Monday, May 22, 2017

Mon May 22nd Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Fake news miss-characterised Trump's campaign for President, and when he gave a terrific, landmark speech to many leaders in the Middle East, they had to claim he had backflipped. Only, Trump's brilliant speech was entirely consistent with his campaign. It is up to the Middle East to deal with Islamic terrorism which is killing many Islamic peoples. They should not wait for America to sort it out for them. I am waiting for Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and hang the so called Palestinian leadership out to dry in an effort to bring about peace. Because decent people are war weary, but will fight because they must. 

 Today is the seventy fifth anniversary of another great speech, Menzies "Forgotten People" or the middle class, was the launch for the new Liberal Party during the darkest days of WW2. Menzies had been a successful lawyer before he was a successful politician and leader. Menzies rhetoric is apt today. The forgotten people are the backbone of the nation, but treated shockingly badly by both the ALP and Turnbull. I am a Liberal supporter. I want a decent conservative administration to make things better for all, rather than pander to special interests.

 On this day in 334 BC, the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeated Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. It was the first of three major battles for 22 year old Alexander against Persia. Persia had had Greek aid, but despite being outnumbered failed to heed the scorched earth advice. 853, a Byzantine fleet sacked and destroyed undefended Damietta in Egypt. It was a great victory for the Byzantines, but they didn't record it as such as they despised Michael III. However, the Caliphate recorded it. Michael had been a party animal, easily manipulated, and despised as a drunk. 1176, the Hashshashin (Assassins) attempted to murder Saladin near Aleppo. Before Saladin had united Islam, they were divided. 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English theologian John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was at odds with the excesses of the church, predating Protestantism. However he did not oppose the church. Even so, he died several years later and a few decades after was exhumed and burned as a heretic. In 1807, a grand jury indicted former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason. He could have been executed and the world would not have suffered for it. Also 1807, most of the English town of Chudleigh was destroyed by fire. The fire had begun during a severe drought near a bakery which had not stored dry goods well. In 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathised with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas").  1945, Operation Paperclip: United States Army Major Robert B. Staver recommended that the U.S. evacuate German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology. 1947, Cold War: In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, the U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed an act into law that would later be called the Truman Doctrine. The act granted $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement. 1964, the U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the goals of his Great Society social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice" in America. He achieved neither. 1967, the L'Innovation department store in the centre of Brussels, Belgium, burned down. It was the most devastating fire in Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured. 1997, Kelly Flinn, the US Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a general discharge in order to avoid a court-martial. Kelly had had an affair with the husband of a subordinate. She had been commanded to end the affair and when she was found to have lied about ending it, in writing, as going to be court martial for failing to follow orders. Press loved to characterise it as being court martial for having an affair. 1998, Lewinsky scandal: A federal judge ruled that United States Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving President Bill Clinton. Press fail to acknowledge they got a predator elected President. Twice.

I am very good and don't deserve the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.


Here is a video I made Just The Way You Are

 Many thanks to my friend from Icompositions, Dirigent (Andreas) who heard my file and made some bgm for it. His is a gift.  http://www.icompositions.com/artists/dirigent
===
"Just the Way You Are" is a love song from Billy Joel's 1977 pop rock album, The Stranger. It was written as a birthday gift to Joel's first wife Elizabeth Weber. After they divorced, Joel said that when performing the song, he would imagine what he would eat for dinner or what he would do after the show, or even accidentally sing alternate lyrics written by Liberty DeVitto ("She took the dog, the house, the car"). This was his first US Top 10 (reaching #3) and UK Top 20 single, and it was also Joel's first Gold single in the US. "Just the Way You Are" won the 1978 Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

=== from 2016 ===
I have moved to a good home. I leave behind the ice house. Dan Andrews would rather I lived with an ice addict, and that you should too. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
Cardinal George Pell is under attack by people accusing him of nothing. He is supposed to have been cold hearted and dismissive over allegations of pedophilia against people now dead. The dead weren't accused in their lifetime, but Cardinal Pell is now denounced as an apparent proxy. It is wrong, and reminiscent of the attacks on Hollingsworth. Despite being dogged by the allegations of nothing, Pell has had a remarkable, effective and unfinished life in the Church. May it long continue. 

Obama's war is failing against the death cult he calls a Caliphate. Iraqi troops are not holding positions against inferior forces. Air sorties are not often launched as rules of engagement are too restrictive. Obama pulled out too soon from Iraq and gave control to Iran. His foreign policy is a power vacuum being filled by anarchists. 

ABC pander to leftists, but are unprofessional as a journalist news service. They don't bother pretending either. Their partisan nature extends before colour tv in Australia. Even Menzies, who had launched it as a national radio brand regretted that it failed to be other than partisan. 

Shorten failed to address balance when the ALP had an ascendancy. The party has arrogantly adopted the view that politics is cyclical and all they need do to acquire power is wait. Queensland and Victoria may enhance that illusion, having fallen to ALP governments recently, neither of which reformed from corrupt activity in office. Unions struggle to reach ten percent of the workforce but represent most of the ALP. 

The silence of churches in the face of terrorism is appalling. They have failed to speak out on issues they are meant to, but speak loudly on issues they have no business in. In being politically partisan, the churches fail all their constituents. But in failing to address need and suffering they could address in the name of God, they are utter failures. 
From 2014
None in 2014 because of Government and public service corruption related to the petitions
Historical perspective on this day
In 334 BC, the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeated Darius IIIof Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. 853, a Byzantine fleet sacked and destroyed undefended Damietta in Egypt. 1176, the Hashshashin (Assassins) attempted to murder Saladin near Aleppo. 1200, King John of England and King Philip II of France signed the Treaty of Le Goulet. 1246, Henry Raspe was elected anti-king of the Kingdom of Germany, in opposition to Conrad IV. 1254, Serbian King Stephen Uroš I and the Republic of Venicesigned a peace treaty. 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English theologian John Wycliffe. 1455, start of the Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeated and captured King Henry VI of England. 1629, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Danish King Christian IV signed the Treaty of Lübeck to end the Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War. 1762, Sweden and Prussia signed the Treaty of Hamburg. Also 1762, Trevi Fountain in Rome was officially completed and inaugurated by Pope Clemens XIII.

In 1807, a grand jury indicted former Vice President of the United StatesAaron Burr on a charge of treason. Also 1807, most of the English town of Chudleigh was destroyed by fire. 1809, on the second and last day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling (near Vienna, Austria), Napoleon I was repelled by an enemy army for the first time. 1812, Action of 22 May 1812: A small French two-frigate squadron comprising Ariane and Andromaque, returning from a commerce raiding campaign in the Atlantic, met the 74-gun HMS Northumberland while trying the slip to Lorient through the British blockade. 1816, a mob in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, rioted over high unemployment and rising grain costs; the rioting spread to Ely the next day. 1819, the SS Savannah left port at Savannah, Georgia, United States, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The ship arrived at Liverpool, England, on June 20. 1826, HMS Beagle departed on its first voyage. 1840, the transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony was abolished. 1848, Slavery was abolished in Martinique. 1849, future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.

In 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat SenatorCharles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathised with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas ("Bleeding Kansas"). 1863, American Civil War: Siege of Port Hudson: Union forces began to lay siege to the Confederate-controlled Port Hudson, Louisiana. 1864, American Civil War: After ten weeks, the Union Army's Red River Campaign ended with the Union unable to achieve any of its objectives. 1871, the U.S. Army issued an order for abandonment of Fort Kearny in Nebraska. 1872, Reconstruction: U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Amnesty Act into law restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathisers. 1885, prior to burial in the Panthéon, the body of Victor Hugo was exposed under the Arc de Triomphe during the night. 1897, the Blackwall Tunnelunder the River Thames was officially opened

In 1903, launch of the White Star Liner, SS Ionic. 1906, the Wright brothers were granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine". 1915, Lassen Peak erupted with a powerful force, and was the only mountain other than Mount St. Helens to erupt in the contiguous US during the 20th century. Also 1915, three trains collided in the Quintinshill rail disaster near Gretna Green, Scotland, killing 227 people and injuring 246; the accident was found to be the result of non-standard operating practices during a shift change at a busy junction. 1926, Chiang Kai-shek replaced communists in Kuomintang, China. 1939, World War II: Germany and Italysigned the Pact of Steel. 1942, Mexico entered World War II on the side of the Allies. Also 1942, the Steel Workers Organising Committee disbanded, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, was formed. Also 1942, World War II: Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a flight instructor. 1943, Joseph Stalindisbanded Comintern. 1945, Operation Paperclip: United States Army Major Robert B. Staver recommended that the U.S. evacuate German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology. 1947, Cold War: In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, the U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed an act into law that would later be called the Truman Doctrine. The act granted $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkeyand Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement.

In 1958, Sri Lankan riots of 1958: This riot was a watershed event in the race relationship of the various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. The total number of deaths was estimated to be 300, mostly Sri Lankan Tamils. 1960, an earthquake measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, now known as the Great Chilean Earthquake, hit southern Chile. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded. 1961, an earthquake rocked New South Wales. 1962, Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashed after bombs exploded on board. 1963, an assassination attempt of Greek left-wing politician Grigoris Lambrakis, who would die five days later. 1964, the U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the goals of his Great Society social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice" in America. 1967, the L'Innovationdepartment store in the centre of Brussels, Belgium, burned down. It was the most devastating fire in Belgian history, resulting in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured. Also 1967, Vietnam War: Vinh Xuan massacre. 1968, the nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sank with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores. 1969, Apollo 10 's lunar module flew within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface.

In 1972, Ceylon adopted a new constitution, thus becoming a Republic, changed its name to Sri Lanka, and joined the Commonwealth of Nations. 1980, Namco released the highly influential arcade game Pac-Man. 1987, Hashimpura massacre in Meerut, India. Also 1987, first ever Rugby World Cup kicked off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand. 1990, North and South Yemen were unified to create the Republic of Yemen. Also 1990, Microsoft released the Windows 3.0 operating system. 1992, after 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carsonhosted The Tonight Show for the last time. Also 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia joined the United Nations. 1997, Kelly Flinn, the US Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a general discharge in order to avoid a court-martial. 1998, Lewinsky scandal: A federal judge ruled that United States Secret Service agents could be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving President Bill Clinton.

