Monday, August 21, 2017

Mon Aug 21st Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. I am proud, humbled and heartened to have published my latest title, Bread of Life: January. I had thought to wait awhile longer. It cost me about $1 thousand for each of the history of the world in a year titles. Bread of Life is much shorter and cheaper. I will have the remaining twelve titles out in the next year. Considering the subject matter, Daniel Katz may not want me thanking him, but I do. 

 The Antifa protests around the world have been punctuated with senseless left wing violence. One must never endorse their violence with claiming that reason supports their stance. Snopes has. A picture of a left wing extremist fighting with a policeman has gone viral, so Snopes addressed it. In the picture, the violent left wing activist, using a weapon against a policeman who is helpless on the ground, has an Antifa marking on their back. It is photoshopped. Snopes has discovered the original photo is of a left wing activist in Greece in 2009 beating a policeman. It reminds me of the lefty apologist pointing out the left wing of the French Revolution couldn't possibly have existed because it predated Marx. 
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 Crying for U w Alannah

I sang the piece and Particle Dots made a gift to me some years ago on iCompositions. Alannah wanted to add her magnificent voice to it. Bryn reminded me of this piece recently, and because my earlier posts on this had weakly included the music file I decided to redo it in HD. 

I am in love, and she doesn't love me. This is ok, if a blow to my pride. I have some homework to do. It is my job to let her see how she seems through my eyes. It is also my job to listen to her. I am sure I will cross lines in pursuing my agenda. Not to harm her, but to find a way to include her as my friend. Maybe I cannot. Maybe my dream is merely a phantasm. And so I include these pictures which are real. 

To get these pictures, I needed to forgive my rapist. I did that, because I believe that God wants me to. 
===
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 AUAWN1303125


=== from 2016 === 
Jason Clare demonstrated getting Australian Troops killed for using substandard equipment would not attract criticism. So it follows that Turnbull can assign many tens of billions of dollars to building Australian made substandard submarines. Had Abbott made the same bad decision, he would have been highly criticised. When Turnbull ambushed Abbott eleven months ago, he said he would run a government that explained the need for fiscal rectitude. He hasn't. Instead, Turnbull stands for waste and incompetence. Knee jerk reactions, like the appointment of a royal commission following a biased ABC report, will contribute to the humiliations of Turnbull before he resigns. Julie Bishop needs to be ditched too. She was made aware of the recent Vietnam Long Tan celebration debacle over a week before last minute panic ruined it. Meanwhile Shorten is 'popular,' not having achieved anything worthwhile too. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility. 
=== from 2015 ===
There are terrible memes being circulated at the moment impugning the character of anyone that is or was on the Liberal front bench or doing good work in rooting out corruption. And the memes are hateful and slanderous. They involve a small truth, which is inflated behind all reason. Kathy Jackson, Arthur Sinodinos, Scott Morrison, Eric Abetz, Dyson Heydon, Bronwyn Bishop and others, listed with their so called 'crimes'. Crimes such as "Accused weather bureau of global warming bias" or "Violated UN Convention on torture". Not all the faces in the meme are accused of any involvement with the different 'crimes' described. So that it is Scott Morrison who is accused in the meme of torture. However, not even that accusation actually applies. Scott Morrison hasn't tortured anyone, or even stood by and allowed it to happen. Morrison has saved lives by turning back boats and maintaining strong border protection laws. As a direct result of Mr Morrison's actions, refugees have been able to come and settle in Australia in larger numbers than under the ALP, the budget has had ten of billions of dollars added to it because money has not been spent on illegal boat people. Fewer people are in detention than under the ALP and all that are are being processed by the UN. There is nothing happening which may, to the casual observer, appear as torture when compared to ISIL, North Korea or even Ireland or Iceland. And so, looking at the meme, one asks, does any of it have any truth to it?

Viewing the meme, and the nasty comments by those largely agreeing with it, one is reminded public figures need thick skin. Which is why Gillard insisted that Thomson not be confronted on what he later admitted were lies to the parliament. Penny Easton was not a public figure when compliant press hounded her and she suicided. Kathy Jackson is not a public figure either. She bravely stood on principle and asked the questions which later got Thomson convicted of minor things. Only Thomson, who apparently lived on similar conditions to Jackson, was not convicted of the same things that Jackson subsequently was. It looks like Jackson has been smeared. Her boyfriend was lampooned by many for representing her and not working. Both sacrificed much for things it is hoped anyone would stand up for. But one has to wonder, seeing the cost to both, if one ever would dare stand on principle, such is the viciousness of those who are part of labor corruption. The law must stand for all, not in isolation, or it isn't the law. Thomson was excused of things Jackson has been convicted of. But then maybe the law is different for the ALP and unions?

One thing those named in the memes have not done is drown thousands of people who wanted to come to Australia. None of them are guilty of losing over $600 billion from Australia's treasury to corruption. None of them are guilty of stealing from union members, or embezzling money obtained from standover tactics designated for union members.

Instead one who was humiliated before the biased ICAC has been accused of being humiliated by that biased body. One who denounced the bias of the weather bureau for bias on AGW is accused of making that responsible declaration. One who denounced the ruinously expensive and incompetent Australian ship builders as being incapable of making a canoe is themselves denounced for being responsible. But when Australians die in battle from substandard equipment, where will the fingers point then? One who took personal responsibility for expense claims when the ALP have done worse is denounced as the only one to have done so, despite it being legal and legitimate. The Attorney General is accused of ignoring a siege gunman's letter seeking contact with ISIS. It was not sufficient to prevent the gunman from carrying out their siege. But given what the Attorney General knew, his call wasn't the murderous one. Maybe the ALP should look at the character reference given the gunman by a former NSW ALP leader. 
From 2014
I began this project a year ago and so I have now completed a phase of my plan to establish a digital cultural museum in the Smithfield and Cabramatta area which promotes local talent and maintains a bulletin board on current issues. It will pay for martial arts clips and cultural dance which are open sourced so as to allow free use or nominal cost. It will allow me to post videos and articles without editorial interference from FB, Google et al. Not a free for all, discussion involves listening as well as voicing an opinion. The phase I have completed is a daily historical column (not really complete, there is a three week hole which needs to be filled and the articles need revising and editing and to be fleshed out. Also a survey of days events from wikipedia. The emphasis is a conservative voice, which is not available through mainstream press in Australia. There are a few conservative commentators, but the best news service (news.com.au) is balanced and often compromised through left wing advocacy. Whereas left wing ideology is conformist in nature, conservatism is a broad tent with diverse opinion and agenda. 

The leader of the opposition has announced he has been investigated for a sexual assault claim made about events in the 80's. The prosecution has announced they could not reasonably hope for a successful prosecution and so, with that ringing endorsement which is more stained than Cardinal Pell or Hollingworth, Shorten claims he is innocent. The victim is upset at the decision of the prosecutor. It would also be impossible to prosecute Shorten on the issue of competence, something Shorten no doubt feels is abhorrent to him. The event related to a young Labor camp when Shorten was 19 and the victim was 16 years old. A reminder, if it were needed, that the former ACTU leader has never done anything in his life but order people around on Labor activist issues. 

More information has been released regarding the beheading of a journalist in the Middle East by Islamic terrorists. Apparently the family who were working to have the victim freed had been sent a threatening email demanding Obama stop bombing, a week ago. Apparently special forces were tasked to free the journalist. The follow up journalist is then probably already dead, but the terrorists are timing the release of the death video. It is a reminder that the theory of evolution is a disproof of Islam. Not the Islam of faithful peoples who coexist peacefully with others and have contributed to arts and science over the years, but the so called Islam of murderous hateful thugs whose so called Allah uses mentally ill people to represent his people. Crimes against humanity bring Islam into disrepute and it is incumbent on the those who are faithful to resist those who champion terrorism. Who wants to be represented by a pervert? Allah? 
Historical perspective on this day
1140 – Song dynasty general Yue Fei defeats an army led by Jin dynasty general Wuzhu at the Battle of Yancheng during the Jin–Song Wars.
1192 – Minamoto no Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shōgun and the de facto ruler of Japan. (Traditional Japanese date: July 12, 1192)
1331 – King Stefan Uroš III, after months of anarchy, surrenders to his son and rival Stefan Dušan, who succeeds as King of Serbia.
1415 – Henry the Navigator leads Portuguese forces to victory over the Marinids at the Battle of Ceuta.
1680 – Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from the Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.
1689 – The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland.

1770 – James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
1772 – King Gustav III completes his coup d'état by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing himself as an enlightened despot.
1778 – American Revolutionary War: British forces begin besieging the French outpost at Pondichéry.
1791 – A Vodou ceremony, led by Dutty Boukman, turns into a violent slave rebellion, beginning the Haitian Revolution.

1808 – Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.
1810 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France, is elected Crown Prince of Sweden by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates.
1821 – Jarvis Island is discovered by the crew of the ship, Eliza Frances.
1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which will claim the lives of 55 to 65 whites.

1852 – Tlingit Indians destroy Fort Selkirk, Yukon Territory.
1863 – Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by pro-Confederate guerrillas known as Quantrill's Raiders.
1883 – An F5 tornado strikes Rochester, Minnesota, leading to the creation of the Mayo Clinic.
1888 – The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.
1897 – Oldsmobile, a brand of American automobiles, is founded.

1901 – The International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres is founded in Copenhagen.
1911 – The Mona Lisa is stolen by a Louvre employee.
1914 – World War I: The Battle of Charleroi, a successful German attack across the River Sambre that pre-empted a French offensive in the same area.
1918 – World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.

1942 – World War II: The flag of Nazi Germany is planted atop Mount Elbrus, the highest peak of the Caucasus mountain range.
1942 – World War II: The Guadalcanal Campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.
1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.
1944 – World War II: Canadian and Polish units capture the strategically important town of Falaise, Calvados, France.
1945 – Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1957 – The Soviet Union successfully conducts a long-range test flight of the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.
1959 – United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day
1961 – American country music singer Patsy Cline returns to record producer Owen Bradley's studio in Nashville, Tennessee to record her vocals to Willie Nelson's "Crazy." Rib pain lingering from her near fatal car accident earlier in the year had kept her vocal range stifled the week prior. This time, Cline was successful in the first take. It marked the first and last time her vocals were dubbed to the Decca Records session musicians' previously recorded instrumental track. Prior to this event, Cline had always recorded with live accompaniment. Patsy Cline died in a plane crash on March 5, 1963, outside Camden, Tennessee. The recording of "Crazy" would become her signature song.
1961 – Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes.

1963 – Xá Lợi Pagoda raids: The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalizes Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
1968 – Nicolae Ceaușescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.
1968 – James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.
1971 – A bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally in Plaza Miranda, Manila, Philippines with several anti-Marcospolitical candidates injured.

