Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Tue Aug 29th Todays News

Some things should not happen, but they do. Demonstrating Democracy by voting on railway station names? Victorian ALP are demonstrating their devotion to democracy by having a vote on something. That is democratic, right? They wouldn't want to vote on anything important, because they don't trust democracy. But this is harmless, and shows their democratic credentials. So new stations are being built, and named by a committee with a twist. Come to Werribee. Catch the train and get off at Guadalupe station. Afterwards go to Albert Park, alighting at Yomamma. But you might not be able to exercise freedom of movement, as our weakened democracy did not extend as far as placing a check on ALP corruption. 

 Craig Ondarchie at Melbourne Market Epping where traders are hurting badly because of power prices. Under Jeff Kennett, Victoria had the cheapest reliable power supply in the world. Now it is not reliable and it is almost as expensive as the worst in the OECD, South Australia. But Craig is likely to be industry Minister in a new conservative government in Victoria by the end of 2018. And business friendly, family friendly policy can mean a turn around in fortunes. Under the ALP, only the corrupt prosper. But Victoria is too good to go to waste. She can be redeemed. 

 ALP lie to public about citizenship of Katy Gallagher and Ecuador, says Sharri Markson. Apparently, ALP are hoping others will navigate the storm while they fly under the radar. 

 Fake News attack Trump on Hurricane Harvey. Vicious Antifa movement rioters beat up scores of innocent people. Kathy Griffin still not sorry, or funny, yells at Australian morning show Sunrise host Armitage who had asked her about the picture of Griffin holding Trump's severed head. Griffin snaps that that little picture was nothing compared to the evil of Trump. It is reminiscent of the Democrat who said that if NK nuked the US, then she was afraid that Trump would start a war with NK. 

 Child dies from firearm in Sydney. A sawn off shotgun. The news article questions gun control laws. Thing is, the firearm was illegal. What is the correct way of storing my illegal firearms? Neither is the ethnicity of the dad mentioned. Could be Presbyterian. 

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 Hawthorn Club Song 

A proud club with a proud history. I am a Swans supporter, but wish to acknowledge Hawthorn before the Grand Final 2012. After, I might not have the strength. 



=== from 2016 === 
It is called loyalty among the left to support a poor leader. It is an example of how evolution doesn't always work. It isn't survival of the fittest. It isn't even survival. Over decades of decline, proud news media are dying for their steadfast support to left wing causes rather than present brave, unbiased journalism. When Gillard ambushed Rudd, she came back with a minority government but successfully led a government for years, posting appallingly bad legislation, because no one in the ALP, or supporting cross benchers, was game to challenge the bad legislation. They were aware carbon tax was not capable of addressing AGW, but passed it anyway. And held onto it afterwards too. Even opposing ending it in opposition. The truth is it isn't loyalty that keeps the ALP in line even though appallingly bad leaders like Dan Andrews cripple important life saving organisations like the CFA. It is fear. They who do not serve, are afraid of doing what is right. Mal Colston is an example, who in his final days decided to make one worthwhile decision allowing the passage of a GST, and is forever branded an ALP rat. We need people in public administration who serve secular society. Who let honest businessman prosper, not corruption. That is why someone like Mike Baird deserves kudos. And someone like Dan Andrews deserves to be booted. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.  
=== from 2015 ===
Peter Greste convicted of terrorism related charges in Egypt again. He won't have to face time for his appalling behaviour of partisan reporting which caused the deaths of many Egyptians. He seems unrepentant. 

Clinton has lied too often for the US, or even the Democrats, to make her President. Her lies over her email account has been analysed by Shannen Coffin leaving no wriggle room. 

By failing to support the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction commission, the 'independents' Lazarus, Muir and Lambie have allowed corruption to fester. Even a former ALP minister and ACTU President, Martin Ferguson has backed the reinstatement so as to bring corrupt unions to heel. When they were elected, those independents had attracted supporters who probably felt their mining and vehicular hobby would predispose them to a libertarian, conservative position. Instead, they have shown themselves to be socialist green in voting patterns. 

Several union leaders have repudiated Shorten for opposing a free trade agreement with China. Those unions and their members would benefit from lowering the trade barriers. But Shorten refuses to be seen to have a common policy with the conservative government. Even if it is effective. 

Journalist Michael Smith has raised disturbing questions on how the attempt to derail the royal commission into trade unions began. A former Labor staffer and a Greens candidate seem involved. And the ALP, Greens and some 'independents.'     
From 2014
Today is the birthday of talented actress Ingrid Bergman in 1915. It is also the day she died in 1982. She was a brilliant actress who was female lead in one of the greatest movies, Casablanca, and in one of the most challenging of all roles, playing Golda Meir while dying of cancer. In Casablanca, Nazis drove tanks into Paris. Today, Russians are invading Ukraine. Unlike Nazi Germany, today's Russia has a right to defend her people from attack by the illegitimate Ukraine government. defending people from attack might seem strange to Obama who is bombing people to oppose IS in Iraq, but dithering in Syria because he is struggling to see how bombing could be made productive. It is a year on from Obama first dithering over Syria. Back then, Russia vetoed the suggestion of bombing to further IS goals. Another issue from last year, Jason Clare's war on sports clubs, which was supposed to combat widespread drug use and corruption of sport has not come up with a single indictable offence a year on. It is that widespread. Some athletes have been encouraged to accept mini bans after their clubs had lacked direction and management when he music had stopped. 

