Monday, October 31, 2016

Mon Oct 31st Todays News

IPA Review features James Bolt on Creativity as he reviews “The Geography of Genius” by Eric Weiner. Genius tends to cluster. Attempting to understand why Genius flowers is important, and could also show why it is that the reverse happens too, where deplorables cluster. Florence in 1504. Elizabethan England. Victoria’s Edinburgh. Plato’s Athens. China’s Song Dynasty. Silicon Valley. Geography and cultural assets have clearly produced opportunity for genius. But also, and unexplored by the book, Democrat Government, Labor government in Australia, NZ or UK, have produced some of the worst tax and spend governments the world has known. In considering what is needed to produce genius, shouldn’t we also compare it with conditions for licentiousness and corruption? There are also similarities between the governments of Augustus and Nero or Caligula. The greatness of Solomon is measured by Solomon’s depravity. More seriously, the greatness of the Howard administration had fractures which also consumed it. Turnbull leaking to force out Costello resulted in ’07’s transition to Rudd Labor. But fierce debate had happened within the administration about important issues. Work choices is an example, where a deplorable union campaign was successful, but apparently some Liberals were uncertain of the wisdom of good policy too.

Geniuses need to have ground work so they can reach up. Geniuses should have rules they can trust so they wont be eliminated being great. Some refer to a Tall Poppy Syndrome in Australia. But Australia has had more than her fair share of greatness. So brilliance, like comedy, sets rules, and breaks them. But one observation, nothing good ever came from Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s or Pol Pot’s death camps.

Meanwhile in current news, lawyers at the Royal Commission into institutionalised response to pedophilia have asked that Cardinal Pell’s evidence be ignored. Pell is a good man, as well as a capable Cardinal. Pell led the Catholic Church in Australia to support victims of pedophilia. He has not been accused (seriously) as being a pedophile. The lawyers have merely illustrated how flimsy their case is. If they throw out Pell’s testimony, he might have no defence? If one were to have thrown out Don Bradman’s high scores, he was an ordinary batsman.

Rumour now runs internationally that the apparent Saudi Spy who partners Hillary Clinton kept a life insurance policy of emails left in her ex husband’s computer. And the FBI found it. And so the insurance policy has been cashed in early. And the FBI investigating a witch on Halloween have found incriminating evidence on her familiar’s Weiner.

One person who knows how to profit from central planning is Hillary Clinton. The Chicago Tribune is withdrawing support from her, and suggesting that Democrats replace Hillary. But corrupt news, like the Tribune, knew everything now known about Hillary as they supported her days ago. Maybe they are only backing a tribe, but not a policy? And Maybe they want to find another crook. I note that press, who had accepted Hillary's corruption, are now denouncing her Saudi Spy Handler

 Donald Trump's speech at Gettysburg is frightening media. They have supported and protected insider corruption for a long time. Trump will clean up the festering wound, and make America great again. 
=== from 2015 ===
People seem to like abuse of power. A problem with abuse of power, beyond the abuse, is that it is recognised as legal by the foolish and hoodwinked. In the 1970's, an elderly German woman was interviewed regarding the leadership of the war. Shown pictures of senior Nazis, she smiled and said "All the old faces bring back memories." She wasn't a Nazi or a fan of them. But while they were imbued with power, they made promises to the people from a position of power they abused. It is sickening how average people gravitate to the abusers. During the weak years of Boris Yeltsin in Russia, one old timer opined for the glory days of Stalin. 

Australia has problems with abuse of power too. Being a modern democracy, it is harder for abuse of power to be sustained. But there is a danger of it being systematised too. So that before the NSW conservative party with Barry O'Farrell could be elected in '11, they had to assure those who corruptly ran NSW they would not shake the boat. Credit to O'Farrell and his front bench, they retained integrity and even resigned when the corruption lobby fingered them. The result has been new leadership unencumbered by pre election promises made in '11. The judiciary of NSW is corrupt. Not biased, but actively partisan in support of the ALP and the left. So that inquiries into corruption get sidelined by judges within the virtue of their powers. It is legal, but an abuse of power. The Heiner Affair is another such abuse. Anyone with sense recognises it is wrong to tear up evidence of a gang rape of an aboriginal girl in detention. Which is why Rudd obtained legal advice. There are supposed to be protections against the abuse of power by Rudd against that girl who was decades without compensation, and silenced when a paltry amount was given her. Australia's parliament could have opened an inquiry, but Steve Fielding, acting against advice from Family First, decided to embrace the abuse of power instead. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
Grooming children to die
Political fights can be bruising and confusing, making people bitter and lowering expectations of political process. But one outrageous, totally unacceptable practice has been endorsed by one side of the political divide and it is unacceptable from them. They must address the issue from their side, and not oppose those who would address it from the community. The issue referred to is child abuse, more specifically, raising children to hate and kill. Such child abuse is soul destroying. We have images of Palestinians marching for terror with kids in tow carrying toy guns. We have images of children's television shows in Palestine with puppet characters glorifying suicide. We have local ISIL spokespeople claiming Jews are responsible for terror through mythical atrocities. We have pictures of children holding severed heads and declaring their love for some terrorist group. We have child soldiers in Burma, Cambodia, Africa and the Middle East, except Israel. One common denominator is an excuse by the left of an imperative driving the behaviour. But there is no excuse for such damnation. It is child abuse. 

One hate preacher who has freedom in Australia has claimed he was taken out of context when he was quizzed over saying "Jews are filthy rapists" and claimed he had limited his statement to specific ones whom had raped his sisters. One doesn't mind free speech, so long as it can be acknowledged that a liar has lied. That hate preacher has lied and is lying. His sisters are safe, but for being siblings to a terrorist. Junaid Thorne is free to say what he likes, but his child abuse deserves to be addressed, and his hate preaching contradicted. In Australia, rapes have been described as cultural to the Islamic community by Islamic community leaders impotent to address the needs of their community under a secular administration. 
ALP has not reformed
Waste is endemic to the ALP in Australia. The previous finance minister, Penny Wong, misplaced about $106 billion. Another 'sister' Natasha Stott Depoja as Ambassador for Girls flies overseas in business class often so as to empower women (ed note, NSD is not ALP, but is left wing). Nova Peris was party to a $445k allocation to identify indigenous sportspeople which overspent by $140k. Among the expenditures was thousands given to an obscure West Indian athlete to give a talk. Yet the leader of the ALP will not pass cuts to spending and yet claims they could have had a surplus had they been given government. 

CFMEU likely to be investigated as part of corruption inquiry. The findings from a royal commission into union practice has meant a 30 member joint federal, Victorian police task force can investigate the abuses. Victorian ALP are claiming that the investigation is close to the Victorian election. However, had they reformed as they had claimed, it would not be an issue. Police cannot time an investigation for political comfort. 

Did Nova lie in her autobiography about her heritage? A fact check of her ALP biography shows she has lied about her parents an grandparents involvement in a stolen generation. Also, she is the fourth Aboriginal person to serve in an Australian Parliament, but the first female to do so. Her online biography has been amends to reflect it after it was flagged. 

ALP member Melissa Parkes keeps company with bigots and might be in danger of transgressing anti terror legislation for siding with BDS against Israel. She is entitled to her opinion, but that opinion should be defensible with reason, not bigotry and hatred. Jewish blood libel is not an argument, as it lacks substance. 
Wanting to be ALP? 
The ABC are confused by what the ALP are saying regarding Ebola. ALP want the government to order people into the zone without knowing how to extract them if they fall ill. Write to the ABC explaining to them that ALP policy is bad, and the government's position is responsible. A balanced organisation would see their mistake quickly. 

