For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
UN report denies Israel's right to self defence. The report suggests Israeli leaders could be arrested. There are few bigoted organisations more corrupt, or well endowed with funds, than the UN. One organisation that would like to be as endowed and corrupt is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). ABC have recently paid a known terrorist advocate to ask a question of a government spokesperson on their QandA program. The audience sided with the bigot. It is hard to remove the confederate flag from South Carolina's Capitol. The white supremacists have stolen the flag for their purposes, but it is doubtful it had another purpose.
Under ALP, the ADF were compromised. And many soldiers died. They hadn't died under Mr Howard, but as the ALP entrenched itself, inquiries became public regarding sexual matters. In office, the ALP need to 'tame' rogue unions and the ADF and Victoria Police Force are two bodies that are seen to be independent. During WW2, Labour unions shamefully betrayed Australian soldiers. Time has not healed wounds. In early '08, Rudd appeared to have failed to follow through with his promise to have close relations with Timor after what appeared to be his bungled black op nearly got the leaders of Timor killed.
Dick Van Patten has died. 86 is enough. JK Rowling discusses the difficult social life of Harry Potter and his aunt and uncle. James Horner has crashed his single seater plane. A music great has passed.
In 109, Roman emperor Trajan inaugurated the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channeled water from Lake Bracciano, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north-west of Rome. 474, Julius Nepos forced Roman usurper Glycerius to abdicate the throne and proclaimed himself Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. 637, the Battle of Moira was fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is claimed to be the largest battle in the history of Ireland. 972, Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces, took place.
In 1128, Battle of São Mamede, near Guimarães: Forces led by Alfonso I defeated forces led by his mother Teresa of León and her lover Fernando Pérez de Traba. After this battle, the future king called himself "Prince of Portugal", the first step towards "official independence" that would be reached in 1139 after the Battle of Ourique. 1230, the Siege of Jaén started in the context of the Spanish Reconquista. 1314, First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognise Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. 1340, Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet was almost completely destroyed by the English Fleet commanded in person by King Edward III. 1374, a sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. 1497, John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.
In 1509, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England. 1531, the city of San Juan del Río, Mexico, was founded. 1535, the Anabaptist state of Münster was conquered and disbanded. 1571, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi founded Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines. 1597, the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reached Bantam (on Java). 1604, Samuel de Champlain discovered the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. 1622, Battle of Macau: The Dutch attempt but fail to capture Macau. 1717, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), was founded in London. 1762, Battle of Wilhelmsthal: The British-Hanoverian army of Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated French forces in Westphalia. 1779, American Revolutionary War: The Great Siege of Gibraltar began. 1793, the first Republican constitution in France was adopted.
In 1812, Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River beginning the invasion of Russia. 1813, Battle of Beaver Dams: A British and Indian combined force defeated the United States Army. 1821, the Battle of Carabobo took place. It was the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain. 1859, Battle of Solferino (Battle of the Three Sovereigns): Sardinia and France defeated Austria in Solferino, northern Italy. 1866, Battle of Custoza: An Austrian army defeated the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War. 1880, first performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français. 1894, Marie Francois Sadi Carnot was assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio.
In 1902, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom developed appendicitis, delaying his coronation. 1913, Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria. 1916, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract. Also 1916, World War I: The Battle of the Somme began with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line. 1918, First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto. 1932, a bloodless Revolution instigated by the People's Party ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand). 1938, pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania. 1939, Siam was renamed Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister.
In 1940, World War II: Operation Collar, the first British Commando raid on occupied France, by No 11 Independent Company. 1947, Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. 1948, start of the Berlin Blockade: The Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible. 1949, the first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC starring William Boyd. 1954, First Indochina War: Battle of Mang Yang Pass: Vietminh troops belonging to the 803rd Regiment ambushed G.M. 100 of France in An Khê. 1957, in Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment. 1963, the United Kingdom granted Zanzibar internal self-government. 1973, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack took place at a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Thirty-two people died as a result of fire or smoke inhalation.
In 1981, the Humber Bridge was opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years. 1982, "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines. 1989, Jiang Zemin succeeded Zhao Ziyang to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China after 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. 1995, "Rugby World Cup final": South Africa defeated New Zealand, Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb-Ellis trophy in an iconic post-apartheid moment. 2004, in New York, capital punishment was declared unconstitutional. 2010, John Isner of the United States defeated Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history. Also 2010, Julia Gillard assumed office as the first female Prime Minister of Australia. 2012, Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, died. 2013, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of abusing his power and having sex with an underage prostitute, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
From 2014
Tonight around the world, many journalists are hammering home a point .. Al Jazeera is a news network reporting news. Another point they will claim is that Greste was falsely convicted on trumped up charges. It is claimed that the prosecution was inept and used footage of Greste out of context. The truth is Egypt is allowed to prosecute criminals who have endorsed terrorism and misrepresented news around the world. Egyptians have died from Islamic Brotherhood propaganda and Greste has wilfully profited from spreading that propaganda. Had I been paid by Al Qaeda to spruik their activity I would expect the US to arrest and detain me. If anyone wants to help Greste, they should encourage him and Al Jazeera to apologise to the world for spreading propaganda. Egyptians have died for the lies, and not only them.
The truth is that leftists will cut their own throats before admitting they have been broadly wrong across most issues. Were it any different, ABC would have a bigger audience, and the Age and SMH would sell more papers. Blood is flowing across the Middle East and the only nation capable of peaceful interaction with all the peoples is held in contempt by Al-Jazeera .. Israel. Israel does not want to run the middle east, but she wants peace. You would not know that if you followed Al Jazeera .. or the ABC .. or the Age and SMH. Greste does not deserve to be jailed for seven years in Egypt. And neither does he deserve to profit from the freely flowing blood.
The Battle of Bannockburn was fought today, 1314. Scotland won the enduring right to shake their bare bottoms at their enemies. In 1340, the English King commanded a fleet which almost annihilated the French fleet. In 1374, Germany, the people experienced St John's dance. Lefties experience it today when they heard of mosques being planned to be built in inner city locales. In 1509, Henry VIII married his older brother's wife. In 1846, Adolphe Sax could at last play his instrument on stage in front of a public audience. 1947, Arnold reported a UFO .. another expression of St John's Dance. In 1957, The US Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by freedom of speech. In 2010, Julia Gillard surprised the ABC by deposing Rudd, a leader the ABC could not fault, for reasons she did not give. Sadly, she failed to change the policies which did not work .. another expression of St John's dance. On the same day, the longest match in Wimbledon history was played.
The truth is that leftists will cut their own throats before admitting they have been broadly wrong across most issues. Were it any different, ABC would have a bigger audience, and the Age and SMH would sell more papers. Blood is flowing across the Middle East and the only nation capable of peaceful interaction with all the peoples is held in contempt by Al-Jazeera .. Israel. Israel does not want to run the middle east, but she wants peace. You would not know that if you followed Al Jazeera .. or the ABC .. or the Age and SMH. Greste does not deserve to be jailed for seven years in Egypt. And neither does he deserve to profit from the freely flowing blood.
The Battle of Bannockburn was fought today, 1314. Scotland won the enduring right to shake their bare bottoms at their enemies. In 1340, the English King commanded a fleet which almost annihilated the French fleet. In 1374, Germany, the people experienced St John's dance. Lefties experience it today when they heard of mosques being planned to be built in inner city locales. In 1509, Henry VIII married his older brother's wife. In 1846, Adolphe Sax could at last play his instrument on stage in front of a public audience. 1947, Arnold reported a UFO .. another expression of St John's Dance. In 1957, The US Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by freedom of speech. In 2010, Julia Gillard surprised the ABC by deposing Rudd, a leader the ABC could not fault, for reasons she did not give. Sadly, she failed to change the policies which did not work .. another expression of St John's dance. On the same day, the longest match in Wimbledon history was played.
Historical perspective on this day
In 109, Roman emperor Trajan inaugurated the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channeled water from Lake Bracciano, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north-west of Rome. 474, Julius Neposforced Roman usurper Glycerius to abdicate the throne and proclaimed himself Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. 637, the Battle of Moira was fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dalriada. It is claimed to be the largest battle in the history of Ireland. 972, Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces, took place.
In 1128, Battle of São Mamede, near Guimarães: Forces led by Alfonso I defeated forces led by his mother Teresa of León and her lover Fernando Pérez de Traba. After this battle, the future king called himself "Prince of Portugal", the first step towards "official independence" that would be reached in 1139 after the Battle of Ourique. 1230, the Siege of Jaén started in the context of the Spanish Reconquista. 1314, First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognise Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. 1340, Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet was almost completely destroyed by the English Fleet commanded in person by King Edward III. 1374, a sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. 1497, John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.
In 1509, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England. 1531, the city of San Juan del Río, Mexico, was founded. 1535, the Anabaptist state of Münster was conquered and disbanded. 1571, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi founded Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines. 1597, the first Dutch voyage to the East Indiesreached Bantam (on Java). 1604, Samuel de Champlain discovered the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. 1622, Battle of Macau: The Dutch attempt but fail to capture Macau. 1717, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), was founded in London. 1762, Battle of Wilhelmsthal: The British-Hanoverian army of Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated French forces in Westphalia. 1779, American Revolutionary War: The Great Siege of Gibraltar began. 1793, the first Republican constitution in France was adopted.
In 1812, Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River beginning the invasion of Russia. 1813, Battle of Beaver Dams: A British and Indian combined force defeated the United States Army. 1821, the Battle of Carabobo took place. It was the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain. 1859, Battle of Solferino(Battle of the Three Sovereigns): Sardinia and France defeated Austria in Solferino, northern Italy. 1866, Battle of Custoza: An Austrian army defeated the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War. 1880, first performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français. 1894, Marie Francois Sadi Carnot was assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio.
In 1902, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom developed appendicitis, delaying his coronation. 1913, Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria. 1916, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract. Also 1916, World War I: The Battle of the Somme began with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line. 1918, First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto. 1932, a bloodless Revolution instigated by the People's Party ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand). 1938, pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania. 1939, Siam was renamed Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister.
In 1940, World War II: Operation Collar, the first British Commando raid on occupied France, by No 11 Independent Company. 1947, Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. 1948, start of the Berlin Blockade: The Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible. 1949, the first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC starring William Boyd. 1954, First Indochina War: Battle of Mang Yang Pass: Vietminh troops belonging to the 803rd Regiment ambushed G.M. 100 of France in An Khê. 1957, in Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment. 1963, the United Kingdom granted Zanzibar internal self-government. 1973, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack took place at a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Thirty-two people died as a result of fire or smoke inhalation.
In 1981, the Humber Bridge was opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years. 1982, "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines. 1989, Jiang Zeminsucceeded Zhao Ziyang to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Chinaafter 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. 1995, "Rugby World Cup final": South Africa defeated New Zealand, Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb-Ellis trophy in an iconic post-apartheid moment. 2004, in New York, capital punishment was declared unconstitutional. 2010, John Isner of the United States defeated Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history. Also 2010, Julia Gillard assumed office as the first female Prime Minister of Australia. 2012, Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, died. 2013, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of abusing his power and having sex with an underage prostitute, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 1128, Battle of São Mamede, near Guimarães: Forces led by Alfonso I defeated forces led by his mother Teresa of León and her lover Fernando Pérez de Traba. After this battle, the future king called himself "Prince of Portugal", the first step towards "official independence" that would be reached in 1139 after the Battle of Ourique. 1230, the Siege of Jaén started in the context of the Spanish Reconquista. 1314, First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn concluded with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognise Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. 1340, Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet was almost completely destroyed by the English Fleet commanded in person by King Edward III. 1374, a sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. 1497, John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.
In 1509, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England. 1531, the city of San Juan del Río, Mexico, was founded. 1535, the Anabaptist state of Münster was conquered and disbanded. 1571, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi founded Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines. 1597, the first Dutch voyage to the East Indiesreached Bantam (on Java). 1604, Samuel de Champlain discovered the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. 1622, Battle of Macau: The Dutch attempt but fail to capture Macau. 1717, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), was founded in London. 1762, Battle of Wilhelmsthal: The British-Hanoverian army of Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated French forces in Westphalia. 1779, American Revolutionary War: The Great Siege of Gibraltar began. 1793, the first Republican constitution in France was adopted.
In 1812, Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon's Grande Armée crossed the Neman River beginning the invasion of Russia. 1813, Battle of Beaver Dams: A British and Indian combined force defeated the United States Army. 1821, the Battle of Carabobo took place. It was the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain. 1859, Battle of Solferino(Battle of the Three Sovereigns): Sardinia and France defeated Austria in Solferino, northern Italy. 1866, Battle of Custoza: An Austrian army defeated the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War. 1880, first performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français. 1894, Marie Francois Sadi Carnot was assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio.
In 1902, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom developed appendicitis, delaying his coronation. 1913, Greece and Serbia annulled their alliance with Bulgaria. 1916, Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million dollar contract. Also 1916, World War I: The Battle of the Somme began with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line. 1918, First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto. 1932, a bloodless Revolution instigated by the People's Party ended the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand). 1938, pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania. 1939, Siam was renamed Thailand by Plaek Pibulsonggram, the country's third prime minister.
In 1940, World War II: Operation Collar, the first British Commando raid on occupied France, by No 11 Independent Company. 1947, Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. 1948, start of the Berlin Blockade: The Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible. 1949, the first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC starring William Boyd. 1954, First Indochina War: Battle of Mang Yang Pass: Vietminh troops belonging to the 803rd Regiment ambushed G.M. 100 of France in An Khê. 1957, in Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment. 1963, the United Kingdom granted Zanzibar internal self-government. 1973, the UpStairs Lounge arson attack took place at a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Thirty-two people died as a result of fire or smoke inhalation.
In 1981, the Humber Bridge was opened to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years. 1982, "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines. 1989, Jiang Zeminsucceeded Zhao Ziyang to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Chinaafter 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. 1995, "Rugby World Cup final": South Africa defeated New Zealand, Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb-Ellis trophy in an iconic post-apartheid moment. 2004, in New York, capital punishment was declared unconstitutional. 2010, John Isner of the United States defeated Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history. Also 2010, Julia Gillard assumed office as the first female Prime Minister of Australia. 2012, Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, died. 2013, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of abusing his power and having sex with an underage prostitute, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
=== 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.
===
Thanks to Warren for this advice on watching Bolt
Warren Catton Get this for your PC or MAC https://www.foxtel.com.au/foxtelplay/how-it-works/pc-mac.html Once you have installed it start it up and press Live TV you don't need a login to watch Sky News!
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January.
Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?
January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?
January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, 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 a free kindle version.
List of available items at Create Space
The Amazon Author Page for David Ball
UK .. http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01683ZOWGFrench .. http://www.amazon.fr/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Japan .. http://www.amazon.co.jp/-/e/B01683ZOWG
German .. http://www.amazon.de/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Happy birthday and many happy returns CamMie Du, Bill Luu, Philip Ly, Ron Ruthfield and Ganesha Edu Tour. Born on the same day, across the years. On your day is celebrated the birth of the greatest Jewish prophet, John the Baptist. In 1571, Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi established a council to govern the city of Manila, now the capital of the Philippines. In 1717, The first Masonic Grand Lodge, the Premier Grand Lodge of England, was founded in London. In 1880, "O Canada", today the national anthem of Canada, was first performed in Quebec City, Quebec, during a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day banquet. In 1937, The United States' first two "fast battleships", the North Carolina class, were ordered from the New York and Philadelphia Naval Shipyards. In 1994, A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress based at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane County, Washington, crashed, killing all four crew members, and later providing a case study on the importance of compliance with safety regulations. But you don't need a case study to comply with safety regulations. Your day is for feasting. You don't lose your head, you explore and your song is as sweet as the kindest Canadian and as inexorable as a fast battleship. Cheers!
