing Afghan applications noted that ‘’fraud is now ‘business as usual’ ‘’. They also noted the ‘’considerable concern’’ about the department’s inability to counter it.
A 2010 report into a Somali people-smuggling network stated that despite evidence pointing to multiple breaches of the Criminal Code Act and the Migration Act, the department had secured ‘’only one minor prosecution’’. ‘’Media attention and three PMQ’s [prime minister briefings] on this issue have not been enough for the government to address this situation,’’ the immigration file states. A 2009 report reveals that the ‘’student visa program is failing’’, ‘’the general skilled migration program is failing’’ and the falsifying of qualifications was ‘’prolific’’.  
Why was this story sold as evidence of failure by the Abbott Government rather than of gross and repeated failure by the previous Labor governments? 
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Giving up free speech so extremists don’t feel picked on

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:56am)

Free speech, Immigration, Islamism

TONY Abbott has exploded one of the dangerous myths of our out-of-control immigration program. We once expected immigrants like my parents to assimilate to Australian values.

But now Australia assimilates to the values of the immigrants — including the most oppressive values.
The Prime Minister confirmed it on Tuesday in explaining why he’d dropped his plan to scrap restrictions in the Racial Discrimination Act that make it unlawful simply to “offend” someone with a statement related to their “race” or ethnicity.
“We are also determined to engage in ever closer consultation with communities including the Australian Muslim community,” he said.
“When it comes to counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of ‘Team Australia’ and I have to say that the Government’s proposals to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act have become a complication in that respect.”
Pardon? We must placate Muslim Australians by restricting our freedom to say something critical of their culture, for instance, extremists being so prone to jihad?
(Read full article here.) 
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Exactly how Liberal is this government?

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:53am)

This Liberal Government:
- has dropped its plans to restore free speech.
- maintains the fiction that man-made global warming threatens the world and we can stop it.
- proposes to change the constitution to divide Australians on the basis of their “race”.
- maintains absurdly high levels of immigration despite evidence of overcrowding and social dysfunction.
- has actually increased government spending.
- has left the ABC largely untouched, and dangerously huge.
- has left the Human Rights Commission intact and now functioning as a de facto opposition.
- proposes intrusive new surveillance powers it struggles to explain.
- has left oppressive workplace restrictions in place.
- has raised the top tax rate by 2 per cent, and broke an election promise in doing so.
Yes, it still:
- opposes same-sex marriage, but is toying now with allowing a conscience vote that is more likely to allow it.
But at least it has:
- called a royal commission into union corruption.
- stopped the boats.
- scrapped the carbon tax.
Are Liberal supporters happy? Should they be?
UPDATE
Is Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm the more authentic Liberal voice?
I am very disappointed that the government has dropped its plan to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act under the guise of national unity. If we want to live in a free society, we should take the advice of Chopper Read and harden up. There are many pressing issues for our governments and courts, but the question of who has had their feelings hurt is not one of them… 
The government is now saying it will also force internet service providers to store the internet communications of their customers. We are all to be treated as potential criminals-in-waiting, with the evidence to be held in case it is needed. This is not acceptable. In a liberal democracy in which the government serves the people, free speech must be the default option, with every encroachment subject to strict justifi­cation. Agencies such as ASIO must never be given the benefit of the doubt.
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If you can’t explain what you’re spying on, I don’t want you to even look

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:39am)

 The Attorney General should not propose tough new surveillance laws when he cannot even explain exactly how they work and how intrusive they will be in checking even your browsing history.
This is terrible explanation of what the IPA’s Chris Berg says is a terrible intrusion - a requirement that internet service providers retain metadata on their customers’ online activities:
Mandatory data retention treats all Australians as suspected criminals, storing away records of their internet activities just in case, in the future, they are accused of criminal activity. 
Far from a targeted anti-terrorism measure, data retained under the government’s policy will be available for any law enforcement agency pry into.
Metadata is nothing less than a complete record of a person’s internet activities - and through that their personal and business life. Claims that ‘only’ metadata will be collected completely misunderstands the nature of digital communications…
The last few decades have shown us that after these sorts of policies are introduced they are incredibly hard to repeal.