A new analysis of the downing of MH17 over Ukraine suggests that Russian separatists did not shoot down the flight with a Buk missile, but by two Ukrainian fighter jets. That is not even suggested as being a possibility in the recent past. The analysis may be chaff from Russia but deserves to be debunked if it is in fact a lie. And if it is not a lie, Ukraine's illegitimate government needs to be put down. And Obama impeached.
From 2013
When you are in love, things matter, and betrayal hurts. The 50th anniversary of Martin King's "I have a Dream" speech. Studied in schools across the globe, Martin hoped for a time where apartheid had ended. Apartheid like that which excluded a black senator who had been present 50 years before. Obama is making the dream a nightmare. Then there is the dream of world peace. How is that peace achieved? Obama asked Syria to use its chemical weapons on her own people. Apparently she did. A community is organised. In Australia, we love sport. Jason Clare told us organised crime had fixed matches using performance enhancing drugs in our major codes. But no evidence had yet been collected. Months passed. Yesterday a club, Essendon, were banned from this years finals for bringing the code into disrepute. Yet nobody had been charged with any performance enhancing drugs use. Today it was announced a Canberra player in ARL was charged with possession and dealing in performance enhancing drugs. He is 23 years old, and the accusation goes back to when he was 21. It looks like he is a prisoner of a compromise deal aimed at protecting Jason Clare from his apparent election stunt. 

A workplace accident has been decided on in the US. An army psychiatrist who cried out to Allah in praise as he emptied a gun into unarmed work mates is sentenced to die for the workplace accident. It has, notes Steyn, taken longer for the army to adjudicate on this workplace accident than it took them to prosecute WW2. Victims of the major who survived are denied service medals because the workplace accident was not deemed a war crime. 

We don't know what will happen to Syria, but peaceniks are keen to make sure there won't be war. The victims of the chemical attacks and indiscriminate bombings .. those that survive .. will love to hear that
Historical perspective on this day
708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
1261 – Pope Urban IV succeeds Pope Alexander IVas the 182nd pope.
1315 – Battle of Montecatini: The army of the Republic of Pisa, commanded by Uguccione della Faggiuola, wins a decisive victory against the joint forces of the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Florence despite being outnumbered.
1350 – Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleetunder King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
1475 – The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between the kingdoms of France and England.
1484 – Pope Innocent VIII succeeds Pope Sixtus IV.
1498 – Vasco da Gama decides to depart Calicut and return to Kingdom of Portugal.

1521 – The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade).
1526 – Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificentdefeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
1728 – The city of Nuuk in Greenland is founded as the fort of Godt-Haab by the royal governor Claus Paarss.
1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War in Europe.
1758 – The Treaty of Easton establishes the first American Indian reservation, at Indian Mills, New Jersey, for the Lenape.
1778 – American Revolutionary War: British and American forces battle indecisively at the Battle of Rhode Island.
1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

1807 – British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley defeat a Danish militia outside Copenhagen in the Battle of Køge.
1825 – Kingdom of Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil.
1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
1842 – Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.
1861 – American Civil War: The Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries gives Federal forces control of Pamlico Sound.
1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first mountain-climbing rack railway.
1871 – Emperor Meiji orders the abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.
1895 – Rugby league is founded by 22 clubs at a meeting in the George Hotel, Huddersfield.
1898 – The Goodyear tire company is founded.

1903 – The Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, is launched.
1907 – The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
1910 – The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.
1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
1914 – Start of the Battle of St. Quentin in which the French Fifth Army counter-attacked the invading Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne.
1915 – US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.
1916 – The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
1918 – Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive.

1930 – The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
1941 – Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is occupied by Nazi Germany following an occupation by the Soviet Union.
1943 – German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves the Danish government.
1944 – Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
1946 – USS Nevada is decommissioned.
1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1950 – Korean War: British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.
1958 – United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1965 – The Gemini V spacecraft returns to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
1966 – Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
1970 – Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Rubén Salazar.

1982 – The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
1991 – Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
1991 – Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
1996 – Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
1997 – At least 98 villagers are killed by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria GIAin the Rais massacre, Algeria.

2003 – Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
2004 – Michael Schumacher wins his 5th consecutive Formula One Drivers' championship (and 7th overall) at the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix by finishing second to Kimi Räikkönen to beat the 47-year-old record held by Juan Manuel Fangio.
2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisianato the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.
2007 – United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: Six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.
2012 – At least 26 Chinese miners are killed and 21 missing after a blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, located at Panzhihua, Sichuan Province.
=== 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 my (distantly related) cuz Chloe Ball and Quang Huynh. You are born on the same day, across the years, as Janus Pannonius (1434), Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619), John Locke (1632), Hyacinth (1777), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809), Ingrid Bergman (1915), Charlie Parker (1920), Richard Attenborough (1923), John McCain (1936), Elliott Gould (1938), Lenny Henry (1958), Stephen Wolfram (1959) and Courtney Stodden, (1994). On your day, Feast day for the Beheading of St. John the Baptist (Gregorian calendar)
1475 – After an invasion by England and the Duchy of Burgundy, France signed the Treaty of Picquigny with England, freeing Louis XI to deal with the threat posed by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
1842 – The Treaty of Nanking, an unequal treaty ending the First Opium War, was signed, forcing the Chinese Qing Dynasty to give control of the island that is now the site of Hong Kong, and other concessions to the British.
1903 – The Russian battleship Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, was launched.
1911 – The last member of the Yahi, known as Ishi, emerged from the wilderness near Oroville, California, to join European American society.
2007 – Six nuclear warheads were alleged to have been mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force heavy bomber that flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Start at the head. Have your feast. Picquigny ensures peace. Nanking means you don't need opium. Slava is the last. Ishi emerges. Those six don't matter, really. Have a lovely day.
Deaths
===
Andrew Bolt

ON TONIGHT: ANDREW BOGUT AND FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE STATUE-SMASHERS

On The Bolt Report on Sky at 7pm:  Andrew Bogut isn't just our highest paid athlete. He's also a widely-read blogger with political opinions that earn him heat. He's my guest, along with Sharri Markson, Michael Kroger and Steve Conroy. We'll discuss the stupidity of warmist Adam Bandt and the hypocrisy of the statue smashers.
29 Aug
===

BLACK MORRIS DANCERS MATTER

Tim Blair – Monday, August 29, 2016 (6:23pm)

