Saturday, September 19, 2015

Sat Sep 19th Todays News

Journalist Latika Bourke was writing about the '09 Liberal leadership spill and made the erroneous claim that Mr Abbott had knifed Mr Turnbull to get the leadership. That is not what happened. Bad leadership by Turnbull had meant that Rudd's proposed ETS was inevitable. It was a tax on Carbon dioxide which paid for nothing, and would be an impost on business and homes. As a banker, Turnbull was comfortable with a tax. Hockey had support to campaign within the party on the issue of opposing the ETS. Turnbull called a spill motion to unite the party. Hockey tanked and said the issue of global warming was a moral one. Mr Abbott stood up on the platform opposing an ETS. Hockey claimed to have negotiated to run for the leadership unopposed, but Turnbull stood up too. The global warming believers split their vote and Abbott won. Abbott had not knifed Turnbull, but had stood up only after a spill. On the other hand, Turnbull white anted Howard and Abbott and cruelled the elections of the LNP in Qld, SA, Vic and Aus. Latika, writing for the SMH likes division among conservatives. The cruel falsehood is meant to confuse those who don't know. Latika back tracked and later claimed that Turnbull was knifed by the right of the Liberal party. In fact, it would be right to replace him, and boot him from the party for treachery. Now that Turnbull is no longer undermining the Libs, Canning looks to be in the good hands of Mr Hastie. An improved educational curriculum has been released. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2014 ===
The Scottish first Minister was wrong and lied. Scotland has a proud history and is not diminished for being part of a United Kingdom. Everything that people said they wanted for Scotland in isolation, she has in unity. But the UK Labor party has played a role in this, they want division and resentment. They profit from it. Was the win big enough to keep UK united? Time will tell. One pressure point is gong to be when Charles is king. It has to do with character. And it is misleading to refer to the kingdom as the royal house represents both. Greens misread campaign and made predictions that Mr Abbott would be humiliated. They got it wrong too. 

Large police raids in Sydney and Brisbane resulted in two charged with planning a terrorist hit on the community, capturing a person at random, beheading them and dragging their body through the streets wrapped in an ISIS flag. ABC immediately goes into damage protection mode, with journalists claiming the raids were over kill, and complaints were made of police brutality and abuse. One boy said his mother was with her husband in bed, naked, when the police broke in, alleging police did it for a cheap thrill. Actually, the boy alleged that police dogs did it which suggests the canine unit is very advanced and likes arab women. There is no specific allegation of crotch sniffing. But the ABC refers to tremendous 'sadness' regarding the raids. Nobody was killed in the raids, and apparently none was hurt, so the need for sadness is not apparent. Waleed Aly seems convinced that none of the terrorists were Islamic, and he would know, he says. Uthman Badar who defended honour killing speaks for terrorists at Lakemba. Catherine Deveny reckons a burka is less restrictive than the Western institution of marriage for women, so she clearly agrees with Uthman. The sad truth is that Jihadists are too few in number to win an election in Democracy. They are too weak to openly fight for what they believe, The terrorists hide and hurt the weakest because they are bullies and cowards. The Islamic leadership is similarly impotent and irrelevant, often supporting corruption and inspiring children in their community to underachieve. 

Michael Mann, self proclaimed genius author of the Hockey Stick graph and serial liar is a warmest idiot. He offered a hashtag askdrmann where he threatened to report anyone who might not agree with him. Exactly to whom they might be reported is not clear. British warmist moron Jarvis Cocker wrote in the Guardian that he sailed around Greenland in 2008 and saw firsthand global warming. Only now there is black ice in Greenland. Warmists are agonising over what it means. It means the ice is not melting in summer and so impurities remain. When warmists stop wringing their hands, they might realise it is good news for them .. Greenland is not warming and they have photographic evidence. 

The Occupy movement never amounted to much, and bickered among themselves. Now they are continuing to bicker in court. An outraged ACT senior public servant complains they need longer break times to source organic soy milk for their coffee. Two archbishops of Sydney have done nothing wrong, but victims of pedophiles want them to apologise. Europe is depressed at the moment, and Poland warns on deflation. 
From 2013
In France it is really chic to sport a beard, apparently. In Canada, it is not an essential skill to drive a train well? In the US it is outrageous to leave your gun before entering Starbucks. Apparently, gun restrictions aren't the preferred cup of tea for many. It is international speak like a Pirate day. 
Chief pirate Flannery has been dismasted. His acts of piracy answered by a reestablished rule of law. A rule which still hasn't reached the ABC. One act of piracy is pedophilia. It is outlawed, but some skirt those laws. 
The ALP is looking for a leader. Abbott is acting as a leader, but the ALP don't like Abbott. They are quite rude about him. It is funny that the ALP are attracting a large number of new members. It seems to happen during times the ALP are prone to branch stacking. It is een as a positive by those who approve of branch stacking. Howes wants to be involved by ditching the old Carr. North Korea is a bad place to be a free thinker. A bit like the ABC being a bad place to be a conservative, but worse. The sports drug issue is dying now that the impetus to get ALP reelected is gone. 
=== 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.
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Paul Sucharittanant and Elsie (Elisabeth's mum). Born on the same day, across the years, as Antoninus Pius (86), Hartley Coleridge (1796), Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche (1909), Adam West (1928), Brian Epstein (1934), Cass Elliot (1941), Jeremy Irons (1948), Twiggy (1949), Kristopher & Jason Simmons (2002). On your day, Sukkot begins at sunset (Judaism, 2013); Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese calendar, 2013); International Talk Like a Pirate Day
634 – Byzantine-Arab Wars: Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid captured Damascus from the Byzantine Empire.
1863 – The Battle of Chickamauga began in northwestern Georgia and would end in the most significant Union defeat in the Western Theater of the American Civil War.
1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival, the largest greenfield festival in the world, was held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, England.
1995 – The Manifesto of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski was published in The Washington Post and The New York Times, almost three months after it was submitted.
2006 – The Royal Thai Army overthrew the elected government of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra while he was in New York City for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. It bein' international speak like a scurvy pirate day. Damascus be on th' road. Union won't win everythin'. Michael's farm be th' place. th' Manifesto was published. Thai Army made a royal mistake. Do well any ye gunna win a calculator .. fer th' sword fightin' academy.
Deaths
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Resigning from the Left

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (12:01pm)