In 2002, in Washington, D.C., the remains of the missing Chandra Levy were found in Rock Creek Park. Also 2002, American civil rights movement: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicted former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. 2003, in Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sörenstambecame the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years. 2004, the U.S. town of Hallam, Nebraska was wiped out by a powerful F4 tornado (part of the May 2004 tornado outbreak sequence) which killed one resident, and became the widest tornado on record at 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide; a record that wouldn't be broken until the El Reno tornado on May 31, 2013. 2005, a Presidential election was held in Mongolia; the result was a victory for Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP). 2008, the Late-May 2008 tornado outbreak sequence unleashed 235 tornadoes, including an EF4 and an EF5 tornado, between May 22 and May 31, 2008. The tornadoes struck 19 states and one Canadian province. 2009, the Credit CARD Act of 2009 was signed into U.S. law by the President, Barack Obama. 2010, an Air India Express Boeing 737 went over a cliff and crashed upon landing at Mangalore, India, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. It was the worst crash involving a Boeing 737. 2011, an EF5 tornado struck Joplin, Missouri, killing 162 people and wreaking $2.8 billion worth in damage—the costliest and seventh-deadliest single tornado in U.S. history. 2012, Tokyo Skytree was opened to the public. It was the tallest tower in world (634 m), and the second tallest man-made structure on Earth, after Burj Khalifa (829.8 m). 2014, general Prayuth Chan-ocha of the Royal Thai Armed Forces announced a military coup d'état, following six months of political turmoil. also 2014, an explosion occurred in the city of Ürümqi, the capital of China's far-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, resulting in at least 43 deaths and 91 injuries.
=== 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
Happy birthday and many happy returns Daniel Bogo, Maria Tan and Bob Scheer. Born on the same day, across the years. The same day, when in 1826, HMS Beagle sailed and the world made discoveries billions of years in the making. You have sailed from Plymouth, and now you can own your future.

William Sturgeon
Deaths
May 22: Unity Day in Yemen (1990)
Lassen Peak eruption of May 22, 1915
We won. Our beagle is searching. Do many volcanos erupt sedately? Five trains crashed after system failure? Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? Let's party. 
===
Tim Blair


PIE RUSTLERS FACE COAL FURY

Australia’s mineral resources, energy supplies, small population and excellent pies will always make us an attractive target for rapacious foreign types craving power, regional supremacy and quality baked goods.
22 May
===
Andrew Bolt


===

Jetsetting jihadis have no place here

Piers Akerman – Friday, May 22, 2015 (6:47am)

EVEN opening the merest possibility of Australian jihadis negotiating a soft return to this country shows a gross contempt for our citizens, in particular those who have migrated here.
Across the nation, especially on Australia Day, tens of thousands of people take a citizenship pledge.
The pledge is in simple, understandable language: “From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”
It has been reported there are at least three jihadis abroad who have found the death cult they rushed to join is not all that its propaganda proclaimed.
Exactly what these individuals found distasteful about a head-lopping, homosexual-murdering, sexually discriminating and rapist society is unclear. Perhaps the sex slaves they were offered weren’t as appealing as those displayed in Daesh’s brochures, but there can be no doubt they must have known what was involved when they committed themselves to supporting the establishment of an Islamist caliphate.
In taking the decision to support this evil in whatever role they chose to play, they knowingly broke Australian law. (Had the current laws applied when the idiot David Hicks gleefully declared his Islamist hatred for the West, Jews and Christians, he would have been as guilty as those now trying to wriggle back to the safety and security offered by the society he wanted to destroy.)
These people rejected the privileges of Australian citizenship, yet now they want those privileges restored.
Intelligence sources suggest half of the more than 100 Australians who have joined IS or other Islamist organisations hold dual citizenship.
ASIO is running investigations into about 400 high-­priority individuals across the nation. Under the Australian Citizenship Act of 1947, anyone with dual citizenship who serves in the armed forces of another country at war with Australia ceases to be an Australian citizen.
The UK, US, and even socialist France and other left-leaning nations, have already stripped dual citizens committed to the Islamist cause of their first-world passports and left them to rot in Middle Eastern hellholes.
Australia would do well to amend the Citizenship Act to make it unambiguously clear that Australian citizens who betray their duty to Australia — who disrespect the laws, who fail to uphold the democratic beliefs, rights and liberties — will have the privileges of having Australian citizenship revoked.
One of those attempting to negotiate a gentle re-entry is a medic who says he went to Syria to assist with humanitarian aid.
There are no legitimate aid organisations like AusAID or USAID operating in areas controlled by the death cult.
Indeed, a number of stupid Westerners who misguidedly thought they could serve in some sort of humanitarian role have ­ lost their heads.
Nor would study be an effective excuse for spending time in Syria.
IS is renowned for its opposition to education as it is understood in Western society.
The Labor Party and its Green, left-leaning bien pensant supporters don’t understand the true nature of terrorism.
It’s barely two years since former prime minister Julia Gillard declared that the “9/11 decade was ending”.
Now she is trying to backpedal with revisionist cant published on The Guardian website last September.
Despite Labor slashing the counterterrorism budget by a third, Gillard told a reporter the ALP had never believed there was no continuing terrorist threat on Australian soil.
“Clearly there is,” she said.
“As I was serving as prime minister we were alive to the mounting risks that would be formed by Australian extremists hardened by going to Syria and fighting.”
Maybe so, but Labor chose to ignore the intelligence and the advice and proceeded with its budget mayhem to win the votes of Muslims.
“What I would say more broadly is … good community relations, good relations with the diverse set of communities that make up Australia, is not only important to multiculturalism, but is actually important to the pursuit of security objectives,” Gillard said.
It is obvious that Labor’s appeal to good community multi-culti supporters within the Muslim community has been as damaging a failure as its hobbling of the security services.
The left mocked the Howard government’s attempt to ensure that migrants had some understanding of Australian values and the result is plain to see with Islamic hardliners now in control of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, which directs a number of Islamic colleges across the country and has been receiving tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars intended for education.
According to Griffith University Associate Professor Halim Rane, attempts at a “non-discriminatory migration policy” backfired by bringing in people whose “values and norms are simply inconsistent with Australian values and norms”.
“So they would obviously find it difficult to integrate into Australian society,” he told ABC radio.
“And they’ve also projected some of their ideas on to Muslims here in Australia.
“And so we are seeing ­second- and even third-generation Australian-born Muslims who have adopted ideas that have their origins in the Islamism that developed in the Muslim world in the 1970s and ‘80s and ‘90s.”
University of Technology, Sydney research associate Jamila Hussain told The Australian he was “right — to a degree”.
“Some people who have come from overseas have hardline views that are not acceptable in an Australian context, but I wish somebody would tell me what Australian values are,” she said. Apparently that is something one doesn’t learn at UTS.
Those who left Australia to fight for an Islamist caliphate made a conscious decision to work for the destruction of our society.
Neither youth nor ignorance of our way of life excuses this treason, whatever Labor may say to appease its Islamic constituents.
These monsters have completely abrogated their right to be Australians.
And the academy award for idiocy goes to …
From coast to coast, academics have successfully demonstrated how completely former Labor education minister John Dawkins managed to ensure the dumbing down of tertiary education nearly 30 years ago.
He forced the mergers of established universities with colleges of education, beginning a process which has left the nation with 43 universities, too many mediocre academics and a pervading leftist politically correct world view that is directly opposed to free speech and the sort of basic transparency that should underpin the aims of higher education.
The University of Western Sydney has permitted a Muslim student body to hold an offensively sexually segregated meeting at which a representative of the radical Islamist body Hizb ut-Tahrir held court.
The University of Sydney has permitted anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions activists to run riot, disrupt lectures and intimidate students and guests.
The University of Western Australia has permitted itself to be bullied by activist students and faculty members into withdrawing permission for the internationally renowned climate economist Bjorn Lomborg to establish a federally funded consensus centre even as other faculty members complain that they are being dismissed without due process.
The chaos within these institutions is not an accident. It is a result of a diminution of authority deliberately orchestrated by the left.
The quality of Australian education is suffering.
And an Australian university degree is rapidly decreasing in value except in certain specialty areas.
===

A TRAVELLING PARTY OF VIOLATED CENTRISTS

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (4:05pm)

Joe Hildebrand charts the desperate, post-apocalyptic adventures of Mad Mal and Juliosa.
UPDATE. Readers with a knowledge of forced induction systems are invited to detect the alarming technical inconsistency between Joe’s column and John Tiedemann’s illustration for that column. If Paul Barry knew anything about cars, this would lead next Monday’s Media Watch. 
===

TAKE THAT, ABBOTT GOVERNMENT

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (2:50pm)

This is fantastic:


The world of dance has not witnessed such passion since Leopold “Butters” Stotch killed all those people.
===

A PERIOD OF INSTABILITY

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (2:36pm)

Tory-fighting sob factory Anthony Albanese says Bill Shorten is safe: 
Anthony Albanese has ruled out taking over the Labor leadership before the next election …
Mr Albanese, who narrowly lost the Labor leadership to Mr Shorten after the 2013 election, today insisted he would remain “a part of Bill Shorten’s team” and is “not available” for the top job.
“We went through a period of instability with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. I think the Australian people want stability; that’s what you’ve got under Labor,” Mr Albanese, the opposition infrastructure spokesman, told the Nine Network today. 
That “period of instability” was otherwise known as “the Labor government”.
===

OSAMA’S BIN WATCHING

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (5:45am)

Many of Osama bin Laden’s documents were released this week, but some of his possessions remain concealed: 
The stash of pornography reportedly found in the hideout of Osama Bin Laden by US commandos will not be declassified released “due to the nature of their contents”, an official has said.
Among the thousands of documents was what Reuters described in 2011 as a “fairly extensive porn stash”.
Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told The Telegraph that the pornography would remain classified even as details of Bin Laden’s other personal files were released. 
Readers are invited to speculate:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'OSAMA’S BIN WATCHING'
===

ALTOGETHER OOKY

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (4:14am)

A young Bill Shorten auditions for the role of Wednesday in the  Addams Family. Sadly – and Bill may have to get used to this – his role was taken by a girl.
===

TRIGGER WARNING

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (3:55am)

In a bloodthirsty celebration of masculine violence, the most powerful man on earth shapes up against a modestly-paid female federal employee:


