Monday, August 14, 2017

Mon Aug 14th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Press are calling for Barnaby Joyce to stand down after the discovery he had dual citizenship. In all likelihood, he won't have to step down or resign because he demonstrably took due diligence. Taking due diligence confuses the press who can only see a double standard if it suits them. Press don't understand how people who are born overseas might not know their nationality if they are Green and haven't exercised due diligence, but an Australian born conservative might not know they are deemed a foreign national after their father had been born in a commonwealth nation prior to either Australian or NZ citizenship being defined. The press claim the ALP are safe, possibly because none of them were born in Australia? And the ALP swear at each other all the time, so they've probably sworn off any dual nationality. One is confident if an ALP member does fall foul of the constitutional imposition, then Shorten will allow a plebiscite on the issue.  

 On this day in history, Octavian was enjoying his second of three days of triumph over Dalmatia in 29 BC. They would rebel again after Nero in 68 and probably inspire the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 because Caeser needed to make a statement, and some one in seven people across the empire were Jewish. In 1040 King Duncan lost his fight with Macbeth. Duncan was a young king, unlike his Shakesperian depiction. As for three witches, they no doubt are hiding in Birnum Wood. In 1183, the Japanese emperor who was a child took flight with the royal treasures. He would be murdered so that he wasn't killed by the wrong person. The Battle of Mauron was a success for Breton's over France in the early part of the hundred years war in 1352. Eventually, France conquered all. Portugal successfully resisted Castilian Spain in 1385 at the Battle of Aljubarrota. In 1415, Henry the Navigator, son of John I of Portugal had a quick victory over Morocco at the Battle of Ceuta. It wasn't a long lasting victory as the object was worthless without Tangier. In 1437 Portugal would attempt to take Tangier, fail and sue for peace. Henry the Navigator was a follower of a common legend of the day, Prester John. Prester John, according to popular legend, was a descendant of a Maggi from Jesus's birth who was king of a Christian Nation in the Orient, lost among Islamic and pagan tribes. The legend was strongest between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries and fuelled expansion eastward, along with the real promise of spice and goods. In 1592, Korea defeated Japan on water at the Battle of Hansan Island. In 1880, Cologne Cathedral was completed. In 1885, Japan patented the first rust proof paint. In 1888 an audio recording was played at a press conference showing Thomas Edison's phonograph. In 1893, France began registering cars.  In 1901 Gustave Whitehead claimed to have made the first powered flight. In 1914, France unsuccessfully tried to seize Lorraine from Germany. In 1915, BA Santamaria was born. He was staunchly Catholic and opposed Communism while supporting worker's rights. He also opposed unfettered capitalism. He was wrong about unfettered capitalism, fetters make it worse. In 1935, the US created Social Security as a government pension system for the retired. It was so successful it now supports generations of people from cradle to grave. In 1945, Japan accepted surrender unconditionally. Also in 1945, the Viet Minh launch the August Revolution plunging Vietnam into civil war which had people fleeing into the late 1980s. In 1969, UK deployed troops in Northern Ireland. In 1974, Turkey invades Cyprus creating almost 200000 refugees and killing over 6000. In 1975, the Rocky Horror Picture Show began. In 1980, Lech Walesa lead strikes at Gdansk. In 1987, Julian Assange's family was released after a police raid. In 1994, Carlos the Jackal was captured. In 1996, Turkish forces killed a Cypriot for climbing a flagpole in Cyprus, in a UN zone. In 2003, widespread blackouts affected North East America. In 2013 Egypt was in a state of emergency following the dumping of Morsi. 
I am a decent man and don't care for 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 Blue Moon

I made the audio file many years ago after talented artist George Peter Tingley posted a piano piece. Mixing my stuff with his high end stuff would be wrong, but the innocence of my attempt is appealing.
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"Blue Moon" is a classic popular song. It was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934, and has become a standard ballad. The song has been covered as a released single by artists such as Billie Holiday, and Mel Torme. In popular culture, the song has featured in musical films such as Grease and Blue Moon is generally regarded as the anthem of Manchester City Football Club.
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I was raised as an Atheist. I learned, after reading the Bible, that God loves me, and you. This is his song for you too. He loves you, and wants to be with you. 
All the elements are me and mine. ARIA ISRC number AUAWN1212129


=== from 2016 === 
 The US Christian conservative lobby have the power to deny any GOP contestant the presidency. And if they don't support Trump then they will inflict Hillary Clinton on the US, just as when they did not endorse Romney or McCain. Trump needs the support of the rump if he is going to win the Presidency in eleven weeks. The alternative is highly undesirable. Dems, after 8 years of inept rule, are in a position to reform and strengthen. Their insiders have seen their mistakes, and need time to push the agenda for improvement they can only do while they aren't in government in the Whitehouse. Journalists and media will never push for Democrat reform as "If they are electable there is no need for reform" or "If they aren't elected then nobody is good enough for government." The Alinsky dichotomy is false "Heads I win, tails you lose." It is about politics, not fairness. In a fair world, Obama was in prison, not President. Ditto Hillary. To not support Trump is to endorse the weakening of the military, an expansion of debt and good people will die, abandoned by a grotesque legislature that cares only about maintaining a trough. There is no alternative. Only Trump can #MakeAmericaGreatAgain 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
 Two years ago, as the Conservative Voice began work on the History of the World in a Year project, the Australian Federal Government was different. A desperate Rudd was hoping to lose an election but save 'the furniture'. That was to be the best he could achieve. It was to be a terrible result for ALP. But the furniture had been saved, with the ALP keeping a blocking vote in the Senate with aligned independents. The new Abbott led government immediately ended the murderous policy allowing people smugglers to ship people to Australia by boats. The new government also ended the carbon and mining taxes which were strangling business, cut back on ALP's runaway spending and managed to not make one single spending blow out which plagued ALP so that the ALP finance minister had lost over $130 billion in six budgets. 

Because the ALP have been so weak since, the media have campaigned on their behalf. Distractions for the ALP, like drugs in sport, gay marriage, Aboriginal sovereignty, education arrangements, medical benefits and industrial corruption have all been flagged by the media as important social issues which the government could never cut spending on. But the truth is the government has to cut spending if it is to continue supporting welfare. $7 copayments to doctors are not onerous like $75 fines for minor ticketing transgressions. Funding for education must be made manageable. Slogans like $100k degrees don't pay bills. For things to remain the same, things are going to have to change. 

Australia cannot afford industrial corruption. We can't accept a PM or two who were involved in standover tactics embezzling funds from business in the name of unions where union members never benefit. A campaign of lies against a judge sitting on a royal commission cannot excuse corruption. Sitting members have said things in parliament they could be sued for, or sent to jail, if they said them outside of parliament, regarding the royal commission's judge. The ALP needs to reform. It hasn't. It may still be electable as an unreformed entity. But that is a tragedy for her supporters. 
From 2014
People are surprised the god daughter of a hedonist atheist who died after they stopped having pleasure in life, the daughter of one of the most corrupt Premiers NSW has had, was present at a stabbing murder while high off her face on Ice. The girl is privileged, went to elite private schools and is facing serious charges, but in all likelihood will be pitied rather than punished. Indulgent crack whores don't get better through pity. Meanwhile nine Liberal Party parliamentarians have stepped aside while being investigated. Combined, they fail to reach within three orders of magnitude of Eddie Obeid's half a billion dollar misappropriations. Had the donations come from union officials it would have been legal. It is important that money handling is transparent and above board. Miss Wran inherited a forty million dollar estate. Crime pays? She probably has a car somewhere. Hockey's theory is right, those who use cars most tend to be wealthy. Many are criticising Hockey for his statement of truth. They will probably be defending Wran. 

Under Obama the US is spending a lot of money and it isn't going to unity but racial division and police overkill. Noting two journalists were arrested recently for not leaving a McDonalds fast enough. A peaceful protest march is met by riot police with tear gas and truck mounted SMG. Gotta love freedom. How did a young woman come to fall from a high rise balcony? She was the daughter of a Christian pastor in NZ. She had flown to the Gold Coast. Loved animals. Met someone through a dating app, Tinder. He is a pervert who recorded his numerous sexual conquests using multiple cameras. It was 2am. If he were black, he could have been Obama's son. He has the right to remain silent. He has no right to his hobby. Another with no right to their hobby is Mike Carlton, who is being challenged over the anti racism provision 18c for a bigoted article on Israel. Maybe now the Left will want the legislation repealed. 
Historical perspective on this day
29 BC – Octavian holds the second of three consecutive triumphs in Rome to celebrate the victory over the Dalmatian tribes.
1040 – King Duncan I is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth. The latter succeeds him as King of Scotland.
1183 – Taira no Munemori and the Taira clan take the young Emperor Antoku and the three sacred treasuresand flee to western Japan to escape pursuit by the Minamoto clan (traditional Japanese date: Twenty-fifth Day of the Seventh Month of the Second Year of Juei).
1288 – Count Adolf VIII of Berg grants town privileges to Düsseldorf, the village on the banks of the Düssel.

1352 – War of the Breton Succession: Anglo-Bretons defeat the French in the Battle of Mauron.
1370 – Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, grants city privileges to Carlsbad which is subsequently named after him.
1385 – Portuguese Crisis of 1383–85: Battle of Aljubarrota: Portuguese forces commanded by King John I and his general Nuno Álvares Pereira defeat the Castilian army of King John I.
1480 – Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam; they are later honored in the Church.
1598 – Nine Years' War: Battle of the Yellow Ford: Irish forces under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, defeats an English expeditionary force under Henry Bagenal.
1720 – The Spanish military Villasur expedition is wiped out by Pawnee and Otoewarriors near present-day Columbus, Nebraska.

1814 – A cease fire agreement, called the Convention of Moss, ended the Swedish–Norwegian War.
1816 – The United Kingdom formally annexes the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, administering the islands from the Cape Colony in South Africa.
1842 – American Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminolesforced from Florida to Oklahoma.
1848 – Oregon Territory is organized by act of Congress.
1880 – Construction of Cologne Cathedral, the most famous landmark in Cologne, Germany, is completed.
1885 – Japan's first patent is issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint.
1888 – An audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made, is played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London, England.
1893 – France becomes the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration.