Greens fight Green policies, having opposed a rise in petrol prices and an environmental policy. Why would anyone who cared about the environment vote Green? 

Free speech under threat? The accusation is easy to make as Free Speech has been under threat from ridiculous laws, like 18c from racial vilification. However, the anti terrorism legislation is not about restricting free speech but locking up terrorists and there is a world of difference between terrorism advocacy and free speech. A disagreement between people should not end in one cutting off the head of the other. 

Palmer withdrew the $10m himself, from Chinese companies. It is up to him to prove he has spent it appropriately, given the evidence he has not. 
From 2013
Clive Palmer has bought himself seats in parliament. But he should not have bought journalists too. He was very slippery on 7:30 tonight, but then their journalists only challenge conservatives, and Palmer is not .. he is reactionary. Fairfax does some research and come to the astonishing fact government advisers are paid. Stay tuned. ALP deputy leader wants Australia to stop coloured people from breeding. ALP policy shines through Obama policy with the stunning success of the US owing a million dollars for each tax payer. 

According to AGW hysterics, Indian mourning practice of incinerating their dead is bad for the environment. Maybe they should choose to live? But then people are a cost to the environment. Without a winning solution, it is best not to become an AGW hysteric. New climate research discovers water in the oceans. What can be made of frost destroying crops? 

Burnside calls for choice to be removed from schooling. Socialists abuse police despite calling for police state regulation. Russell Brand pleasures himself with socialism. 
Historical perspective on this day
Not done
=== 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
===
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
Happy birthday and many happy returns Michael Davis, Harmanto Nguyen and Adam Morgan. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
October 31: Halloween; Samhain begins (Northern Hemisphere); Beltane begins (Southern Hemisphere); Reformation Day (Protestantism)
Martin Luther
As emperor you will last. You've nailed your points. The military follow our orders. We seek truth. We fly. Let's party.
Deaths
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Tim Blair

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Andrew Bolt

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ABBOTT LEADS, OBAMA FOLLOWS

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 31, 2015 (11:36am)

Monday: 
Tony Abbott has warned that special forces soldiers may need to be sent into combat in Syria and Iraq, with an escalation of strategic and tactical air strikes, if the terrorist armies of ISIS are to be defeated …
“The US and its allies … have launched air strikes against this would-be terrorist empire. We’ve helped to contain its advance in Iraq but we haven’t defeated it because it can’t be defeated without more effective local forces on the ground.” 
Friday: 
The United States is set to deploy troops on the ground in Syria for the first time to advise and assist rebel forces combating ISIS, the White House said Friday …
The deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces is the most significant escalation of the American military campaign against ISIS to date. 
===

EL FUZZO ADDRESSES HER PEOPLE

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 31, 2015 (12:58am)

“Mad Clem has outdone herself this time,” emails reader Alex. “Ford has written another crazy-gram, called ‘A letter to women who didn’t ask to live by the rules’. Perhaps your readers can make sense of it, because I can’t.”
It is an odd piece, Alex, even by Clementine’s increasingly megalomaniacal standards. It reads a little like a South American dictator’s speech to peasant supporters: “I see you, even if history doesn’t. I see you, even when the present won’t. The future, we write together!”
===

POWER TAKE-OFF IS AN OFFENSIVE MASCULINE CONSTRUCT

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 31, 2015 (12:32am)

I wonder if students at the University of Minnesota’s small farms division ever suffer from microaggression anxiety:



That tractor buying guide is both informative and practical. Let’s see instructional videos of equal quality composed by arts faculties at Australian universities. On the same subject.
===

BEERY THEORY

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 31, 2015 (12:13am)

My old cricket teammate appears in the New York Post: 
Dean Frenkel, of Victoria University, believes the quirky Australian dialect stems from early settlers’ booze-filled conversations.
“The Australian alphabet cocktail was spiked by alcohol,” Frenkel says in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. “Our forefathers regularly got drunk together and, through their frequent interactions, unknowingly added an alcoholic slur to our national speech patterns.”
Frenkel thinks it’s time for Australians to start speaking more clearly so they can become a “cleverer country.” 
Thish ish absholute nonshense *hic*.
===

SHE COULD BE WORSE THAN OBAMA

Tim Blair – Saturday, October 31, 2015 (12:06am)

Hillary Clinton supported the bank bailout bill in 2008. Seven years later, she’s changed her mind: 
Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Clinton was asked by Colbert, “If you’re president and the banks are failing, do we let them fail?”
Her response was clear: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” 
That’s your possible next president, America. Her greatest opponent is herself.
(Via A.R.M. Jones.)
===

LAMER AND TAMER

Tim Blair – Friday, October 30, 2015 (11:53pm)

Formula One cars are now so docile that talented children can drive them. Here’s a graphic demonstration of how much slower and less challenging today’s F1 cars are compared to the more powerful vehicles allowed by the rules in 2004:



(Via Andrew R.) 
===

What will the Left say now that Obama has done as Abbott advised?

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (4:04pm)

Tuesday:
Tony Abbott has warned that special forces soldiers may need to be sent into combat in Syria and Iraq, with an escalation of strategic and tactical air strikes, if the terrorist armies of ISIS are to be defeated … 
“The US and its allies … have launched air strikes against this would-be terrorist empire. We’ve helped to contain its advance in Iraq but we haven’t defeated it because it can’t be defeated without more effective local forces on the ground.” 
The ABC, Wednesday:
ELEANOR HALL: There’s been a strong reaction to Tony Abbott’s firebrand speech in London. 
The former prime minister urged European powers to strengthen their borders against the flow of refugees from the Middle East and calling for troops to be sent into Syria…
TOM IGGULDEN: It was an expansive and forthright Tony Abbott delivering the second annual Margaret Thatcher lecture to British conservatives in London this morning. It included a frank assessment of the war against Islamic State…
TOM IGGULDEN: The Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is accusing Mr Abbott of over simplifying a complex civil war in Syria. BILL SHORTEN: I think it’s very difficult at a great distance for Australia or some other country to say they’ve got the answers to Syria.
The ABC’s Barrie Cassidy this morning:
Delivering the Margaret Thatcher lecture at London’s Guildhall, Abbott insisted it’s strong leadership that makes a difference. His definition of strength? 
Thatcher on the Falklands, he said, “did not see an Argentine grievance to be negotiated, but a monstrous violation of British sovereignty”.
No negotiation.
Fight. Fight. Fight…
On safer ground, he urged even more force against Daesh terrorists, but even then he argued for more effective local forces on the ground: 
As Margaret Thatcher so clearly understood over the Falklands, those that won’t use decisive force, where needed, end up being dictated to by those who will.
Fight. Fight. Fight.
The news from Barack Obama, around the same time:
The U.S. will send a small number of U.S. special operations forces into Syria as part of a shift in its strategy against ISIS, White House officials announced Friday.
Although, being Obama:
President Barack Obama has authorized a contingent of fewer than 50 commandos to deploy into northern Syria ...
Will Shorten sneer that the US is at too “great distance” to “say they’ve got the answers to Syria”?
Will the ABC sneer at Obama’s “firebrand” announcement?
Will Cassidy sneer that Obama knows only to “Fight. Fight. Fight.”?
Will any of the above praise Abbott for his prescience? 
===

Hijab grab denied

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (12:11pm)

Very distressing for the woman, but a very curious attempt to politicise:
Police are investigating after a young Muslim woman was punched to the ground by a stranger as she made her way through lunchtime crowds in Melbourne’s CBD.

