Saturday, August 19, 2017

Sat Aug 19th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Sarah Hanson-Young made sense when she accidentally said in parliament that Sarah Hanson Young approved cuts to spending on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). But it was a slip of the tongue. She had meant that Pauline Hanson had the sensible policy. World press are pointing to the exit of Steve Bannon from Trump's advisory group as some dramatic reversal of fortune for Trump. Bannon was instrumental in getting Trump elected. But, Bannon is a great campaigner, and what Trump needs now is a different kind of fish who is good at networking. Bannon leaves on good terms. 

 On this day in 295 BC, the first temple of Venus was dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War. The Samnite wars were fights for the Italian peninsular and involved Rome, Samnites, Etruscans and Gauls. At the Battle of Sentinum, Rome faced all three foes. Rome had forty thousand, and the coalition had eighty thousand troops. So, Mus, the Roman leader, sent a raiding party into Etruscan and Gaulish lands causing thirty thousand coalition troops to withdraw. Then Mus agreed to fight. Mus was a cavalry officer and his division did well until it met Gallic chariots. Mus sacrificed himself, which rallied his men and Rome won the day. Rome lost eight thousand men. The coalition lost over twenty five thousand dead. Over the next five years, Rome would secure her legacy unchallenged until Pyrrhus invaded. Meanwhile Gurges, as Consul of Rome, fined noble women living dissolute lives and used the proceeds to build the temple. 

A year after the assassination of Julius Caeser, in 43BC, Octavian compelled the Roman senate to elect him consul. In 1153, Baldwin III of Jerusalem took control of Jerusalem from his mother, Melisende. He was some 23 years old and ten years later would be dead and childless, leaving the throne to his brother, Amalric. She was six days old when her father died, five years old when she went to France, but on this day in 1561, the eighteen year old Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland from France, a year after the Scottish Reformation Parliament had declared Scotland was protestant.  She was widow to the 16 year old King Francis II of France. In 1612, the Samlesbury Witch Trial resulted in three women, accused by a fourteen year old Sowerbutts, being found innocent. Grace Sowerbutts was a granddaughter to one of the accused and had claimed they could transform themselves into dogs. Later it turned out Grace had been coached by a priest. Another accuser, peddler John Law had said one of the women had asked him for a pin. He refused, and then she gave him a stroke. In 1666, English Admiral Robert Holmes attacked 140 trading vessels, burning them down. It was later called Holmes' Bonfire.The Salem Witch Trials mainly had women being executed, but on this day in 1692, four men, including a clergyman, and one woman, were hanged. Some say the Salem case is related to ergot poisoning. In 1812 two ships faced off, USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere. They had a long dogfight in which the Constitution won out, and would later be nicknamed "Old Ironsides." At the end of the conflict, the Constitution sent a raft to the other ship to ask if the captain surrendered. He replied "Well, Sir, I don't know. Our mizzen mast is gone, our fore and main masts are gone - I think on the whole you might say we have struck our flag." In 1839, the French government declared the Daguerre photographic process was a gift "free to the world." In 1848, news of the Gold Rush reached New York. In 1895, John Wesley Hardin, a serial killer gunman, was approached by John Selman Sr while Hardin was drinking at a bar. Selman approached Hardin from behind, and shot him in the head, then fired three more shots into the corpse. Hardin had earlier argued with Selman over the arrest of his prostitute friend who had been handling a gun in public. In 1909, Indianapolis had her first motor car race. 

In 1934, 89.9% of Germany voted in favour of the new position of Fuhrer for Hitler. In 1942, Canadians, experimenting with amphibious landings for Normandy, attempted to land a brigade at Dieppe, failing with many killed and captured. In 1944, Paris rose against her Nazi oppressors with the help of allied forces. In 1960, downed US U2 pilot, Gary Powers, was sentenced to ten years prison by the Soviet Union. Also in 1960, the Soviet Union launched Korabl-Sputnik 2 with dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats and a variety of plants. The capsule returned safely. In 1981 two Libyan Sukhoi-Su-22 fighter jets fired on two US F-14 Tomcats and the Tomcats won. In 1989 the Polish President appointed Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to the position of PM, the first non communist leader of Poland in 42 years. In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was on holiday when he was placed under house arrest during a coup. Meanwhile in NYC Black activist groups targeted Hasidic Jews after a road accident. In 1999, in Belgrade, tens of thousands of Serbs rally to demand the resignation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia PresidentSlobodan Milošević. In 2003, an Iran backed terrorist group car bombed the UN headquarters in Iraq killing 22. Also an Iran backed Hamas executed a suicide attack on a bus in Israel, killing 23. In 2010, US withdrew from Iraq. 

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 My Country tis of thee

"My Country, 'Tis of Thee", also known as "America", is an American patriotic song, whose lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith. The melody is that of the British national anthem, God Save the Queen, although Smith encountered it by way of a German adaptation. The song served as a de facto national anthem of the United States before the adoption of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the official anthem


=== from 2016 === 
We as a community are not the cause of violence in our community. We don't deserve the violence. We don't deserve the abuse. We shouldn't live with fear of going out. We should be able to speak to police and engage them when we are threatened. But there is much that is done and said which suggests we as a community are responsible for that which victimises us. By accepting drugs, and sometimes dithering over what illegal drugs are, we invite into our community terrible problems. Last year, an elite AFL coach was murdered by his son. Today we are told the son was mentally ill and will not face murder charges as he was not competent. Apparently, the son was a habitual drug user. If he is dry, how long will it be before he is cured? There is not enough police to do their job if we excuse drug use. But killing all those involved is not the answer either, as the Phillipines is now illustrating. How long before someone gets it wrong? We, as a community have to be responsible. Not controlling and manipulative, as one 22 yo female athlete discovered after she got home after a big night out, without permission. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
Kidnapped German teen found killed. Her father was guilty of the crime of being relatively wealthy. But apparently the kidnappers messed up and thought she could identify them, so they killed her. They are all thought to be arrested now. It is a horrible reminder that despite the angst over the means of violence, like guns, it is the perpetrators of violence that count in terms of committing the crimes. Too often such low life scum are given scripts that give reasons for their behaviour. There is no reason. They wanted money without working for it, they maybe wanted to kidnap a pretty girl. They wanted to hurt or kill to see what it is like and experience the thrill. Maybe a German prison can reform them. But will German justice reform them when world wide education raised their expectation?

Thailand explosions might be political or might be jihad. It looks political at the moment, one suspect whom authorities believe had support. But jihadists sometimes hide behind local issues. Also the socialist government can't be trusted to say what actually happened. Of course they would blame their political enemies. The socialist government of Thailand has built up resentment and anger from their bad policy. It doesn't make terrorism right. 

The cost of business compliance in Australia is very high. So that it seems impossible for anyone to make a profit from doing business. How does a cake shop in a shopping mall make a profit? The business owner has to pay for their franchise, for their rent, for refitting their shop so that it meets franchise standards. And then it has to compete, sometimes, with badly placed competitors. If some of that red tape and compliance cost was removed, the business would be more profitable and it could hire people, probably young people. The high compliance cost of business is tightly wound with union corruption. Union corruption is not a victimless crime. By gouging business, they make business more expensive. By gouging their own members, they make themselves parasites. Union leaders are parasites on union workers. 
From 2014
He is a wealthy man, atm, not a very smart man or a gifted orator, but Clive Palmers spray against Chinese people will also be a lousy legal defence as to why over ten million dollars seems to have been misappropriated from Chinese business for Palmer to be elected to government. In fact if it is his defence, that he felt entitled to the money, he won't be wealthy for long. Or in parliament. But his followers aren't going to let him say something stupid alone. Enter Jackie Lambie claiming Australia could defend an impending Chinese invasion with twice the number of soldiers in the defence force. She hasn't outlined where she would position these defenders or why only 116000 men would suffice where 58000 would not against China's 2.2 million Red Army. One really interesting thing regarding Palmer's tirade was how ALP's token ethnic figure, Penny Wong, didn't comment on it. Gillard declared she would denounce misogyny wherever she saw it (Gillard didn't see it in the Middle East). Wong might have spoken up for dictatorial communist Chinese peoples. I suppose if they must invade they will. I don't see Lambie doubling the defence force any time soon. Because to do so, the government would have to cut spending somewhere. 
Historical perspective on this day
295 BC – The first temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, is dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the Third Samnite War.
43 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, later known as Augustus, compels the Roman Senate to elect him Consul.
947 – Abu Yazid, a Kharijite rebel leader, is defeated and killed in the Hodna Mountains in modern-day Algeria by Fatimid forces.
1153 – Baldwin III of Jerusalem takes control of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from his mother Melisende, and also captures Escalon.

1504 – In Ireland, the Hiberno-Norman de Burghs (Burkes) and Anglo-NormanFitzgeralds fight in the Battle of Knockdoe.
1561 – Mary, Queen of Scots, who was 18 years old, returns to Scotland after spending 13 years in France.
1612 – The "Samlesbury witches", three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury, England, are put on trial, accused of practicing witchcraft, one of the most famous witch trials in British history.
1666 – Second Anglo-Dutch War: Rear Admiral Robert Holmes leads a raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling, destroying 150 merchant ships, an act later known as "Holmes's Bonfire".
1692 – Salem witch trials: In Salem, Province of Massachusetts Bay, five people, one woman and four men, including a clergyman, are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.