1900 – The Eight-Nation Alliance occupies Beijing, China, in a campaign to end the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China.
1901 – The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21.
1911 – United States Senate leaders agree to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the Senate among leading candidates to fill the vacancy left by William P. Frye's death.
1912 – U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua to support the U.S.-backed government installed there after José Santos Zelaya had resigned three years earlier.
1914 – World War I: Start of the Battle of Lorraine, an unsuccessful French offensive designed to recover the lost province of Moselle from Germany.
1916 – Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary.
1921 – Tannu Uriankhai, later Tuvan People's Republic is established as a completely independent country (which is supported by Soviet Russia).

1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn; it is not fully extinguished until September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres (970 km2).
1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired.
1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last known public execution in the United States.
1937 – The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when six Japanese bombers are shot down by Chinese fighters while raiding Chinese air bases.

1941 – World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims.
1945 – Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperorrecords the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time).
1945 – The Viet Minh launches August Revolution amid the political confusion and power vacuum engulfing Vietnam.
1947 – Pakistan gains Independence from the British Empire and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.

1959 – Founding and first official meeting of the American Football League.
1967 – UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal.
1969 – Operation Banner: British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland.
1971 – Bahrain declares independence as the State of Bahrain.
1972 – An Ilyushin Il-62 airliner crashes near Königs Wusterhausen, East Germany, due to an in-flight fire, killing 156.
1973 – The Pakistan Constitution of 1973 comes into effect.
1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in film history, opens in London.
1980 – Lech Wałęsa leads strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland shipyards.

1994 – Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as "Carlos the Jackal", is captured.
1996 – Greek Cypriot refugee Solomos Solomou is murdered by Turkish forces while trying to climb a flagpole in order to remove a Turkish flag from its mast in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus.
2003 – A widescale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada.
2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522, en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Prague, Czech Republic via Athens, crashes in the hills near Grammatiko, Greece, killing 121 passengers and crew.
2006 – 61 schoolgirls killed in Chencholai bombing by Sri Lankan Air Force air strike.
2007 – The Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 334 people.
2013 – Egypt declares a state of emergency as security forces kill hundreds of demonstrators supporting former president Mohamed Morsi.
2015 – The US Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

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

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space
Happy birthday and many happy returns Joy Slam. Born on the same day as Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albemarle (1653), Hans Christian Ørsted (1777), Doc Holliday (1851), Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin (1866), Frank Oppenheimer (1912), B. A. Santamaria (1915), René Goscinny (1926), Steve Martin and Wim Wenders (1945), Gary Larson (1950), Peter Costello (1957), Sarah Brightman (1960), Emmanuelle Béart (1965) and Mila Kunis (1983). On your day, Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)
1816 – The United Kingdom formally annexed the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, ruling them from the Cape Colony in South Africa.
1880 – Construction of the Cologne Cathedral—Germany's most visited landmark—was completed, 632 years after it had begun.
1941 – After a secret meeting aboard warships, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post-World War II world despite the fact that the United States had yet to enter the war.
1975 – The film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is still in limited release today, making it the longest-running theatrical release in film history, premiered in Los Angeles.
2006 – The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in the Lebanon War between Lebanon and Israel. Run Tristan well. Use that cologne. Meet with the right people. Make the cease fire and enjoy the show.
Deaths
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Andrew Bolt

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PM pulls the hood over his own head

Piers Akerman – Saturday, August 13, 2016 (11:09pm)

THE Turnbull government’s knee-jerk reaction to the thoroughly misleading ABC special on the treatment of ­inmates at the NT’s Don Dale Youth ­Detention Centre marks yet another failed ­response to the real issue hiding in plain sight. 
 Continue reading 'PM pulls the hood over his own head'
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ARTIST GETS A REAL JOB

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 14, 2016 (6:20pm)

The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Elizabeth Farrelly investigates the crucial issue of vocational training: 
I knew an unemployed artist who found work with a registered training organisation. Not teaching art. Teaching forklift drivers. “You ever drive a forklift?” I asked in surprise. He said no, unnecessary. He’d done a short course (not in forklift driving). He’d ticked the VET boxes for the TAE certificate from the RTO. All good. To me it made no sense, even sans the alphabet soup. Still doesn’t. But this is what we have now instead of an education system: a market. Caveat emptor.
It has to end. 
Damn right it does. We can’t have artist-trained forklift drivers. They’ll be crashing and stuffing tines into goods, products and people in warehouses across the nation. They’d be a deadly menace to themselves and others, which is presumably why this fellow is referred to in the past tense. Also from Farrelly: 
This is not lefty claptrap. 
Well, if you actually have to tell us, Elizabeth …
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DO NOT SPEAK OF IT

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 14, 2016 (3:00pm)

Cooling is so uncool: 
A physicist who foresees a 30-year period of global cooling says other climatologists have tried to “silence” her latest research on solar cycles.
Valentina Zharkova, a professor at Northumbria University at Newcastle in the United Kingdom, said the Royal Astronomical Society received requests to withdraw a press release on her team’s latest research pointing to a significant drop in solar activity by mid-century. 
Global cooling was until recently an article of faith among the climate disaster community. Now even the mere mention of it is haram. This is like witnessing the beginning of Islam’s Sunni-Shia divide.
(Via Waxing Gibberish, who emails: “How can this research be controversial? It either proves something or it doesn’t and the only way that matters is if it disproves something based on an agenda rather than scientific fact. And since when has science ever been about consensus?")
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ONLY THE GREATEST

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 14, 2016 (1:14pm)

On International Left-Handers Day, Iowahawk celebrates his fellow southpaws and demands: 
Let’s see what YOU got, right-handers. 
Well, only the finest athlete ever: 
There will never be another Don Bradman, but that will not stop the quest to find one. He was simply the best batsman and the most outstanding sportsman of all time.

He was better at cricket than anybody else has been at any other sport. 
Aside from Bradman, we right-handers have little else.
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HERE AND ELSEWHERE

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 14, 2016 (1:45am)

Counter-terror police are investigating whether millions of dollars in childcare subsidies allegedly obtained by fraud have been funnelled overseas following a series of raids across Sydney …
The ABC’s 7.30 reported on Friday that among the properties raided were Lakemba family daycare businesses, which had claimed more than $27 million in childcare benefits and rebates since 2012, and had nearly 600 home family daycare providers on their books. 
In a report commissioned by the Government, Sir Eric Pickles, the former Conservative Cabinet minister, today warns that the authorities are in a “state of denial” and are “turning a blind eye” to election fraud.
He said that there is evidence of voter fraud “especially in communities of Pakistani and Bangladeshi background” but that the cases have been ignored because of “over-sensitivities about ethnicity and religion”. 
Italy: 
Italy has ordered the deportation of a Tunisian man suspected of plotting a terror attack at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 
Sweden: 
Someone has figured out why all these rapes are taking place in Sweden. Börje Svensson, a psychotherapist and “an expert on sexual criminals”, was interviewed in one of the biggest Swedish newspapers recently about Sweden’s rape epidemic.
His conclusion? The good, hot, summer weather. 
(Via Brat.)
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HE STUMBLES, HE FALLS, HE BLAMES

Tim Blair – Saturday, August 13, 2016 (11:03pm)

Bad numbers are becoming worse for Donald Trump: 
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is opening a wider lead in three battleground states, while maintaining an advantage over Republican rival Donald Trump in Florida, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll has found.
In Colorado, Mrs. Clinton has a 14-percentage-point lead over Mr. Trump, 46% to 32%, six points wider than a poll taken in July before the two parties held their national conventions.
Mrs. Clinton also gained some ground in two Southern states Republicans hoped to make competitive: Virginia, where she leads 46%-33%, and North Carolina, where she is ahead 48%-39%. 
Trump is now in difficult territory: “These are not margins easily overcome, even with some 88 days to go before the vote. If Trump were to mount a comeback by November, he would be the first presidential candidate to do so from such a deficit.”
UPDATE. Polls aside, Trump is a success with Australian model and businesswoman Jennifer Hawkins: 
She met him as the winner of his Miss Universe pageant in 2004, back when The Apprentice was on air, the Iraq war was underway, and the billionaire appeared on the cover of Esquire with the prophetic cover line, “How I’d Run The Country (Better)”.


“He inspired me to keep going and follow my heart,” she says.

“He’s really passionate and really driven. He’s like, ‘What’s next?’ He prompts you to think, ‘All right, what is next?’” 
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LEAST FRIENDLY GAMES SINCE MUNICH

Tim Blair – Saturday, August 13, 2016 (8:33pm)

Anti-Semitism at the 2016 Olympics is completely out of control.
(Via Elaine.)
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Tick, tick, tick, Bernardi

Andrew Bolt August 14 2016 (10:56am)

Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Deborah Snow:
For a man seeking to mobilise a new mass movement on the right of Australian politics, the normally outspoken ultra-conservative [?] South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi has gone strangely quiet. 
It is just over a month since he announced via a blog entry on July 6 that he was kick-starting an outfit dubbed the Australian Conservatives “to help change politics and give common sense a united voice”.
On August 1, he emailed supporters saying he had “registered” more than 50,000 people…
[W]orrying for a number of his Liberal Party colleagues is that they have no idea where he is heading either. And their unease is growing.
“The feeling is that these guys, led largely by Cory Bernardi, are ready to do something that is quasi-separate,” said one senior Liberal this week.
“...The big question is whether it’s something that could ultimately split from the Liberal Party...”
Bernardi has made no secret of the fact that his Australian Conservatives are in large part a response to the July 2 election result, which he has branded a “disaster”.
Pauline Hanson’s resurgent One Nation has bagged four Senate seats. And “over 1.7 million votes were cast for right-of-centre or conservative parties rather than the Liberal Party”, he wrote in his July 6 blog post…
ABC election analyst Antony Green says “there is clearly room in the Australian political spectrum for a party to the right of the Liberals, a right-wing version of the Greens” which could have a “serious impact in the Senate”. 
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
Bernardi’s right to say the Liberal Party should be the home of mainstream conservatism in Australia. But what if things continue to go the way they are, with an increasingly progressive agenda talking hold within the party? 
Abbott’s stirring Adelaide speech stands in stark contrast to what we hear from the party’s current leader. Never mind speaking for conservatives - Turnbull doesn’t much like speaking to conservatives. While the Liberals persist with a leader disdainful of - and somewhat embarrassed by - the party’s conservative values and foundations, conservatives will surely continue to look to support viable alternatives. The only question is whether the shift of support away from the Liberals lasts only as long as Turnbull’s leadership, or whether the shift of support becomes permanent.
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Phelps on the Liberals going to the dogs