UPDATE
Malcolm Turnbull is right to be angry:
An angry and frustrated Communications Minister forcefully warned the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues yesterday that they risked being embarrassed over the new terror provisions ­because they had taken a decision without full knowledge of the repercussions for internet service providers and the public. 
Last night, Senator Brandis, ahead of a meeting today with Mr Turnbull to begin work on a strategy for metadata retention, deepened confusion over whether web histories of private computers would be targeted in the new laws…
On Tuesday, Mr Turnbull bluntly complained to cabinet he found it “strange” that as the Minister for Communications he had not been invited to the National Security Committee of cabinet discussions, which agreed in principle to data-retention plans. He further complained that the first he knew of the decision was a report on the front page of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, which said the cabinet committee had signed off on mandatory data-retention laws.
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The Left and mass immigration make Jews here unsafe

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:08am)

The Left and mass immigration have together whipped up a savage new racism. In Sydney yesterday:
Jewish children as young as five were subjected to a terrifying racial attack when thugs stormed their school bus and threatened to slit their throats. 
Screaming “Kill the Jews” and “Heil Hitler” the louts jumped on the bus packed with about 30 students, from kindergarten to year 12, who were on their way home from school yesterday…
The threatened students, from Mount Sinai College, Moriah College and Emanuel School, were hysterical after the attack by eight young men as the school bus travelled through the eastern suburbs towards Bondi Junction.
The attackers, described as Australian and smelling of ­alcohol, boarded on Alison Rd, Randwick at 4pm…
Mother Jacqui Blackburn said her three daughters on the bus, aged eight, 10 and 12, were traumatised. “The bus driver opened the doors for these strange men and allowed them on to torment the kids,” she said.
“They were screaming ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘Kill the Jews’, ‘Palestine must kill you Jews’, ‘We are going to cut your throats and slice your throats open’ — just all very bad, anti-Semitic stuff… Another mother, Isabelle Stanton, whose daughters Noa, 8, and Anais, 12, boarded at Mount Sinai College in Maroubra, said: “They were screaming racial stuff, ‘We are going to murder you’, ‘We are going to kill you’, and ‘Free Palestine’. 
Last Monday in Perth:
A visiting Hasidic Jewish leader has been the target of anti-Semitic abuse and threatened with physical violence outside the Morley Galleria. 
The Rebbe, who is in Perth on a lecture tour, and his 21-year-old assistant were taunted by a group of six teenagers outside the shopping centre in broad daylight on Monday, a friend of the two men said…
When Mr Mayer ushered the visitors into his car the youths began banging on it. “They were telling us to ‘F*** off’, that we were killers and they wanted to ‘fix us up’,” Mr Mayer said. 
Last Friday a Jewish business in Sydney invaded by Leftists:
Last month in Sydney this savage Jew-hatred openly preached:
At an anti-Israel protest in Melbourne last month, this poster of Abbott as a Jew:
image
In the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago, this vicious cartoon:
image
Also in the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago, this poisonous Mile Carlton column assigning a collective guilt for an invested “genocide”:
The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs… It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.
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Race Commissioner protects Mike Carlton, fellow member of the Left

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (7:16am)

Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald falsely accuses Jews collectively of a genocide:
The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs… It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.
Mike Carlton abuses one of many Jews writing to protest by peddling an offensive stereotype:
You’re the one full of hate and bile, sunshine. The classic example of the Jewish bigot. Now f. k off.
Tim Soutphommasane is our Race Discrimination Commissioner. He’s supposed to be red-hot in denouncing racism. But, then again, he’s a former Labor staffer and Carlton is a darling of the far Left. And anti-Semitism is the fashionable racism of the Left. Maybe I’m too hard on Tim, but give me a better explanation for his refusal to criticise Carlton on the ABC (from 14:10):
Commentators you would hope would be cantankerous or controversial… Obviously Fairfax decided to take some action against him. Look, I’m agnostic on this.
With so many in the Left it is not the principle that counts but the side.
On the same show, Jonathan Green, a fellow Leftist on the ABC, denounces the real crime - that wicked Murdoch journalists noticed Carlton acting like a barbarian:
We have to salute the really hard work here of News Ltd too  in rounding up those emails and drawing them to Fairfax’s attention. They’ve really prosecuted this with a great zeal… They’ve had a very active role in it.
UPDATE
Mike Carlton claims he’s victim of a Jewish conspiracy - and a Murdoch one. That neatly pairs the two fashionable hate figures of the deranged Left:
Carlton says there’s no doubt there was a co-ordinated campaign to oust him by the Jewish lobby in Australia. “That was twinned by a campaign by News Corp?—?because they hate my guts, but also because it destroyed a rival columnist. And now, Fairfax has handed News Corp that present, gift-wrapped.”
Tim Blair punctures another Carlton fancy:
Former SMH columnist Mike Carlton thanks his supportive colleagues: 
“I’d like to thank my colleagues at the Herald for the massive support they’re giving me right now.” 
Don’t be too sure of that, Mike: 
It was Mike Carlton’s own colleagues who sealed his fate, complaining about his abusive behaviour towards readers to Fairfax Media’s news and business publisher, Sean Aylmer. 
Despite Carlton claiming he had vast support at The Sydney Morning Herald, and his downfall was a result of the “Israel lobby”, The Australian can reveal a number of Fairfax employees went to Aylmer with evidence of Carlton’s abusive comments, including one where he told a reader to “f. k off"… 
As usual, Carlton is wrong. His misfortunes are entirely self-inflicted. 
UPDATE
Gerard Henderson: 
IT’S not surprising that The Sydney Morning Herald finally moved to discipline its Saturday columnist Mike Carlton. What’s surprising is that it took so long to do so. 
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Leyonhjelm marries two warring arguments

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (7:00am)

The new morality

DAVID Leyonhjelm is the new poster boy for same-sex marriage. Problem is, he’s also the argument against.

The new Liberal Democrat senator has excited reporters by suggesting his planned private member’s Bill could be the breakthrough.
He believes the Government may now relent on its election promise to collectively oppose same-sex marriage, and “a conscience vote is highly likely”.
Really? I doubt the Prime Minister, having just dropped his promise to restore free speech, will further enrage his base by dropping his even more fundamental promise on marriage.
But just as curious is Leyonhjelm’s argument: that government must get out of the marriage business.
(Read full article here.) 
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These people walk our streets, yet the Left reckons silly Abbott overreacts and I should shut up

Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (12:03am)

Islamism

 What a strange country.
The ABC and Fairfax journalists snigger at Tony Abbott allegedly being “confused” about what exactly what meta-data he wants our security forces to have access to. Labor refuses to say it will support the changes to save us from being blown up or beheaded, and refuses even to suggest what changes would satisfy it. There’s even celebration that laws used to silence me - and stifle debate on, say, Islam in Australia - will be maintained.
Meanwhile we have this Hizb ut-Tahrir boss feeling perfectly free to openly preach the most vicious and threatening Jew-hatred in the streets of Sydney. Real racism, real incitement to violence, a real threat - and a real refusal by so many on the Left of the political class to acknowledge any of it: 
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Except, although the media portray whatever they like, what has been negative about Liberal campaigns? Highlighting the dysfunctional government is kind of important when you think the media wouldn't. The negativity is overstated. Positive messages ignored. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a balanced approach.But I challenge the assertion that it hasn't been. Instead or repeating a media lie as if it were true, we need to be positive and proactive in presenting our message without bogging down in history. Today, August 6th, is an anniversary of a war crime as large as any in history .. the nuclear bomb dropped on civilians and excused by a liberal media keen to promote a left wing government. If they will accept that today, then we cannot expect favours. - ed
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The NYT is going broke and still it doesn't get the message .. as for getting the message, I'm reminded of the story of a guy who had an affair .. many affairs .. and his long suffering wife hired a hit man. The hit man broke into the marital bedroom, shot the husband in the head and ran away. The husband survived. The husband forgave his wife at the trial for her attempted murder of him. He said "She shot me in the head. When someone shoots you in the head, it makes you think .. " .. but I don't feel anything will make the NYT think .. ed

