Sun Dec 4th Todays News

The press is going hysterical because Taiwan called Donald Trump. They would never have called Obama, probably because that would never have been constructive. China is not evil. China is a bully. Trump, by standing firm on issues, will get Chinese respect, where Obama got utter contempt. But Press leaders are bloviating wildly, saying Trump has made a mistake in accepting the phone call. That China will blow up the world in a huff. Meanwhile, Trump has poured cold water on the bad idea of sending economic refugees to the US from Nauru. Australian PM Turnbull has backed a wrong horse in backing Hillary. But to be fair, Turnbull had been too close to Hillary’s people for a long time.

IPA Review (Nov 2016) features a Darcy Allen article on an Edward Stringham book “Private Governance: Creating order in economic and social life.” To begin, one has to suspend their disbelief that capitalism is not already proven effective. We know capitalism works. We know that waiting for police to deal with a shooting killer in the US leads to 14 deaths, but civilians with guns in a shooter killing situation leads to 2 deaths on average. We know that private equity organises for profit better than planned economies. This article is about a book that examines less commonly examined examples of capitalist success. It demonstrates that governments suck in an ever changing world in which financial transactions are near instantaneous but bureaucracy is painfully slow. So that when Paypal was losing $10 million a month to fraud in 2001, government could not help, but Paypal designed and implemented a solution of fraud detection which was instantaneous on transaction.

=== from 2015 ===

All around the world people sacrifice much for a better life. The US population has as many as fifty million peoples wanting to be known as having the US their home. They live there. In China it is rumoured there are some fifty million peoples with applications to migrate to Australia. And then there are murderous, lying dangerous jihadi who live without logic but have much hate. There is a caliphate where Islamic people can live their dream life, it is called Saudi Arabia. But a husband and wife jihadi team planned an assault at a Christmas party in San Bernardino. They left their baby in the care of a grandmother. There had been a baby shower for it months before by many killed. And Islamic leaders excuse the act as legitimate. Proving the link between jihadi and Islam. And it is a problem Islam must solve as jihadi drag it into disrepute. And in Saudi Arabia, the penalty for such is fixed by Sharia Law. Are we to believe the jihadi vision of their god quivering in fear before joyful people?  

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.

From 2014

AGW fear

Beware the anti coal seam gas rabbit found on youtube video opposing Coal Seam Gas. ABC Catalyst claims there is a more efficient way of producing electricity than coal. They illustrate it with a building using Gas, the same Gas Greenies disapprove of as it is mined from coal seams. The fear mongers don't remember what they oppose and support, or why. A Green senator who proposes gender discrimination for children by denying girls pink or boys blue is pictured with her daughter in a pink dress. They are insane, and should not have political power, but should be pitied. 

Lies and Racism

Disability support pension is abused by a 'refugee' who lied about his life and lifestyle while spending substantial time in the Middle East. Tim Blair reports. 

Playing the racism card to include monocultures like the Greens because Greens need to be included? The Victorian election also featured Greens and a nationalist party Rise Up. Rise Up are ethnically diverse, whereas Greens are white hipsters. The Age calls the ethnically diverse bunch 'racist' indicating the Age's view of racism is not defined, but applied tribally. 

Shorten opposing tax reform and drifting into fantasy land on 7:30. Sales might regret going softly on Shorten as much as Red Kerry regretted letting Rudd fracture live. Shorten quotes George Harrison while lamely deflecting from his policy free stance. Shorten intends to cost Australia more billions on top of the projected $650 billion debt. Sales interviews Mr Abbott and refuses to allow Mr Abbott what she freely accepted from Shorten. Sales misquotes budget figures to suggest the budget would leave Australia much worse off than the ALP had. In fact, tens of billions of dollars have been saved making the home budgets easier to balance and small business easier to keep profitable. It is worth noting ALP opposed the savings. ALP have also opposed releasing thirty thousand from detention by opposing temporary protection visas. It appears the TPV will pass the senate, so maybe those people the ALP locked up will be freed by Christmas? 

Misogyny?

A vigorous arrest at Sydney's Potts Point shows police wrestling with a woman avoiding arrest. The secret to avoid such displays is to not resist arrest. A person can be killed resisting arrest. 

Fairfax lauds criminal who breached privacy of PM's daughter. The PM's daughter was awarded a scholarship on merit. A jealous employee of the institution, outraged at the claim that the daughter had an unfair advantage breached the daughter's privacy by accessing private emails which did not show an unfair advantage. The criminal confessed what they had done when faced with the evidence. They were treated very leniently by the courts. Fairfax lists the criminal on a list of candidates for woman of the year. No record yet of Gillard denouncing the misogyny of slurring the other candidates who are presumably women

From 2013

It takes integrity to achieve worthwhile things. And yet some really deficient people seem highly lauded. An actor who could drive cars quickly killed himself recently, and a friend, when he quickly drove his high performance car into a tree. There is real grief being expressed for him. I could understand his wife and children would miss him. Some say he had come from a charity event before he mindlessly killed himself and his friend. He was a good person? He was a kind person? He was a nice person? He was a rich man. I get upset with the bad behaviour of rich people who are role models for young ones. All that time and money people have invested into someone who dies from a stupid irresponsible act. And some young people will take his action as a cue. Not everything is perfect in everyone's life. A better response than gloating over success and de-stressing after, is to give thanks for the terrific blessing one has been given in life. To do that, one cannot rely on others, they need integrity to give of themselves. RIP Paul Walker, you were blessed, and drove away too soon. 

Fairfax move to protect their readers from an opinion that might be different from their view. Gosford Anglican Church gives up on Jesus, and holds to AGW alarmism. Hartcher steps aside. The matter looks less dangerous than that which claimed Greiner. So the press are playing the fantasy for ALP now, because they won't be able to celebrate later, and they will try to inflate things. If one was looking for a prostitute without clients, journalists may be the ones. ALP moves to deny the Libs the funds for Gonski. ABC fight to be unbalanced. Dylan sued. Why is Australia home to islamo fascists? Where are the bent athletes we were told ruined our elite sports? Throwing money at schools seems ineffective.

Historical perspective on this day

In 771, Austrasian king Carloman I died, leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the now complete Frankish Kingdom. In 1110, the Kingdom of Jerusalem captured Sidon. In 1259, Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agreed to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounced his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels. In 1563, the final session of the Council of Trent was held. (It had opened on December 13, 1545.) In 1619, thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. The group's charter proclaimed that the day "be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." In 1674, father Jacques Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek. (The mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois.) In 1676, Battle of Lund: A Danish army under the command of King Christian V engaged the Swedish army commanded by Field Marshal Simon Grundel-Helmfelt. In 1745, Charles Edward Stewart's army reached Derby, its furthest point during the Second Jacobite Rising. In 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington bid farewell to his officers. In 1786, Mission Santa Barbara was dedicated (on the feast day of Saint Barbara). In 1791, the first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, was published.

In 1829, in the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinckissues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal was guilty of culpable homicide. In 1864,  American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea – At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under Union General Judson Kilpatrick prevented troops led by ConfederateGeneral Joseph Wheeler from interfering with Union General William T. Sherman's campaign destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta, Georgia. In 1867, former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founded the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange). In 1872, the crewless Americanship Mary Celeste was found by the British brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged. In 1875, notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escaped from prison. He would later be recaptured in Spain. In 1881, the first edition of the Los Angeles Times was published. In 1893, First Matabele War: A patrol of 34 British South Africa Company soldiers were ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors on the Shangani River in Matabeleland.

In 1909, in Canadian football, the First Grey Cup game was played. The University of TorontoVarsity Blues defeated the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club, 26–6. In 1909, the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club, the oldest surviving professional hockey franchise in the world, was founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association. In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sailed for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office. In 1921, the first Virginia Rappemanslaughter trial against Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle ended in a hung jury. In 1937, the first issue of the children's comic, The Dandy, was published. In 1939, World War II: HMS Nelson was struck by a mine (laid by U-31) off the Scottish coast and was laid up for repairs until August 1940. In 1942, World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaignended. In 1943, World War II: In Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Titoproclaimed a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile. In 1943, World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States. In 1945, by a vote of 65 to 7, the United States Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations. (The UN had been established on October 24, 1945.)

In 1954, the first Burger King was opened in Miami, Florida. In 1956, the Million Dollar Quartet(Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) got together at Sun Studiosfor the first and last time. In 1967, Vietnam War: U.S. and South Vietnamese forces engaged Viet Cong troops in the Mekong Delta. In 1969, Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were shot and killed in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicagopolice officers. In 1971, the United Nations Security Council called an emergency session to consider the deteriorating situation between India and Pakistan. Also, the Indian Navyattacked the Pakistan Navy and Karachi. Also, the Montreux Casino in Switzerland was set ablaze by someone wielding a flare gun during a Frank Zappa concert; the incident would be noted in the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water". Also, "The Troubles": The Ulster Volunteer Force bombed a Catholic-owned pub in Belfast, killing 15 civilians and wounding 17. It was the city's highest death toll from a single incident during the conflict. In 1975, Suriname joined the United Nations. In 1977, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowned himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire. Also, Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 was hijacked and crashed in Tanjong Kupang, Johor, killing 100. In 1978, following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinsteinbecame San Francisco's first female mayor. (She would serve until January 8, 1988.) In 1979, the Hastie fire in Hull killed three schoolboys and eventually led police to arrest Bruce George Peter Lee.

In 1980, English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded, following the death of drummer John Bonham on September 25. In 1981, South Africa granted independence to the Ciskei"homeland" (not recognized by any government outside South Africa). In 1982, the People's Republic of China adopted its current constitution. In 1984, Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Army soldiers killed 107-150 civilians in Mannar. In 1984, Hezbollah militants hijacked a Kuwait Airlines plane, killing four passengers. In 1991, journalist Terry A. Anderson was released after seven years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut. He was the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. In 1991, Captain Mark Pyle pilots Clipper Goodwill, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 727-221ADV, to Miami International Airport, ending 64 years of Pan Am operations. In 1992, Somali Civil War: President George H. W. Bush ordered 28,000 U.S. troops to Somalia in Northeast Africa. In 1993, a truce was concluded between the government of Angola and UNITA rebels. In 1998, the Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, was launched. In 2005, tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong protested for democracy and called on the government to allow universal and equal suffrage. In 2006, Six black youths assaulted a white teenager in Jena, Louisiana.

=== 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.

===

I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc

===

Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space

• July
• June
• May
• April
• March
• February
• January
• December
• November
• October
• September
• August
• Collected writings

The Amazon Author Page for David Ball

UK .. http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01683ZOWG
French .. http://www.amazon.fr/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Japan .. http://www.amazon.co.jp/-/e/B01683ZOWG
German .. http://www.amazon.de/-/e/B01683ZOWG

Happy birthday and many happy returns Jenina Nguyen, John LaMantia, SeHong Win-Nguyen and Kenny Thai. Born on the same day, across the years, along with 1555 – Heinrich Meibom, German poet and historian (d. 1625) 1585 – John Cotton, English-American minister (d. 1652) 1647 – Daniel Eberlin, German composer and conductor (d. ca. 1715) 1660 – André Campra, French composer and conductor (d. 1744) 1667 – Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, French composer (d. 1737) 1713 – Gasparo Gozzi, Italian critic and playwright (d. 1786) 1777 – Juliette Récamier, French salonnière (d. 1849) 1795 – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian (d. 1881) 1910 – Alex North, American composer (d. 1991) 1921 – Deanna Durbin, Canadian-French actress and singer (d. 2013) 1930 – Ronnie Corbett, Scottish actor 1944 – Chris Hillman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Byrds, The Hillmen, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Manassas) 1944 – Anna McGarrigle, Canadian singer-songwriter (Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Mountain City Four) 1949 – Jeff Bridges, American actor, singer, and producer 1949 – Pamela Stephenson, New Zealand-Australian actress and psychologist 1964 – Marisa Tomei, American actress 1973 – Tyra Banks, American model and actress 1992 – Guan Xueting, Chinese ice dancer December 4: Navy Day in India 1829 – Sati, the Hindu funeral custom of widows immolating themselves, was prohibited in part of British India after years of campaigning by Ram Mohan Roy. 1893 – First Matabele War: A patrol of British South Africa Company soldiers was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors. 1909 – The Montreal Canadiens, the oldest professional ice hockey club in the world, was founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association. 1954 – The global hamburger fast food chain Burger King, known for its signature item the Whopper(pictured), was founded in Miami, Florida, US. 1971 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, exploded a bomb at a Catholic-owned pub in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing 15 people. You burn with passion. Avoid asymmetric battles. Skate to the goal. Special orders don't upset us. Avoid church run pubs. Let's party.  Deaths 530 BC – Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire 749 – John of Damascus, Syrian priest and saint (b. 676) 771 – Carloman I, Frankish king (b. 751) 1075 – Anno II, German archbishop (b. 1010) 1131 – Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (b. 1048) 1214 – William the Lion, Scottish king (b. 1143) 1270 – Theobald II of Navarre (b. 1238) 1334 – Pope John XXII (b. 1249) 1340 – Henry Burghersh, English bishop (b. 1292) 1459 – Adolphus VIII, Count of Holstein (b. 1401) 1576 – Georg Joachim Rheticus, Austrian-Slovak mathematician and cartographer (b. 1514) 1585 – John Willock, Scottish minister and reformer (b. 1515) 1609 – Alexander Hume, Scottish poet (b. 1560) 1642 – Cardinal Richelieu, French clergyman (b. 1585) 1649 – William Drummond of Hawthornden (b. 1585) 1679 – Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher and author (b. 1588) 1680 – Thomas Bartholin, Danish physician, mathematician, and theologian (b. 1616) 1696 – Empress Meishō of Japan (b. 1624) 1732 – John Gay, English poet and playwright (b. 1685) 1798 – Luigi Galvani, Italian physician, physicist, and philosopher (b. 1737) 1841 – David Daniel Davis, Welsh-English physician and academic (b. 1777) 1850 – William Sturgeon, English physicist, invented the electric motor (b. 1783) 1893 – John Tyndall, Irish-English physicist and chemist (b. 1820) 1897 – Griffith Rhys Jones, Welsh conductor (b. 1834) 1902 – Charles Dow, American journalist and publisher, co-founded the Dow Jones & Company (b. 1851) 1976 – Tommy Bolin, American guitarist and songwriter (Zephyr, James Gang, and Deep Purple) (b. 1951) 1993 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The Mothers of Invention) (b. 1940) 2009 – Liam Clancy, Irish singer, guitarist, and actor (The Clancy Brothers) (b. 1935) 2013 – Joana Raspall i Juanola, Spanish author, poet, and librarian (b. 1913)

===
Miranda Devine

The great gender profit agenda

Take a male institution, add a sexism scandal, and call Broderick & Co to the rescue, writes Miranda Devine. Needless to say, business is booming.