Andrew Bolt August 14 2016 (10:32am)

NSW Liberal MLC Peter Phelps on his own government’s proposed ban on greyhound racing:
I have read the McHugh report and there are some terrible stories in it. But is this industry so irredeemable that it must be banned? ... 
The Hon. Mark Pearson said that 10 out of 10 witnesses who were called to the inquiry—nine, actually; one was implicated—said that they used live baiting. I could select 10 former members of Parliament who, if we were to interview them and use their evidence as evidence of a grander theme within New South Wales parliamentarians, we could say are all corrupt. The selective use of 10 out of 10 witnesses who were specifically chosen because they were believed to be dodgy anyway is not a great argument. In fact, McHugh makes that point in the report. He said that what those people said there were ex post facto rationalisations to cover for their own malfeasance in the industry.
In fact, he put the element of live baiting at between 10 and 20 per cent as a more realistic figure…
There are many instances in our society of unaddressed endemic problems and systemic failure to correct those problems. One could look at cycling and talk about endemic doping and systemic failure to reject such doping… More importantly, one could say there is also an endemic and systemic problem in relation to the practice of overpaying players, conveniently breaching the salary cap, but no-one is suggesting that rugby league be banned… If people are agitated about a 30 per cent rate of muscular and ligamentary damage in greyhounds, imagine how they will feel if they get vision of blood pouring out of a racehorse’s nostrils? ...  Indeed, in talking about wastage, when a thoroughbred destined for racing is born in Australia its chances of being a successful racehorse are slim. It is estimated that only 300 out of every 1,000 foals produced will ever start a race. That means of 13,000 thoroughbred foals born each year in Australia alone, approximately 9,000 will be considered useless and thousands will end up at the knackers…
Animals are property; they are not persons and the mere fact of sentience does not grant one comparable rights to humans. But that is not the view of animal rights activists. Selective culling is vital for breeding. That is why 95 per cent of male calves are castrated and sold for meat....
It is ridiculous and it is applying a double standard; it is a “How much is that doggie in the window?” moralising. Nobody is calling for the live export trade to be banned for sheep or cattle. I certainly am not—except that actually some people are. The sort of people who enthusiastically support the greyhound ban are exactly the same people who want to shut down the live export trade, shut down horseracing and harness racing and, in many instances, believe that ownership of pets is abhorrent. The precedent that this establishes is very dangerous.
In New South Wales we have hunting with hounds. The Sydney Hunt Club exists. Are we going to ban that too? The irony is that greyhounds now could be bred as companion animals and could actually hunt rabbits in the field, but they could not be used for chasing a mechanical hare around a track.
The second problem we face—and this is an even more dangerous precedent—is the problem of acknowledging as a conservative Government the concept of a social licence. It is a vague, imprecise method; it is a tool uniformly of the Left. One never hears people say, “Wind farms have lost their social licence” or “the CFMEU has lost its social licence”.
We are a party of the rule of law and laws which are rules, not touchy, feely opinions. Social licence is a hammer used by the cultural Left to attack that which is legal but which they dislike—coal, coal seam gas [CSG] and mining—a vague, imprecise tool where any demagogue can claim to be the authentic voice of the people. “So you don’t like something; well let’s ban it.” Why? Because it has lost its social licence. But who determines social licence? 
Read the lot. There are still Liberal polticians who understand the important principles on which their party was founded.                      
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Book goes to school of hard heads

Andrew Bolt August 14 2016 (10:16am)

My book is living large, visiting Croatia,  Ho Chi Minh City, Santorini, London, Lake Como, Ithaca, Scotland, the Bay of Naples, Dubrovnik, Fiji, Aileron,  New Zealand,  Sri Lanka and the Andes, as well as attending a christening in Newcastle.
It has traveled on the Ghan, sailed in the Whitsundays and worked in  Kalgoorlie and Condabri, Queensland, before invading Australia’s most Left-wing Parliament - an experience which convinced one reader at the Katharine River Mango Farmto try teaching even a donkey to understand what’s in it.
Now reader Norm kindly writes:
Attached is your book visiting the medical museum in Montpellier, about 28 miles west of Nimes in Provence, France which is part of the oldest, still-active medical school in Europe. They have been teaching medicine here since tenth century. 
Why the photo, well this place represents a thousand years of people who have a vision for good and practiced it, no matter whats thrown at them and an awful lot was. It’s what your book is really all about to my mind.
To reward the learner in your life, order the book here.  The fourth edition of the Bolt Bulletin, available to on-line buyers, will go out next week. 
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What kind of fools are we?

Andrew Bolt August 14 2016 (9:21am)

How on earth could so much taxpayers’ money be handed over without basic checks that we weren’t being ripped off?
MATT WORDSWORTH, PRESENTER: Counter-terror police are investigating whether childcare subsidies, allegedly obtained by fraud, have been funnelled overseas.
Two men have been charged and another two have been questioned after a series of raids across Sydney this week.
The family day care business at the centre of the alleged scam has collected $27 million in taxpayer funds since 2012…
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP, REPORTER: In May this year, a young zealot from the suburbs of Sydney was on an evangelical mission.
Ali Assad, 22 years old, was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as an emissary for an Australian charity.... But while Ali Assad was delivering aid to refugee children in Malaysia, the Australian Government was paying him thousands of dollars to look after children in Sydney…
This part-time preacher could face 10 years in jail over an alleged multi-million dollar scam that was staggeringly simple...Government officials were convinced Ali Assad was at home, providing childcare in this housing estate in Sydney’s south-west, when his travel records and even his Facebook page showed he was in Malaysia.
In the past year Ali Assad made three trips to Kuala Lumpur and posted the photos online. During each period, he allegedly claimed thousands of dollars in rebates for hundreds of hours of work in his Sydney home…
We’ve obtained the police statement of allegations against Ali Assad. It says the Australian Government paid Assad more than $150,000 in the past financial year for more than 20,500 hours of childcare.
To earn that massive salary, Assad would have needed to care for the maximum of seven children at once for more than eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days in a row.
Ali Assad was part of a much bigger operation, based in Sydney’s west.
According to police, .... Ali Assad was employed by a family day care service that has its offices on this street. And he was allegedly working with his boss to defraud the taxpayer… His name is Ibrahim Omar. He and his brother employ nearly 600 family day-care providers, including Ali Assad… Ibrahim Omar’s business connections should have raised eyebrows already then. He was in the childcare business with the man who became Australia’s highest-ranking terrorist, Abu Sulayman, who is now based in Syria… Ali Assad is out on bail and his charity is under investigation. It’s been accused by Lebanese prosecutors of funding Islamic State.  
Staggering.
UPDATE
Related:
World Vision officials have professed to be “shocked” by the arrest in Israel last week of Mohammed El-Halabi, the head of the megacharity’s Gaza operations. Mr. Halabi is accused of repurposing over the course of 10 years up to $7.2 million a year, in cash and materials, to Hamas. That’s approximately 60% of World Vision’s total aid to Gaza.   
===

Howard remembers

Andrew Bolt August 14 2016 (9:16am)

Tim Blair gives two examples of John Howard’s astonishing memory for names and faces.
That man was born for politics. 
===

The great shark hunt

Piers Akerman – Friday, August 14, 2015 (12:33am)

LABOR yesterday failed to bring down its nemesis, trade union royal commissioner Dyson Heydon, but the Liberals’ patchwork defence of the former High Court justice was indicative of poor management skills.
 Continue reading 'The great shark hunt'
===

Gay and godless: Left pushing their agenda

Piers Akerman – Friday, August 14, 2015 (12:32am)

HOMOSEXUAL marriage is a minor issue for most Australians but it is being pushed to the forefront by the ABC and other agenda-driven organisations hell-bent on marginalising religion in their push for a secular nation.

 Continue reading 'Gay and godless: Left pushing their agenda'
===

AN INCONVENIENT CANDIDATE

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (4:15pm)

Please, Gaia. Please make this happen.
===

CHILD OF IMMIGRANTS ATTACKED

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (4:07pm)

Apparently booing is no longer racist.
===

FLAN CLUB

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (2:40am)

Star Observer editor and pastry vigilante Elias Jahshan is angry for some reason:

Let’s put it to a vote: 
===

SLAPPY DAYS

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (2:37am)

A rare case of a sequel being far superior to the original.
===

DEN AND NOW: FAIRFAX’S OPIUM FIX

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (2:33am)

Writing in Fairfax’s lady pages, a person using the pen name “Julie Stevens” describes her family’s drug issues, which may have commenced with her extremely elderly father: 
A very clever man, he started smoking opium during his travels to China as part of the Dutch East India Trading Company. He came back to Australia addicted. 
That line caught the alert eye of reader Richard P.: “On 12 August 2015 I emailed the Daily Life editor Candice Chung about the sheer unlikelihood of this paragraph. The Dutch East India Trading Company or VOC was dissolved in 1799. Further, the Chinese Communist Party suppressed the use of opium after it took power in 1949, in part by imposing severe penalties. It seems highly unlikely that a foreigner could have become habituated to smoking opium in China.”
Indeed it does. Chung did not reply to Richard’s kind note, but Julie’s article was subsequently edited: 
A very clever man, he started smoking opium during his travels to China. He came back to Australia addicted. 
Richard emails: “The alteration suggests that the small detail of the Dutch East India Trading Company may have been an embellishment. I wonder if other details of the story are true. For example, considering the following description of the author’s mother: ‘My mother grew up in a nice middle class family, learning the piano and studying ballet. She started using heroin with my father and his friends and has said that the first time she put a needle into her arm she did so with tears running down her face but with the feeling that she now ‘had a place to be.’ 
“It sounds a bit melodramatic, doesn’t it?”
===

ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A MEMBER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY?