1745 – Prince Charles Edward Stuart raises his standard in Glenfinnan: The start of the Second Jacobite Rebellion, known as "the 45".
1759 – Battle of Lagos Naval battle during the Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France.
1772 – Gustav III of Sweden stages a coup d'état, in which he assumes power and enacts a new constitution that divides power between the Riksdag and the King.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Blue Licks: The last major engagement of the war, almost ten months after the surrender of the British commander Charles Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown.

1812 – War of 1812: American frigate USS Constitution defeats the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada earning the nickname "Old Ironsides".
1813 – Gervasio Antonio de Posadas joins Argentina's Second Triumvirate.
1839 – The French government announces that Louis Daguerre's photographic process is a gift "free to the world".
1848 – California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States of the gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).
1854 – The First Sioux War begins when United States Army soldiers kill Lakotachief Conquering Bear and in return are massacred.
1861 – First ascent of Weisshorn, fifth highest summit in the Alps.
1862 – American Indian Wars: During an uprising in Minnesota, Lakota warriors decide not to attack heavily defended Fort Ridgely and instead turn to the settlement of New Ulm, killing white settlers along the way.

1909 – The first automobile race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
1919 – Afghanistan gains full independence from the United Kingdom.
1927 – Patriarch Sergius of Moscow proclaims the declaration of loyalty of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Soviet Union.
1934 – The first All-American Soap Box Derby is held in Dayton, Ohio.
1934 – The German referendum of 1934 approves Hitler's appointment as head of state with the title of Führer.

1940 – First flight of the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.
1942 – World War II: Operation Jubilee: The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division leads an amphibious assault by allied forces on Dieppe, France and fails, many Canadians are killed or captured. The operation was intended to develop and try new amphibious landing tactics for the coming full invasion in Normandy.
1944 – World War II: Liberation of Paris: Paris, France rises against Germanoccupation with the help of Allied troops.
1945 – August Revolution: Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh take power in Hanoi, Vietnam.

1953 – Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
1955 – In the Northeast United States, severe flooding caused by Hurricane Diane, claims 200 lives.
1960 – Cold War: In Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage.
1960 – Sputnik program: Korabl-Sputnik 2: The Soviet Union launches the satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats and a variety of plants.
1964 – Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite, was launched.
1965 – Japanese prime minister Eisaku Satō becomes the first post-World War II sitting prime minister to visit Okinawa Prefecture.

1978 – In Iran, Cinema Rex fire caused more than 400 deaths.
1980 – Saudia Flight 163, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar burns after making an emergency landing at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 301 people.
1981 – Gulf of Sidra Incident: United States fighters intercept and shoot down two Libyan Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jets over the Gulf of Sidra.
1987 – Hungerford massacre: In the United Kingdom, Michael Ryan kills sixteen people with a semi-automatic rifle and then commits suicide.
1989 – Polish president Wojciech Jaruzelski nominates Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the first non-communist prime minister in 42 years.
1989 – Several hundred East Germans cross the frontier between Hungary and Austria during the Pan-European Picnic, part of the events that began the process of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Ukraine.
1999 – In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of Serbians rally to demand the resignation of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević.
2002 – Khankala Mi-26 crash: A Russian Mil Mi-26 helicopter carrying troops is hit by a Chechen missile outside Grozny, killing 118 soldiers.
2003 – A car-bomb attack on United Nations headquarters in Iraq kills the agency's top envoy Sérgio Vieira de Mello and 21 other employees.
2003 – A suicide attack on a bus in Jerusalem, Israel, planned by Hamas, kills 23 Israelis, seven of them children, in the Shmuel HaNavi bus bombing.
2005 – The first-ever joint military exercise between Russia and China, called Peace Mission 2005 begins.
2009 – A series of bombings in Baghdad, Iraq, kills 101 and injures 565 others.
2010 – Operation Iraqi Freedom ends, with the last of the United States brigadecombat teams crossing the border to Kuwait.
2013 – The Dhamara Ghat train accident kills at least 37 people in the Indian state of Bihar.
=== 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 Michelle Tran, Lisa Zhao, Jessica Tjong, Lisa Nguyen and Channel Pheanix. Born on the same day, across the years as Marcus Aurelius Probus (232), Orville Wright (1871), Coco Chanel (1883), Ogden Nash (1902), Richard Simmons (1913), Gene Roddenberry (1921), Johnny Nash (1940), Bill Clinton (1946) and Reeva Steenkamp (1983). On your day, Feast of the Transfiguration (Julian calendar); Independence Day in Afghanistan (1919)
295 BC – The oldest known temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, was dedicated.
1745 – Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands to begin the Second Jacobite Rising.
1942 – Second World War: Allied forces suffered over 3,000 casualties when they unsuccessfully raided the German-occupied port of Dieppe, France.
1981 – Two American F-14 Tomcats shot down two Libyan Su-22 Fitters while the U.S. Navy conducted military exercises in the Gulf of Sidra.
2003 – A Hamas suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded over 130 others on a crowded public bus in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem. Your temple is dedicated. You have raised the standard. You can avoid suffering by not participating in the munchy raid. Stay clear of tomcats too .. or terrorists .. don't ask me why .. just avoid them ;)
Deaths
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Andrew Bolt

===

THEY’RE ALL GREAT

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (5:07pm)

My favourite is Fury.
===

BATTLE JOINED

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (3:16pm)

My friend Peter Hoysted deals with some difficult news: 
I want to be upfront about it. It’s important we have these conversations openly and break down the God-awful awkwardness associated with cancer. When I have told people I’ve been diagnosed with cancer, I’ve noticed moments of crushing silence follow while the person scrambles for an empathetic response. It’s perfectly understandable. Nevertheless I find it best to interrupt with a little gag, something like, “You haven’t got a copy of Belle Gibson’s cookbook I could borrow, have you?”
It’s cancer but it needn’t be so grim. 
That is precisely the right attitude.
===

NEW RULES

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (2:27pm)

Domestic violence has suddenly become much less violent: 
Criticising housework and withdrawing affection are defined as domestic violence in the first national guidelines for judges and magistrates.
The new “bench guide’’ for courts released by Attorney-General George Brandis yesterday spells out what can be considered family violence – ranging from physical attacks to yelling or criticising a partner’s appearance or threatening to have an affair. 
We need a new category for lesser offences. Domestic impoliteness.
===

TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN POULTRY

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (2:28am)

Melbourne’s Age – lately divided over a vegan sandwich controversy – now reports: 
Animal rights group PETA wants a “tombstone memorial” dedicated to the chickens injured and killed when crates of live birds fell off a truck onto the doorstep of a KFC outlet …
Vegan Jessica Carter described the location of the incident as “poignant”. 
Not to mention “inexpensive”, “beloved” and “delicious”. Here’s a couple of appropriate memorials for PETA’s chicken mourners.
===

FRIDAY SONGBOARD

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (1:35am)

To celebrate our national cricket team’s performances in Sri Lanka, here’s an Australian song about baseball:

===

GOOD DEED PUNISHED

Tim Blair – Friday, August 19, 2016 (1:19am)

Presenting our next Australian of the Year: 
A man who deliberately parked his car in front of a speed camera in Perth’s north – to prevent it catching speeding motorists – is facing a hefty punishment for his alleged stunt.
The 32-year-old Wanneroo man has been charged with obstructing a public officer and driving without a licence after the incident about 7.40pm Tuesday.
Police also impounded the man’s Holden Rodeo ute for his poorly-conceived parking. 
Remarkably, this public spirited individual was shopped to the police by his fellow motorists.
===

CAT INSULTED

Tim Blair – Thursday, August 18, 2016 (8:41pm)

(Via Iowahawk, who knows better than to take any risks with dubious baked goods.) 
===

Why does the ABC promote Islam, not Buddhism, Christianity or Jews?

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (10:22am)

Reader Matthew is wondering why the ABC is proselytising for Islam.
A really interesting occurrence on the ABC’s the Drum this week. Every night so far a Muslim leader has appeared as a commentator:
Monday 15th Lebanese Muslim Association’s Mostafa Rachwani 
Tuesday 16th Muslim educator Silma Ihram 
Wednesday 17th Ali Kadri from the Islamic Council of Queensland 
Thursday 18th Maha Abdo from the Muslim Women’s Association
The number of Christian, Jewish, Hindu or any other religious leaders: 0
This seems a little odd to me. I think Muslim representation is important on the ABC but this seems a little excessive for one week, don’t you think? 
Well, yes. 
===

Fuel for freedom

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (10:08am)

Brilliant. No more cringing. No more defence. Straight out optimism and truth in showing how coal and oil are the best things since someone worked out how to make fire:
(Thanks to reader Costa.) 
===

Digging for consensus on plans for a race-based constitution

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (9:59am)

Digging for turtle eggs while shooting a documentary with Labor MP Linda Burney on changing the constitution to recognise Aborigines as the First Australians and give them special rights.
ABC TV says it will screen the documentary - Recognition: Yes or No - on Tuesday 20 September.  Thirty hours of filming condensed to one.
UPDATE
Oh dear. We interviewed just five people who were against dividing us by race, whether by treaty or constitutional recognition, and at least 20 who were for it. Sadly, I’m told at least one of the five will not be shown. She is the very thoughtful and erudite Kerryn Pholi, who for some time identified as an Aboriginal woman and now has a most interesting take on the whole business.
Fortunately, I did ask for transcripts after a few weeks of filming, and will write about what I actually saw and heard once the ABC screens the edited version. I have been assured, though, that the edited version is fair, although I am yet to be shown it.  
===

Who willl save us from this blow-out?

