Sunday, October 02, 2016

Sun Oct 2nd Todays News

Obama has often inflamed and harmed situations where a cool head is required. He once claimed a thug killed in the process of committing a crime could have been his son. The Son's of Obama are a fearful lot. Last year, on this day, a mentally ill GOP hating white supremacist went on a shooting rampage in Umpqua Community college, Oregon and Obama unhelpfully declared he had given up on prayer. It might have startled his supporters that Obama had been rather reliant on prayer. The shooter had killed 10, including himself. Following a media script, the shooter had asked his victims if they were Christian before gloating and killing them. Obama reacted quickly, claiming to have no knowledge of the shooter's motivation, but blaming GOP for gun laws that have protected the constitution since the US revolution. And then giving up on prayer. I don't care for Obama's master. Obama's master has not got the same competence as George W Bush's Lord and God, Jesus. At least when Bush prayed, one could be satisfied that the prayer was for understanding of policy, and not the actual policy.
=== from 2015 ===
Two shootings around the world are little more than a continuation of Obama's failed foreign policy. One shooting in the US close to Portland, Oregon (Grimm country) had Obama claiming he had tried prayer and it hadn't worked. It looks like the young man identified as Muslim but he claimed on social media that he was a GOP Conservative. Nobody in the press believes that could be a lie, although nothing of the attitudes expressed support it. Very few white supremacists seem to like the GOP. If the boy had been older, he might have called himself a Nixon/Reagan/Bush supporter too. The 'boy' shot up a school and seems to have killed ten and wounded many more. Asking if they were Christian, as he had targeted Christians. Just like GOP Conservatives?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Parramatta, In NSW, in Sydney, a lone gunman killed a tech analyst outside police HQ, and was subsequently shot dead. The gunman was dressed in black and allegedly of Middle Eastern appearance. Apparently intelligence had warned of such a possible hit and all officers had been required to wear their sidearms, while desk workers had theirs at their desks. But the gunman probably surprised the analyst. So what will Australia's new PM do? Turnbull has replaced the decisive Mr Abbott whose ability to calmly and correctly position such tragedy allowed Australia to prosper in tough times. On form, Turnbull will say a lot, and probably delegate to a committee the issue of responses. Maybe Turnbull should try prayer?

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
A specific issue
ALP seem to govern employing procedural unfairness as a weapon against innocent people who get in their way. The accusation of widespread drug use and criminal betting in every Australian sport by elite athletes has been disproved. It was apparently an attempted smear by Jason Clare to protect disgraced former PM Gillard. It worked, for a time. The compromise deal struck with AFL Essendon seems to protect ASADA's reputation for their outrageous intrusion into the club. But Essendon's coach James Hird has been very shabbily treated. The ALP have public servants in place in all levels of government. They are willing to spin the truth or lie outright to protect the ALP. And Hird is on the wrong side of that thick Labor line. It seems if he resists and appeals, he is on a hiding to nothing. But if he accepts it, there is no reward. 

International terrorism issues
We should not give Iran a bomb to fight ISIL. It is really important the US assert her authority and demand a free run against ISIL without Iranian interference. Iran will do so anyway, as they are still a terrorist state. But to bribe them to get their acquiescence when they won't anyway is arrant foolishness. An Islamo fascist terrorist has killed 41 Islamic children, blowing up the children and then himself. What have the Israel haters to offer now? Diversity has failed in the US Secret Service. In 2012, AP worried about a lack of it, with not enough women to protect the President, then a woman was appointed. Two weeks ago a woman was overpowered by a guy who ran into the Presidential living quarters. Today the woman appointed 19 months ago as director has resigned. 

Australian issues
Palmer abuses parliamentary process by making a bogus inquiry into Campbell Newman. It may well backfire and embarrass him. There is no need to ban the burqa, but women need to be identifiable to security in some instances. It is also important to remember cross dressing Islamo Fascists used women's clothing to hide weapons when attacking a shopping mall in Africa last year. It is not procedural unfairness to segregate Burqa wearing women in Parliament's gallery. It is not unfair. It is not racist. In all probability, it is not needed. But media demanded to know a process, and now have one. Except Mr Abbott may block the procedure. Frightbat Badham becomes Islam compliant in her opposition to misogyny. Demand freedom of speech. It is the last safeguard for a liberal democracy. 
Dr Margot Kingston helpfully tweets "Only the people can stop the horror." She has seen a movie from the fifties, she should present references to it. Otherwise she is plagiarising. 

Stuff that doesn't fit
US overtakes Saudi Arabia in oil production. France more than halves car production since 1994, from three million a year to 1.46 million a year.  France is now overtaken by the UK for car production. Shorten does not have a Prime Ministerial voice in his email to his followers. He abuses and denounces and divides. He is a leader of the ALP, but he is not a leader. US's CBS admits there has been no warming for 18 years. Liberal party's cup of talent runneth over. They are stymied by a hostile senate, but still get some impressive things done. 
From 2013
The world seems focused on the shutdown of the US government. The shutdown is a result of US debt reaching $17 trillion. The shut down would not have happened had Obama cut spending. Instead, Obama is introducing Obama Care which increases spending and does not address basic health care needs for most US citizens. Healthcare is a problem in the US, but spending money that is borrowed doesn't address the problem. The economic truth is no one can own what they can't afford. Parks and museums are shut down at the moment, but if irresponsible government continues unchecked, then US infrastructure crumbles, and world economic confidence ebbs. The danger is Obama will believe he wins a game of chicken if GOP blinks.

US foreign policy is also sadly lacking. Some years ago, I wrote a blog after Hamas trounced Fatah in an election. I pointed out that the worst event had not happened. Fatah is a terrorist group too. The danger of a Hamas win was that democracy would unravel in the Middle East. The Jordanians calling themselves Palestinians have a substantial amount of aid, a lot of which comes from Israel. Israel is a modern democracy, offering freedom for all of her people. So called Palestine is a terrorist military state offering no basic freedoms for anyone but endless civil war. Naturally the UN wants Palestine and despises Israel.Today, the conservative PM of Israel promised to act before Iran acquired nuclear weapons. That is important for world peace. Meanwhile, Obama has asked for Israel (forced) to release killers into the community. A Middle East Islamic scholar has apparently (linked) proven Obama is Muslim according to Islamic law .. meaning Obama is in fact apostate as he falls asleep in a Christian church. Worth considering when one hears that Kenya was warned by Israel of the specific threat to Westgate last year but was ignored (other targets were highlighted too). The Kenyan blooded Obama has relatives who are on the wrong side of the struggle against terror. Victims at Westgate had their Islam bona fides checked. How would the cross dressing terrorists respond to the apostate President? I couldn't make up this story for fear that the suspension of disbelief would be too difficult. Meanwhile a Jewish boy of mixed blood gives to his community (linked) and a brave Israeli widow keeps her husband's farm running, after he was killed by terrorists (linked yesterday). As I have linked, so called Palestinians are being raised to hate and kill, and that breaks many international laws, but apparently the UN approves.

Mr Abbott is a statesman. He has given appropriate weight to Indonesia, The result is a deal that should close down the murderous people trafficking that ALP initiated in 2008 after taking down the pacific solution. Abbott has been criticised by many for many bad reasons. Shorten Burke and Bowen have complained at the secrecy surrounding military operations and boat people. Of course, they had military secrets too, only, not about soldiers sleeping around.

SBS have inflated false claims to create enmity between Australia and Islamics. ABC have lied to protect global warming belief. Details of all the editorial are in todays linked material.
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.
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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!
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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
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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 Ramona Epigraham, Joanna Le, William Phillips, Justin Michael, Simon D Le, Mori Behar and Hy Chheng. Born on the same day, across the years, as 
1452 – Richard III of England (d. 1485)
1644 – François-Timoléon de Choisy, French author (d. 1724)
1722 – Leopold Widhalm, Austrian violin maker (d. 1776)
1800 – Nat Turner, American slave who led a slave rebellion (d. 1831)
1847 – Paul von Hindenburg, Prussian-German field marshal and politician, 2nd President of Germany (d. 1934)
1869 – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian activist and philosopher (d. 1948)
1873 – Plum Warner, English cricketer (d. 1963)
1890 – Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1977)
1895 – Bud Abbott, American comedian and actor (d. 1974)
1945 – Don McLean, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1949 – Annie Leibovitz, American photographer
1994 – Joana Eidukonytė, Lithuanian tennis player
Jacques Cartier
You've ascended the throne. You've reached the island. Raise them on Peanuts and even the dogs will fly in their imagination. Justice finds a good man. The line has been crossed. Join the party. 
Deaths
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Piers Akerman


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Miranda Devine


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Tim Blair


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Andrew Bolt


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PARRAMATTA ATTACKED

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (5:42pm)