Deaths
June 24: Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Christianity); National Holiday/Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec, Canada
About this time, soldiers in the hundred year war felt jaded. It was a fierce battle in Macau, but we held all the cards. They launched a very big mistake. We'll cross that bridge. First is sometimes memorable. Let's party.
|
FRIDAY SONGBOARD
Tim Blair – Friday, June 24, 2016 (3:26am)
To celebrate Britain’s liberation – or to mourn continued EU oppression, depending on the result – please enjoy one of the most patriotic pop songs ever released:
UPDATE. It’s close! Follow the fun at the Sun and the Wall Street Journal.
UPDATE. It’s close! Follow the fun at the Sun and the Wall Street Journal.
UPDATE II. Pro-EU campaigners early in the count:
Pro-EU campaigners now:
Still many votes to count, but it’s looking good for Leave.
Pro-EU campaigners now:
Still many votes to count, but it’s looking good for Leave.
UPDATE III. Reader Steve emails:
I phoned my Uncle Johnny (WWII Parachute Regiment) last night to wish him a happy 90th birthday. He was putting on his overcoat and heading into the rain to his polling station in West Yorkshire. I asked which way he was planning to vote.“When I was 20 I dropped into France to stop the Germans taking over my country,” he replied, “so I thought I’d better have another go at stopping them now.”
UPDATE IV. This is beautiful:
Based on analysis of the remaining undeclared counts, the BBC forecasts that UK has voted to leave the European Union by 52% to 48%.
Eric Cartman wins!
Politics as practised for a generation is upended; traditional party allegiances are shredded; the prime minister’s authority is bust – and that is just the parochial domestic fallout. A whole continent looks on in trepidation. It was meant to be unthinkable, now the thought has become action. Europe cannot be the same again.
Good.
UPDATE VIII. For his usual clear-headed and concise analysis, we now turn to Waleed Aly:
Let’s start with Britain. What is it that ultimately drives the opposition to the EU that we’re witnessing in the ‘Leave’ campaign? I feel like this opposition is completely at odds with itself. What I see is a search for British identity – that it can offer something substantial outside the EU, that will reclaim some sense of British exceptionalism, if you like.But even then, you can’t help but notice that the ‘Leave’ campaign is really an English campaign, it’s not a Scottish campaign, or a Northern Ireland campaign, or even a Welsh campaign.The end result might be a form of English nationalism which was completely unintended: England might become an independent state. All these contradictions start to emerge as soon as you examine it closely. As a result, if the Brexit campaign is in fact successful, everything that might be achieved by means of this mass of contradictory agendas will just collapse upon itself. After all, the politics of protest can only go so far.What about the EU, then? Part of the problem for Europe is that it doesn’t really exist, so it’s very hard for Europe to cobble together something more substantive than a technocratic or economic unity. If you were going to re-energise, re-politicise, re-moralise the EU, where would you even begin? What bedrock identity or underlying myth would you have recourse to?
(Via J.F. Beck, who emails: “Huh?")
UPDATE IX. A prediction from Antony Beevor:
Brexit would make Britain the world’s most hated nation.
Maybe not:
Brexit spreads across Europe: Italy, France, Holland and Denmark ALL call for referendums
WARNING: WARNINGS AHEAD
Tim Blair – Friday, June 24, 2016 (2:05am)
Trigger warnings at Australian universities are even stupider than trigger warnings in the US and UK:
University students are being warned when classes contains graphic or sensitive content, including sexual abuse, rape and transgenderism, to protect their mental health.Australian academics are issuing so-called “trigger warnings” for confronting material in classrooms at the start of each semester, and before classes, to give students the chance to opt out.
The problem is, many of them don’t:
University of Melbourne’s Dr Lauren Rosewarne, who teaches about gender and sexuality, has been warning students about potentially disturbing content since she started teaching 13 years ago …Dr Rosewarne said students in the past two years have been increasingly “polic[ing] the language of lecturers”, and said she is frequently being scrutinised by students, who shout out corrections in the middle of lectures.
That’s a paddlin’. Besides sexual abuse, rape and transgenderism, check out the ever-growing list of trigger-worthy topics:
La Trobe’s student union and the women’s officers at the University of Sydney issue warnings for content relating to classism, colonialism, Islamophobia, ableism, body image, child abuse, mental illness and weapons.They go as far as warning students about content relating to needles, insects, food, pregnancy, eye contact, slimy things, skulls, vomit and blood.
I’m guessing none of these kids are studying medicine.
(Via Dave T., who emails: “I think this is evidence we need to scrap a lot of universities and rebuild from the ground up. The only trigger warning I have ever worried about was when that guy pointed the M16 at my car in PNG.")
GET YOUR BREXIT ON
Tim Blair – Thursday, June 23, 2016 (7:32pm)
Polling stations are opening for Britain’s historic referendum in which turnout is a crucial factor, and the nation’s capital is waking to appalling weather.Overnight thunderstorms and localised flooding have caused chaos on London’s public transport network on the morning of the vote. This status report from Transport for London shows Tube and other services are experiencing delays and some are even suspended.
How this might influence the result is anybody’s guess.
UPDATE. The Sydney Morning Herald‘s view:
The murder of pro-Remain Labour MP Jo Cox last week revealed a disconnect between the political mainstream and a minority who blame others for all manner of personal and social ills. It served to remind everyone what happens when extremes distort political discourse with an agenda that is anathema to respect and tolerance of difference.A victory for Brexit in the vote on Thursday (London time) will be a victory for those destructive forces of hate.
That newspaper is infantile.
(Via Matt Hayden.)
UPDATE II. Too close to call.
UPDATE III. Bookmaker odds are pessimistic:
As Britain goes to the polls to vote on the EU Referendum, the odds on Brexit are plummeting – to a new low of 17 per cent at the time of writing. The Spectator’s zoomable live odds chart, below, shows the speed of the decline. At 9am this morning it was 23pc, at 10.45am it was 19pc and by 11.30am it was 17pc. An hour later, 15pc.
Labor surges
Andrew Bolt June 24 2016 (7:07pm)
I am hearing that there has been a surge to Labor, so bad that Malcolm Turnbull could be left with a majority of just two seats - a disaster that could finish him. Control of the Senate will be lost for a generation or more.
UPDATE
Laurie Oakes on Channel Nine is also reporting more support for Labor in the marginal seats.
And how has Malcolm Turnbull been campaigning lately? He’s spent more than a week talking about Medicare - a Labor issue - and spent a whole day going to the handover of Aboriginal land. He also infuriated his base by saying Australia was “invaded” and by hosting an end of Ramadan meal with Waleed Aly and Muslim representatives, some of whom believe in stoning adulterers and vilifying gays.
This is Turnbull’s strategy of taking the base for granted taken to ludicrous extremes.
===UPDATE
Laurie Oakes on Channel Nine is also reporting more support for Labor in the marginal seats.
And how has Malcolm Turnbull been campaigning lately? He’s spent more than a week talking about Medicare - a Labor issue - and spent a whole day going to the handover of Aboriginal land. He also infuriated his base by saying Australia was “invaded” and by hosting an end of Ramadan meal with Waleed Aly and Muslim representatives, some of whom believe in stoning adulterers and vilifying gays.
This is Turnbull’s strategy of taking the base for granted taken to ludicrous extremes.
That is your taxes at grubby work at the ABC
Andrew Bolt June 24 2016 (6:58pm)
The ABC’s cultural standards are going down the toilet. Why are we subsidising the trashing of our culture?
Gerard Henderson:
===Gerard Henderson:
There is surely a time when the powers-that- be at the ABC should say that one of The Chaser Boys’ attempts at humour has gone too far. For example, the following photoshop of the Prime Minister shown last Wednesday and promoted by Chas Licciardello and Andrew Hansen:Why are we subsidising this?
It’s interesting to note that the ABC management and the ABC board still regard such “humour” by The Chaser Boys with respect to the Prime Minister as both appropriate and funny. But, there you go.
Britain leaves Europe. UPDATE: David Cameron says he’ll quit
Andrew Bolt June 24 2016 (4:13pm)
Britain votes to leave the European Union by a stunning 52 per cent to 48.
This is huge, not just in political or economic terms, but in cultural as well.
The silent majority has voted for independence from European control.
It has voted for independence from the international elite.
It has voted for democracy.
It has voted for the local and the loved rather than rootless cosmopolitanism - the international citizenship of those with no particular ties of affection and custom.
It has voted against multiculturalism and the lie that all cultures are equal and equally deserving of respect.
It has voted against mass immigration and open borders.
It has voted for the right to insist on who comes into their country and the circumstances in which they come.
UPDATE
Politicians in other EU countries now demand referenda, too.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who fought to stay in Europe, says he will step down by October. He called the referendum which has now ended his leadership.
Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in Europe. They love the handouts, I guess. Wales voted to leave. This could lead to further division of the UK.
UPDATE
The country’s newspapers were essentially split between the Leftst ones which voted to remain in the big European super-government and the conservative ones that voted for more British independence.
===This is huge, not just in political or economic terms, but in cultural as well.
The silent majority has voted for independence from European control.
It has voted for independence from the international elite.
It has voted for democracy.
It has voted for the local and the loved rather than rootless cosmopolitanism - the international citizenship of those with no particular ties of affection and custom.
It has voted against multiculturalism and the lie that all cultures are equal and equally deserving of respect.
It has voted against mass immigration and open borders.
It has voted for the right to insist on who comes into their country and the circumstances in which they come.
UPDATE
Politicians in other EU countries now demand referenda, too.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who fought to stay in Europe, says he will step down by October. He called the referendum which has now ended his leadership.
Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in Europe. They love the handouts, I guess. Wales voted to leave. This could lead to further division of the UK.
UPDATE
The country’s newspapers were essentially split between the Leftst ones which voted to remain in the big European super-government and the conservative ones that voted for more British independence.
ABC doing the devil’s work in giving terrorist sympathiser Zaky Mallah a voice
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (5:39am)
WHEN Q&A’s producers hand-picked Zaky Mallah to join its audience at the ABC’s Ultimo stu-dios on Monday night, they knew exactly what he was.
Everyone in media, police and legal circles knows.
Continue reading 'ABC doing the devil’s work in giving terrorist sympathiser Zaky Mallah a voice'Headline numbers a tribute to government’s prudence
Piers Akerman – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (5:14am)
There are two strong underlying messages in this year’s NSW Budget.
The first is that prudence pays off.
The second is that even while basking in the warm sunny uplands of budget surplus territory into which Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian has led the state this year and through the forward estimates, there can be no relaxation of the Baird government’s relentless focus on discipline.
Continue reading 'Headline numbers a tribute to government’s prudence'CLEMENTINE TAKES DOWN THE KIDS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (7:31pm)
The brutal sexist demons tormenting Clementine Ford turn out to be three Adelaide schoolchildren:
Adelaide High School has suspended three Year 11 students for “abhorrent” social media comments directed at women’s advocate and columnist Clementine Ford …Principal Anita Zocchi wrote on the school website on Monday that the “abhorrent” comments included “demeaning references towards women, and racism, and are in stark contrast to the school values of respect and compassion”.
Stupid kids. If they’d made similar comments about women at News Corp, the ABC would have picked them up in a bus and put them on television.
TRUE BELIEVERS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (2:33pm)
Zaky Mallah chooses his side:
I am a Sydney Morning Herald believer. Fairfax allegiance.
And people say the SMH has no readers in Western Sydney. Meanwhile, in a wealthier part of town, here’s Mike Carlton:
My wife and many of our friends have senior jobs in ABC News and Current Affairs. I know how they strive for fair and impartial reporting.
Yet somehow they never quite achieve it. Keep on striving, ABC.
UPDATE. Using Mallah’s “believer” comment and perhaps this photograph, readers are invited to come up with the Syrian Morning Herald‘s next ad campaign. Send the results to blairt@dailytelegraph.com.au or post a link in comments.
UPDATE II. Next week’s Quran & Allah with your host, Al-ABC veteran Tony Jones:
UPDATE III. The love media at war:
UPDATE III. The love media at war:
Reports published in The Guardian Australia and Fairfax make a false claim that the managing director of the ABC Mark Scott ordered its current affairs radio program PM not to broadcast an interview with the former terrorism suspect Zaky Mallah after his appearance on Q&A.This is not correct, as the Guardian was informed prior to publication. No such directive was issued.The ABC has contacted both publications for retraction.
This is getting better by the minute.
UPDATE IV. Aaron P. emails: “In these financially dire times for Fairfax they probably could not afford a new advertising campaign so I have simply refreshed an existing one they had.” Nice work:
WHEN THE ABC WAS WORRIED
Tim Blair – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (3:27am)
A couple of years ago the Daily Telegraph‘s Miranda Devine was invited to be a particular week’s token conservative on the ABC’s Q & A program.
Concerned she would face the usual anti-conservative hostility from the show’s live audience and fellow guests, Miranda called to ask if I might join the audience to offer some support.
Naturally, I agreed. As did another friend, Caroline Overington, then working for The Australian. So Miranda contacted Q & A‘s producers to tell them she had a couple of mates coming along, and asked if tickets could be provided.
That’s when the trouble began.
Continue reading 'WHEN THE ABC WAS WORRIED'FREEDOM FEAST
Tim Blair – Wednesday, June 24, 2015 (2:32am)
Chompin’ steaks and talkin’ politics last night at Kingsleys with Chris Kenny and Adam Baldwin. The last time I caught up with Adam was in Santa Monica, where at one point he gazed around the restaurant and asked: “I wonder how many people here have a concealed-carry .45?” After a moment he answered his own question: “Probably just the one.”
Ahead of last night’s feast we warned Adam that Kingsleys, like the rest of Australia, does not permit concealed-carry firearms. “Open carry?” he asked, hopefully.
(Incidentally, the staff at Kingsleys are among the best in the nation. The place isn’t cheap, but it’s worth booking for the service alone. Seriously.)
On 2GB tonight - Shorten admits he misled
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (8:26pm)
===ABC paid for Mallah
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (3:39pm)
Your taxes were used by the ABC to pay the traveling expenses for Zaky Mallah, jailed for threatening to kill ASIO officers.
Mallah has confirmed to 2GB’s Ben Fordham that the ABC paid for a shuttle bus to bring him from Parramatta to the ABC studio and back again, so he could ask a gotcha question of Parliamentary secretary Steve Ciobo.
Other audience members were not given travel expenses. See, none had even uttered a threat to kill.
===Mallah has confirmed to 2GB’s Ben Fordham that the ABC paid for a shuttle bus to bring him from Parramatta to the ABC studio and back again, so he could ask a gotcha question of Parliamentary secretary Steve Ciobo.
Other audience members were not given travel expenses. See, none had even uttered a threat to kill.