Last week’s return of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians has had little impact on the simmering Palestinian violence in the West Bank – or the efforts of some in the media to glorify the violence.
New York Times reporter Jodi Rudoren is thelatest apologist to present Palestinian stone throwers as noble defenders of their land and victims of Israeli oppression rather than as violent criminals:
Here in Beit Ommar, a village of 17,000 between Bethlehem and Hebron that is surrounded by Jewish settlements, rock throwing is a rite of passage and an honored act of defiance.The futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles matters little: confrontation is what counts.
Rudoren focuses much of the story on a 17-year old Palestinian youth who has been arrested four times “for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and settlers” – not civilians but settlers.Apparently do not merit the standard rights of civilians in Rudoren’s worldview simply because of where they choose to live. At the same time, Rudoren goes to great lengths to build sympathy for the Palestinian youth and his family, noting how his mother made sure to give him a long sleeve shirt for his stay in prison because “they both knew it would be cold in the interrogation room.”
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My Country

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

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

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

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

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

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

**
Dorothea Mackeller
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Bad administration costs - ed
Al Hayat al Jadida reports that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs have received permits to enter Israel during Ramadan - and they are finding that identical items of food and clothing are a fraction of the cost that they are charged back home.
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No reasonable person would disagree. It isn't as if they are behaving worse because of the penalty - ed
Op-d: No reason why Israel shouldn’t execute terrorists who murdered innocent, defenseless civilians
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Not because she is black, but because she is a drug abuser. Save her children. - ed

"I'm black and I use drugs," she says. "That doesn't make me a bad mother. It doesn't mean any Aboriginal woman who takes drugs is a bad mother whose kids should be taken off her.
"They don't take kids off girls who take legal drugs or who drink and smoke. And they don't take kids off some violent parents until it's too late.
"But when it's a black girl and they suspect drugs, they come in with security guards to restrain the mothers and grandmothers and they take our children away.
"It just kills you, every day you don't have your kids. It's the new stolen generation and we've got to stop it."
Celia is an Aboriginal woman and occasional heroin user from an inner city location in urban Sydney. She has seen the lot: drugs, police, courts, jail, violence and murder.
She once had her children taken from her and now it's happened to her daughter and other young Aboriginal relatives and friends.
She says DOCS (the Department of Community Services, or Family and Community Services as it is now known) is destroying families.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Everyone has a story, do not be ashamed of yours... it just may help someone else get through theirs... Share your story, share your love!
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<"G-strings and Desire", a book Ms Frank has written based on her PhD, reveals married men who frequented strip clubs may have more long-lasting relationships with their wives> But probably don't. - ed
A female stripper who works at The Crazy Horse in Adelaide.
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Pastor Rick Warren
To truly believe in freedom is to allow disagreement and even support each other's right to be wrong.
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Pastor Rick Warren
Not everything in this life has a happy ending. But this life is not the end of the story.
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Pastor Rick Warren
Trying to forget doesn't work. But you CAN let God give new meaning to bad things that have happened to you. Romans 8:28
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Pastor Rick Warren
Lies always spread faster than the truth so the wise wait for the whole story. “Fools believe everything they hear.” Proverbs 14:15
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Pastor Rick Warren
30 of our Saddleback Pastors form our global leadership team. In this picture we're watching live video reports from our pastors of Saddleback Hong Kong, Saddleback Berlin, Saddleback Buenos Aires, and Saddleback Manila. Thank God for technology that makes distance irrelevant! One church, many locations.
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Hell isn't really hot enough for the people who committed this crime. - ed