RENDEZVIEW 4 Dec  71 comments

High Court choice shows Libs just sit on the fence

Unlike Labor, which entrenches Leftists any chance it gets, the Coalition keeps failing to make a conservative stamp on our institutions, writes Miranda Devine.

RENDEZVIEW 29 Nov  20 comments

Unbearable march of the manhunters

There is a feminist march to purge our institutions of masculinity, from the military to universities, writes Miranda Devine. It’s just more politically correct social engineering.

RENDEZVIEW 29 Nov  53 comments

Why can’t we just let kids be kids?

Until recently, society accepted that some girls were tomboys and some boys liked dressing up, writes Miranda Devine. It didn’t mean they needed their genitals­ ­“reassigned”. 

RENDEZVIEW 26 Nov

===
Tim Blair

SAVING BENJAMIN RYAN

People, we now have the single finest leftoid reaction to Donald Trump’s election win. Please pour yourselves a drink and enjoy. This cannot be beat.

4 Dec  87 comments

STREET ART IDENTITY CHALLENGE

A well-known person’s image now graces a wall in one of our state capitals.

4 Dec  112 comments

TRIGGER WARNING

Texan seven-year-old Lilly has been practicing for this moment since 2014.

3 Dec  37 comments

KELLOGG’S SNOWFLAKES

The post-election US meltdown now extends even to breakfast cereal companies.

3 Dec  51 comments

BE SEEN OR BEGONE

Moutia Elzahed is suing police over a recent terror raid. Small problem: she refuses to give evidence without wearing her freedom sack.

3 Dec 

===
Andrew Bolt

Racism banned, except the legal kind

Which of these two Victorian Government advertisements in the  Pakenham Gazette is correct? The one saying it is "unlawful for an advertiser to show any intention to discriminate on the basis of sex, pregnancy, race"? Or the one advertising a job for "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicants only"?

4 Dec  0 comments

Post-truth is staring Julia Baird in the mirror

Julia Baird, of the ABC Left, complains about "not just about the abandonment of fact, but how ... trust in the media is the lowest it has been since 1972". Baird blames Trump for  her "post-truth" glums, but let me hand her a mirror.

4 Dec  0 comments

Who lets them in?

The evidence is overwhelming that out refugee program puts Australians in danger. There was the Muslim Lebanese intake, and, more recently, the Sudanese. But then there's also the Afghans - like violent gang leader Farhad Qaumi.

4 Dec  0 comments

Try beating this anti-Trump insanity

Tim Blair has detected peak ani-Trump insanity: a Democrat fundraiser who checked himself into a psychiatric unit for three days to cope with his grief over Trump's win. And he actually wrote it up.

4 Dec  0 comments

Hinch says Turnbull suggested his ABCC sabotage

Derryn Hinch was attacked as a CFMEU stooge for telling the Turnbull Government to add a two-year delay in making the anti-union provisions binding on companies in exchange for his vote. Now he says it was Malcolm Turnbull who suggested it to him.

4 Dec 

===

Turnbull’s turncoats give him a Mac attack

Piers Akerman – Friday, December 04, 2015 (12:33am)

PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday dismissed the defection of senior Liberal former frontbencher Ian Macfarlane with the glib paraphrasing of a quote from the legendary former Prime Minister Billy Hughes.

 Continue reading 'Turnbull’s turncoats give him a Mac attack'

===

POSSIBLE INTERVIEW

Tim Blair – Friday, December 04, 2015 (5:20pm)

A request from the ABC:


And my reply.

===

THE BEST JOURNALISM

Tim Blair – Friday, December 04, 2015 (5:19pm)

2015: 

Walkley Advisory Board chair Kate McClymont said: “The judging process is what gives the Walkley Awards its credibility. The judges are senior journalists – people who know the skill, quick wit, depth of research and analysis, resourcefulness, and even physical courage it takes to create the best journalism.” 

2014: 

Copies of a best-selling, anti-corruption expose are set to be pulped after the authors mistakenly named the son of former federal tourism minister John Brown as a business associate of disgraced former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.

Chris Brown is seeking the pulping of all copies on bookstore shelves, a public apology and the right to pursue compensation for damage to his reputation after he was confused with an Obeid business partner of the same name.

He Who Must be Obeid was written by Walkley award winning journalists Kate McClymont, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, and the ABC’s Linton Besser. Released last month, it was withdrawn from shelves on Wednesday. 

===

SILENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE

Tim Blair – Friday, December 04, 2015 (2:49pm)

Following reports of female genital mutilation within Australia’s Islamic community: 

It would also be useful to know more about what sorts of methods those working against the practice in Australia are using. It would seem to me counterproductive to have loud denunciations of it … I believe that the best step that can be taken to work against it is to give support to those who are best placed to do so where it occurs, not to politicise the issue. 

Following 1400 cases of sexual torture of young children by Islamic men in the UK: 

Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham from 1994 to 2012, actually admitted to the BBC’s World At One that “there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.” 

Following a deadly Islamic siege in Sydney: 

Last September the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Anne Davies went to Lakemba to report on a Hizbie rally in the wake of terrorism raids. One of the attendees was Man Monis …

“I decided to drop his quotes from my story because I concluded he was a man on a campaign, who didn’t represent the broader sentiments of the Muslim community.” 

Following the murder of 14 people by an Islamic couple in San Bernardino: 

A man who has been working in the area said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area in recent weeks, but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people. 

===

DO YOU DARE ATTEMPT THE PRIVILEGE WALK?

Tim Blair – Friday, December 04, 2015 (3:21am)

You’ve been warned: 

This exercise can be very triggering, so do not do this activity unless you are sure you have plenty of time to debrief and reflect what individuals experienced during the privilege walk. 

===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, December 6

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (5:33pm)

On Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: The Turnbull honeymoon. Did it just hit a Brough spot?
My guest: Treasurer Scott Morrison.
The panel: formerTreasurer Peter Costello and former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa. On the Liberals’ in-fighting, ian Macfarlane’s defection, the Greens’ silence over atrocities against gays, and more.  Can Turnbull keep it together?
NewsWatch: Rowan Dean, columnist with The Courier Mail and Financial Review, and editor of Spectator Australia.  The media love for Turnbull and contempt for soldiers.
The videos of the shows appear here.

===

Turnbull’s lurch to the Left. Is this the party Liberals signed up for?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (9:01am)

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has pushed the Liberal party to the Left. The media cheered, and the have polls improved - for now.
But many Liberals aren’t in politics just to help a Labor-lite party get re-elected. They aren’t there just to make Turnbull Prime Minister. Policies and principles still matter more than victory.
And that is why there is such deep unease with what Turnbull has done in just three months.
He has:

- announced $1 billion for global warming projects overseas.
- misrepresented and mocked suggestions by Tony Abbott - since echoed by Barack Obama - to send special forces soldiers to fight the Islamic State.
- defended the Grand Mufti, who blamed terrorism on the West’s alleged oppression of Muslims.
- scrapped Bjorn Lomborg’s proposed consensus centre, opposed by warming extremists.
- dumped conservative Immigration Minister Peter Dutton from the National Security Committee.
- urged Commonwealth leaders to do more to fight global warming.
- dropped support for amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act that would allow more free speech.
- softened the Government’s opposition to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which invests public money to make no difference to global warming.
- trimmed the cuts to middle-class welfare.
- increased the pay offer to public servants from 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent.
- invited Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs to tea to mend bridges with an activist who has accused the government of crimes against humanity
- invited discussions on increasing taxes on superannuation.
- suggested a rise in the GST, inevitably leading to a tax grab after the premiers are paid off.
- announced a bid for a seat on the discredited United Nations Human Rights Council.
- had the partisan leadership of ABC chairman Mark Scott praised by his new Communications Minister.
- initially described the Islamist murder of Curtis Cheng as “politically motivated”, not religiously.
- signalled that the 12,000 refugees to be taken from Iraq and Syria may not be mostly Christians, after all, with two of the first four families chosen actually Muslim.
- banned the visit of an anti-abortion activist.
- appointed a noted spend-our-way-out-of this Keynesian, Martin Parkinson, as the new head of his department.
- had his ministers, with his permission or without, brief journalists to write damaging articles about Tony Abbott.
- allowed the deficit to worsen by up to $5 billion this financial year, claims Deloitte Access Economics.
- shunned conservative journalists.
- restored funding to the Australia Council, which former Arts Minister George Brandis had wanted diverted to excellence rather than mediocrity.
- stalled a decision on the new submarine fleet.

UPDATE
The media Left seems to have persuaded Malcolm Turnbull that conservatives warning against lurching to the Left were just “fringe” figures who “couldn’t let go” of Tony Abbott.
But now the truth is becoming very clear. Turnbull risks tearing the party apart if he doesn’t reach out to conservatives.
Simon Benson:

No sooner had [Turnbull] asked for unity from his MPs, fears of a mass defection were sparked when Liberal backbencher Macfarlane — dumped from the frontbench by Turnbull in an act of friendly fire following the coup — switched camps and joined the Nationals. It is expected that there will be more joining him.... 
Turnbull ... also has to contend with the freelancing by a group of MPs, most recently led by Cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg, who have now ­decided they will speak their minds publicly on the twin ­issues of national security and Islamic extremism — no matter how much it jars with Turnbull’s language. This alternative voice from within government has a popular resonance and a shared truth on which it based, which Turnbull would be unwise to dismiss… His support may be broad but among some of his colleagues it is support that runs shallow.

Phil Coorey:

Conservative Liberals believe Malcolm Turnbull should replace Mal Brough with the dumped Eric Abetz, saying it would relieve the Prime Minister of a political headache that has marred the end of the year, and build bridges with those who backed Tony Abbott.

Piers Akerman:

Turnbull ... is refusing to acknowledge that the party is now more divided than it ever was under his predecessor’s leadership.... 
Macfarlane’s defection is no small matter… (I)t has heartened other Liberals who are disappointed in Turnbull’s leadership on a range of issues — not least his traducing of the Abbott government’s robust approach to national security… They point to Turnbull’s delay in presenting the important Defence White Paper, the Taxation White Paper, and the ongoing deliberations over the overdue replacement of the submarine fleet. The question of Turnbull’s national security policy is, however, the single issue that resonates most strongly with most disaffected Liberals… He has serially failed to address the legions of apologists, including some clerics engaged by the Defence Department, who have attempted to rationalise terrorism as a response to a raft of contemporary issues rather than a reflection of key verses contained in the Koran.

(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 

===

Fear of “Islamophobia” shuts mouths

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (8:53am)

The Left keeps drumming up fear of “Islamophobia” to stifle debate about Islamist terrorism. Did this fear of “Islamophobia” contribute to the carnage in California?:

The husband and wife shooters who shot 36 people in San Bernardino in Wednesday had been acting suspiciously in recent weeks, neighbors claim. 
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, were apparently working late at night in their garage and receiving numerous packages to their home in Redlands, California…
It has since emerged the couple had 12 pipes bombs, a stock pile of tools to assemble explosives, 2,000 9mm rounds, and over 2,500 223 rounds in their suburban home.

Aaron Elswick, whose friend lives on the street, told KTLA a neighbor described her regret at not reporting Farook and Malik.
‘Sounds like she didn’t do anything about it,’ Elswick said. ‘She didn’t want to do any kind of racial profiling. She’s like, ‘I didn’t call it in … maybe it was just me thinking something that’s not there.’

(Thanks to reader Low Profile.) 

===

Poll: Liberal vote down in Hockey’s seat

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (8:48am)

Is Turnbull really the Liberal saviour?:

The Liberal Party’s primary vote has crashed in North Sydney ahead of Saturday’s byelection… The ReachTel poll taken on Tuesday night shows the Liberal Party’s primary vote has fallen to 46.3 per cent - a 14.7 per cent drop from the result achieved by former treasurer Joe Hockey in 2013...<

Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:

AB, recall when the Turnbull wreckers and his boosters claimed the (hopelessly inaccurate) prediction of a 10 per cent 2pp swing in Canning spelt the end for Abbott? 
Do the wreckers and boosters have a view on what a 10-15 per cent drop in the North Sydney primary vote would mean for Turnbull?

===

Jihad in America

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (7:42am)

Jihad in America:

Federal officials also told NBC News that Farook made a trip to Saudi Arabia, most likely for the hajj – the annual religious pilgrimage to the sacred city of Mecca that all devout Muslims are required to go on at least once in their lives. 
FBI Assistant Director David Bowditch said it is believed that during his stay overseas, Farook met [Pakistan-born] Malik, got engaged and in July 2014 brought her over to the US on a K-1 fiancee visa. He also mentioned that Farook traveled to Pakistan at some point, but he would not go into detail.
On Wednesday morning, Farook and Malik dropped off their six-month-old baby with Farook’s mother, according to KTLA, saying they were going to a doctor’s appointment.
By noon, according to police, the couple had donned assault clothing, armed themselves with rifles and stormed a holiday party attended by San Bernardino County employees, killing 14 people and wounding 21 others.

Note that the three most recent terrorist attacks in Australia were all carried out by Muslim “refugees”.
Now, back to that debate about the 12,000 extra refugees - on top of the 14,000 a year already - that we will take from Syria and Iraq. Why won’t the Turnbull Government simply guarantee all will be Christian?  