1982 – Lebanese Civil War: The first troops of a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from Lebanon.
1983 – Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honor).
1986 – Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range.
1988 – The 6.9 Mw Nepal earthquake shakes the Nepal–India border with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), leaving 709–1,450 people killed and thousands injured.
1991 – Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.
1991 – Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.
1993 – NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.
2013 – Hundreds of people are reported killed by chemical attacks in the Ghouta region of Syria.
2017 – Great American Eclipse traverses the continental United States.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

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

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

List of available items at Create Space
Happy birthday and many happy returns Hương Ốc, Ian Russell Baker and Trevor Sobey, born on the same day as Philip II of France (1165), William Murdoch (1754), Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789), Count Basie (1904), Friz Freleng (1905), Christopher Robin Milne (1920), Melvin Van Peebles (1932), Kenny Rogers (1938), Endre Szemerédi (1940), Peter Weir (1944), Hayden Panettiere (1989) and Usain Bolt (1986). On your day, Raksha Bandhan (Hinduism, 2013); Ninoy Aquino Day in the Philippines
1831 – Nat Turner led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, US, but it was suppressed about 48 hours later.
1911 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre by a museum employee and was not recovered until two years later.
1963 – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces raided and vandalised Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
1969 – An Australian tourist set the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire, a major catalyst of the formation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
1993 – NASA lost contact with its Mars Observer spacecraft, three days before orbital insertion. It is a good day for Pooh. The slaves are revolting, but so are the owners. Mona Lisa's smile is more enigmatic. Mistakes are made, but you can correct them, if you are observant.
Deaths
===
Andrew Bolt

===

Method in ‘madness’ of Trumpism’s ideas

Piers Akerman – Saturday, August 20, 2016 (11:03pm)

READ the New York Times or listen to National Public Radio in the US and it would be easy to assume that the result of the November presidential election has already been ­determined. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Method in ‘madness’ of Trumpism’s ideas'
===

THERE GOES THE SOCIALIST FACTION

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 21, 2016 (7:14pm)

If they kick out all the Jew-haters, there’ll barely be anybody left: 
Thousands of Labour members and supporters could be suspended or expelled from the party over allegations of abuse and anti-Semitism, it has emerged.
Almost 6,000 people have been reported to the party’s National Executive Committee as part of a new initiative introduced in mid-July to curb threats and poor behaviour. 
It might be easier to round up all the UK Labour members and supporters who aren’t anti-Semites.
===

ANY MINUTE NOW

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 21, 2016 (3:57pm)

Suspend your child-creating activities, people, because the end of the world is once again nigh: 
Standing before several dozen students in a college classroom, Travis Rieder tries to convince them not to have children. Or at least not too many.
He’s at James Madison University in southwest Virginia to talk about a “small-family ethic” — to question the assumptions of a society that sees having children as good, throws parties for expecting parents, and in which parents then pressure their kids to “give them grandchildren.”
Why question such assumptions? The prospect of climate catastrophe.
For years, people have lamented how bad things might get “for our grandchildren,” but Rieder tells the students that future isn’t so far off anymore.
He asks how old they will be in 2036, and, if they are thinking of having kids, how old their kids will be.
“Dangerous climate change is going to be happening by then,” he says. “Very, very soon.” 
Talk to US students about racial or sexual issues and they’ll cry and demand trigger warnings. Tell them not to have kids because the world is ending and they’ll listen attentively.
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TYPICAL DAILY TELEGRAPH EMAIL CHAT

Tim Blair – Sunday, August 21, 2016 (1:06pm)

Me: Mate, great work.
Photographer Nathan Edwards: Thanks mate.
We don’t waste a lot of words at the Telegraph. I was once privileged to work with Nathan on this story, which resulted in the most Australian photograph ever:
===

AKBAR ACTION

Tim Blair – Saturday, August 20, 2016 (11:21pm)

Just a routine stabbing. Nothing to do with anything, really: 
An Orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed on a street in the French city of Strasbourg by an attacker reportedly shouting an Islamic slogan.
Police arrested the suspected attacker who was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” ...
Local police told BBC News the attack was “not terrorist-related”.
According to the police source quoted by AFP news agency, the suspected attacker has a history of mental illness. 
Of course he does. There’s been quite a bit of Akbar action lately, including in Albania: 
Dijar Xhema, from the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, attacked at least three people in Tirana while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” and, “I am the emissary of Allah.” 
As well, further details have emerged about the last moments of Canadian Allah enthusiast Aaron Driver: 
After the bomb exploded, Driver exited the taxi and refused to follow officers’ orders, the RCMP said. Officials said Driver shouted “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – before he was shot and killed. 
Click here to see what happens in Vienna these days when someone shouts a certain “Islamic slogan”. Can’t say I blame them. 
===

No, domestic violence isn’t just sexism with fists

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (11:03am)

Bettina Arndt says the Turnbull Government and feminist groups are peddling a falsehood - that domestic violence is caused by sexism, with men overwhelmingly the villains:
Just look at the bizarre $30 million television campaign the federal government ran a few months ago, which started with a little boy slamming a door in a little girl’s face. A series of vignettes followed, all about innocent females cowering from nasty males.
The whole thing is based on the erroneous notion that domestic violence is caused by disrespect for women… Our key organisations all sing from the same songbook, regularly distorting statistics to present only one part of this complex story.
There is a history of this in Australia. “Up to one quarter of young people in Australia have witnessed an incident of physical or domestic violence against their mother or stepmother,” Adam Graycar, a former director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, wrote in an introduction to a 2001 paper, Young Australians and Domestic Violence… Somehow Graycar failed to mention that while 23 per cent of young people were aware of domestic violence against their mothers or stepmothers, an almost identical proportion (22 per cent) of young people were aware of domestic violence against their fathers or stepfathers by their mothers or stepmothers — as shown in the same study…
How often have we been told we face an epidemic of domestic violence? It’s simply not true… The official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows violence against women has decreased across the 20-year period it has been studied, with the proportion of adult women experiencing physical violence from their male partner in the preceding year down from 2.6 per cent in 1996 to 0.8 per cent in 2012. (Violence from ex-partners dropped from 3.3 per cent to 0.7 per cent.)…
The most recent statistics from the ABS Personal Safety Survey show 1.06 per cent of women are physically assaulted by their partner or ex-partner each year in Australia… But ...  domestic violence organisations [claim] that one in three women are victims of violence. But that’s utterly misleading because it doesn’t just refer to domestic violence. These statistics are also taken from the Personal Safety Survey but refer to the proportion of adult women who have experienced any type of physical violence at all (or threat of violence.)…
That’s partly how the figure inflates to one in three, but it also doesn’t even refer to what’s happening now because these figures include lifetime incidents for adult women — so with our 70-year-olds the violence could have taken place more than 50 years ago. And the equivalent figure for men is worse — one in two.
As for the most horrific crimes, where domestic violence ends in homicide, we are constantly told that domestic violence kills one woman every week. That’s roughly true… The fact remains that almost a quarter (23.1 per cent) of victims of intimate partner homicide are male — and we hardly ever hear about these deaths… [W]omen account for more than half of all murders of children (52 per cent)…
The explosion in police records is due in part to recent expansions in the definition of family violence to include not just physical abuse but also threats of violence, psychological, emotional, economic and social abuse. Look at Western Australia, where this changed definition was introduced in 2004. That year West Australian police recorded 17,000 incidents of violence, but by 2012 this had almost tripled to 45,000… The growing trend for AVOs to be used for tactical purposes in family law disputes is also pushing up police records of domestic violence… A survey of NSW magistrates found 90 per cent agreed that AVOs were being used as a divorce tactic.  
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Why didn’t the Loyal Deputy warn Malcolm Turnbull about Vietnam?

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (10:57am)

Where was Foreign Minister Julie Bishop? Why didn’t the Loyal Deputy warn the Prime Minister?
The Australian Government was aware for at least a week of Vietnam’s concerns about too many visitors to Long Tan, the commander of the unit that fought the battle says. 
The Vietnamese Government cancelled Thursday’s memorial service for the 50th anniversary of Vietnam War battle, a move which was described as a shock and a “kick in the guts” by Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan.
But the commander of D Company 6RAR, which fought the battle at Long Tan, told the ABC trouble was brewing weeks ago. “It was mentioned some weeks ago when I was in Canberra that Hanoi was a bit worried about the number of people expected — like 3,000 — and it was all getting too much, too big, getting out of hand,” Harry Smith said.
Really? So why did Malcolm Turnbull try to resolve this only on the day before the commemoration?
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

How does this wicked law help anyone involved?

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (10:19am)

Hedley Thomas on the frightening use of the Racial Discrimination Act to punish students who complained against racial discrimination at the Queensland University of Technology. How can any politician or journalist defend a law that encourages this kind of action?:
Cindy Prior[’s] ...  parents were Aboriginal… Married at 23, she had three children. She says she became sole carer of her now adult children following the 2014 death in a car accident of their father, whom she had divorced. She wanted to do an arts degree majoring in human rights, ethics and Australian studies until illness scotched those plans… 
The unanswered question is to what extent Prior’s family circumstances have contributed to her ­reliance on 18C against the students, reinforcing concerns of some that the legislative provision can be used to address past hurts and unrelated grievances…

In the beginning,… on May 28, 2013 ... Prior, who oversaw reception for the indigenous-only “safe space” [at QUT] , ... says she saw “three young white men I did not recognise at all”, and to one of them, Alex Wood, a fee-paying student who had unknowingly entered the unit to try to access a computer, she asked: “Hi, are you indigenous?’’
Wood: “No, we’re not.’’
Prior: “Ah, this is the Oodgeroo Unit, it’s an indigenous space for indigenous students at QUT. There are other computer labs in the university you can use.’’
Prior says the students said nothing. They packed their gear…
A few hours later an indigenous student went to her with concerns that comments had been posted to a Facebook site, called QUT Stalker Space… Wood, in what he saw as a legitimate, uncontroversial exercise of free speech, had written: “Just got kicked out of the unsigned ­indigenous computer room. QUT (is) stopping segregation with segregation.”
Jackson Powell wrote sarcastically: “I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is.”
One post that was obviously ­offensive — “ITT niggers” — came from a Facebook profile bearing the name of student Calum Thwaites, who had not been near the Oodgeroo Unit. He immediately reported to Facebook and QUT that the Facebook profile had never belonged to him; he would never write such words; and that someone had set him up as part of a student prank.
In her affidavit of 285 pages, including exhibits, earlier this year, Prior recalls: “I was terribly upset and angry. I dread the word ‘nigger’. It is the ultimate racist taunt."… She became more upset as she read some students expressing their opinions that an indigenous-only unit was unhelpful because it perpetuated inequality, and resulted in “chronic self-consciousness and feelings of inferiority for Aboriginal people"… The reference to “white ­supremacists” in the sarcastic post of Powell left her, she says, with a “visceral reaction”, and a “primal fear of images of white hoods and burning crosses”. She says she feared being physically assaulted…
Prior went to a doctor and was medically certified as unfit for work.... Four days later, Prior, who has not returned to the unit in the three years since the incident, told QUT she would be taking the matter to the Human Rights Commission… The Weekend Australian has established that a number of students in the original legal action, helped by their parents in some cases, paid thousands of dollars to be released from the complaint.
The students strenuously denied being racists or expressing racist views, but before their ­careers had started they feared their reputations and job prospects would be destroyed by anything linking them to the mere ­accusation of racism. The three students left in the case — Wood, Powell and Thwaites, who also deny racism — ... had minimal funds and could not ­afford legal representation… For Prior, who faces potentially massive orders for legal costs as Federal Circuit Court judge ­Michael Jarrett prepares to rule on whether her action under section 18C should be dismissed, and her lawyers, the case is black and white. But whatever the hurt and offence she insists she felt in late May 2013 over some Facebook posts, public responses to the subsequent 18C legal action and its demand for $250,000 in damages from the students have been significantly more frank and unsympathetic. Many people believe the students were the victims of ­racism because of their eviction. 
Such are the restrictions on free speech now that The Australian is forced to add underneath this report:
Editor’s note: comments have been closed and removed from this story due to legal concerns.
That means it is difficult for Australians to say what they think about a law that affects their right to speak - and which imposes costs on taxpayers.
Yet still we get journalists claiming the Racial Discrimination Act does not restrict free speech. 
===

Public servants gain as private sector workers struggle. This Ponzi scheme must fail

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (10:00am)

We’re borrowing billions to pay for a huge growth in public-sector jobs and wages - and at some stage the crunch will come:
Australian Bureau of Statistics wages data for the June quarter show the public sector is out-­competing the private sector for jobs. While the overall wages growth was the lowest on record, at just 2.1 per cent for the year, public-sector wages grew by 2.4 per cent. 
Wages in the retail sector, Australia’s biggest employer, rose by just 0.1 per cent in the quarter compared with 0.6 per cent in the public sector…
ABS figures show that hours worked in the non-market economy have grown 1.9 per cent in the year to June, outstripping those in the market economy, which grew by 0.1 per cent. Since March 2008, before the global financial crisis, hours worked in non-market ­industries have grown by 24 per cent, ­compared with 4 per cent for the market sector. Excluding ­educa­tion and training, non-market hours worked grew by 29 per cent over the same period.
The ABS defines the non-­market economy as comprising education and training, public ­administration and safety, and healthcare and social assistance.
The growth in non-market hours worked comes as public-sector salary costs for health and education are rising sharply. Salar­ies paid to public-sector workers in education and training rose 43 per cent to $38bn over the same period, while salaries for health workers rose at the same rate to $35bn. 
===