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (2:28am)

Labor’s always-offended Mark Dreyfus revives the spirit of Tailgunner Joe: 
Mark Dreyfus, the opposition legal affairs spokesman, demanded Mr Heydon disqualify himself from the inquiry and disclose all of his links to the Liberal Party, including if he was a party member ...
“If the royal commissioner refuses to disqualify himself formally it’s a matter that can be taken up in court.” 
Why not a senate subcommittee, which would at least be in the tradition of Dreyfus’s ideological forebear.
===

INUNDATED

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (2:25am)

The Emily’s List misogyny speech dish towel is a hit: 
Organisers for the feminist political network Emily’s List say they have been inundated with more than 2000 online orders ...
The group’s national co-ordinator, Lisa Carey, told Fairfax Media women were embracing the irony of the tea towels, which retail for $25.
“The misogyny speech was a turning point in Australian politics, for women especially, basically saying enough’s enough,” she said. 
Just 260 days later, the Labor party said enough’s enough.
===

JOHANN ADAMS

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (1:45am)

The Australian‘s Cut and Paste column cites – with good reason – the Guardian‘s  stomping of disgraced leftist Johann Hari: 
The author used to be (British newspaper) The Independent’s star columnist, a prolific polemicist and darling of the Left, until his career imploded in disgrace when it emerged in 2011 that many of his articles contained quotes apparently said to him but in fact lifted from his interviewees’ books, or from previous interviews by other journalists. 
Hmmm. The Australian still employs a columnist who on at least one occasion used that exact same method.
===

WYATT ACT

Tim Blair – Friday, August 14, 2015 (1:20am)

Independent candidate Wyatt Scott makes his bid for Canada’s parliament:

He’s got my vote. In other troubled political campaign news, Hillary Clinton’s White House run hits rocky ground: 
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has rocketed past longtime front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, a stunning turn in a race once considered a lock for the former secretary of state, a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald poll shows.
Sanders leads Clinton 44-37 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, the first time the heavily favored Clinton has trailed in the 2016 primary campaign, according to the poll of 442 Granite-Staters. 
Clinton’s campaign seems not to have been helped by a compliant, scandal-concealing media: 
Four of the country’s largest newspapers on Wednesday kept the latest developments in Hillary Clinton’s growing E-mail scandal off the front page (one kept it out of the paper completely). The revelation that the Democratic candidate had top secret information on her server was relegated to the bottom of page A13 in the New York Times. 
(Via the Mole.)
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, August 16

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (4:22pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm (NOTE: this week on ONE everywhere except Perth, where it will screen after the netball.)
Editorial:  Abbott’s week of chaos was actually preparation for battle.
My guest: Justice Minister Michael Keenan.
The panel: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger and Sean Kelly, former advisor to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

NewsWatch: Miranda Devine, Daily Telegraph columnist and 2GB host.
We’ll tackle Labor’s most dangerous smear yet. Plus getting tough on ice, taking on the Islamic State and exposing the media that’s pushing same sex marriage with a campaign of hate.
Also on the schedule: Bill Shorten promotes an apartheid in Parliament.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

ABC Fact Check endorses ACTU falsehood

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (11:31am)

The ABC’s Fact Check unit isn’t. It is more like another taxpayer-funded spruiker of the Left.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Bill Shorten demands apartheid in our Parliament

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (11:24am)

Under Bill Shorten’s Labor, all Australians without Aboriginal ancestors will officially be strangers in their own country - even in their own Parliament:
We should begin the parliamentary year with a welcome to country, in the chamber… In the standing orders, inviting guests onto the floor is referred to as welcoming ‘strangers’ to the house. But it is us, the non-indigenous Australians, who are the strangers.
(Thanks to reader Notch and others.) 
===

Labor savages Heydon for uncovering dirty deals

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (6:35am)

The Liberals can again just sit back and be punched by Labor and its media allies. Or it can come out fighting against a sinister attempt by Labor to trash the good to protect the bad - or even corrupt:
A political furore threatens to derail the royal commission into union corruption as Labor and the union movement accuse its head, former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, of being “biased and conflicted” because he agreed to speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser… 
Labor defence spokesman Stephen Conroy called Mr Heydon a Liberal “stooge” while communications spokesman Jason Clare called him a Liberal “bagman” — a remark he was then forced to withdraw.
First, there is no proof that Heydon, a former judge of the High Court, agreed to “speak at a Liberal Party fundraiser”.
He agreed instead to deliver the annual Sir Garfield Barwick Address, last year given by another former High Court judge, Murray Gleeson.  Even rabid Abbott hater Julian Burnside QC, concedes Heydon would almost certainly never have agreed had he known the lecture would be advertised as a fundraiser, and, indeed, he pulled out when it was. Moreover, the event, advertised by the NSW Bar Association, was only a fundraiser in a technical sense, charging $80 a person for three courses and other expenses, and raising virtually no cash for electioneering.
Given that, Clare’s attack would be defamatory if he had the guts to repeat it outside Parliament. It shames Labor that Clare was once the Justice Minister (the man behind the “darkest day in Australian sport” fiasco), and is now publicly vilifying one of our most distinguished jurists.
Second, there is no proof that Heydon has conducted his royal commission in a manner that shows any bias. Labor is screaming about the perception of bias but cannot show real evidence of it. All smoke, no fire.
Which brings me to the real story. The real scandal. The real danger.
Dyson Heydon’s commission has exposed astonishing levels of corruption and thuggery in several unions, particularly the powerful CFMEU. Union officials have been accused of blackmail, accepting kickbacks, threatening employers and government officials and  working with criminals.
Lately it revealed the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten accepted an undisclosed $40,000 gift as head of the AWU from an employer about to negotiate a workplace deal with the AWU. Shorten was also questioned over other highly controversial deals in which workers conditions were traded away, while Shorten’s union received donations from the employer. One involved payments to the union issued on false invoices for training services not performed, medical research not undertaken and ads in the union magazine that never appeared.
Recent reports suggest that Shorten faced more questioning at the commission about his knowledge of those deals. In his first appearance he testimony - involving denials of wrongdoing and knowledge of those invoices - was criticised by Heydon for his ”non-responsive answers”.
That is the background.
Conclusion: Labor is now vilifying one of the country’s leading jurists for uncovering corruption in the unions and highly questionable behavior by the Labor leader. It is trying to destroy the former judge to protect what should be exposed and punished.
This is truly shocking. It looks like Labor is running a kind of protection racket, and roughing up the police.
If Labor will do this even to Heydon, what would it do to you if you stood in its way?  
===

If Tingle meant Labor, she’d be right

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (6:13am)

The Financial Review’s Laura Tingle:
But at some point the conservatives – and the Coalition more broadly – will have to decide not just whether they are prepared to lose an election, but whether they are prepared to have the Coalition’s reputation for good government become likened in history to that of Whitlam’s.
This, of course, would be a legitimate point to make about a government that:
- let in 50,000 undocumented illegal immigrants.
- racked up record deficits, mostly through spending on trash.
- killed overnight a major export - cattle to Indonesia.
- broke a promise and hit Australia with a carbon tax that cost jobs and raised power prices without making a difference to temperatures.
- invented a mining tax that raised almost no money while scaring off investment.
- scrapped on industrial watchdog at the request of militant unions, unleashing a wave of intimidation of employers.
- punished critical media outlets with a hostile media inquiry.
- proposed a draconian state-appointed media supercop to police all commercial media outlets and even blogs, with penalties including imprisonment.
- designed on the back of a beer coaster a $43 billion broadband network that was unaffordable, blew its budget and ran hopelessly behind schedule.
- spent $16 billion on overpriced school halls, many not actually needed.
- put free insulation in people’s homes that killed four installers and set off scores of house fires.
- sacked two of its prime ministers before crashing to a huge defeat.
- spied on the Indonesian president’s wife, later triggering a diplomatic scandal.
- incited a mini race riot by Aborigines on Australia Day.
- offended China by referring to its leaders as “rat f...ers”.
But that, of course, was the previous Labor Government that Tingle actually supported.
This Government, in contrast, stopped the boats, scrapped the carbon and mining taxes, restrained Labor’s runaway spending, repaired relationships with our neighbours and avoided a single one of the spending blowouts and scandals that plagued Labor.
And for that contrast, I suspect, Tingle cannot forgive it. 
===

Fairfax’s opium haze

Andrew Bolt August 14 2015 (6:05am)

An anonymous writer in Fairfax’s women’s section - yes, Fairfax does really have such a sexist division - writes the sad story of her father:
A very clever man, he started smoking opium during his travels to China as part of the Dutch East India Trading Company. He came back to Australia addicted. 
Tim Blair notes that this poor addict must be about 200 years old. Unless, of course, details in this piece are purely fictional. 
===

It’s time for Muslim leaders to speak up

Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (7:27pm)

AUSTRALIA has been forced to rapidly recalibrate its response to the threat of Islamist terrorism over the past few months. International intelligence failed to predict the speed with which the extremist Islamic State has swept through parts of Syria and Iraq.
Icon Arrow Continue reading 'It’s time for Muslim leaders to speak up'
===

BRINGING CULTURED REASON TO A GUN FIGHT

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (4:38pm)

The ABC’s Jonathan Green: 
Could be any day now ... the sudden indiscriminate smack of a terrorist attack.
Our best defence is of course our cultured reason. Our tolerance. Our audacious confidence in the fundamental goodness of others. 
Interesting theory. It deserves to be tested. By Jonathan. In northern Iraq. Meanwhile, members of the Australian Cultured Reason Force have delivered 10 pallets of supplies to Iraq’s Yazidi minority, who have fled to the mountains rather than submit to the Islamic State’s audacious confidence.
===