===

Hartcher’s history silent on the plotters who leaked to him

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (7:09am)

I wrote this week that the Turnbull camp’s paranoia over Tony Abbott was badly affecting the Government’s judgement.
Yet it continues, deepening wounds that Turnbull should actually heal. Take these latest leaks to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher:

Turnbull commonly told colleagues that Abbott’s capacity for self-delusion, his lack of comprehension for the feelings of those around him, showed that he was ”basically a psychopath”. 
Turnbull had been described by an earlier Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson, as suffering “narcissistic personality disorder”. Now it seemed the narcissist was calling the psychopath crazy.

How strange. What Turnbull allegedly told his colleagues is exactly the opposite of what he told one conservative journalist. Does Turnbull lack consistency as well as judgement?
Another hostile leak to Hartcher from the Turnbull camp, and once again with a foreign affairs dimension - and in a story with other elements clearly supplied by Julie Bishop:

After losing the prime ministership, Tony Abbott sought an audience with the Queen during his trip to London last month, but the request was declined. Mr Abbott, Australia’s most famous monarchist and a former executive director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, was told that the Queen’s schedule would not permit a meeting although she was in London at the time. 

This brings me to to the most startling omission in Hartcher’s long account of Abbott’s decline.
Nowhere does Hartcher detail the deliberate and malicious leaking against Abbott by some of his most senior colleagues - a leaking that was instrumental in derailing Abbott’s comeback after the first spill motion against his leadership.
This is bizarre, because Hartcher himself - an Abbott hater - was the recipient of some of the worst of those leaks and knows who fed him. Of all the poison he published, this was surely the worst - a story so false that the anonymity usually granted to sources should be waived:

IF you believe reporter Peter Hartcher, our Prime Minister decides mid-flight he doesn’t want to be met at the airport by a gay. 
If you believe Hartcher’s claims in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age on Wednesday, Tony Abbott actually checked who’d be in the greeting party when he landed in Paris on Anzac Day.
You also believe Abbott got a staffer to ring ahead and tell the gay guy on the list — the Australian ambassador’s partner — to “sit in the car” instead.
Seriously? Abbott has copped plenty of abuse from the media, portraying him as a lying, racist, woman-hating thug.
But I doubt any mainstream journalist has matched this nonsense.... Worse, Hartcher said: “I don’t know and can’t say that it was a homophobic moment,” but we could “speculate"…
Hartcher is no doubt now aware the Prime Minister hadn’t issued such instructions. Besides, Abbott had held a dinner for [Ambassador] Brady and [his partner] Stephens before they left for Paris and had taken them to dinner the night after his arrival. Does that sound like a homophobe?
Moreover, Hartcher overlooked the obvious explanation — a junior official had reminded Brady of the protocol for receiving the Prime Minister…So the real story is that Abbott broke protocol to meet the gay partner of the ambassador and then took the two men to dinner. 

Who leaked that false story to Hartcher? Why won’t Hartcher say? Why does Hartcher not discuss the role of such leaking in his history of Abbott’s downfall? Why does he not make the obvious conclusions about the pattern of so much leaking?
I used to joke that Hartcher was Kevin Rudd’s telephone.  Seems that this telephone goes with the office.
Which office precisely is for you to guess. 

===

Hilary Benn’s astonishing speech on fighting fascists for our freedom

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (6:53am)

 So powerful. Has British Labour found a (male) Thatcher in its ranks? It is still possible, then, for the Left to produce a clear voice not just for freedom but for the force required to defend it.
British Labour foreign affairs spokesman Hilary Benn in the House of Commons this week:

I hope the house will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues. As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road. 
We are faced by fascists — not just their calculated brutality but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all the people we represent.
They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy — the means by which we will make our decision tonight — in contempt.
What we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. It is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists, trade unionists and others joined the International Brigades in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It is why this entire house stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has ­always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice.
My view is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.

===

Turnbull’s honeymoon is over. The crumbling starts

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (6:41am)

The Liberals start to fracture:

Malcolm Turnbull faces a New Year ministerial reshuffle after the shock switch from the Liberal Party to the Nationals of former cabinet minister Ian Macfarlane and the threat of at least one other defection to the junior Coalition partner. 
The move by Mr Macfarlane, one of the ministers dumped when the Prime Minister seized power in September, gives the Nationals the numbers to demand a rise in ­cabinet positions from three to four and could force Mr Turnbull to drop a Liberal minister to ­reinstate him to the frontbench as a National.
With another Queensland Liberal, Scott Buchholtz, considering a switch to the Nationals, Mr Turnbull faces the biggest wave of defections between the Coalition partners since the 1980s, when state Liberals Don Lane and Brian Austin switched to the Nationals and handed Joh Bjelke-Petersen power as Queensland premier in his own right. Mr Macfarlane’s move is the latest manifestation of an emerging conservative challenge to Mr Turnbull’s authority, just three months after he became Prime Minister. 

The Ministry starts to fracture:

Special Minister of State Mal Brough has assured Malcolm Turnbull he will keep him informed of any new developments in a police inquiry that could cost him his job, setting up a trigger for the minister’s removal. 
The Prime Minister was given the assurance before a furious parliamentary debate on Mr Brough’s role in the fall of Peter Slipper, the former parliamentary speaker accused of sexually harassing his former adviser, James Ashby…
The Prime Minister stood by Mr Brough but also canvassed the clear possibility that the minister could face charges after a police investigation into how copies were obtained of Mr Slipper’s priv­ate diaries…“There is a process of investig­ation which may or may not result in charges being laid with the consequences that follow.”

Confidence in Turnbull’s judgement starts to fracture:

In recent weeks, Mr Turnbull has faced pressure to restore Immig­ration Minister Peter Dutton as a permanent member of the national security committee of cabinet, while former prime minister Tony Abbott and former defence­ minister Kevin Andrews have suggested from the backbench that combat troops should be sent to the Middle East.

Turnbull’s trust in his team starts to fracture:

Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce have been keeping a secret from their Prime Minister for two weeks. 
And when it dropped that Ian Macfarlane — one of Malcolm Turnbull’s mates — was defecting from the Liberals to the Nationals, it was a bombshell. Turnbull didn’t know until Macfarlane went to see him on Wednesday to deliver the news.

Trust in Turnbull’s loyalty has already fractured:

Truss revealed that Macfarlane was “angry and upset” at being dropped by Turnbull, but it was a while before he realised there was more to their chats. 
Turnbull is said not to have ­realised how upset his friend was when he asked him to take one for the team and give up his post.
But Macfarlane, who first ­became a minister in the Howard government and returned under Tony Abbott, was still not done, and told colleagues he wanted to contribute more to policymaking for regional Australia. They said he was angered when the government flirted with signing a fossil fuel subsidy treaty that may have jeapordised the ­future of the diesel fuel rebate.

How strange. Tony Abbott was attacked for being too loyal, yet he lost no minister to scandal and had no one defect. No one could accuse Turnbull of excessive loyalty, yet see what he has wrought in just three months. 

===

Bob Carr and the cleansing of Jews from the history of Jerusalem, “this great Arab city”

Andrew Bolt December 04 2015 (5:53am)

Labor’s campaign for Muslim votes in western Sydney is corrupting its values - and betraying our own:

Former foreign minister Bob Carr has lashed out at Israel, accusing the Jewish state of fabricating history and bribing Australian polit­icians, in an attack condemned by the Turnbull government. 
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hit back at Mr Carr’s tirade, describi­ng his remarks as deeply unhelpful and provocative.
The one-time titan of the Labor Right let loose at a dinner in Sydney late last month at an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People function in a speech that has appeared online, accusing Israel of eliminating the Arab character of Jerusalem.
Mr Carr praised Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, the leader of the party’s so-called “water­melon” faction and an arch-foe of his old NSW Labor colleagues. “The people of Palestine are seeing street by street the character, the nomenclature, of Jerusalem being changed,” Mr Carr told the gathering. “The story of Jerusalem is now being fabricated. Juda­ising and eliminating the Arab character of this great Arab city is a shocking thing to take place.” He singled out his former colleague in the NSW parliament and on the federal frontbench, Tony Burke, for his efforts to change Labor Middle-East policy at the party’s national conference in July. 

I was on holidays in Jerusalem only a couple of years ago and know that Carr exaggerates grotesquely, in a way sure to inflame that deadly Muslim victimhood. I saw the Arab quarter of Jerusalem with my own eyes, still there and still overwhelmingly Arab.
Moreover, I also saw the old Armenian quarter, part of the city for 1500 years, as well as the Jewish quarter, built over the ruins of Jewish buildings from 2000 years ago. I know that to simply characterise Jerusalem, still home to the ruins of King David’s Palace and the Second Temple of Biblical times, as a “great Arab city” is a kind of verbal ethnic cleansing. It is a denial of history. Does Carr truly not know there was a time when Jerusalem was a Jewish city and the Arabs still remained in the Arabian Peninsula?
As Psalm 137 recorded, 1000 years before the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s birth and the subsequent Arab conquest of Jerusalem:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept, when we remembered Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.

Why would Carr so misrepresent the history of Jerusalem and the Jewish administration of it?
From 2012:

As The Australian then reported: “Mr Carr is believed to have spent an hour with Ms Gillard … explaining the electoral problems in Sydney” if she did not become less pro-Israeli. 
The Sydney Morning Herald noted: “Many MPs in western Sydney, who are already fearful of losing their seats, are coming under pressure from constituents with a Middle East background.” Frontbencher Tony Burke also insisted Gillard back the Palestinian cause — and here’s why: Burke’s Sydney seat of Watson now has an astonishing 20 per cent of Muslim voters. In fact, of the 20 seats with the most Muslim voters, Labor held all but one.

How far will Labor go to placate the Muslim vote?

Labor ... notoriously reversed a decision to deport extremist preacher Sheik Taj El-Din Hilali. 
[In 2013], the Mufti of Australia [Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed] wrote to Labor members to warn union boss Paul Howe had a “bias” towards Israel, and if he was not blocked from becoming a senator, Labor would lose the Muslim votes that helped “successfully retain the majority of ALP seats in Western Sydney”.

Even more shocking:

To know just what Tony Burke will say to win Muslim votes at an Australia Palestine Advocacy Network Fundraising Dinner: 

If you are serious about justice, then we need to acknowledge and acknowledge the truth, that all Israeli settlements on Palestinian land are illegal. If we’re serious about speaking the truth then we must unequivocally be able to say that East Jerusalem is occupied…
For those who are political advocates within Palestine itself, I will never know the bravery that comes with putting your life on the line and at risk, in engaging in politics in different ways. 

I’d bet many of Burke’s audience heard that as an implicit endorsement of Palestinian terrorism.

===

CRIMINALITY ADMIRED

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (1:01pm)

Look who turns up in Fairfax’s list of candidates for woman of the year: 

Freya Newman was the brave young whistleblower who leaked information about a fashion school scholarship controversially awarded to the Prime Minister’s daughter. 

Newman invaded Frances Abbott’s privacy and then sent confidential details of the young student’s financial circumstances to a male-run publication. Following subsequent legal action, she might not even be a willing recipient of Fairfax’s award: “Ms Newman had expressed contrition and remorse for her actions, and had refused to take part in any of the protests that followed the laying of charges against her.”

Note as well the dismissive definition of Abbott as merely the “Prime Minister’s daughter”. She does have a name, you sexist monsters.

===

DRUM CONTROL

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (12:55pm)

An ominous crime report from Texas: 

Larry Steven McQuilliams, the shooter who opened fire on several downtown Austin buildings Friday morning, had moved to Austin a year-and-a-half ago looking for a fresh start that he failed to find, one of his neighbors said …

He felt at home in drum circles. 

Obviously, drum circles mean danger. Yet local Greens still recklessly encourage this perilous activity.

===

SOMETIMES YOU’RE LAME

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (11:59am)

And the award for the most pointless George Harrison lyric reference during a shambolic television interview goes to … Bill Shorten: 

Leigh, you’re right, but if you don’t know where you’re going – and what I’m spelling out is our direction for the future. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll get you there. And the problem with the current debate in Australia is that the Abbott Government is making things worse. 

There is a touch of the David Brents about this bloke.

===

WHERE IS MYXOMATOSIS WHEN YOU NEED IT?

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (4:06am)

Trust me on this. Although the clip below features music, you are strongly advised to kill the volume. Do not listen to the music. Look instead for the appearance of Bugsy, the anti-coal seam gas protest rabbit:



Remain alert also for a late cameo by Catweazle on keyboards. Personally, I prefer the delicate artistic stylings of Hector the coal lump.

===

BAD MAHMOOD

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (2:42am)

Were it not for the bludjahideen, who by some margin are Australia’s least-deserving welfare recipients, this fellowmight qualify as an all-time master moocher:

A refugee lied about having cancer, faked his father’s death and spent prolonged periods at home in Iraq while Australian taxpayers funded his Disability Support Pension payments.

Ali Mahmood, now 54, started receiving welfare payments a month after he arrived in Australia on a humanitarian visa in 2003. He remained on them for almost a decade before they were finally cut off by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. 

Around 825,000 Australian citizens and residents receive the disability pension. Add family members who also profit from their payments and you’re looking at quite a voting bloc.

===

SMILEY-WILEY

Tim Blair – Thursday, December 04, 2014 (2:27am)

The best moment of this Russell Brand privilege tantrum is the amused copper in the final frames. Finally, commie comedian Brand has made someone smile!

===

You’re not a real woman to Fairfax if you vote Liberal

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (6:59pm)

How far to the Left is Fairfax? How absurdly cartoonish is its bias?
It’s women’s pages nominates 36 women for its ”Women of the Year” awards, five of them politicians past and present.
Missing is Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, as star of the Abbott Government and our first female foreign minister.
Missing is Peta Credlin, the first female chief of staff of an Australian Prime Minister.
Instead, its nominees in politics comprise two Greens, two Labor and one Australian Democrat. Not a single Liberal anywhere.
Other nominees tell us exactly what’s going on. Tim Blair explains:

Look who turns up in Fairfax’s list of candidates for woman of the year: 

Freya Newman was the brave young whistleblower who leaked information about a fashion school scholarship controversially awarded to the Prime Minister’s daughter.