Pure coincidence. “Mentally ill” Muslim stabs French Jew

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (3:02am)

I’ve noted before how politicians and police now prefer to blame mental illness rather than Islam for terrorist attacks by jihadists.
The latest example:
An Orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed on a street in the French city of Strasbourg by an attacker reportedly shouting an Islamic slogan. 
Police arrested the suspected attacker who was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” ...
Local police told BBC News the attack was “not terrorist-related”.
According to the police source quoted by AFP news agency, the suspected attacker has a history of mental illness.
Pure coincidence, then, that the man shouting Allahu Akbar stabbed a Jew.  Or is there some kind of mental illness that drives people to attack Jews in particular?
UPDATE
This mental illness excuse is catching on:
As recently as Aug. 11, a woman ran over two police officers in Montreal with her car while yelling “Allah!” and she was also deemed mentally ill by Canadian authorities, CIJ News reported.
UPDATE
Is fear of making Muslims angry making police chiefs dodge their first duty? Chris Kenny:
When the NSW police should have been totally preoccupied with freeing hostages from an armed, known extremist claiming jihadist intent, senior police were fussing over issues of social engineering. From the evidence of Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione and his deputy, Catherine Burn, we learned they “placed huge weight on community stability” during the siege … 
In her prepared statement, Burn accentuated this point as she described her media performances. “I needed to emphasise community harmony while urging people to provide any information that could help,” she said. “It was paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger which might have led to bias-motivated crime.”
If I understand this tactic correctly, police bosses don’t want to give the impression that Muslims are more prone to terrorism because that will make Muslims more prone to terrorism.
More:
Six hours into the Lindt cafe siege, while hostages feared for their lives, NSW police launched Operation Hammerhead, deploying officers because they were ­worried about the potential for what they termed “bias crime” against the Muslim community. 
Just over an hour after Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson and mother of three Katrina Dawson were killed — Dawson by police gunfire — NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione tasked an assistant commissioner to work with the community on “bias-crime vulnerabilities"… A bias crime is when someone is targeted because of race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.
Acting Deputy Commissioner Jeffrey Loy revealed in his statement to the inquest that at 4.40pm, as hostages were held at gunpoint, he spoke with Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch about launching Operation Hammerhead “pertaining to bias crime and the debriefing of hostages"…
Later, at 3.15am, just over an hour after the siege ended, Mr Scip­ione ordered Mr Loy to launch an operation to deal with bias crime…
One senior police figure said the concern about bias crime during a live hostage situation was misplaced. “I would have thought the lives and the welfare of the hostages was the No 1 priority, not worrying about future media ­releases relating to bias crime or anything else for that matter,” he said. 
It strikes me that police are now hostage to the persecution complete of the Muslim advocacy industry. And this when the ultimate persecution was being suffered by the victims of Man Monis. 
===

Barack plays golf. Hits into water hazard

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (2:38am)

Barack Obama played golf while Louisiana battled floods that have killed 13 people:
President Barack Obama meanwhile announced he is headed to Louisiana on Tuesday, after days of criticism from some in the southern state for not visiting during the week-long ordeal, which culminated with the Republican candidate on the ground and the president still on vacation.
In 2008, Obama attacked President George Bush for not visiting drowned New Orleans immediately:
When the people of New Orleans and Gulf Coast extended their hand for help, help was not there… We can talk about levies that couldn’t hold, about a FEMA that seem not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from a window on an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid.
Compare the hysterical media condemnation of Bush then to the very muted coverage of Obama now.
The media bias really is so unsubtle. 
===

Turnbull reneges on same-sex marriage plebiscite date

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (2:14am)

I hardly care if it’s this year or next, but why break a virtual promise not two months after the election - and before you’ve kept any of the other promises made?
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull will announce a ­national plebiscite on same-sex marriage in Australia for February 2017, dumping his election pledge for a vote by the end of the year.
And here’s another implied promise that may be broken:
Senior cabinet ministers ­remain opposed to public funding of the “yes” and “no” case on the grounds it would add to the existing $160 million cost and fuel homophobia.
“Fuel homophobia”? So now the Liberals are again validating a Labor scare - just as they’ve done with Labor’s bank bashing.
In fact, funding both the no and the yes case is important when all the main political parties will argue for “yes”. And Turnbull did agree to that funding before the election.
What Turnbull said as recently as June 30:
“I am confident we can hold [the plebsicite] before the end of the year,” he said. “As far as the plebiscite is concerned, the expectation is that there will be some funding, to be determined, similar to a referendum for both a yes and no case.”
Turnbull is rapidly becoming someone neither side respects: ridiculous to the Left and treacherous to the Right.
UPDATE
Fairfax is reporting a yes-but-no:
However the government on Saturday night denied that a date – or a question – had been finalised. 
“The mechanics of the plebiscite, including the specific question and also the timing, are subject to the usual cabinet processes,” Mr Turnbull’s spokesperson told Fairfax.
===

River book

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (2:02am)

My book is on an odyssey, visiting the skulls of Montpellier, York Minster, Shanghai, Croatia,  Ho Chi Minh City, Santorini, London, Lake Como, Ithaca, Scotland, the Bay of Naples, Dubrovnik, Fiji, Aileron,  New Zealand,  Sri Lanka,  the Andes,  the Northern Territory,  the Whitsundays,  Kalgoorlie and Condabri, Queensland, before  invading Australia’s most Left-wing Parliament - an experience which convinced one reader at the Katharine River Mango Farm to try teaching even a donkey to understand what’s in it. Meanwhile, it  attended a christening in Newcastle, checked in at a Penrith hospital and recuperated at the Moreton Bay Boat Club.
Joyce has now taken it on a cruise on the Murray in South Australia:
To reward someone cruisy in your life, order the book here.
BOLT BULLETIN
The fourth edition of the Bolt Bulletin, available to on-line buyers, went out last week.  The Bolt Bulletin will also be available to readers who buy Still Not Sorry on line. This reprint of my 2005 collection of columns and reflections, with a new preface, will be published over the next few weeks.  Pre-order here. 
===

Kenny’s false dichotomy. Maybe he sells out free speech simply because he’s clueless

Andrew Bolt August 21 2016 (1:28am)

Is Mark Kenny racist or stupid?
Andrew Bolt ...  rushed to the oppressed Leyonhjelm’s defence, being in no doubt the senator had been racially vilified by the suggestion of his “angry white male certitude”: “The Fairfax journalist responsible for this boorish racist insult is angry white male Mark Kenny,” wrote Bolt in his unfailingly angry blog… 
It’s either racist to refer to white male certitude, or it is nanny-state overreach to have laws which prohibit it. But which? Bolt has obviously come down on the side of the former. Who knew?
The answer to both my question and Kenny’s is precisely the same: it’s both, Mark.
Kenny demonstrates he’s incapable not just of logic but of detecting his own hypocrisy - again:
Why people on the right imagine the rest of us ... yearn for the pure pleasure of firing off racial slurs, remains a mystery.
Er, because that’s what you just did?
UPDATE
Note again that while Kenny purports to be very much against racial abuse, he indulges in it against at least one race - the white one, with the kind of crude generalisations so typical of racialists:
… white men can be angry ...  and frequently do express their views with an annoying degree of “certitude”
Like Kenny, perhaps?
And while Kenny purports to be against abuse on racial grounds, he feels very free to abuse on almost every other, and to an apoplectic degree:
David Leyonhjelm [has] a “certitude” common to angry white males ... morally mercurial senator ... cowardice skulking behind a hypocrisy ...  scurried to the apron strings of the state ... tin-pot ...  ... annoying ... preposterous 
Once again, a demonstration of Bertrand Russell’s maxim:
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
Which is precisely why “idealists” such as Kenny are so often hypocrites. It’s not the principle that counts but the side. Indeed, Kenny unwittingly declares just that in this very same piece:
...racial discrimination laws were never intended to protect the powerful or dominant group, but to protect all of the rest. 
In other words, Kenny is not at all against racism on principle. He’s just against it when it’s used against his preferred side. 
===

Unions Royal Commission is Murphy’s Law

Piers Akerman – Friday, August 21, 2015 (12:28am)

THE totally unprincipled attempt to oust Commissioner Dyson Heydon from the Royal Commission Into Trade Union Governance And Corruption is deceitfully based on the most dishonest of premises.
 Continue reading 'Unions Royal Commission is Murphy’s Law'
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, August 23

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (5:06pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm
Editorial:  Labor’s protection racket for the corrupt
My guest:  Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. On the war with unions and the Greens.
The panel: Georgina Downer, former diplomat and member of the Victorian Liberal administrative committee, and Nicholas Reece, former advisor to Julia Gillard. On crooks, smearing judges and more.

NewsWatch: Sharri Markson, Australian media editor. On the loss of Mark Lathtam. But why is Clementine Ford still a Fairfax columnist?
Plus a response to Noel Pearson.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Greens pay Aboriginal objectors to mine

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (11:33am)

These revelations are extraordinary and disturbing:
Indigenous elders fighting for ­native title on the land of Adani’s proposed $16 billion Carmichael coalmine have accused the green lobby of exploiting them and causing bitter divisions.
The Wangan and Jagalingou people are split over the mine. Opponents are being bankrolled by conservationists to fight Adani, while supporters within the indig­enous group fear the loss of jobs for future generations…
Patrick Malone and Irene White, two of the three applicants in the decade-long battle for native­ title, said yesterday they did not support the legal challenge, which will further delay the mine.
Mr Malone said green activists­ had infiltrated the native title group last year....
Mr Malone, a former manager of indigenous broadcasting at the ABC, said last year the applicants had an in-principle agreement to take Adani’s offer… Mr Malone and Ms White said a change last August in the applic­ants on the native title claim, including the appointment of entertainer and mine critic Adrian­ Burragubba, led to a shift in the group’s position on Adani. Ms White said a subsequent meeting of the 12 families making up the native title group, in October last year, then voted against supporting the deal with Adani…
Earlier this year it was revealed that, weeks after the meeting, Wotif founder Graeme Wood and former Greenpeace employee John Hepburn were involved in setting up a company, The Sunrise Project, to help the indigenous group fight Adani.
Documents obtained by The Australian detail an offer of a $325,000 payment over one year “to initiate a community development program and explore their alternatives to mining on their country’’. Access to a scholarship program connected to the University of Queensland to the value of $600,000 over five years is also canvassed.
A “heads of agreement’’ between The Sunrise Project and a family council of the group, convened by Mr Burragubba, warned that assistance was contingent on continued opposition to the mine…
Mr Burragubba yesterday dismissed claims that the group was being used by conservationists… Mr Burrugubba said funding for the three-week trip around the world to lobby banks had been raised by an online petition, signed by almost 100,000 people who supported the opposition to the mine. But when asked who organ­ised the trip and meetings, he said: “I don’t know … I just went and told my story.’’ 
It’s time the miners fought:
The nation’s biggest resources companies — including Shell and Rio Tinto — have backed the Abbott government’s move to ban green groups from using the courts to stop major projects, as the industry launches a rare campaign targeting activists it accuses of “killing Australian jobs”. 
Industry chiefs said yesterday they expected their projects to be measured against the highest environmental standards, but they did not believe a small number of green activists should be allowed to stop developments and kill jobs.
Shell Australia country chairman Andrew Smith told The Australian the energy giant welcomed the government’s move to restrict legal challenges against projects that were now “almost always” opposed by highly organised and well-trained activists.
===

ACTU tries to shoot the sheriff

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (11:20am)