The 21-year-old woman from Dandenong, in Melbourne’s south­east, was on Swanston Street, opposite the State Library, about 1.10pm on Thursday when she was attacked by a man walking in the opposite direction… 
Discrepancies have emerged between police accounts of the ­alleged assault and those of the Australian Islamophobia Register, which released online statements about the incident, and a 16-year-old boy whose father contacted the advocacy group to say his son had intervened.
Police discounted the register’s initial reports that the man was armed with a knife and ­attempted to remove the woman’s hijab, and said there was no evidence the woman was ­attacked because of her religion… The Australian Islamophobic Register’s president, lawyer Mar­iam Veiszadeh, said that while it was important not to jump to conclusions, a religious or racial ­motivation could not be ruled out.
===

Unions are for officials

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (11:30am)

The union movement has lost the workers, but become an even bigger employment agency for political operatives. Judith Sloan:
If the trade union movement in Australia were a company, it would be thinking of filing for bankruptcy. In the early 1990s, its market share was 40 per cent. It is now 15 per cent… 
The industry with the highest proportion of trade union members is education and training, which reflects the high percentage of teachers who are union members. Even so, only 34 per cent of workers in education and training are union members…
But the real paradox is that notwithstanding the decline in union membership in Australia, the resources available to trade unions have actually increased and there is little evidence to indicate waning influence.
As noted by Henry Ergas, in 1975 the trade unions employed 2000 officials to service three million members. Now there are 4000 officials for about 1.7 million members..., with much higher proportions never having worked in the occupations covered by the employing union… Today, the overall proportion of union officials with ­degrees is twice the proportion of their members.
Increasingly, trade unions rely less on the dues members pay to support their activities and more on alternative sources of income…The real point is that trade unions in Australia have become less industrial organisations committed to enhancing the welfare of their members and more political bodies used by ambitious university graduates to secure political careers or well-paid positions at the Fair Work Commission and other government agencies… It is noteworthy that there are now more former union officials among federal Labor parliamentarians than was the case 20 years ago. 
UPDATE
How much more must come out before Labor admits the royal commission was needed?

The long-serving boss of a powerful union dynasty in NSW has ­abruptly quit just days before he was called to give potentially damaging evidence to the royal commission into union corruption about allegations related to the misuse of union money and credit cards. 
Derrick Belan, state secretary of the right-wing National Union of Workers since 2001, has quietly resigned and handed the reins to his deputy, Wayne Meaney.
Mr Belan’s brother, Nick, has also suddenly left his job as a senior NUW official and will face questioning about the union’s ­financial dealings when he ­appears at the royal commission next week. Another key witness will be Derrick Belan’s niece, Danielle O’Brien, who has suddenly quit as the union’s bookkeeper.
It is understood lawyers for the royal commission want to question all three about alleged serious irregularities in NUW accounts and misuse of union credit cards.
One senior union source told The Weekend Australian that Ms O’Brien’s role was central to the investigations. Also of interest is Mr Belan’s links to a gym at St Marys in Sydney’s west, called ­Ultimate Training Centre, and his links to a Sydney labour hire company co-owned by his former partner....
Derrick Belan’s late father, Frank Belan, [was] notorious because of the power he once wielded during strikes by cutting off NSW petrol supplies, ruled the NUW with an iron hand for many years when it was known as the Storemen and Packers Union.
===

Abbott haters would rather Europe be destroyed in the name of compassion

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (8:16am)

The abuse of Tony Abbott by the media class is astonishing. His alleged sin? No more than to say Europe must save itself from an invasion that has so far this year brought nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants, mainly Muslim, to Europe, most bound for Germany and Sweden, with millions more on the way.
Chris Kenny:
Refugee advocates and other green-Left activists ... are not harmless. Back in 2008 Labor and the Greens bowed to the humanitarian hubris and abolished Australia’s strong border protection measures. This triggered a people-smuggling revival, leading to 1200 deaths as more than 800 boats and 50,000 asylum-seekers crossed dangerous waters. 
A similar but greater tragedy has unfolded in Europe this year ...  When Tony Abbott spoke in London this week about this diabolical ­dilemma — how open borders could lure tens of millions from South Asia, North Africa and the Middle East — the response was hateful.
Abbott talked frankly about how protecting refugees and ­making their homelands safe was the only sustainable solution. He warned that welcoming unlimited numbers of refugees and economic migrants could undermine the very qualities that make European nations desirable destinations. This is what serious politicians need to do — explain hard choices.
“This is so utterly appalling, Tony Abbott,” tweeted human rights lawyer Sarah Joseph. Former Liberal, Democrats and ­WikiLeaks party member Greg Barns tweeted about “Abbott’s racist rant”.
The greatest chutzpah came from Kevin Rudd’s former press secretary, Lachlan Harris, with “What a very small man.” Never mind that Rudd’s policies, designed to appear generous and worldly, actually delivered misery and death…
Fairfax Media’s Waleed Aly said Abbott’s approach was the kind reached when “deep down, the actual lives of people in far-off lands barely feature in your moral calculus”. This moral superiority is coming from people who advocate policies that inevitably lead to chaos, criminal smuggling operations and innocent deaths. Taken to its logical extension, the unrestrained compassion urged by such commentators would be the ruin of Europe with the influx of millions of dependent people.
The ultimate example of the besetting sin of the Left - a narcissistic preference for seeming good, even when achieving evil.
UPDATE
Credit to Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles:
From the moment the former Labor government reopened the detention facility on Nauru, there has been a chorus of voices ­attempting to paint the most dire picture about this place. We are told, variously, that it is a remote hellhole where rape and assault appear to occur with impunity… 

Few of the voices in this debate have ever been to Nauru. Many have a clear agenda to break the model of offshore processing on Nauru… What I do not accept is the demonisation of Nauru in pursuit of it. Because inherent in this tactic is a total disregard for the Nauruan people, which at its worst is outright bigotry… Like any place, crime happens in Nauru. But Nauruans are not habitually violent. Nauruan men are not habitual rapists. To even hint at this is offensive.
UPDATE
The media Left in Australia insisted Tony Abbott had “embarrassed” and shamed Australia by lecturing Europe on border policies.
But in Britain the media thinks Abbott was far from embarrassing. The Daily Express editorialises:
TONY ABBOTT, the former prime minister of Australia, has long been a beacon of common sense.

He has now urged EU leaders to close their borders to illegal migrants and to turn back boats that try to make it across the Mediterranean. 
His is the voice of experience and European leaders would be wise to listen.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, November 1

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (8:14am)


On Channel 10 at 10am and 3pm:
My guest: Best-selling author and geologist Ian Plimer on his new book on Pope Francis and the dangerous global warming movement.
Editorial:  What the invasion of Europe really looks like. And why Tony Abbott is right.

The panel: Former Labor campaign guru Bruce Hawker and Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger.  The evasive Malcolm Turnbull. Is he for a GST or against? For nuclear power or against?  And does Bill Shorten have a future? What of his plan to lower the voting age to 16?

NewsWatch: Sharri Markson, media editor of  The Australian. How journalists made Abbott’s great speech seem a flop. How the ABC rewards bad behaviour. Oh, and why Fiona Stanley should step down from an ABC inquiry into bias.
Plus a warning on coal seam gas. But not what you think.

The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Why this silence about who’s shooting up Melbourne?