Labor wants to run our schools?
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (9:07am)
(Thanks to reader Ian.)
The Killing Season summed up
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (8:34am)
The three-part The Killing Season can be summed up by just two quotes from the final episode:
Kevin Rudd on Gillard:
===Kevin Rudd on Gillard:
I think Julia has always had a bit of a problem with the truth…Julia Gillard on Rudd:
There is nothing that could lead you to expect, you know, bastardry of that magnitude.
Zaky Mallah is just symptomatic of the ABC’s unlawful bias. Time for reform
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (8:15am)
The Australian lists the five questions the ABC refused to answer over Q&A’s decision to use an Islamist extremist who has served jail for threatening to kill ASIO officers:
FIVE QUESTIONS ABC REFUSE TO ANSWERThe answer to question 2 is clearly “yes”, and I hope the Liberals do more than just fume at what is actually symptomatic of the systematic bias of the ABC that starts at the very top, and is particularly flagrant at Q&A. Remember how Q&A stacked an audience with Muslim radicals to confront the Attorney-General? Remember this astonishing panel? Remember this panel, and the set-up questions from radicals in the audience, including the Muslim panelist who raved about the “legitimate grievances” of jihadists and urged us to be “very cynical about the Government’s use of these [anti-terrorism] raids to politicise the Muslim problem of terrorism”?
1 - Did Q&A approach Zaky Mallah to join the show’s audience, or did he approach Q&A?
2 - Were the Q&A team aware of the general nature of the question that Zaky Mallah was going to ask?
3 - Did the ABC pay for Zaky Mallah to appear on Q&A?
4 - Did the ABC pay for his transport or travel to the program?
5 - Can you please release the correspondence between Mallah and the ABC.
So let’s see what comes of this anger:
Mallah’s appearance on Q&A was deliberately manufactured by the ABC to ambush guests… “The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL (Islamic State) because of ministers like him,” Mallah said on the program in response to comments by Mr Ciobo.UPDATE
Tony Abbott said the ABC had “betrayed Australians” and called Q&A a “lefty lynch mob” for providing a national platform for Mallah, who he described as a “convicted criminal and terrorist sympathiser”.
In comments to the Coalition partyroom, Mr Abbott said he would consider a government-wide boycott of Q&A.
“We all know that Q&A is a lefty lynch mob and we will be looking at this and we will bring something back when we return,” he told angry MPs…
Contacting ABC boss Mark Scott, chairman Jim Spigelman and Q&A host Tony Jones, [Communications Minister Malcolm] Turnbull said it “beggars belief” that Mallah was included in a live audience…
“He had served a term of imprisonment for threatening to kill ASIO officers. He had been charged with threatening suicide attacks and preparing for terrorist attacks in that context, although had been acquitted. He had travelled to Syria in the pursuit of what he described as ‘jihad’. “His social media presence is vile, abusive and violent,” Mr Turnbull said. “Surely we have learned to take threats of this kind, to take people like this, extremely seriously....’
...the ABC board will engage in an external review of Q&A, including its audience makeup and its commitment to balance, impartiality and accuracy.
Government MP Alex Hawke wrote to the ABC demanding Q&A be taken off-air while the review was undertaken and asked for all communications between the public broadcaster and Mallah to be released.
Good on Immigration Minister Peter Dutton for repeatedly calling out the ABC reporter this morning for running a “rearguard” action and “protection racket” for Q&A.
UPDATE
Has Labor said anything about this scandal?
UPDATE
Getting it said:
(Thanks to reader Gab.)
Don’t tell sob stories about Sharrouf’s widow
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (7:51am)
A little more frankness from the lawyer might help:
Give me a break.
Here is the story as told by The Australian last year:
===Barrister Charles Waterstreet represents Karen Nettleton, the mother of [Khaled] Sharrouf’s wife Tara. He’s trying to get the family back to Australia.They actually lost a psychopathic killer and rapist who was such a sick father that he got at least one of his five children to hold up a severed head.
CHARLES WATERSTREET, BARRISTER: They’ve lost a husband and a father: little children. And a grandmother has lost custody of them at the moment.
CHARLES WATERSTREET: Tara did not know that when she left Australia and went to Malaysia that where she was going. She had another place told to her by her husband and so she ended up in Syria - in Turkey and Syria - not fully knowing exactly where she was.Pardon? She didn’t purchase tickets to her destination? She didn’t check the destination on her ticket? Didn’t check the departures board to see where she was going? Hadn’t followed the news about her husband? Didn’t ask about where she was smuggled to with her children?
Give me a break.
Here is the story as told by The Australian last year:
With her mother, Karen Nettleton, and the couple’s five children in tow, the Muslim convert flew to Malaysia, where the family stayed with Sharrouf’s sister and brother-in-law. From there, Tara Nettleton and the kids boarded another plane, this one to Turkey. Then they slipped across the border into Syria where they were reunited with Sharrouf, who, along with his friend Mohamed Elomar, was fighting with Islamic State.And did Tara Nettleton really have no idea that her travel would take her to where ASIO would not want her to go? Why disguise her destination?
According to the Attorney-Generals Department Ms Nettleton, her children and their grandmother left Australia after booking return tickets to Malaysia in February.And didn’t she stick with this man even when he was jailed in Australia for terrorism offences?
The Pope of the Marxist greens
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (7:33am)
Paul Kelly reviews the Pope’s encyclical on the environment, much worshipped by warming extremists:
===Page after page reveals Francis and his advisers as environmental populists and economic ideologues of a quasi-Marxist bent. The language is vivid, almost hysterical. Profound intellectual ignorance is dressed up as honouring God.
Labor should apologise for selling us an $80 billion fraud
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (7:26am)
After all that huffing and puffing over the alleged $80 billion of cuts to health and education, Bill Shorten quietly backs off any promise to put back what was never there and never affordable:
===Mr Shorten has flayed the government over $80bn in cumulative savings on federal payments to the states for hospitals and schools over the decade ahead, basing his attack on budget papers from last year that confirmed the cuts.So for at least two years, Labor has been preaching a fraud - promising a wild spending spree on health and education when it always knew there was not the slightest hope of ever finding the money to pay for it.
While spending on schools and hospitals will grow over time, the savings come from a lower trajectory for the outlays compared to earlier forecasts — trimming $30bn from schools and $50bn from hospitals over 10 years.
Mr Shorten ... would not say if a Labor government would restore the cash…
“We’ll unveil our policies but we are always a better bet based upon our history to better fund healthcare and education than the government,” Mr Shorten said.
Mr Abbott drew fierce criticism last year for funding the first four years of the Gonski plan — at a cost of $2.8bn — without making a commitment to the final two years, which cost another $7bn.
One year ago Mr Shorten was unequivocal when asked if he was still committed to the Gonski plan… But yesterday he avoided a similar commitment and emphasised his support for the broad principle that underlies the Gonski reform, a funding model based on the need of each school. “Labor has never given up on needs-based funding,” Mr Shorten said yesterday.
What better story do we tell these potential jihadist recruits?
Andrew Bolt June 24 2015 (7:10am)
Greg Craven, vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, on fighting the Islamic State:
So I have sympathy with Craven’s point. But I do also wonder whether we could ever offer what the Islamic State does - a heady excuse to unleash your inner evil and will to dominate and destroy. And I do wonder whether a stronger Christian presence actually means a weaker Muslim faith.
UPDATE
Can any story we tell truly appeal to the kind of recruits turned on by this savagery?
===So we seem to have at least two problems, apart from being faced with global, growing evil. We do not have our own, strong, resistant national narrative...I worry about the cultural diet we feed children - of shame in our past, of the qualified right of non-Aborigines to belong, of tribalism, of hostility to Christianity.
Perhaps these realities underlie a very frightening question posed to me recently by a close friend… Islamic State, he said, was horror itself distilled. But to disengaged youth it had every appearance of strength, certainty, excitement, commitment and — worst of all — meaning.
Where he asked, in Australia, was the comparable but decent “alternative product”? Even more pointedly, he demanded of me as a member of the Catholic Church — the largest religion in the world with at least as compelling a backstory as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — what our competing program was?
So I have sympathy with Craven’s point. But I do also wonder whether we could ever offer what the Islamic State does - a heady excuse to unleash your inner evil and will to dominate and destroy. And I do wonder whether a stronger Christian presence actually means a weaker Muslim faith.
UPDATE
Can any story we tell truly appeal to the kind of recruits turned on by this savagery?
Vile jihadis fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq have brutally murdered five prisoners by locking them in a metal cage and lowering them into a swimming pool.(Thanks to reader Jenny W.)
Filmed in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, the sickening seven minute long video uses expensive underwater cameras to film the terrified men as they sink below the surface with no hope of escape.
Shortly afterwards the cage is lifted back out of the water, with the dying men - who are understood to have been accused of spying - seen foaming at the mouth as they lie motionless on the floor of the cage, piled on top of one another.
Elsewhere in the video, ISIS militants are filmed brutally killing prisoners by locking them in a car and shooting them with a grenade launcher, while another group of jihadis chain a set of prisoners together with explosive necklaces which are then detonated.
The fundamental fact that so many anti-Israel activists have an issue with: Israel has the right to exist - by anyone's definition. Video: Prager University
Posted by StandWithUs on Monday, 22 June 2015
Today, we mourn the loss of film composer, orchestrator, conductor and ASCAP member James Horner. Truly one of the...
Posted by American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP)on Tuesday, 23 June 2015
===
Tim Mathieson’s cry for attention
Miranda Devine – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (9:06pm)
FORMER Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd have spent much of the nine months since the election overseas, out of the local spotlight.
Continue reading 'Tim Mathieson’s cry for attention'How jihad became the latest fashion in Sydney
Miranda Devine – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (9:03pm)
WHY is jihad so cool in Australia that we have become the leading supplier, per capita, of Western fighters in Syria and now Iraq? Our 150 jihadists are disproportionately represented, compared to an estimated 50 from the US, and 400 from the UK, out of 1000 from all Europe.
Continue reading 'How jihad became the latest fashion in Sydney'SYDNEY JOINS THE CALIPHATE
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (5:33pm)
Excuse me, but what the hell is this?
A speaker at the upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas will seek to defend so-called honour killings – the murder of women deemed to have brought shame or dishonour on their family.Uthman Badar, a Sydney-based Muslim speaker, writer and activist, will deliver a presentation titled“Honour killings are morally justified” and argue that such acts are seized on by Westerners as a symbol of everything they dislike about another culture …Mr Badar is speaking alone and will not be debated by an opponent.
Maybe he thinks an opponent would be dangerous. This is revolting.
UPDATE. The cost to attend this speech is $25 per head. Attached, presumably.
AUSTRALIA’S NEWEST OLDEST ART
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (4:49am)
Stencil shenanigans in NSW:
An “Aboriginal hand stencil” cited by opponents of a controversial coalmine extension proposed west of the Blue Mountains in NSW has been identified as a recent piece of rock art only a few years old.A report by engineering consultancy Aecom Australia for Coalpac says the “questionable” hand stencil is likely to be a “modern replica” of a traditional Aboriginal hand stencil and is at most 3½ years old.
I’ve got canned food older than this – culturally significant canned food. Readers are invited to raid cupboards for their own historic consumables. Send photographs of any domestic artefacts to blairt@dailytelegraph.com.au
NO FACTS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (4:12am)
No Fibs editor Margo Kingston publishes a lie:
This simply isn’t true. The myth of Gillard’s supposedly hidden quote was exposed last year by Andrew Bolt. Once again, for unobservant Margo, here is Gillard’s full statement:
This simply isn’t true. The myth of Gillard’s supposedly hidden quote was exposed last year by Andrew Bolt. Once again, for unobservant Margo, here is Gillard’s full statement:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead. What we will do is we will tackle the challenge of climate change. We’ve invested record amounts in solar and renewable technologies. Now I want to build the transmission lines that will bring that clean green energy into the national electricity grid. I also want to make sure we have no more dirty coal-fired power stations. I want to make sure we’re driving greener cars and working from greener buildings. I will be delivering those things and leading our national debate about to reach a consensus about putting a cap on carbon pollution.
Notice that at no point does Gillard say: “But let’s be absolutely clear. I am determined to price carbon.” Not even close. Over to you, Margo. As a follower of the MEAA code of ethics, you’re obliged to offer a correction:
Do your utmost to achieve fair correction of errors.
In your own time.
FUNDED FUNDAMENTALISTS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (3:46am)
Another member of the moocherhideen (Texas division):
Muslim Killer on Disability and Food Stamps had Diamonds and 200 Credit Cards …He was too disabled to work. But not too disabled to kill.
Do read on. Meanwhile, across in the UK, some 500 locals have joined battle in Syria and Iraq against fellow Muslims. Around 300 have returned. Former MI6 counter-terrorism chief Richard Barrett says keeping track of these security risks is “a completely impossible task” for British authorities. Leo McKinstry:
We have ended up with Muslim enclaves dominated by the burkha, sharia tribunals, forced marriages, and ballot box fraud. Nor do the mosques do much to promote social cohesion. A recent study found that, out of Britain’s 1,700 mosques, just two follow a modernist interpretation of the Koran, while a quarter do not even allow women on the premises.And the truth is that Islamic extremists have contempt for our society. Their allegiance is entirely to their hardline doctrine, not to this country.Indeed, it is absurd to describe them as “British” at all, for they have complete disdain for the normal responsibilities of British citizenship.They are interested only in exploiting us, whether it be through welfare or education or housing or legal aid.
Even Hezbollah is spooked by the recent surge in violent fundamentalism. Back in Sydney, our jihadi boys cut dashing figures in the latest fashions from the house of Mo:
Islamic fundamentalists in south-western Sydney are wearing propagandist paraphernalia freely available for sale at local markets and online to show their support for jihadi bloodshed.
“Submit” seems to be a recurrent motif.
I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING SHE SAID
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (3:04am)
Sarah Hanson-Young delivers the best speech of her entire career:
A REALLY BIG QUESTION
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (2:52am)
Anguished carbon justification from Greenpeace:
The head of Greenpeace UK has defended the need for one of the environmental group’s top executives to fly to work several times a month …Responding to fresh revelations in the Guardian that the organisation’s finance team is in disarray, and that Pascal Husting, Greenpeace’s international programme director, flies several times a month from his home in Luxembourg to offices in Amsterdam, John Sauven wrote in a blogpost: “as for Pascal’s air travel. Well it’s a really tough one. Was it the right decision to allow him to use air travel to try to balance his job with the needs of his family for a while?”
Feel the sweat as Greenpeace overlord Sauven continues:
“For me, it feels like it gets to the heart of a really big question. What kind of compromises do you make in your efforts to try to make the world a better place?“I think there is a line there. Honesty and integrity to the values that are at the heart of the good you’re trying to do in the world cannot be allowed to slip away. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we’ve crossed that line here at Greenpeace.”
Forget the line, pal. Your frequent-flying administrator is being shadowed by a doom clown. He’s as good as gone.
PATTERN EMERGES
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (2:21am)
Every day is sorry day at the ABC.