Two men are reportedly dead after opening fire on NSW Police headquarters in Parramatta: 
The Daily Telegraph understands a number of shots were fired in the drive-by shooting, although there is no confirmation that it was a terrorist attack.
Police had warning of the attack through intelligence sources, The Daily Telegraph can confirm. 
“Drive-by” might not be an accurate description. These are very early accounts. Some claim the shooters were on foot when they began firing. Nothing is known yet about their identities: 
The NSW Police Force building is home to the State Crime Command, which includes the homicide, drug, Middle Eastern organised crime and gangs squads …
A man called Nathan told 2GB Radio that he saw a man lying on the street surrounded by blood.
“I saw the guy dressed in black on the pavement with blood everywhere,” he said. 
A police officer is said to have been injured in the attack. No word yet on the officer’s condition.
UPDATE. One gunman, not two – and the murder of a police employee: 
A lone gunman has shot dead a police IT expert outside police HQ in Charles Street, Parramatta, before being gunned down by police.
The shooter, believed to be of Middle Eastern appearance and dressed in black, launched an attack from the street, peppering the front of the building with bullets. 
Video of the police response.
UPDATE II. Police have still not identified the killer.
UPDATE III. This may or may not be related to today’s attack: 
A police source has told Fairfax Media that there was increased “chatter” detected in the last week relating to a possible attack on the Parramatta headquarters.
The officer, who works at the State Crime Command headquarters, said that every officer had been ordered to wear their guns on them at all times this week, even while at their desks. 
UPDATE IV. Despite a two-kilometre exclusion zone around the murder scene, the riot squad is now attending.
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FAR MORE REASONABLE PEOPLE

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (3:04pm)

The ABC’s Fran Kelly interviews Paul Bongiorno: 
Kelly: This suggestion that hundreds of Liberal party members have quit the Liberal party in protest at the shift to Malcolm Turnbull. What are you hearing about this?
Bongiorno: Well, um, this is certainly a line from people who are very sympathetic to Tony Abbott. More conservative Liberals. I’ve spoken to several Liberal MPs. One of them told me that a couple had quit from the branch [who] were basically right-wing nut jobs. And they’ve been replaced by far more reasonable people. 
(Via Quadrant‘s Roger Franklin.)
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FROM CHALLENGES AND EXPLANATIONS TO IDEAS AND CONVERSATIONS

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (3:17am)

Prime Minister Malcolm x 70 last month presented the case for his leadership bid: 
The big economic changes that we’re living through here and around the world offer enormous challenges and enormous opportunities and we need a different style of leadership.
We need a style of leadership that explains those challenges and opportunities, explains the challenges and how to seize the opportunities. A style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues. 
“Challenges” is Turnbull shorthand for “we don’t have enough money and we’re spending too much”, and “explains” means – or should mean – “here’s what we’re going to do about it.” Yesterday Turnbull sent out his new education minister, Simon Birmingham, to explain how the government would meet the challenge of tertiary education funding reform: 
I am announcing that higher education funding arrangements for 2016 will not be changed from currently legislated arrangements while the Government consults further on reforms for the future.
Any future reforms, should they be legislated, would not commence until 2017 at the earliest. 
Rather than face this challenge, The Great Explainer has parked it behind the 2016 election. Birmingham continued: 
I invite ideas and conversations about how to achieve equity and excellence in higher education, while honestly recognising the financial limitations of taxpayers. 
Oh, my. Ideas and conversations. Is anybody else picking up a hint of Kevin Rudd circa 2008 here?
UPDATE. Here we go: 
Malcolm Turnbull will seek to recast the government’s relationship with Muslims through more co-operative and inclusive policies after warnings from security agencies that relations with the Islamic community have sunk to their lowest ebb. 
Let’s see how this works out.
UPDATE II. Turnbull’s co-operative and inclusive policies are clearly needed in Germany, where a police chief tells of friction inside refugee shelters: 
We have been witnessing this violence for weeks and months. Groups based on ethnicity, religion or clan structures go after each other with knives and homemade weapons … Sunnis are fighting Shiites, there are Salafists from competing groups. They are trying to impose their rules in the shelters. Christians are being massively oppressed and the Sharia is being enforced. 
Maybe Julie Bishop and her UN friends can do something.
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ONE FOR THE FRIGHTBATS

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (2:22am)

An inspirational thought from the great Iowahawk:


UPDATE. Jaki comments: “That scenery is triggering. It reminds me of rape.”
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MIND THE GAP, EMMA

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (2:07am)

Like all of her tax-funded ABC colleagues, Emma Alberici has always been deeply concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor. Here she is two years ago, interviewing Harvard’s  Michael Sandel: 
You lament ultimately this widening gap between rich and poor, which has emerged as a result of everything having a price tag on it. Is that ever going to change and how? 
But it appears Emma herself is making the gap grow ever wider: 
Lateline co-presenter Emma Alberici has joined the hordes of buyers paying top dollar for Sydney property, picking up a Coogee apartment for $1.53 million. 
That apartment was paid for with money from people who earn less than Emma Alberici.
(Via JJ.)
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RICH AND VARIED ETHICAL STANDARDS

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (1:51am)

Nick Cohen on a moment of Swedish bravery, followed by the usual global cowardice: 
A few weeks ago Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth.
Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that? 
You’ll never guess: 
The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, which represents 56 Muslim-majority states, accused Sweden of failing to respect the world’s ‘rich and varied ethical standards’ – standards so rich and varied, apparently, they include the flogging of bloggers and encouragement of paedophiles …
Outside Sweden, the western media has barely covered the story, and Sweden’s EU allies have shown no inclination whatsoever to support her. A small Scandinavian nation faces sanctions, accusations of Islamophobia and maybe worse to come, and everyone stays silent. 
They’re silent because, unlike Wallström, Cohen and Mark Steyn, they’re scared. Mark happens to be in Sweden at present. Please read this.
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I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A CENTRAL ZONE MAN MYSELF

Tim Blair – Friday, October 02, 2015 (1:15am)

Former Smiths singer Morrissey turns his hand to fiction, with impressive results:
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Shooting at Sydney police station

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (5:36pm)

Very ugly:
Two people have been shot dead outside police headquarters in Parramatta, in Sydney’s west. 
A NSW Police Force spokeswoman has also confirmed that a “police operation is now underway”.... One Facebook user, who claimed to have witnessed the incident, said a man opened fire about five times outside the NSW Police Force headquarters building, before being shot by police and a security guard, who returned fire.
A hint: 
There is no confirmation it was a terrorist attack. Police had warning of the attack through intelligence sources, The Daily Telegraph can confirm.
UPDATE
Suspicions harden:
A lone gunman has shot dead a police IT expert outside police HQ in Charles Street, Parramatta, before being gunned down by police. 
The shooter, believed to be of Middle Eastern appearance and dressed in black, launched an attack from the street, peppering the front of the building with bullets. 
On the other hand:
The ABC understands the incident is not terror related.
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Dozens of ethnic brawls in Germany’s “refugee” centres

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (11:59am)

Germany is importing ethnic hatreds that are already breaking out in its “refugee” centres:
In a September 29 interview with the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, the head of the German police union (Deutschen Polizeigewerkschaft, DPolG), Rainer Wendt, warned that “brutal criminal structures” have taken over the refugee shelters and that police are overwhelmed and unable to guarantee safety and security. He called for Christians and Muslims to be separated before someone gets killed: 
“We have been witnessing this violence for weeks and months. Groups based on ethnicity, religion or clan structures go after each other with knives and homemade weapons… Sunnis are fighting Shiites, there are Salafists from competing groups. They are trying to impose their rules in the shelters. Christians are being massively oppressed and the Sharia is being enforced....
Wendt gave the interview days after 300 Albanian migrants clashed with 70 Pakistani migrants at a refugee shelter in Calden, a town in the state of Hesse, on September 27. More than a dozen people, including three police officers, were injured… More than 60 migrants, including ten children, were injured after Pakistanis and Syrians clashed at the same shelter on September 13. ...
In the past two months alone, dozens of violent brawls and riots between different groups of migrants have erupted in Germany’s refugee shelters.