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (8:04am)

The Age refuses to mention the ethnic factors which might help to explain why parts of Melbourne are starting to resemble Beirut:
A person has been injured or killed by gunfire on average every nine days in Victoria so far this year. 
Almost one in three shootings resulting in death and injury over the past 10 months were concentrated in a small pocket in Melbourne’s outer north, a Fairfax analysis found.
October has been the worst month for gun violence this year, with 10 incidents, including the ambush of a man who was gunned down in Bentleigh East on Friday morning.At least half of the eight fatal shootings this year were drug-related, the victims suspected or convicted traffickers, or associated with some of Melbourne’s most notorious criminal networks.
The Age does not trust its readers with his information, reported two days ago in the Herald Sun:
MIDDLE Eastern gangs are to blame for a surge of shootings in Victoria, mainly caused by drugs and territorial disputes, according to police… 
Victoria Police Crime Command Acting Commander Peter de Santo said ... “these incidences are isolated around Melbourne’s northwest region where we have the main concentration of Middle Eastern groups who conduct their illicit activities.”
The Age did mention this before, when police spoke out. Why ignore it now? What else isn’t it telling its readers?
UPDATE
The Herald Sun tells it straight:
Police believe [many of the shootings] stem from a power vacuum left by the jailing of a major crime figure and violent members of five families with crime links...the Kheirs, Tibas, Kassabs, Haddaras and Chaouks…
UPDATE
Yet another shooting in Melbourne, quite likely unrelated to those above:
A MAN aged in his 20s is in a critical condition in hospital after he was shot during a brawl in Melbourne’s west. Police say four men got into a fight in Kurunjang on Friday night, with two producing a gun and a hammer.
===

Islamic State murders activists in Turkey

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (8:04am)

ABC Middle East correspondent Matt Brown reported this week on brave anti-Islamic State activists:
In a non-descript office in southern Turkey, a tiny group of activists is waging an extraordinary electronic war.
They are refugees from the Islamic State (IS) group’s stronghold of Raqqa and they are posting online videos and text that defy the group’s agenda.
The images are shaky and hastily shot but remarkable because they are taken by brave young people still living in Raqqa…
They also distribute pamphlets and posters spoofing Islamic State’s extremism.
“We are mocking IS,” Mohammed Al Salih said.
“We try to use humour to break through the fear of IS and show the world that IS in fact is just a caricature.” When IS militants killed Sarmad’s brother after a battle with rival rebels, they pointedly sent him photos of the mutilated corpse warning he would be next… IS supporters have even posted pictures on Facebook showing Sarmad’s front door in Turkey and a friend at an ATM machine on a Turkish street. 
But today’s terrible news:
Two activists who campaigned against Islamic State in Syria have been shot in the head and beheaded in the southeastern Turkish town of Sanliurfa, the founder of the group they worked for said… 
Both men killed in Sanliurfa worked for Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, a campaign group founded in April 2014.
Ibrahim Abd al-Qader, born in 1998, and his friend Fares Hammadi, who had resigned from the group in 2014 because of the dangers of the work, were found dead in their apartment on Friday morning…
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Captain Mona Shindy

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (7:52am)

An inspirational story that offers hope:
WHEN Captain Mona Shindy climbed aboard HMAS Canberra to test missiles in the Pacific, a locker had to be converted into a sleeping quarters to accommodate her. 
Never before had an active Australian warship carried women. But aged 23 and launching what would become a 26-year career with the Navy, this was just the first hurdle of a trailblazer. Already she had a University degree in the blokey domain of engineering. Weapons engineer. And if this were not unusual enough, Captain Shindy happens to be Muslim, and for most of her career in the navy, has been a mother.
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On hating Tony Abbott for praising Britain’s war against invasion

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (7:25am)

ABC host Barrie Cassidy continues the Left’s demonisation of Tony Abbott: 
Delivering the Margaret Thatcher lecture at London’s Guildhall, Abbott insisted it’s strong leadership that makes a difference.
His definition of strength? Thatcher on the Falklands, he said, “did not see an Argentine grievance to be negotiated, but a monstrous violation of British sovereignty”. No negotiation. Fight. Fight. Fight.
Got it? Abbott is just a thug, spoiling always for a fight, rather than negotations.
But Cassidy misrepresents the history of the Falklands War by failing to give the context. There were in fact many negotiations over what was, in fact, an illegal invasion over British territory by military junta, and  war was just the last resort, short of surrender: 
The actual motivation for Argentina’s April 1982 invasion was a more immediate threat to General Leopoldo Galtieri’s ruling military junta: internal instability in Argentina threatened to topple his dictatorship. Galtieri needed a uniting diversion… 
Argentina’s claim on the Falklands (which it calls the Malvinas Islands) was based on sheer proximity to Argentina’s mainland and its purported “inheritance” of sovereignty from the failed 1810 Spanish government....
In 1979 full diplomatic relations were reestablished between Argentina and Britain, and in 1980 both countries resumed talks on the Falkland/ Malvinas question. During a round of talks in February 1982, however, Argentina refused to establish a compromise with Britain, and on March 1 the Minister of Foreign Relations Nicanor Costa Méndez of Argentina warned Britain that Argentina would seek other means of settling the dispute. On 19 March 1982, less than three weeks after the Argentine warning to Britain, a group of 30 Argentine scrap merchants landed on South Georgia/Georgia del Sur Island (part of the area under dispute) to dismantle an old whaling station… The men, who did not carry appropriate visas and work permits, raised the Argentine flag on the island…
HMS Endurance was dispatched from Stanley with half the Falklands garrison embarked—22 Royal Marines and one lieutenant. They were under orders to deport the salvagers back to Argentina. Endurance arrived on 23 March and landed the Royal Marines....
On 26 March, 100 Argentinean troops arrived by sea, purportedly to defend the salvagers… Additional Argentinean reinforcements arrived steadily… The outnumbered British force observed the troops until 03 April, when the Royal Marines on South Georgia surrendered after the fall of Stanley…
The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 502 on April 3, 1982, which deplored the invasion by Argentina, requested the cessation of hostilities, and demanded the withdrawal of Argentine forces from the Falkland/ Malvinas Islands. Resolution 502 was soon invoked by the United States and the European Economic Community (EEC) in their calls for an end to the war. On April 6 Britain imposed a commercial embargo on all Argentine imports, which was seconded by the EEC and followed by Norway, Australia, and the Commonwealth of Nations countries… Argentina’s refusal to comply with a United States peace initiative prompted United States economic sanctions… 
Thatcher would not reward a military junta’s invasion by surrendering British territory. For Cassidy to portray this as a mindless “fight, fight, fight” instinct is grossly simplistic. It’s Chamberlain politics - the politics of surrender - dressed up as virtue. Cassidy is sneering at the defence of national territory from invasion, portraying it as just the actions of a thug.
But Cassidy then proceeds with his demonisation, casting Abbott as two-faced and mean for believing the huge columns of illegal immigrants streaming into Europe should be stopped:
Abbott insisted “no country can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself”, and that Europe needed to close its borders to migrants “for the universal decencies of mankind, lest the world rapidly becomes a much worse place”. Close the borders in the name of decency and compassion - not since George Orwell’s 1984 satire has logic been so twisted. 
“War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, “Ignorance is Strength”, wrote Orwell of a new world government that had brainwashed its population.
But, again, Cassidy misrepresents Abbott’s argument. He has transposed Abbott’s quote - the one Cassidy mocks to put it in a false context. Abbott in discussing in his speechthe need for the West to defend “universal decencies” was talking primarily about the need to confront the evil of the Islamic State, not to turn back illegal immigrants:
Yet the worse the times and the higher the stakes, the less matters can be left in the too hard basket. More than ever, Western countries need the self-confidence to stand up for ourselves and for the universal decencies of mankind lest the world rapidly become a much worse place. Like the countries of Europe, Australia struggles to come to terms with the local terrorism that Daesh has inspired. Like you, we are trying to contain Daesh from the air while waiting for a Syrian strategy to emerge. 
In fact, far from being Orwellian in declaring tough measures sweet, Abbott freely acknowledged the conflict between wanting to show compassion and wanting to save Europe from being overwhelmed, but appealed to the greater good in turning back illegal immigrants:
It will require some force; it will require massive logistics and expense; it will gnaw at our consciences – yet it is the only way to prevent a tide of humanity surging through Europe and quite possibly changing it forever. We are rediscovering the hard way that justice tempered by mercy is an exacting ideal as too much mercy for some necessarily undermines justice for all.
Cassidy ploughs on:
If the speech was designed to lay down markers for Abbott’s eventual return to the top of Australian politics, then the only winner can be Malcolm Turnbull. Having demonstrably captured the crucial middle ground, why should Turnbull fear a campaign from Tony Abbott intent on pitching even further to the right?
So now it’s just the politics of the far Right to refuse to surrender to an invasion of your territory by a junta?
Orwell, the socialist cited by Cassidy to damn Abbott, would not have agreed at all:
If I had to defend my reasons for supporting the war, I believe I could do so. There is no real alternative between resisting Hitler and surrendering to him, and from a Socialist point of view I should say that it is better to resist; in any case I can see no argument for surrender that does not make nonsense of the Republican resistance in Spain, the Chinese resistance to Japan, etc. etc. But I don’t pretend that that is the emotional basis of my actions. What I knew in my dream that night was that the long drilling patriotism which the middle classes go through had done its work, and that once England was in a serious jam it would be impossible for me to sabotage.... 
I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King’. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. It is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will flinch from revolution when the moment comes....
The young Communist who died heroically in the International Brigade was public school to the core. He had changed his allegiance but not his emotions. What does that prove? Merely the possibility of building a Socialist on the bones of a Blimp, the power of one kind of loyalty to transmute itself into another, the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues, for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the Left may like them, no substitute has yet been found.
UPDATE
Barack Obama, far too late, does a little of what Abbott urged in his speech:
United States officials disclosed plans on Friday to station the first American boots on the ground in Syria in the war against Islamic State fighters, saying dozens of special forces troops would be sent as advisers to groups fighting against the jihadists.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Time that Fair Work Australia had a broom put through it