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (8:56am)

How many warnings do Labor, the Greens and even many Liberals intend to ignore? David Uren:
Australia’s debt could blow out by more than $100 billion if the budget is wrong in its prediction that the economy will return to pre-crisis growth and the Turnbull government is unable to win Senate support for all of its outstanding savings ­measures… 
Whereas under Treasury’s benign outlook, net debt would be falling within two years and would be down to roughly $335bn by 2020-21, a scenario with slow nominal growth of 3.5 per cent, combined with Senate obstruction, would push it to about $440bn — a blowout of more than $100bn over six years…
The budget is counting on nominal growth doubling from 2.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 5 per cent by next year, while it predicts inflation will be back to its long-term average of 2.5 per cent by 2018-19.
[Deloitte Access Economics’s Chris Richardson] is more conservative, expecting nominal growth of 4.6 per cent next year and 4.4 per cent the year after that…
The firm’s modelling of its own economic forecasts shows it would bring a much slower fall in the ­government’s debt burden with it still holding above 19 per cent of GDP by 2021-22. If the Senate does not pass outstanding savings measures, even that slow fall in the government’s debt would not happen and the debt would remain stuck just above 20 per cent of GDP indefinitely. The dollar amount would creep higher along with growth of the economy to about $410bn by 2021-22. Although it is not Deloitte’s forecast, Mr Richardson’s analysis shows that if nominal growth remains 3.5 per cent, debt would keep rising, reaching 22.4 per cent of GDP by 2021-22, rather than the 13.6 per cent Treasury forecasts imply.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
AB, it should be noted that Turnbull is yet to put any real savings of his own on the table: he’s essentially working with the blocked measures proposed by Abbott and Hockey. 
As Judith Sloan noted yesterday, Turnbull and Morrison’s standalone contribution so far tallies an abysmal $1.7b in proposed fiscal repair over four years: 
Turnbull ... might now seek to enlist Labor’s co-operation by putting forward an omnibus bill containing a potpourri of budget savings, but we should not forget that these savings have already been recorded in the books even though they are not legislated. A company director would be disbarred for this kind of accounting manipulation… But let us not forget the most memorable lines from this year’s budget, the first under Turnbull’s prime ministership. “The government remains focused on restraining growth in government spending and aims to achieve a steady trajectory towards a balanced budget and lower government debt. The overall impact of new policy decisions in this budget is an improvement to the bottom line of $1.7 billion over the four years to 2019-20.” I really thought this must have been a typo. $1.7bn over four years out of total government spending above $2000bn and the government thinks this is something about which to brag?
===

Why the cover-up, CNN?

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (8:21am)

A [black] policeman shoots a black criminal named Sylville Smith. Naturally, this is an excuse for black racists, activists and troublemakers to attack police, loot and destroy property.
But CNN does its best to preserve the preferred media narrative of white oppression of black victims, and reports that Sylville Smith’s sister spoke out nobly for peace:
CNN reporter: With the sister calling for peace: 
Sister: Don’t bring the violence here and the ignorance here.
Small problem. That little grab was taken from a longer rant in which the sister made clear she simply wanted the looting and burning to be done not in her own streets but out in the suburbs:
Ya’ll burning down s*** we need in our community. Take that s*** to the suburbs. Burn that s*** down. 
See for yourself. Here’s what the sister actually said, compared to what CNN claimed she said:
CNN apologises.
(Thanks to reader Bob.) 
===

If you’re interested in catching up…

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (8:00am)

SYDNEY, Saturday, September 3
I’ll be speaking at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas:
How many dangerous ideas can one person have?  ANDREW BOLT
03 Sep 2016, 3pm - from $27 Class war, multiculturalism, race, politics, culture wars, free speech, global warming - Bolt’s favourite targets get audiences excited, and this is a rare chance to explore where his ideas come from and whether he thinks they are dangerous. How dangerous is being an Australian commentator speaking your mind without reservation?
Hmm. I notice from the blurb how the focus swiftly switched from how dangerous my ideas were to society to how dangerous they were to me.
Book here to witness the result.
MELBOURNE, Sunday, September 4 - Father’s Day
I have been asked to do a book signing from 2pm at the big Costco store at 381 Footscray Rd, Docklands, Melbourne.  Yes, an unusual event for me, so I will be intrigued to see how it goes.
===

A taxpayer-funded Kama Sutra for school children

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (7:51am)

Is this teaching or coaching? Information or porn?
A new sex education guide being promoted by the research institute behind the Safe Schools program provides ­students with explicit descriptions of more than a dozen sexual activities. 
La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society this month launched Transmission, a film with related educational activities that introduces its Year 10 audience to a range of highly sexualised terms that have not previously been canvassed in sex education curriculums…
In one classroom activity, students are asked to consider a list of 20 ways of “engaging in sexual pleasure” to determine which ­activities they “think might be okay”. They are then asked to sort each sex act by their level of ­comfort…

Among the handouts provided to students is a list of sexual terms including “analingus”, also known as “rimming” and “scissoring”. “Penetrative sex” is ­described as “when a penis or object is inserted into the vagina or anus”.
===

Free speech sell-outs: Turnbull ministers are the cork and not the river

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (7:33am)

Do the Greens stop arguing against our boat people laws just because the numbers in the Senate are against them?
Does Labor stop arguing for same sex marriage just because the numbers in Parliament mean it won’t get through?
Sometimes it is a question of pride and moral seriousness for a political party to fight for a losing cause. That is even more so when the cause is so just and even supporters believe you stand for little.
That is why this smart-alec response is so pathetic, coming from a minister who clearly has the disease of managerialism:
Some Liberals are dismissive of the 18C agitators [demanding free speech reform]. ”None of them can count,” says one minister. With all ministers and assistant ministers bound by the cabinet policy to leave 18C alone, there are only a handful of ­Coalition votes in the Senate to back a bill to amend the act
That minister should know the reformers can indeed count, and they would count that minister as a protector of laws now being used to censor even Queensland students protesting against a new apartheid.  That minister should also know that each of those three students has more courage than he does in fighting for free speech, win or lose.
But isn’t that the Turnbull Government now? Going with the flow. Not fighting for Liberal beliefs.
Managers, not leaders.  The cork and not the river.
UPDATE
Sure, they talk a big game in private before going to water in public:
Malcolm Turnbull expressed his “general support” for senator Bob Day’s push to amend section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and pledged to look at the matter early this year after asking him to delay a vote on the change. 
As some Coalition senators rally support for a renewed push to amend section 18C of the law, Senator Day revealed to The Australian that the Prime Minister had phoned him last year during ­debate on the bill and the two “agreed the time (for a vote) was not right for either of us at that time.”
Senator Day said Mr Turnbull indicated his “general support” for the push to amend the contentious section, which restricts speech that is “reasonably likely, in all the ­circumstances, to offend, insult, ­humiliate or intimidate” on the basis of “race, colour or ­national or ethnic origin”.
“Shortly after he became Prime Minister, (Mr Turnbull) rang and we discussed my 18C bill, which I had in the Senate at that time,” Senator Day told The Australian. “We landed at the position where I would not put it to a vote, but would bring it back in the new year and we agreed with that timetable.”
===

Coal is king

Andrew Bolt August 19 2016 (7:23am)

In the end, what warmists forget is that people want electricity - and they want it cheap:
Coal? Who wants that any more? Ross Gittins, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 14 last year: 
In a nutshell … coal’s days are numbered. The rapidly falling price of renewable energy such as wind and solar, combined with the growing resolve of China, the US and others to reduce their emissions, put a dark cloud over the future of coal.
The Herald’s Michael West made much the same call on February 19: 
Here is an idea for the Ideas Boom: put a moratorium on all new coalmines. Protect the price of our bulk commodities, protect the nation’s wealth. Don’t rip it up by murdering the price of our biggest exports.
But don’t take their word for it. The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on the return of coal, yesterday: 
Less than a year after the coal industry was declared to be in terminal decline, the fossil fuel has staged its steepest price rally in over half a decade, making it one of the hottest major commodities.
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After Worth Fighting For, Still Not Sorry

Andrew Bolt August 18 2016 (11:30pm)

Thanks for your support for Worth Fighting For. A second printing is under way, but - encouraged - we’re now also reprinting Still Not Sorry, my 2005 collection of columns and reflections, with a new preface. It sold out then but can now be pre-ordered here.  On-line buyers of Still Not Sorry will - like  on-line buyers of Worth Fighting For receive the semi-regular Bolt Bulletin.
The fourth edition of the Bolt Bulletin went out this week. It includes a prediction of a big culture war, the loudest lesson learned on my book tour and a must-visit recommendation for Australia’s least-known arts jewel. I also include a scathing column I somehow forgot to put in my book - one I was reminded of while reading a terrific memoir of a genius who rescued two of the greatest opera houses in the world before dying in 1940. 
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So now banks are censoring columnists?