WHOLE CLASS FEELS HIS WRATH
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 24, 2014 (1:41am)
Nobody messes with Mr Garvey:
Rebekah Brooks cleared of all charges
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (9:10pm)
A seven-month trial is so ruinously expensive, even for those found innocent, that it represents an abuse of state power. And that goes double for this trial, which seemed politically and ideologically motivated:
===Andy Coulson has been been found guilty in the phone hacking trial, but his co-defendant, Rebekah Brooks has been cleared of all charges.May the Murdoch haters choke on their vomit at this result.
Coulson, who edited the News of the World before becoming Prime Minister David Cameron’s official spokesman, now faces prison after the jury returned a guilty verdict in dramatic scenes at the Old Bailey.
But Mrs Brooks, who edited The Sun and the News of the World, before promotion to News International chief executive was exonerated after being cleared of conspiracy to hack phones, conspiracy to corrupt public officials and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The verdicts represent only a partial victory for the police and prosecutors, who have spent three years and tens of millions of pounds attempting to bring those responsible for the phone hacking scandal to justice. Mrs Brooks had always denied any knowledge of illegal activities at the Sun and the News of the World and after a seven month trial the jury accepted her version of events.
Multicultural Australia
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (7:49pm)
February:
We can’t be sure of what really happened, and who is responsible. But the allegations suggest our immigration and refugee programs don’t leave us as safe as we deserve.
===A teenage girl has been sexually assaulted by a gang of men in Sydney’s west…Saturday:
In an attack police believe was random, the 14-year-old girl was initially assaulted by one man in Doonside before his friends joined on Saturday night… The men are all described as being of African appearance and aged in their late teens to early 20s.
The gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in a Western Sydney car park stairwell has disgusted police.
The girl was in the Liverpool library forecourt on Saturday night after using the council’s free wi-fi internet when six men approached her and invited her to meet a mutual friend…
The men, described as African in appearance and aged in their 20s, were last seen walking toward a Macquarie Street shopping centre.
We can’t be sure of what really happened, and who is responsible. But the allegations suggest our immigration and refugee programs don’t leave us as safe as we deserve.
Peter Greste a POW in Egypt’s war on Islamism and its allies in al Jazeera
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (7:28pm)
This is not about anything Peter Greste did, and I doubt the Australian Government can do much to help him:
Terrible news for the Greste family:
===AUSTRALIAN journalist Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues accused of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood have been jailed for seven years in Egypt.The Government even got the US, bearing gifts, to tell Egypt to free Greste:
Greste and two other reporters working for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera English were among 20 defendants in a trial that has triggered international outrage amid fears of growing media restrictions in Egypt.
Since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the authorities have been incensed by the Qatari network’s coverage of their deadly crackdown on his supporters.
They consider Al Jazeera as the voice of Qatar, and accuse Doha of backing Morsi’s Brotherhood.
Greste, Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed were tried with 17 others on charges of “spreading false news” and having Brotherhood links.... Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he spoke to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over the weekend… The talks between the two leaders follow similar lobbying by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who spoke with her recently appointed Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukri over the weekend.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is pressing Egypt to allow greater political freedoms on the eve of a Cairo court ruling in the terrorism-related case of Australian Peter Greste and two journalist colleagues.And the evidence was a joke:
Kerry became the highest-ranking US official to meet President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi since he came to power earlier this month during a surprise visit on Sunday…
“We also discussed the essential role of a vibrant civil society, free press, rule of law and due process in a democracy."… US officials also revealed $US572 million ($A618.88 million) in aid, frozen since October, was released to Egypt about 10 days ago after a green light from Congress.... US officials said in April they planned to resume some of the annual $US1.5 billion in mostly military aid to Cairo, including 10 Apache helicopter gunships for counterterrorism efforts in the Sinai Peninsula.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Monday her government was shocked by the sentences. ‘The Australian government simply cannot understand it based on the evidence that was presented,’ Ms Bishop said.But Greste is collateral damage in the Egyptian regime’s bloody war against militant Islam:
The arrests of [the al Jazeera journalists] are part of a larger campaign against dissent by Egypt’s military-backed interim government… The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in September and declared a terrorist organization in December. Thousands of its supporters have been arrested, and hundreds have died in clashes with security forces…To Egypt, Greste will seem a prisoner of war:
Among media organizations, Al Jazeera has received a disproportionate amount of abuse and harassment from authorities and pro-government gangs. The broadcaster is owned by the government of Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt accuses Al Jazeera of sharing this agenda—a charge Al Jazeera denies…
Last fall, however, the Washington Post reported that several exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood were living in hotel rooms in Doha paid for by Al Jazeera. Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has also spoken with a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who says he fled Egypt for Qatar, where Al Jazeera paid for him to live in a Doha hotel for two months… “These journalists do not in any way bear any responsibility for this,” says Trager, speaking of Fahmy and his colleagues. “They were doing their job. But the parent organization, Al Jazeera, is putting these people in a very compromising situation by not just covering what is happening in Egypt, but, in some ways, actually participating in it.”
In December, Qatar’s Emir Shaikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani said he has a “duty” to support the Muslim Brotherhood ...Greste should wonder why Al Jazeera put him in such danger by supporting militants opposed to Egypt’s military-backed government:
Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain consider the Brotherhood a threat to national and regional stability and have made several unsuccessful attempts to bring Qatar on side. Instead, Doha has aligned itself with Turkey, whose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hosted several Muslim Brotherhood conferences and is a vehement critic of Egypt’s interim government. Qatar is the only Gulf state that has shown hostility towards Egypt’s transition, resulting in Cairo returning billions of dollars in Qatari aid and withdrawing its ambassador. Qatar has become a safe haven for Brotherhood members who have fled Egypt, according to an article in the Washington Post headlined ‘Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood finds havens abroad’. “Several of the exiles live temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera…” it reads. Doha has ignored Egypt’s requests to extradite Muslim Brotherhood figures, exacerbating tensions between the two countries.
While Muslim Brotherhood strategists plot their next moves in Doha, their fiery religious mentor Yousuf Al Qaradawi — an Egyptian national also being sheltered by Qatar — has been given free rein to stir up dissent in Egypt and shower Saudi Arabia and the UAE with verbal attacks… It’s worth noting that this divisive figure wanted by Egypt is barred from entering the US, the UK and France.
Cast out by — or, perhaps, saved from— the harshest political crackdown in recent Egyptian history, a handful of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders found refuge here in the Qatari capital, while others traveled to Istanbul, London and Geneva…UPDATE
At the same time, an exile leadership is starting to take shape here among the shimmering high-rises of Doha. Several of the exiles live temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera — and it is in those suites and hotel lobbies that the future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and, more broadly, the strategy and ideology of political Islam in the country may well be charted… A high-ranking Egyptian Foreign Ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that the “international Muslim Brotherhood” has held more than half a dozen meetings in Doha and a handful in Turkey and Pakistan since the coup, and that foreign funding is propping up the group at home.
Terrible news for the Greste family:
EGYPT’s president says he will not intervene on behalf of Peter Greste, as his family and the Abbott government ponder a response to his jailing.
Australian Muslim group says West worse than ISIS, and “honour killings” are just
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:34pm)
Young Australian Muslims of Hizb ut-Tahrir say the ISIS terrorist group - which releases propaganda videos showing them shooting and beheading other Muslims - aren’t as bad the West. In fact, the West is the “root problem” and Muslims must “react” to it:
Some truth in that, but missing entirely from the discussion is that the troubling minority is a rather large and extreme one, not seen in any other faith here:
Instead, our cultural elite seems more likely to give Hizb ut-Tahrir a platform to normalise its vile version of Islam:
Would a Christian or a Jew be give the stage to argue why killing disobedient women is good? So why this astonishing license for a Muslim misogynist?
And note the intellectual bankruptcy of the organisers. Longstaff does not understand that free speech comes with a responsibility to attack bad speech, not privilege it. And Mossop’s claim that the speech will “obviously” not advocate honour killings seems belied by the speech’s title: “Honour killings are morally justified.” And why the glowing describing of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the program?
Note from the blurb that at the very least Badar intends to argue that even when Muslim men murder Muslim women for their “honor”, the West is still the villain and the wife-killers are the “powerless”:
Just to remind you what is being defended in Australia - the preparation of the stoning to death of a woman to restore “honour”:
===This time the ‘Islamic state of Iraq and Sham’ (ISIS) is the primary object through which Muslims, Islam and Islamic ideals such as Jihad and the Caliphate are being demonised and attacked.And there is this apparent threat:
In this regard, Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia emphasises the following points:
1.This episode is little more than the usual neo-colonial tactic of forming a basis on which to justify continued intervention in Muslim lands…
If ‘terrorism’ is the use of violence for ideological or political ends, the world has seen no greater terrorists than western states who have laid entire nations to waste through decade-long invasions and war. Yet they are presented as the philanthropic saviors of humanity whilst the actions of relatively powerless groups reacting to oppressive conditions are blown out of all proportion. At the same time, Muslims in the west who make the sacrifice of going abroad to fight tyranny and assist the oppressed are characteristed as ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’… We should respond to these lies with the truth: the truth that the real problem, the root problem, is western violence, which eclipses the violence of any individual or group many times over and is in fact the cause of the oppression to which people are forced to react.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been leading the way in demonising Islam and Muslims… We remind him that Australia made the mistake of going into Iraq aforetime, and that if he does so again, his government and those who support such a move alone will be responsible for the repercussions that ensue.As I write this I hear the usual pieties from a Sky News panel - how the vast majority of Muslims mean well, and those who criticise their faith are nut-jobs etc etc etc.
Some truth in that, but missing entirely from the discussion is that the troubling minority is a rather large and extreme one, not seen in any other faith here:
A HARDLINE Islamic group has warned Muslims that the government was trying to “brainwash” their children and that they should resist any attempts to water down their strict view of Islam.All those journalists denouncing racists might start by denouncing the most obvious examples.
“The government is playing a dirty, dirty game,” Wassim Doureihi told the 600-strong audience at the Hizb ut-Tahrir Australia conference in Lidcombe yesterday…
Mr Doureihi warned the audience that it was “a war on Islam - a war that is being waged in this country as it is in the rest of the world”. Fellow speaker Soadad Doureihi warned: “This is truly a battle.”
Instead, our cultural elite seems more likely to give Hizb ut-Tahrir a platform to normalise its vile version of Islam:
What an utter disgrace.
A speaker at the upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas will seek to defend so-called honour killings - the murder of women deemed to have brought shame or dishonour on their family.
Uthman Badar, a Sydney-based Muslim speaker, writer and activist, will deliver a presentation titled ”Honour killings are morally justified” and argue that such acts are seized on by Westerners as a symbol of everything they dislike about another culture…
Joint founder and co-curator of the festival Simon Longstaff said the idea is one he had consistently nominated for six years, because the point of the event is to push boundaries “to the point where you become extremely uncomfortable"… Co-curator Ann Mossop told Fairfax Media the speech will “obviously” not advocate honour killings but will discuss the framework in which the killings take place… Mr Badar is an Australian spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group described by the festival as “global advocacy group working for positive change in the Muslim world via the re-establishment of the Islamic Caliphate” - a state under sharia, or Islamic law.
Would a Christian or a Jew be give the stage to argue why killing disobedient women is good? So why this astonishing license for a Muslim misogynist?
And note the intellectual bankruptcy of the organisers. Longstaff does not understand that free speech comes with a responsibility to attack bad speech, not privilege it. And Mossop’s claim that the speech will “obviously” not advocate honour killings seems belied by the speech’s title: “Honour killings are morally justified.” And why the glowing describing of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the program?
Note from the blurb that at the very least Badar intends to argue that even when Muslim men murder Muslim women for their “honor”, the West is still the villain and the wife-killers are the “powerless”:
Overwhelmingly, those who condemn ‘honour killings’ are based in the liberal democracies of the West. The accuser and moral judge is the secular (white) westerner and the accused is the oriental other; the powerful condemn the powerless. By taking a particular cultural view of honour, some killings are condemned whilst others are celebrated. In turn, the act becomes a symbol of everything that is allegedly wrong with the other culture.Where is the anti-misogynist lobby now? Where are the Muslim moderates to denounce this? And why is the media so hesitant to criticise a faith whose believers include relatively many who advocate such hatred and excuse such violence?
Just to remind you what is being defended in Australia - the preparation of the stoning to death of a woman to restore “honour”:
If you won’t vote for a carbon tax, you don’t deserve a say
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (3:34pm)
The cultural elite seems dangerously disparaging of democracy - particularly when the public dismisses the fashionable faith. From last night’s Q&A:
===MARK CARNEGIE: Well, I certainly think that we’ve got to explore other ways of thinking about democracy. I think the silent majority of Australia feel incredibly disillusioned and disengaged…Even worse:
I’d say is, having been to sort of summits and other things that are meant to be taking the great and the good to get them together to find some way forward, I would - all I would say to you is anything that we try is likely to have a better chance than what we are doing at the moment.
MARK LATHAM: ... one of the greatest success stories in this country over the 23-year period, has been a policy model along those lines with the Reserve Bank of Australia independently professionally setting official interest rates and I think there must be scope to extend that model to other contentious areas of public policy. The most important long-term issue for the country is climate change, for the planet, is climate change but it’s the worst level of political debate. Surely there is room, at some point, perhaps under a Turnbull-led Liberal Party, to have an agreement about an independent policy-making authority to look after these contentious issues. Take out the partisanship. Take out the scare campaigns. Take out the low-level party politics. And so, too, in framing the Budget. Tony has been involved in this but the Budget debate in this country is just horrible. Again, full of scare campaigns and political opportunism. You could use a model in macro economics similar to what we have got with the Reserve Bank in monetary policies…These people really want you unable to vote against the carbon tax. Really:
TONY JONES: ...a non-elected body where the power…
MARK LATHAM: To make the decisions. TONY JONES: ...to make the policy is delegated, as with the Reserve Bank on monetary policy.
MARK LATHAM: That modern politics doesn’t handle big issues very well and we’ve now got to the point, effectively, of policy gridlock, where you can’t expect an Opposition Party like Labor to put forward carbon pricing at the next election for fear of Tony Abbott’s scare campaign.... That’s why I say that you have to think about alternative mechanisms of policy making that are independent, that are non-partisan…
That’s the first step, for both sides to acknowledge that, really, you won’t get much done in this area if you open it up to political scare campaigns. The Reserve Bank model for monetary policy has been phenomenally successful in this country and Australians now have got accustomed to the idea this is how it’s done. So it can be applied in other areas of policy.
And that should be about the last word from Baillieu
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (3:29pm)
It is particularly stupid to be taped briefing against your own colleagues, and worse to be so abusive in doing so:
===THE Napthine government has been rocked by a leaked recording detailing former premier Ted Baillieu’s strident criticism of colleagues, plunging the Coalition into yet another pre-election scandal.Any hope Baillieu had of a resurrection is now formally dead.
The Sunday Age newspaper has blamed a thief for stealing a recorder, which contained a conversation earlier this year between Mr Baillieu and one of its reporters.
Premier Denis Napthine today called on Mr Baillieu and the newspaper to deal with the scandal gripping the Coalition.
In the recorded conversation, which has leaked widely, Mr Baillieu attacks Liberal colleagues including Bernie Finn, Michael Gidley and Murray Thompson and plays down the merits of the newly-preselected Member for Kew Tim Smith.