On September 30, migrants went on a rampage at a refugee center in Braunschweig, a city in Lower Saxony. On September 29, Syrian migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Gerolzhofen, a small town in Bavaria. Also on September 29, migrants from Algeria and Mali clashed at a refugee center in Engelskirchen, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia.
On September 28, more than 150 Syrians and Pakistanis clashed at a refugee shelter on Nöthnitzer Straße in Dresden. The migrants attacked each other with wooden planks and metal bars. Two dozen police officers were needed to restore order. More than 30 Syrians and Pakistanis clashed at the same shelter on August 10.
Also on September 28, between 100 and 150 migrants of different nationalities clashed at a refugee shelter in Donaueschingen, a town in the Black Forest. The trouble started over a dispute about who should be able to use the shower facilities first. On September 22, more than 400 migrants marched through town to protest conditions at the same facility. On September 15, a male migrant was attacked by another migrant for using a female bathroom at the shelter.
On September 24, around 100 Syrians and Afghans clashed at a refugee shelter in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony. The fight broke out after a 17-year-old Afghan pulled a knife on an 11-year-old Syrian girl at the shelter, which houses 1,800 migrants. On September 23, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter for unaccompanied minors in Nuremberg.
On September 3, Syrian migrants attacked security guards at a refugee shelter in the Moabit district of Berlin. Also on September 3, Iraqi migrants attacked security guards at a refugee shelter in Heidelberg. A total of 21 squad cars were dispatched to restore order. On September 2, Algerian and Tunisian migrants clashed at the same shelter. A dozen police cars were deployed to restore order.
On September 3, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Hövelhof, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia. On September 2, migrants clashed at a refugee facility in Wolgast, a town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Also on September 2, migrants clashed at a refugee center in Gütersloh, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia.
On September 1, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Delitzsch, a town in Saxony. A 27-year-old Tunisian migrant was killed after being stabbed by a 27-year-old migrant from Morocco. Also on September 1, a 15-year-old Somali migrant stabbed a 15-year-old Egyptian migrant with a scissors at a refugee center in the Groß Borstel district of Hamburg. On September 1, Somali, Syrian and Albanian migrants clashed at a refugee center in Tegernsee, a small town in Bavaria. Also on September 1, migrants clashed at a refugee shelter in Heidelberg.
Links at the link.
Germany is making a terrible mistake for which the price will be paid over years to come.
(Thanks to reader Lew.) 
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Christians targetted in US massacre

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (11:36am)

Another US shooting - 10 people dead - and it has a religious factor:
The gunman who opened fire at an Oregon community college was forcing people to stand up and state their religion before he began blasting away at them, survivors said Thursday. 
A woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded, described the scene in a tweet. ”The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs...”
Christianity is fast catching up to Judaism as the most persecuted faith.
The shooter:
On his dating profile on the website Spiritual Passions, Chris Harper Mercer says that he “doesn’t like organized religion.” 
He writes that he is, “Not Religious, Not Religious, but Spiritual.” And says, under personality that he is, a “lover, conservative, professional, intellectual, introvert.” He also says under interests, “internet, killing zombies, movies, music, reading.” Harper Mercer says he is “mixed race,” doesn’t drink and is a “conservative, Republican.”
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On The Bolt Report on Sunday, October 4

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (8:11am)

 On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.

Editorial:  Turnbull’s first big call. Oh dear. What has Julie Bishop signed us up for?
My guest: Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. Looking for reassurance that this government is tough.
The panel: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger and former Labor national president Warren Mundine.
NewsWatch: Sharri Markson, media editor of The Australian. Will this new government confront the ABC over its latest sliming?
And why on earth is this government banning an anti-abortionist from speaking here? What insanity is this?
The videos of the shows appear here. 
(And thanks to Jill Jacks.) 
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What should Tony Abbott do now?

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (7:33am)

Stay or go?
Suggestions below, please. 
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Malcolm Rudd rules, not OK?

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (7:03am)

Good question from Tim Blair:
Is anybody else picking up a hint of Kevin Rudd circa 2008 here?
Let’s see:
- a summit
- promises to do lots of “explaining”
- a million options, but no firm policy
- waffle
- proposals to increase taxes
- more inclusive language to placate Islamist extremists
- signing up for the UN Human Rights Council
- applying for a UN Security Council gig in 14 years
- delaying spending cuts to higher education
- sloganeering about “innovation”
- banning a visitor opposed to abortion
- talking up global warming
- suggesting changes to our border laws
- praising the ABC
And that’s in just three weeks, when Turnbull is trying really, really hard not to alarm Liberals by lurching to the Left.
UPDATE
Greg Sheridan, whose goodness leads him to generosity and benefits-of-doubt, is kind of hoping Turnbull is offering the Left baubles to build credit for genuine reform:
For the moment, Labor cannot counter Turnbull’s ability to generate waves of positive publicity with completely meaningless and cost-free gestures. 
Most new prime ministers are able to make electorally pleasing gestures, essentially symbolic and devoid of substance, in their honeymoon period. It builds up goodwill and establishes a fund of statesmanlike images and ­narratives…
Turnbull is getting his honeymoon in spades. It is enormously to his credit, and to that of Julie Bishop, that they could generate millions of dollars of pro-Coalition publicity from their bitterest enemies at the ABC from a gesture that means nothing and costs nothing. The ABC’s flagship current affairs program 7.30 was in paroxysms to declare the liberation of the nation from the stifling straitjacket of Abbott into the new world of outward-looking multilateral engagement.
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The Pope could soon be banned and jailed under our police state of the Left

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (6:26am)

Offence takers are killing free speech. They are also making Christianity a crime.
We’ve got a visiting anti-abortionist banned and in detention:
American anti-abortion activist Troy Newman has been detained at Melbourne Airport, after travelling to Australia even though his visa had been cancelled. 
Mr Newman, who has questioned why doctors who abort babies are not executed, had his visa cancelled by the Immigration Department yesterday and was stopped from getting on a flight in Denver.
[Note: the ABC is falsely implying Newman advocates violence. In fact, he years ago wrote that abortionists should be treated as murderers by the state, a crime which in some US jurisdictions carries the death penalty.]…
Mr Newman is the head of anti-abortion organisation Operation Rescue and was due to speak at events run by the group Right to Life Australia around Australia.
He said the revocation of his visa on Wednesday was “based on a pile of lies, including the idea that I promote violence”.
“My 25-year history of peaceful, prayerful action speaks for itself,” he said…
Several Australian politicians, including Labor backbencher Terri Butler, had called for Mr Newman to be banned from entering the country.
We’ve also got an Archbishop facing court for opposing same-sex marriage. John Roskam:
We know that Australian politicians and journalists care about freedom of speech for people such as Peter Greste. We’ll soon discover whether they care as much about freedom of speech for the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous… 
A candidate for the Greens at the next federal election has lodged a complaint with the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner claiming a booklet Don’t Mess With Marriage explaining the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage is insulting and offensive.
There’s a number of things to note about the case. The first is that the booklet does little more than set out a position that was, until a few years ago, the settled policy of all of the country’s major political parties.
The second point is that the complaint has been brought under new legislation introduced in 2012 by the then Labor/Greens government. At the time, the government specifically said the new laws would not inhibit discussion about same-sex marriage. Either by accident or design, something has happened that politicians promised would not happen. Yet again, the intended consequences of a law have little resemblance to how the law actually operates in practice. What’s happening in Tasmania goes beyond a debate about the right to express a religious viewpoint. Malcolm Turnbull has promised a plebiscite on same-sex marriage after the next election. Same-sex marriage is therefore now both a religious and a political question. If the complaint against Archbishop Porteous succeeds, one side of the debate on the same-sex marriage plebiscite will be shut down.
If calling abortion murder is enough to get you banned from Australia, and opposing same sex marriage gets you dragged before the courts, how much longer before the Pope is banned or jailed here, too?
What kind of police state is the Left building here, and why is the Turnbull Government going along with it?
UPDATE
Many news sites are repeating Terri Butler’s misleading claim that Troy Newman “wants abortionists to be executed”, as if he is inciting murder and vigilante justice. In fact, Newman has publicly and repeatedly opposed violence, and his offending comments come from a book he wrote 15 years ago, calling for abortionists to be treated as murderers under the US justice system:
In addition to our personal guilt in abortion, the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in
order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people. Instead, the act of abortion has been elevated to a ‘God-given right’ and the abortionists canonized as saints. 
Many people will not like his position, but it is ludicrous to say we should not let him express it here. The only people in mortal danger in the debate Newman seeks are, after all, the unborn children he’s trying to save.
I don’t agree with capital punishment of abortionists at all. I don’t even agree with criminalising abortion, although I confess it troubles me. I am not a Christian.
But I do sense the real danger here: of authoritarians criminalising the speech that challenges them, and denying the right of the rest of us to decide for ourselves whom to hear and what to think. 
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We have lost if this government no longer dares call the Islamic State a “death cult”

Andrew Bolt October 02 2015 (6:01am)