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (7:15am)

How can anyone have any confidence in Fair Work Australia? What other conflicts of interest are kept hidden?
Fair Work vice-president ­Michael Lawler initiated and presided over two conciliation conferences after a massive Victorian health industry dispute during the first six months of his relationship with former Health Services Union nation­al secretary Kathy Jackson. 
Mr Lawler claimed in emailed correspondence with Fair Work president Iain Ross this year that he had declared the affair to Justice Ross’s predecessor, Geoff ­Giudice, as soon as it began, avoiding health industry matters from that point to prevent a conflict of interest. The email correspondence — tabled in the Senate a week ago — suggests that Mr Lawler misled Mr Ross and also the ABC’s recent Four Corners program when he asserted ­unconditionally that the conciliation conferences preceded his relationship with Ms Jackson by a year. 
This is absolutely amazing, if as true as it seems:
The Australian revealed on ­August 31 this year that in August 2008, five months after their relationship began, Lawler initiated two conciliation conferences following a massive dispute in the health industry led by Jackson. 
During those conferences, on ­August 5 and August 19, 2008, Jackson had appeared before Lawler, together with top hospital representatives and the Victorian government.
No disclosure had been made to the other parties regarding any relationship between the vice-president and the unionist…
Sources later said that the second of these conferences concluded with angry words after Lawler ­allegedly pressed the employers and the government to carefully consider the risk they took if they failed to settle and instead went to arbitration. The sources claimed Lawler had put considerably more pressure on the employers and the government than the union. 
===

Bush going, going…

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (6:56am)

Peggy Noonon gives up on Jeb Bush. So it’s safe to conclude he’s finished:
He’s not good at the merry aggression of national politics. He never had an obvious broad base within the party. He seemed to understand the challenge of his name in the abstract but not have a plan to deal with it. It was said of Scott Walker that the great question was whether he had the heft and ability to go national. The same should have been asked of Jeb. He had never been a national candidate, only a governor. Reporters thought he was national because he was part of a national family. 
He was playing from an old playbook—he means to show people his heart, hopes to run joyously. But it’s 2015, we’re in crisis; they don’t care about your heart and joy, they care about your brains, guts and toughness. The expectations he faced were unrealistically high. He was painted as the front-runner. Reporters thought with his record, and a brother and father as president, he must be the front-runner, the kind of guy the GOP would fall in line for. But there’s no falling in line this year. He spent his first months staking out his position not as a creative, original chief executive of a major state—which he was—but as a pol raising shock-and-awe money and giving listless, unfocused interviews in which he slouched and shrugged. There was a sense he was waiting to be appreciated. I speak of his candidacy in the past tense, which is rude though I don’t mean it rudely. It’s just hard to see how this can work. By hard I mean, for me, impossible.
The Republican party suspends the contract with NBC after  the farcically hostile hosting of the latest Republican debate by CNBC:
Priebus told the NBC chief that “the CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith.” 
“We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance,” he continued. “CNBC billed the debate as one that would focus on ‘the key issues that matter to all voters—job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy.’ That was not the case.”
“Before the debate, the candidates were promised an opening question on economic or financial matters. That was not the case. Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness. That was not the case.  Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive. The first question directed to one of our candidates asked if he was running a comic book version of a presidential campaign, hardly in the spirit of how the debate was billed.”
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Shorten wants vote extended to those young and stupid enough to vote Labor

Andrew Bolt October 31 2015 (6:52am)


The older you get, the more you understand the difference between seeming good and achieving it. The more you appreciate that fine plans go easily astray, and the best measure of them is not intentions but consequences.
It is summed up in this now-tired maxim: “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”
So it’s no surprise that Labor thinks its best hope of winning elections is to extend the vote to the brainless, the inexperienced, the untrained and the excited:
LABOR leader Bill Shorten will promise to lower the voting age to as young as 16 if his party wins the next federal election… Labor estimates around 500,000 more people would vote.
You want this country made even more stupid? Go ahead, vote Labor.
(Thanks to reader Lily.)  
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Caught in the Play School of pure evil

Piers Akerman – Thursday, October 30, 2014 (7:24pm)

LAST week, Australians were asking how a 17-year-old boy could wind up in Syria fronting a propaganda video for the barbaric terrorist gang IS.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Caught in the Play School of pure evil'
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PRE-TRAUMATIC STRESS

Tim Blair – Friday, October 31, 2014 (1:47pm)

Climate scientists are cracking up: 
From depression to substance abuse to suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder, growing bodies of research in the relatively new field of psychology of global warming suggest that climate change will take a pretty heavy toll on the human psyche as storms become more destructive and droughts more prolonged. For your everyday environmentalist, the emotional stress suffered by a rapidly changing Earth can result in some pretty substantial anxieties …
Lise Van Susteren, a forensic psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. — and co-author of the National Wildlife Federation’s report — calls this emotional reaction “pre-traumatic stress disorder,” a term she coined to describe the mental anguish that results from preparing for the worst, before it actually happens. 
Via Tony Thomas, who somehow finds amusement in this tragic development.
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THORNE EXPLAINS