He is also highly critical of the forces aligned to party heavyweight Michael Kroger, accusing them of being behind the preselection debacle that forced Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge to contest an Upper House seat. “You know I am not a briefer,’’ Mr Baillieu is quoted as saying in a transcript while slamming some of his colleagues.
Frequent flying green
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (9:10am)
I’ll think Greenpeace really believes in the warming scare when it acts like it preaches:
===One of Greenpeace’s most senior executives commutes 250 miles to work by plane, despite the environmental group’s campaign to curb air travel, it has emerged.
Pascal Husting, Greenpeace International’s international programme director, said he began “commuting between Luxembourg and Amsterdam” when he took the job in 2012 and currently made the round trip about twice a month.
Big Nanny is the smokers’ secret friend
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:49am)
Terry McCrann says Big Nanny made another Big Mistake, but the Left don’t want to know:
It all started with an article by Christian Kerr in our stablemate The Australian, detailing analysis that suggested the Gillard government’s plain packaging legislation had failed in its intended purpose — to reduce smoking.
Kerr cited analysis which indicated the actual number of cigarettes sold — literally, the “sticks” — had increased in calendar 2013. This was the year after plain packaging ... was introduced in December 2012…
A torrent of abuse was unleashed from the left, initiated by former, ahem, Gillard adviser ... Stephen Koukoulas…
In the usual cocktail of stupidity and dishonesty, the Kouk cited official statistics showing the volume of tobacco consumption in the March 2014 quarter was 5.3 per cent lower than in the December 2012 quarter when the law came into effect.
What he did not point out, and as our graph from the Macrobusiness blog shows, virtually the entire fall came in the March quarter itself — which just happened to follow a thumping 12.5 per cent excise increase. What the Kouk is also unable to comprehend is that the ABS figures he cited are merely a proxy for actual tobacco and cigarette volumes…
The following week it was taken up by left-media central, Media Watch, which naturally took as gospel truth what Koukoulas ...said ...
MW did not note Koukoulas had been an adviser to Gillard around that time, and had been subsequently, arguably, the greatest defender of her, ahem, legacy. Yet in contrast, MW host Paul Barry viciously smeared Kerr as a “regular writer … for the Institute of Public Affairs”; with the IPA in turn “partly funded by the tobacco industry”.... Now note that the graph measures dollar spending… What has clearly happened since the new law is that tobacco companies have pushed cut-price smokes; so if the dollar spend is relatively unchanged, it means that the actual sticks smoked or at least bought must have gone up.
Labor and Greens first spend, now shoot the savers
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:22am)
Labor, with the Greens’ help, blew the Budget, leaving us to pay $1 billion a month on their borrowings - and rising fast.
But even in Opposition - yet with a block in the Senate - Labor and the Greens seem still determined to make their debt even worse.
Labor sabotages the Budget rescue:
Labor bases its opposition to welfare cuts on dodgy data:
===But even in Opposition - yet with a block in the Senate - Labor and the Greens seem still determined to make their debt even worse.
Labor sabotages the Budget rescue:
THE federal government will be forced to wait until September at the earliest to try to legislate $12 billion in welfare reforms as Bill Shorten escalates his attacks on the changes to convince voters of the unfairness of the budget.The Greens sabotage the Budget rescue:
The Australian Greens are set to place fresh demands on the government as they seek to overcome an internal spilt over whether to support the $2.2 billion increase in petrol tax contained in the May federal budget…Another saving blocked:
Previously, Greens leader Christine Milne said the party would support the tax increase but she later clarified that only if the proceeds were spent on public transport, not roads, as the government intends.
The Australian Financial Review understands Senator Milne will ask her party room to accept a further condition of not allowing some or all of the excise increase to be rebated to miners, loggers, farmers and other big users of diesel…
It is now likely that July 1 will pass with only one significant budget measure - the $3.2 billion deficit tax - enacted. Other measures due to start on July 1 and which have no hope of passing by then include a $2.6 billion freeze on the indexation of family tax benefits, lifting interests payments and the repayment threshold for higher education fees, worth $3.2 billion, and denying people under 30 the dole for six months, worth $2.1 billion. On top of this the government, in early July, is going to have to pay another $800 million instalment of the schoolkids bonus, something it wants to scrap along with the mining tax.
THE Abbott government’s plan to cut financial assistance to the car industry faces a renewed campaign from the component sector, as Senate opposition to the proposed changes grows.It is disgusting that this country is so unwilling to cut the spending everyone knows is dangerously high and not backed by revenue.
The Greens have joined Labor and independents in seeking to block the cuts, announced by the Coalition before the election… Independent senator Nick Xenophon, who represents South Australia, was confident the Senate could block the government’s proposed $500 million cuts.
Labor bases its opposition to welfare cuts on dodgy data:
Labor based its parliamentary attack on the welfare changes yesterday as Mr Shorten and his colleagues accused Tony Abbott of taking thousands of dollars off families despite his election talk of easing cost of living pressures…Henry Ergas fact-checks NATSEM:
The claim is based on modelling from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra, which estimates that a couple with two children and one income of $65,000 would forego $6100 under the government’s changes.
Those [National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling] numbers, which were commissioned by the ALP, are iffy: that explains why Labor, though feeding the report to the ever-sympathetic Fairfax press, has covered up the problems by refusing its release…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Instead of being slashed to the bone, welfare spending continues to rise by 2.5 per cent annually in real terms until 2017-18, while total real public spending increases by 3.6 per cent a year…
Unpicking that tangle is impossible without access to NATSEM’s analysis but the press report implies an average annual income loss per family in the bottom quintile is $290 a year — an amount that could be replaced by working two days at the minimum wage. But NATSEM, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, seems to assume there will be no such response. Nor does it pay any attention to the counterfactual: what would happen were fiscal repair postponed into the never-never.
Not good enough
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:20am)
I predict a reshuffle, with Sinodinos omitted:
===LIBERAL Senator Arthur Sinodinos is expected to escape a corruption finding from the Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into his involvement with Australian Water Holdings — but is likely to face severe criticism by the commission.
The Daily Telegraph has learned Senator Sinodinos is not likely to be found corrupt by the commission in its findings on Operation Credo but he still faces the potential of ICAC’s reprimand for allegedly failing in his duty as a director of the company and for the quality of his evidence to the commission…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott could face the prospect of having to decide whether he needs a corruption finding to sack Senator Sinodinos as Assistant Treasurer or whether the senator should go anyway if he is criticised by ICAC. Senator Sinodinos is also set to appear in August in ICAC’s other operation, Operation Spicer — the inquiry into illegal developer donations to the Liberal Party through two alleged slush funds — to address questions on whether he knew about the arrangements as NSW Liberal Party treasurer at the time.
Palmer’s plan to make our economy the Titanic
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (8:06am)
Clive Palmer sells snake oil:
===CLIVE Palmer has outlined more than $86 billion in budget savings only to have them shot down within hours by experts who warn that his biggest idea would blow a hole in the nation’s finances…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The first thing would be to spend $7bn rather than $45bn on the NBN…
Communications analyst Paul Budde said that “unravelling” of the NBN would be impossible because of the contract between Telstra and NBN Co to build the network. “… it would cost you $10bn just to pay Telstra out,” Mr Budde said.
The second PUP proposal was to overhaul Australia’s $37bn submarine program by spending $10bn instead on vessels from the US… Asked if it was possible to keep the cost of the fleet to $10bn, [Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Mark] Thomson said shipbuilding costs in Australia were too high to make that possible…
Mr Palmer also restated a plan to give companies a one-year delay in their tax payments every year, effectively collecting tax at the end of the year rather than expecting them to pay instalments earlier in the year… “If we change the reporting date on that from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, after we know what the results are, after we know we’ve actually earned a profit, we’d release $70bn into the economy through our business structures...” Deloitte Access Economics director Chris Richardson said that plan would not add much to economic growth because it would only shift money around the economy rather than injecting a new $70bn to spur growth… Mr Richardson also said the federal government would lose $70bn in revenue in the first year of the plan, deepening the deficit in that year because tax collections would be delayed.
We now foolishly breed our own jihadists
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (5:10am)
Leo McKinstry on a danger Britain imported and then nursed:
===The police have estimated that more than 500 young radicals from our shores have travelled to the Middle East to join extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a notoriously savage organisation that wants to create a despotic medieval caliphate.I have tried to raise similar issues with our Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, with no luck:
In addition, around 300 jihadists are thought to have returned to Britain after involvement in terrorist campaigns in Syria and Iraq, posing a lethal threat to the fabric of our civilisation. According to Richard Barrett, the former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, the sheer number of these returning zealots means that it would be “a completely impossible task” for our security forces to keep track of all of them....
But by far the worst error has been the state’s addiction to immigration and multiculturalism. Domestic jihadism is the direct creation of a political class obsessed with open borders and the transformation of our society’s structure. Thanks to these two strategies, the Muslim population of Britain has now reached almost three million, while one in 10 British children under the age of four is Muslim. The pro-immigration brigade tells us that this is no problem, since the “vast majority” of Muslims are moderate. But that is more self-deceit at odds with the evidence. One independent survey showed that 40 per cent of Muslims here want to live under Sharia law; another revealed that 32 per cent of Muslim students at university felt killing in the name of religion is justified.
Such attitudes have been reinforced by the state’s fixation with cultural diversity which, instead of promoting integration, encourages migrant groups to cling to their traditional customs, practices, even languages. That is how we have ended up with Muslim enclaves dominated by the burkha, sharia tribunals, forced marriages, and ballot box fraud. Nor do the mosques do much to promote social cohesion. A recent study found that, out of Britain’s 1,700 mosques, just two follow a modernist interpretation of the Koran, while a quarter do not even allow women on the premises.
And the truth is that Islamic extremists have contempt for our society. Their allegiance is entirely to their hardline doctrine, not to this country.
Indeed, it is absurd to describe them as “British” at all, for they have complete disdain for the normal responsibilities of British citizenship. They are interested only in exploiting us, whether it be through welfare or education or housing or legal aid.
Andrew Bolt: Scott, we’ve already had 21 jihadists jailed here on terrorism charges, another 150 fighting overseas, two Australians have even appeared in an ISIS video, telling Muslims to come on over and join the fighting. Many Australians would be asking, is it smart, in these circumstances, to take so many immigrants from Muslim countries? Why expose us to this danger?(Via Tim Blair, who notes a celebration by Australian Muslims of jihadist barbarity.)
Minister Morrison: Well, the vast majority, if not complete number, of those who we have concerns about are Australian citizens, Andrew. They’re the ones who have been identified, and are being closely watched, and they’re the ones we’re on high alert for at our airports, both on the way out and the way in, in terms of those who might be participating in that dreadful conflict, which is just absolutely despicable.
Andrew Bolt: Yes, but more than half the 21 terrorists jailed here were born overseas. Almost everyone else was born to people that came in from the Middle East. Shouldn’t we be screening better for cultural compatibility with Australia?
Minister Morrison: Well, when I look at issues under the character test, which is 501, for people of bad character, I’m cancelling visas right across the board and right across any number of different ethnic backgrounds, be they Anglo-Celtic, through to Middle Eastern, through to Asian, to Polynesian, and right across the board. Criminality Andrew, isn’t specific to any one group…
Andrew Bolt: Are you actually denying that there’s a specific problem with Middle Eastern immigrants?
Minister Morrison: What I’m saying is, is that, wherever I’m focused, it’s always on the criminality and the threats and issues that need to be focused on from the government’s perspective. And I do that right across the board. My first concern is people who may present a threat, and where I believe they present a threat then I’ll take the actions that are available under the various laws.
Andrew Bolt: Yeah, but here’s the problem. You can’t screen the children of immigrants coming in, and it’s the second generation that seems to be particularly more militant than their parents who come here. That’s why I think, you know, perhaps the issue of immigration for Muslim countries should be considered as a potential problem. Minister Morrison: Well, what we’ve found over, not just 50 years, Andrew, but longer than that in this country, as an immigration country, is that, those who come to Australia to work, not to go on welfare, to make a contribution, go right across the spectrum.
How much global warming is just fiddled data?
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:31am)
Christopher Booker:
===Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science [shows] how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Steven Goddard:
Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century. When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous “hockey stick” graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.
Prior to the year 2000, NASA showed US temperatures cooling since the 1930?s, and 1934 much warmer than 1998…Steven Goddard again:
Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The [graphs] below shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.
I’ve shown how NASA and NOAA have dramatically altered the US temperature record, and they are doing the same thing in other countries, like Iceland and Australia – almost always cooling the past, which creates the appearance of warming.Jennifer Marohasy:
I’ve since come to understand that the annual average temperature for 2013, which the Bureau claimed was a record, is in fact a wholly contrived valued based on modeling of temperatures, rather than the averaging of actual recorded values. That is, careful scrutiny of the Bureau’s methodology shows that recorded temperatures at locations across Australia are submitted to a two-step homogenization process that can have the effect of changing the entire temperature trend at specific locations. A weighted mean of these ‘homogenized’ values is then used in the calculation of the Australian annual mean temperature. In turn, the ‘homogenized’ values are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gives advice back to the Australian government on global and Australian temperature trends…Jennifer Marohasy again:
As part of ongoing research into natural rainfall patterns in Queensland, Professor John Abbot and I have been studying the temperature record for northeastern Australia, as temperature is a key input variable in our neural network models (e.g. Abbot and Marohasy 2014). Considering the data from the late 1800s until 1960, a cooling trend is evident, followed by warming between 1960 and 2001. In contrast, the last 12 years show quite dramatic cooling, Table 1. All three periods have occurred while greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.
Our analysis of the maximum temperature trend for the years 2002 to 2013 is based, not on the modeled temperature values used to generate official temperature statistics, but on the unadjusted observed temperatures also available from the Bureau of Meteorology website. The thirty-one sites across Queensland were chosen on the basis that there is a continual temperature record for the period 2002 to 2013 at each of the locations. We choose 2002 as the start date, as the data suggests a change in trend at about this year from warming to cooling. This is consistent with published studies by astrophysicists and physicists (e.g. Nicola Scafetta 2010, Abdussamatov 2012, and Lu 2013) and closely follows the timing of the last solar maximum (eg. NASA update 02/05/2014, http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml). While Table 1 is limited to Queensland, preliminary assessment of data from NSW, Victoria and the Northern Territory also suggests the onset of a cooling trend. This information is in stark contrast to the information in the State of the Climate Report 2014 recently published by the Bureau and also CSIRO. The report states that “warming over Australia has been consistent” and temperatures are “projected to continue to increase, with more hot days and fewer extremely cool days.”
The most extreme example that Ken found of data corruption was at Amberley, near Brisbane, Queensland, where a cooling minima trend was effectively reversed, Figure 1.”
Hand it to some fraud
Andrew Bolt June 24 2014 (4:03am)
The Lithgow Environmental Group was scathing. How could those stupid miners not see the Aboriginal hand print their wicked mine could destroy?
The group seems very easily fooled.
===The question now is who painted the stencil and why:
AN “Aboriginal hand stencil” cited by opponents of a controversial coalmine extension proposed west of the Blue Mountains in NSW has been identified as a recent piece of rock art only a few years old.
A report by engineering consultancy Aecom Australia for Coalpac says the “questionable” hand stencil is likely to be a “modern replica” of a traditional Aboriginal hand stencil and is at most 3½ years old.