Were it up to me, I’d ban all folk festivals, imprison folk performers and deport their folkin’ families. But this is just stupid: 
One of the UK’s biggest folk festivals has banned Morris dancers from performing with black paint on their faces after complaints that the centuries-old tradition is racist.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival bosses announced it will no longer book acts who wear full black face paint.
And this weekend’s event will be the last where Morris dancers will be allowed to showcase the 500-year-old custom …
Known as ‘Border Morris’ the tradition sees performers wearing a full-face of black paint in order to disguise themselves. But it has no racial connotations. 
According to the BBC, the ban followed “a complaint from a member of the public”. Just one. Further on the Morris dancing crisis from James Delingpole.
===

ALWAYS THE VICTIM

Tim Blair – Monday, August 29, 2016 (3:22pm)

Former senior Fairfax journalist Margo Kingston once claimed that “the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia”,  alleged that America used nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and declared at one point that Australia was “at war with Norway”.
Margo – who operated against her own code of ethics – also announced that Australians who voted for John Howard would kill democracy.
Many years later, Kingston is still wailing about being criticised for these and other idiotic statements. Get over yourself, sister. Besides, don’t you have a doctorate to finish?
===

YOU SHOULD SEE THE ONES THEY REJECTED

Tim Blair – Monday, August 29, 2016 (2:02pm)

“Unique” is one way of putting it:
===

WONG ARGUES WITH HERSELF

Tim Blair – Monday, August 29, 2016 (12:59pm)

Labor senator Penny Wong once spoke against gay marriage. Just six years later, however, Wong claims anyone delaying gay marriage lacks “courage” and that a debate on gay marriage will encourage “hate speech”.
It didn’t happen in 2010, Penny.
UPDATE. According to Greens leader Richard Di Natale: “We will most likely see young people take their lives if this plebiscite goes ahead.”

Democracy is deadly. The Greens should now campaign for an end to compulsory voting.
===

Book does Roots

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (9:51pm)

The book’s amazing world tour continues. Now reader Arie acquaints the book with its roots - in Aalsmeer, Holland:
To reward the traveller in your life, order the book here. On-line buyers also get the semi-regular Bolt Bulletin, as will people pre-ordering the reprint of my Still Not Sorry on line.    
===

Explain why SBS uses your money to publish this hate-Hanson sludge

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (5:33pm)

This is an example of what the allegedly impartial SBS brands as ”comedy” and pays people -with your money - to put on its website:
Parliament House Visibly Shudders As Hanson Returns 
By The Backburner 
As the newly-elected senators arrive at Parliament House to learn the ropes ahead of Parliament’s return next week, disturbing reports say Parliament House has visibly, violently shuddered upon Pauline Hanson’s return.
Twenty years after the One Nation senator’s debut in the lower house, Hanson returned today triggering the bizarre paranormal event that has terrified Parliamentary staff.
Around eight am on the morning of the arrival of new senators, the building allegedly let out a chilling creak and began to shake powerfully, as though suddenly overcome with abject horror, begging to be freed from such hideous pain.
Witnesses have reported gruesome images at the scene, with the tremor throwing Edmund Barton’s portrait off the wall. Many claim to have heard macabre inhuman shrieks rising from within the very depths of the Earth.
“We knew she was coming today, we really should have been more prepared,” a member of the building’s cleaning staff told the Backburner.
“As soon as she started approaching the building with that harem of Islamophobes and climate change deniers, we could sense something terrible was about to happen. Some real Harry Potter shit went down in here.” Senator Derryn Hinch vehemently denies that the shudder was a response to Hanson, claiming he is ‘heaps controversial,’ and asserting the shudder could easily have been a response to him ‘telling it like it is.’
Another example of this totally lame Leftist “comedy” from SBS:
Turnbull Defends Greyhound Racing ‘As Like Horses For Commoners’ 
By The Backburner 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has slammed New South Wales Premier Mike Baird’s ban on greyhound racing, calling the industry essential for “distracting the commoners with their little faux horses”.
Reports emerging from a private dinner with MPs suggest that Turnbull was strongly against Baird’s ban on greyhound racing in New South Wales claiming that he believed it to be an “overreaction” and that greyhound racing “is a real pleasure for good, hard-working peasants.”
“Personally, I’m against the ban.” Turnbull reportedly expressed. “I think that these little commoner horses are a wonderful thing. It is aspirational in a sense. If you cannot afford a herd of horses or even a sports car or two then why not get yourself one of these large racing rats.
“I think it’s a noble sport and I would certainly love to go along to a concert or two once I find a hazmat suit that could provide the necessary protection from the germs, sorry, people...”
Why does the SBS think its duty is to publish this stuff - with our money? 
===

On The Bolt Report and radio tonight - Pauline Hanson

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (4:17pm)

On The Bolt Report on Sky News Live at 7pm tonight:
Editorial: Will Malcolm Turnbull sell out the Liberals on same-sex marriage?
Guests:
Podcasts of the show here but also now on our Facebook page here.

On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
Listen live here. Talkback:  131 873.  Listen to all past shows  here.
===

The sword is mightier than the pen

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (8:50am)

A fine piece by Melbourne author Anson Cameron on self-censorship in this age of Islamist violence:

Say what you will about the rights and wrongs of machine-gunning cartoonists at their easels, it is an invigorating lesson to those creative types… 
I proposed a novel to a publisher in which a sexual encounter between two Australian schoolboys, one of them a Muslim, is secretly filmed and exposed on Facebook. There follows a sort of queer/religious Montague/Capulet tale of unrest in which the deadweight of family, community, and belief bear down on a young person…
The publisher thought the idea was great, but … This could be dangerous for booksellers…
And the publisher is right. It’s not his job to defend our freedoms. It’s his job to publish good books, to make money for his firm without endangering anyone in the process. The problem is, it turns out to be nobody’s job to defend freedom of speech at the level of conception, at the level ideas are floated and projects are negotiated. It’s an orphan.
Every artist or writer contemplating a project that involves Islam will have a conversation like this with his or her potential paymaster. There will be scant chance of money for a project that, even tangentially, looks at Islam with a critical gaze. I mean, why take the heat?…

While the country rages in argument about the excellence or enormity of 18C as a tool of censorship, implied violence goes quietly about its business; killing off projects in utero, racking up a casualty list of stillborn novels, miscarried cartoons and aborted blockbusters.
You might think a gifted employee creates the window display in your favourite bookshop – you should know murderers also have a hand in it.
(Thanks to reader Joe.) 
===