The ACTU launches its disgraceful campaign to get ride of corruption buster Dyson Heydon, telling him in his royal commission he should step down:
The heart of the ACTU’s case is that “the reasonable bystander” would think Dyson Heydon might be biased. 
In terms of legal strategy, the ACTU has decided not to argue “actual bias” but instead “apprehended bias.” It appears the ACTU has gone for this basis for its application as it has a lower standard of proof. For “apprehended” bias one only has to prove that the judge “might” not bring an impartial mind to a judgment or commission.
This “hypothetical bystander” is, according to the ACTU, someone who has listened to the ACTU and Labor smears and not to the Heydon defenders:
Mr Newlinds [the ACTU’s counsel] focuses on Justice Heydon’s reputation: “We know that you’re the Honourable Dyson Heydon. When I say we, I mean the lawyers in this room, and we know that you have particular skills as a lawyer and as a judge and for that matter as an academic."… 
He says: “We know that you’re a man with a reputation for having a razor sharp mind, to use another cliche, a mind like a steel trap. I think my learned friend is correct in saying that the hypothetical bystander that this matter must be judged by, he or she doesn’t know that ... They do know that you were appointed to the High Court, that you were appointed to the COA of NSW, then to the HC of A and served for the best part of a decade, I think, and that the executive branch of government has seen you as a person appropriate to carry out this very important, difficult and fact intensive inquiry. 
So is that the ACTU argument? That it knows and accepts Hyson is a fine judge and fair man, but that he must go because its smears - and Labor’s - have worked to discredit him?
Hmm. Interesting point made. 
UPDATE
The “hypothetical bystanders” - to judge from the Herald Sun’s letters pages today - have overwhelmingly concluded that Heydon should stay, and that he is the victim of a disgusting campaign of denigration by Labor and unions with plenty to hide.
More hypothetical bystanders write to The Australian today to express the same view.
UPDATE
The CFMEU’s counsel launches an attack that blows up in his face:
11.55am: Mr Agius says: “There is a clear inference available, in our respectful submission, on the material that, Mr Commissioner, you have lent your support to the Liberal Party and that would indicate, in our respectful submission, a clear link between the bias which that, is the apprehended bias, that we allege.” 
11.54am:Elizabeth Colman clarifies this for us: The 12 August email released to the public was about the final arrangements for the Barwick dinner, to be held on 26 August.
Agius says the email released to the public, and to the ACTU, was missing a line: “attachments: Barwick invitation August 2015. State donation compliance doc”.
Apparently, the full version was tendered to the Commission this morning.
“It clearly identifies the function as one which might be called a fundraiser,” Mr Agius said:
“The fair-minded observer would in our respectful submission have serious concerns as to why it was that this email, which was produced yesterday and the form in which it was produced, didn’t find its way into ACTU MFI2 and that the copy of which did find its way into that bundle deleted the reference to attachments.”
11.53am: Breathtaking allegations by the eminent John Agius SC for the CFMEU about an email on August 12 2015 was a “doctored document”. Agius says there is “concern that the information that was released was at best a partial disclosure, if not a disclosure of a doctored document which had been edited to remove the reference to State donation and also would be concerned about the incomplete disclosure”. 
Agius is implying that Heydon could be a sneak, deleting embarrassing stuff - that he “doctored” a document.
Foul allegation.
In fact, that line is present on the emails published by the royal commission:
Agius then gets up and says he’s just been told that when a document is forwarded, the attachment line in the email drops off. He backs off that damaging allegation of a document being “doctored”.
The ACTU counsel then jumps up to disassociate himself from any claim that the document was “doctored”. 
===

Just calling Aborigines “indigenous” does not disguise this dangerous tribalisation

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (10:54am)

Noel Pearson thinks that by redefining Aborigines as “indigenous” he’s no longer talking about race, and therefore can’t be accused of promoting a new apartheid:
NOEL PEARSON: What I do want recognition of is the fact that there were Indigenous peoples in this country prior to 1788. That is not a question of race, even though commentators like Andrew Bolt and so on, they, in a very dishonest way, try to conflate race and indigenous. They are separate things. I completely agree that we shouldn’t have a racial constitution. But the simple historical fact that there were peoples here that came upwards to 53,000 years ago, there were people here prior to 1788 - that’s a question of being indigenous to Australia; it’s not about race.
Simple way to explode that trickery.
I was born in Australia six years before Pearson. If you consider us as individuals I am more indigenous than Pearson. I “came” here before he did.
So why does Pearson demand special rights of citizenship, superior to my own? Not because he was here first but because he belongs to a tribe - a “race” or people who were here before my “race” or people.  Whether you talk of “race” or “indigeneity”, the aim is the same - to divide us by tribe or ancestry, rather than to judge us as individuals.
So when does this division finally become so artificial or strained that we no longer defend it? Will that be two centuries from now, when we’re so thoroughly intermarried that half the population can trace some ancestor from 400 years earlier who was Aboriginal, thus giving them special rights not available to the other half of the population, some from families who have lived here for centuries? This should matter? This is healthy?
If Pearson merely wants recognition that Aborigines were here before 1788, he’s got it. It’s taught in school books, commemorated in museums and accepted as a fact by everyone. In fact, I’ll repeat it here: there were Aborigines in Australia before white settlement.
Now, let’s get onto fixing the real problems, none of them fixed by retribalising Australia.  
===

No but yes. Green groups really do want deindustrialisation

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (8:02am)

Fairfax columnists really need to workshop a collective position.
Waleed Aly denies green groups want to deindustrialise and be more communistic and authoritarian:
The “new religion” of the “extreme left” is how former Coalition senator Nick Minchin put it: the cloak that masks its real agenda to “deindustralise the Western world”. Environmentalism, then, becomes the new communism, designed to implement vast new bureaucracies that control the free market and implement the will of the unelected.
But Elizabeth Farrelly yesterday confirmed:
Simply, we have to become fossil free. No more oil. No more gas. And not just no new coalmines. No coal, period. This requires an immediate and universal switch to renewables, evs, organic farming, intensive reforestation, efficiencies, walking and cycling. Not just for the believers. For everyone… 
But on the comfort side is Cuba which, in 1990, with Russia’s connivance, became the no-oil test case. Everyone expected disaster but found, when forced to walk, work and cycle more, to mend and invent, to produce bio-fuel and farm organically, they lived healthier, longer lives and formed stronger, more energised communities.
Cuba is our model? The “comfort side”?
Ah, Cuba! With, according to the World Bank, a per capita gross domestic product in 2013 of: 
$US6848.
Which comes in at just under a tenth of ours at:
$US67,473
And that community! Stronger in some less desirable ways. Human Rights Watch World Report 2014, country summary for Cuba:
The Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticise the government or call for basic human rights. Officials employ a range of tactics to punish dissent and instil fear in the public, including beatings, public acts of shaming, termination of employment, and threats of long-term imprisonment.  
So, who best describes the green dream - Aly or Farrelly?
Well, let’s get former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton, member of the Climate Change Authority, to arbitrate:
Climate change is a collective problem that demands collective solutions. In other words, it needs good, strong policies enforced by governments… 
It is possible to imagine a society in which we live up to Keynes’ vision, one in which we are no longer obsessed with growth and consumption and instead cultivate the art of life? It would be a society in which we nurture the things that really do improve our wellbeing, rather than dreaming evermore of the things that only money can buy… So if we want to consume less we must earn less, and if we want to earn less we must work less. At least, we must perform less paid work. 
And if we don’t agree to slash our emissions? Hamilton suggests what Aly denies:
Very few people, even among environmentalists, have truly faced up to what the science is telling us. This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes.
And is Aly right to mock the notion that greens really want “to implement vast new bureaucracies”? Let’s call in another arbiter, former Greens leader Bob Brown:
The Greens’ hero was met with a standing ovation when he delivered the 2012 Green Oration, which called for a single global and democratic parliament. 
“Let us create a global democracy and parliament under the grand idea of one planet, one person, one vote, one value,” he said.
UPDATE
Yes, green groups really do want to destroy the pillars of our industrialisation.
From Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom, a manual for green activists drawn up by Greenpeace and the Graeme Wood Foundation:
Challenge and delay key infrastructure developments (ports and rail) and ‘mega mines’… Build on the outrage created by coal seam gas to win federal and state based reforms to exclude mining from key areas, such as farmland, nature refuges, aquifers, and near homes… Increase investor risk… Increasing the cost of coal is fundamental to the long-term global strategy to phase out the industry…
Change the story of coal from being the backbone of our economy, to being a destructive industry that destroys the landscape and communities, corrupts our democracy, and threatens the global climate. 
What ending coal would mean:
Coal is the world’s fuel of choice for electricity generation – accounting for 41 per cent of global generation – because it is affordable and reliable… Coal generates three-quarters of the electricity that powers Australian industry and heats, cools and lights Australian homes… 
In the International Energy Agency’s core scenario, Australia’s coal production grows by almost 50 per cent between 2011 and 2035…
The “broader coal economy” – that is, coal economy output plus spending of wages earned in the coal economy – represented 4.2 per cent of GDP or almost $60 billion in 2011-12. This is about the same size as iron ore… 
And what closing mining generally would involve:
The mining sector currently contributes around 8.5% to Australia’s GDP (total output), and employs around 2% of the workforce (about 220,000 people).
However, as with most primary products, this underestimates the impact of the mining sector. Downstream processing sometimes means that production is not counted as mining output…
[F]or 2013-14 financial year, the mining sector paid about $12.7 billion in taxes ... and another $10 billion in royalties as payment for the minerals (to state governments). The mining sector’s biggest impact is on exports - in recent years it has made up over 50% of Australia’s total export earnings… [B]etween 2000 and 2010, the value of exports from mining rose by over 120%, from $63 billion to $139 billion.
Yet the Greens policy is to destroy the coal industry:
The NSW Greens will step up the attack on coal, calling for exports to end in five years and existing mines to be phased out. 
It is a fantasy to believe this agenda would not deindustrialise Australia.  
===

Let’s laugh at the Catholic

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (7:54am)

Seriously? Dragging in Tony Abbott’s faith for some ridicule? Why not Shorten’s? Rudd’s?
This headline appeared in the Financial Review, not in the Green Left Weekly or some undergraduate propaganda sheet, as you might have assumed. 
===

Seven more jihadists kept on our streets

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (7:25am)

This is not a problem solved. It is a problem kept on our streets:
SEVEN men carrying large sums of cash have been stopped from boarding flights out of Australia allegedly to join terrorists in the Middle East. 
IMMIGRATION Minister Peter Dutton said more than 350 people had been stopped from departing Australia in 2014-15 and this was the largest single group.
I heard journalists chattering about deradicalisation programs, as if there were some classes the Government could give that would turn jihadists into loyal Australians in just a few easy lessons.
You really have to share the Left’s dangerous and arrogant faith in the perfectibility of humans to believe this stuff.
Culture counts. A few lessons from some sociologist won’t.
First defence against the jihad-minded? Don’t import more.  
===

Christ out of Victorian schools. Kirner in

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (7:00am)

Labor continues its war against Christianity:
Victorian schools will scrap special religious instruction from class time, with changes to the state’s curriculum throwing the future of the controversial program in doubt. 
The Andrews government has ordered that the weekly 30 minute program move to lunchtime and before and after school in 2016 to make way for new content on world histories, cultures, faiths and ethics. Classes that address domestic violence and respectful relationships will also become compulsory for all prep to year 10 students from 2016.
This is robbing children of an education in the faith that is the source of so much they take for granted - the faith that created the world’s freest societies, which are now under attack again from tribal forces of intolerance and oppression.
Yes, I mean this time the tribal forces of the Left, first attacking Jewish Israel and then, is so often the pattern, moving on to the Christians.
PS
When did we last have a Victorian government so overt in using state power to promote its propaganda?
One of Victoria’s new hospitals will be named in honour of the state’s first female premier, the late Joan Kirner. 
Two months after Ms Kirner died after a long battle with illness, the $200 million Women’s and Children’s Hospital to be built in Sunshine will take her name as an ongoing tribute to her legacy… “Joan was an absolute inspiration to all of us and we want to honour her and her legacy,” [Premier Dan] Andrews said
But watch: you will find the Victorian Liberals so lacking in intellectual clout and cultural knowledge that they will barely resist.  The lights are going out.
(Declaration: I am an agnostic, not a Christian.)
UPDATE
Jennifer Oriel gives another example of the authoritarianism and intolerance of the tribal Left:
A Sexton poll found that, like the Prime Minister, more than two-thirds of Australians want a plebiscite on marriage reform. Yet Abbott’s plebiscite proposal was met with howls of condemnation from the Left, accompanied by the doublethink spin that permitting citizens the exercise of free thought and conscience would cause democratic decline… 
Labor’s illiberal position on marriage reform arises from the belief that it knows better than the people and thus is justified in ceding our freedom of thought and conscience to the all-powerful party machine. The same ALP technocrats trying to deny a plebiscite on gay marriage are those we booted out of office for perverting minority politics and human rights in an attempt to censor the free press, free speech and public reason…
The incipient marriage reform debate has revealed the looming choice for voters in the lead-up to next year’s election: government by liberal democracy or a nation suppressed by the tribalist technocracy of the modern Left. 
===

Who let him get away with it?