Newman invaded Frances Abbott’s privacy and then sent confidential details of the young student’s financial circumstances to a male-run publication. Following subsequent legal action, she might not even be a willing recipient of Fairfax’s award: “Ms Newman had expressed contrition and remorse for her actions, and had refused to take part in any of the protests that followed the laying of charges against her.” 

UPDATE
More from Fairfax.
The headline:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott loses first round in John Setka defamation case

The copy: 

Mr Abbott’s lawyers had applied to the Victorian Court of Appeal to order Mr Setka to immediately pay legal costs incurred over the union official’s failed bid to have part of the Prime Minister’s defence against the defamation action struck out.

===

Five chances for David Johnston is four too many

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (12:05pm)

This internal turmoil is fast becoming very dangerous for Tony Abbott.  Defence Minister David Johnston is now the worst offender.
First big sign of trouble? The extremely capable Major-General (ret) Jim Molan quit working for Johnston in September after just a couple of weeks out of sheer frustration.
Next: the Government gets blindsided by the damaging campaign against the stripping of conditions from defence personnel, as well as a pay rise that’s less than inflation.
Then: the uproar caused when Johnston said he wouldn’t even trust the government’s ASC shipbuilder to build a canoe - when it’s chasing the contract to build our next submarines.
Then yesterday this devastating leak, clearly intended to punish Johnston:

AUSSIE troops may be facing a pre-Christmas pay cut but Defence top brass are spending thousands of taxpayer dollars wining and dining industry figures vying for billions of dollars in government contracts. 
Documents obtained by News Corp show that many of the five-star meals hosted during November — at a total cost of $6384 and up to $300-a-head — included $200 wines, $20 cocktails and exotic culinary delights such as oysters verjuice.
Soldiers who travel on official business can claim up to $47 for dinner, $28 for lunch and $24 for breakfast provided there is no flight meal involved… Guests included foreign dignitaries who were hosted by the Minister David Johnston and his Chief-of-Staff Sean Costello.

And today this shambles:

DEFENCE has launched an investigation into the leaking of material to News Corp Australia that has further damaged embattled minister David Johnston. 
The investigation by the feared Defence Security Branch follows the removal of two senior staff from the troubled ministerial office.

One of the staff was former media adviser Mark Dodd and the other was the minister’s international adviser. Mr Dodd was due to leave his position on January 15. It is understood that neither man received any explanation as they were marched from Parliament House yesterday by security personnel.

I thought Molan’s resignation should have been all the warning the Government needed.
Time for a reshuffle fast, the one that signals this government truly has listened and learned. The one that puts fighters in key positions.
The Abbott Government needs to give its critics a reason to give it another look, another chance. And it needs to sharpen up its act. 

===

Is Julie Bishop “too green” to be trusted? Is Abbott’s office too suspicious?  Or is this a beat-up?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (10:49am)

I don’t know the truth of this, but the worst is that it got out (if true). And if the leak is deliberate it seems another attack on the control exercised by Tony Abbott’s office:

The first sign of serious tensions between Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have emerged, with reports the deputy Liberal leader “went bananas” at the Prime Minister after Fairfax Media reported she would be chaperoned on a key overseas mission. 
Fairfax Media reported on Sunday that Mr Abbott personally requested Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb - one of the Coalition’s early opponents of emissions trading - accompany Ms Bishop to climate change talks in Lima ... to make sure any new domestic carbon reduction commitments would be framed around Australia’s economic impacts.  Sources told Fairfax Media the move was seen as a sign Mr Abbott was worried the Foreign Minister would go “too green” at the UN conference.
On Thursday, The Australian Financial Review reported the story triggered an angry response from Ms Bishop, who is said to have “gone bananas” at Mr Abbott… The tensions between leader and deputy leader have emerged amid heightened concerns about the role and influence of Mr Abbott’s office, which ministers and backbenchers believe wields too much control.

That said, it would be of serious concern if Bishop were indeed not to be trusted at the talks. But can that really be possible? 

===

Dio Wang starting to break loose from Clive Palmer, who discredits him

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (10:36am)

I’ll say it again: Dio Wang may be the quietest but is also the most impressive and serious of the Palmer United Senators, past and present. He is let down only by the company he keeps for now, but Clive Palmer’s control is crumbling and the Government may well find Wang a friend of genuine reform:

PALMER United Party senators have split over the government’s higher education changes, with Zhenya Wang breaking ranks to call for reform by 2016. 
His comments came as Clive Palmer and PUP senator Glenn Lazarus continued to resist the government’s higher education changes, defying warnings of an inevitable decline in tertiary education without reform.
The split emerged as vice-chancellors from across the country yesterday strongly backed the deregulation reforms being pursued by Education Minister Christopher Pyne, which would uncap student fees.  As Mr Pyne insisted deregulation was inevitable, a Group of Eight vice-chancellor attacked Mr Palmer, saying his suggestion that higher education should be free was in “la-la land” and defied basic arithmetic…
Senator Wang split from Senator Lazarus, saying his consultations with the sector convinced him reform was needed.
“I do believe we need reform, given the last government took $6.6 billion out of the sector, and clearly this government has demon­strated its reluctance to increase funding to tertiary education,” he told The Australian. Senator Wang told The Australian there needed to be “historic” reform within the next three years but urged the government to slow down and sell the legislation to the public first.

Government ministers and crossbenchers all tell me Wang takes his responsibilities very seriously. And in the end, his vote is worth no less than Lambie’s.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 

===

Which of these two parties is too white and too racist? To The Age it is obvious

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (8:35am)

The Greens love diversity in theory:

Australia’s strength lies in the cultural diversity of people from all corners of the globe, the Australian Greens said today… Our country has been greatly enriched by successive generations of immigrants whose influences are reflected in every facet of society.

Not every facet, actually. Greens leader Christine Milne with Greens politicians and candidates in the Victorian election:

In contrast, Rise Up Australia leader Danny Nalliah with candidates in the Victorian election:

Age writer Ruby Hamad isn’t so sure about this diversity thing, after all:

Yes, it appears that Australia’s far right, ultra-nationalist, evangelical Christian, anti-abortion, and anti-immigration party has an extraordinary amount of gender and racial diversity. More so, as I noted someone comment dryly under the photo, than The Greens. 
How is this possible? 

Suddenly she’s abusing people from racial minorities as racists even when they embrace people of other “race”:

[A] little part of me dies every time I see someone from a racial minority willingly espouse racist ideologies.  

Suddenly she’s treating people from racial minorities as too brainless to think for themselves, and obviously the pawns of clever whites:

It’s a clever trick, getting non-white people to spout racist rhetoric...

And amazingly, she damns the multicultural Rise Up Australia - not the monoculturally white Greens - as too racist and too white, the colour of evil:

Whiteness is essentially those cultural beliefs, practices, norms and values that are sanctioned by white, western society.. Rise Up Australia is an example of how you can share in the bounty of white privilege even if you are not white, as long as you are willing to play by the rules. And one of these rules is to talk about race in a way that legitimises the dominance of white culture. 

The Left’s real problem with Rise Up Australia? It isn’t as racist as ethnics are meant to be.
(Thanks to reader Baden.)    

===

What’s today’s sign of change?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (8:26am)

Niki Savva is right. The Government only has a few months left to reform itself:

So much depends on Joe getting his mojo back. During the past few days he has shown he is getting back in form. He has to keep it up. No pressure, Joe, but everything has to go perfectly from now on, for your sake as well as Tony’s and the government. 
The government must win the economic arguments, beginning today, continuing in February with the release of the intergenerational report to set the scene for the budget, then capping it off with the budget. If it doesn’t, recovery will be impossible.

A symptom of a key problem:

(L)ast week’s chaos over whether the Medicare co-payment was dead or alive ... had been cast as a rift ­between Abbott, the Treasurer and Health Minister Peter Dutton. It wasn’t. It was much worse than that. 
First the Prime Minister asserts he did not know his office had briefed that it was dead, then did not even know it was running hot on all the TV news broadcasts, so not only did he not know what his own office was briefing, he was not briefed on the fruits of its briefings before he went out to dinner, where he was doorstopped about it. Next morning, Abbott had to tell Senate Leader Eric Abetz, who was booked in for early morning radio, then Dutton that nothing had changed, the policy stood and the briefings from his office were “unauthorised”. It was bad on every level, whether the Prime Minister’s press office freelanced (inconceivable given the level of control over them plus the fact more than one senior staff member briefed the media) or they misspoke (in which case they need counselling or a new job) or the journos got it wrong (possible but unlikely given earlier softer news stories were hardened up later by the electronic media after further PMO briefings).

(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and brett t r.) 

===

This is too serious for Labor’s denials

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (8:10am)

Time to get cracking. We need to scramble if we don’t want to get a whole lot poorer fast:

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson has issued an urgent call for corporate and personal tax cuts, warning that our tax system is stuck in the 1950s and that Australians’ standard of living will collapse without reform… 
“ ... (U)nless we tackle structural reform, including fixing our fundamental budget problem, we will not be able to guarantee rising income and living standards for Australians."…
High corporate and personal tax rates are the key priorities for reform, he said, as inflation pulls the average wage earner into Australia’s second-highest tax bracket over the next decade and corporate tax rates fall globally. 

Just to say that our tax rates are too high is to get that sinking feeling. How on earth can that argument be successfully run when the culture and the political opportunists are all against it?

Dr Parkinson acknowledged the difficulty in winning the “hearts and minds” of Australians in arguing for corporate tax cuts, but said that work done by Treasury showed “about half of all the benefit of a corporate income tax cut flow back relatively seamlessly towards employees ...

Good luck with that argument. It simply cannot be won unless Labor acknowledges the truth of it and fights to save Australia, rather than to destroy Tony Abbott.
Attack the Abbott Government all you like - and I have - but Labor is the true barrier to saving this country from the crash to come. If you doubt it, then listen again to Bill Shorten last night refusing to admit the plain truth that we are spending more than we now afford on health and welfare.
It would very much help the Abbott Government’s case to drop its paid parental leave scheme. That would not just avoid yet another humiliating Senate battle but would demonstrate that, yes indeed, the money truly is gone. It would then deny Labor the cheap comeback it’s exploited for a year, the one Shorten trotted out yet again last night:

You’ve said what would you do? ... Well here’s some options where Tony Abbott doesn’t even have to go to an election on. He could do these tomorrow. Dump his paid parental leave scheme, which is billions of dollars ...

Why does the Government keep offering Labor this free kick?
UPDATE
Just get the topic every time to Labor’s dangerous irresponsibility - both in office and now. A little scrutiny is enough to have  Shorten struggling for more than three words:

BILL SHORTEN: Yes, the concepts you’re asking are about sufficiently important. I just can’t give you a three-word slogan… you go for growth ... we’ve got to go for growth.... you go for growth… The only way this country will get ahead is by inclusive growth.... you can have inclusive growth ...  

Which party - other than the Greens - doesn’t want growth? The aim is shared. It’s wishing the means that’s the problem.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 

===

Why won’t Bill Shorten admit we’re running out of money?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (8:06am)

WE’VE all whacked Tony Abbott for the way he’s struggling to fix the Budget. Time to switch the heat on the real villain.
The Prime Minister is at least trying to stop the country from going broke. But what the hell is Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s game?
Sure, Abbott hasn’t properly explained the country could be smashed if we don’t clear some of our massive debts before China really slows and stops buying our stuff.
But how disgraceful is Shorten for pretending the Budget deficit — $48 billion last year and big blowouts predicted — is actually just a “myth, a manufactured crisis”?
True, Abbott was wrong to break promises by raising new taxes and cutting the ABC, even if the cause was just — trying to fix our finances.
But how reckless is Shorten for breaking Labor’s own promises to cut $5 billion of spending just to spite the Government, showing he’d rather help Labor win than help Australia survive?
True again, Abbott hasn’t effectively explained or negotiated his sometimes ill-considered cuts, which in truth are modest.
But how scandalous is Shorten’s peddling of a sweet lie that there’s still so much money that every spending cut by the Government is a scandal?
For God’s sake, this country must see through Labor’s lies before we’re sunk and our children are left poorer than their parents.
First, some facts, before I contrast them with Shorten’s fibs.
(Read full article here.) 

===

The Government shouldn’t offer more refugee places just to seal a deal

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (8:01am)

I don’t think this is smart:

IMMIGRATION Minister Scott Morrison will increase Australia’s refugee and humanitarian intake and grant work rights to asylum-seekers in the community as part of efforts to win over Senate ­crossbenchers. 
As parliament sits for the last time before the long summer ­recess, Mr Morrison is battling to secure the six crossbench votes he needs to reintroduce three-year temporary protection visas and strengthen boat turn-back powers…
If the bill passes, Mr Morrison will ... increase the refugee and humanitarian intake at the next budget by a total of 7500 extra places over the forward estimates at a cost of $100 million. In 2017-18, the intake of 13,750 places would increase by 2500 people, and in 2018-19 it would rise by 5000 to 18,750 places.

First, the evidence suggests refugees cost money and are far more likely to be on welfare after five years. With unemployment so high, this has obvious dangers when we seem to find it harder than ever to integrate newcomers. So is this in the national interest?
Second, should the government be using refugees as bargaining chips like this? Sure you either believe there should be more or not. To make this increase in refugee numbers conditional suggest it’s not a desirable measure on its own and it treats refugees as mere pawns.
UPDATE
An illustration of some of the issues:

A refugee lied about having cancer, faked his father’s death and spent prolonged periods at home in Iraq while Australian taxpayers funded his Disability Support Pension payments. 
Ali Mahmood, now 54, started receiving welfare payments a month after he arrived in Australia on a humanitarian visa in 2003. He remained on them for almost a decade before they were finally cut off by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.   