The Betts way is best - although it won’t make him Australian of the Year

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (8:34am)

Rowan Dean on the power of not taking offence:
When [a] woman threw the banana at Eddie Betts, it was an incredibly offensive act. Or was it? Let’s assume for the moment that the woman did intend to harm Betts – not physically but psychologically… 
Yet Betts simply refused to take the offence. In fact, not only did he simply shrug it off, he went on to actively forgive her for her insult. What a legend.
Compare that to the actions of the entire “grievance industry”, in whose warm and fuzzy embrace we can include Adam Goodes, Waleed Aly, and the woman at the heart of the QUT case. Goodes, you will recall, when confronted by a little girl yelling “ape” pointed her out in the crowd. She was hauled off and Goodes was, in my view laughably, made Australian of the Year. In that position he bizarrely went on to say he was “ashamed” to be Australian.
Meanwhile, Aly used his Gold Logie speech to complain that Muslims are discriminated against on TV, using the example of a Muslim actor who, er, is the star of a show.
The QUT woman claims to be the victim of racism because one of the students complained of “fighting segregation with segregation”. She’s black, they’re white. Game on! Each time, the aggrieved individual has actively chosen to take offence, even when none may have been intended, and by noisily doing so, provokes division and discord. Lose-lose. Compare that to Betts – by refusing to take offence, even when it was very real, Betts fosters goodwill and harmony, while disempowering the banana-tosser. Win-win.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

No mercy for children: the cruelty of the “anti-racists”

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (8:22am)

Culture wars, The politics of race, three

THE persecution of a young fan of AFL star Nic Naitanui proves today’s anti-racist is now often just a bully.
Anti-racism, once a noble cause, has instead become a licence to humiliate even children.
First, these anti-racist hypocrites turned a 13-year-old girl into the “face of racism” in Australia and named and shamed her for yelling “ape” at AFL star Adam Goodes at the football.
Never mind that she said she did not mean the insult in a racist way and was tearily sorry.
Never mind that she was a mere child. No, she was identified on national television, detained by police and evicted from the stadium.
It was disgusting to then see powerful adults — football administrators and champions, media heavies and activists — line up to smash a powerless girl from a broken home.
That was shameful enough, from moralisers claiming to be fighting for a kinder and less judgmental world. But now their latest victim is a grade four boy.
(Read full column here.)  
===

Why won’t Turnbull say it’s a plebiscite or nothing?

Andrew Bolt August 29 2016 (8:18am)

Culture wars, Malcolm Turnbull, The new morality, three

 LIBERALS should panic about their Prime Minister. Is a wounded Malcolm Turnbull ready to destroy the Government over same-sex marriage?
Turnbull’s plan for a people’s vote — a plebiscite next February — to decide whether to legalise same-sex marriage is almost sure now to be blocked by the Senate.
Labor yesterday briefed journalists that it was preparing to vote against it. “I’m worried Malcolm Turnbull will just stuff it up,” said Labor leader Bill Shorten, who actually let it be known he fears the public wouldn’t vote for this vast social change.
But Shorten also knows that if Labor does vote in the Senate against a plebiscite, he could take down Turnbull.
The Greens have already said they will block the plebiscite, too, and that leaves Labor needing just three more Senate votes to kill it.
That should be easy. Nick Xenophon last week said he and his two senators were also hostile — “Right now, it’s a no” — and Senator Derryn Hinch says he is hostile, too.
So what’s Turnbull’s Plan B?
Will Turnbull then do what his heart prefers — allow a free vote by his party that could, with Labor and Greens support, impose same-sex marriage and make Turnbull the hero of the ABC Left?
Or will he honour his election promise and do what most of his party demands: say it’s a people’s vote or nothing, and be vilified by the Left as a sellout?
(Read full article here.) 
===

Koala one day, busy the next 10. How to catch up

Andrew Bolt August 28 2016 (11:52pm)

It was a lovely weekend. All seemed quiet, but for a strange rustling in the trees on the side of our balcony:
I had to look closer before I could see the chubby visitor just three metres away:
But now for two weeks of pell-mell.
On The Bolt Report tonight on Sky News at 7pm: Pauline Hanson, plus Peta Credlin, Michael Costa and Campbell Newman.
ON SATURDAY: I’ll be speaking at Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas The topic: How Many Dangerous Ideas Can One Person Have? I suspect they mean dangerous to me.  Click here for more info and to book. Please do book, because I suspect from the line-up that I will not be among warm friends back-stage:
There will be a book signing.
Then, ON FATHER’S DAY, SUNDAY, September 4, another book-signing, this time in Melbourne - at 2pm at the Costco store at 381 Footscray Road, Docklands.

I think I will then take a long weekend off to think about giving myself more koala time.  
===

Pauline Hanson has arrived. She conquers 60 Minutes

Andrew Bolt August 28 2016 (10:49pm)

I thought Pauline Hanson was mad to trust  60 Minutes with interviews. After all, it’s basically of the Left. It usually sneers at people like her. It can edit stuff to make even a saint look sick.
And remember how 60 Minutes stitched Hanson up when she was last in Parliament, two decades ago:
But I was wrong.
What a transformation we saw on tonight’s 60 Minutes, both in Hanson and how the program treated her - with respect and even affection. It was as if this time reporter Liz Hayes did not dare mock Hanson and risk putting her own Channel Nine audience off side. And Hanson is, of course, now much more powerful, back with four senators in all.
Then again, maybe Hanson is this time much more relaxed, more charming, more careful and seasoned. But what went out tonight was gold to a political leader who for years was treated like a pariah, a joke and a bigot. Hanson got a media advertisement and an endorsement bigger - or more telling - than any before in her long political life. That is not to discount the important support she’s had, say, from Alan Jones. But in terms of a signal of which way the media winds are blowing, this was critical.
And may I say that the more Hanson smiles and laughs, the more she confounds what her haters say?:
Watch out. 
===