Nick Cohen explains why he’s finally given up on the Left:
I come from a left-wing family, marched against Margaret Thatcher and was one of the first journalists to denounce New Labour’s embrace of corporate capitalism — and I don’t regret any of it. But slowly, too slowly I am ashamed to say, I began to notice that left-wing politics had turned rancid.
In 2007 I tried to make amends, and published What’s Left. If they were true to their professed principles, my book argued, modern leftists would search out secular forces in the Muslim world — Iranian and Arab feminists, say, Kurdish socialists or Muslim liberals struggling against reactionary clerics here in Britain — and embrace them as comrades. Instead, they preferred to excuse half the anti-western theocrats and dictators on the planet. As, in their quiet way, did many in the liberal mainstream....
I can’t be bothered any more. Cries of ‘I’m the real left!’, ‘No I’m the real left!’ are always silly. And in any case, there is no doubt which ‘real left’ has won.
The half-educated fanatics are in control now. I do not see how in conscience I can stay with their movement or vote for their party. I am not going to pretend the next time I meet Owen Jones or those Labour politicians who serve in [new Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn’s shadow cabinet that we are still members of the same happy family. There are differences that cannot and should not be smoothed over.
I realise now what I should have known years ago. The causes I most care about — secularism, freedom of speech, universal human rights — are not their causes. Whatever they pretend, when the crunch comes, they will always put sectarian unity first, and find reasons to be elsewhere.
So, for what it is worth, this is my resignation letter from the left. I have no idea who I should send it to or if there are forms to fill in. But I do know this: like so many before me, I can claim constructive dismissal.
(Thanks to readers Terry and WaG311.) 
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Turnbull’s first big job - heal the Liberals. UPDATE: And beware Morrison

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (9:47am)

Malcolm Turnbull is going to have trouble demanding loyalty from people after showing none.
Yes, this is but a junior staffer, but I suspect he spoke for a number of Liberal staffers when he piped up on Monday:
Richard Dowdy, the Tony Abbott junior staffer, ...  confronted Mr Turnbull and according to one Liberal source, said: “‘Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm,’ and then Malcolm turned around and he yelled ‘you’re a c---’.”
UPDATE
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
AB, Dowdy didn’t call him a conservative, did he? I don’t think Turnbull could imagine a greater insult. Mortifying.
UPDATE
More leaking and more evidence of anger. Paul Kelly:
Morrison has been damaged this week on the grounds of loyalty and trust. He tried to be too smart…
The backdrop to the public clash yesterday between Morrison and 2GB’s Ray Hadley is Morrison’s huge success in winning Sydney-based media support, a process that was recently exposed in the cabinet room. During a sharp cabinet clash with Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs, who wanted to ease regulations to allow individuals to purchase a car offshore, Morrison, who was opposing Briggs, said that “as the minister for 2GB this won’t go down well”. A strong free market minister, Briggs retorted: “If we listened to 2GB there’d be no free trade agreement with China.”
Morrison’s boast caught the attention of ministers.
Moreover, it is not a boast Morrison will be able to make for a while. 2GB’s Ray Hadley, for a start, no longer trusts his “mate”.
UPDATE
No self awareness at all. On the ABC’s 7.30:
SABRA LANE, PRESENTER ... (D)oes Malcolm Turnbull owe anyone anything in becoming leader again?
ANDREW PROBYN, POLITICAL EDITOR, THE WEST AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER: That’s one of the interesting aspects of this, he doesn’t owe Rupert Murdoch anything, he doesn’t owe any other news organisation.
Not even the ABC?
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
How many challengers for the Prime Ministership have had the benefit of being the minister responsible for a billion-dollar-a-year media behemoth pumping his tyres for two years while it bashed and smeared the incumbent incessantly?
UPDATE
Such are the hatreds and the suspicions now unleashed that Morrison feels attacked by both sides of the Turnbull coup. After all, who must Turnbull now fear in the next leadership challenge?
Dennis Shanahan:
Scott Morrison is in the hot seat: being accused of betraying Tony Abbott by “running dead” for his own promotion to treasurer, he has become the Abbott loyalists’ No 1 target for recrimination…
Of course, Morrison knew Turnbull was moving against ­Abbott at least since July, when the two talked about the then prime minister’s handling of the scandal over Bronwyn Bishop’s use of a helicopter to go to a Liberal Party fundraiser.... His real crime in [the Abbott camp’s] eyes is that when the challenge was launched six days from the Canning by-election, he did not goad or cajole his followers into sticking with Abbott but merely told them how he was voting.
But it is a mistake to think only disgruntled conservative Abbott supporters are attempting to mire Morrison’s hands with the blood of Abbott and curse him with the “damned spot” of Lady Macbeth.
There are those who have been supporting and working with Turnbull for Abbott’s demise who are even more vicious towards Morrison.
They describe Morrison as duplicitous, someone who “has been stalking Joe Hockey for years”.
The attacks on Morrison are not just about the fallout from this leadership challenge but also about the next leadership ­ballot.
Such is the present nature of Australian politics, where the removal of a leader based on public polls has become an accepted norm at state and federal level, that there are those anticipating the next federal leadership change within three years.
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On The Bolt Report tomorrow, September 20

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (8:49am)

image

On Channel 10 tomorrow.
Editorial:  Brilliant coup or the Liberals’ worst mistake? Is Malcolm Turnbull actually the Liberals’ Julia Gillard?
My guest: Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi. Time we created a party for conservatives?  Or can Turnbull heal his party? 
image
The panel: former NSW Labor Treasurer Michael Costa and former Productivity Commissioner Judith Sloan, now columnist for The Australian.  Turnbull promises a better economic leadership. Can he deliver - and how?

NewsWatch: Nick Cater, author, head of the Menzies Research Centre and Australian columnist. Is Abbott right to say the media has rewarded treachery? How can Turnbull now keep the media sweet? 

Plus: Turnbull’s disgust at a coup that dragged down a Prime Minister. And a tribute to Tony Abbott.
The videos of the shows appear here.
APOLOGIES:
This week the usual 10am screening for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Tasmania will actually be delayed by half an hour to 10:30am. Adelaide and Perth will start, as usual, at 10am.
The 3pm repeat stays as is.
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Before they spin the Canning results, know this

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (8:33am)

There will be a lot of pro-Turnbull spinning of the result today in the Canning by-election.
Remember this: Tony Abbott expected to win that by-election comfortably and use the result to calm the panic in the party. Internal party polling suggested the result would be better than the 53 per cent to 47 recorded by Ipsos, and possibly even the 55 to 45 tipped by pollster William Bowe.
That is why the Turnbull plotters were so desperate to depose Abbott before the by-election. They could not afford to let Abbott have a good result, and then three more weeks before Parliament sat again.
The result today will probably be slightly better than was expected. There is a honeymoon bounce for Turnbull. But don’t be fooled by the commentators who will insist that Turnbull saved this seat.
For one thing, the Liberals were always favorites when they selected as their candidate the impressive Andrew Hastie, the former SAS captain despicably and falsely smeared by Fairfax as a possible war criminal, while Labor picked yet another unimpressive lawyer, Matt Keogh, who had more trouble this week:
Matt Keogh: I have been involved in law enforcement and law reform for a long time. Mandatory sentencing doesn’t work ...
Journalist: How many drug criminals did you send to jail?
Keogh: I don’t have a record that I’ve been keeping around with me. I was a federal prosecutor, I was involved in sentencing for drug importations as well as commercial matters ...
Journalist: A pretty small number wasn’t it?
Keogh: I have no idea.
Journalist: You were only there for six months (in) that section?
Keogh: I did six months in that section but while I was working in the office for 4.5 years I used to do work in and out of the different sections in sentencing matters.
Bill Shorten: Thanks, Matt. One last question?