===

Clive Palmer sees spies, spies, spies

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (12:57am)

  
ARE we missing the obvious with Clive Palmer? Are we fooled by his private jet and good suits into thinking he can’t be nuts?
I ask because Palmer, leader of the Palmer United Party, is voicing conspiracy theories that are unhinged. Consider the following statements and imagine them made not by a rich MP in pinstripes but some slob in trackie dacks on a park bench.
Imagine this nuff-nuff in the park turns to you and murmurs: “I’m monitored, my phones are tapped every day.”
Wouldn’t you think it mad? Yet that’s exactly what Palmer said on the ABC this week.
The nuff-nuff then adds he has the dope on Greenpeace: “It’s funded by the CIA ... And so are the Greens; everything they say.”
(Read full column here.) 

===

Bill Shorten just floated away on 7.30

Andrew Bolt December 04 2014 (12:01am)

The Opposition Leader had a shocker on 7.30. Repeatedly asked whether he would at least admit that the nation was so short of cash now that spending on health and education had to be cut, Shorten just blathered and blathered until the hot air could float a Zeppelin. An example:

LEIGH SALES: But under a Shorten government, you are also going to have to make some difficult decisions around spending in portfolios like Health and Education because we’ve heard people like Martin Parkinson say the current levels of spending are just not sustainable. So, do you agree with me that you’re going to have to make some tough decisions around that stuff? 
BILL SHORTEN: What I agree is that for Australia to have a bright future, then we’ve got to go for growth. And the way you go for growth is you spend money on skills and training and higher education. You make sure that you have a system where the infrastructure is being built and it’s working.
LEIGH SALES: That’s not enough to fix the hole.
BILL SHORTEN: Well, but, let’s talk about the future because that’s - I think Australians are sick of tit-for-tat and sound bites. You want me to be straight upfront with you and I’m happy to be. This government is a petty government. They go for changes which injure people. They change what they say before the election to what they do afterwards. I’m interested in going for the high ground. The high ground equation is pretty straightforward. Skills and education, better infrastructure. It also involves, I believe, having a more equal society.
LEIGH SALES: Mr Shorten, all of that is required, of course, but also, Martin Parkinson, other credible economists are saying to us that the budget has in-built problems, that we spend so much on health and education that we currently, with the way the economy is, cannot make the money that’s going to cover that. So how are you actually going to cover that spending if you don’t intend to cut it?
BILL SHORTEN: Leigh, you’re right, but if you don’t know where you’re going - and what I’m spelling out is our direction for the future. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll get you there. And the problem with the current debate in Australia is that the Abbott Government is making things worse. Ever since the Budget, they’ve killed confidence. Under this government we’ve seen unemployment rise. We’ve got youth unemployment at a 13-year high. We’ve got - unemployment has risen generally. There’s a real problem here. The number of people participating in the economy has shrunk.
LEIGH SALES: But you’re telling us what the all the problems are, but not giving us any idea of how you would actually address them. You seem to be trying to convey that we can fix the economy without pain.
BILL SHORTEN: No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am endeavouring to say and I’ll try and say it more concisely - I appreciate that you want that. It’s about the future. You know, Tony Abbott said at the G20 he’s not worried about the far distant future of 16 years. I think that’s not the right - Tony Abbott said the wrong thing there. It’s all about the future. I’m interested in policies. And this is how you build growth. If you’ve got growth, if you’re creating national wealth, then a lot of pressure comes off the budget. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to build the infrastructure of the future, you’ve got to have the skills and training of the future ...

Unbelievable.  

===

ABC trawls for a government critic

Andrew Bolt December 03 2014 (7:44pm)

The ABC’s 7.30 makes the Abbott Government’s higher education bill - rejected by the Senate last night - seem a dog sold by a clown It interviews at length a vice-chancellor of a minor university who is damning of the reforms:

STEPHEN PARKER, UNI. OF CANBERRA VICE-CHANCELLOR: Definitely, there are things that need to be looked at. But what we had was a surprise announcement on Budget night which contradicts assurances from what is now the Government two days before the election with the threat of a loss of research funding if we don’t agree. That is not the way for an honourable government or for a statesman with the best interests of higher education at heart to effect reforms. So if the gun is removed and we can have a proper conversation, then I’d be very happy to join them at the table…
SABRA LANE: Stephen Parker’s the Vice-Chancellor of Canberra University. He’s critical of the universities’ peak lobby group, Universities Australia, for supporting the Government’s changes, saying it’s tantamount to a suicide pact. STEPHEN PARKER: I think they’ve sold their soul, they’ve sold out students and someone needs to say so clearly… I think [the Government needs] to withdraw their proposals and stop trying last-minute compromises, tacky things like $400 million for Tasmania, and then do what the Commission of Audit actually recommended, which was a 12-month debate about fee deregulation. We could possibly have pilot schemes, we could look at certain kinds of courses having fees deregulated first, we can model the impact on different kinds of students. This has been done far too fast and in a rushed way, which has just sapped confidence that the Government knows what it’s going with these reforms.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne is then interviewed by 7.30’s Leigh Sales and calls her out:

Well, surprisingly, Leigh, you’ve found the one vice chancellor who is publically opposed to these reforms out of 41. But the other 40 are in favour.

If Parker was the one warming sceptic among 41 climate scientists the ABC would spurn him. But the one Abbott Government critic among 41 vice chancellors?
If Labor votes down a reform backed by 40 out of 41 university vice chancellors, isn’t the real story the bloody-mindedness of Labor, not the unfairness of the Coalition? 

===

HOW DARE HE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, December 04, 2013 (1:26pm)

In Fairfaxland, supporting a Liberal prime minister is controversial: 

Former Australian cricketer Brett Lee copped plenty of sledging on social media for giving Prime Minister Tony Abbott his vote of support on Twitter last month …

Lee, the former Australian fast-bowler, declared he was no swing-voter when he controversially tweeted after Australia’s victory over England in the opening Ashes Test at Brisbane on November 24 …

‘’It’s no secret I’m a fan of Tony Abbott and what he’s doing for the country,’’ Lee said on Wednesday. 

===

FAITHS ENTWINED

Tim Blair – Wednesday, December 04, 2013 (12:10pm)

Religion and global warming alarmism holding hands.

===

NSW Lib minister quits over corruption inquiry

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (1:40pm)

The stain spreads in NSW politics:

Energy and Resources Minister Chris Hartcher has ... been forced to quit his portfolio as a result of an ICAC inquiry, but was confident he would clear his name… 
In September, the Independent Commission Against Corruption raided the offices of central coast Liberal MPs Chris Spence and Darren Webber, seizing computers and documents.
The raids are believed to have been linked to allegations, revealed by Fairfax Media last year, that two staff members of Mr Hartcher funnelled political donations through a front company before the 2011 state election. Last year Mr Hartcher told Parliament he was not under investigation in relation to the matter involving his two staff, but in September declined to repeat the statement.

===

Feminism wins. Prostitutes are fine, but can’t have clients

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (10:56am)

A sociology lecturer has an idea:

Imagine a scenario where prostitution is not restricted or sanctioned but buying sex is banned.

So you can sell sex but not buy it.
Why one but not both or neither? 

===

Labor denies Abbott the Labor cash for a Labor promise

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (10:30am)

Labor now backtracks on its own Gonski-related promises – the means to pay for the policy: 

LABOR has deepened the political row over education by reversing one of its own policies one day after accusing Tony Abbott of a backflip, adding to fears of a hit to the budget from the government’s $1.2 billion increase in school funding. 
The policy switch raises the prospect of a Senate blockade over a $2.3bn savings measure, including an efficiency dividend on universities, that Labor announced in April and the Coalition later adopted to pay for the school reforms… The $2.3bn saving included an efficiency dividend on universities to raise $900 million, changes to scholarships to raise $1.2bn and the removal of discounts on upfront fees to raise $230m. Bitterly opposed by universities after Labor announced them, the savings now face a veto from Labor and the Greens in the upper house and may not be passed until the balance of power changes in the Senate next July.

Labor insists the Government implement the Gonski changes but now denies it the money set aside to pay for them.
Doesn’t that perfectly capture Labor’s last six years?
UPDATE
Labor sides with Greens to block savings, and the Greens once again take the credit:

Is Labor the political arm of the Greens party?
(Thanks to readers Gaetano and Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 

===

Where’s our Laterline?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (10:11am)

Daryl McCann at Quadrant suggests ways to fix the ABC’s bias: 

There are two choices for the Coalition, the first involves taking a leaf out of the New Left’s own handbook – affirmative action. For that to happen, though, the ABC must first own up to the fifty-year-old delusion of open-mindedness. All we ask is that for every episode of Media Watch hosted by Paul Barry there’s another one straight afterwards anchored by, say, Andrew Bolt – for every 7:30 Report an 8:30 Report, for every Lateline a Laterline, for every Insiders an Outsiders, and so on. Characters like Kerry O’Brien of “Bennelong has seen a large swing to the ABC” can come out of the political closet and be themselves. 
On the other hand, if the ABC refuses to honour its commitment “to deliver content with integrity, diligence and transparency and to act in the interests of citizens”, the second option open to the Coalition government is to privatise the corporation, a not unreasonable outcome given that it would save the Australian taxpayer $1.1 billion (and climbing) every year, which includes Tony Jones’ $355,789 salary, Jon Faine’s $285,249, Fran Kelly’s $255,000, Paul Barry’s $191,259, Barry (sic) Cassidy’s $243,478 and Mark Scott’s own not inconsiderable of $773,787.

I’d prefer the first, not least because it is politically an easier sell.
But the ABC should also realise there are many conservatives who do actually listen to the ABC and want it to stay - who listen to Jon Faine even though he can infuriate with his Leftism.  Telling us to go listen to Neil Mitchell instead is an insult and derogation of duty. Mitchell is not a conservative but a populist - a windsock - and humorless and self-important besides. If I hear the word “decency” one more time…
No, the ABC has a responsibility to give the very many intelligent conservatives in this country a service as well.
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 

===

Maybe Tony Abbott hasn’t angered Indonesia as Fairfax claims

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (9:33am)

Relations between the Indonesian Government and the Abbott Government may be not as shattered as Fairfax likes to claim:

Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb meets Indonesian Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan at a meeting of the Cairns Group Ministerial Meeting, Bali Indonesia, 2 December 2013.

===

Let’s not think twice about laws against free speech, and hope Bob Dylan puts them right

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (9:08am)

The use of the law to stifle debate has become utterly ridiculous as well as sinister. I’m hoping the latest victim is finally admired enough to turn French officialdom into the real pariah:

French authorities have filed preliminary charges against Bob Dylan over a 2012 interview in which he is quoted comparing Croatians to Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. 
The charges of “public insult and inciting hate” were filed against the musician in mid-November…
They stem from a lawsuit by a Croatian community group in France over remarks in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in September 2012.
Speaking about race relations in the United States, Dylan was quoted as saying: “If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

Much in this case will depend on the bias of the judge, as is usually the case with such laws. Is he a Dylan fan or not?
But France really is a joke, and its ethnic and religious strife - including many riots - suggests its laws against free speech do no good to balance the harm. Among some notorious cases:

French film star Brigitte Bardot was today convicted of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France… 
In the December 2006 letter to Mr Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is “tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”
The actress, who is most famous for her sex kitten role in And God Created Woman, was referring to the Muslim feast of Eid el-Kebir, celebrated by slaughtering sheep.

And: 

Bernard Lewis, the British-born historian of Islamic religion and culture .... explicitly argued that, although the Turks massacred countless Armenians, there is no evidence that they operated according to a centralized policy of genocide, and that calling the killings that had the effect of diminishing the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust. 
Lewis’ revisionism on the Armenian question led to his being charged and tried in France for denial a genocide, a crime there, and in the mid-1990s, he was ordered by a French court to pay one franc in damages after losing a case. Three other lawsuits against him in another French court, however, failed.  

And here the mere existence of ludicrous laws against causing “offence” allow a punishment by process that is so expensive for a defendant that even to win is to lose:

FORMER University of Canberra vice-chancellor and former chairman of the National Capital Authority Don Aitkin is being sued for $6 million for alleged racial discrimination. 
Ngambri Aboriginal elder Shane Mortimer alleges the adjunct professor’s blog contravenes Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and has lodged an application for damages in the Federal Magistrates Court.
But Professor Aitkin said the application was preposterous…
‘’I am a supporter of the Aboriginal people in their struggle for respect … I’ve been a proponent for restoration for Aboriginal people since I can remember. I was a member of the ACT conciliation council while it existed for 10 years.’’Mr Mortimer said he was offended by an article from August 27 that says: ‘’He looks about as Aboriginal as I do, and his constant references to his ‘ancestors’ makes me scratch my head.’’

(Thanks to reader Mike.) 

===

Why is Australia their home? Is our door now shut?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (8:35am)

If they are so keen to send people to Syria, why are they here?

THE husband of controversial Muslim woman Carnita Matthews is one of two people arrested today for sending Australians to fight on the front lines of Syria’s civil war. 
Hamdi Alqudsi, 39, ... is the husband of Ms Matthews’ who is best known for her run in with police, when she refused to remove her burqa during a random breath test, two years ago.

Gosh, we’re a soft touch: 

Hamdi Alqudsi claims to live a quiet, modest life. 
Surviving on a disability pension and supposedly with less than $500 to his name, he lives in a small western Sydney home with one of his two wives, Carnita Matthews… 

Who let them in? Is our door now shut?