Book gets Grant

Andrew Bolt August 28 2016 (10:00pm)

The book’s amazing world tour continues. Today reader Chris takes it to New York to show it the tomb of a man who certainly found something worth fighting for:
The pic is at Grant’s Tomb in a more peaceful part of Upper Manhattan. To get there I walked along 125th Street, aka Martin Luther King Jnr Boulevard. Sad to think that in Australia, and in the US, in 2016 you can be called a racist for agreeing with Dr King’s simple yet powerful dream of a nation where people are judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
To reward the traveller in your life, order the book here. On-line buyers also get the semi-regular Bolt Bulletin, as will people pre-ordering the reprint of my Still Not Sorry on line.    
===

Gayby Baby imbroglio - Denials, fear and a lack of tolerance

Miranda Devine – Friday, August 28, 2015 (6:00am)

THE NSW Department of Education has been telling lies about the Gayby Baby controversy to cover up its covert campaign to “de-normalise” heterosexuality.
This newspaper reported accurately the concerns of numerous parents at Burwood Girls High over the planned compulsory screening to all 1200 students of the overtly political documentary promoting same-sex parenting.
Those concerns included direct complaints to the school and complaints made via three religious ministers acting on parental request. It was in response to those complaints that principal Mia Kumar changed her mind on Monday and allowed students to opt out of the screening.
Yet the department pretended there had been no complaints from parents, thus portraying our story as inaccurate and, worse, muzzling those concerned parents.
A department spokesperson was quoted in The Guardian on Wednesday, saying: “The school has not received any complaints from Burwood High School parents.”
That just wasn’t true. But the official disinformation has resulted in a campaign by GetUp against this newspaper, which includes a petition, a complaint to the Press Council, vituperative emails and a planned protest outside our offices. The idea is to intimidate us into silence.
In true Orwellian fashion, the word “complaint” has been redefined by the department. Apparently it’s not a “complaint” unless it’s logged at the school, or if it’s couched in polite language, or if it isn’t rubber-stamped by departmental bureaucracy. Rank sophistry.
Eventually, last night, the department admitted what we have known all along, that the school has received a number of complaints, both directly from parents and through proxies. 
Religious ministers said parents asked them to intervene on their behalf.
Presbyterian minister Mark Powell said the calls began on Saturday morning. A meeting was convened on Monday night between 15 concerned parents and citizens to address the problem.
One father told Powell his daughter begged him not to complain to the school.
“I’ll be ostracised. They’ll call me a homophobe,” she said.
What an irony that a program designed to stamp out bullying ends up intimidating anyone with a different view.
After our story, minister Piccoli ordered the cancellation of the movie screening. But he is driving the Proud Schools program, which supports “sexual diversity” through exactly such events as the screening of Gayby Baby.
Ostensibly designed to stamp out homophobia, the Proud Schools program aims to eradicate the idea that heterosexuality is the norm in human relationships. It defines such thinking as bigotry and labels it “heterosexism”. 
According to the Proud Schools’ Consultation Report, “positioning heterosexuality as the norm for human relationships [is] discriminating against non-heterosexual people. Heterosexism feeds homophobia.”
When parents complain about this propaganda, their concerns are airbrushed out of existence. And when this newspaper reports these facts we are subjected to a campaign of intimidation.
Great way to promote tolerance.
===

No better on the other side of the camera

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (5:14pm)

Oh dear:
===

The ABC hands the microphone to any passing Abbott hater

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (9:54am)

Why is the ABC AM program this morning giving a long interview to former Independent MP Tony Windsor to let him rant about how the Abbott Government is wicked, dragging us to war for political purposes?
Windsor represents no one. He is no longer in Parliament. His opinions are incoherent, extreme and seemingly driven in part by a long-standing malice to the Nationals and Tony Abbott personally. The ABC could interview a thousand other Australians with more status and a million others with more credible views.
So why is Windsor interviewed instead? And why is not a single one of his wild statements questioned, even when Windsor despicably suggests the Government is actually hoping to provoke Muslims here into a terrorist attack to give it an election issue?
I’ve got no doubt that some of these people in Abbott’s government hope that something goes wrong domestically, that they can taunt the Muslims into doing something so that they can say that we’re the only ones that can protect you, that the Labor party are too weak to protect you, vote for us. Well, I think that’s an extraordinary agenda to go to an election on.
Simple: the ABC gives Windsor this platform because he says just what the ABC wants said - that the Abbott Government is evil and the war on the Islamic State just a political stunt.
The ABC is openly campaigning against the Abbott Government. It is out of control.
(For a more sane discussion about our military role in Syria, read Greg Sheridan, who makes the good point that we need to go into Syria to help save Iraq.)
UPDATE
Later in AM follows another kid glove interview with an extremist kicking Tony Abbott, this time Noel Pearson, pushing his astonishing proposal to change the constitution so we have an Aborigines-only council to guide Parliament. Blacks vs whites forever. And every question in the interview is designed to portray Abbott as the problem, not Pearson.
Abbott has shown such support for Pearson and his work, yet Pearson never misses an opportunity to reward him with the back of his hand. The fact is that Pearson’s Cape York Initiative has been a great sink-hole of taxpayers’ money which should be exposed, not defended. But that’s another topic the ABC won’t touch.
The ABC is out of control.
UPDATE
Gerard Henderson, my guest on The Bolt Report tomorrow, is right - the ABC is not just too big and too biased but  too barbaric as well:
Not for the first time, the ABC got into trouble last Monday when a Q&A producer allowed the hashtag “#AbbottLovesAnal” to be screened ... 
As ABC editor-in-chief, [Mark] Scott can instruct Q&A to junk its ad­herence to parading the abusive tweets of people who lack the courage to put their names to their opinions. The problem is that, during Scott’s time, the ABC has been a trailblazer in facilitating abuse — subsidised by the taxpayer.
This is not only the case with Q&A… [E]very morning, every night and frequently during the day, ABC presenters read out anonymous tweets that are rife with abuse and frequently based on ignorance. In late July, I took the opportunity to appear on ABC Radio 774’s Drive with Rafael Epstein to discuss my book Santamaria: A Most Unusual Man. The invitation was appreciated and the interview was fair and professional. After discussing the book, I ... had to listen as three anonymous listeners were given the opportunity by the 774 producer and presenter to call me “a racist” — to which I had no effective right of reply.  
This habit of ABC presenters also helps to further skew the ABC to the Left. The audience of the near-uniformly Leftist presenters is already of the Left and social media also leans hard Left - and vicious. So by reading out the texts of the listeners, the presenters create an echo-chamber effect to magnify their own opinions, abuse conservatives and create the impression that the public is right behind the ABC’s standard positions on social and political issues, again, all of the Left.
(Thanks to readers Paul and Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, August 30