The “now obvious” rock stencil was not there in December 2010 when the site, near Lithgow, west of Sydney, was inspected by two archeologists and three representatives of local Aboriginal groups.
And it does not show any of the hallmarks of a genuine traditional Aboriginal hand stencil in terms of the “thick and easily observed” pigment, the way it was applied or the canvas used. Nor does it match other known Aboriginal cave art in the area.
Coalpac wants to extend the operations of the Invincible Colliery and Cullen Valley Mine so it can continue to supply fuel to the Mt Piper power station and says the plan would create 245 direct and indirect jobs.
But environmentalists are battling the project, fearing the impact on the Garden of Stones region…
The vice-president of the Lithgow Environment Group, Chris Jonkers, found the hand stencil in a cave in the Ben Bullen forest in April.
The group seems very easily fooled.
===
Meh, I think Al Jazeera are parochial and politicised and that convicts their journalists .. the sentence is commensurate with Egyptian standards. Don’t forget, people have died from Al Jazeera lies .. ed
G’day,
Well, what a tragic outcome for Mr Peter Greste and his family and freedom in general. Seems to me that if this man was guilty of the charges for which he has been convicted then as hard and as uncomfortable as it is for a person who is a strong advocate for freedom of speech to say, then he has to cop the punishment for the local crime as per the local law.
I would never hold up Indonesia as a country of freedom & democracy and justice for all but at least the prosecution delivered pretty damning evidence that has sent Schapelle Corby to prison. Of course it is my opinion and that of most people that regardless of her guilt, the sentence certainly doesn’t fit the crime.
The same is certainly my opinion in this case in Egypt but the vast difference between Corby and Greste is a matter of Judicial transparency. Where is the evidence that he deliberately conspired to promote propaganda for an out lawed terrorist group and why was any evidence not available to the world even after the sentence of seven years was announced.
This will be a tough one and I sure as hell hope that the President of Egypt will listen to our Foreign Department and the PM and find clemency in favour of Peter Grests. If only to save face, they could just banned him from ever entering the country again. Pretty sure he’d never want to set foot in that place again anyway. If there is any blessing to be had here then it must be that he at lest escaped the hangman’s noose.
Godspeed
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist/Caricaturist
0414293765
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Eveningby Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
===
"The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, and at the same time they're the people of the book. They're accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity... Everything and its opposite becomes a reason for anti-Semitism."
This is how irrational anti-Semitism is. Whatever you hate, that's what the Jew is.
===
However, it should be pointed out that Rudd's '07 success was based on lies .. claiming to be an economic conservative, claiming to have a fairer way of treating asylum seekers and claiming to have better IR laws Not only were they lies then, but it is apparent they have no such policy now - ed
===
INTEREST SPEECH BY Matt Ridley IN THE UK HOUSE OF LORDS: Must We Go On Making These Mistakes?
House of Lords, 18 June: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest in coal-mining on my family’s property, as detailed in the register, but I shall not be arguing for coal today but for its most prominent rival, gas, in which I have no interest.
I thank my noble friend the Minister for her courtesy in discussing the Bill and welcome the fact that the Government have grasped the nettle of energy policy, especially on the issue of nuclear power, after the deplorable vacuum left by the previous Government.
However, I am concerned that we are being asked in the Bill to spend £200 billion, mainly on the wrong technologies, and that we will come to regret that. We are being asked to put in place a system that will guarantee far into the future rich rewards for landowners and capitalists, while eventually doubling the price of electricity and asking people to replace gas with electric space heating. That can only drive more people into fuel poverty.
We have heard a lot about the needs of energy investors and producers. We have not heard enough about consumers. If the industry gets an 8% return on the £200 billion to be spent, just two offshore wind farms or one nuclear plant would be declaring profits similar to what British Gas declares today. That will be an uncomfortable position for the Government of the day.
The Bill is a dash for wood and wind—two medieval technologies—and it is twice as big as the dash for gas of the 1990s. Between 6 and 9 gigawatts will have to be built a year for the next 16 years, compared with 2 gigawatts a year during the dash for gas. I am not sure it can be done, let alone affordably. In the case of biomass, the only way we can source enough is by felling trees overseas. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, Drax will soon be taking more than 40 trains a day of wood pellets from North America. That is not energy security.
Under the Bill,
“‘low carbon electricity generation’ means electricity generation which in the opinion of the Secretary of State will contribute to a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases”.
Shades of Humpty Dumpty: a word means just what I choose it to mean. We are being asked to pretend that the most carbon rich fuel of all, wood, is not a source of carbon. According to Princeton University, trees used for biomass electricity generation increase carbon dioxide emissions by 79% compared with coal over 20 years and by 49% over 40 years, even if you replant the forest.
We are through the looking glass.
Offshore wind, meanwhile, is a risky technology with a track record of engineering problems, sky- high costs, disappointing lifespan and problems of decommissioning. At the moment, we generate less than 1% of total energy, or 6% of electricity, from wind, despite all the damage it has already done to our countryside and economy. We are to increase that to something like 30% in just a decade or so, may be more if nuclear is delayed. It is a huge gamble, and if it fails, the only fallback is carbon capture and storage, a technology that has repeatedly failed to meet its promises at all, let alone affordably, a point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell.
Even if this wood and wind dash is possible, under the contract for a different system proposed in this Bill, while better than the renewable obligations that preceded it, the subsidy to renewable energy will quadruple by 2020. That is only the start.
On top of that, there are system costs for balancing the unpredictability of wind; transmission costs for getting wind from remote areas to where it is needed; VAT; the carbon floor price; not to mention the cost of subsiding renewable heat and renewable transport fuels. Hence, at a conservative estimate, the Renewable Energy Foundation thinks that we will be imposing costs of £16 billion a year on our hard-pressed economy for several decades.
Why are we doing this? We are doing this because of four assumptions that were valid in 2010 but, as my noble friend Lord Lawson pointed out, are no longer valid to the same extent. First, we assumed we would not be acting alone, so we would not damage our competitiveness. Instead, not only is there no longer a Kyoto treaty, but China is planning to build 363 coal- fired power stations; India 455. On top of that, the European trading system has collapsed to less than €5 a tonne of carbon. Our carbon floor price is more than three times that: £16 a tonne, rising to £32 a tonne in 2020 and £76 a tonne in 2030. Acting unilaterally in this way does not save carbon emissions. It merely exports them and the jobs go with them. Northumberland’s largest employer, the aluminium smelter at Lynemouth, has closed with the loss of 500 jobs, almost entirely because of carbon policies.
The second assumption behind the Bill was that the cost of gas would rise, thus making the cost of energy rise anyway. The Committee on Climate Change said recently in a report that:
“Consensus projections are that gas prices will rise in future”.
This remark has been described by the utilities team at Liberum Capital as “genuinely amazing” in the light of recent events. Now that we know that gas prices have plummeted in the United States to roughly one-quarter of ours, thanks to shale gas; now that we know that Britain probably has many decades worth of shale gas itself; now that we know that enormous reserves of offshore gas near Israel, Brazil and parts of Africa are going to come on line in years to come; now that we know that conventional gas producers such as Russia and Qatar are facing increasing competition from unconventional and offshore gas; now that we know that methane hydrates on the ocean floor are more abundant than all other fossil fuels put together and that the Japanese are planning to explore them; in short, now that we know we are nowhere near peak gas, it is surely folly to hold our economy hostage to an assumption that gas prices must rise.
We will need the gas anyway.
The intermittent nature of wind means that we will require increasing back-up and we cannot get it from nuclear because it is not responsive enough to fill the lulls when the wind drops. Far from replacing fossil fuels, a dash for wood and wind means a dash for gas too, only this time we will have to subsidise it because the plants will stand idle for most of the time and pay a rising carbon floor price when they do operate.
Having distorted the markets to disastrous effect with subsidies to renewables, we are now being asked, under the capacity market mechanism, to introduce compensating countersubsidies to fossil fuels.
The third assumption was that the cost of renewables would fall rapidly as we rolled them out. This has proved untrue and, indeed, as the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has shown, the cost curve for renewables inevitably rises as the best sites are used up, not least in the North Sea. I am told by those who work in the offshore wind industry that, at the moment, the industry has every incentive to keep its costs up not down, as it sets out to strike a contract with the Government. They will not have to try very hard. Even at low estimates, offshore wind is stratospherically expensive.
The fourth assumption on which this Bill is based was that the climate would change dangerously and soon. Once again, this assumption is looking much shakier than it did five years ago. The slow rate at which the temperature has been changing over the past 50 years and the best evidence from the top-of-the-atmosphere radiation about climate sensitivity are both very clearly pointing to carbon dioxide having its full greenhouse effect but without significant net positive feedback of the kind on which all the alarm is based.
The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and the noble Lord, Lord Stern, both mentioned Professor Myles Allen and they will be aware, therefore, of his recent paper, which found significantly reduced climate sensitivity. If that is the case, the dash to wind and biomass may well continue to do more harm to the environment as well as to the economy for many decades than climate change itself will do.
However, leaving that on one side, as my noble friend Lord Lawson said, the argument against subsidising wind and biomass does not depend on a benign view of climate change. It stands powerfully on its own merits, even if you think dangerous climate change is imminent.
In 1981, my noble friend Lord Lawson, ignoring the prevailing wisdom of the day, as he sometimes does, decided against the predict-and-provide central planning philosophy and instead embraced the idea of letting the market discover the best way to provide electricity. The result was the cheapest and most flexible energy sector of any western country.
We have progressively turned our backs on that. Under this Bill, the location, the technology and the price of each power source is determined by one person—the omniscient Secretary of State. Recent occupants of that position have an unhappy history of not making wise decisions.
Remember ground source heat pumps? They do not work as advertised. Remember electric vehicles? They have been a flop.
Remember biofuels? They have caused rainforest destruction and hunger. Remember the Green Deal? Must we go on making these mistakes?
We have returned to a philosophy of picking winners, or rather, from the point of view of the consumer, of picking losers. Not even just picking losers, but hobbling winners, because of the obstacles we have put in the way of shale gas.
America has cut its carbon emissions by far more than we have, almost entirely because of shale gas displacing coal. By pursuing a strategy that encouraged unabated gas, we could halve emissions and cut bills at the same time. Instead, I very much fear we will find we have spent a fortune to achieve neither.
House of Lords, 18 June 2013
===
June 24: Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Christianity); National Holiday/Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec, Canada
- 1314 – In the decisive battle in the First War of Scottish Independence, Scottish forces led by Robert the Brucedefeated English troops under Edward II nearBannockburn, Scotland.
- 1622 – Dutch–Portuguese War: An outnumbered Portuguese force repelled a Dutch attack in the Battle of Macau, the only major military engagement that was fought between two European powers on theChinese mainland.
- 1880 – "O Canada" (audio featured), today the national anthem of Canada, was first performed in Quebec City, Quebec, during a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day banquet.
- 1994 – A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress based at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane County, Washington, crashed, killing all four crew members, and later providing a case study on the importance of compliance with safety regulations.
- 2010 – After 11 hours, 5 minutes of play over three days, John Isnerdefeated Nicolas Mahut at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships in thelongest match in tennis history.
- 217 BC – The Romans, led by Gaius Flaminius, are ambushed and defeated by Hannibal at the Battle of Lake Trasimene.
- 109 – Roman emperor Trajan inaugurates the Aqua Traiana, an aqueduct that channels water from Lake Bracciano, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north-west of Rome.
- 474 – Julius Nepos forces Roman usurper Glycerius to abdicate the throne and proclaims himself Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
- 637 – The Battle of Moira is fought between the High King of Ireland and the Kings of Ulster and Dál Riata. It is claimed to be the largest battle in the history of Ireland.
- 972 – Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces, takes place.
- 1128 – Battle of São Mamede, near Guimarães: Forces led by Afonso I defeat forces led by his mother Teresa of León and her lover Fernando Pérez de Traba. After this battle, the future king calls himself "Prince of Portugal", the first step towards "official independence" that will be reached in 1139 after the Battle of Ourique.
- 1230 – The Siege of Jaén started in the context of the Spanish Reconquista.
- 1314 – First War of Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn concludes with a decisive victory by Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce, though England did not recognize Scottish independence until 1328 with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton.
- 1340 – Hundred Years' War: Battle of Sluys: The French fleet is almost completely destroyed by the English fleet commanded in person by King Edward III.
- 1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
- 1497 – John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.
- 1509 – Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are crowned King and Queen of England.
- 1531 – The city of San Juan del Río, Mexico, is founded.
- 1535 – The Anabaptist state of Münster is conquered and disbanded.
- 1571 – Miguel López de Legazpi founds Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines.
- 1597 – The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reaches Banten (on Java).
- 1604 – Samuel de Champlain discovers the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
- 1622 – Battle of Macau: The Dutch attempt but fail to capture Macau.
- 1717 – The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London.
- 1762 – Battle of Wilhelmsthal: The British-Hanoverian army of Ferdinand of Brunswick defeats French forces in Westphalia.
- 1779 – American Revolutionary War: The Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.
- 1793 – The first Republican constitution in France is adopted.
- 1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon's Grande Armée crosses the Neman river beginning the invasion of Russia.
- 1813 – Battle of Beaver Dams: A British and Indian combined force defeats the United States Army.
- 1821 – The Battle of Carabobo takes place. It is the decisive battle in the war of independence of Venezuela from Spain.
- 1859 – Battle of Solferino (Battle of the Three Sovereigns): Sardinia and France defeat Austria in Solferino, northern Italy.
- 1866 – Battle of Custoza: An Austrian army defeats the Italian army during the Austro-Prussian War.
- 1880 – First performance of O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.
- 1894 – Marie François Sadi Carnot is assassinated by Sante Geronimo Caserio.
- 1902 – King Edward VII of the United Kingdom develops appendicitis, delaying his coronation.
- 1913 – Greece and Serbia annul their alliance with Bulgaria.
- 1916 – Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract.
- 1916 – World War I: The Battle of the Somme begins with a week-long artillery bombardment on the German Line.
- 1918 – First airmail service in Canada from Montreal to Toronto.
- 1932 – A bloodless revolution instigated by the People's Party ends the absolute power of King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand).
- 1938 – Pieces of a meteor, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, land near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
- 1939 – Siam is renamed Thailand by Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the country's third prime minister.
- 1940 – World War II: Operation Collar, the first British Commando raid on occupied France, by No 11 Independent Company.
- 1947 – Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
- 1948 – Start of the Berlin Blockade: The Soviet Union makes overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.
- 1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, is aired on NBC starring William Boyd.
- 1954 – First Indochina War: Battle of Mang Yang Pass: Viet Minh troops belonging to the 803rd Regiment ambush G.M. 100 of France in An Khê.
- 1957 – In Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment.
- 1963 – The United Kingdom grants Zanzibar internal self-government.
- 1967 – The worst caving disaster in British history takes six lives at Mossdale Caverns.
- 1973 – The UpStairs Lounge arson attack takes place at a gay bar located on the second floor of the three-story building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Thirty-two people die as a result of fire or smoke inhalation.
- 1981 – The Humber Bridge is opens to traffic, connecting Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It would be the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years.