A CRACKDOWN on Australians travelling to Syria to fight with jihadists is set to widen, with police preparing to charge a third suspected extremist currently in jail on attempted murder charges… 
Hamdi Alqudsi, 39, and Amin Iman Mohamed, 23, both from Sydney, appeared in court…
AFP Deputy Commissioner Peter Drennan said police would allege Mr Alqudsi was “responsible for organising travel to Syria for Australian citizens to fight on the frontline, including with Jabhat al-Nusra and then with other al-Qa’ida-affiliated groups"…
Some of Mr Alqudsi’s supporters in court refused a request from the NSW Sheriff’s officer to remove their hats inside the courtroom.
”That’s part of the law? It’s not our law,” said one of the men, who declined to give his name.
Mr Mohamed’s lawyer, Peter Allport, ...  said his client was part of the “Somali diaspora” who had fled the civil war and chaos in the East African country…

About 80 Australians, mostly dual nationals, are believed to be assisting the Syrian rebels in combat roles…
All those who Mr Alqudsi allegedly helped to travel to Syria were Australians and are understood to have come from a “variety” of backgrounds, marking them out from other Australians who have fought in Syria, most of whom have been Lebanese-Australian dual nationals. According to court documents, their names are: Tyler Casy aka Abu Qaqa, Caner Temel aka Abu Moussa, Mehmet Biber aka Abu Abdul Malik, Muhammed Abdul Karim Musleh aka Abu Hassan, Mahmoud Abed Aboshi aka Abu Alem, Nassim Elbasha and Mr Mohamed, aka Abu Bilal. 

Note: the charges have not been proven. Those charged must be presumed innocent. 

===

ABC called Climategate whistleblower a “hacker”. So why isn’t Snowden a “thief”?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (8:08am)

Edward Snowden steals and releases US National Security Agency spying secrets which expose no crime but do damage the national security of the US and its allies.
Here’s how the ABC routinely describes Snowden: 

The Guardian Australia has published secret documents from 2008, leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden...

An unknown person, believed to be a scientist, leaks emails from the most influential global warming scientists revealing collusion, bullying, manipulation of data and stifling of dissent.
Here’s how the ABC (and Fairfax) routinely describes the leaker.

The scandal began when hackers broke into the computer server at the University of East Anglia and stole thousands of personal emails from climate scientists late last year.

ABC science presenter and alarmist Robyn ”100 metres” Williams goes further:

This theft is mischief on the level of Mossad or Stasiland by  pros in the business of political subversion… 
There are two theories being offered about the origin of the expose. The first, and most convincing, given the forensic trail, is that a gang of professional hackers in Russia (Tomsk?) was hired by someone. The second is that the emails had been assembled by a person within the CRU in response to a Freedom of Information demand that had subsequently been blocked. This person then allowed the emails to escape ‘in the public interest’.

Memo to ABC: your bias is showing. If the Climategate whistleblower is a “hacker” then Snowden is a “thief”.
(Thanks to reader Barry.) 

===

Pyne was only following orders

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (7:41am)

The Coalition should never have made its Gonski promise to start with. But the answer should never have been to break it.
Paul Kelly says the fault isn’t really Christopher Pyne’s (although he did bungle the sell):

....this was a case of cabinet’s Expenditure Review Committee pushing for more savings but falling foul of the Coalition’s election pledges. 
Christopher Pyne was personally given a letter by Tony Abbott that embodied the ERC’s deliberations. He was given a tough job but he mishandled it, causing deep agitation within the PM’s office. The ERC decided to commit to promised Gonski school funding for one year for the non-signatory states. Pyne’s brief was to run a public operation and private negotiation to try to get savings from the total pool of Gonski money given that NSW and Victoria had been generously treated…
It was never going to be realised because it ran into the brick wall of the election campaign pledges made by Abbott.
When the Prime Minister briefed Pyne, his Education Minister was scarcely happy. It was agreed he would begin by making a political issue of Labor’s removal of $1.2 billion from the pre-election estimates as the prelude to getting a better overall deal for the national government…
In the end [the Government] was battered into political submission. Last Sunday night at a meeting involving Abbott, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Pyne and Peta Credlin the decision was taken to cut their losses.

===

The ABC betrayed conservative Australians and now pays

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (6:58am)

Pressure on the ABC is mounting as Tony Abbott ups his rhetoric:

As pressure builds within the government for reform of the national broadcaster and its funding, Mr Abbott attacked the ABC for amplifying allegations Australia tapped the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and senior officials. 
“I think the ABC were guilty of poor judgment in broadcasting that material, which was obviously difficult for Australia’s national security and long-term best interests,” Mr Abbott said yesterday. “Why should the ABC be acting as an advertising agent for a left-wing British newspaper?” Mr Abbott pledged to “speak plainly and candidly with Australians in the hope that ABC management will see sense”. 

It could have proved cheaper for the ABC to honor its charter and provide balance - hire conservative presenters rather than only those from the Left. Now even Malcolm Turnbull sounds like a man with an axe:

Earlier, Mr Turnbull told the Coalition partyroom ABC operations could be modernised, saying “old-fashioned” and “last-century work practices” were a problem for the ABC… 
Coalition sources say ... support is strengthening for its charter to be withdrawn and funding stripped back under the commission of audit so it could only operate a basic radio and television.  

Here are the issues with the ABC:

- It is a state-owned media outlet.
- It has spread vastly in reach, operating five national radio networks, four TV networks, an overseas TV service, bookshops and now a publishing arm, competing with newspapers on line. Its reach would not be tolerated in a private media business.
- It is now killing off private competitors. It offers free the same kind of on-line news and views to the same audience Fairfax must sell to to survive. Last month Politifact, a private on-line political fact-checking business, announced it had been forced to wind down operations and could close, in part because the ABC had this year created its own on-line political fact-checking unit.
- It is biased, in breach of its charter. The ABC is meant to be balanced, or at least present a range of voices. Yet every one of its main current affairs shows is headed by someone of the Left. Every one of the eight Media Watch presenters has been of the Left. Its main science presenters are of the global warming Left. Its most recent Radio National hirings - Jonathan Green and Waleed Aly - are of the Left. A recent survey, albeit limited, confirmed ABC staff strongly lean to the green left. A recent ABC TV program attacked an ABC critic by showing a doctored photo of him having sex with a dog under a sign “dog f...ker”. Yet all taxpayers are forced to pay for it.
- Now the ABC has, in coordination with the far-Left Guardian, published stolen spying secrets which had badly damaged the national interest without revealing any abuses of authority. Yet ABC presenters routinely refer to the source of the stolen information, Edward Snowden, as a “whistleblower” rather than traitor, saboteur or thief.
- The ABC is getting cruder. Calling conservative Chris Kenny a “dog f..er” is just one sign of it.
- The ABC is expensive, costing $1.2 billion a year.

But to repeat. It would have been cheaper for the ABC to inject a bit of the balance it’s obliged to provide.  Now, having so clearly declared war on conservatives, using bullets paid for by conservative taxpayers, it’s invited open resistance.
UPDATE
Well, to a point. Here’s Abbott, typically believing sweet reasonableness - and not a big stick - will make the Left do the right thing:

MY intention is to speak plainly and candidly with the Australian people in the hope that ABC management will see sense... 
AS for the ABC’s other activities, well, look, I can understand why a lot of people in the media think that it’s not a level playing field when it comes to competition, given that the ABC is funded to the tune of a billion dollars or so a year by the taxpayer, but it’s been thus for many a long year and this government has no plans to change that.

Anyone believe that merely talking nicely to the ABC will bring reform?

UPDATE
Cory Bernardi has been most articulate and most persuasive:

Senior conservative senator Cory Bernardi touched off the spirited debate on Tuesday, slamming the ABC as ‘’a taxpayer-funded behemoth’’ for expanding into print via its online news operations which he said put it in direct competition with privately funded commercial media companies, operating in an already difficult market… 
He said there was a compelling case to consider breaking the ABC into two entities with the traditional television and radio operations protected to ensure services in the bush and regional Australia, while the online news service could be disposed of…

According to multiple sources in the meeting, the trio of Ms Bishop, and senators Bernardi and Ian Macdonald, received ‘’warm’’ support for their assessments that the broadcaster had failed to maintain political balance, and was using its annual $1.1 billion tax-payer funding to crowd out commercial news organisations in breach of its charter.

Bernardi was very, very good on Radio National Breakfast this morning.

UPDATE
Miranda Devine:

More than any other news organisation, the ABC gave Labor a free pass over the past six years of calamitous government. 
Remarkably, it has run dead on serious crime allegations against senior Labor figures which are currently being investigated by police, while ferociously hunting down every verbal misstep or stumble by the new government.

===

So where are all those athletes we were told were taking performance-enhancing drugs?

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (6:24am)

So the prime scapegoat so far in the “blackest day in Australian sport” didn’t actually oversee any program of illicit drug taking, after all. Here the AFL’s emailed offer to Essendon chairman Paul Little to drop everything if coach James Hird just stepped aside for 12 months:

===

We added billions and students went backwards. So mere cash is not what schools need

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (6:17am)

First the Rudd Government launched the “Digital Education Revolution” in our schools - $2.4 billion to give senior secondary students their own lap tops. But computers don’t actually teach.
Then the Rudd Government launched the “Building the Education Revolution” in our schools - $16 billion for school halls, canteens and libraries. But buildings don’t actually teach.
So after this massive spending on everything in schools except better ways of teaching, what did we get?

AUSTRALIAN teenagers have slipped further behind their peers overseas in international tests assessing skills in reading, maths and science, now ranking behind students in Vietnam, Poland and Estonia. 
The latest results of the tests of 15-year-olds conducted by the OECD group of industrialised nations, released last night, show that Australia is one of 13 countries to have recorded a significant fall in student performance in maths since 2003, while nine countries recorded a significant improvement. Asian jurisdictions now dominate the ranks of high-scoring students. While Australia’s results in reading and science remained relatively stable, maths scores recorded a big fall, and Australia has slipped outside the top 10 nations in all three subjects for the first time since the tests, called the Program for International Student Assessment, started in 2000. 

Asian countries soar. So it’s not so much the money but how you spend it and how you teach - and how families value what you teach. Yet tell that to our educationalists:

Sue Thomson, the director of educational monitoring and research at the Australian Council for Educational Research who oversees PISA in Australia, ... said the report made the case for the Gonski review’s more equitable distribution of resources among schools...

Yes, just add more cash. In fact, even the Gonski report, demanding another $5 billion a year for education, had to admit that the biggest falls in student performance didn’t come from children denied “equitable” funding but from those with plenty:

However, over the last decade the performance of Australian students has declined at all levels of achievement, notably at the top end. This decline has contributed to the fall in Australia’s international position. 

The biggest fall in our standards is among students at the top - students we must presume tend to come from non-disadvantaged backgrounds and good schools. And they are being overtaken mainly by students from disadvantaged countries, with largely poorer schools.
So is the money or the method of teaching to blame? To help you decide:

What follows are excerpts, presented verbatim, from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority website (ACARA) outlining how mathematics is to be taught and absorbed… 

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics values Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It provides opportunities for students to appreciate that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies have sophisticated applications of mathematical concepts.
Students will explore connections between representations of number and pattern and how they relate to aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. They will investigate time, place, relationships and measurement concepts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts. 

No, I am not saying this idea explains our falling standard - comparatively - in maths. But it illustrates a tendency in education to stress proper attitudes rather than academic excellence. 

===

Just what a Labor Government would do to bail out a union-strangled business, too

Andrew Bolt December 04 2013 (6:02am)

I can’t believe this. Now this Liberal Government is considering giving taxpayers’ money to to a foreign company to bail out a struggling local operation mad enough to give its unions a 35-hour week. And it employs a former union boss to negotiate the deal:

INDUSTRY Minister Ian Macfarlane has recruited his Labor predecessor Greg Combet to negotiate a rewrite of work practices at troubled food producer SPC Ardmona, including the future of the 35-hour week, as the government examines an assistance package. 
Mr Macfarlane will today announce that Mr Combet, who was Julia Gillard’s industry minister, as well as Telstra chairwoman Catherine Livingstone and former Manufacturing Australia chief and Reserve board member Dick Warburton, will form a high-level panel to advise on a major restructure of the SPC fruit and vegetable canning operations. Mr Macfarlane has been in talks with its owner, Coca-Cola Amatil. The Australian understands CCA has promised a significant investment in plant and equipment, and a range of new product lines as part of a restructuring package that would involve an investment from the Victorian and federal governments.

This government is completely lost in the thickets of industry assistance. Someone give it a compass.
A truly free market government would cut the costs of business, free the labor markets and give business more power to determine a proper market rate for labor.  It would not subsidise the restrictive work practices and high costs of a union-dominated business. Do that and you just invite more beggars to your door.
And indeed:

Mr Macfarlane said the process at SPC could provide a lead for Simplot, which makes Edgell and Bird’s Eye products as well as the Chiko Roll and is also seeking government assistance. 

Hey, there’s another Labor Government in Canberra. 

===
David Bowles
I'm often amused at the close-minded, knee-jerk assumptions of some people who agitate for open-mindedness and tolerance. Granted, I probably shouldn't go around poking at hornets' nests, but the temptation to peer past personas is very tempting. I will now go back to keeping my mouth shut and an eyebrow raised in disapprobrium.
===
We are all alone, even when we are together ..
===

Family returns home to find man has taken over

http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/family-returns-home-to-find-man-has-taken-over/story-e6frfmd9-1226775010957

A FAMILY in the US has returned home to find a man has thrown away their possessions and changed the locks.

What is the problem? It is USA .. shoot him. - ed
===

Secret city designs that are tricks

http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/secret-city-designs-that-are-tricks/story-e6frfqai-1226774782976

HIDDEN in streets around the world are secret design tricks that are intended to manipulate your behaviour without you even noticing.

Meh, won't help poor people .. and won't make it more comfortable for poor people, but will make crime easier .. ed
===

So much for summer: snow predicted

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/so-much-for-summer-snow-predicted-20131204-2yq97.html

Snow will fall on Victoria's Alps on Thursday as a cold blast of wintry air hits the state.

===
Court hears of former MP Craig Thomson's date in red turbo spa room

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/politics-news/court-hears-of-former-mp-craig-thomsons-date-in-red-turbo-spa-room/story-fn59nqld-1226774931499

THE case against former federal MP Craig Thomson has formally opened with explosive new details of sexual services allegedly paid for with union money.

===

Teachers more important than cash: Pyne

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/teachers-more-important-than-cash-pyne/story-e6frfku9-1226775129387

FEDERAL Education Minister Christopher Pyne says teacher quality is more important than funding for schools, but he won't "infantilise" the states by demanding improvements.