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (9:15am)

On Channel 10 tomorrow at 10am and 3pm
Editorial:  An army of illegal immigrants marches through Europe, with millions more to follow.
My guest:  Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
The panel: Bruce Hawker, former Labor campaign strategist, and Janet Albrechtsen, former ABC board member and Australian columnist.

NewsWatch: Gerard Henderson, Australian columnist and head of the Sydney Institute.
Hot to trot on the increasingly frantic attempts by Labor to destroy Dyson Heydon; the Canning showdown; fighting the Islamic State; the ABC’s latest sliming of Tony Abbott; and the washed-out Tim Flannery. I should also cut Joe Hockey a lot more slack.

The videos of the shows appear here.
UPDATE
I will be appearing every second Tuesday on Neil Mitchell’s 3AW program at 10am. Mitchell says he has an advantage over me.
===

How this campaign to destroy a union corruption-buster started

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (9:03am)

Michael Smith provides a most interesting time-line of how Dyson Heydon’s planned law lecture broke in the media, and how it became spun as proof he was too “biased” to stay as head of the royal commission into union corruption.
The time-line raises questions for me, too. One is, how did correspondence from the counsel assisting Heydon’s royal commission to the NSW Bar Association become public?
How was the misleading words “Liberal fundraiser” injected into the story, and by whom?
Among the people named in the time-line is a former Labor staffer and a Greens candidate. What exactly was their role and motivation in this unfolding story?
There is a smell to this. And it is not coming from Heydon’s side.
(Thanks to reader Lisle.) 
===

Labor isn’t serious about our borders - unless unions are threatened

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (8:43am)

 I agree, we do not need to have Border Force officials on the streets randomly checking visa papers. That is overreach by the state.
But when Labor joins in the hysterical abuse started by the Socialist Alternative yesterday of a badly worded Australian Border Force press release, I hear again the sound of a party that does not take our border laws seriously:
Going hard. Press release from federal Labor’s spokesman Richard Marles yesterday: 
Peter Dutton’s Australian Border Farce — Immigration Minister Peter Dutton needs to come out of hiding and provide an explanation for the shambles that has seen a cross-agency operation compromised and a key government agency left red-faced. Opposition immigration and border protection spokesperson Richard Marles said the Abbott government’s overzealous handling in announcing an upcoming joint agency operation was at best clumsy and at worst shambolic. “This has been incredibly badly handled and Peter Dutton needs to immediately come clean on how this announcement was so botched,” Mr Marles said.
Going harder. The Victorian Labor government’s Police Minister Wade Noonan: 
Operation Fortitude was intended to be a standard police operation. We fully support the decision by Victoria Police to cancel the operation after the unfortunate and inappropriate characterisation by the Australian Border Force today.
And the Labor Herald yesterday: 
How the Australian Border Force became #borderfarce in 5 hours … The Australian Border Force might be kitted out in swank new uniforms as part of a $10m “rebrand” but their first mass “operation” to join police in a visa fraud crackdown in Melbourne’s streets sparked a new hashtag #borderfarce. The agency in charge of border protection and national security, ABF, bizarrely issued a press release saying it will check people’s visas on the streets of Melbourne as part of a wider police operation to crack down on “anti-social behaviour”.
Of course, Labor is actually very keen on checking people’s papers in other contexts:
Immigration investigators have conducted a series of raids on a multi-national firm working on major Australian mining and infrastructure projects as part of one of the nation’s biggest inquiries into working visa fraud…

Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney said the action against MPC highlighted the need for reform of the visa system.
On ABC Radio National today, ABC presenter Geraldine Doogue characterises yesterday’s protest as a mass uprising by citizens, some of whom had never protested “in years”.
Complete tripe. Average citizens are not normally free on a Friday morning to rally within an hour or two, and are not normally so inconsiderate as to deliberately block traffic and scream abuse. Check the signs - Socialist Alternative. Check the spokesman:
“Every single person here will be doing everything they can to impose themselves on those checks, they’ll be trying to interrupt those checks,” protest organiser Ezekiel Ox told AAP on Friday.
More on Ox:
Ezekiel Ox (born Alan James Davies, Colac, Victoria) ... was a founding member of the committee for Musicians Against Police Violence (MAPV) in Melbourne… Ezekiel is a well known community activist in Melbourne, working with the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, No Room For Racism, Save The Palace, Refugee Action Collective, Indigenous Social Justice Association, Warriors Of The Aboriginal Resistance, R.A.A.F and WACA, among others. 
I really don’t think this was the first time in years that the likes of Ox held a protest.
The ABC and Fairfax are again operating as an echo chamber for the far Left.
UPDATE
So no effort should be made to catch them?
According to an Immigration Department report, Migration Trends 2012-2013, visitors (44,800) and students (10,720) were the largest cohort of visa holders to overstay their visit. The highest number of visa overstayers in 2013 by nationality came from China (7690), Malaysia (6420), the US (5220) and the UK (3780). 
The department says an estimated 62,100 people were unaccounted for in Australia during 2014, which is roughly 1.2 per cent of the 5.5 million people who enter the country each year on temporary visas.
Isn’t this checking of illegal workers just what unions and ABC hosts usually demand?
AN ILLEGAL foreign worker is set to be deported after being picked up in Malvern by the secretive new Australian Border Force… In a written statement, an ABF spokeswoman said the agency was targeting illegal workers and their employers, imposing fines of up to $255,000 in a bid to deter the practice.
UPDATE
An Age reporter just invents evils to oppose:
First, would people who “cross paths” with an ABF officer be racially profiled? Last time I checked, this sort of thing is not ok.
===