DON’T WORRY, BE GAPPY

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (2:07pm)

Fairfax is gap-obsessed: 
• The gap between the rich and poor in Australia is growing …
• The richest Australians saw their wealth rise at more than triple the pace of the poorest …
• The gap between rich and poor is widening …
• Outrage about the widening gap between rich and poor is gripping much of the developed world …
• A growing gap in income levels has opened up in the past three years …
• The gap between the haves and have-nots in Australia is widening …
• The gap between Australia’s wealthiest and poorest households is getting wider …
• The widening gap between rich and poor is threatening the very tenets of capitalism and democracy.
• An ever-growing gap between rich and poor is bad for growth.
• The gap between rich and poor widened markedly between 2004 and 2008 …
• What can we do to stop the gap between the rich and the poor getting wider? 
Fairfax’s solution – widen it even further: 
Fairfax executives have been immune from the cost-cutting underway at the media company, taking home generous salary increases of more than $2 million in total last year …
While Fairfax is stripping costs from the company and has made dozens of journalists and photographers redundant over the past year, Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood was protected from the cutbacks, taking home a salary of $2.8 million including shares — up almost $1 million on the year before. 
Lowly Fairfax staffers are holding a meeting this afternoon to beg for a pay increase of just two per cent.
===

EL-MO

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (12:55pm)

Mark Steyn on that picture: 
If you think the picture’s appalling, consider the Australian establishment’s reaction. Could you turn Khaled Sharrouf’s son into a functioning Australian citizen? Maybe. In theory. But, in practice, no – not if the limp-wristed hand-wringing of the deluded multicultists is any indication … first, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Bill Shorten, who thinks it’s a parenting issue:
“As a parent, I have no idea how you could ever let your child be in that situation. I think that’s shocking,” the Opposition Leader said.
Perhaps we need some sort of federal parenting class, in which prospective parents have to pick the age-appropriate toy for their infant to play with:
a) severed head of Assad supporter; 
b) severed head of Mosul Christian; 
c) severed head of Kurdish Yazidi; 
d) bloody pulped remains of post-stoning Ramadi adulteress; 
e) Tickle-Me Elmo. 
===

WHO TO BELIEVE?

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (12:21pm)

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel: 
The Iraqi people, the government of Iraq, country of Iraq is now under threat from some of the most brutal, barbaric forces we’ve ever seen in the world today, and a force, ISIL, and others that is an ideology that’s connected to an army and it’s a force and a dimension that the world has never seen before like we have seen it now …
The world is exploding all over. 
US President Golfy McBambipants: 
The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. 
(Via A.R.M. Jones)
UPDATE. Thirty days of tolerance. (Via Craig R.)
===

PELOSI GALORE

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 14, 2014 (11:47am)

Dennis Miller on issues relating to the below post, and much else besides (caution: clip is CLR – Carlton Language Rated):

Via Mike Mc. Speaking of Carlton: 
The controversial 18C provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act will be used in a complaint against The Sydney Morning Herald over its anti-­Semitic cartoon and the accompanying article by former columnist, Mike Carlton. 
===

Paper named

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (6:08pm)

Stackja describes perfectly the paper that published Mike Carlton’s anti-Israel rant and a cartoon of a hook-nosed Jew with his Star of David blowing up a city:
...the Sydney Morning Hamas.
===

Green: little difference between a headhacker and Abbott

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (12:00pm)

Far-Left ABC presenter Jonathan Green believes there is little difference between a jihadist cutting off heads to a politician promising to stop him:
And then on Monday came the clincher, the front page photo from The Australian, an image plucked it seems from the Twitter feed of homegrown and probably certifiable jihadist Khaled Sharrouf: a grinning boy and a severed head. 
It’s offered as proof of the incarnate evil that we confront, an image that transports the observer through shock, to revulsion, and then quite probably to fear… To use that same fear to push a domestic agenda for increased national security protections that compromise cherished individual liberties is one thing. To promote anxiety to lever the improved popularity that comes from soothing paternalism seems not that far removed from the original tactic of the likes of the Islamic State:  using fear to overwhelm your enemies and cement the loyalty of your friends.
I’ve long said Green was a third-rate brain with a first-rate ego. I now concede that “third-rate” flatters him.
The ABC is out of control.
UPDATE
Note the used of the word “supposed”:
Sharrouf, decapitating infidels and threatening Australia, is only a “supposed” enemy?
UPDATE
It is often the boast of genius to see what others can’t. Trouble is, it is often the characteristic of madmen, too.
UPDATE
Green is a caricature of the sanctimonious Leftist hypocrite.
First he retires hurt in protest at the “attack tweets” that have driven him to incoherent spluttering:
But he cannot wait even half an hour before himself retweeting a spiteful attack tweet mocking a former ABC chairman:
Is this seriously the standard of debate the ABC encourages - and finances with our taxes?
The ABC is out of control. 
===

Let’s hear how Gillard Government hunted James Hird

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (9:06am)

Something really stinks when a government is pushing an allegedly independent authority to get it some scalps, apparently to save its ministers from looking like idiots:
AN independent inquiry will examine evidence of high-level political interference in the ­Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s investigation into Essendon… 
Government sources last night expressed concern at the persistent involvement of Kate Lundy, Labor’s sports minister at the time, along with her advisers and senior departmental figures in discussions between ASADA and the AFL about how the investigation would run and the outcomes it could deliver…
Sworn affidavits and detailed notes by former ASADA chief executive Aurora Andruska and other anti-doping officials tendered to the court as part of the case have exposed political pressures placed on the anti-doping body to produce an outcome to suit the needs of the Gillard government and commercial considerations of the AFL…
The court was yesterday told that, in June last year, the Gillard government offered ASADA ­additional funding to meet an AFL deadline to take disciplinary action against Essendon and Hird before last year’s finals series.
Previously undisclosed notes of an ASADA “strategy meeting’’ also revealed a government plan to bolster the anti-doping authority’s legal team with lawyers provided by the AFL.
ASADA national manager of operations Trevor Burgess told the Federal Court he received a briefing on June 13 from Richard ­Eccles, a deputy secretary within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, about an AFL plan to take action against club staff and suspend Hird for at least six months… 
===

West getting poorer

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (8:55am)

The West is getting poorer, having lost the discipline to create wealth rather than redistribute it.
In Australia:
Real wages (wages adjusted for annual inflation) fell in the June quarter to be 0.5 per cent lower over the year. By this measure, Australian living standards have declined over the past year. 
In the US:
U.S. jobs pay an average 23% less today than they did before the 2008 recession, according to a new report released on Monday by the United States Conference of Mayors.
In Britain:
British workers have suffered an “unprecedented” decline in real wages over the past six years, with the average employee £2,000 worse off since the financial crisis hit, according to new research. 
The average worker saw a 8pc decline in real wages between 2008 and 2013, said the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). 
===

Media attacks Hockey for their untruths about him

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (8:25am)

What the Treasurer actually said:
The people that actually pay the most are higher income people, with an increase in fuel excise. ... The poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases.
What one Age reporter, Jacob Saulwick, falsely claims Hockey said:
Really poor people, Hockey claims, are too poor to drive.
What one News Corp reporter, Leftist Malcolm Farr, falsely claims Hockey said:
TREASURER Joe Hockey today argued his fuel tax increases weren’t unfair to low income earners because they couldn’t afford to own cars anyway. 
What one Age headline falsely claims Hockey said:
Critics attack Joe Hockey’s claim poorest don’t drive cars as ‘completely fallacious’
What the Daily Mail falsely claims Hockey said:
‘Poor people don’t drive cars’: Joe Hockey’s extraordinary riposte to critics who say his budget targets low-income earners
What the ABC falsely claims Hockey said:
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has accused Treasurer Joe Hockey of being an “arrogant”, “cigar-chomping” politician over his remarks that poor people will not be affected by the increase to the fuel excise because they “don’t have cars”.
What the ABC falsely claims Hockey said:
‘Poorest people don’t have cars’: Joe Hockey shrugs off criticism over fuel excise comments
What Hockey said was in fact perfectly correct:
“The Australian Bureau of Statistics data states that the highest 20 per cent of household incomes pay three times more in fuel taxes than the lowest 20 per cent of household incomes, “ he told ABC NewsRadio from Perth. 
“The Australian Bureau of Statistics data is not something that I’ve concocted, it is the reality. These are dealing with the facts.”
In essence, many journalists of the Left are attacking Hockey for their own jeering misrepresentations of what he accurately described.
Journalism today. Not even the truth will save you from the pack. 
===

There is a culture shaping this jihadism

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (8:05am)