If a retreat from speaking the truth is seen as an advance, we are in trouble:
Malcolm Turnbull will seek to ­recast the government’s relationship with Muslims through more co-operative and inclusive policies after warnings from security agencies that relations with the ­Islamic community have sunk to their lowest ebb.
The move will see the new Prime Minister avoid the blunt and often divisive language used by his predecessor Tony Abbott… He is expected in coming weeks to emphasise the need to work ­co-operatively with the Muslim ­community in order to rout extremists and extremist ideology from communities.... The move ... will be embraced by the country’s Muslims, according to community leader and GP Jamal Rifi… Dr Rifi said Mr Abbott had alienated many in the Muslim community through poor choice of words. These included his ­comment in February that he wished more Muslim leaders would describe Islam as a religion of peace and mean it, and his use of terms such as “Team Australia” and “death cult”. 
Those three comments were alienating?  Turnbull will retreat from them? He won’t even describe the Islamic State as the “death cult” it is for fear of seeming “divisive”?
Uh oh.
This is all based on the notion that so many leaders around the world have toyed with, only to be defeated by experience. They feel that if they come with ingratiating smiles and weasel words and cringing submission that the radicals will be mollified. They feel that the key to this is a nicer “us”. Oh, and to ensure a nicer us there must be laws, of course, to punish harshly those who aren’t yet submissive enough.
UPDATE
Divisive leader:
President Barack Obama has denounced Isis as a “brutal, vicious death cult” ...
Divisive leader:
David Cameron ...  said Britain is facing the same threat as France from what he described as “this fanatical death cult of Islamist extremist violence”.
Here is what’s happening. First we saw lunatic offence-taking at Tony Abbott by a media determined to find fault in even truth, and now we see a retreat from that truth used as a marker of a better leader. Had Abbott been our own Barack Obama referring to death cults, a besotted media would not have objected to the truth.
You see, it’s not the principle but the side.
UPDATE
The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, representing 56 Muslim-majority states,  demands that Sweden pay proper respect to the “rich and varied ethical standards” of countries that flog even bloggers and democracy advocates..   
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Turnbull betrays Liberal base: taxes to rise on the “rich”

Andrew Bolt October 01 2015 (11:13pm)

Malcolm Turnbull’s first big economic move is to slug the “wealthy” for even more taxes?
The Turnbull government has reached in-principle agreement with unions, employers and welfare organisations to reduce a raft of concessional taxation arrangements that benefit the rich, as all sides hailed the prospect of a new era of consensus and co-operation in Canberra.
What a genius. Heads a Liberal government that lifts taxes yet again.
What was it that his new Treasurer, Scott Morrison, said only last week?
There’s plenty of people out there who want to raise taxes and have a new idea for a tax every single day of the week. I’m interested in talking to people who have ideas how we can get spending under control. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.
But then, bang, a tax hike. Worse, without even winning a single concession from the unions and the social welfare sector in exchange. 
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US commits us to an accelerated war without asking Malcolm Turnbull first

Andrew Bolt October 01 2015 (10:57pm)

US Secretary of State John Kerry just makes it up as he goes along, carelessly committing Australia to a stepped-up war and possible confrontation with Russia:
Pursuant to these procedures in Syria over the past year, the coalition has now conducted nearly 3,000 airstrikes against ISIL targets, and we are now in position with France, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and other coalition partners joining the campaign, to dramatically accelerate our efforts. This is what we will do.
I guarantee Kerry has not got any Australian commitment to “dramatically accelerate” our efforts in Syria. We only have six fighters in the region, for heaven’s sake. We’re in no position to accelerate anything.
Our new defence minister barely knows what to say in response to this astonishing claim:
Asked whether Australia intended to accelerate its efforts, Senator Payne told Fairfax Media: ”There has been no change to our involvement, however we continue to monitor the situation closely.”
Naturally, you’d expect our Foreign Minister to stay in New York, where Kerry is, to figure out exactly what he’s trying to commit us to and whether he’s got the slightest idea of how to handle Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict.
But, no, Bishop is on her way back to Australia. An AFL grand final in Melbourne to catch. But she’s on the phone, don’t you worry:
It really feels like the end of days for the West. 
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GET TO IT, PEOPLE

Tim Blair – Thursday, October 02, 2014 (12:57pm)

Helpful advice from Dr Margo:


On that happy note, I’m out of here for a few days to enhance my carbon footprint. Back next week.
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WEAKNESS THROUGH DIVERSITY

Tim Blair – Thursday, October 02, 2014 (12:06pm)

Back in 2012, Associated Press was worried about the lack of women in the US Secret Service: 
Secret Service agents are often portrayed in popular culture as disciplined, unflappable, loyal – and male … Only about a tenth of field agents and uniformed officers are women …
“I can’t help but think that there would be some progress if there was more diversity and if there were more women that were there,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “When you have a diversity of people there, it brings more accountability.” 
Possibly. But it doesn’t necessarily bring more safety. Two weeks ago an intruder barged into the White House: 
The Secret Service has been under fire for failing to stop an armed man from jumping the White House fence and running through the president’s home, and some critics have begun asking if political correctness is partly to blame for the extent of the security breach.
As the New York Times reported on Monday, the jumper, Omar Gonzalez, “overpower[ed] a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance” of the White House and then ran past the stairway to the presidential living quarters and into the East Room where he was finally tackled by an off-duty agent.
Without explanation, the Times deleted the word “female” from the opening paragraph of its story (the Washington Post similarly edited the word “female” out of its story).
Few details have been reported about how precisely Gonzalez overpowered the female agent, but it’s certainly possible that the Secret Service’s disparate physical strength requirements for men and women may be endangering the life of the president. 
Julia Pierson, the first female director of the Secret Service, has now resigned after just 19 months in the job.
(Via A.R.M. Jones)
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BAT IN A HAT

Tim Blair – Thursday, October 02, 2014 (11:49am)

Former feminist frightbat Vanessa Badham is now Islam-compliant:


(Via Marcus V)
UPDATE. Reader Patrick H. proudly displays his Islamic feminist solidarity:

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TWO TURNAROUNDS

Tim Blair – Thursday, October 02, 2014 (11:45am)

The U.S. shale boom is about to hit another big milestone, as it looks like fracking will propel American liquid petroleum production (that includes oil and natural gas liquids) past Saudi Arabia for the first time in nearly a quarter century …
With productivity continuing to rise, the United States has a chance to become the single biggest producer of crude oil sometime in the near future. If you had said that a decade ago, you would’ve been laughed at and called a fool. What a difference fracking makes. 
England overtakes France: 
In 1994 French producers made more than three million cars, double Britain’s output.
Now, the tables have turned dramatically. Britain last year produced more cars than France for the first time in decades: 1.51 million to France’s 1.46 million. 
(Via Ganesh)
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Let us hear from the Israel haters now

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (7:05pm)

Israel accidentally killed children as it fought Gaza Islamists using them as human shields.  The Left and Muslim leaders could not damn it enough.
Now an Islamist deliberately murders Muslim children. Reaction from the Left and Muslim leaders?
At least 41 Syrian children aged under 12 have been killed in a double bombing by a lone assailant at a school in the government-controlled city of Homs, a monitor said… 
One attacker carried out both bombings.
“He planted a bomb at one location at the school, and then blew himself up at another spot nearby,” Abdel Rahman said.
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Parliament’s new burka rules are divisive

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (6:35pm)

This is not smart or helpful:
A memo from the Department of Parliamentary Services released today says “persons with facial coverings entering the galleries of the House of Representatives and Senate will be seated in the enclosed galleries. This will ensure that persons with facial coverings can continue to enter the Chamber galleries, without needing to be identifiable”. 
The regular galleries for members of the public are open to the chamber below. The glassed-in areas are generally reserved for school groups.
The new rules mean women in burkas will be identified and screened for weapons - like every one else - before they get to the public galleries.
If they are deemed unsafe, why let them in at all? Why seat them with children?
If they have been deemed safe, why treat them any differently?
The closest thing to an excuse:
Senator Parry told parliament that the changes would more easily allow people to be removed from the chamber if they interjected during the proceedings. 
“They need to be identified quickly and easily so they can be removed from that interjection,” he said.
“Or if they are asked to be removed from the gallery ...we need to know who that person is so they cannot return to the gallery, disguised or otherwise.” 
Why not wait until we get an instance of a woman in a burka heckling from the galleries? (I suspect we will wait years.) Then we will know if this is necessary.
I don’t like our Parliament doing to such women what is already done to them at their mosques - sit up the back. I would hate to see veiled women up the back and behind glass while their husbands sit down at the front.
I agree with the Greens that this rule sends the wrong signal.
Mind you, the Greens today also sent the wrong signals with their inflammatory reaction and double standards:
“This is treating Muslim women as second class citizens.”
No, it isn’t. The rules apply to all Australians with their faces covered. The vast majority of Muslim women do not cover their faces in public and do not consider that a requirement of their faith. If the women affected bared their faces in Parliament they could sit in the front, just like everyone else - and still as Muslims.
But if the Greens are so concerned with Muslim women being treated as second class citizens they should protest at the burka, a symbol and guarantor of just that.
Just as it is important not to recklessly inflame anti-Muslim sentiment, it is important not to recklessly inflame the persecution complex of radical Muslims.
UPDATE
The Prime Minister has overruled the sit-up-the-back rule. He was not consulted about it and does not like it..
Not sure that his authority formally extends over these operations of Parliament but I would bet he gets his way.
Can we just settle down now with this dangerously inflammatory talk of a war on Islam?  
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We should be trusted by government to speak freely

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (2:02pm)

Today, a brave attempt to reform the Racial Discrimination Act to restore some free speech:
Senators today considered a private bill to remove the words “offend and insult” from section 18C of the act, a variation on the proposed changes that the Abbott government abandoned in August.
Liberal senators Cory Bernardi and Dean Smith co-sponsored the bill with Family First’s Bob Day and Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm.
Senator Day said the changes were “minor” and would restore the balance between freedom of speech and protection against racial vilification. Senator Bernardi ... said it was “absurd” someone could be hauled before a court for offending someone.
Senator David Leyonhjelm spoke powerfully today on the need for reforms to restore some of our free speech:
You either believe this is a free country or you don’t. You either get the first line of our national anthem, or you don’t. In times of trouble, true leaders speak for a nation about what they stand for, not which freedoms they have decided to give away.