UPDATE
Interestingly, some in Labor have been telling journalists that Canning was lost to Labor when Turnbull took over. This spinning is either foolish, in building the story that Turnbull is the Liberals’ Mr Magic, or it is hostile to Bill Shorten, in suggesting he’s no match for the new Prime Minister. 
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Millions to join the invasion of Europe

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (8:21am)

Hungary prepares for 30 million illegal immigrants:
The huge figure was revealed today by Hungary’s minister for foreign affairs and trade Peter Szijjártó…
“It’s a self delusion to call this situation a migration crisis; it is a massive migration of nations, with inexhaustible reserves.
“I don’t think that the analysis results, stating that 30-35 million people out there could possibly become migrants, would be an exaggeration.
“Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are all countries with a huge population and an extremely unstable situation.”
Marxist Associate Professor Salvatore Babones:

[On August 24] the German government announced that it would accept all refugees from Syria no matter where they first entered the European Union. Under the EU’s “Dublin system,” refugees are ordinarily expected to claim asylum in the first EU country they reach. Germany “temporarily” suspended this rule.
Germany’s unilateral suspension of the Dublin system created a giant sucking sound heard as far away as Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. German protestations that only Syrians were covered by the blanket offer of accommodation fell on deaf ears. Germany’s noble offer to take in 800,000 refugees this year and up to 500,000 in every year to follow was bound to be more loudly trumpeted than its fine-print terms and conditions.
A mere three weeks later, on September 13, Germany announced that it could no longer cope with the influx and attempted to shut the door. “Attempted,” because it is a fantasy to believe that a crisis like this can be declared over just when it becomes politically and administratively inconvenient…
In announcing its own border closures, Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maizière said that “Germany is facing up to its responsibilities, but the burden has to be spread in solidarity.” All eyes (and ears) now turn to German chancellor Angela Merkel. Will she allow squalid camps of refugees chanting “Germany” to spring up on Germany’s southern and eastern borders?…
And what about the non-Syrians among the refugees currently overrunning Europe? It is Germany’s position that most of them should be returned to their home countries. But how? By force? Germany and the other countries of northern Europe will ultimately accept these asylum seekers or face mass homelessness on their streets…
What Germany has created through three weeks of unrestrained idealism is a policy quagmire that may reverberate for generations.
UPDATE
image
The numbers are astonishing:
Croatia sent 19 busloads of migrants to Hungary Friday… More than 17,000 people surged into Croatia in just two days, prompting Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic to say the country had reached capacity in accepting migrants and refugees, and is now directing people toward Hungary and Slovenia.
More keep coming through Italy, too:
The Naval Service patrol ship LÉ Niamh rescued 380 refugees and migrants from the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya during three search and rescue operations on Friday.
Judit Neurink of the Kurdish Rudaw news service:
Facebook is playing a major role in making this trip attractive and telling people of the possibilities, the routes and costs…
Most of the Syrians [a colleague] met had prepared for and organised their trip based on information friends shared on Facebook on how they had reached Europe.
Many smugglers are on Facebook, Whatsapp and Viber. There are Facebook pages in Arabic that list smugglers’ contact information, routes and departure schedule....
One smuggler offers on Facebook a boat trip ‘Istanbul-Greece, $1200’ or ‘land trip Istanbul-Greece, €1800’. A direct trip by land from Istanbul to Germany, costing €6000 per person: “only 1 hour walking, the rest by car”.
And then there is the economics side. Some of those who have made it to Europe claim that the refugee allowance is higher than any salary or aid Syrians may get at home or in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon.
It’s not just illegal people smugglers cashing in:
The European Union’s borders agency has suggested one of the world’s biggest airlines is fuelling the illegal migration crisis by opening new routes in Africa.
Frontex said a dramatic increase in migrants from Africa illegally crossing the borders of the Western Balkans in order to reach the EU “could be partly explained” by the commercial strategy of Turkish Airlines… The flag carrier, which serves more destinations than any airline in the world, has a fleet of 296 and revenues of £5 billion last year, has opened a raft of new routes to Africa – a move interpreted as a drive by President Erdogan to increase Turkish influence…
Turkey is a major route for would-be migrants, travelling by land from Syria and Afghanistan onwards by land or sea to Greece, the Balkans and central Europe… Frontex noted there had been a threefold increase in Africans detected making illegal border crossings in the Western Balkans in the three months June to compared to the previous quarter..
UPDATE
No, they aren’t mostly Syrians at all:
Only one in every five migrants claiming asylum in Europe is from Syria. The EU logged 213,000 arrivals in April, May and June but only 44,000 of them were fleeing the Syrian civil war....
The figures from Eurostat, the EU’s official statistical agency, show ... the number of Afghans lodging asylum claims is up four-fold, from 6,300 to 27,000. Another 17,700 claims were made by Albanians, whose country is at peace. A further 13,900 applicants came from Iraq which, like Syria, is being torn apart by the Islamic State terror group…
Half a million migrants have arrived in Europe so far this year, with 156,000 coming in August alone. Rather than claiming asylum in the first safe EU country they reach, most head on toward wealthy northern states.
UPDATE
Even if only one in 1000 of the illegal immigrants streaming into Europe are supporters of the Islamic State, that makes 300 now inside the gates so far this year.
And how many more share the values of this top imam, preaching in the biggest mosque in Jerusalem?:
Sheikh Muhammad Ayed gave the speech at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem claiming Europe was only welcoming refugees as a new source of labour. He said Europe was facing a demographic disaster and urged Muslims to have children with westerners so they could ‘trample them underfoot, Allah willing.’
(Thanks to reader Ken.) 
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Turnbull doesn’t need to change the Liberals. UPDATE: Stay in the party, Abbott urges

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (7:51am)