Click again for a shot of Barack Obama rejoicing in brutal gun culture. Considering the feminist rage generated when Australia’s Prime Minister was shown winking and drinking, these far more menacing Presidential images should fuel media chick-rage clear through to August, at least.
===

McBURNED

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (3:50am)

Guido Fawkes charts future Tanya Plibersek advisor John McTernan’s talent for destruction. It really is a remarkable skill. McTernan is even able to end the careers of people whose emails he declined to answer.
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THINK LOCAL, LIE GLOBAL

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (2:37am)

When climate alarmists want to frighten people about Australian carbon dioxide output, they use an image of a power station in England.
When climate alarmists want to frighten people about degradation of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, they use an image of a coral reef in the Philippines.
===

MIRROR SHATTERED

Tim Blair – Friday, May 22, 2015 (2:06am)

This does not diminish in any way the News of the World‘s phone hacking crimes, but it should be noted that the left-wing, Labour-loving Daily Mirror‘s violations were just as bad, if not worse: 
After years of rebuttals, numerous assurances under oath to the Leveson inquiry and the dismissal of legal claims as “wholly unsubstantiated”, it took a single devastating morning at the high court in London to leave Trinity Mirror’s phone-hacking denials in ruin.
The court was told that senior journalists at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People intercepted celebrities’ voicemails on an industrial scale – making the News of the World look like a “small cottage industry”.
The allegation was all the more striking because – for the first time – there was an absence of any denial from the publisher, Mirror Group Newspapers; in effect it was not contesting the testimony offered up in court. 
Mirror papers have been ordered to pay $A2.4 million in compensation. It should also be noted that the Australian edition of the Guardian – whose parent paper led criticism of British phone-hacking – has not joined the Press Council.
===

In defence of George Pell

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (5:52pm)

Gerard Henderson mounts a very important defence of Cardinal George Pell, subjected to a series of damaging but false claims from the media:
No, this week’s allegations against Pell are not new.
No, he is not hiding from the royal commission, and has instead twice given evidence to it.
No, he was not “Bishop of Ballarat”.
No, there is no evidence that Pell was “very complicit” in the abuse of children and should be “facing charges”. (That is defamatory and Dee Madigan should be ashamed of herself.)
I would also praise Paul Bongiorno for his (implicit) defence of Pell, accused of shielding pedophile Gerald Ridsdale, but Henderson does have an important caveat:
During his regular Thursday chat with Fran Kelly on Radio National Breakfast yesterday, the left-of-centre journalist Paul Bongiorno opened up for the first time in public about his time as a student and, subsequently, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat. Let’s go to the transcript...: 
Paul Bongiorno: ... I grew up in Ballarat. I went to Ballarat Catholic schools — St Patrick’s College and Drummond Street, run by the Christian Brothers. And I was inspired by what I heard and by the lives of men — both priests and brothers — by the ideals and the values that they had in terms of social justice and human welfare and well-being and belief in God, to go off and become a Catholic priest… 
I know Gerald Ridsdale. I lived in a presbytery with him in Warrnambool. I’ve had the victims approach me to appear for them in court cases. Let me tell you this Fran. I had no idea what he was up to. And when people look at me quizzically, I say: “Well look, let me tell you this. There are married men and women now who sleep with their husbands and wives who don’t know that their husband or wife is having an affair.” 
Let me tell you that Ridsdale never came into the presbytery in Warrnambool and said: “Guess how many boys I’ve raped today?” They hide it. It was certainly hidden from me.....
Talk about double standards. George Pell (born 1941) has been implicitly criticised by David Marr for having “noticed nothing” when he shared accommodation with Gerald Ridsdale in a presbytery in Ballarat. But, so far at least, Marr has not criticised (the then Father) Bongiorno (born 1944) for not having noticed that Ridsdale was a child sex abuser when he shared accommodation with Ridsdale in a presbytery in Warrnambool. However, Paul Bongiorno is correct. Criminals — including sex offenders — rarely boast of their crimes. And paedophiles tend to be very cunning in hiding their criminality. What’s surprising about Paul Bongiorno’s comment is that he waited so long before stating that, once upon a time he shared a presbytery with Ridsdale. Moreover, Bongiorno has criticised the Cardinal — tweeting on 24 August 2014: “How does George Pell sleep at night?”
===

ABC too keen to entertain, rather than inform

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (5:35pm)

Bill Shorten was absolutely right to complain, even if he misdiagnoses the problem with the ABC. It is certainly not some bias against Labor, but an increasing triviality and search for cheap ratings:
Bill Shorten’s office lobbied ABC managing director Mark Scott to broadcast the Opposition Leader’s budget reply speech on the ABC’s flagship station after learning of plans to screen it only on the low-rating News24.

In a letter to Mr Scott, Mr Shorten’s communications director Kimberley Gardiner… warned the move could “contradict the ABC’s expressed editorial policy of impartiality”. 
“Given the ABC still plans to broadcast the Treasurer’s budget speech on ABC1, the refusal to grant the opposition leader’s budget reply equal billing could be perceived as favourable to the government,” she wrote on May 4. The speech was ultimately screened on both ABC stations.
===

Shorten should have taken on the Left when he was ahead. Too late now

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (5:13pm)

Bill Shorten has two problems. One is the Left of Labor, now rampant. Two is his inability or unwillingness to challenge it:
BILL Shorten is emerging as Julia Gillard reincarnated, with Labor poised to take key Gillard policies to the next election — including a price on carbon and softer boats policy. 
Labor’s powerful left faction is pressuring Mr Shorten to soften his stance on national security and end the controversial turnback policy that stopped illegal boat arrivals.
Pressure is mounting on the Opposition Leader to take a stand on key issues after focus groups described him as “wishy-washy” and “weak”. Former NSW Labor treasurer Michael Costa last night said Mr Shorten had taken Labor too far to the left...: “He’s moved the party too far to the left. There’s no point pandering to the Greens. They should bite the bullet and not do preference deals with the Greens.’’
Here is a truth that will soon become received wisdom: Shorten should have taken on the Left when Labor was ahead in the polls and he still had some authority. He should have changed his party’s suicidal policies then on global warming, boats and spending.
But he chose instead to wait as Abbott floundered, hoping to profit from the Liberals’ mistakes rather than his own virtues. Now that Abbott has reformed and recovered it is too late. Shorten has no popularity and little authority left to risk on starting a brawl with Labor’s Left.
UPDATE
Global warming today is for Labor what the socialist objective was last century. A holy grail for the faithful, and- increasingly - anathema for everyone else. Ridding Labor of this toxic faith, a reason-killer, will take years.
UPDATE
Shorten’s press conferences have become increasingly shambolic, with journalists growing frustrated at not getting straight answers - or clear policies. Shorten seems to feel stressed, increasingly rocking and weaving as he answers.
Wednesday’s press conference on the Rohingya boat people was not good:
JOURNALIST: So will Labor then be happy to adopt this [Abbott Government] policy? ... In regards to turning boats around as I was asking you. 
SHORTEN: Well no, we were talking about the inter-communal violence, and we see the deplorable situation and the treatment of Rohingya minorities. Those issues are deep-seated. In terms of Australia’s approach in terms of asylum seekers, we fundamentally believe in a regional approach, we do support regional settlement.
JOURNALIST: So do you support turning boats around?
SHORTEN: Well Labor’s the one who’s put regional settlement on the map in terms of a policy. Our approach is defined by, we want to see refugees treated well, we want to make sure that people aren’t drowning at sea and we also want to make sure that Australia’s immigration policies are respected....
JOURNALIST: I’ve asked you several questions about Labor’s policy on turning around boats and you’ve dodged around it the whole time. Does Labor actually have a policy on this?
SHORTEN: Well you’ve asked several questions to do with the refugee crisis, and you’ve said well what would we do, and we’ve said back every time to your question is the Government should talk to us about what they have in mind to help this latest refugee tragedy of the Rohingya people. These conflicts go back a long time, I’m not blaming the Government for these conflicts....
JOURNALIST: And where does it stand on turning around boats?
SHORTEN: Well first of all, we need to see what the policies are in terms of how they’ve been working, in terms of regional approaches and attitudes to this. We are the ones who pioneered having regional resettlement but again, what I would say to the Government is sit down and talk to us about this latest refugee crisis and tragedy. Are there any other questions?
UPDATE
Jack the Insider is right to note that Labor is now cursed with Kevin Rudd’s final act of sabotage - new rules making it almost impossible to replace a dud leader:
It was originally hailed as a masterstroke but as with many of Rudd’s pushes, it has a shelf life, a use-by date before calamity comes. 
The original plan was that a leadership spill could only occur outside a post-election leadership ballot (when it is mandatory) when 75 per cent of the caucus signed a petition calling for a spill. Ultimately, it was settled at 60 per cent… What is important is that there is no show of hands but the more incriminating signature on a piece of paper.
Political careers turn on such things and that is why a spill is unlikely, if not downright impossible. ... (Yet) many Labor members and supporters see Shorten as a stand-for-nothing, insipid piece of work… But the growing speculation about Shorten’s leadership is a sign that one of Kevin Rudd’s time bombs is set to go off. What it will lack in explosive force, it will more than make up for in paralysing effect with the party incapable of renewal and unable to put itself in some of reasonable shape before the next federal election.
Bad for Shorten that rival Albo is having to deny:
Anthony Albanese has ruled out taking over the Labor leadership before the next election, despite surging support for Tony Abbott in this week’s Newspoll..
Mr Albanese, who narrowly lost the Labor leadership to Mr Shorten after the 2013 election, today insisted he would remain “a part of Bill Shorten’s team” and is “not available” for the top job…
“We went through a period of instability with Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. I think the Australian people want stability; that’s what you’ve got under Labor,” Mr Albanese, the opposition infrastructure spokesman, told the Nine Network today.
(Thanks to reader marg of nambour.) 
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, May 24

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (3:59pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
My guest: Parliamentary secretary Christian Porter, former WA Treasurer and now rising star in the Abbott Government..
Editorial: “Nope, nope, nope.” The best answer to give desperate boat people? Or is Bill Shorten right?

The panel: Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian  Nicholas Reece, former adviser to Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
NewsWatch: Nick Cater, columnist of The Australian and head of the Menzies Research Centre.