I fear that Mr Abbott and Mr Shorten are not true leaders. When they talk about freedom there is always a “but” to be found nearby. They believe in freedom, but not if someone might have their feelings hurt. They believe in freedom, but not all of the time. They believe in freedom, but will vote the same way that barbarians would vote. A lot of people, I suspect, are sick of hearing about democracy’s ‘but’. Those, like Mr Shorten, who believe we need to keep 18c for the sake of national unity don’t seem to understand that democracies were never meant to be places of unity; that’s a feature of fascist and communist regimes and, dare I say it, Islamist regimes. The difference that characterises a democracy is its greatest strength, because it means that propositions are put to the test of public deliberation. People who make ‘national unity’ arguments in a democracy probably do not understand democracy at all. Unfortunately, when it comes to section 18C, opinions are protected from public deliberation, in part because people are considered ‘weak’ or ‘vulnerable’, and somehow incapable of bearing too much reality.
John Roskam:
Labor and the Greens’ concerns about anti-terrorism laws could be taken more seriously if they cared as much about the right of Andrew Bolt to question the merits of race-based government programs as they care about the right of a hypothetical Guardian journalist to write about a botched ASIO investigation. Labor and the Greens care (as they should) that an inadvertent mistake could put the journalist in jail. But they don’t care that Andrew Bolt was taken to court…
there’s another matter that’s also at the middle of the political debate in this country at the moment: namely, whether Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be recognised in the constitution. And from this flows the question of who precisely is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Yet section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, the law that both Labor and the Greens supports, prevents that sort of question being asked…
The speech Labor and the Greens want to be free is speech about things they agree with. In 2012 in his inquiry into the media Ray Finkelstein famously gave as one of the reasons for him recommending the government impose editorial control over the press, the fact some newspapers were “unfavourable to action on climate change”. The Greens and many Labor MPs were enthusiastic barrackers for Finkelstein’s recommendation. 
The IPA explains what this bill to reform the Act would do - and why.
Leyonhjelm’s full speech:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'We should be trusted by government to speak freely'
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18 years of no warming

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (8:16am)

Global warming - general


America’s CBS reports:
The Earth’s temperature has “plateaued” and there has been no global warming for at least the last 18 years, says Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama/Huntsville. “That’s basically a fact. There’s not much to comment on,” Christy said when CNSNews.com asked him to remark on the lack of global warming for nearly two decades as of October 1st. 
How many more years of no-warming must there be before our politicians dare to notice what the science is saying?
(Thanks to readers Old Fellah and Rocky.) 
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Labor becomes Palmer’s business muscle

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (8:02am)


SO-called billionaire Clive Palmer is dragging Labor down to his own low standards as he turns our Parliament into a business asset.
Has any politician been so apparently brazen in using Parliament to make a buck and destroy people who thwart him in business?

Palmer has already used his Palmer United Party senators to help repeal the carbon tax, saving his businesses up to $6 million a year.
He has used his senators to vote against the mining tax, making his coal interests more valuable.
One of Palmer’s top executives even warned his Chinese partner, Citic Pacific, to back off its legal case accusing Palmer of dishonestly taking $12 million, reminding them they were taking on “Australia (sic) fourth largest political party of which our chairman is leader”. (Palmer denies dishonesty.)
Palmer, in his furious court battle with Citic over disputed port and royalty payments, also exploited his new status as a political leader to attack “Chinese mongrels” who “shoot their own people” and “want to take over our ports and get our resources for free”.
And this week Palmer got Labor and the Greens to agree to a rigged Senate inquiry to dig for dirt against Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, who refused Palmer a lucrative deal.
(Read full article here.) 
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Don’t ban the burqa, but do reject it

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (7:54am)


OF course we should not ban the burqa or the niqab. We do believe in freedom, don’t we?

But it is because we believe in freedom that we should still feel free to criticise those shrouds of oppression.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday weighed in, confessing he found the burqa “a fairly confronting form of attire”.
(Read full article here.)
UPDATE
A history of attempts to ban the burqa  - along with the reasons why it should not be tolerated:
During the 1920s and 1930s, in this new international environment, kings, shahs, and presidents unveiled their female citizens, and Muslim feminists campaigned hard for open faces in public. They were successful in Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran, to name but a few countries. 
As early as 1899, the Egyptian intellectual Qasim Amin published his landmark book The Liberation of Women, which argued that the face veil was not commensurate with the tenets of Islam and called for its removal… In 1923, the feminist Hoda Hanim Shaarawi, who established the first feminist association that called for uncovering the face and hair, became the first Egyptian woman to remove her face veil or niqab…
In Afghanistan, Shah Amanullah Khan (r. 1919-29) “scandalized the Persians by permitting his wife to go unveiled.” In 1928, he urged Afghan women to uncover their faces and advocated the shooting of interfering husbands....
Turkey banned the Islamic face veil and turban in 1934, and this prohibition has been maintained ever since by a long succession of governments that adhered to Atatürk’s secularist and modernist revolution. Moreover, from the 1980s onward, Turkish women have been prohibited from wearing headscarves in parliament and in public buildings, and this law was even more strictly enforced after a 1997 coup by the secular military.... In recent years, women wearing both hijabs and burqas have been seen on the streets of Istanbul.
As early as 1926 in Iran, Reza Shah provided police protection for Iranian women who chose to dispense with the traditional scarf. Ten years later, on January 7, 1936, the shah ordered all female teachers and the wives of ministers, high military officers, and government officials “to appear in European clothes and hats, rather than chadors"…
Since 1981, women in Tunisia have been prohibited from wearing Islamic dress, including headscarves, in schools or government offices. In 2006, since this ban was increasingly ignored, the Tunisian government launched a sustained campaign against the hijab. The police stopped women in the streets and asked them to remove their headscarves; the president described the headscarf as a “sectarian form of dress which had come into Tunisia uninvited."…
Public servants in Malaysia are prohibited from wearing the niqab. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that the niqab “has nothing to do with [a woman’s] constitutional rights to profess and practice her Muslim religion” because it is not required by Islamic law.
On July 18, 2010, Syria became the latest Muslim state to ban full face veils in some public places, barring female students from wearing the full face cover on Syrian university campuses. The Syrian minister of higher education indicated that the face veil ran counter to Syrian academic values and traditions. In October 2009, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, perhaps the foremost, formal spiritual authority in Sunni Islam and grand sheikh of al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s highest institution of religious learning, was reportedly “angered” when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a teenage girl wearing niqab. Asking the girl to remove her face veil, he said, “The niqab is a tradition; it has no connection with religion.” He then instructed the girl never to wear the niqab again and issued a fatwa (religious edict) against its use in schools.
(Thanks to reader Park.) 
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An email from Bill, appearing soon

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (7:30am)

I can’t say  Bill Shorten’s mass email to supporters strikes a prime ministerial note:
WE asked you to prove Christopher Pyne dead wrong — and you did. Last week he said that Labor’s comments don’t get on TV and his do. Together we’ve raised enough to make an ad and prove him wrong. In just 24 hours over 1500 people donated, and gave us enough to engage a production team to start filming. We’ll be in touch soon with a preview of the ad you’ve funded, and we’ll let you know how we’re reaching out to people who don’t realise what Christopher Pyne and Tony Abbott are up to.
UPDATE

This won’t help Shorten at all, even though the allegations don’t seem to fit the man I know, are hotly denied, and only surfaced publicly more than 20 years after the event:
A WOMAN who claims she was raped by federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has accused Victoria Police of failing to investigate properly because of his position of power.

Earlier this year, authorities decided not to press charges against Mr Shorten because prosecutors felt that “there was no reasonable prospect of conviction"…
“I had three main witnesses ... I gave them the phone number of one, her maiden and married names, told them she lived in Melbourne.
“The police told me they couldn’t find her,” Kathy said…
Mr Shorten’s press secretary Ryan Liddell last night referred to Mr Shorten’s statement in August: “The claim has now been thoroughly and rigorously investigated by police, as is entirely proper.’’ ..
[Kathy said:] “ I have got rights, and they are trying to take away my rights. People are treating me like a nutcase.
“It doesn’t mean I’m stupid or I’m fabricating things.”
Kathy had a rapid rise in Young Labor when elected to the rural policy committee. She became a delegate for party state and national conferences in 1986…
Kathy says she was raped after a group had arrived back from going for a drive… Kathy says she and her sister left the camp the next day. 