As I’ve said from the start, Labor will not defeat Malcolm Turnbull, but Liberals might.
Paul Kelly agrees:
The risk to Turnbull at this stage is not the Labor Party that looked singularly ineffective this week, not the public that will be ready to give Turnbull a “fair go”, not the business community that is filled with goodwill, but the Liberal Party that is a cauldron of raw and mixed emotions: anger, recrimination, hope, relief and expectations about Malcolm.
Here is the key: Turnbull must somehow convince conservative Liberals that he has not stolen their party. That it still represents them, too. That they have a stake in seeing him succeed.
Talk by ABC and Fairfax commentators of Abbott having steered the Liberals too far to the Right are self-serving exaggerations. Abbott dropped 18c reforms that Turnbull, a more libertarian Liberal, actually supports in large part. Abbott pushed the Left’s proposals for race-based changes to the constitution that I suspect Turnbull will not make a crusade. Abbott gave in on the renewable energy target, agreed to take in 12,000 Syrian refugees and set ambitious targets for cuts in emissions. Abbott publicly backed the global warming scare. He criticised but barely touched the ABC. He increased taxes on the rich and backed away from workplace reform. True, he restored those wretched knighthoods, but that is mere flim-flam.
So Turnbull in fact inherits an already moderate government from a conservative who’d been largely powerless or reluctant to impose his own conservatism on it. There is little value in Turnbull now wrenching the party to the Left on the issues the media Left cares for most, and I doubt he will do so any time soon.
Turnbull cannot afford to weaken our border laws. He has accepted Tony Abbott’s brilliant and popular compromise on gay-marriage - a people’s vote, rather than a politicians’ vote that would have split the party. He will not weaken terrorism laws, not least for fear of a terror attack on his watch. He has agreed not to back a form of carbon tax, and would destroy all unity and lose a potent anti-Labor weapon if he tried. He will not scrap the royal commission into union corruption that is putting such heat on Labor and the unions, and exposing genuine problems in how some unions and even industry super funds operate. The Republic will not occur in even the next term of Parliament, with the Liberals already promising two referenda or plebiscites on constitutional recognition and gay marriage.
The only possible weakening I can see is in foreign policy - on Russia and the Middle East.
So Turnbull has inherited a suite of positions and policies which he was not willing to - or capable of - putting in place himself but which he could use to surf to victory.
There is no need to steer the party in a dramatically different direction. The mainstream media has already accepted that he is the more moderate face of the Liberals, and a man of their own kind. Job done. Turnbull’s job is now to persuade the Liberals that he is a man of their kind, too.
Caveat: all the assurances and predictions above apply only to Turnbull before the election. Once he wins that, all bets are off. I cannot predict if victory will go to his head.
UPDATE
But Turnbull may offer a couple of sops to green voters - and to Alan Jones:
MALCOLM Turnbull plans to give a green tinge to his new Government by beefing up the environment portfolio and retaining activists’ rights to challenge major developments.
The new Prime Minister is likely to scrap or at least wind back Tony Abbott’s changes to environmental laws that were designed to stop green groups challenging developments such as Adani’s planned Carmichael mine in Queensland.
I can’t say this would dismay me. I thought Abbott’s change was good, on balance, but as I’ve said before there are arguments on both sides.  Moreover, I doubt Abbott’s proposed change would have got through the Senate, anyway. And Turnbull does need painless ways to appeal to the increasing number of Liberal greens who threaten seats such as that of Kelly O’Dwyer, a Turnbull backer.
UPDATE
Daily Telegraph:
The first is that an angry Liberal base, furious at Turnbull’s ousting of Abbott, will be more likely to ­forgive the member for Wentworth if he remains true to the government’s course. If Turnbull veers from that course — for example, by reviving his previous near-religious zealotry over climate change — the anger of grassroot Liberal voters will become intensified.
The second reason Turnbull should stick with much of the ­Abbott agenda is because, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it was working.
Piers Akerman:
Tony Abbott is urging conservative members of the Liberal Party not to walk away from the party he led into government two years ago.
Aware of the tsunami of anger created by his ousting among party stalwarts, the former prime minister is telling friends that the Liberal Party will always be a better organisation with good people working within it than against it from the outside.
“...[I]t would be a tremendous loss to our country and our party if those who are now so upset with the Liberals left,” he has told his supporters. “They must swallow their hurt and stay in the party, they must redouble their efforts to ensure we have good policy, a good party and a great country.”
UPDATE
And I in turn respect Tom Switzer, but he mistakes my role:
SABRA LANE, PRESENTER: ... Judging by the [Ray Hadley 2GB] interview that Scott Morrison was subjected to [on Friday] perhaps, is the biggest blowback going to come from Conservatives outside Parliament not within the wing of Parliament here in Canberra?
TOM SWITZER [CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL COMMENTATOR]: I think that’s right. I have great respect for Ray Hadley, Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt among other Conservative commentators. They reflect the thoughts and attitudes of a lot of the Liberal Party grassroots. It is important to recognise this ...  [But] I think there’s a sense in the Party Room that the Conservative movement, broadly speaking, needs to rally behind their new Prime Minister and leader and make sure that Bill Shorten and the Labor Party don’t get back in power.
Sorry, but I have never seen my role as rallying around any prime minister, even my friend Tony Abbott, whom I criticised on everything from his knighthoods to his plan for race-based changes to our constitution, not to mention his broken promises, his stubborn support for the expenses-rorting Bronwyn Bishop and his absurdly generous parental leave scheme.
I won’t “rally behind” Turnbull, either. My loyalty is not to the Liberals but to my audience and to my principles. Sorry to sound pompous about it, but I will fight for my ideas, even when I know I am in the small minority. And I will praise Labor and even the Greens if they back those ideas, too.
I know for a fact that Alan Jones feels exactly the same way.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Eagle Dan.) 
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The Abbott curriculum unveiled

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (7:45am)

Yes, it’s been long in the works and reflects Tony Abbott’s influence, but is this announcement an olive branch to conservatives from the new Turnbull team?
Australia’s “Christian heritage’’ will be taught in schools in a slimmed-down national curriculum that focuses on phonics to ­improve children’s reading.
History and geography have been scrapped as stand-alone subjects, in a back-to-basics return to traditional teaching.
But 21st-century computer coding will be taught in primary school, starting in Year 5, in the new curriculum endorsed by Australia’s education ministers yesterday.
Indigenous issues have been cut from parts of the curriculum, and students will no longer be taught about Harmony Week, ­National Reconciliation Week, or NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) week.
Students will continue to learn about Australia Day, Anzac Day and National Sorry Day. The Year 6 study of the contribution of “individua­ls and groups” to Australian society will no longer ­include a reference to indigenous people or migrants, and will be confined to the post-Federation period. 
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Obama left Syria for Putin to take

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (7:17am)

Vladimir Putin has completely outplayed Barack Obama in Syria. Charles Krauthammer:
Once again, President Obama and his foreign policy team are stumped. Why is Vladimir Putin pouring troops and weaponry into Syria?. . .
Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin. . . .
Putin will offer Russia as a core member of a new anti-Islamic State coalition. Obama’s Potemkin war — with its phantom local troops (our $500 million training program has yielded five fighters so far) and flaccid air campaign — is flailing badly. What Putin is proposing is that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah spearhead the anti-jihadist fight.
Putin’s offer is clear: Stop fighting Assad, accept Russia as a major player, and acquiesce to a Russia-Iran-Hezbollah regional hegemony — and we will lead the drive against the Islamic State from in front.
And there is a bonus. The cleverest part of the Putin gambit is its unstated cure for Europe’s refugee crisis.
Wracked by guilt and fear, the Europeans have no idea what to do. Putin offers a way out: No war, no refugees. Stop the Syrian civil war and not only do they stop flooding into Europe, those already there go back home to Syria.
Weakness always leaves room for the strong. 
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Honourable to the last