Tim Blair – Friday, October 31, 2014 (12:42pm)

Islamic preacher Junaid Thorne claims he was taken out of context: 
Earlier this year Thorne gave a lecture in which he called Jews and Christians “filthy rapists”.
He told Lloyd that he was misunderstood and the comments had been taken out of context. 
Very well then, Junaid. What did you mean to say? 
“If you go back to the lecture, I said we have our sisters being raped by filthy Jews and Christians. So I’m talking about the ones that actually do that.” 
Glad we’ve cleared that up.
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Fact-checking the biography of Nova Peris. UPDATE: Fresh emails suggest Peris blackmail claims false

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (5:28pm)

How much trust can we put in the word of Senator Nova Peris?
From her official Labor biography:
Nova was born and raised in Darwin and her mother, grandmother and grandfather are all members of the ‘Stolen Generations’ ...
In fact:
The Federal Court investigated claims of a “stolen generation” in the Northern Territory in the Gunner and Cubillo test case and found children were not “stolen” for racist reasons as alleged, but  were rescued for welfare reasons - and even then the numbers involved were relatively low:
[I]ntegration of part Aboriginal children was not based on race; it was based on a sense of responsibility —perhaps misguided and paternalistic—for those children who had been deserted by their white fathers and who were living in tribal conditions with their Aboriginal mothers. Care for those children was perceived to be best offered by affording them the opportunity of acquiring a western education so that they might then more easily be integrated into western society… Finally, there was absolutely no causative link connecting ‘race’ to a failure to have regard for the welfare of children. The existence of one does not preclude the existence of the other… Even though one forced removal would be regarded today as one too many, the numbers in the Administrator’s report, if accurate, do not support an argument that there was a large scale policy of forced removals occurring in this period. 
And this conclusion: 
...that evidence does not support a finding that there was any policy of removal of part Aboriginal children such as that alleged by the applicants: and if, contrary to that finding, there was such a policy, the evidence in these proceedings would not justify a finding that it was ever implemented as a matter of course in respect of these applicants.
Can Peris really claim her mother was “stolen”?
Nova’s mother, Joan, at nine, and three of her siblings were sent to a Catholic mission on Melville Island when Nora developed typhoid and was unable to look after them. They stayed for six years. Joan then opted to live with foster parents in Adelaide and did not return to Darwin until 1969, by which time her mother Nora had hit the grog hard.  
Can Peris really claim her grandfather was “stolen”?
After the war [grandmother] Nora met and married Johnny Peris, who was of Aboriginal and Filipino descent, and whose Spanish surname came from parents who adopted him after his mother had given him up.  
Can Peris really claim her grandmother was “stolen” when she was sent to Moola Bulla station?
From the official Labor biography:
She was first elected in 2013 and has become the first Indigenous Australian to be elected to the Commonwealth Parliament.
In fact:
Peris is actually the fourth Aborigine elected to the Commonwealth Parliament, after Neville Bonner, Aden Ridgeway and Ken Wyatt.
UPDATE
New Matilda suggests Novas Peris’s claims of blackmail don’t check out:
Labor Senator Nova Peris - Australia’s first female Aboriginal federal politician - has told Parliament that the publishing of the ‘Ato Boldon Sex Scandal’ emails by News Corporation earlier this week was part of an attempt to blackmail her over a long-running family dispute. 
In an emotional speech to parliament yesterday afternoon, Senator Peris revealed brief details of three emails she received which she says supported her accusation the release of the Boldon emails was “an attempt to extract money and embarrass” her, and her family.
New Matilda has obtained copies of all three emails. Read in full, they do not appear to support Senator Peris’ claims.
While New Matilda does not assert further information that substantiates the claim of blackmail may not subsequently emerge, an offer to Senator Peris’ office late yesterday to provide evidence to support her claims of blackmail was not taken up.
...
The email dated October 19, 2012, which Senator Peris’ statement suggests was the start of the blackmailing, does not appear to support Senator Peris’ version of events.
After complaining to the ‘aggrieved party’ about a lack of funds in a deceased estate, Senator Peris receives the following reply: “For your records and to assist you with the identification of additional Estate items [the deceased] left his “tinny” on my pontoon with motor and accessories, a file box of taxation information for Peris Enterprises from 2001 and a folder of information pertaining to Ato Boldon’s visit to Australia that you organized in early 2010. I am happy to pack up the written information in a box and include it with the boat/accessories and make it available to a representative of your choice for collection at a convenient time.”
At no stage does the author of the email reference the details of the Boldon emails, nor does it appear that any threat can be inferred from the author’s correspondence…
The second email – dated March 21, 2014 – is from an intermediary, acting on behalf of the ‘aggrieved family member’.
The letter seeks Senator Peris’ ongoing participation in an informal process to arrange access visits to children in Senator Peris’ care.
Senator Peris told parliament that she was warned if the demands of the aggrieved family member were not met, it would result in “major trauma for everyone, especially the children and damage the reputation of some stakeholders.”
The full transcript of the email does not appear to support this assertion.
The entire paragraph quote by Senator Peris reads: “Nova; the [redacted] families will eventually be granted access to the children you share in common with them. The decision that needs to be made is whether it is going to be achieved the right way, so as to minimize the further trauma for stakeholders, or the wrong way, which will only result in causing major trauma for everyone, especially the children and damage the reputation of some stakeholders.”
The use of the term ‘wrong way’ appears to be a reference to proceeding to a full hearing of the matter in the Family Court, as opposed to reaching an amicable agreement among the parties, which can then be registered with the courts… In an interview with New Matilda late yesterday, one of the authors of the emails flatly rejected any suggestion of impropriety.  
(Thanks to reader Duncan.) 
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The Bolt Report on Sunday, November 2

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (4:40pm)

On The Bolt Report on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm.
Editorial:  Labor’s deadly compassion.
My guest:  Attorney-General George Brandis on terrorism and loss of free speech.
The panel: Janel Albrechtsen and Sean Kelly, former media advisor to Julia Gillard. On the Government’s fake climate cure, feminism and Clive “no means yes” Palmer.
NewsWatch:  Piers Akerman on the Nova Peris scandal.
And lots more, including: how beautiful is a power station?

The videos of the shows appear here.
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What’s so hard to understand? We can’t send doctors to fight ebola if we can’t guarantee their care

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (10:04am)

Labor and the ABC have waged a bizarre campaign against the Abbott Government for refusing to send health workers to fight ebola without proper medical care guaranteed.
That campaign hit a snag yesterday on the ABC’s The World Today:
ELEANOR HALL:  Professor Tim Inglis from the School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Western Australia is warning in a piece published in the journal Nature that governments like Australia’s can’t protect their citizens from Ebola by retreating behind their borders. 
Professor Inglis joins us now in Perth.
Professor Inglis, thanks so much for being there.
TIM INGLIS: Good morning.
ELEANOR HALL: In your article in Nature today you argue that the Federal Government is actually putting more Australian lives at risk by refusing to send medical teams into West Africa. The Government of course, says it is taking a prudent approach.
You don’t agree?
TIM INGLIS: Actually, the way you present the information is not quite the phrase that I use.
I use the term “reluctant” and I can understand that reluctance because this is a complex issue that we’re all having to cope with and deal with, and that reluctance, that prudent approach is something that those of us who are volunteering to do work in the hot zone understand.
We appreciate that people care about whether we’re going to come back alive and kicking or unfortunately come back with a disease, which is obviously something anybody who goes into the hot zone wants to avoid.
(Thanks to reader ABCcharter.) 
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Wastewatch #1