I strongly believe the presumption of innocence must apply when damaging allegations like these are made so many years later that they are incapable of being proved one way or another. 
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Julie Bishop stakes her claim

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (7:20am)

Niki Savva says Julie Bishop is now the leader in waiting - and is determined to ensure it stays that way. So cool it, Scott Morrison:
IF Tony Abbott fell off his bike and toppled over the Red Hill escarpment tomorrow, the person most likely to replace him would be Julie Bishop. If he fell off in a year, it could be Scott Morrison.

That is the view of some of the more astute Liberals… 
Across time, Bishop could become even more irresistible. The first Liberal woman to become prime minister, a powerful conservative (small-c) counter to Julia Gillard, one who took her time to get there, garnering enough experience to equip her to do the job…
Bishop is as tough as Gillard ever was. Unlike Gillard, she is not in any rush. The longer she waits, the more experience she has, the better she gets… Unlike some of her colleagues, she is much better now than when she was a Howard government minister… Bishop’s discipline is legendary… Before the election she was absent 100 days straight from her Perth base. 
The bit Morrison will read closely:
Last week I reported her reservations about a mooted restructure of intelligence agencies. She followed up by loudly staking out her position, ring-fencing her territory and throwing a protective cordon around her friends and allies, flatly declaring it was unnecessary. 
Given the Prime Minister had let it be known he was keen to replicate the Operation Sovereign Borders model to address structural gaps in the bureaucracy in the wake of a review of counter terrorism agencies — with Morrison the obvious choice to run it — Bishop’s full-frontal assault was a sign of her growing confidence… Nor has Abbott been put off. Yesterday he wisely kept his options open. Prime ministers don’t mind a bit of competitive tension between aspirants.
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We risk forgetting Iran is a bigger threat than the Islamic State

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (7:05am)

Colin Rubenstein warns that Iran’s cooperation in fighting the Islamic State isn’t worth a nuclear bomb:
THERE is no question that the Sunni radical group, the so-called Islamic State, is a serious threat ...  Yet ... most military analysts believe it would not be a match for organised and motivated regional armies. 
By contrast, the Gulf region has a well-organised, well-resourced radical Islamist regime with hegemonic ambitions that commands a formidable army, has abundant funds, equips several proxy armies and terror groups abroad, and reportedly is also ­occupying and oppressing swaths of Iraq.
Most disturbingly, it has reached the advanced stages of developing a nuclear weapon and an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system.
That nation is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the long-term threat it poses to regional stability, global energy supplies and global non-proliferation efforts remains more disconcerting than the dangers posed by the Islamic State…

While US President Barack Obama ostensibly has ruled out partnering with Iran to fight the Islamic State ... some in the US administration appear to be still nurturing hopes that, by partnering with Iran in areas of mutual interest — such as the fight against the Islamic State — and taking account of Iran’s regional interests, the US will earn goodwill in Tehran, draw it into a regional security structure and persuade Iran to agree to an ­acceptable nuclear deal… This risks a dangerously shortsighted and naive approach. The idea that the extremist Shia Islamist state of Iran — which has maintained a remarkably consistent policy for decades in terms of its state sponsorship of terror and other rogue behaviour — can be transformed into an ally or partner of the West may be superficially appealing but amounts to dangerous wishful thinking. 
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Palmer could be exhibit A of his own inquiry

Andrew Bolt October 02 2014 (6:52am)

Clive Palmer might just have dumped himself in another mess:
THE Greens have outman­oeuvred Clive Palmer and Labor and will use the Palmer-initiated Senate inquiry into the Queensland government to examine the environmental impact of the federal MP’s own coal holdings and polluting nickel refinery.

The minor party will also put the former Queensland Labor government’s approvals regime for coal-seam gas projects under the microscope, potentially embarrassing the ALP, which supported the inquiry… 
Greens senator for Queensland Larissa Waters denied her party had been caught up in what the Abbott government has dubbed Mr Palmer’s “personal vendetta’’ against Mr Newman.
“The terms of reference that we’ve had included will ensure that we can look at not just the Newman government’s environmental track record but the dodgy coal-seam gas approvals under the Bligh (Labor) government, and also Mr Palmer’s own activities with his mega mines in the Galilee and his Yabulu refinery on the shores of the Great Barrier Reef,’’ Senator Waters said… The Newman government is taking legal advice on the inquiry, and is expected to turn the tables on PUP and use the Senate probe to retaliate and dump on Mr Palmer and Labor.
UPDATE
Hedley Thomas:
CLIVE Palmer wants a penetrating public inquiry in Queensland. He wants to expose dishonesty and corruption. Shameless standover tactics by big business bullying a government must be highlighted. He promises to root out this wickedness and more.

Let’s give the tycoon what he wants. A public inquiry is a brilliant idea. 
But it must examine the allegedly fraudulent, often unhinged, economically destructive, environmentally reckless and usually embarrassing conduct of Clive Frederick Palmer, businessman, serial litigant and leader of the Palmer United Party.
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Andreas Herrmann
Wir werden weniger, älter, bunter. Dagmar Mühlenfeld
We are less, older, more colorful. Dagmar mill field 
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Pastor Rick Warren
This State Prison did our #40DaysInTheWord small group campaign to learn personal Bible Study Methods. Then the inmates signed a giant, handmade Thank You note. 

Has your small group or church done #40DaysInTheWord yet? Here's the link: http://www.40daysintheword.com/
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We are told, day after day, that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a genuine moderate committed to achieving a peace settlement with Israel. In addition to the international community, even some Israelis – admittedly a dwindling minority – also chant this mantra.
Abbas and his spokesman Saeb Erekat bolster this theme by uttering soothing statements in English, endorsing peace to the gullible international community. Yet they speak with forked tongues because in Arabic to their own people, they deny Israel’s right to exist and promote vicious hatred against Jews.
They also claim to have reneged violence. But the PA never conceded that terrorism was immoral. They simply concluded that having failed to achieve their objectives by violence, their goals could best be promoted by temporarily suspending terrorism in order to gain Western support. Abbas made it clear that he “had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965″ and was only opposed to terrorist attacks “at this time” for tactical reasons and that “in the future things may change.” Yet, even within this framework, Fatah has still succeeded in killing more Israelis than Hamas.
The true objectives of the PA are reflected in the poisonous hatred against Jews and Israel inculcated to their people through the broad range of institutions they control, permeating every level of society– from kindergarten and upwards.
- See more at: http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3873#sthash.PGlVEQKF.4rSl2hgM.dpuf
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The Palmer United Party (PUP) has secured a third seat in the Senate after a tight race in Western Australia that has seen Greens Senator Scott Ludlam lose out.
PUP candidate Zhenya Wang and sitting Labor Senator Louise Pratt won the last two West Australian Senate seats, joining the Liberal Party's David Johnston, Michaelia Cash and Linda Reynolds, together with the ALP's Joe Bullock in the Upper House.
Counting for the six seats was completed earlier today and while the results are yet to be formally declared, the count shows Mr Wang has gained a seat for PUP and Senator Pratt will narrowly scrape in.
Mr Wang, who is the managing director of Australasian Resources, said during the election campaign that he planned to abolish the carbon tax and focus on downstream processing of Australian natural resources.
ABC election analyst Antony Green says 14 votes were the difference between the PUP and ALP candidates finishing fifth and sixth over the Greens and the Australian Sports Party.
The Greens are expected to lodge an official request for a recount.
It was predicted early in the counting that the Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich would pick up a seat due to preference deals, but he has missed out.

Ludlum won't be missed .. ed
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An antique wood engraving by an unknown artist showing a man peeing out beyond the earth’s edge

Time was when sensible folks truly believed that if you venture too far, you’ll fall off Earth’s jagged edge into the endless void below. That was the majority view, the widely-accepted and fundamentally unquestioned conventional wisdom.
By today, though, one would assume that nobody swallows that any more, certainly not in the erudite parts of what we’ve for centuries recognized as our globe.
Welcome to the International Flat Earth Society, now largely California-based (where else?). You think IFES-members are crazy? You’d be surprised to learn that they’ve diagnosed the rest of us as profoundly insane for not grasping reality as they know we should.