Andrew Bolt September 19 2015 (6:13am)

Last night, a sign of the true class of the man that many in the media vilified, even this week calling him a “sook” - Tony Abbott honored a long-standing invitation to host his old school mates at Kirribilli House on the day he left it:
But just two hours later Mr Abbott was back, if not as a resident then as a very familiar guest, welcoming more than 50 St Ignatius old boys for their 40th reunion.
Advertisement
The class of 1975 arrived at the prime ministerial pad in two bus loads, ferried from a North Sydney pub where they had been wetting their whistles before the main event.
Mr Abbott greeted every one of the “Old Ignatians” at the door of Kirribilli House, beaming as he shook hands, patted backs and bear hugged his old school pals.
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SOY STORY

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (2:11pm)

The latest legal adventure involving Canberra’s always-entertaining public service: 
A Canberra public servant told her boss she needed longer breaks than her colleagues, saying she had to find a café that served organic coffee with soy milk.
When the Australian Taxation Office bureaucrat was warned about her absences from her desk and told she had to adhere to time management requirements, she took her case to the Commonwealth government’s workplace authority.
After the appeal was dismissed, the Executive Level 1 public servant went on stress leave and claimed workers compensation, arguing that her ATO supervisor’s approach left her with “adjustment disorder”. 
Click, click, click and click again for previous examples of bureaucratic Canberra madness. 
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DEVOTEES INFURIATED

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (5:40am)

Considering that around 70 people holding Australian passports have already joined Islamic State, this isn’t exactly surprising: 
The Daily Telegraph can reveal intelligence agencies had picked up “chatter” involving a potential random attack on Parliament House, with fears among national security and intelligence agencies that the Prime Minister and other senior government officials were prime targets.
Senior intelligence sources confirmed that “chatter” about Parliament House had been intercepted and they now held fears the building had already been “scoped out” … 
And further south: 
ASIO has seized the passports of several of the Melbourne relatives and associates of jailed terror cell leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika as it investigates cell members for recruiting local jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq …
Prison authorities have also stepped up monitoring of Benbrika since the terrorist group Islamic State ramped up its activities in Iraq and Syria, limiting his access to religious books and phone, or computer contact with people outside jail.
The move has infuriated his local devotees … 
Oh, the sadness!
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GO THE NO

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (5:16am)

Follow Scotland’s independence vote here. A final count should be in by around 4pm Sydney time. 
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WAFFLED ALY

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (5:05am)

Waleed Aly’s response to yesterday’s terrorism raids: 494 words that say absolutely nothing. 
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AROUND THE BLOCK

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (5:03am)

A question-and-answer session with warmy warrior Michael Mann results in hilarious humiliation.
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COWARDS AND LOSERS

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (4:54am)

Joe Hildebrand precisely defines those who, as Labor’s Tony Burke might say, engage in politics in different ways: 
They don’t have the courage to win in a battle and they don’t have the numbers to win in a democracy.
Instead they attack the most innocent and vulnerable: Kidnapping and raping women and girls on an industrial scale, beheading helpless captives for the camera and slaughtering en masse countless other normal everyday people.
This is both cruelty and cowardice at a level that is literally inhuman. The creatures who commit such acts, and those who support them, forsake all claims not just to membership of this or any other country but to humanity itself. 
Forget humanity. These types are on the same evolutionary arc as gravel.
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OCCUPY COURT

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (4:35am)

At the beginning of Occupy, the movement split into various working groups and committees. After the end of Occupy, the movement is split into various groups taking each other to court. As a certain prophet predicted three years ago: “Imagine the feuds, tiffs, hissy fits and squealfights that’ll emerge from this lot.”
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VEINS OF AN IMBECILE

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (4:11am)

The Spectator‘s Rod Liddle reviews Russell Brand: 
I watched Russell’s latest address to the world, which he delivers regularly from his bedroom – complete with those by now familiar mangled, high-camp estuarial vowels, tortuously pretentious grammar and infantile, uninformed narcissistic political opinions …
It’s like a condensed version of a particularly bad edition of the Guardian, filtered through the veins of an imbecile. 
Speaking of British morons, here’s pop singer and global warming witness Jarvis Cocker – in the Guardian, of course:
Back in 2008, I sailed the coast of Greenland on a vessel chartered by the organization Cape Farewell and saw the effects of global warming firsthand. It exists. 
And then he went to the airport and caught a jet back to the UK.
(Via Brat)
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BIGGER THAN BURKAS

Tim Blair – Friday, September 19, 2014 (4:08am)

Remember Catherine Deveny? No? Anyway, she’s being an idiot again: 
I regard heterosexual marriage as a much more important feminist issue and bigger oppressor of women than the burka. 
Coincidentally, a new range of burkas seem to have been designed with Deveny in mind.
(Via Martin C.)
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MOHAMED ELOMAR WAS UNAVAILABLE

Tim Blair – Thursday, September 18, 2014 (7:27pm)

Look who is speaking at tonight’s Muslim rally in Lakemba:

image

Why, it’s none other than leading Islamic moderate Uthman Badar, spokesbacterium for Hiz ub-Tahrir and defender of the right to kill women.
UPDATE. An unscheduled speaker offers his opinion: 
“My house was raided by these police pigs,” a teen from within the crowd screamed.
He claimed his mother was assaulted by the police, who he kept referring to as “pigs” or “dogs”.
He alleged she was assaulted as she tried to cover herself with a bed sheet.
“They tried to take the blanket off my mother ... Pigs came and tried to take it off my mother as she was dressed like any woman would dress for her husband.” 
Kid’s got issues. 
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On the Bolt Report on Sunday

Andrew Bolt September 19 2014 (4:59pm)

On The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial:  Terror raids - have we woken up yet?
My guest:  Major General (ret.) Jim Molan, chief of the allied operations which a decade ago captured Mosul, now held by the Islamic State.
The panel: Australian columnist Niki Savva and Sean Kelly, press advisor to both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
NewsWatch:  Nick Cater, columnist and head of the Menzies Research Centre, on journalists playing down the Islamist threat.
And lots more, including has Tony Abbott gone too far on changing our constitution?