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (6:55am)

There will be wider repercussions - and should be:
Victoria Police was called in after the Liberal Party accused its former state chief, Damien Mantach, of siphoning off [$1.5 million of] the party’s money to pay for his mortgage, his lifestyle, and to amass a $500,000 share portfolio… 
It can be revealed:
MR Mantach had to repay $48,000 to the Tasmanian Liberal Party after a dispute over his use of his corporate credit card on private expenditure while state director.
NO Victorian MP knew of the Tasmanian repayment, and senior officials who appointed him in Victoria say they had been told only that there was a minor credit card discrepancy.
OPEN warfare erupted within the Victorian Liberal Party, as MPs sheeting home the blame for Mr Mantach’s appointment to Brian Loughnane, the federal director and husband of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin… MPs now believe bulk mail-outs and polling meant to occur before their November 2014 election loss never happened, and the money instead was siphoned off. 
But beware of opportunists trying to exploit this scandal:
But sources said Mr Loughnane was only aware of a minor “overspend” on a corporate credit card, which he believed was settled internally. It’s believed he did not know the figure was anywhere near $48,000…

Tony Nutt, former chief-of-staff to then premier Ted Baillieu, was also a target for his role in Mr Mantach’s promotion.
But one bright spot: new Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger has handled this brilliantly. He had it sorted before the news broke, was frank to the media and covered up nothing.
Here is one difference: when a party official rips off Liberal members, the Liberals call the cops. When a union official rips off union members, Labor shoots the cops. 
===

The ABC give a Greens extremist two programs to produce her propaganda

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (6:42am)

How can the ABC justify this vile stuff, exposed by Alex Rivchin?
The programs, Jerusalem: a divine crime scene, and An unholy mix – Jerusalem, religion and archaeology, produced by former Greens Marrickville Councillor Cathy Peters, presented the views of a parade of veteran anti-Israel propagandists…
An editor’s note published online described Peters as a member of the NSW Greens, an executive member of the Coalition For Justice and Peace in Palestine and a member of Jews Against the Occupation. What the ABC failed to disclose is that Peters is also a fierce proponent of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel…
Given her background in the anti-Israel movement, it was unsurprising that the two programs were as blatantly inaccurate and one-sided as they were, featuring a panel of speakers all coming from a relentlessly one-eyed anti-Israel perspective. One panellist, Ross Burns, the former Australian Ambassador to Israel, has previously served on the board of the Palestinian lobby group, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network.
Sara Irving, described as a historian and a writer, has filed over 200 stories for the virulently anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website.
Jeff Halper, the Israeli professor, ostensibly chosen to present an Israeli perspective, calls for the eradication of a Jewish national home through a ‘one-state solution’ to the conflict, and has made the bizarre claim that Israel has developed a ‘spectral dust’ it can spray over wide areas of land, every grain of which is a sensor, programmed with a person’s DNA to track, locate and kill that individual.
Shawan Jabarin was presented as a human rights activist from a Palestinian NGO. The audience was not told that ...  a court found that Jabarin ... “is an activist in a terrorist organization which does not shy away from acts of murder and attempted murder....’
The former Jerusalem city councillor, Meir Margalit, provided perhaps the most extreme turn of all, in likening archaeological digs which seek to understand, preserve and honour the history of Jerusalem, to the acts of wholesale archaeological destruction and grotesque vandalism committed by Isis.
The opinions of the panellists were punctuated by recordings supposedly presenting Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. The audience heard a gentle-sounding Palestinian poet reciting incantations of longing and pain. The ostensible Israeli perspective was presented in the form of thick American accents repeatedly speaking of God and King David. As if those are the only, or predominant, voices on either side…
There were also straight-out factual errors. Listeners were told ‘if you’re not Jewish in Jerusalem you don’t have the right to vote.’ 
How does a Green activist to the far Left of even her own party get to produce two such programs on the ABC to produce her hateful anti-Israel propaganda?
How on earth does that happen? 
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Four reasons why Clementine Ford’s excuse is pathetic

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (6:05am)

There are four obvious objections a rational person would have to this excuse:
Fairfax Media columnist Clementine Ford has sold “F..k Tony Abbott” T-shirts, abused an Iran­ian-born rival for not being a white male and tweeted profan­ities with vicious abandon. 
Yet just days after celebrating Mark Latham’s demise as a Fairfax columnist over abuse and sexism, Ford has justified her behaviour by saying she is less offensi­ve than other columnists.
First, the excuse is untrue.
Second, the excuse is childish. Most parents don’t buy that but-everyone-else-is-doing-it self-indulgence from their own children.
Third, the excuse is dangerous. What other barbarities might an eye-for-an-eye tribalist forgive themselves on the grounds that they consider the other side is even worse?
Fourth, the excuse is demeaning. Do you really adopt the standards of people you consider evil?
No, it seems to me Ford only has one excuse: she’s a woman of the Left. Therefore she’s excused any vicious wah-wah that would kill the career of a white conservative. Which means she’s a sexist, too, accepting lower standards from women. 
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A quieter wedding would have suited Mehajir better

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (5:33am)

Salim Mehajir held a look-at-me-wedding. His problem is that we did indeed look, and it isn’t pretty.
I doubt it will stop there, either. 
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Greek PM quits to stand again for the opposite policies

Andrew Bolt August 21 2015 (5:21am)

In January Greece voted in far-Left loudmouths who pretended the country’s financial crisis was caused by foreigners and vowed to keep spending those foreigners’ money.
A warning to Australia: facts are stubborn things. So are creditors:
GREEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has announced his resignation and called for snap elections, as he went on the offensive to defend the country’s massive bailout after it triggered a rebellion within his own party… 
Mr Tsipras’s announcement came after debt-crippled Greece paid a huge debt to the ECB on Thursday, effectively starting its third mammoth bailout, expected to cost as much as 86 billion euros ($131 billion) over the next three years. It is the latest gamble by the charismatic young premier, who successfully persuaded Greeks to reject tough reforms in a referendum last month, only to adopt them at a eurozone summit a week later.
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Trade union preys on weak and guilt-ridden

Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (7:29pm)

THERE was an outpouring of public sympathy for Down syndrome baby Gammy, abandoned in Thailand to be cared for by his surrogate mother, 21-year-old Pattaramon Chanbua.
 Continue reading 'Trade union preys on weak and guilt-ridden'
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The big rush to rewrite history

Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (6:44pm)

SINCE last year’s election, there has been an unholy rush by participants competing to get their versions of history into print. First out of the chute was Rob Oakeshott’s own explanation for the failure of the nation to find any beauty in the ugliness of Julia Gillard’s minority government he helped install.
 Continue reading 'The big rush to rewrite history'
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PULPED FICTION

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (2:26pm)

A cooperative venture between Fairfax and ABC staffers somehow goes horribly wrong: 
Copies of a best-selling, anti-corruption expose are set to be pulped after the authors mistakenly named the son of former federal tourism minister John Brown as a business associate of disgraced former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.
Chris Brown is seeking the pulping of all copies on bookstore shelves, a public apology and the right to pursue compensation for damage to his reputation after he was confused with an Obeid business partner of the same name.
He Who Must be Obeid was written by Walkley award winning journalists Kate McClymont, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, and the ABC’s Linton Besser. Released last month, it was withdrawn from shelves on Wednesday. 
According to the victim, checking was non-existent: 
‘’There was no normal journalistic process in calling me,” he said. “It would have taken four minutes on the ASIC website to find out this Chris Brown was not me … nobody bothered to check that that Chris Brown was born in Colchester, has a different middle name and lives in Canberra.’’ 
An easy enough mistake to make, I suppose. After all, who would have guessed that Australia has more than one Chris Brown?
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PAINFUL TRUTH

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (1:44pm)

Andrew Klavan, in the LA Times: 
It is not a journalist’s job to protect us from the ugly facts. Neither is it his job to protect the sensitive from the painful truth or anyone, really, from anything.
In fact, speaking more broadly, it is not a journalist’s job to make the world a better place, to ensure our right thinking, or to defend the virtuous politicians that sophisticates like himself voted for while excoriating the evildoers elected by those country rubes on the other side. It is not his job to do good or be kind or be wise. The idea that any of this is a journalist’s job is a fallacy that seems to have infected the trade in the 1970s, when idealistic highbrows began to replace the Janes and Joes who knew a good story when they heard one.
Because that’s the journalist’s job: the story. His only job: to tell the whole story straight. 
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Here are two recent examples.
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BIKINI PATHOLOGY

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (5:58am)

According to someone interviewed by a woman in a bikini, coal seam gas makes children bleed from their eyes:

Yeah, right. Just as well kids aren’t birds: 
California’s massive Ivanpah solar power plant can produce enough electricity for 140,000 households — but the environmental cost is nothing less than an avian slaughter …
Ivanpah owner BrightSource estimates that “about a thousand” die each year, and one environmental group says the plant kills up to 28,000 birds each year.
Ivanpah isn’t the only green darling with a lot of bird blood on its hands, either. The American Bird Conservancy estimates wind turbines slay 440,000 birds each year, and the an analyst writing in the Wildlife Society Bulletin says it’s closer to 573,000 — in addition to 888,000 bats. 
It’s a batfright!
UPDATE. Our bikini-clad scientific authorities are also against fluoride: 
They tell us it’s good for our dental health. Little do we know, it’s a toxic poison affecting major organs in our body. Originally used in Nazi German concentration camps in WW2 to keep the prisoners apathetic and docile, it is now in Queensland water supplies (albeit in lower doses). Much of western Europe has rejected it and there is a growing movement around the world to rid our water supplies of this carcenogenic sterilent. 
(Via bigpete) 
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BACKLASH STILL ON THE WAY

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (5:53am)

Mark Steyn in 2006: 
I believe the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia. After the London Tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:
British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing. 
And now to 2014: 
Local Muslim leaders fear James Foley’s brutal beheading will cause backlash … 
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SURF ‘N’ WOOF

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 21, 2014 (5:49am)

A canine-crustacean challenge:
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SILENT OB

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 20, 2014 (8:15pm)

There is no point being history’s greatest speaker if you don’t actually speak: 
President Obama returned to his vacation home at Martha’s Vineyard after briefly interrupting his vacation for two days of meetings in Washington, D.C.
Obama met with his economic team Tuesday before leaving the White House at 4:22 pm to return to his vacation home.
He did not react to the news that broke later that evening about an ISIS video that showed the beheading of American journalist James Wright Foley. 
In other developments, here’s Ronald S. Lauder in the NYT: 
Why is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa? In Europe and in the United States, we have witnessed demonstrations over the tragic deaths of Palestinians who have been used as human shields by Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. The United Nations has held inquiries and focuses its anger on Israel for defending itself against that same terrorist organization. But the barbarous slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Christians is met with relative indifference. 
UPDATE. Obama finally speaks, for what it’s worth: 
Let’s be clear about ISIL … ISIL speaks for no religion. 
I’m pretty sure it does. What does the “I” stand for again?
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Improbable rape claim dropped. UPDATE: Shorten names himself

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (10:26am)