Plenty to debate:  the media and George Pell, the carbon tax returns, the silence of the churches, the decline of Bill Shorten and two good reasons for stripping the Australia Council of arts grants funding.

The videos of the shows appear here.
===

How tough are Melbourne Anglicans on jihadists? Check the questions

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (1:41pm)

Roland Ashby, director of communications for the Melbourne Anglican diocese,  asks an expert in Islam some hard-core questions as jihadists slaughter Christians in Africa and the Middle East:
RA: In a recent article you argue that just as it would be wrong to judge Christianity on the behaviour of some Christian extremist groups, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda which quotes the Bible, it would be wrong to judge Islam on the violent behaviour of extremists.   
RA: On what grounds could it be argued that Islam is a religion of peace?
RA: You have also said that the battle for the soul of Islam is earnestly underway.
RA: You have said that Islam is not the problem, but it has a problem, and part of this problem is Dhimmitude, and the attitude to women.
RA: What are the conditions which lead to terrorism and to what extent do you believe that the West is responsible for Islamic terrorism?  I’m partly thinking, of course, of the invasion of Iraq.
RA: You were brought up as a Muslim but you became a Christian in High School, which would have been a difficult move to make. What was so powerful about Christianity that attracted you? RA:  And that brings us to the final question about the challenges of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Is the Muslim God the same as the Christian God?
===

Not a denier

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (8:32am)

Don Aitkin says he’s a ”lukewarmer”. Seems I might be, too.
UPDATE
Gosh, I’ve helped to write an international bestseller.
To order your own copy, go here.
(Thanks to reader Low Profile.) 
===

Obama’s war is failing. Islamic State advances

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (8:22am)

 The Obama-led war in Syria and Iraq is going very badly:
ISLAMIC State group jihadists seized Syria’s Palmyra on Thursday, as UNESCO warned that the destruction of the ancient city would be “an enormous loss to humanity”. 
The capture of Palmyra, a 2000-year-old metropolis, reportedly leaves more than half of Syria under IS control and comes days after the group also expanded its control in Iraq.
Think: if we spent our entire arts budget for one year on sending soldiers to save Palmyra instead, we’d probably leave the arts richer.
Then there’s the fall of Ramadi this week:
The way many Iraqis view it, the collapse of the Ramadi garrison—an event in which barely a few hundred Islamic State militants routed a vastly more numerous Iraqi security force—equals in its significance the fall of Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul last summer. That milestone forced President Barack Obama to send troops to Iraq just 2½ years after withdrawing them. 
“What happened is a major catastrophe,” said prominent Iraqi lawmaker Dhiaa al-Assadi…
Given the realities of the war so far, this would likely mean continued Islamic State rule over a huge territory for many years to come. Islamic State’s area in Syria and Iraq has shrunk somewhat over the past year following Kurdish offensives in the north Shiite militias’ advances around Baghdad and into the city of Tikrit. But the group has expanded elsewhere… U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who retired in 2013 as NATO’s supreme allied commander, said the debacle in Ramadi showed the number of U.S. troops in Iraq should be raised to roughly 10,000, with U.S. special operations forces getting directly involved in the fight as they did in last week’s raid against a senior Islamic State official in Syria. 
This is a complete failure of leadership:
Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary [under Obama], put it even more bluntly: “We don’t really have a strategy at all. We’re basically playing this day by day.” 
And that effort is crippled by Obama’s refusal to accept he was wrong to pull out too soon from Iraq - a failure he would underline by returning 10,000 soldiers to fight or stepping up the war in other ways.  David Kilcullen:
...if you look at the average rate of international air strikes since last August into Syria and Iraq, it’s about 10 per day. If you compare that to Libya in 2011, it was 45 per day. In Afghanistan in 2001, it was 83 per day. And in the Kosovo campaign, which people may remember from 1999, was 250 per day. So without even going close to putting troops on the ground, we could be doing a very significantly greater amount to deal with the Islamic State. What’s limiting us is rules of engagement and the way that we haven’t been able to put what are called JTAGS, sort of observers for air strikes, forward on the ground.
===

How much of our school funding is diverted to Islamic groups?

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (8:17am)

What is going on here?
A senior official in the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has been accused of attempting to embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Islamic College of Brisbane and falsifying school loans worth almost $1?million… 
The school receives about 80 per cent of its funding from taxpayers…
Islamic schools around Australia — including the nation’s largest, Malek Fahd in Sydney’s southwest — have been involved in numerous financial scandals.
Malek Fahd was forced to repay $9m to taxpayers after The Australian revealed it had been funnelling profits to AFIC.
Rissalah College in Sydney’s southwestern Lakemba had its funding frozen in 2013 amid allegations it misused hundreds of thousands of dollars in school funds and that a gun was pulled on a whistleblower.
Three other Muslim schools have had their funding frozen by the NSW Education Department or have been the subject of police investigations in recent years… AFIC president Hafez Kasseem did not return requests from The Australian for comment. 
Add halal funding, and a hell of a lot of money is being channeled into AFIC and other Muslim groups. 
===

Feeding unions costs us two thirds of the navy ships

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (7:59am)

And there are unions and Labor MPs demanding we next give Adelaide the $50 billion contract to build our next submarines, too:
The Air Warfare Destroyer program will run about $2 billion over budget and be nearly three years late, according to a forensic audit to be released today. 
The total cost to build the three missile destroyers will exceed $9bn, meaning each ship will cost approximately $3bn. Comparable ships built by Navantia in Spain cost about $1bn. If Australia had bought the ships ready-built in Spain, it could have had nine for the price of three, or saved $6bn.
This is bizarre. We have a third of the ships to defend us because politicians preferred to pork-barrel. 
===

Gillard’s Labor disarmed us, wishing away exactly this threat

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (7:37am)

Piers Akerman says Labor cannot be trusted with our security, and he has the evidence:
It’s barely two years since former prime minister Julia Gillard declared that the “9/11 decade was ending”. 
Now she is trying to backpedal with revisionist cant published on The Guardian website last September.
Despite Labor slashing the counterterrorism budget by a third, Gillard told a reporter the ALP had never believed there was no continuing terrorist threat on Australian soil.
“Clearly there is,” she said.
“As I was serving as prime minister we were alive to the mounting risks that would be formed by Australian extremists hardened by going to Syria and fighting.”
Maybe so, but Labor chose to ignore the intelligence and the advice and proceeded with its budget mayhem to win the votes of Muslims. 
What Gillard said two years ago, downplaying exactly the scenario we face now - non-state actors seizing territory outside our region, yet posing a direct threat to security here that no diplomacy can address:
.... we are transitioning from one decade, the decade of 9/11, to a post 9/11 era where some risks and challenges endure and others are evolving rapidly.... 
And since the galvanising events of September 11 and Bali, our partners and Australia have secured some significant successes.
Osama Bin Laden is dead. Al Qaeda’s senior leadership is fractured. Jemaah Islamiah has been decimated in our region. Here at home, numerous terrorist plots have been thwarted, and 23 convictions have resulted from the prosecution of those who planned such attacks. Afghanistan will soon take full responsibility for its own security… Our work in Iraq has been completed…
I offer you three intersecting conclusions about the national security imperatives of the next decade and consequently the risks our nation will face. 
First, our principal national security focus will be on our own region… Second, it will be an era in which the behaviour of states, not non-state actors, will be the most important driver and shaper of Australia’s national security thinking. 
Third, it will be an era in which diplomacy will be critical…
The key risks that we see ahead include: 
- The traditional and familiar risks that nations have always faced such as espionage and foreign interference,state-based conflict, and coercion affecting our interests; 
- The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction… 
- Instability in developing and fragile states.
While understanding and managing state-based risks will require renewed effort, this does not mean that terrorism is defeated or we should ignore the malign intent of non-state actors…
Recent events in Mali and the terrible murders in Algeria remind us that terrorism remains an enduring threat
Global terrorism showed us on 9/11 that it has the capacity to surprise us and surpass our worst fears. It could do so again, so we will always be vigilant. 
===

Tomorrow’s Labor politicians and the culture of violence

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (7:06am)


The Left is now the natural home of the thug, the authoritarian ...  and the hypocrite.
Here are scenes from Wednesday’s anti-Abbott protest, organised by the National Union of Students. Can you imagine the uproar from that union and their fellow travellers in the media had students been pictured smashing a pinata of Julia Gillard and kicking the head down the street?
(Thanks to reader Matthew Lesh.) 
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How to breed young warming extremists

Andrew Bolt May 22 2015 (12:01am)