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (12:27am)

MARK Latham has bagged me, bagged my friends and bagged my enemies. He’s an equal opportunity bagger.

 Continue reading 'So now banks are censoring columnists?'
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Only a double dissolution election can save the PM

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (12:26am)

SO let’s get this straight. The biggest scandal in Australia is that trade unions royal commissioner Dyson Heydon, AC, QC, did not speak at a function that was not a Liberal fundraiser.

 Continue reading 'Only a double dissolution election can save the PM'
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PAGING DR SOUTPHOMMASANE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (3:16pm)

Clementine Ford’s anti-women hate binge continues with this attack on Rita Panahi: 
No matter how hard she tries, she’ll never be a white man. 
Racial vilification and dumb sexism in the same tweet! Clem is completely throwing it. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. 
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BEING TONY ABBOTT

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (12:59pm)

Multiple grant recipient and freelance writer Lea McInerney presents what might be the perfect Age column: 
The other night, I was discussing difficult workplaces and difficult bosses with some friends. Then we moved on to federal politics, and managed to make ourselves quite despondent. How broken is our democracy? Is the Westminster system the best we can do … ?
That led to us talking about the Prime Minister’s style, the polarising language, the brinkmanship, our fears for the effect it’s having on the psyche of our country. I mentioned Mr Abbott’s boxing history and my fascination with his posture, and told them I was curious about what it might be like to be in his body. 
This led to a frightening challenge: 
Goaded on by my friends, I stood up, took a breath, hunched my shoulders, locked my arms, and walked across the room. Without even consciously thinking about it, my chest and jaw thrust forward and my fists clenched. I could feel myself ready for a fight. 
Lea achieved this astonishing transformation just by walking in a slightly different way. What happens to her when she runs? 
What old ways of thinking might Abbott be locked into, within that boxer physique of his? He uses fighting metaphors a lot, but what else? In some of his language, in the way he puts things, I hear echoes of old-school Catholic doctrine …
He talks of good and evil as a dichotomy. In particular, and most troublingly, he refers to some people – as opposed to their actions – as bad or evil. 
Lea should discuss her findings with some of her fellow leftists. 
In the tangled world of political spin and media bombardment, maybe looking into a politician’s body language might offer a way of getting closer to what’s true. 
Then again, probably not.
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EVERYTHING GREEN IS STUPID AND DOESN’T WORK

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (12:51pm)

Three years ago, Californians voted for a proposition created by rich environmentalist Tom Steyer that would fund green projects in schools through increased corporate taxes: 
He promised it would create 11,000 new jobs each year. What could go wrong?
There are inherent problems with the idea of green public-works projects, and still more problems with tax hikes. But this plan had the benefit of at least being elegant and simple. All of the facilities slated for green-energy improvements would be government-owned and government-run. There would be no NIMBY-style community pushback, nor significant added costs to ratepayers. Districts could apply for funds and choose projects that met their needs. If any such program could work, this was it.
Naturally, it did not work at all. 
Do read on. 
(Via Gregoryno6.) 
===

THE NEW INTOLERANCE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 19, 2015 (11:42am)

Belief in traditional marriage is now a mark of shame, writes Brendan O’Neill: 
This was once seen as a perfectly normal point of view. Now, in the historical blink of an eye, it has been denormalised, and with such ferocity and speed that anyone still brave enough to express it runs the risk of being ejected from public life …
What we have here is the further colonisation of public life by an elite strata of society – the chattering class – and the vigorous expulsion of all those who do not genuflect to their orthodoxies. Whether you’re a climate-change denier, a multiculturalism sceptic or, the lowest of the low, someone who believes in traditional marriage, you’re clearly mad and must be cast out.
The social impact of this illiberal liberalism will be dire. 
With the likes of Julian Burnside at the fore, that outcome is unavoidable. Interestingly, fewer than three years ago Julia Gillard joined Coalition benches to vote against gay marriage, along with Labor colleagues Chris Bowen, David Bradbury, Tony Burke, Craig Emerson, Ed Husic, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan:
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Heydon was the only judge who backed Labor’s “Malaysian solution”. Yet it smears him now as “biased”

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (1:25pm)

Labor has been smearing royal commissioner Dyson Heydon as “biased” and a Liberal patsy.
To show how grossly false this claim is - and how manifestly unfair - note that Heydon was the only judge on the High Court to back the Gillard Government’s “Malaysian solution”, then hotly opposed by the Liberals:
RICHARD AEDY:  When the full bench of the High Court threw out the government’s Malaysia solution, he was the lone dissenter… it was six to one… 
JUSTICE HEYDON: With all respect to my colleagues I think it was a field where the government had to be left to run its foreign policies as it saw fit and there was no legislative bar to the policy which Mr Bowen and the Government were adopting.  
For Labor to now smear Heydon as biased and even a Liberal “bag man” is utterly shameful.
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 
===

Why won’t the Leftist NSW Bar Association defend an honest judge from Labor’s sliming?

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (8:18am)

Gillian Triggs, head of the Human Rights Commission, demonstrated manifest bias in her conduct of an inquiry into children in detention. Yet the head of the NSW Bar Association defended this crusader of the Left:
NSW Bar Association president Jane Needham SC said that judges and people in statutory positions should be given the space to do their jobs and encouraged Professor Triggs to hold on to her position in the face of pressure to resign, warning that the attacks would deter others from accepting similar positions.
Justice Dyson Heydon has shown no bias in his conduct of an inquiry into corruption in trade unions. Yet where is the NSW Bar Association’s president now? Why isn’t she publicly defending this conservative against Labor’s campaign of personal denigration and it demands that he resign?
Instead, Needham, who participates in NSW Society of Labor Lawyers’  events and publications, was yesterday retweeting Crikey attacks on the Abbott Governmentand chiding the lack of a vote on same-sex marriage. Her last press release on the NSW Bar Association’s website is another attack on the Abbott Government for criticising legal action by anti-coal activists - an attack on Tony Abbott personally that a professor of law found strange.
Would I be right to wonder if the NSW Bar Association has been captured by the Left?
Why hasn’t Needham publicly defended Heydon? 
===

Using the law to redefine support of traditional marriage as bigotry

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (7:47am)

US Supreme Court judge Samuel Alito warns against the new bigots and straighteners:
In his dissent from the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which declared that same-sex marriage is a right, Justice Samuel Alito said the court had falsely likened opposition to same-sex marriage to racism and that its decision “will be used to vilify Americans unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy."… 
“I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labelled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools,” Alito wrote. “By imposing its own views on the entire country,” he said, “the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.”
The same process is underway here, albeit without the backing of the law - so far.
(Thanks to reader fulchrum.) 
===

This is why Labor is helping dodgy unions to destroy a corruption buster

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (7:37am)