A MOTHER whose newborn baby was allegedly sold to human traffickers by a doctor has been reunited with her son.
Dong Wan from China wept as she held the boy at a hospital in Fuping following the arrest of Zhang Lin, a female obstetrician, and two suspected accomplices.
The doctor apparently told Mrs Wan, 31, that her son was born with severe health problems and would soon die. She is accused of persuading the mother to sign the baby over to the hospital before selling him to traffickers for $5000.
"I was told the best thing would be to let the hospital take care of him, so I did," Mrs Dong said.
But after signing the documents at the Fuping County Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital in northern China on July 17, she became suspicious and begged her husband to call the police.
The healthy baby was tracked down hundreds of miles away after the original traffickers sold him on for a profit.
Local deputy director Chen Jainfeng said that "the suspects told us where the baby was and with the help of local police we found the child".
"The baby is undergoing medical tests and is on his way home," he added.
Police fear there may be many more such cases and are investigating at least seven in the region.

Dong cries
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ALP backer employed hit man to take out rival? - ed

But within three years Mr McGurk had organised an associate to stage a car accident in an attempt to catch Medich drink driving and Medich had allegedly forked out upwards of $300,000 for a contract killing on Mr McGurk.
Medich has been charged with soliciting the murder and murdering Mr McGurk, who was shot at close range outside his Cremorne home in northern Sydney on September 3, 2009.
To help carry out the hit, the crown alleges Medich enlisted the help of one-time featherweight boxing champion Lucky Gattellari.
Gattellari then allegedly recruited Senad Kaminic, Haissam Safetli and Christopher Estephan to help.
It was Safetli and Estephan, the crown says, who then went to his home and fired the fatal shot.
When his murder failed to resolve Medich's financial and legal disputes, he then allegedly funded someone to threaten the businessman's widow, Kimberley McGurk.
On the second day of the committal hearing involving Medich and his co-accused Christopher Estephan, Central Local Court heard that in 2007 and early 2008 the developer and Mr McGurk's business relationship was running smoothly.
The 65-year-old was transferring upwards of $8 million into Mr McGurk's company accounts for various properties and trusted and "thought highly" of the businessman.
But by 2009 suspicions were festering and the pair became embroiled in legal battles over properties amounting to about $7 million.
In July 2009 Mr McGurk paid an associate $5000 to plough into Medich's car in Sydney's CBD in the hope the property tycoon would be arrested for drink driving.
The accumulative effect of these disputes and the damage to his reputation led to Medich having a "strong desire" to have Mr McGurk killed, Crown Prosecutor Gina O'Rourke said.
The court heard that when Gattellari allegedly told Medich the hit would cost between $300,000 to $500,000, the developer said he would organise cash through his friend and associate - racing identity Les Samba.
Mr Samba was gunned down on a Melbourne footpath in February 2011.
Matthew Crockett - a former standover man of Gattellari - told the hearing that he "vaguely remembered" a conversation in which it was said Mr Samba owed Medich money.
"Ron said he was sick of people in need of cash," Mr Crockett told the court.
But Medich's barrister Winston Terracini SC put to Mr Crockett that his client had also said he was sick of Gattellari asking for cash.
The court heard Gattellari employed Mr Crockett to "stand over" people who owed him money and make "veiled threats".
In 2010 Mr Crockett said Gattellari had also paid him to carry out surveillance on Mr Medich's wife Odetta - who after Mr McGurk's death had begun putting enormous pressure on her husband to distance himself from the boxer and cease funding his companies.
Of the five men charged in relation to the killing, only Estephan and Medich are facing committal to determine whether they should stand trial.
Gattellari and Kaminic were sentenced earlier this year for their part in the murder and received heavy discounts for co-operating with police and giving evidence against Medich.
Safetli is due to be sentenced later this week.
The hearing before Magistrate Jan Stevenson continues.
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Harvard Mark I input/output and control
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Births[edit]