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obama 378x331

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized President Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, in which he argued falsely that the creation of a Palestinian state under the auspices of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) is “central” to Israel’s security and that developments in the Middle East, which is in the midst of violence, instability and turbulence not seen in decades, and would make the time “ripe” to work to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian peace treaty and the creation of a PA-led Palestinian state. 
ZOA National Chairman of the Board Dr. Michael Goldblatt said, “The ZOA repudiates both propositions. Under prevailing conditions, a Palestinian state would:
  • Be a dangerous, terrorist, anti-Semitic, racist state would encompass perilous Israeli withdrawals, including from the strategically vital Jordan Valley; 
  • Require the uprooting and expulsion of over 500,000 Jews from their lawful homes in Judea and Samaria, given Mahmoud Abbas/Palestinian Authority (PA) insistence on a Jew-free state; 
  • Entail drastic deterioration in Israeli security, including bringing within rocket and rifle range of Palestinian terrorists Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport and most of Israel’s major population centers; 
  • Would eventually trigger a full-scale war; and, 
  • Given the impossibility of demilitarizing such a state, even if its demilitarization were a clause in a hypothetical signed peace treaty, result in a terror-state on Israel’s longest and most vulnerable border. 
“Furthermore, the idea that the time is “ripe” for international efforts to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian peace and a Palestinian state is absurd on its face. As we detail below, Palestinians don’t accept Israel as Jewish state, support murderous violence, including suicide terrorism, against Israelis; do not accept the idea of a permanent peace with Israel; glorify terrorists and incite their society and especially children to hate and fight Israel.
“If a Palestinian Arab state was to be established next door to the U.S. in the near-certainty that it would be a corrupt, terror-promoting state which would also be beggar state, dependent on an infusion of billions of dollars, would Americans agree to this? Of course not –– yet that is the idea that President Obama is trying to foist on Israel. Under these conditions, anyone with a shred of realism and concern for Israel’s well-being should oppose his call for a Palestinian state.”


Read more: http://zoa.org/2013/10/10215948-obama-at-u-n-wrongly-argues-pal-state-is-central-to-israeli-security-time-ripe-for-israelipalestinian-peace/#ixzz2gXwyHvFP
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Feminists have attacked Prime Minister Tony Abbott simply for doing something the women's sector has been requesting for years, according to a leading feminist academic.
Mr Abbott's government came under sustained fire when he announced that the Office for Women would sit in his own department and the Minister Assisting for Women, Michaelia Cash, would be in the outer ministry.
But the Australian National University's Susan Harris Rimmer says the move is a triumph for women and many of the critics have not fully understood the treatment of the office under the previous Labor government.
According to the academic with the ANU's Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Mr Abbott has endured a storm of criticism and mockery on social and mainstream media and from prominent feminist campaigners, one of whom started a 10,000-signature petition.


Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/feminist-outrage-too-quick-off-mark-20130930-2uowa.html#ixzz2gXxBs2vz
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MUMBAI: Most Mumbaikars live by laws laid down by the 7.52 CST Fast, tuition classes and ration queues. That's why spiritual commandments —although sanctified by a much higher authority than the general manager (Sales)—are usually given the go-by. 

Alarmed by this trend, members of the city's minuscule Jewish community have formed a new organisation called the Foundation for Jewish Life in India. Its objective is to wrest rights and provide facilities that will allow Jews in India to "lead a Jewish life''. "We have noticed a definite decline in religious observances in recent years,'' says Joshua Kolet, the city's only rabbi and chairman of the foundation. "Today people identify themselves as Jewish merely because they were born in the community, not because they actively follow the religion.'' 

In Judaism, religion is inextricably linked with everyday life—and involves stern dietary laws, enforces complete rest on the Sabbath and maintains that only a religious court can adjudicate in matters of divorce. That is why, in a city where the community is much too small to warrant off-theshelf kosher food, special holidays on Saturdays or a full-fledged religious court, the laws of the Torah are willynilly flouted. "For centuries we carried on without fancy organisations,'' says Samson Korlekar, a foundation trustee, echoing the fears of small communities the world over. "But today, youngsters are much more concerned with their careers, intermarriage is widespread and the atmosphere is too cosmopolitan.'' 

This panic is ironic, given that the history of the Bene Israel in India is one of resilience. Legend has it that more than 2,000 years ago, seven men and seven women were shipwrecked near Chaul and settled down amidst the prosperous wadis of the Konkan. Although they lost their religious texts in the disaster—and their religious identity in the following centuries— these children of Israel clung to seemingly inexplicable customs. They refrained from working on Saturdays, followed intricate rules about food and circumcised their sons. 
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The time has come for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyau to apply the same words that he has invoked against the integrity of the leader of the Iranian regime to an attack on the integrity of the leader of the PLO, who shows no peaceful intentions.
The text of Netanyahu's speech against the Iranian leader can be found at:
www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Speeches/Pages/speechUN011013.aspx
From his speech, we can extrapolate the same words & Principles that the PM used against Iran and apply them to the PL0.
SUGGESTED OPENING TEXT FOR NETANYAHU'S NEXT UN APPEARANCE:
Today, our hope for the future is challenged by the PLO, which seeks our destruction.
But in 1964, the PLO was established by the Arab League as a radical organization determined to stamp out any possibility of friendship between Arabs and Jews.
Arafat was a wolf in wolf's clothing and Abbas is a wolf in sheep's clothing - a wolf who thinks he can pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.
Abbas condemns terrorism. Yet Abbas uses the media outlets and education system at his disposal to promote demonization and war against the state and people of Israel.
Abbas's record flatly contradicts Abbas's soothing rhetoric.
Abbas has adopted a charm offensive, based on the following process: First, smile a lot. Smiling never hurts. Second, pay lip service to peace, democracy and tolerance.
Abbas's fanaticism is not bluster. It's real.
(Following these opening remarks, the Israeli PM can then document Abbas's continuing policy of promoting terror and incitement against of the state and people of Israel. A peace partner he is not.)

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The Israel Hayom newspaper, which appears in English on the internet and is a free giveaway in Hebrew, has been doing a series of video discussions between Editor Steve Ganot and top op-ed writer Ruthie Blum.  The latest is about the European boycott of industrial products and other things from what is known as "the west bank."

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Sinem Tezyapar

Whenever calamities befall Muslim-majority nations, there is always a country to blame: Israel. Is there a revolution against a tyrant? Zionists are responsible. Who else could be at fault if there is a clash between Sunni and Shia groups? The Jews. Did a bomb explode on the other side of the world, or is there a problem with the economy? No need look any further than Israel. And where else would the control center for destabilizing the Arab world be? In Tel Aviv, of course!
The late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi blamed Israel for the violence and unrest in Africa. Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that the turmoil in the Arab world is a pro-Zionist conspiracy. Saudi cleric Sheikh Ismae’il al-Hafoufi blamed Israel for the desecration of Islamic holy sites in Syria. Sheik Abd al-Jalil al-Karouri, a Sudanese cleric, pointed to Israel for the Boston and Texas bombings. And then there’s the belief that Zionists planned the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, to demonize Arabs and Muslims in the eyes of the world.
This madness of putting the blame on Zionists — and Israel in general — is a knee-jerk reaction with no basis in logic. The most surprising part is that so many people believe this without question and continue to disseminate such rumors far and wide.
Syria, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon all aggressively hold the “Zionist regime” responsible for their woes. While Bashar Assad accuses Israel of trying to destabilize Syria, the Syrian opposition blames Israel for assisting the Assad regime by giving them diplomatic cover. Both sides see Israel as responsible for all the bloodshed and unrest going on in Syria. Now with the possibility of an international intervention in Syria, Iranian legislators and commanders are issuing blunt warnings, saying any military strike from the United States on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel. Israel’s staying out of the equation, it seems, is simply not possible. Even though Israeli politicians refrain from taking sides in the regional conflicts, all sides point toward Israel anyhow.
On the other hand, we have the Egyptian coup d’état, where we see both sides ascribe blame to Israel. Interestingly, the Egyptian grass-roots protest movement Tamarod blames Israel but urges the Egyptian government not to renege on the Camp David accords. If Israel condemns the violence committed against the anti-coup alliance, she is labeled as an enemy of Egypt and accused of collaborating to destroy the Egyptian army. Even the state-allied newspaper al-Ahram claimed that Israel is in an alliance to demolish the Egyptian army and to balkanize the country. Furthermore, in 2010, an Egyptian government official blamed Israel intelligence for a fatal shark attack off Egypt’s shores. 
It must sound like a bizarre joke for some, but this tragicomic situation is quite serious for many in the Middle East. We are no longer surprised to hear Israel’s being the scapegoat for every single evil in the world, but Iran’s blaming the Zionist entity for the deadly earthquake in Iran was pushing the limits of credulity. This, despite the fact that Jews are a handful of people, a tiny population when compared to the overall population of the world.
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Delta Air Lines plans to buy 11,000 Microsoft Surface 2 tablets for its pilots to replace the heavy bundles of books and maps they haul around now.
Other airlines, including American and United, have been buying Apple's iPad for that purpose.
Delta says the Surface tablets will save it $13 million per year in fuel and other costs. Right now, each pilot carries a 38-pound flight bag with manuals and maps.