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (9:52am)

Waste:
Australia’s Ambassador for Women and Girls, Natasha Stott Despoja, works to ensure that the empowerment of women and girls is a central focus of Australia’s diplomatic, development and defence concerns. By advocating internationally for women’s equal participation in political, economic and social affairs, the Ambassador advances global progress, peace and stability.
Business class jet-setting to what practical effect?
Waste:
An independent audit of the $445,000 given to Athletics Australia for a program at the centre of allegations against Senator Nova Peris found no misuse of the money, despite an overspend in its Indigenous department of $140,000, the Australian Sports Commission has said.... Jump Start to London [was] a national talent and identification project program for young Indigenous athletes…
Nearly half a million dollars for “talent identification”? A $140,000 blowout? With thousands given to a West Indian athlete to come give a talk or two?
(Thanks to reader Paul.) 
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CFMEU in the gun

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (8:47am)

Excellent:
A POLICE taskforce will be unleashed on rogue unions including the CFMEU in an unprecedented strike against criminality in the construction industry.  

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Premier Denis Napthine will today reveal the establishment of a joint police taskforce to focus on union officials and others engaged in blackmail, cartel behaviour, extortion, boycotts, kickbacks and intimidation. 
The Herald Sun can reveal the taskforce of about 30 Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police officers will pursue criminal activities uncovered by the royal commission into trade union corruption.
It will focus on unions but will also pursue corrupt employers, debt collectors and mediators. People who work as “mediators” in the building industry, such as underworld figure Mick Gatto, an associate of CFMEU state secretary John Setka, are likely to be pursued.
ABC bias watch: 774 presenter Jon Faine is attacking Treasurer Michael O’Brien for making the CFMEU an election issue. (The CFMEU has links to Labor.) 
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Greens fight green policies

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (7:22am)

The Greens have this year:
- opposed an increase in petrol excise, even though their own policy calls for more expensive petrol to fight global warming.
- opposed the Government’s Direct Action scheme, even though the Greens demand something be done to fight global warming. 
===

Another assault on our free speech

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (7:08am)

Greg Sheridan on the Abbott Government’s draconian new restrictions on reporting on special intelligence operations:
A free society requires that the government must not be able to declare whole chunks of reality as simply unreportable under any circumstances.
The problem:
One law passed earlier this months imposes 10-year jail terms for those who reveal special intelligence operations while a law passed yesterday could impose similar terms for those who publish “news items” on the recruitment of terrorists.
The Government’s assurance:
“There is no possibility, no practical or foreseeable possibility that in our liberal democracy a journalist would ever be prosecuted for doing their job,” Senator Brandis said yesterday. 
He then said he had told the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions that it must get the attorney-general’s consent before taking a journalist to court under the laws…
Senator Brandis argued it would be a “very powerful safeguard” if a political official ­assumed that responsibility.
But:
NewsCorp Australia group editorial director Campbell Reid told Sky News that some of the company’s newspaper reports in the past would have breached the new rules if they had been in force. NewsCorp Australia is the publisher of The Australian. 
“Our point is that rather than having George Brandis or a subsequent attorney-general intervening on this, there are easy and sensible ways that the legislation itself can be amended so that the jeopardy to journalists doing their jobs is removed in the legislation,” Mr Reid said.
I’m torn. I absolutely accept there are dangers here to free speech and a free society.
The one reservation I have is that it is no longer possible to treat the media as a just a few serious organisations, led by people alive to the national interest. Wikileaks should teach us what can be dumped by even media organisations claiming to be serious, and the rise of blogs and micro on-line publications expands the definition of journalist to include an army of cranks, extremists and enemies of the West.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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The company Melissa Parke keeps

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (7:01am)

Melissa Parke is fast confirming that she is on Planet Pluto of the far Left:
LABOR MP Melissa Parke, Hansard, Monday:  
RICHARD Falk ... has said that the “Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement provides a hopeful way of writing the future history of Palestine in the legal and moral language of rights, rather than the bloody deeds of warfare”.
Christian Kerr, The Australian, Wednesday: 
A SPOKESMAN for Ms Parke said she was unaware of Professor Falk’s 9/11 comments ...
Richard Falk blogs, January 11, 2011: 
WE ... know that governments (ab)use their authority to ... criminalise those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing ... The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008).
David Ray Griffin, devoted scholar of high integrity? Kourosh Ziabari, Centre for Research on Globalisation, September 12, 2012:
DR David Ray Griffin is one of the people who is actively involved in the 9/11 Truth Movement ... The first question which I asked Dr Griffin was about Osama bin Laden, the alleged commander of the 9/11 attacks ..."There is no good evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks ... As to who ‘recruited’ the terrorists, we don’t know, since we have no evidence that there were any terrorists. There is even good evidence against the idea that the planes were taken over by terrorists,” he added....The US government is ‘sensitive’ because it is guilty, either of organising and carrying out the attacks ... or by covering up the attacks, at least to the extent of endorsing the official story while knowing it to be false ...” One of the speculations which the truth-seekers of the 9/11 attacks propose is that Israel was involved in the attacks. Five Israeli citizens were seen recording movies of the collapsing of the twin towers while celebrating and congratulating each others in the street of New York. What does Dr Griffin has to say about this? “… The dancing Israelis are evidence of foreknowledge ... We ... have pretty strong evidence that some of the ‘hijackers’ were Israelis. That’s the strongest ­evidence I know.”
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Who got Clive Palmer’s $6 million of allegedly Chinese money in the week before the election?

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (6:51am)

Did China pay for Clive Palmer’s party?
CLIVE Palmer went on a spending spree after siphoning $10 million of Chinese funds into a bank account he controlled, according to fresh documents lodged in the Queensland Supreme Court ­yesterday.

The documents, part of Mr Palmer’s formal legal defence to allegations of dishonesty and fraud, include evidence that he drew a $6m cheque on September 4 last year, three days before the federal election… 
[A]n annexure document to his 12-page defence ...  shows that the $6m cheque was the first one drawn on a newly opened account, of which Mr Palmer was sole signatory, for a company he controlled, Cosmo Developments Pty Ltd.
Other documents disclosed over recent months show Mr Palmer personally withdrew $10m, on August 8 last year, from an NAB account, “Port Palmer Operations”, which held China’s cash for the purpose of funding the port at Cape Preston…
The $10m that Mr Palmer withdrew on August 8 last year was then deposited by him into the Cosmo Developments account that he alone controlled.
The evidence has previously disclosed that Mr Palmer paid for advertising for his Palmer United Party by drawing a cheque on September 2 last year for $2.167m directly from the “Port Palmer Operations” NAB account. The $2.167m cheque, signed by Mr Palmer, went directly to Brisbane agency Media Circus Network, which handled PUP’s costly media campaign.
The disclosure yesterday of the $6m cheque — and its timing of September 4 last year — will fuel speculation that these funds were also channelled into the PUP campaign. The recipient of the $6m cheque has not yet been disclosed on the public record…
Other documents show that Media Circus sent an invoice to PUP for $2,167,065.60 on August 31 last year, payable “immediately”, as “August and September media booked and approved” would cost $7,167,065.60… Mr Palmer’s formal legal defence in the Supreme Court “breach of trust” case denies he was involved in any dishonesty or wrongdoing, and insists “Palmer did not know that the funds in the bank account were trust funds, if it be the case, which is denied”. 
===