 Tony Thomas exposes the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which has - astonishingly - tax-exempt status by pretending it’s not really a vote-promoter for the Greens:
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition seems a formidable bunch. Its leaders, for example, use their vast membership roll as a weapon, such as badgering the Big Four coal-lending banks “on behalf of 110,000 young Australians"… 
Along the way, co-founders Anna Rose and Amanda McKenzie have been showered with honours and accolades from Labor governments, business, media (Fairfax), academia, even non-political Rotary. Rose’s latest citation, ACT Finalist for Australian of the Year 2015, says AYCC “now boasts more than 110,000 young Australians who are standing up for their future.”
But there is something odd about this membership roll, which the 2014 annual report puts at 120,000. First, it’s free to join. The Liberals charge $35 (concession) to $100 pa in Victoria, while Labor in Victoria collects dues of between $34 (concession) and $224…
Second, AYCC is pretty cavalier about the particulars of each member. Determined “to stand up for my future”, I joined online by providing name, email, age (a youthful 74), phone and state. That’s it. They don’t even want my address… Just for interest, I joined successfully a second time…
My spaniel Natasha also wanted join ..., so I enrolled her, successfully, with AYCC. I assume both of us are now members forever, since there would be no point in AYCC reminding us about free annual renewals. What proportion of AYCC “members” since 2007 are bounce-back phantoms?
While “member numbers” are useful for AYCC propaganda, AYCC focuses internally on its “volunteers” (currently 2100) who proselytise in schools, jump about in fish suits, and help run AYCC events… What’s also noteworthy is that the 110,000-strong AYCC can claim only ‘several’ local groups in WA (pop 2.6m). Victoria manages about 20 local groups. Tasmania has two…
AYCC ... proclaims, like similar lobbyist groups, that it is politically non-partisan. This is important for maintaining its ‘charity’ status....
Among the AYCC online resources for teachers is a video to show to students, “How to Talk About Climate Change”. At 50 seconds, a girl and boy stroll past three prominent posters on a fence: two of “This Time, I’m Voting Greens” and “Vote 1 Adam Bandt: The Greens”. (AYCC’s Spencer swears the posters must have got in the shot inadvertently). Here’s an example of the ambience around AYCC. Chair Anna Rose worked from 2010 concurrently for a consultancy called Make Believe along with her husband-to-be Simon Sheikh, stalwart of GetUp and a failed Greens Senate candidate in 2012. Make Believe, self- described as “delivering cut-through social & political campaigns…for a ‘who’s who’ of non-profits, progressive political parties and socially responsible businesses.” In practice, as Rose put it in an unguarded moment (see the 50-minute mark of this video), Make Believe comprised basically ex-AYCC and ex-GetUp people, and the important clients were “the federal Greens Party, the Victorian Greens Party, Adam Bandt who was running for the Greens Party seat of Melbourne, lots of Greens.”
Thomas in part 2 reveals the role that one alarmist’s money plays in creating the impression of a crowd:
The ultimate power in AYCC is held by a group known as “Full Members” who pay a token ($10) joining fee and elect the directors. Who these Full Members are, I can’t discover. The only hint is in the 2011 report, where a dozen “partner groups” are listed, such as the Youth Affairs Coalition, Law Students’ Association, and Engineers Without Borders. The report says these groups “continue to play an important role in electing the board”. But the 2013 and 2014 reports are silent even on who the “partners” are and what role, if any, they play. 
AYCC’s Spencer says AYCC structure changed, that it is now an independent organization, working in partnership with others but with no formal ‘coalition’…
AYCC’s latest annual revenue of $1.1m is not trivial… AYCC from inception has been backed by aged-care and radiology ex-tycoon Robert E. Purves.
Purves 56, is a Governor of AYCC and his fund matches AYCC donations dollar-for-dollar…
Purves, with sister Sandra, inherited a fortune from their father, Sir Raymond Purves, in the shape of 18% of loco-maker Clyde Industries. The 1994 BRW Rich List put Robert and Sandra’s net worth at $55 million, and in 1999, at a peak of $87m. Robert as DCA Group chair and a pioneer shareholder, developed it to an aged-care and radiology giant from a $10m start-up. In 2004 he sold half his DCA shares (for an amount I can’t discover), and with a $10m deposit, started the Purves Private Fund Trust charity. Two years later, DCA was bought by a Citigroup affiliate for $2.7 billion.
Since 2004, Purves’ top-level environment fund has been doing fine.  From earnings and capital growth of more than $3 million per annum for the past two years it has donated about $1.2m pa to environmental not-for-profits… Purves has also gifted more than $5 million personally and helps fund Earth Hour Global and other eco-silliness.
Purves also helps fund Cool Australia’s work pumping green and climate-change education into the school system…
Purves has backed Tim Flannery’s views with adulation and money, for example financing conversion of Flannery’s apocalyptic tome The Weather Makers into lurid memes for schoolchildren.  In 2005 he started, and still funds, the formalized Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, which combines useful land and water care with global warming horror-shows from the likes of Professors David Karoly, Lesley Hughes and drought-forecaster Flannery… The AYCC’s statutory report says it received $96,000 in government grants in fiscal 2014 (9% of revenue)… But in fiscal 2012, taxpayers kicked in $270,000, or 34%, of AYCC income.  
Labor was generous with our money. 
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Posted by Church Leaders on Thursday, 16 April 2015
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Posted by GAMMA.CON on Monday, 18 May 2015
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Their ABC

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (12:15am)

IF a Martian were to land in Sydney and start watching the ABC, she would soon figure out the taxpayer-funded broadcaster is biased to the left.
Whether it’s a show like Q&A, which consistently stacks its panel with one lone conservative plus a Coalition politician (who may or may not be conservative) against four left-wingers. Or Insiders, which struggles to put one conservative on its couch each Sunday or MediaWatch, which just announced a new presenter, but did not extend the genepool past Paul Barry, who is not much of a leftie, but who has already done the job.
The leftist bias is patently obvious to everyone, and denials from within the ABC are laughable, even to themselves.
Now that bias has been quantified, in a survey into journalists’ political leanings by the University of the Sunshine Coast. It showed that all journalists lean left - no surprise.
But ABC journalists are extremists. They vote 41% Greens, 34% ALP and 16% Coalition - just about the exact opposite of the community.
The latest Newspoll shows the community favours 9% Greens, 31% ALP and 46% Coalition.
So will the ABC launch an affirmative action program to hire conservatives as a matter of urgency?
What assurances can the ABC provide that coverage of climate change is impartial and accurate when so many of its staffers are green zealots?
Does the ABC think its role is to balance against the perceived right-wing bias of News Limited and other commercial media?
If so, then it should say so honestly and allow the proposition to be tested. The truth is that News Limited journalists also lean left, just not so far as the ABC, with 19.8% voting for the Greens, 46.5% for Labor, and 26.7% for the Coalition, as reported by The Conversation website.
Yes, senior editors are more conservative than their staff, but they are still left of the public, voting 11.4% Greens, 34.1% Labor and 43.2% Coalition. ‘
And, as anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows, it’s the frontline journalists who create the culture, not their bosses.
So how can the ABC continue to pretend it provides balance when its staff are so out of kilter with the taxpayer? It’s why the ABC is known on twitter as #theirabc.

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Magistrate’s strength in weak legal system

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 (8:02pm)

PEOPLE have been quick to condemn magistrate Jacqueline Milledge over the refusal of a Muslim defendant to stand when she entered the court this week. But look a bit deeper and you’ll find they’re flogging the wrong horse.

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KYLE AND JULIA G

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (5:10pm)

The Prime Minister with her new best friend, this time minus the rabbit outfit:



Gillard’s previous alliances seem almost acceptable by comparison.
UPDATE. “Business deals in parking lots …” A Midnight Oil lyric comes to life for our PM.

===

BOB’S OPTIONS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (1:41pm)

Labor folk hero Bob Ellis is considering two courses of action in his strange feud with Fairfax columnist and dental expert John Birmingham. Let’s help Bob by putting those options – plus a third – to a fair, democratic and legally binding vote:
Thank you for voting!
 
 
 

Total Votes: 1,063
Return To PollCreate Your Own Poll 



UPDATE. With 1000 votes submitted, readers strongly endorse love. Marriage leads death and legal action by a massive margin.

===

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (11:49am)

Back in 1975, tornadoes were said to be caused by global cooling. Now they’re caused by global warming – or conservatives.
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LEAF SENTENCE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (11:47am)

A leaf is imprisoned in an upstairs window sill. Updates to follow:
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WE’RE ALL BAD

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (11:04am)

“If you find this amusing,” emails David Thompson, “you’re a very bad person.”
===

CHECKER APPOINTED

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (10:59am)

Our spy deep within the ABC’s Ultimo compound forwards this memo: 
I’m pleased to announce the appointment of a new and foundation Editor for the ABC Fact Check unit.
Russell Skelton has vast experience as both a media executive and writer. He is a highly regarded reporter and Contributing Editor to The Age newspaper and Fairfax Media. A former deputy editor, business editor, foreign editor and North Asia correspondent for The Age, Russell has worked in top positions at Fairfax and News Limited. He has been business editor of the Melbourne Herald.
Russell also worked for the ABC as Executive Producer for 7.30 Victoria.
He is the winner of numerous awards including a Walkley and the George Munster award for independent journalism.
The ABC News Division is delighted to attract to this position a journalist with Russell’s reputation for accuracy and integrity.
Bruce Belsham
Head Current Affairs 
Skelton is the husband of ABC presenter Virginia Trioli.
===

NEW CHARGES FOR THOMMO

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 22, 2013 (10:31am)

The member for Embattled faces additional charges: 
Embattled MP Craig Thomson is now facing 19 new charges in relation to allegations he misused thousands of dollar in union funds.
The Melbourne Magistrates’ Court heard this morning Mr Thomson would now face 173 fraud related charges – including 19 new charges …
Court documents, tendered at that hearing, alleged Mr Thomson misused $42,800, allegedly using union credit cards to pay for prostitutes, R-rated movies and ATM cash withdrawals. 
Thomson maintains his innocence. No comments.
===

Damn. Mr Trioli beats me to another ABC job

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (5:14pm)

Of course, the ABC isn’t biased. It’s just that conservatives can’t be trusted to deliver news and views.
Thus the ABC’s head of current affairs announces a new appointment, just a couple of weeks after Media Watch gained its eighth straight presenter of the Left: 

I’m pleased to announce the appointment of a new and foundation Editor for the ABC Fact Check unit. 
Russell Skelton has vast experience as both a media executive and writer. He is a highly regarded reporter and Contributing Editor to The Age newspaper and Fairfax Media. A former deputy editor, business editor, foreign editor and North Asia correspondent for The Age, Russell has worked in top positions at Fairfax and News Limited. He has been business editor of the Melbourne Herald. Russell also worked for the ABC as Executive Producer for 7.30 Victoria. 
To cut to the chase, Skelton is the husband of Virginia Trioli.
Which you click that last link, you might suspect Skelton will feel a strong temptation to make me an early subject of an ABC audit. 

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Turning dead children in Oklahoma into a joke

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (9:48am)

Ah, the Left. So sure of its greater compassion:
She thought she was making a topical political joke, but a co-creator of ‘The Daily Show’ managed to enrage many of her followers after tweeting joke about the Oklahoma tornado’s political motivations. 
‘This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives,’ wrote comedian Lizz Winstead, in a tweet, around 3:30 Monday afternoon.
The Daily Show is one that ABC managing director Mark Scott is looking to for inspiration.  

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Would journalists tell you if there really were a bust-up?

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (9:19am)

Would it be a big story if Tony Abbott was getting divorced? I suspect the answer would be yes, yes and yes.
In fact, Abbott’s marriage is as sound as a bell.
I’m just trying to establish the ground rules here, now that 3AW has referred to a rumor widely shared by journalists - but not with the public.
(From 36:50) 

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I’ll what?

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (9:05am)

News to me:
It is expected that the new owner will use Bolt for breeding more birds.
(Thanks to reader burrah.) 