Shorten risks our future to please the CFMEU

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (8:40am)

Labor leader Bill Shorten is just following union orders, and to hell with Australia’s future: 
Several of the nation’s most senior union leaders have repudiated Bob Hawke’s support for the China free-trade agreement and demanded Bill Shorten help kill off the deal in the Senate if it is not fundamentally redrawn… 
Tony Abbott ruled out any concessions in the face of Labor and union opposition to the deal [and] urged Labor to stop listening to the unions and “start listening to Bob Hawke and (former foreign minister) Bob Carr.”
The Opposition Leader brushed aside former prime minster Mr Hawke’s warning ... not to ­oppose the agreement and said there were “slack loopholes”. He dodged questions on whether Labor would vote it down. The head of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Michael O’Connor, told The Weekend Australian he expected Labor, the Greens and the crossbench to oppose the deal in parliament if it were not amended… Electrical Trades Union nat­ional secretary Allen Hicks said it was the “duty of senators to vote it down” if the agreement went unchanged… Australian Workers Union chief Scott McDine said provisions allowing Chinese companies to negotiate concessions to the 457 visa program and bring in workers on the visa for projects of more than $150 million were “unacceptable."… 
Australia’s most militant unions - including the corruption-plagued CFMEU - are again dictating Shorten’s lines.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Sarah Hanson-Young threatens planet with her frequent-flyer travel

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (8:29am)

Won’t someone in the Greens think of the planet?  Won’t someone stop this reckless use of petrol and Avgas, so fatal to our warming planet? 
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has claimed almost $1 million on travel entitlements… And her party has racked up almost $245,000 on its MPs’ charter travel claims…
[B]etween her entry into parliament in mid-2008 and December last year, Senator Hanson-Young claimed almost $970,000 on travel entitlements. These included domestic fares, travelling allowance, family travel costs, car costs, charter and overseas expense claims.... Over an 18-month period between 2012 and 2014 [Hanson-Young] claimed more than $20,000 on tours to Indonesia, PNG, Jordan and Lebanon. Senator Hanson-Young claimed almost $25,000 travelling to Denmark, Sweden and Greece in 2011...Senator Ludlam claimed two trips to Manjimup and Margaret River worth almost $10,000.
What is it with Greens and frequent flying? What makes them such hypocrites?
Quantum Market Research’s annual social survey… divided Australians into five groups, from “Ultra Greens” to Un-Greens”, depending on how they’d “embraced the Green culture"… 
[T]he Ultra Greens, “the original tree loving hippies and green peace embracers”, ... were not only the most likely to vote Green and join green groups, but also the most likely to own a four-wheel drive and join frequent flyer clubs.
UPDATE
The biggest threat to our prosperity is not global warming but global warming crusaders.
Chris Kenny:
(F)ormer trade minister Craig Emerson ... is remembered for his performance of “Whyalla wipe-out”. His bizarre ­reworking of the Skyhooks hit Horror Movie was an attempt to mock concerns that Labor’s carbon tax would wipe the industrial town of Whyalla “off the map"… 
The two coal-fired power stations operated at [nearby] Port Augusta by Alinta will now close by 2018 — along with the mine at Leigh Creek that supplies them — leaving 400 people without work. They once supplied most of [South Australia’s] electricity but, having survived the carbon tax, are no longer viable thanks to subsidised wind farms, domestic solar and gas-fired stations.
At Whyalla, with iron ore miner Arrium closing a mine that used the port, up to 900 jobs have gone during the past year…
The crucial point is this: while the people of the Iron ­Triangle ... continue this struggle for a good livelihood, Labor is still singing for the cameras in Canberra. Instead of helping to pass measures to fix the budget, it launches hypocritical attacks over MPs’ entitlements. Instead of vowing to protect workers by stamping out union corruption, it protects union bosses and undermines an inquiry by smearing the royal commissioner. Instead of fighting for jobs, it fights against coalmines. Instead of encouraging economic growth, it stokes xenophobic fears about Chinese workers exploiting a free trade deal. Labor under Bill Shorten is dancing to the tune of the Greens, and turning its back on economic reform and people in places such as Whyalla. Under Shorten, Labor is promising more renewable energy and a reimposed carbon price — which will lead to more job ­losses… Emerson’s “Whyalla wipe-out” still has a horrible resonance...
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Filling up: petrol in the car, ice in the brain

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (7:37am)

Astonishing:
ICE pipes are now so common they are being sold at a Western Sydney service station and retailers across the city, feeding the devastating drug scourge ravaging the state. 
The Speedway Service Station at St Marys was this week raided by police after a tip-off from the Saturday Telegraph, which conducted an investigation into the widespread, illegal sale of ice pipes in NSW.
Police seized more than 500 ice pipes, bongs and metal pipes from the Glossop St service station during a search warrant on Thursday afternoon… It comes as the NSW Police Drugs Squad stepped up their campaign against drug cooks in NSW, shutting down 65 labs this year and a record 17 labs in the month of May alone.
Our society is fraying badly at the edges. 
===

Lambie, Lazarus and Muir protect the corrupt and the lawless

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (7:09am)

Former Labor minister Gary Johns:
ALP, Green and independent senators who voted against the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission voted to prolong corruption. They should be ashamed.
Former Labor Minister and ACTU president Martin Ferguson:
FORMER ACTU president Martin Ferguson has backed the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, likening the ­actions of elements of the CFMEU to the outlawed Builders Labourers Federation and declaring the union must be “brought to heel’’. 
Mr Ferguson, the resources minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments, said that for the sake of the building industry, there had to be a “policeman on the beat’’. 
Des Houghton wonders why some Independent Senators are protecting crooked union officials - at the cost of us all:
PALMER United Party deserter Glenn Lazarus, now an independent senator, did something really stupid last week… 
It happened when [Lazarus] joined the Labor Party and the Greens in blocking a Bill to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the construction watchdog axed by the Gillard government.
A construction code of conduct for government building work came with the Bill and it was rejected also. The legally binding code would have weakened the unions’ stranglehold on the nation’s $57 billion government construction sector.
Government projects make up a third of all construction in this country.
It meant enterprise bargaining agreements would have had to comply with the code in improving efficiencies and abolishing restrictive work practices – especially the requirement for subbies to be CFMEU members on major government work sites.
Master Builders Queensland calculates that thanks to Lazarus and others who voted down the commission, Queenslanders will pay 10 per cent more for State Government buildings....