Royal commission told: Julia Gillard cleared of crime, but not of sloppiness or receiving money

Andrew Bolt October 31 2014 (7:03pm)

No crime but stupidity, suggests the royal commission, and perhaps a lack of frankness about money received.
This is the good bit for Gillard:
FORMER prime minister Julia Gillard did not commit any crime in relation to an alleged corrupt slush fund operated by her one-time boyfriend, an inquiry has been told. 
The lawyer leading inquiries for the trade unions royal commission has recommended a finding that Ms Gillard did not commit any crime and did not know about allegedly criminal activity by her former lover, union boss Bruce Wilson. The recommendation is among the written submissions to the commission by counsel assisting, Jeremy Stoljar SC, published today. 
And this is the bad:
However Mr Stoljar reports that some aspects of Ms Gillard’s professional conduct as a solicitor “appear questionable” and that she likely did receive money from Mr Wilson for her home renovations — something she has consistently denied… 
Ms Gillard advised Mr Wilson and his union bagman, Ralph Blewitt, on setting up the AWU Workplace Reform Association (WRA) in the early 1990s… Mr Stoljar wrote: “Had she adopted a more rigorous approach to the task, it might have been more difficult for Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt to have behaved as they did.”  
But it’s all bad for Kathy Jackson:
Possible criminal charges were also recommended against Health Services Union whistleblower Kathy Jackson for her alleged submission of a false claim for payment to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Victoria in October 2003.
UPDATE
Another friend of Labor:
VICTORIA Police should charge CFMEU state secretary John Setka with blackmail, a submission to the Royal Commission says.

Jeremy Stoljar, SC, counsel assisting the commission, ... outlined concerns about Mr Setka’s involvement in a $10 million boycott of concrete giant Boral. 
“The Boral case study reveals the breach of many laws by the CFMEU and its officers,” Mr Stoljar wrote. The documents allege: “Mr Setka committed the offence of blackmail. It is submitted that the Commissioner should recommend that the relevant authorities in Victoria consider whether Mr Setka ought to be charged and prosecuted.”
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Child pimps who protitute out other children on the rise in Indonesia
http://www.news.com.au/world/child-pimps-who-protitute-out-other-children-on-the-rise-in-indonesia/story-fndir2ev-1226750047677
CHIMONY flicks a lighter and draws a long drag until her cheeks collapse on the skinny Dunhill Mild, exhaling a column of smoke.
This is a generational curse .. denying a future to generations .. there is something worse than mere death .. denying a good life - ed
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Sarah Palin
Please see the link below to watch the great promo Uncle Si Robertson from Duck Dynasty did for Samaritan’s Purse’s Operation Christmas Child. Rev. Franklin Graham and his team do such wonderful work all around the globe. It was such an honor to join him on a Christmas mission in Haiti a few years ago (which this photo is from). And it will be thrilling to pay tribute to Rev. Billy Graham next week as he celebrates his 95th birthday! The entire Graham family has had such a positive influence on our nation and the world. God bless them!

Here’s the link:
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/operation-christmas-child/pack-a-shoebox-with-uncle-si/
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David Bowles
Okay, friends. Tomorrow is Halloween, so you'll definitely want to pick up The Monitor to read the creepiest and final Creature Feature: "El Cucu." With art by Jose Mlndz, this story will totally set the mood for your festivities.

Though some of you may be saddened that the mini-series is coming to an end, stay tuned for some very exciting news concerning the future of the column...
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How To Block Bitstrips From Your Facebook Timeline
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ailbhemalone/how-to-block-bitstrips-from-your-facebook-timeline
Bitstrips, be gone.
.. but .. but .. I *like* it .. ed
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“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"I will praise thee, O Lord."
Psalm 9:1

Praise should always follow answered prayer; as the mist of earth's gratitude rises when the sun of heaven's love warms the ground. Hath the Lord been gracious to thee, and inclined his ear to the voice of thy supplication? Then praise him as long as thou livest. Let the ripe fruit drop upon the fertile soil from which it drew its life. Deny not a song to him who hath answered thy prayer and given thee the desire of thy heart. To be silent over God's mercies is to incur the guilt of ingratitude; it is to act as basely as the nine lepers, who after they had been cured of their leprosy, returned not to give thanks unto the healing Lord. To forget to praise God is to refuse to benefit ourselves; for praise, like prayer, is one great means of promoting the growth of the spiritual life. It helps to remove our burdens, to excite our hope, to increase our faith. It is a healthful and invigorating exercise which quickens the pulse of the believer, and nerves him for fresh enterprises in his Master's service. To bless God for mercies received is also the way to benefit our fellow-men; "the humble shall hear thereof and be glad." Others who have been in like circumstances shall take comfort if we can say, "Oh! magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together; this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him." Weak hearts will be strengthened, and drooping saints will be revived as they listen to our "songs of deliverance." Their doubts and fears will be rebuked, as we teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. They too shall "sing in the ways of the Lord," when they hear us magnify his holy name. Praise is the most heavenly of Christian duties. The angels pray not, but they cease not to praise both day and night; and the redeemed, clothed in white robes, with palm-branches in their hands, are never weary of singing the new song, "Worthy is the Lamb."

Evening


"Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice: cause me to hear it."
Song of Solomon 8:13

My sweet Lord Jesus remembers well the garden of Gethsemane, and although he has left that garden, he now dwells in the garden of his church: there he unbosoms himself to those who keep his blessed company. That voice of love with which he speaks to his beloved is more musical than the harps of heaven. There is a depth of melodious love within it which leaves all human music far behind. Ten of thousands on earth, and millions above, are indulged with its harmonious accents. Some whom I well know, and whom I greatly envy, are at this moment hearkening to the beloved voice. O that I were a partaker of their joys! It is true some of these are poor, others bedridden, and some near the gates of death, but O my Lord, I would cheerfully starve with them, pine with them, or die with them, if I might but hear thy voice. Once I did hear it often, but I have grieved thy Spirit. Return unto me in compassion, and once again say unto me, "I am thy salvation." No other voice can content me; I know thy voice, and cannot be deceived by another, let me hear it, I pray thee. I know not what thou wilt say, neither do I make any condition, O my Beloved, do but let me hear thee speak, and if it be a rebuke I will bless thee for it. Perhaps to cleanse my dull ear may need an operation very grievous to the flesh, but let it cost what it may I turn not from the one consuming desire, cause me to hear thy voice. Bore my ear afresh; pierce my ear with thy harshest notes, only do not permit me to continue deaf to thy calls. Tonight, Lord, grant thine unworthy one his desire, for I am thine, and thou hast bought me with thy blood. Thou hast opened mine eye to see thee, and the sight has saved me. Lord, open thou mine ear. I have read thy heart, now let me hear thy lips.
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Today's reading: Jeremiah 20-21, 2 Timothy 4 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Jeremiah 20-21


Jeremiah and Pashhur

1 When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the official in charge of the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD’s temple. 3 The next day, when Pashhur released him from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD’s name for you is not Pashhur, but Terror on Every Side. 4 For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; with your own eyes you will see them fall by the sword of their enemies. I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, who will carry them away to Babylon or put them to the sword. 5 I will deliver all the wealth of this city into the hands of their enemies—all its products, all its valuables and all the treasures of the kings of Judah. They will take it away as plunder and carry it off to Babylon. 6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into exile to Babylon. There you will die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied lies....’”

Today's New Testament reading: 2 Timothy 4

1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing....
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