The Liberals must use this issue not to defend the royal commission but to attack Labor for defending the corrupt.
Why Labor and the unions are trying to destroy royal commissioner Dyson Heydon, the former High Court judge:
The trade union royal commission has already referred 26 union and ex-union officials to law ­enforcement agencies and regulators to investigate more than 50 potential breaches of criminal and civil laws…
Further evidence this week tendered to the commission in Sydney builds on a raft of allegations since hearings began last year that unions are raising millions of dollars in untaxed funds from ­employers through so-called ­education and training and social welfare programs and income protection schemes…
However, the work of the ­commission, which has already resulted in references to 11 commonwealth and state agencies — including alleged criminal charges against the [CFMEU] construction union’s NSW head Brian Parker, Victorian secretary John Setka, and Queensland branch boss Michael Ravbar of the construction union — risks being undermined by ­attacks on its commissioner, Dyson Heydon. ..
During [proceedings in Canberra last month], the commission’s police taskforce arrested [CFMEU] construction union official John Lomax and ex-union ­official Fihi Kivalu on blackmail charges, and a concrete construction worker for perjury.
The ­arrests took the total by the commission to four after Queensland Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union official Justin Steele was charged with ­assault in May....
Over 143 days of hearings the commission has heard hundreds of hours of evidence from union and industry figures, alleging threats, coercion, bullying, intimidation and harassment. It exposed an alleged “culture of bullying”, harassment and intimidation within the Victorian branch of the Health Services Union… Details of slush funds set up by the Australian Workers Union, the National Union of Workers, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, and the Canberra branch of the CFMEU have also been aired.
Mr Heydon’s interim report recommended sanctions against the construction union’s national office, the head of the health services union’s Victorian branch, the national office of the transport union and the Queensland office of the shoppies’ union. It examined the Victorian CFMEU branch black ban on concrete supplier Boral from construction sites as part of its “war” with developer Grocon in 2013. Mr Heydon warned the CFMEU “treats itself as above the law”.
The commission’s investigations into the CFMEU’s NSW branch exposed claims Mr Parker was involved in a plan to obtain confidential details of union superannuation members to use in his campaign against construction firm Lis-Con. Its continuing investigations into [Labor leader Bill] Shorten follow allegations he failed to disclose more than $40,000 donated to his political campaign by a company with which his [AWU] union was dealing. The AWU has also come under fire over revelations it traded away the penalty rates of low-paid workers, and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in unexplained payments.
UPDATE
Brendan O’Neill nails the phoniness of this “scandal” involving royal commissioner Dyson Heydon:
I have to say, Australia, this is a really rubbish scandal… So, in a nutshell, this guy accepted an invitation to speak at a dinner and he said “I won’t speak if it’s a fundraiser”. Someone said to him, “It is a fundraiser”, and he said, “Okay I won’t speak at it”. That’s it.
Bill Leak’s take:
Chris Kenny:
(R)evelations [in the royal commission] have been extremely damaging to the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, who was forced to reveal that his 2007 election campaign director — when he switched from Australian Workers’ Union boss to federal parliament — was funded, in secret, by a company that was negotiating an enterprise agreement with the AWU. 
Shorten channelled $40,000 of funds in this arrangement through the AWU, which meant the deal was hidden from the Australian Electoral Commission and, importantly, AWU members…
So the unions [and] the ALP ...  just want to damage the commission — and shut it down if possible…
Heydon is being attacked for agreeing to give a lecture. What the unions, ALP and press gallery all know but deliberately misinterpret is that the event was neither highly political nor a fundraiser… But the problem was identified, the engagement was cancelled. Nothing happened....
Let’s call this for what it is. The unions, Labor and their media allies are targeting Heydon in a politically-motivated distraction that is prepared to tarnish the reputation of a distinguished Australian just so a royal commission can be undermined. The aim is to protect union thuggery from accountability and to preserve political interests… If this attack on the royal commission succeeds, we had better all join a union because if you are not with them, it will be impossible to stand against them.
UPDATE
Calling out Labor’s sinister campaign:
Former commonwealth solicitor-general David Bennett defended the integrity of Mr Heydon, described the case against him as politically motivated and said it was unlikely to be upheld in court. 
“It seems to me to be very trivial,” he told The Australian. “First of all, the connection between the Liberal Party and the Garfield Barwick address is not so widely known.
“The annual Garfield Barwick address has, I think, a significance and a reputation which transcends its organisers. Once it became clear, he withdrew from giving the address. He probably didn’t have to do that. But having done that, that seems to remove all suggestion of bias."…
He said Mr Heydon was now in the middle of a “political attack” but defended him as being “totally fair and independent”.
“He was, in my view, one of the outstanding High Court judges of the last few years and I know nothing to his discredit,” he said. “There certainly wouldn’t be a finding of bias. What one would argue would be an apprehension of bias. But, even in my view, that finding would not be made I would have thought.”
What we are seeing is the trashing of a good judge to protect the corrupt:
THE Law Council has slammed Labor’s attacks on former high court judge Dyson Heydon, presiding over the royal commission into trade union corruption, claiming they are unacceptable and are damaging the integrity of the court system… 
“The public attacks on the commissioner being played out through the media are ­unacceptable and damage the basis on which tribunals and courts operate,” a council statement said. “In this case, Mr John Dyson Heydon AC QC is a highly regarded former judicial officer.”
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Gab.) 
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Hillary Clinton and “us sinners”

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (7:15am)

No wonder Donald Trump is so popular for defying the modern racists and thought police.
Hillary Clinton shows the depths to which the cringing Left have sunk, accepting the crude racial stereotypes of the victim industry:
Video from Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Black Lives Matters activists last week in New Hampshire has been released, showing an at-times tense exchange in which the Democratic presidential candidate was accused of “victim blaming.” 
Clinton also referred to herself and other whites as “us sinners” during the Aug. 11 meeting with the activists… “The consciousness-raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical, but now all I’m suggesting is, even for us sinners, find some common ground on agendas that can make a difference right here and now in people’s lives,” Clinton said. 
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Let anti-coal activists fight for votes, not the say of some activist judge

Andrew Bolt August 19 2015 (6:50am)

Radical green groups aren’t our conscience but our bullies. They do not protect our interests but harm them. And the law is meant to protect the afflicted, not be a weapon for the unaffected ideologue:
Tony Abbott has escalated his ­attack on anti-coal activists and challenged Labor to stand up for jobs, by moving to ban green groups from using the courts to stop major developments such as the Adani coalmine… 
Adani’s Carmichael coal project in central Queensland has proven a flash point between green activists trying to stop the development of new coalmines to limit climate change and the ­Abbott government, which has backed the development on the basis it will bring up to $31 billion in investment and create 10,000 jobs. Mr Abbott this month lashed the Federal Court action that sparked the delay in the approval of the mine, warning against ­allowing the courts to evolve into a “means of sabotaging projects’’.
Attorney-General George Brandis yesterday announced the government would remove ­Section 487 of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the provision that he said “allowed radical green ­activists to engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects’’.
The move would return legal action against projects to the common law, meaning litigants would have to have a direct interest in the case to be given standing, such as landholders affected by a resources project…
Mr Abbott said the Adani issue was “a setback for the reputational risk of Australia’’ and jobs were being threatened by “the militancy of the green movement led by the Mackay Conservation Group’’. He said the group was located 600km from the mine and was represented by the NSW Environmental Defender’s Office, which was located a 13½-hour drive from the mine.
But Labor and the Greens will have enough supporters in the Senate - populists Glenn Lazarus and Jaqui Lambie among them - to protect green radicals and leave coal projects exposed to lawfare.
[Nationals leader] Warren Truss, question time, yesterday: 
This is not some kind of accidental or community motivated process. The reality was that a prospectus was put out in November 2011 talking about an almost $1 million campaign to stop the Australian coalmining boom.
Indeed. Extract from strategy paper Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Coalswarm and the Graeme Wood Foundation, November 2011: 
The first priority is to get in front of the critical projects to slow them down in the approval process. This means lodging legal challenges … This will require significant investment in legal capacity.
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But it’s fine if judges speak at Labor events, of course

Andrew Bolt August 18 2015 (10:39pm)

Labor hypocrites, complaining of royal commissioner Dyson Heydon having agreed to speak at a Liberal function (but then pulling out):
The judge at a Labor speech night:
Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs at a Labor speech night:
UPDATE
Judith Sloan:
Last November, the President of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, delivered a lecture at an event of the Australian Labor Party organised by member for Fraser, Andrew Leigh – the annual Fraser Lecture (note similarity to annual Sir Garfield Barwick Lecture). 
Yes, she actually delivered the lecture, rather than just accepting the invitation and then realising that this was an event organised by the Labor Party (note invitation to a supporter and to donate) and then declining to speak. Will Shadow Attorney General be calling for her resignation, suppported of course by Julian Burnside, QC.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
It seems Triggs gave the lecture on 17 November 2014. She handed her children in immigration detention inquiry report to the government on 11 November 2014. 
Not that he ever would, but how might Labor respond to Justice Heydon appearing at a Liberal Party event within a week of handing down his findings from the royal commission?
(Thanks to readers Gab and Benjamin.) 
===

Green lawfare checked

Andrew Bolt August 18 2015 (7:54pm)

Good:
Environment groups will be forbidden from challenging large developments in court as the Abbott government responds to the controversial decision that stopped Australia’s largest coal project – Adani’s Carmichael coal mine - in its tracks… 
It comes after Prime Minister Tony Abbott labelled as “sabotage” a successful challenge by a Queensland conservation group in the Federal Court that halted Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in central Queensland.
Mackay Conservation Group, Adani and Environment Minister Greg Hunt agreed the company’s federal environment approval should be set aside after the challenge successfully exposed the government’s failure to properly consider two threatened species – the yakka skink and ornamental snake…
Under the current laws, anyone “adversely affected” by a decision or a failure to make a decision has the legal right to challenge it.
This includes any Australian citizens and residents who have acted “for protection or conservation of or research into the environment” any time in the two years before the decision was made. The changes proposed will mean that legal challenges can only be made by people directly affected by a development, such as a land holder. 
===

Burnside sees bigots everywhere. Gilllard is apparently one, too

Andrew Bolt August 18 2015 (7:43pm)

More of that hate-speech that Labor warns we will get if there is a people’s vote on same-sex marriage:
So Burnside hasn’t met a single one of the one third of Australians who oppose gay marriage. He hasn’t met priests or imams, for instance. He’s never met Julia Gillard, Steve Conroy or any of the many Labor MPs who have opposed gay marriage.
Not having met them, he’s convinced they - a third of Australia’s population - are all bigots, Gillard included.
Sanctimony and arrogance combined. Not an attractive package. And that is the hatred driving so much of this debate.
(Thanks to reader Blaise.) 
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ALL BOOKSTORES ARE EQUAL

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 19, 2014 (4:51am)

Labor member for Lakemba Robert Furolo takes issue with yesterday’s column: 
Last time I checked, nearly every suburb in Sydney has bookstores, yet we don’t define the residents of those suburbs by what the authors of those books say or think. That would be just absurd. 
Mate, a store in your electorate sells books that praise Hitler and condemn women to hell. Have you ever visited that store? Are you proud that this is happening under your watch?
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DIG UP