More expensive, but may not work, also. - ed
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In the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq archaeologists have discovered an ancient city called Idu, hidden beneath a mound.
Cuneiform inscriptions and works of art reveal the palaces that flourished in the city throughout its history thousands of years ago.
Located in a valley on the northern bank of the lower Zab River, the city's remains are now part of a mound created by human occupation called a tell, which rises about 32 feet above the surrounding plain. The earliest remains date back to Neolithic times, when farming first appeared in the Middle East, and a modern-day village called Satu Qala now lies on top of the tell.

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THEY wanted the highway all to themselves.
The angry bikers who viciously beat a Manhattan driver in front of his wife and 2-year-old daughter were at first trying to slow the man down so they could get in front of him and take over the West Side Highway, law-enforcement sources told The New York Post.
This comes amid reports a man is now paralysed after he was run over by the motorist who was trying to escape the gang.
The bikers had already blocked off at least some of the highway's entrances to prevent other drivers from getting onto the stretch near West 125th Street, sources said.

Selfish git should not try to stand in front of a car while threatening a young family. - ed
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MUCH of the vast machinery of the US government has ground to a halt as Democrats and Republicans blame each other for a partial shutdown that closed federal agencies, parks and research facilities across the nation.
Ominously, there are suggestions from leaders in both parties that the shutdown, heading for its second day, could last for weeks and grow to encompass a possible default by the Treasury if Congress fails to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama accused Republicans of causing the first partial closure in 17 years as part of a non-stop "ideological crusade" to wipe out his signature health care law.
House Speaker John Boehner disagreed.
"The president isn't telling the whole story," he said in an opinion article posted on the USA Today website.

Obama has overspent more than all the previous Presidents combined. And all he has achieved is the need to spend more. - ed
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FOR those who have caught a glimpse of the ghostly light, it is as baffling as it is dazzling.
Deep in the backwoods of America's Ozark hills in Missouri, locals have been bewitched by the mysterious 'Spook Light' for more than a century.
It can only be seen on chance evenings as a floating orb, hovering on a remote country road in an area known as the Devil's Promenade.
Some witnesses say it's a brilliant blue, others insist it is red. Guesses about its origins range from everyday expulsions of natural gas to UFOs or the haunting spectre of a headless indigenous inhabitant of the area.
Nothing is known for sure about the Spook Light. Not even a 1950s investigation by the United States Army Corps of Engineers could figure out the cause of the chilling apparition.

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Holly Sarah Nguyen
God's plan is like a movie, all the good and bad things are arranged together for the good endings.

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It’s 20 years after that hesitant Yitzhak Rabin handshake with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, and tragically little has changed.
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One of the largest terrorist groups operating in the Sinai Peninsula has joined Al-Qaeda.
The group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (“The Army of Islam in the Beit Al-Makdas Region”), has announced its loyalty to Al-Qaeda, and particularly, to the Al-Qaeda leadership in Iraq.
The group in question has carried out many attackstargeting Egyptian soldiers in Sinai. It has also attempted to attack Israel by infiltrating the border, shooting over the border, and firing rockets on Israeli towns.
If the ties between the Sinai group and Al-Qaeda prove stable, it will indicate the trend of growing Al-Qaeda strength in the states around Israel.
Israel’s defense leaders have previously expressed concern over Al-Qaeda’s strength among Syrian rebel groups, some of which have gained ground next to Israel’s northern border and the Golan.
A second Islamic group fighting the Egyptian army in the Sinai, the Al-Furkan Brigades, is ideologically close to Al-Qaeda, but not officially linked to the global terror network. The Al-Furkan Brigades released a video to YouTube this week with footage of some of its attacks on the Egyptian army, including the killing of a senior Air Force officer.
The video also showed the killing of an Egyptian civilian who was accused of cooperating with the army.

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Nazi scientists helped Arab countries produce chemical weapons, according to a prominent Egyptian journalist.
The journalist, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, made the comments in an interview which aired on September 19, 2013. The comments were translated and posted to the internet by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

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The United Nations, New York City. Tuesday, October 1, 2013
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Thank you, Mr. President.
I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the state of Israel. We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have journeyed through time. We’ve overcome the greatest of adversities.
And we re-established our sovereign state in our ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
Now, the Jewish people’s odyssey through time has taught us two things: Never give up hope, always remain vigilant. Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it.
Today our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear-armed Iran that seeks our destruction. But I want you to know, that wasn’t always the case. Some 2,500 years ago the great Persian king Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. He issued a famous edict in which he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. That’s a Persian decree. And thus began an historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times.
But in 1979 a radical regime in Tehran tried to stamp out that friendship. As it was busy crushing the Iranian people’s hope for democracy, it always led wild chants of “death of the Jews.”
Now, since that time, presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, other hard-liners. But they’ve all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgiving regime, that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known as the supreme leader, first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei.

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URGENT -- JUST RELEASED: Middle East Report Translated, Declares That "Barack Hussein Obama IS A Muslim Terrorist!" (Video News Report)


nb I have not vetted this site .. it could be a joke - ed
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The Changing Face of America

What unites us is strong. What divides us? - ed
Dean Hamstead Its very confusing if skin colour and genitals are what you value in people.
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Diamond Imports | Instagram feed
Diamond Imports sell the Highest Quality Certified Loose Diamonds at wholesale diamond prices to create beautiful diamond engagement rings.
Page: 4,090 like this.
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““Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved."
Song of Solomon 7:13

The spouse desires to give to Jesus all that she produces. Our heart has "all manner of pleasant fruits," both "old and new," and they are laid up for our Beloved. At this rich autumnal season of fruit, let us survey our stores. We have new fruits. We desire to feel new life, new joy, new gratitude; we wish to make new resolves and carry them out by new labours; our heart blossoms with new prayers, and our soul is pledging herself to new efforts. But we have some old fruits too. There is our first love: a choice fruit that! and Jesus delights in it. There is our first faith: that simple faith by which, having nothing, we became possessors of all things. There is our joy when first we knew the Lord: let us revive it. We have our old remembrances of the promises. How faithful has God been! In sickness, how softly did he make our bed! In deep waters, how placidly did he buoy us up! In the flaming furnace, how graciously did he deliver us. Old fruits, indeed! We have many of them, for his mercies have been more than the hairs of our head. Old sins we must regret, but then we have had repentances which he has given us, by which we have wept our way to the cross, and learned the merit of his blood. We have fruits, this morning, both new and old; but here is the point--they are all laid up for Jesus. Truly, those are the best and most acceptable services in which Jesus is the solitary aim of the soul, and his glory, without any admixture whatever, the end of all our efforts. Let our many fruits be laid up only for our Beloved; let us display them when he is with us, and not hold them up before the gaze of men. Jesus, we will turn the key in our garden door, and none shall enter to rob thee of one good fruit from the soil which thou hast watered with thy bloody sweat. Our all shall be thine, thine only, O Jesus, our Beloved!

Evening


"He will give grace and glory."
Psalm 84:11
Bounteous is Jehovah in his nature; to give is his delight. His gifts are beyond measure precious, and are as freely given as the light of the sun. He gives grace to his elect because he wills it, to his redeemed because of his covenant, to the called because of his promise, to believers because they seek it, to sinners because they need it. He gives grace abundantly, seasonably, constantly, readily, sovereignly; doubly enhancing the value of the boon by the manner of its bestowal. Grace in all its forms he freely renders to his people: comforting, preserving, sanctifying, directing, instructing, assisting grace, he generously pours into their souls without ceasing, and he always will do so, whatever may occur. Sickness may befall, but the Lord will give grace; poverty may happen to us, but grace will surely be afforded; death must come but grace will light a candle at the darkest hour. Reader, how blessed it is as years roll round, and the leaves begin again to fall, to enjoy such an unfading promise as this, "The Lord will give grace."
The little conjunction "and" in this verse is a diamond rivet binding the present with the future: grace and glory always go together. God has married them, and none can divorce them. The Lord will never deny a soul glory to whom he has freely given to live upon his grace; indeed, glory is nothing more than grace in its Sabbath dress, grace in full bloom, grace like autumn fruit, mellow and perfected. How soon we may have glory none can tell! It may be before this month of October has run out we shall see the Holy City; but be the interval longer or shorter, we shall be glorified ere long. Glory, the glory of heaven, the glory of eternity, the glory of Jesus, the glory of the Father, the Lord will surely give to his chosen. Oh, rare promise of a faithful God!
Two golden links of one celestial chain:
Who owneth grace shall surely glory gain.
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Today's reading: Isaiah 11-13, Ephesians 4 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Isaiah 11-13



The Branch From Jesse

1 A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
4 but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist....

Today's New Testament reading: Ephesians 4

Unity and Maturity in the Body of Christ
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:
“When he ascended on high,
he took many captives
and gave gifts to his people.”
9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ....
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