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No one in Treasury fired for a $20 billion blue

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (8:48am)

Terry McCrann agrees there was no conspiracy. I just want to know why no one was fired for the mistake:
THE Treasury Department did not fiddle its forecasts to help the Government cook the Budget books - the easy, conspiratorial, explanation for why a predicted $1 billion surplus ended up as a $19.4 billion deficit. 
Nor did Treasury provide the Government with a range of forecasts, to enable it to pick and choose the one that best suited its own political purposes.
Treasury head Martin Parkinson gave a vigorous, even aggressive, defence of his department and its role in the Budget forecasting process, in the traditional post-Budget speech yesterday… Essentially it came down to this: we got it wrong. In the process, he once again proved the truth of the maxim: if you have to choose between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, go for the stuff-up every time.
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Sick pensioner finds Wayne Swan needs his $22,000 life savings

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (8:42am)

This isn’t a good look:
A QUEENSLAND pensioner emerged from a quintuple heart bypass only to find his bank had emptied his account, handing more than $22,000 to the Federal Government. 
Legislative changes rushed through Parliament late last year mean money can now be identified as “unclaimed” after an account has been inactive for more than three years, instead of seven years.... ASIC says the money can be claimed “at any time by the rightful owner”, but banks have pointed out the process can take as long as six weeks.
Toowong resident Adrian Duffy is now looking at a lengthy battle to have his savings restored.
The 75-year-old spent 21 days in hospital following quintuple heart bypass surgery and a second operation in April.
When he and his wife, 57-year-old Mary-Jane, went to check their Suncorp account, they discovered their balance had plummeted from $22,616 to zero. A note on the May 1 entry read: “Closing WDL Govt unclaimed monies.”
The couple had saved for 14 years in preparation for major health-related costs…
Mr and Mrs Duffy are adamant they received no warnings of the closure of the account. “I called it stealing,” Mr Duffy said.

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Robbing stay-at-home mums to pay for the child-care rich

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (8:34am)

Janet Albrechtsen, a critic of the baby bonus, concedes what we discussed on Sunday - that removing it, but boosting paid parental leave, privileges working women above stay-at-home mothers:
Howard’s policy had one great virtue. It was an equitable way to acknowledge the social value of women bearing and caring for children. As Howard explains in his biography, he was opposed to taxpayer-funded paid parental leave because he wanted fair treatment of both stay-at-home and workforce-bound parents. This led to the Baby Bonus, set at $3000 in 2004, rising to $5000 in 2008 - the rough equivalent of 12 or 13 weeks of paid leave at the then federal minimum wage level… 
It put an end to the mummy wars. However, with the abolition of the Baby Bonus and the introduction of paid parental leave, equity is gone. Now, even more middle-class welfare is skewed towards working parents. Even before the Baby Bonus was axed, the Gillard government boasted that working women will be $2000 better off receiving PPL than if they opt for the baby bonus. The opposition’s even more generous PPL policy is even more objectionable now that the Baby Bonus has been axed. Working women on incomes up to $150,000 can extract $75,000 from taxpayers to fund their maternity leave. 

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Not a “cut to the bone” but a scratch

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (8:12am)

Labor’s latest focus-group-tested catch-phrase to attack Tony Abbott:
These are just the start of the cuts to the bone that the Leader of the Opposition has planned ...
“Cuts to the bone”? I wish.
No one has yet challenged Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan or Finance Minister Penny Wong on their use of this ludicrous meme.
The bare facts expose the lie.
The extra savings Tony Abbott announced last week - a net $1 billion a year:
Aiming his pre-election Budget reply speech directly at the family wallet, the Opposition Leader last night pledged to lower the cost of living with a $4 billion tax and cash splash to households… 
To pay for it all, however, Mr Abbott said he would take an axe to government spending and other handouts - with $5 billion in extra savings..
Government spending: $391 billion next year.
Deficit next year: $18 billion.
A $1 billion a year cut in $391 billion outlays when we are running a deficit of $18 billion is not a “cut to the bone” but the lightest scratch.
UPDATE
Jack Waterford, like many on the Left, dramatically underestimates Abbott, but there is a kernel of truth to this attack:
But it cannot be said that cuts or changes of the order being promised will make a huge difference to the scale of government, or cause lasting damage to the economy. In any event Labor has been cutting at much the same rate… 
Labor could be better to ask whether Abbott is more timid than bold, more timorous than decisive… Can Abbott lead a government that does things, drives things and changes things? Can he win arguments about the rationing of public resources… Many of his senior colleagues are quite serious about economic restraint and simply do not trust Abbott to knuckle down to financial discipline.   

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Gonski a fight over false figures and never-never funding

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (8:03am)

The Gillard Government just makes up another number - as it did with the ”10,000” rorted 457 visas - to flog a scare:
Labor’s central claim that Abbott’s opposition to Gonski’s changes will cost schools $16.2 billion over six years is based on the extrapolation of a hypothetical and is still not justified or explained. 
School Education Minister Peter Garrett has confused the education funding debate by arbitrarily announcing funding growth to be 3 per cent for the next six years, airily claiming this is standard budgetary practice. What’s more, his claim the budget papers “clearly show” this fall to 3 per cent is plain wrong - they say “had” they fallen to this level, a hypothetical.
Paul Kelly is right to warn Abbott about the poor politics of picking a fight over school funding with not just Gillard but a Liberal premier:
Abbott visited NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and tried to persuade him not to sign up. O’Farrell, backed by his cabinet, rebuffed Abbott. 
O’Farrell told Sky News’ Australian Agenda on Sunday “the existing funding formula is broken” and “unfair”. A direct repudiation of Abbott.
But Abbott cannot slide into office just promising to do Labor things, but better. Spending is out of control. He cannot sign up to spend as much as Labor.
But Kelly says he shouldn’t worry - the real spending hit only comes in his second term:
The budget boasted an extra $9.8 billion from the national government for schools across six years. But only $2.9bn falls in the next four years of forward estimates. The bulk comes in 2017-18 and 2018-19, well into the second term of any theoretical Abbott government. Yet these ballpark numbers grossly exaggerate the new funding. 
Across the forward estimates Labor is redirecting to Gonski funds a series of five national funding plans worth $2.1bn. So the extra Gonski money is more like $800 million across four years. That’s no revolution. The Gonski funds come very slowly.
Yet they do come. 

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The ABC is killing Fairfax and betraying its charter. Answer: sell it

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (7:52am)

The arguments are sound, the politics difficult:
Tony Abbott is facing internal pressure from Victorian Liberals to privatise the ABC and SBS if he wins the September 14 election amid claims both organisations are struggling to comply with their charters… 
The Victorian Liberal Party’s state conference this weekend will vote on a motion urging the federal Coalition to make a full-scale ‘’operational review’’ of the ABC and SBS to ‘’look at the feasibility of partial or full privatisation of both’’.
The motion says ...  both broadcasters ‘’aggressively compete’’ with private media outlets in a ‘’high-velocity public information environment’’… Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam said it was becoming ‘’more apparent by the day’’ that concerns about public ownership and bias would need to be addressed if the Coalition won the September 14 election. 
Abbott does not want this debate before the election. But conservatives - and Fairfax shareholders and journalists - must quickly address the vast expansion of the ABC into on-line publishing. We are getting a state newspaper (electronic version) that is actually a propaganda sheet for the Left and is cannibalising the traditional audience of Fairfax mastheads, which must sell what the ABC is giving away.
UPDATE
Professor James Allan:
DOES it really matter if every host of the ABC’s Media Watch since its inception has left-of-centre sympathies?
Or if all the ABC political programs, not least Insiders, show an unmistakable tilt towards having more left-of-centre participants than right-of-centre ones, sometimes by a factor of 3:1?
... let’s consider a couple of analogies…
Does anyone doubt that if, say, the Labor Party got to pick every top judge that we would end up with a different set of rulings about how to read our Constitution and our federal statutes than if about half of these judges were chosen by Labor and half by the Coalition?
Of course we would. Because all of us bring to the table certain core beliefs that influence how we see and decide the borderline cases…
So the way the ABC selects its top hosts and participants for its big-ticket current affairs shows, choosing them overwhelmingly from one side of the political spectrum, means that we end up with less balance than if they were picked the way top judges are, with both sides of politics getting about even input… Personally, I think there is real bias at the ABC. But let’s say I’m wrong. Why not at least improve the awful appearances and pick, say, at least one conservative host of Media Watch (ever) or make sure that exactly half of those who appear on Insiders have a lineage on each side of politics?
But I believe the ABC, certainly under Scott, has made it clear it has not the slightest intention of fixing its bias. To plead for balance at the ABC is to whistle in the wind.
Treat that hope as vain - even naive. So the next step is to conclude that what cannot be reformed must be sold. 

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That 97 per cent claim: four problems with Cook and Obama

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (7:13am)

Global warming - propaganda
John Cook’s claim got wide coverage:
Today, the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate research to date was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Our analysis found that among papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming, over 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Overwhelming agreement among scientists had already formed in the early 1990s. And the consensus is getting stronger.
It was always odd that Cook, a Queensland University Climate Communication Research Fellow (what is that, exactly?), could find strong certainty about global warming science at the very time the failure of the world to warm as predicted was causing warmist scientists to rejig figures and think up new excuses.
Even the ABC this week conceded:
A recent slowdown in global warming means the harshest climate change predictions are less likely in the immediate decades, say an international team of scientists. Others argue the conclusions need to be taken with a ‘large grain of salt’.
But four key things are now emerging about Cook’s claim, which was swallowed whole by the usual media suspects, and was even tweeted by President Barack Obama.
First, the papers which explicity endorsed the standard global warming theory were outnumbered by those which explicitly denied it:
The guidelines for rating these abstracts [of papers on global warming] show only the highest rating value blames the majority of global warming on humans. No other rating says how much humans contribute to global warming. The only time an abstract is rated as saying how much humans contribute to global warming is if it mentions: 
that human activity is a dominant influence or has caused most of recent climate change (>50%).
If we use the system’s search feature for abstracts that meet this requirement, we get 65 results. That is 65, out of the 12,000+ examined abstracts. Not only is that value incredibly small, it is smaller than another value listed in the paper:
Reject AGW 0.7% (78)
Remembering AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming, or global warming caused by humans, take a minute to let that sink in.  This study done by John Cook and others, praised by the President of the United States, found more scientific publications whose abstracts reject global warming than say humans are primarily to blame for it… This study found ~4,000 abstracts that say humans cause some amount of global warming. Only 143 of those indicate how much warming humans are responsible for. Of those, 65 say its a lot, 78 say it isn’t much.
Second, a theory is not proved by the number of scientists who believe it. And however popular, it can be disproved by a single fact.
Third, Cook’s study missed key papers by sceptical scientists.