Tanveer Ahmed’s analysis suggests important lessons for our immigration and refugee programs:
AS a psychiatrist who visits jails, I see a lot of overlap between locals who are lured towards terror and many clients from Middle Eastern backgrounds I see in the legal ­system… 
There remains a marked difference in the way males are raised within some Lebanese groups which predisposes them to greater acts of anti-social behaviour. It is a fairly specific segment of the Lebanese community and a result of the migration of poorer farmers and lower-class Lebanese Muslims after the civil war in 1975…
There is a rampant anti-social character to some youths from this segment which stems in part from unsuccessful child rearing. The horrific moves towards terror acts can be seen as an ideological extension of a propensity towards bad behaviour, combined with an unshakable victim mentality.
There are clear trends in the ­clients I see from Arab groups in jails. They come from large families. The fathers were often absent while they worked unskilled jobs trying to provide. The mothers lacked the extended family support they may have had in their ancestral lands… The men were placed on a pedestal with few behavioural limits. The relatively absent fathers, who might have disciplined the sons, compounded the problems.
I see further key psychological differences among these groups, particularly the Lebanese or the children of refugees from Iraqi or Afghan ... While expressions of anger and threats are a quick way to lose face in polite Western society, it is more acceptable within Arab groups. At its worst, calm, measured responses to conflict may be seen as weak.
This is outlined by Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennell’s groundbreaking work visiting Muslim criminals in jail, where he makes reference to the Arab notion of “holy anger”, which is completely foreign to English.
Another key difference is the psychological idea of “locus of control"… Western thinking teaches that we have some control of our destinies… Arab cultures have… a God that decides their life’s course. “Inshallah” follows every statement about future plans: if God wills it to occur…
In societies shaped under Islamic influences there is little emphasis on guilt and a greater likelihood to demand that society adapt to one’s own wishes… Other Arab Australians from Egypt, Jordan or Iran do not have the same problems. If you meet them, they will be quick to point out that their community’s migration was from a more skilled base. They had smaller families, focused on their children’s education and integrated more easily. 
UPDATE
What is it about the Islamic ideology that it is so easily seen as endorsing terrorism?
Dozens of pro-Isis leaflets were distributed in London’s Oxford Street on Tuesday, urging Muslims to pledge allegiance to the jihadi group and travel to Syria and Iraq… 
The spread of such pro-Isis material across Europe has been a growing concern for intelligence chiefs, who believe the security threat posed by Isis-linked jihadis is one of the gravest facing the west. More than 3,000 Europeans, including more than 500 Britons, have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight in radical Sunni extremist groups, including Isis. At least one successful terror attack in Europe – shootings at a Belgian Jewish museum in May – has been linked to the conflict. 
UPDATE
I am glad the imams are doing this, but I am seriously alarmed that so many of their followers are so tempted by terrorism:
JASON OM: ASIO says there are 150 known Australian radicals, including 60 fighters. The Grand Mufti says the number could have been far greater without intervention from Australian imams, who he says have implored young Muslims not to go and fight. 
IBRAHIM ABU MOHAMED (voiceover translation): If it wasn’t for our effort, there could have been 1,500, not 150.
===

Carlton sued under 18C. Good

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (8:05am)

Free speech

I fully support this suing of Mike Carlton. Why should the Racial Discrimination Act be used to silence only conservatives? Let the Left now realise the law menaces even their own and must be scrapped as a crime against free speech:
THE controversial 18C provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act will be used in a complaint against The Sydney Morning Herald over its anti-­Semitic cartoon and the accompanying article by former columnist, Mike Carlton. 
A Sydney engineer, Wayne Karlen, 60, has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission ­arguing the publication of the cartoon and column caused offence to Australian Jews.
Mr Karlen also referenced the subsequent abuse of readers by Carlton, stating in the complaint that The Sydney Morning Herald has committed an unlawful act within the meaning of the Racial Discrimination Act…
Mr Karlen, who is not Jewish, said he decided to lodge the complaint on Tuesday after the ABC’s Media Watch defended the cartoon and Carlton the night before…
In addition to Mr Karlen, The Australian understands at least one member of the Jewish community has also lodged a complaint with the commission under section 18C, although Jewish ­organisations have stated they will not be taking similar action in light of the Herald’s apology. 
Those “Jewish organisations” are two-faced. They know that using these laws against Carlton will discredit them. And so they do not use these wicked laws to defend their community, yet say nothing when those laws are used to muzzle their allies.
But Carlton has little to fear. He is an ideological mate of the Human Rights Commission, whose Race Discrimination Commissioner, a former Labor staffer, has already rushed to exonerate Carlton: 
Commentators you would hope would be cantankerous or controversial… Obviously Fairfax decided to take some action against him. Look, I’m agnostic on this.
Mates rates? 
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End this blindness to evil

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (7:33am)

Culture wars, Islamism

THE danger isn’t just from jihadist terrorists. There’s also the intellectual cowardice of our political class. I’m talking about those — mainly on the Left — claiming Islamism is no real threat or that the real problem is not “them” but “us”.
Or those who just put their hands over their eyes and go “la la la la”, the people confusing blindness with kindness.
Example 1: Far-Left ABC presenter Jonathan Green. Green was furious that The Australian published a front-page picture of the seven-year-old son of Sydney jihadist Khaled Sharrouf holding a head cut off a Syrian soldier.
“To know something appalling has happened is enough. To be forced to see it is a theft of innocence,” he tweeted.
But I suspect Green was mourning the theft not of innocence but of his wilful ignorance.
After all, here — where it could no longer be ignored — was an image of such unambiguous evil that no Leftist apologist could credibly keep blaming Western oppression of a poor Muslim.
Example 2: Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Shorten, holding a raft of marginal seats with strong Muslim votes, insisted “every Australian was shocked to their core at that dreadful image”.
In fact, some weren’t at all, which is exactly the problem.
(Read full column here.) 
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Cooling would be worse, and some scientists now warn…

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (7:24am)

Maurice Newman warns:
Russian scientists at the Pulkovo Observatory are convinced the world is in for a cooling period that will last for 200-250 years. Respected Norwegian solar physicist Pal Brekke warns temperatures may actually fall for the next 50 years. Leading British climate scientist Mike Lockwood, of Reading University, found 24 occasions in the past 10,000 years when the sun was declining as it is now, but could find none where the decline was as fast. He says a return of the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830), which included “the year without summer”, is “more likely than not”. In their book The Neglected Sun , Sebastian Luning and Fritz Varen­holt think that temperatures could be two-tenths of a degree Celsius cooler by 2030 because of a predicted anaemic sun. They say it would mean “warming getting postponed far into the future”. 
If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are ill-prepared… Cheap electricity in a colder climate will be critical, yet distorted price signals caused by renewable energy policies are driving out reliable baseload generators… It is interesting to contemplate how the West would handle the geopolitical and humanitarian challenges brought on by a colder climate’s shorter growing seasons and likely food shortages. Abundance is conducive to peace.... Yet the global warming pause is now nearly 18 years old and, as climate scientist Judith Curry says, “attention is moving away from the pause to the cooling since 2002”. 
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No wonder they despise our weakness

Andrew Bolt August 14 2014 (7:16am)

Too disabled to work, not too disabled to be a terrorist. We really have been played for fools:
WELFARE payments to more than a dozen suspected jihadists have been axed to stop Australian taxpayers’ money being used to finance terrorist outrages in Iraq and Syria… Wanted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, who was photographed executing Iraqi soldiers and whose young son was photographed holding a soldier’s severed head, received a $383-a-week disability support pension for several months. It lapsed after he left Australia on his brother’s passport.
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Larry Pickering
“SEX APPEAL” IS NOT PC... unless you have it

It was staggering to see Abbott’s off hand “sex appeal” comment make the lead story on Sky News and many newspapers this morning. 

[It must have been hard for pensioners who had difficulty keeping warm last night to understand what the media considered a page one story.]

Obviously I’m out of touch so I decided to be awfully offensive and did a quick ring around to see what politicians were considered to have (or not have) sex appeal.

It seems a woman’s concept of sex appeal is different to men, except for one politician who who got top “sexy” marks from both sides!

Admittedly it was not a comprehensive poll, I made only 15 or 20 calls and included my own assessment. So, here’s what might well be a dodgy, apolitical consensus:

Women went for Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenburg, Doug Cameron (must be his accent), Nick Xenophon (must be his bedroom eyes) and Julie Bishop.

Women said those who are bereft of sex appeal are Kevin Rudd, Christine Milne (she just needs ironing), David Bradbury, Sophie Mirrabella and Penny Wong (I won’t say anything).

Men nominated only women as having sex appeal and that’s interesting in itself: Julie Bishop (she really is funny hot), Kate Lundy, Tanya Plibersek, Sarah Hanson-Young (wot!!), Kate Ellis and that was about it.

Men suggested those who were without sex appeal were Christine Milne, Kevin Rudd, Adam Bandt, Jenny Macklin, Graham Perrett and Peter Slipper (no surprises there).

This politically incorrect poll probably has a margin of error of 80% but there was one slam dunk: Julie Bishop! She was considered by all to have the most sex appeal. (Hard to disagree.)

So, should Julie Bishop be offended? Of course not! And she wouldn’t be. The only complainants are those women without sex appeal, and there are plenty of those in Parliament.

They are the women who wear heavy-duty uplift bras, disguise their shaved short legs with high heels, sport a cleavage, plaster on red arousal lippy, wear colorful clobber and fly into a blind rage if someone mentions their appearance or, God forbid, sex appeal!

If a bloke can’t comment on a woman’s sex appeal, when she has gone to extreme lengths to show she has it, then PC has sunk to new depths.

Women who complain of being treated as a sex object should stop dressing like one or stand still and enjoy the plaudits.