The videos of the shows appear here.
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Scotland stays, UK survives

Andrew Bolt September 19 2014 (3:24pm)

The United Kingdom is saved. No to independence, 55 per cent.
People tended to lie to the pollsters, fearing not to seem patriotic. But in the privacy of the ballot box…
Well done to Tony Abbott for his small role:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared supporters of Scottish independence are not “friends of freedom” or “friends of justice” in an interview with a British newspaper. 
Mr Abbott’s comments, which were published in The Times, are the strongest yet by a major foreign leader on the Scottish independence debate…
A spokesman for Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, who is leading the pro-independence campaign, said Mr Abbott had “put his foot in it"… “Many Australians, including the great number with close Scottish connections, will look on in bafflement at these remarks - Australia is a country that has gained its independence from Westminster and has never looked back.”
The Green Left Weekly back then called it with all the judgment one expects from socialists:
Should Scotland’s people decide to separate from Britain in next month’s independence referendum, the English establishment may well be very unhappy with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose recent ham-fisted attack on Scottish nationalism appears to have given the Yes campaign a boost.
Academic Ben Wellings on the ABC: 
Abbott’s Anglophilia is primarily just that: a passion for England and the English-speaking peoples and their economic and political cultures. This is the lens through which he views Scottish independence. 
Ultimately his intervention in the debate may backfire: when Scots find out his politics are like those of Cameron’s Conservatives, only more so, the effect will likely drive Scots towards independence. The kind of conservative neo-liberalism that Abbott espouses has been out of favour in Scotland for almost 30 years.
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ABC asks: is all this terror talk just a political con? UPDATE: Mad Left joins with madder Islamists

Andrew Bolt September 19 2014 (7:54am)

Dear God, spare us:
RAFAEL EPSTEIN (ABC presenter): Do you accept in any way the criticism that you’d rather be talking about this than a difficult budget? 
GEORGE BRANDIS (Attorney-General): Well I wouldn’t rather be talking about this. I would rather that this not be happening. 
UPDATE
Then there is the predictable conspiracy-mongering by Greg Barns, lawyer, columnist and former wanna-be candidate for the Liberals, Democrats and Wikileaks party:
image
UPDATE
Dennis Shanahan on the astonishing denialism and paranoia which has joined the mad Left to the lunatic Islamic fringe:
YESTERDAY’S anti-terrorism raids and Labor’s solid, bipartisan support for the security services and Australia’s commitment to Iraq have failed to dampen claims the Abbott government is “hyping up” terrorism fears to distract the public from its budget difficulties… 
Attorney-General George Brandis [was] confronted on ABC radio with a listener’s claim that the government was using the terrorist plan as a distraction. ABC presenter Rafael Epstein asked: “Do you accept in any way the criticism that you’d rather be talking about this than a difficult budget?"…
Fundamentalist Sunni political group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has made headlines for extremist views and is campaigning for a global Islamic caliphate, said the timing of the counter-terrorism raids were “suspect"…
Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek was taken aback on Wednesday when it was put to her on the ABC that the threat of genocide had passed in Iraq and the evolving commitment wasn’t necessary. Radio National’s Waleed Aly queried whether genocide was happening and suggested “the genocidal threat seems to have abated"…
Crikey political editor Bernard Keane posted a series of tweets querying the need for more security powers and responded to one post with: “And you’re seriously suggesting the government hasn’t been hyping national security?
“Its enthusiasm for the Iraq war — to distract from its domestic problems — is the reason why we are now less safe from terrorism.” Wendy Bacon, a professorial fellow with the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and contributor to Crikey, also said scepticism over the raids was “justified”. On Monday, Labor senators Kim Carr and Sue Lines accused the government of using terror fears to distract the public and on Tuesday West Australian Labor MP Melissa Parke expressed concern about so quickly escalating the involvement in Iraq.
(Thanks to readers AbcCharter and Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Once again, Waleed Aly can’t say “Muslim”

Andrew Bolt September 19 2014 (6:57am)

Waleed Aly is, in my opinion, our most prominent apologist for Muslim extremism: 
His rewards have been great. Once the spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, he is now an ABC radio host, a Channel 10 co-presenter and an Agecolumnist. 
He is even a politics lecturer at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, despite having no doctorate and having qualified in engineering and law.
When asked on Channel 10 to discuss Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group which slaughters Christians and enslaved nearly 300 schoolgirls, Aly did not once use the words “Muslim” or “Islam”:
They are a really, really hard group to define because they are so splintered and so diverse… What we do know though is that the broader movement is a terrorist movement and they’ve been wanting to overthrow the Nigerian government and establish a government of their own. But beyond that, this particular group, who have done this particular thing, it’s hard to identify who they are and they might just be vigilantes. 
When interviewing Labor’s Tanya Plibersek this week about fighting the Islamic State jihadists, Aly did not once use the words “Muslim” or “Islam”:
As I understand it there was the threat of genocide but then there were Iraqi airstrikes and there was the arming of particularly Kurdish forces and then there was that famous altercation where ISIS lost control of the dam and so on and so the genocidal threat seems to have abated… What seems to underlie all of this is that ISIS represents a serious threat to Australia. Can you give us an indication of precisely the scope of that threat and the mechanism, can you describe it precise terms? Because it’s not immediately clear when you consider this is a movement on the other side of the world that seems to be importing people rather than exporting them.  
When asked by The Age to comment on the Boston bombings last year (before the perpetrators were known), Aly did not once use the words “Muslim” or “Islam”, although he did make a single fleeting reference to “Islamist” as he deflected suspicion from the guilty:
But it’s possible, too, that this reticence is a product of the very real suspicion that the perpetrators here are self-styled American patriots. At this point, most analysts are leaning that way… Does the act become more heinous if it is Islamist?
An amazing trick, but he’s done it again. When asked by The Age to file nearly 500 words on the police raids on Australian jihadists, Aly again refuses to mention the words “Muslim” or “Islam”:
For us in Australia, it’s most dangerously a symbol: a brand a young man from Sydney can claim for himself; a flag in which he can wrap himself, and his proposed victim. 
Should the ABC and Age use a man so clearly partisan to report and comment on Islam and Islamic terrorists without at the very least declaring his faith? Should they not also balance his contributions with people more prepared to give things their proper names?
UPDATE
Interesting. Aly’s presumably unmoderated copy on the Age website fails to mention Islam, as on this paragraph:
We tried to smash al-Qaeda. It fragmented, then morphed into a mass movement not truly under anyone’s direct control, with Osama bin Laden mostly a symbolic figurehead. Then it begat ISIL.
But in the newspaper itself, someone (a sub editor) has finally broken through Aly’s ban. The paragraph now reads:

We tried to smash al-Qaeda. It fragmented, then morphed into a mass movement not truly under anyone’s direct control, with bin Laden mostly a symbolic figurehead. Then it begat Islamic State. 
Was Aly too evasive even for The Age? 
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Jihadists in our suburbs

Andrew Bolt September 19 2014 (6:26am)

The alleged plot:
[I]t began almost by accident in a NSW jail cell in December last year when 39-year-old Sydney man Hamdi Alqudsi was charged with having organised for at least six people to travel to Syria to fight.