I didn’t believe it for a second and have refused from the start to name the accused:
A senior figure in the Labor Party will not face criminal charges over an alleged rape dating back to the 1980s… 
“Investigating police sought advice from the Office of Public Prosecutions, which advised there was no reasonable prospect of conviction,” a statement from Victoria Police said.
I hope the whisper campaign on the Internet now stops.
UPDATE
Opposition leader Bill Shorten names himself. Says the claims are untrue, date from when he was 19 and have distressed his family. He won’t talk about this again.
Note: the media have been scrupulous throughout - and correct - in not naming him. I hope this same courtesy will be extended to any Liberal who faces the same awful predicament. 
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Obama claims to know Islam better than the Islamic State chief

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (9:56am)

Barack Obama claims the beheading of James Foley is non-Islamic:
So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just god would stand for what they did yesterday 
But Simon Turnill wonders whether Barack Obama really understands Islam better than does the “caliph” of the Islamic State:
A professor, teacher, former educator, recognized preacher, and a graduate of the Islamic University in Baghdad, where he finished his academic studies (BA, MA and PhD). He is known as a preacher and a person of knowledge in Islamic culture, Shariah knowledge, and jurisprudence, and possessing vast knowledge of history and lineage… 
He is a man from a religious family. His brothers and uncles include preachers and teachers in Arabic, eloquence and logic.  
UPDATE
When it comes to denialism, Guardian assistant editor Michael White wins the prize:
One widely used [image this month] ... was a video screengrab of a bearded young man, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary from west London. Kitted out in Kevin the Teenage Jihadi uniform, he was boasting about his adventures in Syria while holding a severed head ("Chillin’ with my homie, or what’s left of him") in one hand… 
Yet in that odd way [these images] are as reassuring as they are menacing… But the Kevins, the Barys and their tweets remain rooted in our own world, Pop Idol, the football season, even the death of Robin Williams, and their self-evident silliness shines through the words they glibly utter as clearly as it does through those beards, as obligatory a fashion statement as tattoos or nose-piercing in some quarters. Last year Kevin was into rapping or medical studies, this year jihad, next year back to studying perhaps – if he survives the Nutella-free side of jihad and escapes the attention of the British police at Heathrow or Manchester airport....
And [Islamic State] Baghdadi and his movement are routinely condemned as “evil, corrupt, self-centred and un-Islamic” by leading British Muslims, though not loudly enough to generate media headlines very often....
But for all their threats to stick one on the White House or reopen Turkey’s Atatürk dam (shutting the Euphrates’ water off to both Syria and Iraq lately) by conquering Istanbul, the viewer can’t help but notice how utterly in thrall the Kevins are to so-called “western” technology and behaviour, and how utterly dependant on it they are…
So, let’s tackle Islamic State and Kevin the Canon Fodder; better still let’s encourage well-armed state actors in the region to sort out a fundamentalist problem it helped to create from Saudi and football-loving Qatar. But let’s not over-react, let’s not do some of the brutally counterproductive and brutal things we’ve done in the past. We want the lucky Kevins to survive, to come home for clean underwear, chastened not angry, and keen to go to college. Will we still be talking about Isis in a year? I may be wrong, but I doubt it. 
The Islamic State may be destroyed next year. But we will indeed by talking about some Kevin still, and for many years yet. British Muslims now hacking off heads of American, Iraqi and Syrian blasphemers will not return to Britain merely “chastened not angry”, and the wide-eyed malcontents admiring their work on social media won’t be dreaming of college. Liking Robin Williams does not mean you can’t also kill. Evil is actually banal.

(Thanks to reader BGC.) 
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Cut the Budget negotiations. Cut Palmer’s oxygen

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (9:44am)

FOR God’s sake put the country out of this misery, Prime Minister. End these Budget negotiations now.
Forget it. There will be no big breakthrough deal with the likes of crazy Clive Palmer and his banshee, Senator Jacqui Lambie, now talking of wanting missiles to stop an “invasion” by those “mongrels” in China.
Nor will reckless Labor lift a finger to back the savings in your Budget, and the Greens are on another planet.
Between the three of them, they’ve got the Senate locked up, so almost every contentious spending cut in your Budget is dead.
The only question now is how long you want to let prize jerks humiliate you and trash the country’s good name.
(Read full article here.)    
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Ferguson: Swan betrayed me and sank Labor

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (9:34am)

The adult in the Rudd Government speaks out:
FORMER resources minister Martin Ferguson has accused Wayne Swan of misleading and ambushing the mining industry over his proposed mining tax, of betraying Mr Ferguson and of provoking the industry campaign against the former Labor government. 
“I was misled by Swan,” Mr Ferguson said in an exclusive interview. “The industry was promised full and proper consultations. But Swan had no intention of that. Wayne does not like meetings and argument. He likes to ambush you with the numbers. He is a political apparatchik, not a policy person.”
Kevin Rudd also believes he was misled by his treasurer over the resource super-profits tax and says in a further exclusive interview that Mr Swan “told us that they (the miners) would be supportive of the proposal"…
In effect, the Ferguson critique destroys the Labor folklore of a brave ALP government being unfairly assaulted by a bunch of multinational corporations. “We lost the mining tax dispute not because of the mining industry’s response but because we created the mess,” Mr Ferguson said.
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Wake up to ourselves. As Stevens says, this Budget isn’t tough

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (9:26am)

Glenn Stevens nails the fraud in a country gone so mad that it’s screaming about the “unfairness” even of a lousy 1 cent a rise in petrol excise:
Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens skewered the rhetoric about this year’s budget by labelling it “not that tough” and making it clear the nation needed federal parliament action to scale back the deficit… 
Mr Stevens said voters had backed some “very big and very costly” programs but were yet to accept the spending and tax changes needed to pay for them…
”I did not think, really, that the budget was that draconian, frankly, in a macro-economic sense,” he told a parliamentary committee yesterday.
“I am not talking about this measure or that measure; I am talking about the pace of intended consolidation over a run of years. That is actually not that tough, frankly.”
Bill Shorten launched his ­assault on the budget in May by warning voters of “unbelievably tough cuts” to family benefits and pensions, while Greens leader Christine Milne has attacked “cruel” measures and argued for higher taxes on mining companies and banks instead. Tony Abbott has called the government’s plan “necessarily tough” to reduce the deficit.
You want an argument about unfairness?
Here’s what is unfair. It is unfair that we’re spending money we don’t have. It is unfair we’re spending money we’ll steal from our children. It’s unfair that Labor left us with blown Budgets and debt over our ears.  
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No to racism. Not to racist changes to our constitution

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (9:24am)

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In the end, only Muslims can stop this brutality

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (8:55am)

The Koran and Hadith licence the savagery we now see. Historian Tom Holland calls for an Islamic Reformation - if that is possible:
This battle has to be fought and won by theologians. 
Why, for instance, do Islamic militants think a beheading is something to revel in?
Not just because it terrifies their enemies; not just because it demonstrates their own martial prowess. Nothing is permissible in the Islamic State, after all, unless it is believed to be divinely licensed — and beheadings, in the opinion of its fighters, are indeed sanctioned.
“I will instil terror into the hearts of the unbelievers,” God declares in the Koran. “Strike off their heads, then, and strike off all their fingertips.” Mohammed is said to have ordered the decapitation of 700 rebellious Jews. His sword — after which the Iranian battle tank Zulfiqar is named — translates into English as “cleaver of vertebrae”.
That there are other, richer, more nuanced interpretations of these various verses and traditions in Islam goes without saying. Indeed, so completely does it go without saying that there is a temptation to take it for granted. This, amid the horrors of what is happening in the Fertile Crescent, would be a mistake. The appeal of the brutal and murderous literalism of the Islamic State is too lethal to permit such complacency.
These signs from a Sydney protest suggest beheading is indeed considered by many Muslims to have religious sanction. These protesters haven’t just independently dreamed up some punishment of their own:
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Clive Palmer loses again. Is his money now running out?

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (8:36am)

Clive Palmer once had a boast: 
Mr Palmer, who is renowned for being highly litigious, has repeatedly boasted that he has been to court 68 times and won every case. 
That’s even less true this week, and the question is: is Clive Palmer running out of money? Hedley Thomas:
In the Federal Court in Perth, then a short time later in the Federal Court in Sydney, the resources tycoon copped a legal belting yesterday…

Palmer desperately needed a win in the Federal Court to provide leverage to salvage something from the wreckage of his increasingly costly commercial battle with China’s state-owned international investment company, Citic Pacific. The two emphatic judgments he got have severely undermined his negotiating position… 
[A]t their nub is a valuable, powerful prize: control of the port of Cape Preston, the hub for the shipment of iron ore. China’s money built this port and its infrastructure… Iron ore from West Australian tenements controlled by Palmer’s company, Mineralogy, has been shipped through the new port since December…
The reason Palmer is unhinged about all of this is simple. As he runs out of money, and as the ships keep turning up to deliver iron ore to Chinese mills, his demands for royalties for himself remain bogged down in litigation…
If things had gone his way [in court] — if he had wrested back some control of Cape Preston, sufficient to stop those ongoing shipments of iron ore — ... he might have been able to stall the resources project and tightened the screws until he had achieved a royalty deal to his satisfaction… Palmer’s defeat in both Federal Court matters will cut deeply. Back to the Brisbane case, it remains Palmer’s greatest challenge. The allegations of “fraud” and “dishonesty” [over $12 million Citic claims Palmer took from them] ... are to be determined in a hearing in which hundreds of documents about where the $12m went. It will also rule on a so-called “sham” port services agreement that was allegedly clumsily pulled together by Palmer’s company after the withdrawals, but backdated, in a bid to justify the withdrawals of the Chinese funds from a National Australia Bank cheque account in August and September last year. Palmer signed the cheques, and Beijing suspects its funds wrongfully bankrolled his party into the federal election. Palmer denies wrongdoing. 
Niki Savva says Palmer is running out of credit:
Voters vested Palmer with the balance of power, then watched in wry amusement as he revelled in the attention it bestowed. 
On Monday night they also got to see that whatever faith they had in him to cherish that trust and use it for their benefit was sorely misplaced. He showed he was willing to risk Australia’s national interest to settle scores or to deflect attention from his business practices....
Any old politician, any old businessman, or any old bigot on a bus might get away with it, but a wealthy MP holding the balance of power launching a vicious, premeditated attack on our biggest trading partner is intolerable.
With parliament resuming on Tuesday for a critical two weeks, the unleashing of ugly Palmerdrama has the potential to dramatically change the at­mo­spherics. The fallout could provide the government, assuming it plays its cards properly, with the all-important leverage it needs, fuelled by shifts in public opinion, to salvage the rest of its budget by making sensible “adjustments”.
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James Foley’s killer has an English accent. That is important

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (8:20am)

Leftist Scott Burchill, despite being a senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, claims he can’t see what danger we’re in from jihadists who go to fight in the Middle East:
Yeah, look I’m a bit concerned about the use of this argument of an Australian Muslims going to fight in Syria, or in amongst with ISIL, as an excuse for increasing surveillance powers in Australia… But clearly the threat that these people pose is not so much to the peace and security of this particular country but the area that they’re going to. And I’m just wondering – I don’t think the government has clearly explained the connection between those going off to fight to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and what they would do coming back into Australia…. Creating a direct link between these people going to these countries to fight and coming back and somehow creating – what? Some insurgency here? Or targeting people here? It’s not clear. Or somehow they get brainwashed or indoctrinated there and turn up back in Sydney doing what? There’s – no one’s properly explained to me.
Does this help spell out the obvious to Mr Burchill?
UK and US intelligence agencies are scrambling to uncover the identity of the English-speaking Islamist who is suspected of killing journalist James Foley, amid deepening fears in Britain about homegrown terrorism. 
The possibility of involvement by a British national in Mr Foley’s death underscores what for many UK officials has become their top national security threat: that some of the estimated 400 British Muslims suspected of fighting with jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq could come home radicalized and threaten their homeland with terror attacks… Security officials believe that at least several dozens of those British citizens have joined the al Qaeda-linked militant groups, including the newly renamed Islamic State… The government has already arrested approximately 70 people on terrorism charges related to Syria… 
Sure, someone who cuts off the head of an American on video could be perfectly peace-loving when he gets back home. Or, of course, maybe not…
The fact that Foley’s killer has an English accent is actually one of the most significant details about this horrible murder.  
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Young Muslims betrayed by their leaders

Andrew Bolt August 21 2014 (7:35am)

SEVERAL Muslims rang our 2GB show this week. They were young and angry — but not with me.
No, Ali, Muhammad and Sabrina were angry with their so-called “leaders” who have betrayed them.
This week Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked to meet Muslim leaders in both Sydney and Melbourne to discuss his anti-terrorism proposals. Even an idiot would understand Muslim Australians have much to fear from a jihadist terrorism on Australian soil. There would be the sorrow for the deaths, of course. But the backlash against the many decent Muslims here could be ugly
So the key concern for Muslim “leaders” should be, first, to do as much as possible to stop jihadists and, second, to be seen doing so.
(Read full article here.) 
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The weakest US president ever?