- 1982 – "The Jakarta Incident": British Airways Flight 9 flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines.
- 1989 – Jiang Zemin succeeds Zhao Ziyang to become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
- 1995 – "Rugby World Cup final": South Africa defeats New Zealand, Nelson Mandela presents Francois Pienaar with the Webb-Ellis trophy in an iconic post-apartheid moment.
- 2002 – The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281, the worst train accident in African history.
- 2004 – In New York, capital punishment is declared unconstitutional.
- 2010 – John Isner of the United States defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon, in the longest match in professional tennis history.
- 2010 – Julia Gillard assumed office as the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
- 2012 – Lonesome George, the last known individual of Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, dies.
- 2013 – Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is found guilty of abusing his power and having sex with an underage prostitute, and is sentenced to seven years in prison.
- 1244 – Henry I, Landgrave of Hesse (d. 1308)
- 1257 – Robert de Vere, 6th Earl of Oxford, England noblemen (d. 1331)
- 1314 – Philippa of Hainault (d. 1369)
- 1343 – Joan of Valois, Queen of Navarre (d. 1373)
- 1386 – John of Capistrano, Italian priest and saint (d. 1456)
- 1485 – Johannes Bugenhagen, Polish-German priest and reformer (d. 1558)
- 1519 – Theodore Beza, French theologian and scholar (d. 1605)
- 1532 – Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire (d. 1588)
- 1532 – William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (d. 1573)
- 1535 – Joanna of Austria, Princess of Portugal (d. 1573)
- 1542 – John of the Cross, Spanish mystic and saint (d. 1591)
- 1546 – Robert Persons, English-Italian priest and author (d. 1610)
- 1587 – William Arnold, English-American settler (d. 1675)
- 1661 – Hachisuka Tsunanori, Japanese daimyo (d. 1730)
- 1663 – Jean Baptiste Massillon, French bishop (d. 1742)
- 1687 – Johann Albrecht Bengel, German-Lutheran clergyman and scholar (d. 1757)
- 1694 – Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Swiss author and theorist (d. 1748)
- 1704 – Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, French philosopher and author (d. 1771)
- 1753 – William Hull, American general and politician, 1st Governor of Michigan Territory (d. 1825)
- 1755 – Anacharsis Cloots, Prussian-French activist (d. 1794)
- 1767 – Jean-Baptiste Benoît Eyriès, French geographer and author (d. 1846)
- 1771 – Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, French chemist and businessman, founded DuPont (d. 1834)
- 1774 – Antonio González de Balcarce, Argentinian commander and politician, 5th Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (d. 1819)
- 1774 – François-Nicolas-Benoît Haxo, French general and engineer (d. 1838)
- 1777 – John Ross, Scottish commander and explorer (d. 1856)
- 1782 – Juan Larrea, Argentinian captain and politician (d. 1847)
- 1783 – Johann Heinrich von Thünen, German economist and geographer (d. 1850)
- 1784 – Juan Antonio Lavalleja, Uruguayan general and politician, President of Uruguay (d. 1853)
- 1788 – Thomas Blanchard, American inventor (d. 1864)
- 1795 – Ernst Heinrich Weber, German physician and psychologist (d. 1878)
- 1797 – John Hughes, Irish-American archbishop (d. 1864)
- 1804 – Stephan Endlicher, Austrian botanist, numismatist, and sinologist (d. 1849)
- 1804 – Willard Richards, American religious leader (d. 1854)
- 1811 – John Archibald Campbell, American lawyer and jurist (d. 1889)
- 1813 – Henry Ward Beecher, American minister and reformer (d. 1887)
- 1813 – Francis Boott, American composer (d. 1904)
- 1821 – Guillermo Rawson, Argentinian physician and politician (d. 1890)
- 1825 – Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaevna of Russia (d. 1844)
- 1826 – George Goyder, English-Australian surveyor (d. 1898)
- 1835 – Johannes Wislicenus, German chemist and academic (d. 1902)
- 1838 – Jan Matejko, Polish painter (d. 1893)
- 1839 – Gustavus Franklin Swift, American businessman (d. 1903)
- 1842 – Ambrose Bierce, American journalist and author (d. 1914)
- 1846 – Samuel Johnson, Nigerian priest and historian (d. 1901)
- 1850 – Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Irish field marshal and politician, Governor-General of Sudan (d. 1916)
- 1852 – Friedrich Loeffler, German bacteriologist and academic (d. 1915)
- 1856 – Henry Chapman Mercer, American archaeologist and author (d. 1930)
- 1858 – Hastings Rashdall, English historian, philosopher, and theologian (d. 1924)
- 1860 – Mercedes of Orléans (d. 1878)
- 1865 – Robert Henri, American painter and educator (d. 1929)
- 1867 – Ruth Randall Edström, American educator and activist (d. 1944)
- 1869 – Prince George of Greece and Denmark (d. 1957)
- 1880 – Oswald Veblen, American mathematician and academic (g. 1960)
- 1881 – George Shiels, Irish-Canadian author, poet, and playwright (d. 1949)
- 1882 – Athanase David, Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 1953)
- 1882 – Carl Diem, German businessman (d. 1962)
- 1883 – Victor Francis Hess, Austrian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1964)
- 1883 – Arthur L. Newton, American runner (d. 1956)
- 1883 – Frank Verner, American runner (d. 1966)
- 1884 – Frank Waller, American runner (d. 1941)
- 1885 – Olaf Holtedahl, Norwegian geologist (d. 1975)
- 1888 – Gerrit Rietveld, Dutch architect, designed the Rietveld Schröder House (d. 1964)
- 1893 – Roy O. Disney, American businessman, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (d. 1971)
- 1895 – Jack Dempsey, American boxer and soldier (d. 1983)
- 1897 – Daniel K. Ludwig, American businessman (d. 1992)
- 1897 – Omkarnath Thakur, Indian singer, musicologist, and academic (d. 1967)
- 1898 – Armin Öpik, Estonian-Australian paleontologist and geologist (d. 1983)
- 1898 – Karl Selter, Estonian politician, 14th Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (d. 1958)
- 1900 – Wilhelm Cauer, German mathematician and engineer (d. 1945)
- 1901 – Marcel Mule, French saxophonist (d. 2001)
- 1901 – Harry Partch, American composer and theorist (d. 1974)
- 1901 – Chuck Taylor, American basketball player and salesman (d. 1969)
- 1904 – Phil Harris, American singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1995)
- 1905 – Fred Alderman, American sprinter (d. 1998)
- 1906 – Pierre Fournier, French cellist and educator (d. 1986)
- 1906 – Willard Maas, American poet and educator (d. 1971)
- 1907 – Arseny Tarkovsky, Russian poet and translator (d. 1989)
- 1908 – Hugo Distler, German organist, composer, and conductor (d. 1942)
- 1908 – Alfons Rebane, Estonian colonel (d. 1976)
- 1909 – Jean Deslauriers, Canadian violinist, composer, and conductor (d. 1978)
- 1909 – William Penney, Baron Penney, English mathematician and physicist (d. 1991)
- 1911 – Juan Manuel Fangio, Argentinian race car driver (d. 1995)
- 1911 – Ernesto Sabato, Argentinian physicist and academic (d. 2011)
- 1912 – Brian Johnston, English sportscaster and author (d. 1994)
- 1912 – Mary Wesley, English author (d. 2002)
- 1913 – Gustaaf Deloor, Belgian cyclist and soldier (d. 2002)
- 1914 – Jan Karski, Polish-American activist and academic (d. 2000)
- 1914 – Pearl Witherington, French secret agent (d. 2008)
- 1915 – Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and author (d. 2001)
- 1916 – William B. Saxbe, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 70th United States Attorney General (d. 2010)
- 1917 – David Easton, Canadian-American political scientist and academic (d. 2014)
- 1917 – Ramblin' Tommy Scott, American singer and guitarist (d. 2013)
- 1918 – Mildred Ladner Thompson, American journalist and author (d. 2013)
- 1918 – Yong Nyuk Lin, Singaporean businessman and politician, Singaporean Minister for Education (d. 2012)
- 1919 – Al Molinaro, American actor (d. 2015)
- 1920 – John Coplans, British artist (d. 2003)
- 1922 – Jack Carter, American actor, singer, and director (d. 2015)
- 1922 – Tata Giacobetti, Italian singer-songwriter (Quartetto Cetra) (d. 1988)
- 1922 – John Postgate, English microbiologist, author, and academic (d. 2014)
- 1923 – Margaret Olley, Australian painter and philanthropist (d. 2011)
- 1924 – Kurt Furgler, Swiss politician, 70th President of the Swiss Confederation (d. 2008)
- 1924 – Archie Roy, Scottish astronomer and academic (d. 2012)
- 1927 – Fernand Dumont, Canadian sociologist, philosopher, and poet (d. 1997)
- 1927 – James B. Edwards, American dentist, soldier, and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Energy (d. 2014)
- 1927 – Martin Lewis Perl, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2014)
- 1929 – Carolyn S. Shoemaker, American astronomer
- 1930 – Claude Chabrol, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2010)
- 1930 – Donald Gordon, South African businessman and philanthropist
- 1930 – William Bernard Ziff, Jr., American publisher (d. 2006)
- 1931 – Billy Casper, American golfer and architect (d. 2015)
- 1932 – David McTaggart, Canadian-Italian environmentalist (d. 2001)
- 1933 – Sam Jones, American basketball player and coach
- 1934 – Ferdinand Biwersi, German footballer and referee (d. 2013)
- 1934 – Jean-Pierre Ferland, Canadian singer-songwriter
- 1935 – Terry Riley, American composer and educator
- 1937 – Anita Desai, Indian-American author and academic
- 1938 – Lawrence Block, American author
- 1938 – Ken Gray, New Zealand rugby player (d. 1992)
- 1940 – Vittorio Storaro, Italian cinematographer
- 1941 – Erkin Koray, Turkish singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1941 – Julia Kristeva, Bulgarian-French psychoanalyst and author
- 1941 – Graham McKenzie, Australian cricketer
- 1941 – Charles Whitman, American murderer (d. 1966)
- 1942 – Arthur Brown, English singer (Kingdom Come and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown)
- 1942 – Michele Lee, American actress, singer, and dancer
- 1942 – Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Chilean engineer and politician, 32nd President of Chile
- 1942 – Colin Groves, Australian academician and educator
- 1943 – Birgit Grodal, Danish economist and academic (d. 2004)
- 1944 – Jeff Beck, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (The Yardbirds, The Jeff Beck Group, The Honeydrippers, and Beck, Bogert & Appice)
- 1944 – Nancy Cartwright, American philosopher and academic
- 1944 – Kathryn Lasky, American author
- 1944 – John "Charlie" Whitney, English guitarist (Family, Axis Point, and Streetwalkers)
- 1944 – Chris Wood, English saxophonist (Traffic and Ginger Baker's Air Force) (d. 1983)
- 1945 – Colin Blunstone, English singer-songwriter (The Zombies and Keats)
- 1945 – Wayne Cashman, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1945 – George Pataki, American lawyer and politician, 53rd Governor of New York
- 1945 – Betty Stöve, Dutch tennis player
- 1946 – David Collenette, Canadian civil servant and politician, 32nd Canadian Minister of National Defence
- 1946 – Ellison Onizuka, American colonel, engineer, and astronaut (d. 1986)
- 1946 – Robert Reich, American economist and politician, 22nd United States Secretary of Labor
- 1947 – Clarissa Dickson Wright, English chef, author, and television personality (d. 2014)
- 1947 – Mick Fleetwood, English-American drummer and actor (Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers)
- 1947 – Peter Weller, American actor and director
- 1948 – Patrick Moraz, Swiss keyboard player and songwriter (Yes, The Moody Blues, and Refugee)
- 1949 – John Illsley, English singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (Dire Straits)
- 1949 – Betty Jackson, English fashion designer
- 1950 – Nancy Allen, American actress
- 1950 – Bob Carlos Clarke, Irish-born English photographer (d. 2006)
- 1950 – Jan Kulczyk, Polish businessman (d. 2015)
- 1950 – Mercedes Lackey, American author
- 1951 – Raelene Boyle, Australian sprinter
- 1951 – Leslie Cochran, American activist (d. 2012)
- 1951 – David Rodigan, German-English actor and radio host
- 1951 – Charles Sturridge, English director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1952 – Dianna Melrose, English diplomat, British High Commissioner to Tanzania
- 1952 – Bob Neill, English lawyer and politician
- 1953 – William E. Moerner, American chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1953 – Michael Tuck, Australian footballer and coach
- 1955 – Chris Higgins, English geneticist and academic
- 1955 – Edmund Malura, German footballer and manager
- 1955 – Loren Roberts, American golfer
- 1956 – Michael Coleman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2014)
- 1956 – Owen Paterson, English politician, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
- 1957 – Astro, English rapper (UB40)
- 1957 – Mark Parkinson, American lawyer and politician, 45th Governor of Kansas
- 1958 – Jean Charest, Canadian lawyer and politician, 5th Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
- 1958 – Silvio Mondinelli, Italian mountaineer
- 1958 – John Tortorella, American ice hockey player and coach
- 1958 – Mary Youngblood, Native American musician
- 1959 – Andy McCluskey, English singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (The Id, Dalek I Love You, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark)
- 1960 – Elish Angiolini, Scottish lawyer, judge, and politician, Solicitor General for Scotland
- 1960 – Walter E. Ellis, American serial killer (d. 2013)
- 1960 – Siedah Garrett, American singer-songwriter and pianist (Brand New Heavies)
- 1960 – Juli Inkster, American golfer
- 1960 – Karin Pilsäter, Swedish accountant and politician
- 1960 – Erik Poppe, Norwegian director, cinematographer, and screenwriter
- 1961 – Dennis Danell, American singer and guitarist (Social Distortion) (d. 2000)
- 1961 – Iain Glen, Scottish actor
- 1961 – Bernie Nicholls, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1961 – Ralph E. Reed, Jr., American journalist and activist
- 1961 – Curt Smith, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Tears for Fears and Graduate)
- 1963 – Yuri Kasparyan, Russian guitarist (Kino, U-Piter)
- 1963 – Preki, Serbian-American soccer player and coach
- 1963 – Mike Wieringo, American author and illustrator (d. 2007)
- 1964 – Jean-Luc Delarue, French television host and producer (d. 2012)
- 1964 – Kathryn Parminter, Baroness Parminter, English politician
- 1964 – Gary Suter, American ice hockey player and scout
- 1965 – Claude Bourbonnais, Canadian race car driver
- 1965 – Uwe Krupp, German ice hockey player and coach
- 1966 – Hope Sandoval, American singer-songwriter (Mazzy Star and Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions)
- 1966 – Adrienne Shelly, American actress, director, and screenwriter (d. 2006)
- 1967 – Jeff Cease, American guitarist (The Black Crowes)
- 1967 – Bill Huard, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1967 – Richard Z. Kruspe, German guitarist (Rammstein, Emigrate, and First Arsch)
- 1967 – Janez Lapajne, Slovenian director and producer
- 1967 – John Limniatis, Greek-Canadian footballer and manager
- 1967 – Sherry Stringfield, American actress
- 1968 – Alaa Abdelnaby, Egyptian-American basketball player and sportscaster
- 1969 – Sissel Kyrkjebø, Norwegian soprano and actress
- 1970 – Glenn Medeiros, American singer-songwriter
- 1970 – David May, English footballer
- 1970 – Bernardo Sassetti, Portuguese pianist, composer, and educator (d. 2012)