===

Ex Qld gov't head cleared of crime

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/ex-qld-govt-head-cleared-of-crime/story-e6frfku9-1226775148733

CRIMINAL charges will not be laid against Queensland's former transport head Michael Caltabiano.

===

Transparency International ranks the most corrupt countries in the world

http://www.news.com.au/business/transparency-international-ranks-the-most-corrupt-countries-in-the-world/story-e6frfm1i-1226774772468

AUSTRALIA is clean but New Zealand is almost squeaky-clean, graft watchdog Transparency International says in a just-released survey.

without ALP, we'd be as corrupt as NZ? - ed
===

Katana Kitsao Gona jailed for bestiality faces female goat in court

http://www.news.com.au/world/katana-kitsao-gona-jailed-for-bestiality-faces-female-goat-in-court/story-fndir2ev-1226775150585

A man jailed for bestiality has come face to face in court with the goat he 'defiled'.

Meh - ed
===

Five ways you're sabotaging your workout

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/five-ways-youre-sabotaging-your-workout/story-fneuzle5-1226775008745

SO YOU'VE been sweating up a storm for a good couple of months now, but you're not seeing any results?

===

Sydney cafe owner lashes out in note war with dissatisfied customer

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/sydney-cafe-owner-lashes-out-in-note-war-with-dissatisfied-customer/story-fn93ypt9-1226774851353

HAVE you ever checked a restaurant's reviews online before you visited?

Where is the cafe? Let's go! - ed
===

• 771 – Austrasian king Carloman I dies, leaving his brother Charlemagne king of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.
• 1110 – The Kingdom of Jerusalem captures Sidon.
• 1259 – Kings Louis IX of France and Henry III of England agree to the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry renounces his claims to French-controlled territory on continental Europe (including Normandy) in exchange for Louis withdrawing his support for English rebels.
• 1563 – The final session of the Council of Trent is held. (It had opened on December 13, 1545.)
• 1619 – Thirty-eight colonists arrive at Berkeley Hundred, Virginia. The group's charter proclaims that the day "be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."
• 1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek. (The mission would later grow into the city of Chicago.)
• 1676 – Battle of Lund: A Danish army under the command of King Christian V engages the Swedish army commanded by Field Marshal Simon Grundel-Helmfelt.
• 1745 – Charles Edward Stuart's army reaches Derby, its furthest point during the Second Jacobite Rising.
• 1783 – At Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington bids farewell to his officers.
• 1786 – Mission Santa Barbara is dedicated (on the feast day of Saint Barbara).
• 1791 – The first edition of The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, is published.
• 1829 – In the face of fierce local opposition, British Governor-General Lord William Bentinck issues a regulation declaring that anyone who abets suttee in Bengal is guilty of culpable homicide.
• 1864 – American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under Union General Judson Kilpatrick prevent troops led by Confederate General Joseph Wheeler from interfering with Union General William T. Sherman's campaign destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta.
• 1867 – Former Minnesota farmer Oliver Hudson Kelley founds the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (better known today as the Grange).
• 1872 – The crewless American ship Mary Celeste is found by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for nine days but was only slightly damaged.
• 1875 – Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed escapes from prison; he is later recaptured in Spain.
• 1881 – The first edition of the Los Angeles Times is published.
• 1893 – First Matabele War: A patrol of 34 British South Africa Company soldiers is ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors on the Shangani River in Matabeleland.
• 1906 – Alpha Phi Alpha the first black intercollegiate Greek lettered fraternity was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
• 1909 – In Canadian football, the First Grey Cup game is played. The University of Toronto Varsity Blues defeat the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club, 26–6.
• 1909 – The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club, the oldest surviving professional hockey franchise in the world, is founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association.
• 1918 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office.
• 1939 – World War II: HMS Nelson is struck by a mine (laid by U-31) off the Scottish coast and is laid up for repairs until August 1940.
• 1942 – World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign ends.
• 1943 – World War II: In Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile.
• 1943 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.
• 1945 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate approves United States participation in the United Nations. (The UN had been established on October 24, 1945.)
• 1954 – The first Burger King is opened in Miami.
• 1956 – The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio for the first and last time.
• 1963 – Pope Paul VI promulgates the first two documents approved by the Second Vatican Council: the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the Decree on the Media of Social Communications.
• 1967 – Vietnam War: U.S. and South Vietnamese forces engage Viet Cong troops in the Mekong Delta.
• 1969 – Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.
• 1971 – The Indian Navy attacks the Pakistan Navy and Karachi.
• 1977 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire.
• 1977 – Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 is hijacked and crashes in Tanjong Kupang, Johor, killing 100.
• 1978 – Following the murder of Mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein becomes San Francisco's first female mayor.
• 1979 – The Hastie fire in Hull kills three schoolboys and eventually leads police to arrest Bruce George Peter Lee.
• 1981 – South Africa grants independence to the Ciskei "homeland" (not recognized by any government outside South Africa).
• 1982 – The People's Republic of China adopts its current constitution.
• 1984 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Army soldiers kill 107–150 civilians in Mannar.
• 1991 – Terry A. Anderson is released after seven years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut; he is the last and longest-held American hostage in Lebanon.
• 1992 – Somali Civil War: President George H. W. Bush orders 28,000 U.S. troops to Somalia in Northeast Africa.
• 1998 – The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched.
• 2005 – Tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong protest for democracy and call on the government to allow universal and equal suffrage.
• 2006 – Six black youths assault a white teenager in Jena, Louisiana.
• 2014 – Islamic insurgents kill three state police at a traffic circle before taking an empty school and a "press house" in Grozny. Ten state forces die with 28 injured in gun battles ending with ten insurgents killed.
• 2015 – A firebomb is thrown into a restaurant in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, killing 17 people.

Births[edit]

• 34 – Persius, Roman poet (d. 62)
• 1555 – Heinrich Meibom, German poet and historian (d. 1625)
• 1585 – John Cotton, English-American minister and theologian (d. 1652)
• 1595 – Jean Chapelain, French poet and critic (d. 1674)
• 1646 – Alain Emmanuel de Coëtlogon, French field marshal (d. 1730)
• 1647 – Daniel Eberlin, German soldier and composer (d. 1715)
• 1660 – André Campra, French composer and conductor (d. 1744)
• 1667 – Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, French composer and educator (d. 1737)
• 1670 – John Aislabie, English politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (d. 1742)
• 1713 – Gasparo Gozzi, Italian playwright and critic (d. 1786)
• 1777 – Juliette Récamier, French businesswoman (d. 1849)
• 1795 – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish-English historian, philosopher, and academic (d. 1881)
• 1798 – Jules Armand Dufaure, French lawyer and politician, 33rd Prime Minister of France (d. 1881)
• 1817 – Nikoloz Baratashvili, Georgian poet and author (d. 1845)
• 1835 – Samuel Butler, English author and critic (d. 1902)
• 1844 – Franz Xavier Wernz, German religious leader, 25th Superior General of the Society of Jesus (d. 1914)
• 1861 – Hannes Hafstein, Icelandic poet and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Iceland (d. 1922)
• 1861 – Lillian Russell, American actress and singer (d. 1922)
• 1865 – Edith Cavell, English nurse (d. 1915)
• 1868 – Jesse Burkett, American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 1953)
• 1875 – Joe Corbett, American baseball player and coach (d. 1945)
• 1875 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian-Swiss poet and author (d. 1926)
• 1881 – Erwin von Witzleben, Polish-German field marshal (d. 1944)
• 1883 – Katharine Susannah Prichard, Australian author and playwright (d. 1969)
• 1892 – Francisco Franco, Spanish general and politician, Prime Minister of Spain (d. 1975)
• 1892 – Liu Bocheng, Chinese commander and politician (d. 1986)
• 1893 – Herbert Read, English poet and critic (d. 1968)
• 1895 – Feng Youlan, Chinese philosopher and academic (d. 1990)
• 1897 – Robert Redfield, American anthropologist of Mexico (d. 1958)
• 1899 – Karl-Günther Heimsoth, German physician and politician (d. 1934)
• 1899 – Charlie Spencer, English footballer and manager (d. 1953)
• 1903 – Cornell Woolrich, American author (d. 1968)
• 1904 – Albert Norden, German journalist and politician (d. 1982)
• 1908 – Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1997)
• 1909 – Jimmy Jewel, English actor and singer (d. 1995)
• 1910 – Alex North, American composer and conductor (d. 1991)
• 1910 – R. Venkataraman, Indian lawyer and politician, 6th President of India (d. 2009)
• 1912 – Pappy Boyington, American colonel and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1988)
• 1913 – Mark Robson, Canadian-American director and producer (d. 1978)
• 1914 – Rudolf Hausner, Austrian painter and sculptor (d. 1995)
• 1914 – Claude Renoir, French cinematographer (d. 1993)
• 1915 – Eddie Heywood, American pianist and composer (d. 1989)
• 1916 – Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr., American journalist and author (d. 1994)
• 1919 – I. K. Gujral, Indian poet and politician, 12th Prime Minister of India (d. 2012)
• 1920 – Nadir Afonso, Portuguese painter and architect (d. 2013)
• 1920 – Michael Bates, Indian-English actor (d. 1978)
• 1920 – Jeanne Manford, American educator and activist, co-founded PFLAG (d. 2013)
• 1921 – Deanna Durbin, Canadian-born French actress and singer (d. 2013)
• 1923 – Charles Keating, American lawyer and financier (d. 2014)
• 1923 – Eagle Keys, American-Canadian football player and coach (d. 2012)
• 1923 – John Krish, English director and screenwriter
• 1924 – John C. Portman, Jr., American architect, designed the Renaissance Center and Tomorrow Square
• 1925 – Albert Bandura, Canadian-American psychologist and academic
• 1926 – Monty M. Wyche, American soldier, lawyer, and judge (d. 2014)
• 1929 – Şakir Eczacıbaşı, Turkish pharmacist, photographer, and businessman (d. 2010)
• 1930 – Ronnie Corbett, Scottish actor and screenwriter (d. 2016)
• 1930 – Jim Hall, American guitarist and composer (d. 2013)
• 1931 – Alex Delvecchio, Canadian ice hockey player, coach, and manager
• 1931 – Wally George, American radio and television host (d. 2003)
• 1932 – Roh Tae-woo, South Korean general and politician, 6th President of South Korea
• 1933 – Wink Martindale, American game show host and producer
• 1933 – Horst Buchholz, German actor (d. 2003)
• 1934 – Victor French, American actor and director (d. 1989)
• 1935 – Paul O'Neill, American businessman and politician, 72nd United States Secretary of the Treasury
• 1936 – John Giorno, American poet and performance artist
• 1937 – Max Baer, Jr., American actor, director, and producer
• 1937 – Bill Collins, Australian film critic and author
• 1938 – Andre Marrou, American lawyer and politician
• 1938 – Yvonne Minton, Australian-English soprano and actress
• 1939 – Stephen W. Bosworth, American academic and diplomat, United States Ambassador to South Korea (d. 2016)
• 1939 – Joan Brady, American-British author
• 1939 – Freddy Cannon, American singer and guitarist
• 1940 – Gerd Achterberg, German footballer and manager
• 1941 – Marty Riessen, American tennis player and coach
• 1942 – Bob Mosley, American singer-songwriter and bass player
• 1944 – Chris Hillman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1944 – Anna McGarrigle, Canadian musician and singer-songwriter
• 1944 – François Migault, French race car driver (d. 2012)
• 1944 – Dennis Wilson, American singer-songwriter, producer, and drummer (d. 1983)
• 1945 – Roberta Bondar, Canadian neurologist, academic, and astronaut
• 1946 – Geert Mak, Dutch journalist and author
• 1947 – Jane Lubchenco, American ecologist, academic, and diplomat
• 1947 – Terry Woods, Irish guitarist
• 1948 – Southside Johnny, American singer-songwriter
• 1949 – A. Scott Berg, American journalist and author
• 1949 – Jeff Bridges, American actor
• 1949 – Jock Stirrup, Baron Stirrup, English air marshal and politician
• 1950 – Bjørn Kjellemyr, Norwegian bassist and composer
• 1951 – Gary Rossington, American guitarist
• 1951 – Patricia Wettig, American actress and playwright
• 1953 – Rick Middleton, Canadian ice hockey player and sportscaster
• 1955 – Philip Hammond, English businessman and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer
• 1955 – Dave Taylor, Canadian-American ice hockey player and manager
• 1955 – Cassandra Wilson, American singer-songwriter and producer
• 1956 – Nia Griffith, Welsh educator and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Wales
• 1956 – Bernard King, American basketball player and sportscaster
• 1957 – Raul Boesel, Brazilian race car driver and radio host
• 1957 – Eric S. Raymond, American computer programmer and author
• 1958 – Tim Hutchings, English runner
• 1959 – Susan W. Krebs, American accountant and politician
• 1959 – Paul McGrath, English-born Irish footballer
• 1959 – Christa Luding-Rothenburger, German speed skater and cyclist
• 1960 – David Green, Nicaraguan-American baseball player
• 1960 – Glynis Nunn, Australian heptathlete and hurler
• 1961 – Frank Reich, American football player and coach
• 1962 – Gary Freeman, New Zealand rugby league player, coach, and sportscaster
• 1962 – Nixon Kiprotich, Kenyan runner
• 1962 – Kevin Richardson, English footballer and manager
• 1963 – Sergey Bubka, Ukrainian pole vaulter
• 1963 – Nigel Heslop, English rugby player
• 1964 – Scott Hastings, Scottish rugby player and sportscaster
• 1964 – Marisa Tomei, American actress
• 1965 – Álex de la Iglesia, Spanish director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1965 – Shaun Hollamby, English race car driver and businessman
• 1966 – Fred Armisen, American actor and musician
• 1966 – Andy Hess, American bass player
• 1966 – Suzanne Malveaux, American journalist
• 1966 – Suzette M. Malveaux, American lawyer and academic
• 1966 – Chris Shepherd, English animator, director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1968 – Dionne Farris, American singer-songwriter, producer and actress
• 1969 – Jay Z, American rapper, producer, and actor, co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records
• 1969 – Plum Sykes, English journalist and author
• 1971 – Shannon Briggs, American boxer and actor
• 1972 – Jassen Cullimore, Canadian ice hockey player
• 1972 – Yūko Miyamura, Japanese voice actress and singer
• 1973 – Tyra Banks, American model, actress, and producer
• 1973 – Frank Boeijen, Dutch keyboard player
• 1973 – Michael Jackson, English footballer and manager
• 1973 – Mina Caputo, American singer-songwriter and keyboard player
• 1973 – Steven Menzies, Australian rugby league player
• 1973 – Kate Rusby, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
• 1973 – Racci Shay, American drummer
• 1974 – Tadahito Iguchi, Japanese baseball player
• 1976 – Kristina Groves, Canadian speed skater
• 1977 – Ajit Agarkar, Indian cricketer
• 1977 – Darvis Patton, American sprinter
• 1977 – Big Pokey, American rapper
• 1977 – Morten Veland, Norwegian guitarist and songwriter
• 1978 – Jaclyn Victor, Malaysian singer and actress
• 1979 – Ysabella Brave, American singer-songwriter
• 1979 – Jay DeMerit, American soccer player
• 1980 – Rick Victor, Canadian wrestler and manager
• 1981 – Brian Vandborg, Danish cyclist
• 1981 – Kristīne Šefere, Latvian badminton player
• 1982 – Nathan Douglas, English triple jumper
• 1982 – Waldo Ponce, Chilean footballer
• 1982 – Ho-Pin Tung, Dutch-Chinese race car driver
• 1982 – Nick Vujicic, Australian evangelist
• 1983 – Jimmy Bartel, Australian footballer
• 1984 – Marco Giambruno, Italian footballer
• 1984 – Anna Petrakova, Russian basketball player
• 1984 – Joe Thomas, American football player
• 1985 – Andrew Brackman, American baseball player
• 1985 – Stephen Dawson, Irish footballer
• 1985 – Carlos Gómez, Dominican baseball player
• 1986 – Kaija Udras, Estonian skier
• 1986 – Martell Webster, American basketball player
• 1987 – Orlando Brown, American actor and rapper
• 1987 – Yukina Kinoshita, Japanese model, actress, singer, and television personality
• 1987 – Kethy Õunpuu, Estonian footballer
• 1988 – Andriy Pylyavskyi, Ukrainian footballer
• 1990 – Lukman Haruna, Nigerian footballer
• 1990 – Blake Leary, Australian rugby league player
• 1990 – Igor Sjunin, Estonian triple jumper
• 1992 – Peta Hiku, New Zealand rugby league player
• 1992 – Jean-Claude Iranzi, Rwandan footballer