That’s unless we have all become genderless, homogeneous homosexuals!
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Almagor, an organization that represents victims of Arab terrorism, responded with sorrow to the High Court decision to reject its motion against the release of 26 terrorist murderers, as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Almagor chairman Meir Indor said, "We regret very much that the court, like the prime minister, did not even listen to the serious arguments regarding the government'scrossing of red lines, including the fact that some of the terrorists being released committed their crimes after the Oslo accords were signed.
"The Supreme Court locked its gates today before the bereaved families and the Jewish terror victims – something it does not do when it comes to any Palestinians,” Indor added – noting, among other past decisions by the High Court, its willingness to force the state to change the route of the security fence, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, because of complaints by Arabs.
"The High Court has, in effect, erased the status of the victims and has given its protection to the men of terror, who will be able to demand the release of murderers from now on,” he went on. “This is a very sad day for the bereaved families and Israeli society, and a day of victory for the terror organizations and their supporters.”
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In what is being described as yet another example of Palestinian Authority (PA) denial of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, the Presidential Guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has claimed the Western Wall as an Arab and Islamic site.
Palestinian Media Watch(PMW), an NGO which monitors incitement, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda on Palestinian Arab TV, has revealed that last week, a picture of the Western Wall was posted onto the PA Presidential Guard's official Facebook page with a PA flag superimposed on it, along with the words "The Al Buraq Wall - Public Relations and Information - The Presidential Guard - Palestinian youth know their rights."
The Western Wall is a relic of the retaining wall of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by Imperial Roman in 70CE. For nearly 2,000 years Jews were prevented from worshipping on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site, and instead prayed at the wall, which has since become a holy site in its own right, at which millions of Jews congregate to pray each year. Ongoing restrictions on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount mean that the Wall is still the primary place of Jewish worship in Jerusalem.
"Al Buraq" is the name given to the Western Wall by Arab rejectionists, who deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
They claim that the wall has nothing to do with the Jewish Temples, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; instead, they assert that it is the place where Muhammed tethered his mythical winged horse Buraq hundreds of years later, when according to some Islamic legends it transported him from Mecca to Jerusalem and back - despite the fact that Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Quran. 
PMW noted that this is only the latest example of PA rejectionism and denial of the Jewish people's claim to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel, as a way of rejecting the State of Israel's very legitimacy and right to exist.
Despite the start of much-lauded "peace talks" between Israel and the PA, Arutz Sheva has reported on the continued campaign of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda and incitement to violence by the PA through its official organs.
For example, last week the PA's official TV station broadcast a crudely anti-Semitic program which legitimized violence against Jews in Judea and Samaria, who were stereotyped as violent thieves. The end of the program glorified the humiliation of a religious Jew by cutting off his peyot side-curls, in a scene chillingly reminiscent of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda.
Other Ramadan broadcasts include a re-run of a music video encouraging violence against Israelis, and the glorification of the murderer of 61 Israeli civilians on the official Facebook page of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.
Recently, an anchor on the PA's official news station declared that a future "Palestinian state" would extend from Rosh Hanikra in northern Israel to Eilat in the south - effectively wiping Israel off the map.
These incidents and others led to Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahucomplaining directly to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been pushing the Israeli government to enter into talks with the PA.
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Guess who graduated first in this year's medical school class at the Technion, Israel's version of M.I.T.? The answer will surprise you. It's a 27-year-old stereotype-buster: a charming, feminist, smart, open-minded and observant Islamic woman named Mais Ali-Saleh who grew up in a small village outside of Nazareth, in Israel's Galilee.
Ali-Selah's academic excellence not only marks her own personal achievement but also proves that contrary to propaganda spouted by proponents of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement -- whose latest convert is Stephen Hawking -- an academic boycott of Israel is the wrong approach to solving the Israel-Arab conflict. Moreover, it ultimately hurts the very people it claims to help. Ali-Selah put it best when she said, "An academic boycott of Israel is a passive move, and it doesn't achieve any of its purported objectives."
After Ali-Selah's first class at the Technion, in Haifa, northern Israel, she was ready to call it quits. Ali-Selah had studied Hebrew from elementary school through high school but in the predominantly Arab area around Nazareth, she rarely used Hebrew and her vocabulary was limited. During Ali-Selah's first Chemistry lecture, she couldn't understand why her professor kept talking about malls. What did shopping malls have to do with Chemistry? She then realized the professor was speaking about moles, a standard scientific unit for measuring quantities of minute entities.
It did not take long for her to break through her limited language skills and rise to the top of her class. In fact, in 2011, she was one of eight students from around Israel who were presented with academic awards of excellence at the Knesset, Israel's Senate.
Ali-Selah claims that her academic drive is "part genes and part family background." After raising four children, Ali-Selah's mother, Fahima, went back to school to complete her college education and is now studying for a PhD in education. (Ali-Selah's father, Rohi, would have liked to continue his education but his father died when he was a high school senior and he was forced to go to work to support his younger siblings.) Ali-Selah said that the atmosphere in the village, Jaffa-Nazareth, is liberal and many of its residents encourage young women to further their education.
Ali-Selah is currently doing an Obstetrics/Gynecology residency at Carmel Hospital in Haifa. She said that in her village, Jaffa-Nazareth, she knew of only one female Arab doctor. She decided to take on the field, despite its demanding hours, because she knew that many Arab women are more comfortable going to a female doctor rather than a male. She says that in addition to her personal goals, she wants to make a contribution to Israeli-Arab society.
Aware that she is seen as a role model to other young Arab women, Ali-Selah also knows that she is breaking common misperceptions and stereotypes. "The media emphasizes negative things about Muslims and does not emphasize the positive," Ali-Selah said. She also feels, however, that extremists are co-opting Islam and radicalizing it. Extremists within Islam are influencing people's perceptions about Islam and women's roles. "There is nowhere in the Koran that that states women should not study," Ali-Selah explained. In fact, she said that the Koran emphasizes that women must learn because they are the ones to educate the children. The same is true of women's dress. Women are supposed to dress modestly, but there are no Islamic laws stating that women need to wear long robes or cover their faces.
"If people's socio-economic situation improves, they become more educated and enlightened," Ali-Selah said. "Take away people's food, and they become religious." Her husband, Nidal Mawasi, agrees with her. Mawasi, who comes from Baqa al-Gharbiya, an Arab city in central Israel, graduated from Technion's Medical School in 2008. They met because he was teaching her dissection course, and they are now expecting their first child.
On trips to Europe, Ali-Selah said that people she met were surprised to learn that Israeli Arabs studied engineering and medicine in Israel, and that they lived among Jews. This lack of awareness helps the BDS Movement win misguided supporters. Boycotters like Roger Waters repeat a falsehood -- that Israel is an apartheid state -- and deny a fundamental truth: Arabs, in particular Arab women, have more freedom, liberties and academic opportunities in Israel than in any Arab country. Yes, they do.
Rather than an academic boycott -- which targets researchers who want to disseminate knowledge rather than restrict it -- Ali-Selah suggests a more active stance: encouraging academic life within the Palestinian Authority and strengthening academic ties with Palestinian universities, planning joint research projects with Palestinian scientists, and admitting more Palestinian scholars to European and American universities for academic programs.
Ali-Selah said that because she did medical research, the boycott did not negatively impact her work, but sooner or later, she said that it will impinge upon academic researchers she knows, both Jews and Arabs. That's why Stephen Hawking and others interested in advancing the cause of peace in the Middle East should focus their energies on supporting more of Israel's success stories like Mais Ali-Selah's, and pressuring Arab countries to emulate Israel's academic freedoms and democracy.
Some might argue that Ali-Selah is an exception to the rule about the Arab minority in Israel. But we only have to look at President Barack Obama to remember how unusual -- and important -- exceptions are.
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Australia’s Online Hate Prevention Institute denounced a Facebook account Tuesday for spreading “Holocaust inversion and also significant new antisemitism related to Israel.”
In a statement, Dr. Andre Oboler, CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Instituteflagged “The Untold History” Facebook account, which is “liked” by 843 people, and features 428 comments, though many of them were made to ridicule the account and its creators.
“Social media is a powerful tool and that power should not be used to take content like this viral.  Social media companies, that have such a major impact on our daily lives, need to behave in a socially responsible manner and to be held accountable when they fail to live up to the standards society expect,” Oboler said.
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<Does anyone honestly believe that American intervention has solved the Iraq crisis? Or the Afghanistan crisis? Or that it ever will?> I feel it is unarguable that Iraq is much better without Hussein and Afghanistan without the Taliban .. the world is safer. I feel those two nations have more hope now than they had before. But none of the good things that has happened in either nation were a result of Obama policy. That being said, Syria has no good side worth supporting. - ed
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Trusting in God will not make the mountain smaller, but it will make the climbing easier. Do not ask Him for a lighter load, ask for a stronger back instead.
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Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr lived a busy life: When he wasn’t re-imagining atomic structure and quantum mechanics, he was saving over 7,000 Danish Jews from Nazi persecution.
In 1943, after learning that Nazi occupiers sought to prevent him from working on the Allied Manhattan Project, Bohr evacuated to Sweden, whose government was under strict Allied orders to fly him to the United States immediately.
But upon learning of the plight of his compatriots, Bohr, whose maternal grandfather was Jewish, refused to leave until Sweden announced that it would be open to receiving Danish Jews. He took his request all the way to the top: in September 1943, King Gustaf of Sweden made public his country’s intention to provide asylum.
But that’s not all: After founding the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (now the Niels Bohr Institute), Bohr provided temporary work and financial support to refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Some who sought asylum, like Felix Bloch and James Franck, went on to win Nobel Prizes and were instrumental in changing modern science.
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<“Al-Habbash explained that, like Hamas, many of Mohammed's companions burned with anger that their leader was negotiating with the Quraish tribe rather than attacking Mecca. But Mohammed knew that only a more measured approach would lead to ultimate victory.

“Two years after signing the treaty, Mohammed's forces had gained enough strength and he launched the brutal conquest of Mecca.

“"This is the example and this is the model" that the Palestinian leadership is following, Al-Habbash acknowledged.

“Amazingly, all of the doe-eyed Israeli commentators who believe that this round of negotiations is for some reason going to be different from all the previous fail to take the simple step of listening to what the Palestinians themselves are saying.