- 1972 – Robbie McEwen, Australian cyclist
- 1972 – Denis Žvegelj, Slovenian rower
- 1973 – Alexis Gauthier, French chef
- 1973 – Jere Lehtinen, Finnish ice hockey player
- 1974 – Dan Byles, English sailor, rower, and politician
- 1974 – Vinnie Fiorello, American drummer and songwriter (Less Than Jake)
- 1974 – Chris Guccione, American baseball player and umpire
- 1975 – Marek Malík, Czech ice hockey player
- 1975 – Federico Pucciariello, Argentinian-Italian rugby player
- 1976 – Brock Olivo, American football player and coach
- 1977 – Dimos Dikoudis, Greek basketball player and manager
- 1977 – Jeff Farmer, Australian footballer
- 1978 – Luis García, Spanish footballer
- 1978 – Pantelis Kafes, Greek footballer
- 1978 – Shunsuke Nakamura, Japanese footballer
- 1978 – Ariel Pink, American singer-songwriter (Atheif)
- 1978 – Juan Román Riquelme, Argentinian footballer
- 1978 – Emppu Vuorinen, Finnish guitarist and songwriter (Nightwish, Brother Firetribe, Altaria, and Barilari)
- 1979 – Mindy Kaling, American actress and producer
- 1979 – Petra Němcová, Czech model and philanthropist
- 1980 – Cicinho, Brazilian footballer
- 1980 – Nina Dübbers, German tennis player
- 1980 – Andrew Jones, Australian race car driver
- 1980 – Minka Kelly, American actress
- 1982 – Kevin Nolan, English footballer
- 1982 – Mark Penney, Canadian director and producer
- 1982 – Jarret Stoll, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1983 – Rebecca Cooke, English swimmer
- 1983 – Gianni Munari, Italian footballer
- 1983 – Gard Nilssen, Norwegian drummer (Puma, Bushman's Revenge)
- 1983 – David Shillington, Australian rugby league player
- 1984 – Andrea Raggi, Italian footballer
- 1984 – J.J. Redick, American basketball player
- 1985 – Diego Alves Carreira, Brazilian footballer
- 1985 – Tom Kennedy, English footballer
- 1985 – Nate Myles, Australian rugby league player
- 1985 – Vernon Philander, South African cricketer
- 1985 – Yukina Shirakawa, Japanese model
- 1986 – Stuart Broad, English cricketer
- 1986 – Phil Hughes, American baseball player
- 1986 – Solange Knowles, American singer-songwriter and actress
- 1987 – Simona Dobrá, Czech tennis player
- 1987 – Serdar Güneş, Turkish footballer
- 1987 – Craig Henderson, New Zealand footballer
- 1987 – Arturo Lupoli, Italian footballer
- 1987 – Josh Lillis, English footballer
- 1987 – Lionel Messi, Argentinian footballer
- 1988 – Micah Richards, English footballer
- 1989 – Teklemariam Medhin, Eritrean runner
- 1990 – Michael Del Zotto, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1990 – Richard Sukuta-Pasu, German footballer
- 1991 – Simone Nobili, Italian male model
- 1991 – Mutaz Essa Barshim, Qatari high jumper
- 1991 – Rie Kitahara, Japanese actress and singer (NGT48, AKB48, SKE48, and Not Yet)
- 1991 – Aidan Sezer, Australian rugby league player
- 1992 – David Alaba, Austrian footballer
Births[edit]
- 803 – Higbald of Lindisfarne, English bishop
- 1314 – Gilbert de Clare, 8th Earl of Gloucester, English commander (b. 1291)
- 1314 – Robert de Clifford, 1st Baron de Clifford, English soldier and politician, Lord Warden of the Marches (b. 1274)
- 1398 – Hongwu Emperor of China (b. 1328)
- 1439 – Frederick IV, Duke of Austria (b. 1382)
- 1503 – Reginald Bray, English architect and politician, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (b. 1440)
- 1519 – Lucrezia Borgia, Italian wife of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (b. 1480)
- 1520 – Hosokawa Sumimoto, Japanese commander (b. 1489)
- 1564 – Rani Durgavati, Indian queen (b. 1524)
- 1604 – Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, English courtier, Lord Great Chamberlain (b. 1550)
- 1637 – Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer and historian (b. 1580)
- 1643 – John Hampden, English politician (b. 1595)
- 1766 – Adrien Maurice de Noailles, French soldier and politician, French Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1678)
- 1778 – Pieter Burman the Younger, Dutch philologist and academic (b. 1714)
- 1803 – Matthew Thornton, Irish-American judge and politician (b. 1714)
- 1817 – Thomas McKean, American lawyer and politician, 2nd Governor of Pennsylvania (b. 1734)
- 1835 – Andreas Vokos Miaoulis, Greek admiral and politician (b. 1769)
- 1908 – Grover Cleveland, American lawyer and politician, 22nd and 24th President of the United States (b. 1837)
- 1909 – Sarah Orne Jewett, American author and poet (b. 1849)
- 1922 – Walther Rathenau, German businessman and politician, 7th German Minister for Foreign Affairs (b. 1867)
- 1931 – Otto Mears, Russian-American businessman (b. 1840)
- 1931 – Xiang Zhongfa, Chinese politician, 2nd General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (b. 1880)
- 1932 – Ernst Põdder, Estonian general (b. 1879)
- 1935 – Carlos Gardel, French-Argentinian singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1890)
- 1943 – Camille Roy, Canadian priest and critic (b. 1870)
- 1946 – Louise Whitfield Carnegie, American philanthropist (b. 1857)
- 1947 – Emil Seidel, American politician, Mayor of Milwaukee (b. 1864)
- 1964 – Stuart Davis, American painter and academic (b. 1892)
- 1968 – Tony Hancock, English actor, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1924)
- 1969 – Frank King, American cartoonist (b. 1883)
- 1969 – Willy Ley, German-American historian and author (b. 1906)
- 1976 – Minor White, American photographer, critic, and academic (b. 1908)
- 1978 – Robert Charroux, French author and critic (b. 1909)
- 1984 – Clarence Campbell, Canadian businessman (b. 1905)
- 1987 – Jackie Gleason, American actor and producer (b. 1916)
- 1988 – Csaba Kesjár, Hungarian race car driver (b. 1962)
- 1991 – Sumner Locke Elliott, Australian-American author and playwright (b. 1917)
- 1991 – Rufino Tamayo, Mexican painter and illustrator (b. 1899)
- 1994 – Jean Vallerand, Canadian violinist, composer, and conductor (b. 1915)
- 1997 – Brian Keith, American actor (b. 1921)
- 2000 – Rodrigo, Argentinian singer-songwriter (b. 1973)
- 2000 – Vera Atkins, British intelligence officer (b. 1908)
- 2002 – Pierre Werner, Luxembourgian banker and politician, 21st Prime Minister of Luxembourg (b. 1913)
- 2004 – Ifigeneia Giannopoulou, Greek songwriter and author (b. 1957)
- 2005 – Paul Winchell, American voice actor and ventriloquist (b. 1922)
- 2007 – Chris Benoit, Canadian wrestler (b. 1967)
- 2007 – Derek Dougan, Northern Irish footballer and manager (b. 1938)
- 2008 – Gerhard Ringel, Austrian mathematician and academic (b. 1919)
- 2008 – Ira Tucker, American singer (The Dixie Hummingbirds) (b. 1925)
- 2009 – Roméo LeBlanc, Canadian journalist and politician, 25th Governor General of Canada (b. 1927)
- 2010 – Fred Anderson, American jazz tenor saxophonist (b. 1929)
- 2011 – Tomislav Ivić, Croatian football coach and manager (b. 1933)
- 2012 – Darrel Akerfelds, American baseball player and coach (b. 1962)
- 2012 – Gad Beck, German author and educator (b. 1923)
- 2012 – Gu Chaohao, Chinese mathematician and academic (b. 1926)
- 2012 – Miki Roqué, Spanish footballer (b. 1988)
- 2012 – Ann C. Scales, American lawyer, educator, and activist (b. 1952)
- 2013 – Mick Aston, English archaeologist and academic (b. 1946)
- 2013 – Emilio Colombo, Italian politician, 40th Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1920)
- 2013 – Jackie Fargo, American wrestler and trainer (b. 1930)
- 2013 – Joannes Gijsen, Dutch bishop (b. 1932)
- 2013 – William Hathaway, American lawyer and politician (b. 1924)
- 2013 – Puff Johnson, American singer-songwriter (b. 1972)
- 2013 – James Martin, English-Bermudian computer scientist and author (b. 1933)
- 2013 – Alan Myers, American drummer (Devo and Swahili Blonde) (b. 1955)
- 2014 – John Clement, Canadian lawyer and politician (b. 1928)
- 2014 – Olga Kotelko, Canadian runner and softball player (b. 1919)
- 2014 – Ramón José Velásquez, Venezuelan journalist, lawyer, and politician, President of Venezuela (b. 1916)
- 2014 – Eli Wallach, American actor (b. 1915)
- 2015 – Cristiano Araújo, Brazilian singer-songwriter (b. 1986)
- 2015 – Mario Biaggi, American police officer, politician and criminal (b. 1917)
- 2015 – Walter Browne, Australian-American chess and poker player (b. 1949)
- 2015 – Marva Collins, American author and educator (b. 1936)
- 2015 – Susan Ahn Cuddy, American lieutenant (b. 1915)
Deaths[edit]
- Christian feast day:
- Discovery Day, observed on the nearest Monday to June 24 (Newfoundland and Labrador)
- Earliest day on which Armed Forces Day can fall, while June 30 is the latest; celebrated on the last Saturday in June. (United Kingdom)
- Earliest day on which Mother's Day can fall, while June 30 is the latest; celebrated on the last Sunday in June. (Kenya)
- Feast of Raḥmat (Bahá'í Faith) (Date is generally June 24, but this may vary from year to year)
- Army Day or Battle of Carabobo Day (Venezuela)
- Bannockburn Day (Scotland)
- Day of the Caboclo (Amazonas, Brazil)
- St John's Day and the second day of the Midsummer celebrations (although this is not the astronomical summer solstice, see June 20) (Roman Catholic Church, Europe), and its related observances:
- Enyovden (Bulgaria)
- Jaanipäev (Estonia)
- Jāņi (Latvia)
- Jónsmessa (Iceland)
- Midsummer Day (England)
- Saint Jonas' Festival or Joninės (Lithuania)
- Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (Quebec)
- Sânziene (western Carpathian Mountains of Romania)
- Youth Day (Ukraine)
Holidays and observances[edit]
“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah 40:31NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
A cake not turned is uncooked on one side; and so Ephraim was, in many respects, untouched by divine grace: though there was some partial obedience, there was very much rebellion left. My soul, I charge thee, see whether this be thy case. Art thou thorough in the things of God? Has grace gone through the very centre of thy being so as to be felt in its divine operations in all thy powers, thy actions, thy words, and thy thoughts? To be sanctified, spirit, soul, and body, should be thine aim and prayer; and although sanctification may not be perfect in thee anywhere in degree, yet it must be universal in its action; there must not be the appearance of holiness in one place and reigning sin in another, else thou, too, wilt be a cake not turned.
A cake not turned is soon burnt on the side nearest the fire, and although no man can have too much religion, there are some who seem burnt black with bigoted zeal for that part of truth which they have received, or are charred to a cinder with a vainglorious Pharisaic ostentation of those religious performances which suit their humour. The assumed appearance of superior sanctity frequently accompanies a total absence of all vital godliness. The saint in public is a devil in private. He deals in flour by day and in soot by night. The cake which is burned on one side, is dough on the other.
If it be so with me, O Lord, turn me! Turn my unsanctified nature to the fire of thy love and let it feel the sacred glow, and let my burnt side cool a little while I learn my own weakness and want of heat when I am removed from thy heavenly flame. Let me not be found a double-minded man, but one entirely under the powerful influence of reigning grace; for well I know if I am left like a cake unturned, and am not on both sides the subject of thy grace, I must be consumed forever amid everlasting burnings.
Evening
"Waiting for the adoption."
Romans 8:23
Romans 8:23
Even in this world saints are God's children, but men cannot discover them to be so, except by certain moral characteristics. The adoption is not manifested, the children are not yet openly declared. Among the Romans a man might adopt a child, and keep it private for a long time: but there was a second adoption in public; when the child was brought before the constituted authorities its former garments were taken off, and the father who took it to be his child gave it raiment suitable to its new condition of life. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." We are not yet arrayed in the apparel which befits the royal family of heaven; we are wearing in this flesh and blood just what we wore as the sons of Adam; but we know that "when he shall appear" who is the "first-born among many brethren," we shall be like him, we shall see him as he is. Cannot you imagine that a child taken from the lowest ranks of society, and adopted by a Roman senator, would say to himself, "I long for the day when I shall be publicly adopted. Then I shall leave off these plebeian garments, and be robed as becomes my senatorial rank"? Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of what is promised him. So it is with us today. We are waiting till we shall put on our proper garments, and shall be manifested as the children of God. We are young nobles, and have not yet worn our coronets. We are young brides, and the marriage day is not yet come, and by the love our Spouse bears us, we are led to long and sigh for the bridal morning. Our very happiness makes us groan after more; our joy, like a swollen spring, longs to well up like an Iceland geyser, leaping to the skies, and it heaves and groans within our spirit for want of space and room by which to manifest itself to men.
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Othniel
[ÅŽth'nĭel] - powerful one or lion of god. A son of Kenaz, younger brother of Caleb, who, after the death of Joshua, judged Israel for forty years. He is the first to be mentioned among the "Judges" (Josh. 15:17; Judg. 1:13; 3:9, 11: 1 Chron. 4:13). The Othniel mentioned in 1 Chronicles 27:15 is probably the same person.
[ÅŽth'nĭel] - powerful one or lion of god. A son of Kenaz, younger brother of Caleb, who, after the death of Joshua, judged Israel for forty years. He is the first to be mentioned among the "Judges" (Josh. 15:17; Judg. 1:13; 3:9, 11: 1 Chron. 4:13). The Othniel mentioned in 1 Chronicles 27:15 is probably the same person.
Little is recorded of this saviour who came from the tribe of Judah. He followed the Lord with all his heart, and, Spirit-empowered, he fought for Israel and prevailed.
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Today's reading: Esther 9-10, Acts 7:1-21 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Esther 9-10
1 On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, but now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them. 2 The Jews assembled in their cities in all the provinces of King Xerxes to attack those determined to destroy them. No one could stand against them, because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them. 3 And all the nobles of the provinces, the satraps, the governors and the king's administrators helped the Jews, because fear of Mordecai had seized them. 4 Mordecai was prominent in the palace; his reputation spread throughout the provinces, and he became more and more powerful....Today's New Testament reading: Acts 7:1-21
Stephen's Speech to the Sanhedrin
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, "Are these charges true?"
2 To this he replied: "Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 'Leave your country and your people,' God said, 'and go to the land I will show you.'
4 "So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: 'For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,' God said, 'and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.' 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs...."
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