Fourth, some of the papers Cook claims endorse global warming theory do not.
Says who? Say the scientists who wrote them:
I emailed a sample of scientists who’s papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists’ papers as “endorsing AGW"… 

Craig D. Idso, Ph.D. Geography; Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Dr. Idso, your paper ‘Ultra-enhanced spring branch growth in CO2-enriched trees: can it alter the phase of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle?’ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Implicitly endorsing AGW without minimizing it”.
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Idso: “That is not an accurate representation of my paper. The papers examined how the rise in atmospheric CO2 could be inducing a phase advance in the spring portion of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 cycle. Other literature had previously claimed a measured advance was due to rising temperatures, but we showed that it was quite likely the rise in atmospheric CO2 itself was responsible for the lion’s share of the change. It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.”
Nicola Scafetta, Ph.D. Physics; Research Scientist, ACRIM Science Team
Dr. Scafetta, your paper ‘Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming’ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%”
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Scafetta: “Cook et al. (2013) is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.
What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun....
Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most...”
Nir J. Shaviv, Ph.D. Astrophysics; Associate Professor, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Dr. Shaviv, your paper ‘On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget’ is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; “Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise”
Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
Shaviv: “Nope… it is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C)…
Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren’t necessarily correct. Moreover, as you can see from the above example, the analysis itself is faulty, namely, it doesn’t even quantify correctly the number of scientists or the number of papers which endorse or diminish the importance of AGW.” 

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Stand up for our rule of law

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (6:54am)

Miranda Devine defends the magistrate who dealt with the Muslim man who refused to stand for her in court.
Devine blames the legal culture for making it difficult to punish such contempt. But the culture cannot change until one individual starts to push. I want that individual to be the magistrate, not the defendant.  

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Abbott prays for fair coverage

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (12:08am)

What Tony Abbott actually said:
I thank God every day for the privilege of leading this great party and I pray to God every day that my colleagues and I can give this great country the better government that it deserves… 
How the Sydney Morning Herald cast that in its first paragraph:
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he prays every day for an election victory.
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The night Mike Carlton showed us what he’s got. Dear God…

Andrew Bolt May 22 2013 (12:06am)

Tim Blair, in his update on the latest inanities of three writers of the Left, notes the verdict of Twitter on the performance of the boor Mike Carlton on the ABC’s Q&A:
...failed to impress on Q & A last night ...
Intrigued, and keen to check prejudice against evidence, I checked the transcript to see if this harsh judgment from a normally sympathetic medium was fair.
Here are all Carlton’s contributions to what the ABC fondly likes to imagine is an intellectually heavyweight show.
Note the reflex “blame America”, which leads Carlton to forget even the Cambodian genocide. Note the reflex hate-the-rich mockery, and the reflex resentment when another country snaffles what the business he expects our rich to have signed up. And note about all the schoolboy humor and, er, insights.
[UPDATE: Cut&Paste has edited excerpts, plus fact checks and screams of horror at his mumblings over oral sex.]
But judge for yourself: 

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Helen Keller’s Letter to Nazi Germany

In 1933, she attacked book-burning German students
Slate’s new history blog recently posted a piece on a semi-obscure letter from Helen Keller to German university students in the wake of a decision to burn books that were deemed “un-German.” Among the books was Keller’s, whose political leanings were chronicled in How I Became a Socialist. As Rebecca Onion points out, Keller’s letter contained a prescient excoriation for Germany’s treatment of its Jewish citizens.
To the student body of Germany:
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.
I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.
Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.


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Walk by faith, not by sight. We are all scared of the unknown and what we can't see. But we have a God who does see and is faithful. We need to trust in His direction for our life. Eventually he will make it seen to us.
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The struggle of the spirit against the mindlessness: the composer, lyricist and music writer Richard Wagner in conversation nmz


Richard Wagner, Fotografie von Pierre-Louis Pierson, Aufnahmedatum: zwischen 28. Oktober und 4. November 1867, Abzug im Format carte-de-visite. Sammlung Gunther Braam, München
(Schott) - 
  Before Richard Wagner This year there's no escape: Hardly a theater game plan comes in the anniversary year without him, no festival can do without the tension of the ubiquitous Tonsetzers, feature articles and magazines above are reflected in wordy appraisals, valuations and dedications. Everywhere will be talking about Richard Wagner, the new musikzeitung, however, has tried to talk to him. To the conversation, Juan Martin Koch tried.
new musikzeitung: Mr. Wagner, two years ago we spoke with your father Franz Liszt among other things, the "desire for change" in the musical and cultural life of our time (Schott 9/2011). What has done since then, in your view?
Richard Wagner: The struggle of man against the existing society has begun. This struggle, he is the most sacred, the most sublime that has ever been fought, for he is the struggle of consciousness against the coincidence of the Spirit against the inanity, morality and evil, the force against the weak: it is the struggle for our determination, our right to our happiness. The status quo, it has great power over the people. Our current society has a terrible power over us because they deliberately inhibited the growth of our power. The power of this holy struggle we can only arise from the knowledge of the depravity of our society. If we are well aware of how our existing society of their task contradicts how violent and often intentionally keeps us, our determination, our right to get our happiness, we have also gained the strength to fight them, to defeat them. Our first, most important task is therefore: on all sides to examine the nature and work of our existing society, and to grasp more clearly, it is once detected, then it is also judged! (1) However, we have this modern world to shed light necessary in order for us to find out that nothing was to be hoped from it? You will always be hostile and under every form, such requests as we have for the care of a noble art, because they just what we want, do not want. (2)

The bloody heavy work of education

Schott: Where do you get the motivation to compose in such a hostile environment?
Wagner: Only with true desperation, I always take back the Art on: happen Diess, and I must renounce the reality again - I have to throw myself back into the waves of the artistic imagination to satisfy me in an imaginary world, it must at least also helped my imagination, my imagination must be supported.Then I can not live like a dog, I can not embed on straw and refresh myself in booze: my very irritated, fine, immensely covetous, but extremely delicate and tender sensuality, must somehow be flattered if my mind the bloody heavy work of formation of a unvorhandenen world is to succeed. (3)
Schott: Which brings us indirectly reached even at the cultural education ...
Wagner: The daily perceived and bitterly lamented gap between the so-called education and ignorance is so vast, a connecting link between the two so unthinkable, a reconciliation so impossible to admit at some sincerity, founded on those unnatural formation of modern art at its deepest shame is would, as a life elements owe their existence, which in turn can support its existence only to the deepest ignorance of the actual mass of humanity. The only thing that should be able to modern art in this their assigned position and assets in honest hearts aims, namely to spread education, they can not do, simply for the reason that because the art in order to somehow act in life can even the flower of a natural, that is grown out from below, education must be, can never be capable however, formation pour down from above. At best, therefore, resembles the person seeking in a foreign language a people communicate to themselves, which does not know this our culture art: Anything, and especially also the spirit richest person what he produces can only lead to the most ridiculous confusions and misunderstandings. (4)

"We have the whole press against us"

Schott: I wonder what lies at our school system, with its emphasis on the natural sciences.
Wagner might if our science, the idol of the modern world, our state constitutions found so much out sense that they would be able, for example, figure out a cure for starving unemployed citizens, we should take them at the end of the substitutions for the impotent become ecclesiastical religion then . But they can not do anything. And the state is using its social "order" in the face of extended circles there like a lost child, and has only one concern to prevent that it would otherwise about. To this end, he pulls himself together, gives laws and increased the armies: the bravery is formed disciplinary action, which then in cases occurring injustice is protected against Übele consequences. (5)
Schott: What role do the media in this context?
Wagner: We have the whole press against us, which is very natural: for she is the only who they interested by material for themselves. All the rulers of this world, from the highest to the lowest powers, have their advocates, their organs in the press. Conviction is nothing here that interests all. (6)
Schott: Do you see a way out?
Wagner: We need to set ourselves an organ in the daily press. Even in my report on the music school I have shown the necessity of starting a specifischen press organ for the same. Diess must now be placed immediately into the work, without any loss of time. (7)
Schott: Interesting, because we would have to bring one or the other suggestion ...
Wagner: I wish that this sheet of 1 January of the next year to appear. I have already counseled me about it. The cost of such weekly Journales are not important: I have made for me by experts to calculate, after which with 3000 florins to justify this magazine and to be maintained to the point where they must entertain through their own sales themselves. In the cheap requirement that my Creirung would be entrusted to the music school, I had already ordered the redaction of this Journales considered.(8)

The drama illuminated by artistic creation

Schott: We'll closely monitor ... Again back to the position of art and music: As an important means for their anchoring in society puts so for some time placement in the center. Are they right?
Wagner: Every art form divides naturally only in the degree of, as the core, the drama zureist in it, which can stimulate and justify the work of art only by its relation to man or in his derivation of it.Allverständlich, fully understood and justified, each art work in proportion as it rises in the drama, the drama is illuminated. (9)
Schott: The now refers primarily to your own work. Can your conception of the musical drama because claim universal validity?
Wagner: Who has understood me as it would have been me to do it, set up an arbitrary erdachtes system, henceforth musicians and poets should work after that did not want to understand me. But who also wants to believe the new, what I said about, based on absolute acceptance and is not identical with the experience and the nature of the developed object that is can not understand me, even if he wanted to. The new thing that I said about, is nothing else than me become aware of the unconscious in the nature of things, as I became aware of the THINKING artist, because I sensed that its connection to what has so far been taken only separated by artists. I have therefore invented nothing new, but just found that connection. (10)
Schott: Hmm ... Do not you have the impression that your opinion has now become established?
Wagner: The utter immaturity of the theater-going public of our provincial cities in terms of a for precipitating first sentence of a new, it occurring Art phenomenon - because it's only used already outwardly judged of and demonstrated to see accreditirte works - brought me to the decision , at any price to bring in smaller theaters a larger work for the first performance. (11)