Deaths[edit]

• 749 – John of Damascus, Syrian priest and saint (b. 676)
• 771 – Carloman I, Frankish king (b. 751)
• 1075 – Anno II, German archbishop and saint (b. 1010)
• 1131 – Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher (b. 1048)
• 1214 – William the Lion, Scottish king (b. 1143)
• 1270 – Theobald II of Navarre (b. 1238)
• 1334 – Pope John XXII (b. 1249)
• 1340 – Henry Burghersh, English bishop and politician, Lord Chancellor of England (b. 1292)
• 1456 – Charles I, Duke of Bourbon (b. 1401)
• 1459 – Adolphus VIII, Count of Holstein (b. 1401)
• 1576 – Georg Joachim Rheticus, Austrian-Slovak mathematician and cartographer (b. 1514)
• 1585 – John Willock, Scottish minister and reformer (b. 1515)
• 1609 – Alexander Hume, Scottish poet (b. 1560)
• 1642 – Cardinal Richelieu, French cardinal and politician, Chief Minister to the French Monarch (b. 1585)
• 1649 – William Drummond of Hawthornden (b. 1585)
• 1679 – Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher and theorist (b. 1588)
• 1680 – Thomas Bartholin, Danish physician, mathematician, and theologian (b. 1616)
• 1696 – Empress Meishō of Japan (b. 1624)
• 1732 – John Gay, English poet and playwright (b. 1685)
• 1798 – Luigi Galvani, Italian physician, physicist, and philosopher (b. 1737)
• 1828 – Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1770)
• 1841 – David Daniel Davis, Welsh-English physician and academic (b. 1777)
• 1845 – Gregor MacGregor, Scottish soldier and explorer (b. 1786)
• 1850 – William Sturgeon, English physicist, invented the electric motor (b. 1783)
• 1893 – John Tyndall, Irish-English physicist and chemist (b. 1820)
• 1897 – Griffith Rhys Jones, Welsh conductor (b. 1834)
• 1902 – Charles Dow, American journalist and publisher, co-founded the Dow Jones & Company (b. 1851)
• 1926 – Ivana Kobilca, Slovenian painter (b. 1861)
• 1933 – Stefan George, German-Swiss poet and translator (b. 1868)
• 1935 – Johan Halvorsen, Norwegian violinist, composer, and conductor (b. 1864)
• 1935 – Charles Richet, French physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1850)
• 1938 – Tamanishiki San'emon, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 32nd Yokozuna (b. 1903)
• 1942 – Juhan Kukk, Estonian politician, 3rd Head of State of Estonia (b. 1885)
• 1944 – Roger Bresnahan, American baseball player and manager (b. 1879)
• 1945 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, American geneticist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1866)
• 1948 – Frank Benford, American physicist and engineer (b. 1883)
• 1955 – József Galamb, Hungarian-American engineer (b. 1881)
• 1967 – Bert Lahr, American actor (b. 1895)
• 1969 – Fred Hampton, American activist (b. 1948)
• 1971 – Shunryū Suzuki, Japanese-American monk and educator, founded the San Francisco Zen Center (b. 1904)
• 1975 – Hannah Arendt, German-American historian, theorist, and academic (b. 1906)
• 1976 – Tommy Bolin, American guitarist and songwriter (b. 1951)
• 1976 – Benjamin Britten, English pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1913)
• 1976 – W. F. McCoy, Irish soldier, lawyer, and politician (b. 1886)
• 1980 – Francisco de Sá Carneiro, Portuguese lawyer and politician, 111th Prime Minister of Portugal (b. 1934)
• 1980 – Stanisława Walasiewicz, Polish-American runner (b. 1911)
• 1980 – Don Warrington, Canadian football player (b. 1948)
• 1984 – Jack Mercer, American animator, screenwriter, voice actor, and singer (b. 1910)
• 1987 – Arnold Lobel, American author and illustrator (b. 1933)
• 1987 – Rouben Mamoulian, Georgian-American director and screenwriter (b. 1897)
• 1988 – Osman Achmatowicz, Polish chemist and academic (b. 1899)
• 1992 – Henry Clausen, American lawyer and author (b. 1905)
• 1993 – Margaret Landon, American missionary and author (b. 1903)
• 1993 – Frank Zappa, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1940)
• 1999 – Rose Bird, American academic and judge, 25th Chief Justice of California (b. 1936)
• 2000 – Henck Arron, Surinamese banker and politician, 1st Prime Minister of the Republic of Suriname (b. 1936)
• 2003 – Iggy Katona, American race car driver (b. 1916)
• 2004 – Mahmut Atalay, Turkish wrestler (b. 1934)
• 2004 – Teo Peter, Romanian bass player (b. 1954)
• 2004 – Elena Souliotis, Greek soprano and actress (b. 1943)
• 2005 – Errol Brathwaite, New Zealand soldier and author (b. 1924)
• 2005 – Gregg Hoffman, American film producer (b. 1963)
• 2006 – K. Ganeshalingam, Sri Lankan accountant and politician, Mayor of Colombo (b. 1938)
• 2006 – Ross A. McGinnis, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1987)
• 2009 – Liam Clancy, Irish singer, actor, and guitarist (b. 1935)
• 2011 – Sócrates, Brazilian footballer and manager (b. 1954)
• 2011 – Hubert Sumlin, American singer and guitarist (b. 1931)
• 2012 – Vasily Belov, Russian author, poet, and playwright (b. 1932)
• 2012 – Jack Brooks, American colonel, lawyer, and politician (b. 1922)
• 2012 – Miguel Calero, Colombian footballer and manager (b. 1971)
• 2012 – Anthony Deane-Drummond, English general (b. 1917)
• 2012 – Carroll E. Lanier, American sailor and politician (b. 1926)
• 2013 – Joana Raspall i Juanola, Spanish author and poet (b. 1913)
• 2014 – Claudia Emerson, American poet and academic (b. 1957)
• 2014 – V. R. Krishna Iyer, Indian lawyer and judge (b. 1914)
• 2014 – Lynne Kosky, Australian social worker and politician (b. 1958)
• 2014 – Vincent L. McKusick, American lawyer and judge (b. 1921)
• 2014 – Jeremy Thorpe, English lawyer and politician (b. 1929)
• 2015 – Bill Bennett, Canadian lawyer and politician, 27th Premier of British Columbia (b. 1932)
• 2015 – Robert Loggia, American actor and director (b. 1930)
• 2015 – Yossi Sarid, Israeli journalist and politician, 15th Israeli Minister of Education (b. 1940)

Holidays and observances[edit]

• Christian feast day:
  • Ada
  • Barbara, and its related observances:
    • Barbórka, Miners' Day in Poland
    • Eid il-Burbara, a holiday similar to Halloween in honor of Saint Barbara. (Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine)
  • Bernard degli Uberti
  • Clement of Alexandria (Anglicanism)
  • Giovanni Calabria
  • John of Damascus
  • Nicholas Ferrar (Anglicanism)
  • Osmund
  • Sigiramnus
  • December 4 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
• Earliest day on which Detinjci can fall, while December 10 is the latest; celebrated on Sunday two weeks before Christmas Day. (Serbia)
• Navy Day (India)
• Thai Environment Day (Thailand)
• Tupou I Day (Tonga)

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“Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35 NIV

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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"There is no spot in thee."
Song of Solomon 4:7

Having pronounced his Church positively full of beauty, our Lord confirms his praise by a precious negative, "There is no spot in thee." As if the thought occurred to the Bridegroom that the carping world would insinuate that he had only mentioned her comely parts, and had purposely omitted those features which were deformed or defiled, he sums up all by declaring her universally and entirely fair, and utterly devoid of stain. A spot may soon be removed, and is the very least thing that can disfigure beauty, but even from this little blemish the believer is delivered in his Lord's sight. If he had said there is no hideous scar, no horrible deformity, no deadly ulcer, we might even then have marvelled; but when he testifies that she is free from the slightest spot, all these other forms of defilement are included, and the depth of wonder is increased. If he had but promised to remove all spots by-and-by, we should have had eternal reason for joy; but when he speaks of it as already done, who can restrain the most intense emotions of satisfaction and delight? O my soul, here is marrow and fatness for thee; eat thy full, and be satisfied with royal dainties.

Christ Jesus has no quarrel with his spouse. She often wanders from him, and grieves his Holy Spirit, but he does not allow her faults to affect his love. He sometimes chides, but it is always in the tenderest manner, with the kindest intentions: it is "my love" even then. There is no remembrance of our follies, he does not cherish ill thoughts of us, but he pardons and loves as well after the offence as before it. It is well for us it is so, for if Jesus were as mindful of injuries as we are, how could he commune with us? Many a time a believer will put himself out of humour with the Lord for some slight turn in providence, but our precious Husband knows our silly hearts too well to take any offence at our ill manners.

Evening

"The Lord mighty in battle."
Psalm 24:8

Well may our God be glorious in the eyes of his people, seeing that he has wrought such wonders for them, in them, and by them. For them, the Lord Jesus upon Calvary routed every foe, breaking all the weapons of the enemy in pieces by his finished work of satisfactory obedience; by his triumphant resurrection and ascension he completely overturned the hopes of hell, leading captivity captive, making a show of our enemies openly, triumphing over them by his cross. Every arrow of guilt which Satan might have shot at us is broken, for who can lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Vain are the sharp swords of infernal malice, and the perpetual battles of the serpent's seed, for in the midst of the church the lame take the prey, and the feeblest warriors are crowned.

The saved may well adore their Lord for his conquests in them, since the arrows of their natural hatred are snapped, and the weapons of their rebellion broken. What victories has grace won in our evil hearts! How glorious is Jesus when the will is subdued, and sin dethroned! As for our remaining corruptions, they shall sustain an equally sure defeat, and every temptation, and doubt, and fear, shall be utterly destroyed. In the Salem of our peaceful hearts, the name of Jesus is great beyond compare: he has won our love, and he shall wear it. Even thus securely may we look for victories by us. We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. We shall cast down the powers of darkness which are in the world, by our faith, and zeal, and holiness; we shall win sinners to Jesus, we shall overturn false systems, we shall convert nations, for God is with us, and none shall stand before us. This evening let the Christian warrior chant the war song, and prepare for to-morrow's fight. Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.

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Today's reading: Ezekiel 45-46, 1 John 2 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Ezekiel 45-46

Israel Fully Restored

¹ "'When you allot the land as an inheritance, you are to present to the LORD a portion of the land as a sacred district, 25,000 cubits long and 20,000 cubits wide; the entire area will be holy. ² Of this, a section 500 cubits square is to be for the sanctuary, with 50 cubits around it for open land. ³ In the sacred district, measure off a section 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide. In it will be the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. ⁴ It will be the sacred portion of the land for the priests, who minister in the sanctuary and who draw near to minister before the LORD. It will be a place for their houses as well as a holy place for the sanctuary. ⁵ An area 25,000 cubits long and 10,000 cubits wide will belong to the Levites, who serve in the temple, as their possession for towns to live in.

⁶ "'You are to give the city as its property an area 5,000 cubits wide and 25,000 cubits long, adjoining the sacred portion; it will belong to all Israel....

...read the rest on Bible Gateway

Today's New Testament reading: 1 John 2

¹ My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ² He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Love and Hatred for Fellow Believers

³ We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. ⁴ Whoever says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.⁵ But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

⁷ Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. ⁸ Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining....

...read the rest on Bible Gateway

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