Andrew Bolt August 20 2014 (9:00pm)

A serious question: when did the US last have a president this weak?
President Obama returned to his vacation home at Martha’s Vineyard after briefly interrupting his vacation for two days of meetings in Washington, D.C. 
Obama met with his economic team Tuesday before leaving the White House at 4:22 pm to return to his vacation home. He did not react to the news that broke later that evening about an ISIS video that showed the beheading of American journalist James Wright Foley. 
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Are you tired of having to come up with excuses?

Looking for help when you're in strife?

Then why not borrow one of Kevin Rudd's many excuses.

Check out Ruddymade.com.au and use our handy app.

If you find yourself unable to generate excuses for everyday mistakes simply use Ruddymade Excuses from any smart phone, tablet or desktop computer.
These are not just any old excuses. These are timeless classics developed by the world's leader in passing the buck, Kevin Rudd. Don't forget to tune in to tonight's debate to see many of these excuses live.

Enjoy,

Brian Loughnane

P.S. Excuse the brevity of this email, I've "gotta zip"
Authorised by Brian Loughnane, Cnr Blackall and Macquarie Streets, Barton  ACT 2604.
Copyright © Liberal Party of Australia.
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Allyson Christy.

New movement targets Hamas rule in Gaza - IMRA

“It is time we rejected death forcibly under Hamas’ pretext of security. Our people regardless of their political and even religious affiliations have been targeted by their criminality,” the statement continued. It explicitly accused Hamas of murder, torture, sabotage, bribes, vandalism and smuggling."

http://paper.li/allysonchristy/1338794440
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ARLINGTON CEMETERY

Jeopardy Question:

On Jeopardy the other night, the final question was:
"How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the tomb of the Unknowns" ----

All three contestants missed it! --

This is really an awesome sight to watch if you've never had the chance.

Very fascinating.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

1. How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the tomb of the Unknowns and why? 21 steps:

It alludes to the twenty-one gun salute which is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary.

2. How long does he hesitate after his about face to begin his return walk and why?
21 seconds for the same reason as answer number 1

3. Why are his gloves wet? His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle.

4. Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time and, if not, why not? He
carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the tomb. After his march across the path, he executes an about face and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder.

5. How often are the guards changed? Guards are changed every thirty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

6. What are the physical traits of the guard limited to? For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb, he must be between 5' 10' and 6' 2' tall and his waist size cannot exceed 30.

They must commit 2 years of life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb, and cannot drink any alcohol on or off duty for the rest of their lives. They cannot swear in public for the rest of their lives and cannot disgrace the uniform or the tomb in any way.

After two years, the guard is given a wreath pin that is worn on their lapel signifying they served as guard of the tomb. There are only 400 presently worn. The guard must obey these rules for the rest of their lives or give up the wreath pin.

The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt.

There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform. Guards dress for duty in front of a full-length mirror.

The first six months of duty a guard cannot talk to anyone nor watch TV.

All off duty time is spent studying the 175 notable people laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

A guard must memorize who they are and where they are interred. Among the notables are:

President Taft,
Joe Lewis {the boxer}
Medal of Honor winner Audie L. Murphy, the most decorated soldier of WWII and of Hollywood fame.

Every guard spends five hours a day getting his uniforms ready for guard duty..

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

In 2003 as Hurricane Isabelle was approaching Washington, DC, our US Senate/House took 2 days off with anticipation of the storm. On the ABC evening news, it was reported that because of the dangers from the hurricane, the military
members assigned the duty of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were given permission to suspend the assignment. They respectfully declined the offer, "No way,
Sir!" Soaked to the skin, marching in the pelting rain of a tropical storm, they said that
guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment, it was the highest honor that can be
afforded to a service person. The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24/7, since 1930.

God Bless and keep them.

I'd be very proud if this post reaches as many as possible. We can be very proud of our young men and women in the service no matter where they serve.

God Bless America
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U.N.’s next major climate report
reportedly states that scientists are more certain than ever that man’s actions are warming the planet -- even as the report struggles to explain a slow-down in warming that climate skeptics have seized upon.> Political report struggles to sex up data
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
GOD gives, gives, gives and Forgives ... HUMAN gets, gets, gets and Forgets.
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Pastor Rick Warren
3 causes pastors fall: Personal worship dries up. No boundaries-meets with women alone. Pride-believed it couldn't happen.
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Glenn Beck.
When your town votes to stand with a pedophile, your town has lost its soul.


MI school votes to keep teachers who defended colleague convicted of rape


On yesterday’s Glenn Beck Radio Program, Glenn spoke to John Janczewski, a resident of Rose City, Michigan whose son was molested by a teacher, Neal Erickson, at Rose City Middle School. The sexual abuse happened on several occasions when Janczewski’s son was in 8th grade. The boy is now a sophomore in college. On July 10, Erickson was convicted of statutory rape on and sentenced to 15-30 years in prison. Six educators and one school board member, however, came out in support of the teacher and wrote the judge letters asking for leniency.
This morning, Glenn spoke to John’s wife, Lori Janczewski. Lori explained what happened last night during the meeting held at a local high school that would decide the fate of the educators who stood by Erickson. While the resident’s have demanded the teachers be fired, the town has expressed concern about the cost of litigation. Ultimately, the teachers did not lose their jobs. Meanwhile, the family has been threatened and had their property vandalized as a result of speaking out.
“I told you yesterday about the Janczewski family in Michigan that had their eighth grader son raped by a teacher… And then six teachers, spoke out against the sentence for this molester: ‘Neal has pleaded guilty to this one criminal offense, and he’s not a predator,’” Glenn said. “Last night I thought we had a chance of living in America again. Last night there was a school board meeting… All the neighbors and everybody showed up to vote: Are we going to fire these teachers? And the guy who was supporting the pedophile on the school board, he said, ‘Well, you don’t support the teachers. The town is going bankrupt.’ Good. Stand in line on the bankruptcy window. Everybody seems to be doing it nowadays. I thought it was a popular thing to do.”
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C. H. Spurgeon
When you desire to be most alive to God, you will generally find sin most alive to repel you.
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I don't agree with it entirely, but respect the sentiment. I feel nothing works under bad administrations and much does under good ones .. which can surprise people. I never thought Saddam, Gaddaffi or any of the mad dictators would fall. The lawlessness which followed is not the fault of democracy or political machines but a reflection of the power of terrorist organisations that prospered under the tyrants. There will be an end to this power play .. but not while Obama feeds it. - ed
Reuven Kossover
My friend and buddy for over 40 years, Irwin Blank, wrote the following (I edited it slightly). It speaks for itself.

Estimates of the dead in Egypt range from 525-700 and countless others have been wounded in riots against the current government. These rioters, from the Moslem Brotherhood and their Islamist cohorts are the dregs of society. That is why since 1952, when the Free Officers, under Mohammed Neguib and Gamal Nasser seized power there, they drove these fanatics underground, arrested and executed their leadership by the thousands because even they knew the evil and malicious character of these fanatics and despots. It is no wonder that the Moslem Brotherhood gave rise to Hamas and a host of other Islamist terror organizations all over the Middle East.

Those who believe that a republican form of government, or a regime based on Western style democracy can exist in an Islamist nation are fooling themselves and being totally ignorant of the fact that democracy and Islam are antithetical and cannot exist in a nation whose only legal religion is Islam. Islam is not a religion as Westerners know one to be. It is a dictatorial, intolerant and murderous philosophy that unless restrained by modernistic leadership, often in the form of military rule, will result in a banal viciousness that begs be checked.

The Americans cannot bring democracy to the Arab world as the Arab world is far too diverse in its structure and tribal allegiances which, by nature, are jealous of the power that they possess. Syria is a prime example, where the minority Alawites rule over Sunni, Shi'a, Druse and Kurdish minorities with a bloody hand that has already slaughtered over 100,000 men, women and children and created a refugee crisis in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

The Middle East is breaking apart the imperialistic and artificial borders and tribal territories that were left over from the domination of the British and the French after World War I. Arab states and kingdoms were established without regard to tribal loyalties or religious sensitivities and this is breaking apart with bloodshed and grief.

The only stable and viable remnant of the old world imperialism is Israel, where ethnic and cultural differences brought by the Jews from over 70 lands have melded into a new identity where the differences have enhanced that new society rather than tore it asunder. Sure, there is conflict here, but one doesn't see Ashkenazi Jews murdering Sephardi Jews in the streets as Alawite Arabs are mowing down Sunni Arabs, all Moslems, in the sanguinary situation in Syria. Churches aren't put to the torch in Jerusalem as they are in Cairo and the Baha'i, Druse, Circassians and Christian Arabs in Israel, as well as the Moslem Arabs, aren't slicing each others throats.

The Christian world should be more worried about Churches being burned to the ground and people being beheaded and flogged for reading the Gospels, than it is over building kindergartens in Gilo or Pisgat Ze'ev or adding classrooms in Ma'ale Adumim and Teqo'a. Where Moslems are destroying, we, in Israel, are building for ALL our citizens.

I do not delight in anyone's death if that person doesn't seek mine, but the "Arab Spring" is not a spring of fresh water and blooming flowers, it is a river of blood and booming explosions that must keep us, in Israel, on guard and prepared.

Shabbat Shalom from Ma'ale Adumim in liberated Israeli Yehuda, guarding the eastern approaches to Jerusalem, the eternal, united and indivisible capital of the Jewish people.
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Graphic Quotes: John Wayne on Well-Educated Idiots

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/graphic-quotes-john-wayne-on-well-educated-idiots/

“I’d like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living.” John Wayne
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Why don't you apologise for the people who have drowned, Mr. Rudd? 
Well over 1000 people have died at sea since you wound down John Howard's very effective Pacific solution in 2007. At least five have just drowned in the latest disaster as authorities called off the search on Tuesday night, 20 August 2013.. 

They are attracted , as the Indonesians say, because you put the "sugar on the table".
But instead of doing what your government specialises in doing - apologising for events in the past - your government used this tragedy to claim it has reduced arrivals by 30% because of the Manus arrangement.

Not so, says is the left of centre Sydney Morning Herald - it's less than 20%.