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 19, 2014 (4:08am)

A quick review of the latest Labor memoir: 
In the prologue to his new book, Wayne Swan writes he joined the Labor Party “in 1974, under Gough Whitlam, while working part-time as a manure shoveller”.
The former treasurer is still shovelling it 40 years later. 
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ALLAH OVER AUSTRALIA

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 19, 2014 (3:53am)

Nothing to see here: 
A senior leader of radical Sydney-based Islamic organisation al-Risalah has denounced the Australian flag, as the group’s supporters posted Facebook messages about beheading “non-believers”.
Wissam Haddad, the head of the al-Risalah Islamic Centre in Sydney’s southwest, yesterday told The Daily Telegraph he followed the “flag of Allah” rather than the flag of Australia.
The flag, called the Shahada, is the same as the one used by Islamic State terrorists who have been spreading death and terror across the Middle East. 
Maybe they just prefer that colour scheme.
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THEY’RE FIRING EAR PLUGS

Tim Blair – Monday, August 18, 2014 (11:40pm)

There is no such thing as a stupid question. Except this one.
(Via Dave T.) 
===

STUMP CAM

Tim Blair – Monday, August 18, 2014 (10:08pm)

Poor Ian Botham.
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No doubt Plibersek will say thanks…

Andrew Bolt August 19 2014 (9:53am)

Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have fixed what Labor broke with its spying:
THE Australian and Indonesian governments have concluded an agreement to patch up differences over allegations of Australian spying on Indonesia and could formally sign the text as early as this week. 
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Your family is paying $260 a year on useless green power

Andrew Bolt August 19 2014 (9:40am)

The green energy industry has not just wasted a grotesque amount of the public’s money. It has done this without making the slightest difference to the climate:
Alan Moran on the renewable energy target, which forces us to use wind and solar power:
[T]wo studies of the RET have independently placed its net present value cost at $29-$37 billion.  Even if it were closed today its costs would be $6-$16 depending on the assumptions… 
In terms of the direct impact on electricity consumers, the burden of renewable requirements this year is estimated by the energy regulator to add 12 per cent to the average household’s electricity costs. That’s about $260 per year.
That is $260 a year paid by the average family to keep green carpetbaggers in business with no benefit at all to the environment.
UPDATE
Senator Matt Canavan on the great green rort:
Last week, the nation was gripped by the spectacle of a “regressive” fuel tax that would cost the average consumer $20 a year. The same people who pillory the Treasurer for indexing fuel excise argue for a RET more than twice as costly. At least fuel excise will help build roads, whereas the RET doesn’t make electricity more reliable or powerful, it just makes pensioners and the poor go without heating or airconditioning to subsidise the lucky few with the resources to invest in the latest fad: renewables. 
The RET is an extremely expensive form of emission reductions, between double and six times the cost of the carbon tax. And it doesn’t stop there. The big losers from the RET are those industries that use lots of energy, such as aluminium and fertiliser producers. Some economic modelling finds that the RET will lead to 5000 fewer jobs.
===

Clive Palmer calls partners “Chinese bastards” and “mongrels”. Wong silent

Andrew Bolt August 19 2014 (9:26am)

 Clive Palmer plays the race card as Labor’s Penny Wong, herself ethnically Chinese, sits by without a single protest or mention of 18C:
In a broad spray the maverick MP accused the “communist Chinese government” of trying to take over Australia’s ports to steal the nation’s natural resources. “I don’t mind standing up against the Chinese bastards and stopping them from doing it,” he said on Q&A.... 
He said ... he’d keep up the fight against the “Chinese mongrels”. “I’m saying that because they’re communist, because they shoot their own people, they haven’t got a justice system and they want to take over this country,” he said.
The Chinese “bastards” Palmer refers to are in this case his own Chinese partners. The take-over of this country he denounces is the investment he himself sold them.
The real issue:
Mr Palmer is currently fighting two court cases against Chinese firm Citic Pacific, who claim $12 million in royalty payments were improperly siphoned off to pay for Mr Palmer’s election campaign.
Clive Palmer makes Pauline Hanson look perfectly reasonable:
FORMER One Nation leader Pauline Hanson ... criticised Mr Palmer for his tirade against Australia’s biggest trading partner.
UPDATE
Palmer once said the exact opposite about the Chinese - but that was when he was making money from them. From 2009:
THE nation’s fifth-richest man, Clive Palmer, has denounced the federal government’s foreign investment rules as racist, claiming they are weighted against Chinese companies seeking to buy into Australian resource projects.
UPDATE
What does Palmer think of his Chinese-born Senator Dio Wang taking a seat in our Parliament with the alleged help of Chinese money, spent on the party’s advertising? What does Wang in turn think of Palmer’s tirade against Chinese businessmen?
(Note: Palmer denies claims by his partner CITIC Pacific that he improperly took $12 million of its money, some of which went to a company working on Palmer’s election campaign.)
UPDATE
If Lambie really thinks our military should double in size she should finally nominate some savings to pay for it:
ONE of Clive Palmer’s senators says Australia must double the size of its military to counter the threat of a Chinese invasion. 
A DAY after Mr Palmer stoked controversy by describing the Chinese as “bastards” and “mongrels” who shoot their own people, Jacqui Lambie has weighed in. The outspoken Palmer United Party senator for Tasmania says she strongly supports her leader’s comments about “China’s military capacity and threat to Australia”.
“If anybody thinks that we should have a national security and defence policy which ignores the threat of a Chinese communist invasion - you’re delusional and got rocks in your head,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.
Marvellous how these clowns are destroying our relationship with China to further Palmer’s business vendetta.
(Thanks to readers Gab and Lambie.) 
===

Muslim leaders play the victim, boycott anti-terrorism discussion

Andrew Bolt August 19 2014 (8:59am)

We have a problem and Tony Abbott reaches out to Muslim leaders to help avert what would be a disaster for the Muslim community:
Mr ­Abbott [met Sydney Muslim leaders yesterday] to build support for reforms that would allow police to arrest Australians who may have joined foreign conflicts. 
Mr Abbott will meet Islamic leaders in Melbourne today and Attorney-General George Brandis will hold a meeting in Sydney on Wednesday to discuss the new laws.
But how serious and responsible are these leaders really? How quick are they to play the victim card and make non-Muslim Australians seem the real problem?
Example 1: The Islamic Council of Victoria has boycotted today’s meeting with Abbott, accusing him of being divisive and inflammatory.
Example 2: Sydney Muslim leaders yesterday gave Abbott more criticism than help:
ISLAMIC leaders have urged Tony Abbott to safeguard the presumption of innocence in the government’s new counter-terrorism laws as the Prime Minister insists on the need for stronger powers to avoid a “mass-casualty terrorist event” on Australian soil… 
The Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, told the Prime Minister of the importance of legal freedoms, while ­others warned against the powers going too far to deal with a “handful of lunatics” who embraced terrorism. Islamic Friendship Association spokesman Keysar Trad said after the meeting: “The reversal of the presumption of innocence, of course, was a very, very important issue. The mufti stressed in there the importance of freedoms. This is why we love Australia. We don’t want these freedoms to be threatened."…
The Australian was told yesterday that leaders also aired concerns about divisive language that could isolate Muslims rather than turn the fight against terrorism into an issue for all parts of the community. 
Example 3: Sydney Muslim leaders also played the victim card and released a statement hinting that their cooperation might have a price - the abandonment of Israel:
Attendees stressed the need for appropriate risk assessment of any measures proposed in order to ensure that they do not result in the further marginalisation or victimisation of any members of the Muslim community… 
It was highlighted that Australia needs to maintain its ethical and moral leadership in tackling global issues and devise sound foreign policies that uphold human rights, are balanced and do not negatively impact on any section of the Australian community. 
Example 4: The Sydney attendees included Keysar Trad, whose past associations include a pro-jihadist publication and a pro-Hezbollah Mufti.
Example 5: The Grand Mufti boycotted an end-of-Ramadan dinner hosted by the Australian Federal Police to signal his opposition to the new anti-terrorism plans.
I am left with the clear impression that many of our Islamic leaders have more interest in preaching victimhood than in fighting terrorism. They are feeding what they should be fighting.
UPDATE
Those Muslim leaders should spend less time attacking Tony Abbott for his allegedly divisive statements and more time combating truly divisive and dangerous statements by their own:
A senior leader of radical Sydney-based Islamic organisation al-Risalah has denounced the Australian flag, as the group’s supporters posted Facebook messages about beheading “non-believers”. 
Wissam Haddad, the head of the al-Risalah Islamic Centre in Sydney’s southwest, yesterday told The Daily Telegraph he followed the “flag of Allah” rather than the flag of Australia. The flag, called the Shahada, is the same as the one used by Islamic State terrorists who have been spreading death and terror across the Middle East. 
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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.

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Post by David Daniel Ball.
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Below350.org
Headline from 1969
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THIS DAY IN HOLOCAUST HISTORY, 1943: The process of destroying the evidence of mass murder that took place at Babi Yar, a suburb of Kiev in the Soviet Ukraine, began. Jewish and Soviet prisoners were set to work, unearthing thousands of bodies and burning them in huge pyres. The Jewish prisoners attended to the horrible task knowing that they too would be shot and burned at the end they tried an escape. During attempt to hide the evidence of genocide, 311 out of 325 Jewish and Soviet prisoners would be killed in their break-out attempt.