Alqudsi, whose wife had once been sentenced to six months in jail for falsely accusing a policeman of forcibly trying to remove her burka, was a popular figure among Sydney’s hardline Islamists…

Police quickly identified a group of 17 young men who were, in Alqudsi’s absence, co-ordinating efforts to recruit wannabe Australian jihadists to take up the fight with the Islamic State… 
Then, early last month, ... the group received a phone call from [former Kings Cross bouncer and now senior Islamic State commander, Mohammed] Baryalei in which he asked the group to carry out an attack in Australia.
Authorities listened in as some of the group discussed packing a vehicle with explosives and detonating it… The more they watched the group, the more suspicious links they found. One of those to visit the group in Sydney was Omar Succarieh, 31, brother of Australia’s first suicide bomber in Syria, Ahmed Succarieh… Then on Tuesday this week authorities monitored a call between Baryalei and [39-year-old Sydney man Hamdi] Azari in which Baryalei allegedly demanded that Azari go out and kill a random non-Muslim as a demonstration of Islamic State’s intent.
Tony Abbott a target?
The Daily Telegraph can reveal intelligence agencies had picked up “chatter” involving a potential random attack on Parliament House, with fears among national security and intelligence agencies that the Prime Minister and other senior government officials were prime targets… 
In response, senior security sources have identified the most vulnerable entry point to parliament was the entrance to the ministerial wing, which could be infiltrated by “taking out” two unarmed parliamentary security officers who represent the only sentry point to prevent instant access to the PM’s own courtyard… It is understood several armed AFP officers have been redeployed to Parliament House.
This tiny, unrepresentative group of supporters are not just limited to Sydney and Brisbane:
No Victorians were implicated in the pre-dawn terror raids in NSW. However, Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Tim Cartwright said counter-terrorism teams were aware of people in this state who were supporters of the Islamic State terror group.
More signs of trouble:
ASIO has seized the passports of several of the Melbourne relatives and associates of jailed terror cell leader Abdul Nacer Benbrika as it investigates cell members for recruiting local jihadists to fight in Syria and Iraq.
Three hostages already beheaded:
IN its first propaganda posting since yesterday’s terror-charge arrests in Australia, Islamic State released a video early today said to be of a British freelance photojournalist, in which he says he is being held captive. 
Opposition leader Bill Shorten earlier this week:
When we talk about humanitarian assistance in Iraq and Syria, perhaps - and I’ll be having further discussions with my Deputy Leader Tanya Plibersek and others - perhaps it’s time to discuss do we take more refugees from these countries. 
UPDATE
Just a small, unrepresentative minority - yet excused and defended by hundreds more, some preaching a dangerous hate:

About 400 people attended a protest at Lakemba railway station on Thursday night organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir…
Wassim Doureihi, a prominent member of the group, told the crowd that the community was deeply upset by the raids.
“What would be your reaction if your home was raided and your women dishonoured?” he said.

”Let me say clearly even if a single bomb went off even if a thousand bombs went off in this country all it will prove is that Muslims are angry.”
Why is it that the true hate preachers aren’t touched by our laws against free speech?  
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=== Posts from last year ===
Sukkot, Dry Bones cartoon, doobie, shuldig, jews, jewish, continuity, huts, booths,===
Hopscotch

Young hopscotch aficionados could become unwitting criminals under proposed new anti-graffiti laws in New South Wales.
The legislation, which has been introduced to the NSW Parliament, makes it an offence to intentionally mark any premises or other property without the permission of the owner.
Greens MP David Shoebridge says there is no requirement in the legislation for a mark to be permanent or difficult to remove.
He says that means it will technically outlaw things like chalk hopscotch squares or handball courts drawn on footpaths or bitumen.
"Unless the kids get the consent of the local council they're committing an offence," Mr Shoebridge said.
"This Government is going to be putting on the statute books laws that make it an offence not just for kids to chalk a hopscotch court on the footpath, but for Mr Stace to have chalked 'Eternity', or for a street artist to put a rainbow crossing on the road.
"This will now all become criminal activity. If children get caught by police they'll be facing a $440 fine. Now that's just nonsense."
Attorney-General Greg Smith has downplayed the impact of the new legislation while apparently acknowledging that drawing in chalk will technically be an offence.
He says police always have discretion about whether to lay charges and he considers it unlikely they would charge children for chalking up hopscotch squares.

It is a Green announcement .. as believable as the world ending yesterday. But, if they must, Greens can go quake in their boots. - ed
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A good discussion point. I dislike how Greenies have stolen moral high ground with lies. But I support the initiative to be responsible and connected to community. - ed
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Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell and the NSW Liberal National Government deliver on another key election promise to begin construction of a eleven and a half billion dollar super-motorway that will connect the M4 and M5 through Sydney.
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A historic conference in support of the Jewish settlemententerprise in Judea and Samaria took place Tuesday inside one of the bastions of opposition to the Jewish presence in the region – the European Parliament.
The conference was organized by the Deputy Chairman of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, Dr. Fiorello Provera of Italy, who became a supporter of the Jewish communities after touring Samaria (Shomron), and by senior MEP Bastiaan Belder of Holland, who has also become a friend of Samaria in recent years.
The Israeli delegation included Samaria (Shomron) Regional Council Head Gershon Mesika, Acting Council Head Yossi Dagan, and the Director of Shomron Foreign Department, Shay Atias. MK Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) was also a part of the delegation.
David Walzer, Israel's Ambassador to the EU, delivered an address at theconference – the first time he has done so alongside the Samaria representatives.
In the two days that preceded the conference, members of the Israeli delegation met with influential MEPs including Germany's Elmar Brok, Chairman of the EU's Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Alejo Vidal Quadras, Vice-President of the European Parliament.
About 20 MEPs took part in the historic conference, in the Foreign Affairs Committee hall, and many media representatives attended it as well.

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<As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators pursue their latest round of talks, hate speech remains one of many daunting obstacles to long-term peace. It is one thing for a government to tolerate private hate speech, but quite a different and more serious matter for it to actually produce, disseminate, or subsidize such speech. Put another way, it is illogical and ill-advised for the United States to proclaim its absolute opposition to terrorism while looking the other way when Palestinian officials and institutions elevate terrorists as heroes and role models>
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Caricature drawn by Carlos Latuff for Belgian educational website.

A Belgian Education Ministry website compared Israel and Nazi Germany, a Jewish newspaper reported.
The comparisons were made on the KlasCement.be website, a major teaching resource offered by the Education Ministry of the Flemish Region, one of three entities that make up the federal Belgian state, the Jewish monthly Joods Actueelreported Monday.

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oslo 521
Twenty years ago today, Israel’s so-called peace process with the PLO was officially ushered in at the White House Rose Garden.

A year or so later, when the death toll of Israeli victims of the massive terror offensive that the PLO organized shortly afterwards reached what then seemed unbearable heights, a popular call went out to “Put the Oslo Criminals on Trial.”

Needless to say, with Shimon Peres, the architect and godfather of the so-called peace process now serving as the president of Israel, nothing ever came of the call.

The demand for an accounting was not unprecedented. There was no reason, on the face of things, for those who made it to be perceived as anything other than reasonably enraged, and as responsible citizens insisting that those responsible for the largest, most destructive strategic error Israel has ever made pay a personal price for their actions.