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Holidays and observances[edit]

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“All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.” Psalm 119:160 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"Watchman, what of the night?"
Isaiah 21:11
What enemies are abroad? Errors are a numerous horde, and new ones appear every hour: against what heresy am I to be on my guard? Sins creep from their lurking places when the darkness reigns; I must myself mount the watch-tower, and watch unto prayer. Our heavenly Protector foresees all the attacks which are about to be made upon us, and when as yet the evil designed us is but in the desire of Satan, he prays for us that our faith fail not, when we are sifted as wheat. Continue O gracious Watchman, to forewarn us of our foes, and for Zion's sake hold not thy peace.
"Watchman, what of the night?" What weather is coming for the Church? Are the clouds lowering, or is it all clear and fair overhead? We must care for the Church of God with anxious love; and now that Popery and infidelity are both threatening, let us observe the signs of the times and prepare for conflict.
"Watchman, what of the night?" What stars are visible? What precious promises suit our present case? You sound the alarm, give us the consolation also. Christ, the polestar, is ever fixed in his place, and all the stars are secure in the right hand of their Lord.
But watchman, when comes the morning? The Bridegroom tarries. Are there no signs of his coming forth as the Sun of Righteousness? Has not the morning star arisen as the pledge of day? When will the day dawn, and the shadows flee away? O Jesus, if thou come not in person to thy waiting Church this day, yet come in Spirit to my sighing heart, and make it sing for joy.
"Now all the earth is bright and glad
With the fresh morn;
But all my heart is cold, and dark and sad:
Sun of the soul, let me behold thy dawn!
Come, Jesus, Lord,
O quickly come, according to thy word."

Evening

"Let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen."
Psalm 72:19
This is a large petition. To intercede for a whole city needs a stretch of faith, and there are times when a prayer for one man is enough to stagger us. But how far-reaching was the psalmist's dying intercession! How comprehensive! How sublime! "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory." It doth not exempt a single country however crushed by the foot of superstition; it doth not exclude a single nation however barbarous. For the cannibal as well as for the civilized, for all climes and races this prayer is uttered: the whole circle of the earth it encompasses, and omits no son of Adam. We must be up and doing for our Master, or we cannot honestly offer such a prayer. The petition is not asked with a sincere heart unless we endeavour, as God shall help us, to extend the kingdom of our Master. Are there not some who neglect both to plead and to labour? Reader, is it your prayer? Turn your eyes to Calvary. Behold the Lord of Life nailed to a cross, with the thorn-crown about his brow, with bleeding head, and hands, and feet. What! can you look upon this miracle of miracles, the death of the Son of God, without feeling within your bosom a marvellous adoration that language never can express? And when you feel the blood applied to your conscience, and know that he has blotted out your sins, you are not a man unless you start from your knees and cry, "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen." Can you bow before the Crucified in loving homage, and not wish to see your Monarch master of the world? Out on you if you can pretend to love your Prince, and desire not to see him the universal ruler. Your piety is worthless unless it leads you to wish that the same mercy which has been extended to you may bless the whole world. Lord, it is harvest-time, put in thy sickle and reap.
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Today's reading: Psalm 70-71, Romans 8:22-39 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 70-71

For the director of music. Of David. A petition.
1 Hasten, O God, to save me;
come quickly, LORD, to help me.
2 May those who want to take my life
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin
be turned back in disgrace.
3 May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!"
turn back because of their shame.
4 But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who long for your saving help always say,
"The LORD is great!"
5 But as for me, I am poor and needy;
come quickly to me, O God.
You are my help and my deliverer;
LORD, do not delay.

Today's New Testament reading: Romans 8:22-39

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently....

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