Babi Yar: Jews (including babies) were rounded up and shot before being pushed into the ravine, Their dignity stripped from them..

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/babiyar.html
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MAN RULES

AT LAST A GUY HAS TAKEN THE TIME TO WRITE THIS ALL DOWN
FINALLY, the guys' side of the story. ( I MUST ADMIT, IT'S PRETTY GOOD.)

WE ALWAYS HEAR 'THE RULES' FROM THE FEMALE SIDE
NOW HERE ARE THE RULES FROM THE MALE SIDE

THESE ARE OUR RULES!

PLEASE NOTE. THESE ARE ALL NUMBERED #1 ON PURPOSE!

1. MEN ARE NOT MIND READERS.

1. LEARN TO WORK THE TOILET SEAT. YOU'RE A BIG GIRL. IF IT'S UP, PUT IT DOWN. WE NEED IT UP, YOU NEED IT DOWN. YOU DON'T HEAR US COMPLAINING ABOUT YOU LEAVING IT DOWN.

1. CRYING IS BLACKMAIL.

1. ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT. LET US BE CLEAR ON THIS ONE:

SUBTLE HINTS DO NOT WORK!
STRONG HINTS DO NOT WORK!
OBVIOUS HINTS DO NOT WORK!
JUST SAY IT!

1. YES AND NO ARE PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE ANSWERS TO ALMOST EVERY QUESTION.

1.. COME TO US WITH A PROBLEM ONLY IF YOU WANT HELP SOLVING IT. THAT'S WHAT WE DO. SYMPATHY IS WHAT YOUR GIRLFRIENDS ARE FOR.

1. ANYTHING WE SAID 6 MONTHS AGO IS INADMISSIBLE IN AN ARGUMENT. IN FACT, ALL COMMENTS BECOME NULL AND VOID AFTER 7 DAYS.

1. IF YOU THINK YOU'RE FAT, YOU PROBABLY ARE. DON'T ASK US.

1. IF SOMETHING WE SAID CAN BE INTERPRETED TWO WAYS AND ONE OF THE WAYS MAKES YOU SAD OR ANGRY, WE MEANT THE OTHER ONE.

1. YOU CAN EITHER ASK US TO DO SOMETHING OR TELL US HOW YOU WANT IT DONE. NOT BOTH.
IF YOU ALREADY KNOW BEST HOW TO DO IT, JUST DO IT YOURSELF.

1. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, PLEASE SAY WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO SAY DURING COMMERCIALS.

1. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DID NOT NEED DIRECTIONS AND NEITHER DO WE...

1. ALL MEN SEE IN ONLY 16 COLORS, LIKE WINDOWS DEFAULT SETTINGS..
PEACH, FOR EXAMPLE, IS A FRUIT, NOT A COLOR. PUMPKIN IS ALSO A FRUIT. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MAUVE IS.

1. IF WE ASK WHAT IS WRONG AND YOU SAY 'NOTHING,' WE WILL ACT LIKE NOTHING'S WRONG. WE KNOW YOU ARE LYING, BUT IT IS JUST NOT WORTH THE HASSLE.

1. IF YOU ASK A QUESTION YOU DON'T WANT AN ANSWER TO, EXPECT AN ANSWER YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR..

1. WHEN WE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING YOU WEAR IS FINE...REALLY.

1.. DON'T ASK US WHAT WE'RE THINKING ABOUT UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO DISCUSS SUCH TOPICS AS FOOTBALL OR MOTOR SPORTS.

1. YOU HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHES.

1 .. YOU HAVE TOO MANY SHOES.

1. I AM IN SHAPE. ROUND IS A SHAPE!

1.. THANK YOU FOR READING THIS. YES, I KNOW, I HAVE TO SLEEP ON THE COUCH TONIGHT.. BUT DID YOU KNOW MEN REALLY DON'T MIND THAT? IT'S LIKE CAMPING...

PASS THIS TO AS MANY MEN AS YOU CAN - TO GIVE THEM A LAUGH...
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오사렘
On the phone to the ATO- 'if you are enquiring about natural disasters, please press 5'. Wtf?
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What is more outrageous than releasing one murderer?
26 “prisoners” went home to a hero’s welcome and official greetings over night, in case you missed the list of “political prisoners”
Warning: reading the following should be upsetting, very upsetting.
But at the end, as comfort my friends, see a new video produced by a young man who spent time in Israel.
Guess that is what we do, keep on creating and making music in spite of what seems impossible to comprehend.
Fayez Khur: Aged 51, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On May 10, 1983, he murdered Menahem Dadon in the Gaza Strip, and was involved in the murder of Salomon Abukasis in the Gaza Strip on February 14, 1983. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Salah Mugdad: Aged 47, a Fatah activist from Kfar Bracha in Samaria in the West Bank. On June 14, 1993, he murdered Israel Tenenbaum, a guard at the Sirens Hotel in Netanya. Sentenced to life imprisonment, which was then commuted to a 32-year sentence.
Samir Na’neesh: Aged 46, a Fatah activist from Nablus in the West Bank. On February 14, 1989 he murdered a soldier, Binyamin Meisner, by throwing a building block at him in the Kasbah in Nablus. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Yusef Irshaid: Aged 45, a Fatah activist from Jenin in the West Bank. On June 15, 1992, he took part in the murder of a Druze Israeli citizen, Mufid Cana’an. In the years 1991-92 he took part in the murder of three Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel. He also planned a car bomb attack in Afula and made attempts to kidnap a soldier. Sentenced to five life imprisonments.
Mustafa al-Haj: Aged 45, a Fatah activist from Brukin in the West Bank. On June 17, 1989, he stabbed Steven Frederick Rosenfeld to death with a knife close to Ariel. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Salameh Musleh: Aged 44, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On May 20, 1991, he took part in the murder of Reuven David in Petach Tikva, when he and his accomplice beat him to death. Sentenced to life imprisonment, which was then commuted to a 30-year sentence.
Atiyeh abu Musa: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On March 29, 1993, he murdered Isaac Rotenberg with an axe on a building site in Bat Yam. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Salah Mukled: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On March 29, 1993, he stabbed Yeshayahu Deutsch to death with a knife in the hothouses of Kfar Yam. In that same year, he also carried out shooting attacks. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mohemed Sawalha: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the village of Azmut in West Bank. On December 2, 1990, he took part in a stabbing on a bus in Ramat Gan, in which Baruch Heisler was murdered and three other passengers were injured. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Atef Sha’ath: Aged 49, a Popular Front activist from the Gaza Strip. He collaborated in the murder of Simcha Levy on March 12, 1993. Sentenced to 29 years imprisonment.
Yusef Abed al-Al: Aged 42, a Popular Front activist from the Gaza Strip. On April 18, 1993, he took part in the murder of Ian Feinberg in the Gaza Strip. On July 3, 1993, he murdered a Palestinian who was suspected of collaboration. Sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.
Midhat Barbakh: Aged 38, a Popular Front and Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On January 21, 1994, he stabbed his employer, Moshe Beker, a citrus grower from Rishon Letzion, killing him. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Ali Rai: Aged 56, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On January 21, 1994, he murdered Morris Eizenstat in Kfar Saba. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mohamed Nashbat: Aged 52, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On September 20, 1990, he took part in the stoning and lynch of a soldier, Amnon Pomerantz, in al Burej in the Gaza Strip. Sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.
Samir Murtaji: Aged 42, a Hamas activist from the Gaza Strip. In the years 1993-94, he murdered four Palestinians who were suspected of collaboration. He was also involved in kidnapping other Palestinians suspected of collaboration. Sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
Hosni Sawalha: Aged 39, a Fatah activist from Azmut, a village in the West Bank. He took part in a stabbing on a bus in Ramat Gan on December 2, 1990, in which Baruch Heisler was murdered and three other passengers were injured. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Faraj Rimahi: Aged 48, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. Murdered Avraham Kinsler on June 6, 1992 and planned to murder more Israeli citizens. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Ala Eddin Abu Sitteh: Aged 43, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On December 31, 1993, he took part in the murder of Haim Weizman and David Dadi in Ramle. After stabbing them both to death with knives, the murderers desecrated their victims’ bodies. Sentenced to two life imprisonments.
Ayman Abu Sitteh: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On December 31, 1993, he took part in the murder of Haim Weizman and David Dadi in Ramle. After stabbing them both to death with knives, the murderers desecrated their victims’ bodies. Sentenced to two life imprisonments.
Esmat Mansour: Aged 36, a Democratic Front activist from Deir Jarir, a village in the West Bank. On October 29, 1993, he aided the terrorist cell that murdered Haim Mizrahi in a chicken farm in Beit El. He led the murderers to a hiding place behind the chicken coops, brought rope to tie up the victim and helped them load the dead body into the trunk of the car. Sentenced to 22 years imprisonment.
Khaled Asakreh: Aged 41, a Fatah activist from Rafida, a village in the West Bank. On April 29, 1991, he murdered Annie Ley, a French tourist in Bethlehem. Sentenced to life imprisonment.
Nihad Jundiyeh: Aged 40, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On July 14 1989, he took part in the murder of Zalman Shlein in Gan Yavne. During questioning, he admitted to planning two more attacks that were not carried out: a stabbing in Gan Yavne and forcing a bus off a cliff. Sentenced to 25.5 years imprisonment.
Mohamed Hamdiyeh: Aged 41, a Fatah activist from the Gaza Strip. On July 14, 1989 he took part in the murder of Zalman Shlein in Gan Yavne. Sentenced to 25.5 years imprisonment.
Jamil Abed al-Nabi: Aged 50, a Hamas activist from the Hebron area in the West Bank. He was involved in planning and carrying out the shooting in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron that occurred on October 25, 1992. In the attack, an IDF soldier, Shmuel Gersh, was killed and another soldier wounded. Sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.
Taher Zaboud: an Islamic Jihad activist from Silat al Harithiya, a village in the West Bank. He took part in a shooting that occurred on September 22, 1992 near the settlement Gadish. He was also involved in an unsuccessful attempt to murder a police officer in Umm al-Fahm. Sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.
Borhan Sabiah: Aged 42, a Fatah activist from Rai, a village in the West Bank. He was convicted of murdering six suspected collaborators. Sentenced to six life imprisonments.
Now, Comfort My Friend
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Pastor Rick Warren
You're on the road to healing when you can thank God for what you're learning from a painful experience.
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Allyson Christy.
US concern? How hypocritical. Perhaps the US ought offer an explanation of that hypocrisy to the many other terror victims' families who painfully watched the killers of their loved ones recently released amid US pressure to appease the PA.
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Rioting surf fans rampaged through Huntington Beach on July 29 and tore the place apart.
Hundreds brawled, looted shops, trashed property and clashed with police. Several officers and people received minor injuries.
Last week, after scouring video of the disturbance, the Huntington Beach Police Department posted photos of 25 suspects on Facebook and asked for the public's help identifying them.
Two days after the photos were posted, a friend of Luis Enrique Rodriguez, 18, of Anaheim tagged him in the comments of one photo, LAist reports.
Rodriguez responded by liking the post and sharing it on Facebook.
"Mr. Rodriguez, apparently proud of his actions, "liked" the Huntington Beach Police Department's picture #15 and shared it with his friends, which was noticed by numerous fans of our Facebook page and a series of tips leading to his identification," the police posted.
They say that made it pretty easy to track him down.
Anaheim Police Department have now arrested Rodriguez and charged him with vandalism.
He's accused of writing "**** the pigs" on police squad cars.
There's another photo of him on his Facebook profile that features him sitting on top of a squad car that same day.
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Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. I don't feel an OHS study could adequately cover this kind of misadventure - ed
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max brenner hijabs