Neglected area of ​​public art

Schott: That seems to me a blanket judgment too ...
Wagner: The perfect Styllosigkeit of German opera, and the almost grotesque incorrectness of their services, the hope is corporate to meet in a home theater for higher task practiced art means not to grasp: the author, in this neglected public art areas, a seriously intentioned, intends to make greater task applies to its support of anything, as the real talent of individual singers who taught in any school, guided by no style for the presentation, here and there, rarely - because this is the talent of the Germans on the whole low - and leave completely themselves, occur. Therefore it can not provide a single theater, would be able, happy case, only an association airborne forces, which would be called together for a certain time on a certain point. (12)
Schott: What role do the structural conditions of the theater?
Wagner: The role of the theater building for the future must be considered by no means our modern theater building as solved: in them are conventional assumptions and laws giving maaß who with the requirements of pure art nothing in common. Where acquisition speculation act determines on the one hand, and with her luxurious ostentation on the other hand, the absolute interest of art must be affected to the most sensitive, and so not a builder of the world is as it is able, that by the separation of our audience in under most diverse objects and citizenship categories offered layering and fragmentation of the auditoriums on legislation to raise the beauty. If we are in the theater of the future of the common rooms, we see without difficulty that to a rich field of the invention is open to him. (13)
Schott: What do you say about the state of the orchestra, whose existence threatened repeatedly appears. What function does it perform today?
Wagner: The orchestra has an undeniable power of speech, and the creations of our modern instrumental music have revealed to us Diess. We have the symphonies of Beethoven Diess seen develop language skills to a level from which it felt forced, even to say what exactly it but can not speak to his nature. Now that we have just supplied in the Wortversmelodie him what he could not pronounce, and zuwiesen him as the carrier of this kindred melody, the effectiveness of it - totally easy - just only that should not say what it is by its nature can only speak, - we call this ability to speak clearly to the orchestra as meaning that it is the manifestation of the power of the ineffable. (14)

Horny modern opera, music, and other excesses

Schott: Beethoven - well and good, but the "modern instrumental music" is even now but already a bit further. How do you assess the current composers scene?
Wagner: Only the incompetent, weak, knows no nothwendigstes, strongest soul desire in himself: in him outweighs any moment the random, occasionally excited by external desires that he, precisely because it is only a longing for it can never be silent, and therefore, arbitrarily thrown from one to the other back and forth, never even get to the real enjoyment. Did this Bedürfnißlose but the power to pursue the satisfaction random cravings persistent, so just created the hideous, unnatural phenomena in life and in art, which we as outgrowths insane selfish and bustle, as murderous lust of the despot, or as a horny modern opera, comply with such unspeakable disgust. (15)
Schott: Who do you specifically have in mind with this diagnosis, and why maybe we can discuss some other time. In our context, however, would be interesting to see which treatment you suggest.
Wagner: The outrageous Dani Eder chairs our present domestic German composer initially made ​​me aware of what is to take now: (16) Complete you, you unfortunate people, a healthy digestion, and suddenly living in a very different shape to yourself, when you could seen it from the abdomen Plage out!Truly, all of our politics, diplomacy, ambition, fainting and science, and - unfortunately - our whole modern art, in which one has the palate to spoilage of the stomach so long only satisfied, irritated, and again tried to flatter, until finally insensibly only one body was still galvanisirt, - verily, all these Schmarotzergewüchse of our life today have no other reason and soil from which they grow, as - ruined our abdomen! Oh! wanted and everyone could understand me, I Diess - almost ridiculous-sounding - and yet so terribly shouts true word! - But now I realize that I am the hundredth to the thousandth gerathe: I will finally close then! (17)
Schott: In fact, even the space is limited in our monthly ...
Wagner: Above all, however, I must also have money: (18) Could you give me at once, but in a few days or 100 dollars to any percentage ... (19)
Schott: ... here we have to cancel, unfortunately, Mr. Wagner. Thank you for this interview!

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20 Pearls of Wisdom From The Book of Job

If you're enduring a season of hardship, be encouraged and use this time to build your faith. God is still on the throne and He's in control. Let these 20 pearls of wisdom from the book of Job remind us that God always has the last say in our lives....

READ MORE ►http://r.beliefnet.com/JobILJO — 
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JEWISH COMMUNITY REACHES OUT TO OKLAHOMA TORNADO VICTIMS

As emergency crews sort through the wreckage of yesterday’s Oklahoma tornado, which has killed at least 51 people, the Jewish community is reaching out to offer support. Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו contacted President Barack Obama early this morning, expressing his condolences and prayers. Meanwhile, the Chabad Community Center of Southern Oklahoma is organizing a supply drive for victims, many of whom saw their homes flattened during the Monday storm.

Read full article: http://www.jspace.com/news/articles/jewish-community-reaches-out-to-oklahoma-tornado-victims/14074

Follow Jewish news at Jspace.com. — ‎with ‎דורית קוסטיקה‎.‎
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Incredible footage of Jerusalem from the year 1896!
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I have a poster in my window and also a couple of small ones on my car of my local Liberal candidate Emanuele Cicchiello. When I went out to my car this morning, I discovered that it had been 'egged'! You know when the oposition can't beat you with reasoned debate, but...
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If you try to serve people, it impresses them. If you try to impress people it irritates them.

Pastor Rick Warren'

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a letter of condolences to the President and people of the United States, following the tragic tornado in Oklahoma.

The Prime Minister wrote:
On behalf of the Government and people of Israel, I offer our heartfelt condolences to you and to the people of the United States on the massive tornado that struck in Oklahoma and exacted such a horrific toll in human life.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this tragedy and their families at this difficult time.

In friendship,
Benjamin Netanyahu
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Mini lion
Gillette the best a cat can get
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JensenSutta-Malkin-2
Photo credit: www.jensensutta.com
Hi everyone! Here's the MichelleMalkin.com newsletter for May 21st. Enjoy!

From the Blog

Tornado horror: Dozens reported dead in Moore, Oklahoma

The death and injury toll from yesterday’s horrific tornado that ripped through Oklahoma continues to rise...

Dept. of Justice IG report: DOJ official leaked document to smear Fast & Furious whistleblower

Approved leaks only, please!

Senior Obama adviser: President’s precise location during and after Benghazi attack ‘largely irrelevant’

This is “what difference does it make” v2.0...

More From the Right Side of the Web

Featured Video

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The president may want us to believe that he's unaware of what's going on, but we know better. And we will not stand down.

Michelle's Top Tweets

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And ... Our Hate Tweet of the Day

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*Sigh*

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HMS Beagle
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Births[edit]

Deaths[edit]

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“I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.” - 1 Corinthians 1:10
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious."
1 Peter 2:3

If:--then, this is not a matter to be taken for granted concerning every one of the human race. "If:"--then there is a possibility and a probability that some may not have tasted that the Lord is gracious. "If:"--then this is not a general but a special mercy; and it is needful to enquire whether we know the grace of God by inward experience. There is no spiritual favour which may not be a matter for heart-searching.

But while this should be a matter of earnest and prayerful inquiry, no one ought to be content whilst there is any such thing as an "if" about his having tasted that the Lord is gracious. A jealous and holy distrust of self may give rise to the question even in the believer's heart, but the continuance of such a doubt would be an evil indeed. We must not rest without a desperate struggle to clasp the Saviour in the arms of faith, and say, "I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him." Do not rest, O believer, till thou hast a full assurance of thine interest in Jesus. Let nothing satisfy thee till, by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit bearing witness with thy spirit, thou art certified that thou art a child of God. Oh, trifle not here; let no "perhaps" and "peradventure" and "if" and "maybe" satisfy thy soul. Build on eternal verities, and verily build upon them. Get the sure mercies of David, and surely get them. Let thine anchor be cast into that which is within the veil, and see to it that thy soul be linked to the anchor by a cable that will not break. Advance beyond these dreary "ifs;" abide no more in the wilderness of doubts and fears; cross the Jordan of distrust, and enter the Canaan of peace, where the Canaanite still lingers, but where the land ceaseth not to flow with milk and honey.

Evening

"There is corn in Egypt."
Genesis 42:2
Famine pinched all the nations, and it seemed inevitable that Jacob and his family should suffer great want; but the God of providence, who never forgets the objects of electing love, had stored a granary for his people by giving the Egyptians warning of the scarcity, and leading them to treasure up the grain of the years of plenty. Little did Jacob expect deliverance from Egypt, but there was the corn in store for him. Believer, though all things are apparently against thee, rest assured that God has made a reservation on thy behalf; in the roll of thy griefs there is a saving clause. Somehow he will deliver thee, and somewhere he will provide for thee. The quarter from which thy rescue shall arise may be a very unexpected one, but help will assuredly come in thine extremity, and thou shalt magnify the name of the Lord. If men do not feed thee, ravens shall; and if earth yield not wheat, heaven shall drop with manna. Therefore be of good courage, and rest quietly in the Lord. God can make the sun rise in the west if he pleases, and make the source of distress the channel of delight. The corn in Egypt was all in the hands of the beloved Joseph; he opened or closed the granaries at will. And so the riches of providence are all in the absolute power of our Lord Jesus, who will dispense them liberally to his people. Joseph was abundantly ready to succour his own family; and Jesus is unceasing in his faithful care for his brethren. Our business is to go after the help which is provided for us: we must not sit still in despondency, but bestir ourselves. Prayer will bear us soon into the presence of our royal Brother: once before his throne we have only to ask and have: his stores are not exhausted; there is corn still: his heart is not hard, he will give the corn to us. Lord, forgive our unbelief, and this evening constrain us to draw largely from thy fulness and receive grace for grace.
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Today's reading: 1 Chronicles 13-15, John 7:1-27 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Chronicles 13-15


Bringing Back the Ark

1 David conferred with each of his officers, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. 2 He then said to the whole assembly of Israel, "If it seems good to you and if it is the will of the LORD our God, let us send word far and wide to the rest of our people throughout the territories of Israel, and also to the priests and Levites who are with them in their towns and pasturelands, to come and join us. 3 Let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we did not inquire of it during the reign of Saul." 4 The whole assembly agreed to do this, because it seemed right to all the people....

Today's New Testament reading: John 7:1-27

Jesus Goes to the Festival of Tabernacles
1 After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. 2 But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, 3 Jesus' brothers said to him, "Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. 4 No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world." 5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him....
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