Twenty years before that ceremony at the White House, Israel suffered the worst military defeat in its history.

Israel did win the Yom Kippur War, in the end.

It was a sloppy, painful, tragic and costly win.
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S.C. School District Responds to Blaze Report onTextbook With Flawed 2nd Amendment Definition

The South Carolina school district currently utilizing a U.S. history textbook with a disputed interpretation of the Second and Third Amendments responded to TheBlaze’s exclusive report in great detail on Wednesday.
In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Greenville County Schools confirmed that Hillcrest High School in Simpsonville, S.C., has received “several emails and phone calls” expressing concern over how the textbook, “The Americans,” defines the Second Amendment.
Oby G. Lyles, Sr., the director of communications at Greenville County Schools, told TheBlaze that the district has “looked into the matter and found that page 149 of the state-adopted textbook does not accurately present the Second Amendment.”
“It states that citizens have the right to bear arms as members of a militia of citizen-soldiers,” he added. “This is not accurate.  We will inform our high school social studies teachers that they should refer to page 166 of the textbook which accurately presents the Amendment (as originally ratified).”
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New data from the U.S. Census Bureau's annual survey released this week reveal that the gap between the wages paid to women and men in this country has not improved in the last 11 years. This is a bitter pill for the nation's women and families, and a painful reminder that lawmakers' failure to act is causing grave harm to women, their families and our economy.
The wage gap must not continue to go unchecked. There is much more that Congress, the Obama administration and employers can and should be doing to help.
According to the new survey data, women with full-time, year-round jobs are paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to men who hold full-time, year-round jobs. The gap amounts to more than $11,500 in lost income annually, which affects the short- and long-term financial security of women, their families and our economy. With women serving as essentialbreadwinners for their families, losing income that could go toward basic necessities can have devastating consequences.
For women of color, the wage gap is even more appalling and made worse by racial discrimination. African American women are paid 69 cents for every dollar paid to all men, and 64 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. Latinas are paid just 58 cents for every dollar paid to all men, and a mere 54 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. The effects of losses of this magnitude are appalling.

Token politics doesn't deal effectively with the issue. I'm glad a woman was PM. I just wish she had been competent. I'm glad a woman is foreign minister .. Julie Bishop is very good. It was an interesting exercise to parallel Gillard with Thatcher. But it is unfair .. Thatcher was great. - ed
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Over the last few years Fairfield City Council has invested a lot of money into improving cycling infrastructure within the municipality. This ranges from connected off-road cycle paths, signage, and bicycle parking facilities nearby train stations. But the growth in numbers of cyclists in the south-western suburbs isn't as great as it could be, particularly considering the extensive off-road infrastructure available.

There is where Fairfield Bike Shorts (FBS) comes in. FBS is a series of film making workshops which will culminate in the premier screening of films in Fairfield in October 2013. There may be opportunities for the films to then be showcased in the 2013 Sydney Rides Festival (TBC) and the films will be submitted to the 2014 Bicycle Film Festival for worldwide screening consideration. With these films we hope to engage the local community to get them thinking about and reconnecting with the act of cycling.

At the conclusion of the workshops we aim to have FIVE short films in post-production. These include a fictional narrative, an animation, a music video, a documentary and a behind-the-scenes documentary of the project.
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Oops - mandatory calorie counts in fast food restaurant have the exact opposite effect than intended! http://t.co/GqqaoBNCje
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Statue of Our Lady of Salette
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“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."
Galatians 5:25
The two most important things in our holy religion are the life of faith and the walk of faith. He who shall rightly understand these is not far from being a master in experimental theology, for they are vital points to a Christian. You will never find true faith unattended by true godliness; on the other hand, you will never discover a truly holy life which has not for its root a living faith upon the righteousness of Christ. Woe unto those who seek after the one without the other! There are some who cultivate faith and forget holiness; these may be very high in orthodoxy, but they shall be very deep in condemnation, for they hold the truth in unrighteousness; and there are others who have strained after holiness of life, but have denied the faith, like the Pharisees of old, of whom the Master said, they were "whitewashed sepulchres." We must have faith, for this is the foundation; we must have holiness of life, for this is the superstructure. Of what service is the mere foundation of a building to a man in the day of tempest? Can he hide himself therein? He wants a house to cover him, as well as a foundation for that house. Even so we need the superstructure of spiritual life if we would have comfort in the day of doubt. But seek not a holy life without faith, for that would be to erect a house which can afford no permanent shelter, because it has no foundation on a rock. Let faith and life be put together, and, like the two abutments of an arch, they will make our piety enduring. Like light and heat streaming from the same sun, they are alike full of blessing. Like the two pillars of the temple, they are for glory and for beauty. They are two streams from the fountain of grace; two lamps lit with holy fire; two olive trees watered by heavenly care. O Lord, give us this day life within, and it will reveal itself without to thy glory.

Evening

"And they follow me."
John 10:27
We should follow our Lord as unhesitatingly as sheep follow their shepherd, for he has a right to lead us wherever he pleases. We are not our own, we are bought with a price--let us recognize the rights of the redeeming blood. The soldier follows his captain, the servant obeys his master, much more must we follow our Redeemer, to whom we are a purchased possession. We are not true to our profession of being Christians, if we question the bidding of our Leader and Commander. Submission is our duty, cavilling is our folly. Often might our Lord say to us as to Peter, "What is that to thee? Follow thou me." Wherever Jesus may lead us, he goes before us. If we know not where we go, we know with whom we go. With such a companion, who will dread the perils of the road? The journey may be long, but his everlasting arms will carry us to the end. The presence of Jesus is the assurance of eternal salvation, because he lives, we shall live also. We should follow Christ in simplicity and faith, because the paths in which he leads us all end in glory and immortality. It is true they may not be smooth paths--they may be covered with sharp flinty trials, but they lead to the "city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant." Let us put full trust in our Leader, since we know that, come prosperity or adversity, sickness or health, popularity or contempt, his purpose shall be worked out, and that purpose shall be pure, unmingled good to every heir of mercy. We shall find it sweet to go up the bleak side of the hill with Christ; and when rain and snow blow into our faces, his dear love will make us far more blest than those who sit at home and warm their hands at the world's fire. To the top of Amana, to the dens of lions, or to the hills of leopards, we will follow our Beloved. Precious Jesus, draw us, and we will run after thee.
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Today's reading: Proverbs 30-31, 2 Corinthians 11:1-15 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Proverbs 30-31

Sayings of Agur
1 The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh—an inspired utterance.
This man’s utterance to Ithiel:
“I am weary, God,
but I can prevail.
2 Surely I am only a brute, not a man;
I do not have human understanding.
3 I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I attained to the knowledge of the Holy One.
4 Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Whose hands have gathered up the wind?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is the name of his son?
Surely you know!

Today's New Testament reading: 2 Corinthians 11:1-15

Paul and the False Apostles
1 I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me! 2 I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough....
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