On Saturday August 17th, the Palestine Action Group held a protest against Max Brenner at Parramatta.
According to Shirlee, there was a whole lot of fail on display, but the most priceless fail was undoubtedly this:
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
My help [cometh] from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. Psalm 121
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August 19: Feast of the Transfiguration (Julian calendar);Independence Day in Afghanistan (1919); 2000th anniversary of the death of Roman emperor Augustus
Mohammed Mossadegh
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“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"Strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the Lord's house."
Jeremiah 51:51
In this account the faces of the Lord's people were covered with shame, for it was a terrible thing that men should intrude into the Holy Place reserved for the priests alone. Everywhere about us we see like cause for sorrow. How many ungodly men are now educating with the view of entering into the ministry! What a crying sin is that solemn lie by which our whole population is nominally comprehended in a National Church! How fearful it is that ordinances should be pressed upon the unconverted, and that among the more enlightened churches of our land there should be such laxity of discipline. If the thousands who will read this portion shall all take this matter before the Lord Jesus this day, he will interfere and avert the evil which else will come upon his Church. To adulterate the Church is to pollute a well, to pour water upon fire, to sow a fertile field with stones. May we all have grace to maintain in our own proper way the purity of the Church, as being an assembly of believers, and not a nation, an unsaved community of unconverted men.
Our zeal must, however, begin at home. Let us examine ourselves as to our right to eat at the Lord's table. Let us see to it that we have on our wedding garment, lest we ourselves be intruders in the Lord's sanctuaries. Many are called, but few are chosen; the way is narrow, and the gate is strait. O for grace to come to Jesus aright, with the faith of God's elect. He who smote Uzzah for touching the ark is very jealous of his two ordinances; as a true believer I may approach them freely, as an alien I must not touch them lest I die. Heart searching is the duty of all who are baptized or come to the Lord's table. "Search me, O God, and know my way, try me and know my heart."

Evening


"And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not."
Mark 15:23
A golden truth is couched in the fact that the Saviour put the myrrhed wine-cup from his lips. On the heights of heaven the Son of God stood of old, and as he looked down upon our globe he measured the long descent to the utmost depths of human misery; he cast up the sum total of all the agonies which expiation would require, and abated not a jot. He solemnly determined that to offer a sufficient atoning sacrifice he must go the whole way, from the highest to the lowest, from the throne of highest glory to the cross of deepest woe. This myrrhed cup, with its soporific influence, would have stayed him within a little of the utmost limit of misery, therefore he refused it. He would not stop short of all he had undertaken to suffer for his people. Ah, how many of us have pined after reliefs to our grief which would have been injurious to us! Reader, did you never pray for a discharge from hard service or suffering with a petulant and wilful eagerness? Providence has taken from you the desire of your eyes with a stroke. Say, Christian, if it had been said, "If you so desire it, that loved one of yours shall live, but God will be dishonoured," could you have put away the temptation, and said, "Thy will be done"? Oh, it is sweet to be able to say, "My Lord, if for other reasons I need not suffer, yet if I can honour thee more by suffering, and if the loss of my earthly all will bring thee glory, then so let it be. I refuse the comfort, if it comes in the way of thine honour." O that we thus walked more in the footsteps of our Lord, cheerfully enduring trial for his sake, promptly and willingly putting away the thought of self and comfort when it would interfere with our finishing the work which he has given us to do. Great grace is needed, but great grace is provided.
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Today's reading: Psalm 100-102, 1 Corinthians 1 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 100-102

A psalm. For giving grateful praise.
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations....

Today's New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 1

1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

2 To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ-their Lord and ours:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving
4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way-with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge- 6God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord...
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Ishmael

[Ĭsh'mael] - god heareth.
1. The son of Abraham, by Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian maid. Ishmael was born when Abraham was eighty-six years of age, and was circumcised when he was thirteen years of age, along with his father and his servants. He received the divine promise that he would beget twelve princes and become a great nation. He died at the age of 137 (Gen. 16:11-16; 17:18-26; 25:9-17; 28:9; 36:3). Ishmael was the founder of the tribal family called Ishmaelites, sometimes referred to as Midianites ( Gen. 37:25-28).

The Man Who Became an Outcast


Ishmael, who was some fourteen years older than Isaac, was not his father's heir and did not share his father's property. Abraham was tenderly attached to Ishmael (Gen. 17:18), and the casting out of the boy and his mother by Sarah was a great grief to Abraham. Such a hard transaction was necessary to keep the inheritance unbroken for Isaac's possession. "To thee will I give it" (Gal. 3:16; 4:30 ). Ishmael's name is a monument of God's goodness in answering prayer. "God shall hear." What did He hear? He heard the moaning of Hagar's broken heart. God said concerning Ishmael: "I will make him a great nation" (Gen. 21:18).
The names of Ishmael's twelve sons have been preserved but there is no record of any good they achieved (Gen. 25:13-16).
Paul tells us that the record of Hagar and Ishmael is an allegory (Gal. 4:24 ). Hagar and Sarah represent two covenants - Jewish and Christian. Hagar represents the law, and Ishmael, because he was born of the bond woman, typifies those who are under the law. Isaac, because of his super-natural birth, represents those born anew by the Spirit of God.
The casting out of Ishmael has been productive of bitter fruit, surviving in the religion of Mohammed. The wild hearts beat on in the bosoms of those who form the Arab world. Little did Sarah know, when she persuaded Abraham to take Hagar that she was originating a rivalry which has run in the keenest strife through the ages, and which oceans of blood have not stopped.
The Moslem Arabs claim descent from Ishmael. Ishmael's mother and wife were Egyptian, which differentiates them from pure Hebrew. Arabian tribes springing from Ishmael are scattered throughout the Arabian peninsula. When Ishmael received his name, the Lord said that he would be "a wild man," or "a wild-ass man" as the Hebrew expresses it.

2. An ancestor of Zebadiah who was one of Jehoshaphat's judicial officers (2 Chron. 19:11).

3. A Son of Azer and a descendant of Saul through Jonathan (1 Chron. 8:38; 9:44).

4. A son of Jehohanan and one of the military officers associated with Jehoiada in the revolution to raise Joash to the throne (2 Chron. 23:1).
5. A son of Pashbur and one of the priests persuaded by Ezra to put away his foreign wife (Ezra 10:22).
6. A son of Nethaniah, a member of the royal house of David who took part in the murder of Gedaliah. His vile conduct and character are fully described by Jeremiah (40:8-16; 41).
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