“"Abbas is a real peace partner," they shout, while willfully ignoring what Abbas' own ministers are telling the public, in his name and in his presence, without any refutation by the "president.">
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THE DIARIES OF PETER BEATTIE'S MISTRESS
[Accuracy of the following report cannot be assured beyond doubt. Material that could not be corroborated has been deleted. Information in these diaries is more an indictment on Kevin Rudd’s judgment than the ethics of Peter Beattie. Rudd, as an ALP and Premier Wayne Goss confidant, would have been privy to the following information.]
On June 15, 2006 Andrew Bolt reported: “EX-PREMIER Peter Beattie is embroiled in a war of words with a Nationals MP after claims he had an affair with a cabinet minister were referred to the CMC.
“A furious Mr Beattie yesterday hit out at Burnett MP Rob Messenger, who has referred a complaint that disgraced former Tourism Minister Merri Rose forced her electorate staff to falsify and shred documents to cover up an alleged relationship with Mr Beattie.”
This may be true but Pickering Post has been reliably informed (and it is widely held to be true among ALP insiders) that Peter’s transgressions extended to Merri Rose’s daughter who became pregnant to, and bore a daughter to, Beattie.
It is believed that it was this matter that Merri Rose attempted to blackmail Beattie over in order to obtain political favours.
Merri Rose was found guilty and spent jail time.
But Peter Beattie was embroiled in another affair with Pat Gillespie, a political journalist for The Sunday Mail and The Australian newspapers from the early 1990’s until 1996.
Gillespie became an embarrassment to the Government so she was shifted to The Children’s Commissioners Office where she became their problem.
Gillespie was concerned that the Criminal Justice Commission would raid her house so she gave the diaries (in disk or tape format) to a friend, Lorelle Saunders, a former police officer, for safe keeping.
 Saunders didn’t want to keep the diaries, so she gave them to a solicitor friend, Mr Gordon Harris, for safe keeping.  It was Gordon who had the data transcribed. The diary notes were legitimately obtained.
 There are a number of people named in the diaries.
 Danny is Peter Beattie.
 Darth Vader is Heather Beattie.
 Ken Crooke is the Former State Secretary of the National Party.
 Drew Hutton is the former Convenor of The Greens in Qld.
 DJ is Doug Slack the former National Party Minister for Environment in the Borbidge government. 
 There are other names that can be Googled.
 Just prior to the June, 1998 Queensland State election, Beattie had booked the Presidential Suite at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Brisbane.
There was also a function at the same hotel for the party heavyweights.  The cost of the function and room was bankrolled by now convicted paedophile Bill D’Arcy, the ALP’s money man.
While Beattie was staying at the Stamford Plaza, Gillespie attempted to set herself up as the new Mrs Beattie.  Beattie had her physically thrown out of the hotel and barred from re-entry.
In 2000/1 Gillespie had her husband charged with rape. He was a doctor and is now in the Hervey Bay area. 
Gillespie judged that the DPP was too slow to act in progressing with the charges.  She attempted to use her connection, with Premier Beattie, to force the DPP to proceed more quickly with the prosecution.  There are several letters from the DPP, Leanne Clare, confirming this. 
This is one letter and appears to give legitimacy to the claims:  
In fact one of the letters confirms that six of the DDP’s staff had to seek counselling, as a result of Gillespie’s harassment and bullying. 
The DPP cast doubt on many of Gillespie’s claims and she eventually received a paltry settlement of $8,000.
Leanne Clare is now a District Court judge, so no comment was available.
Gillespie became a  severe embarrassment to Beattie and the ALP financed the purchase of a property for her in Tasmania. 
A job was also arranged with the RSPCA. This deal caused some disquiet among the ALP party management because party funds were used to pay off Beattie’s mistress.
Tasmania is an interesting place and appears to be a dumping ground for former ALP leaders’ mistresses.
When Wayne Goss was State ALP Opposition leader in 1989, he had a potential image problem with a mistress, who also happened to be a journalist.  Her name was Marion Smith. 
The Qld, ALP arranged for a job for Marion with the Field ALP Government there. When the Field Government fell within a short time, Marion returned to Queensland and obtained a position as Media Liaison Officer with the new Criminal Justice Commission. 
Wayne Goss pressured CJC Chairman, Sir Max Bingham, to sack Marion but he refused to do so.
Kevin Rudd, who worked closely with Goss, would have known of the ins and outs of the affairs but has seen fit to resurrect a bitter enemy in Beattie as an ALP candidate for Forde. This appears to throw doubt on Rudd’s judgment.
For Peter Beattie to become involved with someone apparently as unhinged as Pat Gillespie in the first place, provides some insight into the REAL Peter Beattie and more importantly, Rudd’s judgment
The diaries can be downloaded here:-
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Kim Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner defended her daughter while criticizing Obama for his comments putting down successful celebrities.
The comments were received with great applause on her new show Kris. Obama had blamed celebrities for the negative affect they have on children during an interview with Amazon:
“Kids weren’t monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing or where Kanye West was going on vacation,” Obama explained, “and thinking that somehow that was the mark of success.”
Kris Jenner hit hard when she pointed out that many of these celebrities worked very hard to get where they are, but she was especially spot on when criticizing the anti-success attitude behind Obama’s comments:
“I wasn’t aware that you could only set the bar so high and that we could only dream so big.
I was taught ‘dream big, work hard, and you could have whatever you want.’
And I thought, ‘wow I bet the president has some friends with 10,000 square foot houses and you probably wouldnt mind going over there, mister president, while you were asking them to have a party for you when you were campaigning for dollars to run for president.
I was thinking about her 10,000-square-foot house, and I thought, ‘Wow, her job affords her to live in a 10,000-square-foot house’. And I think, if I’m not mistaken, Mr President’s job affords him to live in a 55,000-square-foot house.
I find it so odd that he’s picking on Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
Kanye West, first of all, doesn’t go on vacation, ever. And Kim Kardashian is the hardest-working young lady in the world. She never sleeps, she never stops, she never slows down and works so hard for what she’s got.
You poke at someone and criticize someone for living a lifestyle – I’m sure when he was growing up his dream was, ‘One day, I want to become President of the United States, and have this wonderful fabulous life and that was his dream.’
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A few hours earlier....

"Terrorists from Hamas-controlled Gaza “thanked” Israel for releasing 26 terrorist murderers by firing two rockets at the southern part of the country on Tuesday night.

One rocket exploded in an open area near the city of Sderot. There were no physical injuries or damages.

Kol Yisrael radio reported that a second rocket exploded within Gaza.

On Monday night, terrorists from the Sinai Peninsula fired a rocket towards the Israeli resort city of Eilat."
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Israel’s hopes that freeing 26 terrorists in the middle of the night would tone down the celebrations in the Palestinian Authority were quickly dashed on Tuesday night.
As the 11 terrorists who were freed to Ramallah arrived at their destination, they were welcomed by thousands ofcheering PA Arabs and were escorted to the Muqataa compound, where they were greeted by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself.
"This is the first group," Abbas told the crowd at the official welcoming ceremony, according to AFP.
"We shall continue until we free all the prisoners from Israeli jails," he added.
“Allah willing, all will return to us soon. We say to all prisoners in the jails: We will not rest until you are all with us," Abbas declared.
At the same time, 15 other terrorists returned to their homes in Gaza. Kol Yisrael radio reported that the celebrations in Gaza will be toned down, if any take place at all, as the Hamas terrorist group which controls the region objects to the peace talks between the PA and Israel.
Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar said on Monday that the talks with Israel are “futile” and are “purely a means for the occupation (Israel) to look good to the international community.”
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August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)
Lech Wałęsa
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“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted."
Psalm 104:16
Lebanon's cedars are emblematic of the Christian, in that they owe their planting entirely to the Lord. This is quite true of every child of God. He is not man-planted, nor self-planted, but God-planted. The mysterious hand of the divine Spirit dropped the living seed into a heart which he had himself prepared for its reception. Every true heir of heaven owns the great Husbandman as his planter. Moreover, the cedars of Lebanon are not dependent upon man for their watering; they stand on the lofty rock, unmoistened by human irrigation; and yet our heavenly Father supplieth them. Thus it is with the Christian who has learned to live by faith. He is independent of man, even in temporal things; for his continued maintenance he looks to the Lord his God, and to him alone. The dew of heaven is his portion, and the God of heaven is his fountain. Again, the cedars of Lebanon are not protected by any mortal power. They owe nothing to man for their preservation from stormy wind and tempest. They are God's trees, kept and preserved by him, and by him alone. It is precisely the same with the Christian. He is not a hot-house plant, sheltered from temptation; he stands in the most exposed position; he has no shelter, no protection, except this, that the broad wings of the eternal God always cover the cedars which he himself has planted. Like cedars, believers are full of sap, having vitality enough to be ever green, even amid winter's snows. Lastly, the flourishing and majestic condition of the cedar is to the praise of God only. The Lord, even the Lord alone hath been everything unto the cedars, and, therefore David very sweetly puts it in one of the psalms, "Praise ye the Lord, fruitful trees and all cedars." In the believer there is nothing that can magnify man; he is planted, nourished, and protected by the Lord's own hand, and to him let all the glory be ascribed.

Evening


"And I will remember my covenant."
Genesis 9:15
Mark the form of the promise. God does not say, "And when ye shall look upon the bow, and ye shall remember my covenant, then I will not destroy the earth," but it is gloriously put, not upon our memory, which is fickle and frail, but upon God's memory, which is infinite and immutable. "The bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant." Oh! it is not my remembering God, it is God's remembering me which is the ground of my safety; it is not my laying hold of his covenant, but his covenant's laying hold on me. Glory be to God! the whole of the bulwarks of salvation are secured by divine power, and even the minor towers, which we may imagine might have been left to man, are guarded by almighty strength. Even the remembrance of the covenant is not left to our memories, for we might forget, but our Lord cannot forget the saints whom he has graven on the palms of his hands. It is with us as with Israel in Egypt; the blood was upon the lintel and the two side-posts, but the Lord did not say, "When you see the blood I will pass over you," but "When I see the blood I will pass over you." My looking to Jesus brings me joy and peace, but it is God's looking to Jesus which secures my salvation and that of all his elect, since it is impossible for our God to look at Christ, our bleeding Surety, and then to be angry with us for sins already punished in him. No, it is not left with us even to be saved by remembering the covenant. There is no linsey-wolsey here--not a single thread of the creature mars the fabric. It is not of man, neither by man, but of the Lord alone. We should remember the covenant, and we shall do it, through divine grace; but the hinge of our safety does not hang there--it is God's remembering us, not our remembering him; and hence the covenant is an everlasting covenant.
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Today's reading: Psalm 87-88, Romans 13 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 87-88

Of the Sons of Korah. A psalm. A song.
1 He has founded his city on the holy mountain.
2 The LORD loves the gates of Zion
more than all the other dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are said of you,
city of God:
4 "I will record Rahab and Babylon
among those who acknowledge me-
Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush-
and will say, 'This one was born in Zion.'"
5 Indeed, of Zion it will be said,
"This one and that one were born in her,
and the Most High himself will establish her."
6 The LORD will write in the register of the peoples:
"This one was born in Zion."
7 As they make music they will sing,
"All my fountains are in you."

Today's New Testament reading: Romans 13


Submission to Governing Authorities

1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God's servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience....

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