Just apologise Mr. Rudd.
@profdavidflint
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/five-drown-as-asylum-boat-capsizes-20130820-2s8l0.html
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According to a newly-released study, a New York mother of two is eligible for in excess of $38,000 in annual welfare benefits – more than the starting salary of a New York entry-level school teacher.
Think that’s bad? In Hawaii, that same mother would receive $60,590 per year.
The study, conducted by the CATO Institute, found that in addition to New York and Hawaii, welfare pays better than work in many states. While Hawaii tops the list at $60,590, Idaho brings up the rear at $11,150, as reported by Breitbart. [I assume the beaches aren't as nice in Idaho.]
Indeed, the CATO study claims:
In 11 states, welfare pays more than the average pre-tax first-year salary for a teacher. In 39 states, it pays more than the starting wage for a secretary. And, in the 3 most generous states, a person on welfare can take home more money than an entry-level computer programmer.
The study found that 33 states and the District of Columbia offer welfare benefits that pay recipients more than they would earn from an $8-an-hour job. Twelve states and the District of Columbia offer welfare packages that pay better than does a $15-an-hour job.
Add in Obama’s suspension of welfare-to-work requirements, and life on welfare can be a pretty good gig these days, as evidenced by the now somewhat infamous Cali surf bum.
“There is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy,” writes CATO senior fellow Michael Tanner. “But they’re also not stupid. If you pay them more not to work than they can earn by working, many will choose not to work.”
Therein lies the quintessential problem with the nanny state. Since LBJ declared “war on poverty,” U.S. taxpayers have spent over $15 trillion on anti-poverty programs – a total nearly equal to the national debt. And where has it gotten us? Look around. Start with the surf bum.
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Bristol Palin's blog

I love what Ashton Kutcher said at the Teen’s Choice Awards!  Did you see his emotional speech about work?
He was saying something important under all that screaming – work is the key to success!
Since I was a kid, my parents taught me the value of work.  Mom, of course, was our town’s mayor, then  our state’s governor. She worked for a newspaper and tv station when I was very small. Dad has always been a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay, plus, for years he had a great job in the oil fields up on the North Slope. Through some of those years he also owned an outdoor recreation shop selling and fixing snowmachines, watercraft, boats, ATVs, etc. (He always had Willow on his hip there, because she wasn’t in school yet and she loved hanging out in the mechanic shop!)
Mom and Dad worked hard. We weren’t wealthy, but they took care of our needs.
Here was my problem – mom sometimes didn’t realize I “needed” more jeans.
“If you want designer jeans, that’s fine,” Mom told me,  “but you’re gonna work for them.”
That’s why I got my first “real” job (besides babysitting) that summer at an out-of-the-way café in Nordstrom’s in Anchorage – which gave me the company’s discount on clothes. Of course, by the time I’d pay for the gas to get to Anchorage, plus parking, and then take advantage of that discount, I was barely breaking even.
There were several coffee stands with little drive-throughs where customers pull up to order fancy hot coffees, and—hopefully—leave me a tip. I worked in many of them, serving lattes, espressos, cappuccinos, etc. I’d happily be grinding and brewing coffee at the Sunrise Coffee Shack, then after my shift I’d drive down the road to Café Croissant and pour more coffee in the afternoons during a second shift there. Then, about a year later, I got a job working at the Espresso Café about fifty feet down the road. (Alaska seems to have coffee shacks on every corner!) Since it was all basically just the same job – smile, take orders, make their caffeine-infused drinks – I don’t think my bosses were ever concerned about me sharing company secrets.
Beginning in 7th grade, I also worked at my grandparent’s L&M Ace Hardware store in Dillingham, about four hundred air miles southwest of Anchorage.  It’s owned by my dad’s mom, who’s like a mom to everyone in that fishing town. One day, I was cleaning the glass shelves that held the guns and knives. Willow was on one side of the glass and would not stop bugging me. I took the Windex and merely sprayed it in her general direction. I was a mile away from her, but she immediately started screaming, “My eyes! My eyes!” My Nana, sick of listening to us, grabbed us both by the arm and said, “That’s it! You’re going home!”
After I got fired by my own grandmother, Dad wasn’t going to let me get away with being a bad worker. The next night, he hauled us all out to work in his open-air commercial fishing skiff.  This was harder – and so much colder – than cleaning the gun cases, but I look back on these times of employment when I really learned how hard people have to work to make money.
Now, as an adult, I still carry those lessons with me.  No, I don’t fish every Bristol Bay season opener anymore (at least not putting in enough time on the water slaying salmon to make much money!). I’ve been working for four years now in a dermatology office – with the best coworkers ever, I’d add!
My parents have said they are so proud of their kids’ work ethic, and that adds to the pride we can take in working hard every single day. I hope you all have that confirmation from your family and friends that reminds you how important work is. And like Ashton suggested from the awards show stage, don’t feel like any job is beneath you. And don’t wait for that “perfect” job to come along before getting off the couch to make a paycheck. Better jobs will come along after you put in the grinding hours today, believe me, I know. I’m glad for my work lessons through these years.
And now, thankfully, I can buy my own jeans, Mom!
Read more on the (new and improved) Patheos Faith and Family Channel!
Also,  fan me on Facebook and follow this blog on Twitter!
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Allyson Christy.

"The Egyptian army....has demolished five tunnels so far in the past few days alone.

The army has reportedly been bringing tunnels down with explosives, and then filling them with water. The report also stated that the Egyptian army demolished some buildings along the border."
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Allyson Christy.

"Indeed, his own agenda has resulted in untold bloodshed and a human rights meltdown in Syria, Iraq, North Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The Egyptian military, acceding to the demands of some 33 million of its citizens to remove the Islamic and Sharia colluding Morsi regime, redeployed to end Mohammed Morsi’s Brotherhood supporters from their occupation of areas of the Egyptian capital. They were met by heavy gunfire and over 100 soldiers and police were killed in the first few hours of the confrontation.

Not surprisingly, Obama never mentioned this fact during his August 15th press conference; a long harangue during which, according to former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Obama predictably blamed not the Morsi rioters but the Egyptian military; again revealing this president’s egregious and systemic support for the Muslim extremists who wish to turn Egypt into an Islamic republic.

Nor did Obama castigate fully the pro-Morsi thugs who turned their savagery upon the hapless embattled Coptic Christian community. It is estimated that perhaps as many as 50 churches and Christian establishments were burned to the ground during the Muslim anti-Christian pogrom; this after Copts have been beheaded in the streets of Cairo. And still the Vatican and world Christendom remain in the main deathly silent." - Victor Sharpe, excerpt from article
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Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly debated New York’s controversial ‘stop-and-frisk’ policy. Last week, a federal judge ruled that it violates people’s civil rights. O’Reilly argued in his Talking Points Memo that while the policy is intrusive, it has helped save the lives of hundreds of New Yorkers.
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Director Frank Capra Tells Hollywood About American Exceptionalism (Video)

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/director-frank-capra-tells-hollywood-about-american-exceptionalism-video/ 

Capra was a Republican who was active in the anti-Communist cause and also donated funds to the Human Life Amendment PAC. There aren’t many directors we can say that about today!
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Are you tired of having to come up with excuses?

Looking for help when you're in strife?

Then why not borrow one of Kevin Rudd's many excuses.

Check out Ruddymade.com.au and he'll show you how it's done. Don't forget to share with your friends! #thesameoldway #auspol
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That sort of horror is a daily occurrence in North Korea's prison camps, former inmates have told a United Nations inquiry.
The inquiry, chaired by former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, is the first to expertly examine North Korea's human rights record, ABC News reports.
There is no shortage of testimony.
One ex-prisoner, 34-year-old Jee Heon-a, told the hearing about a mother who was forced to drown her own child.
"It was the first time I had seen a newborn baby and I felt happy," she said.
"But suddenly there were footsteps and a security guard came in and told the mother to turn the baby upside down into a bowl of water.
"The mother begged the guard to spare her, but he kept beating her. So the mother, her hands shaking, put the baby face down in the water. The crying stopped and a bubble rose up as it died."
Jee was incarcerated in 1999. Her fellow inmates were barely fed.
"Everyone's eyes were sunken. They all looked like animals, she said.
"Frogs were hung from the buttons of their cloths, put in a plastic bag and their skins peeled off. They ate salted frogs and so did I."
Another defector, Shin Dong-hyuk, was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother. Shin, who was born in the prison camp, overheard his family members planning an escape attempt and turned them in.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Last week i lost my wallet with all my important cards in it, i wasn't panicking but was happy instead because thru prayer i felt God's peace. This man named Julian drove out of his way about an hour just to return it to me at my sister's address but she wasn't home so he left it with a note saying that he had put it in the letterbox for me. Today i was in the bank waiting then suddenly a woman ran into the counter in front of me, she huffed n puffed in panicked, wept. and acted like it was the end of the world, because she had lost her wallet. The teller sent her to sit next to me then she went to get the poor lady a drink. I said to her ''it's alright i lost my wallet the other day too'', she started crying cause she was late for work and had no time to catch a train cause this had happened..''not to worry i can drive u to work if that's fine with u'' i asked, she looked at me thankfully as we began to share how our purses got lost. Afterwards she seemed much calmer, she must've caught the peace off me. There is power in recognizing that we are the children of God, the one who filled me up with Love Joy Peace for Missions. Glory to the Creator of Heaven and Earth, only through Him may we put our minds at ease through tough trying times when things are hard.
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August 21: Youth Day and King Mohammed's Birthday in Morocco; Ninoy Aquino Day in the Philippines
Mona Lisa
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“I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”Psalm 16:8 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"The sweet psalmist of Israel."
2 Samuel 23:1
Among all the saints whose lives are recorded in Holy Writ, David possesses an experience of the most striking, varied, and instructive character. In his history we meet with trials and temptations not to be discovered, as a whole, in other saints of ancient times, and hence he is all the more suggestive a type of our Lord. David knew the trials of all ranks and conditions of men. Kings have their troubles, and David wore a crown: the peasant has his cares, and David handled a shepherd's crook: the wanderer has many hardships, and David abode in the caves of Engedi: the captain has his difficulties, and David found the sons of Zeruiah too hard for him. The psalmist was also tried in his friends, his counsellor Ahithophel forsook him, "He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me." His worst foes were they of his own household: his children were his greatest affliction. The temptations of poverty and wealth, of honour and reproach, of health and weakness, all tried their power upon him. He had temptations from without to disturb his peace, and from within to mar his joy. David no sooner escaped from one trial than he fell into another; no sooner emerged from one season of despondency and alarm, than he was again brought into the lowest depths, and all God's waves and billows rolled over him. It is probably from this cause that David's psalms are so universally the delight of experienced Christians. Whatever our frame of mind, whether ecstasy or depression, David has exactly described our emotions. He was an able master of the human heart, because he had been tutored in the best of all schools--the school of heart-felt, personal experience. As we are instructed in the same school, as we grow matured in grace and in years, we increasingly appreciate David's psalms, and find them to be "green pastures." My soul, let David's experience cheer and counsel thee this day.

Evening


"And they fortified Jerusalem unto the broad wall."
Nehemiah 3:8
Cities well fortified have broad walls, and so had Jerusalem in her glory. The New Jerusalem must, in like manner, be surrounded and preserved by a broad wall of nonconformity to the world, and separation from its customs and spirit. The tendency of these days break down the holy barrier, and make the distinction between the church and the world merely nominal. Professors are no longer strict and Puritanical, questionable literature is read on all hands, frivolous pastimes are currently indulged, and a general laxity threatens to deprive the Lord's peculiar people of those sacred singularities which separate them from sinners. It will be an ill day for the church and the world when the proposed amalgamation shall be complete, and the sons of God and the daughters of men shall be as one: then shall another deluge of wrath be ushered in. Beloved reader, be it your aim in heart, in word, in dress, in action to maintain the broad wall, remembering that the friendship of this world is enmity against God.

The broad wall afforded a pleasant place of resort for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, from which they could command prospects of the surrounding country. This reminds us of the Lord's exceeding broad commandments, in which we walk at liberty in communion with Jesus, overlooking the scenes of earth, and looking out towards the glories of heaven. Separated from the world, and denying ourselves all ungodliness and fleshly lusts, we are nevertheless not in prison, nor restricted within narrow bounds; nay, we walk at liberty, because we keep his precepts. Come, reader, this evening walk with God in his statutes. As friend met friend upon the city wall, so meet thou thy God in the way of holy prayer and meditation. The bulwarks of salvation thou hast a right to traverse, for thou art a freeman of the royal burgh, a citizen of the metropolis of the universe.
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Today's reading: Psalm 105-106, 1 Corinthians 3 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 105-106

1 Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
2 Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
3 Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.
4 Look to the LORD and his strength;
seek his face always.
5 Remember the wonders he has done,
his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,
6 you his servants, the descendants of Abraham,
his chosen ones, the children of Jacob.
7 He is the LORD our God;
his judgments are in all the earth....

Today's New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 3


The Church and Its Leaders
1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly-mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere human beings?
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe-as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. 7 So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. 9 For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building....

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