Crossbench senators John Madigan, David Leyonhjelm, Bob Day and Nick Xenophon voted in favour of reviving the watchdog. Good for them.
Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir, inexplicably – and irresponsibly in my view – joined Lazarus in voting with Labor and the Greens.
Curiously, PUP Senator Zhenya Wang, who previously supported the reinstatement of the commission, abstained....
Lazarus and others who voted down the code voted in favour of allowing countless millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to be wasted. Without a majority in the Senate, Tony Abbott is fighting union corruption with one hand tied behind his back.
Thanks to Labor, the Greens, Jacqui Lambie, Glenn Lazurus and Rickie Muir, people such as Andrew Bourke face threats and ruin:
Andrew Bourke fears a bleak ­future of escalating intimidation by unions, meek capitulations by builders, mounting job losses, soaring costs and a stranglehold on the construction sector.
If former High Court judge Dyson Heydon’s royal commission into union corruption goes off the rails, Mr Bourke predicts small businesses such as his Site Service Group, which is being targeted by the CFMEU, will die.
As unions step up their campaign for the royal commission to be closed down over Mr Heydon’s alleged bias for accepting an invitation to speak at a Liberal Party event, Mr Bourke has elected to speak out about union conduct on Brisbane work sites. According to Mr Bourke, speaking out is a sure way to become a bigger target, but he told The Weekend Australian: “They’ll still try to destroy me if I stay quiet so I would rather speak the truth and make sure people understand the facts. There will be recriminations. But I have had enough and want to go public with the threats and intimidation by the cowardly union and their scumbag delegates and officials.
“In the middle of a royal commission, the CFMEU is crushing my small business, a traffic control company working in commercial construction.
“The union have had me sacked from five projects and stopped us winning two others. I believe we are black-banned by the union. We are a small player trying to grow, but we cannot get any work. It will be devastating if the royal commissioner is rolled over a speech to a bunch of lawyers, a speech which he didn’t even give. It is ridiculous."…

Mr Bourke said his company faced an uphill struggle to survive because of its pledge to the union’s enemy, Grocon, to strictly manage site access and prevent trespass and disruption by the CFMEU…
At Grocon’s 480 Queen Street site in Brisbane’s CBD yesterday, Mr Bourke said as many as 200 workers had been called off the job by their union delegate about 11am for a “safety” issue — the deliberate blockage of a toilet with paper meant there was no water on the job. “They have gone home at 11am on a Friday because the toilet was sabotaged, and because they call it a safety matter they get paid for the full eight hours,” he said. “It’s a scandal. They want to hold the industry to ransom.”
He said it was “insane” that on building sites controlled by the union, he was compelled to pay his own employees $42 an hour as their base rate for handling a stop/go sign, compared with $20 an hour elsewhere. “Some are making $2000 a week in the hand to turn a stop/go bat. Who can justify that?” he said.
Why is Jacqui Lambie on the side of union thugs and crooks? Why is Glenn Lazarus? Why Ricki Muir? We know Labor and the Greens at least get big donations from the CFMEU, the main construction union, but what is the excuse of the other Senators? 
===

Clinton out of excuses

Andrew Bolt August 29 2015 (12:10am)

Hillary Clinton could get knocked out of the presidential race for one scandal above all her others - using a personal email account to transact her business as Secretary of State, and then covering up the scale of this stupidity or duplicity.
Shannen Coffin demolishes her excuses so far:
She used a personal email account because it would be easier to carry just one device. But it turned out that she frequently used two.
The vast majority of her work emails went to government employees at government addresses, and thus “were captured and preserved immediately on the system at the State Department.” But the State Department did not automatically archive emails while Clinton was Secretary of State, and only a small percentage of emails were officially preserved.
She turned over more than 55,000 printed pages of emails. But only after the State Department demanded that she do so. And she destroyed 30,000 emails.
She fully complied with the federal records laws by preserving her e-mails after she left office. But State Department regulations require employees separating from service to return all official records in their possession when they leave office. Clinton waited two years before returning any official emails.
Other Secretaries of State used a private email account. But the only two who served when email was ubiquitous were Condollezza Rice and Colin Powell. Rice didn’t used email. Powell occasionally used a personal e-mail account, but did not conduct State Department business exclusively on a private server. In any event, State Department policy at the time did not plainly foreclose such occasional use.
There was “no classified material” in Clinton’s emails. But inspector generals for the State Department and the intelligence community found that out of the 40 emails they initially reviewed, at least four contained classified information and two were “top secret.” Since then, hundreds of additional Clinton emails with classified information have been identified…
The State Department permitted what Clinton did. But the State Department Foreign Affairs Manual permitted occasional private e-mail use only under certain carefully delineated conditions designed to guard against compromise of sensitive government information. The State Department did not permit Clinton to email exclusively on a private server. As Judge Emett Sullivan recently said, “we wouldn’t be here [in court] today if [Clinton] had followed government policy.”
None of the information contained in Clinton’s emails was classified at the time the emails were sent. But the State Department and Intelligence Community inspector generals have flatly rejected this claim. Okay, but the emails weren’t marked classified when sent. But Reuters has reported that at least 30 email threads from the documents released to date contain information provided in confidence to U.S. officials by foreign-government counterparts. These documents were “born classified.” Any public official would have known that information from foreign governments about the world’s hot-spots is classified and, in any event, not ripe for dissemination on a homebrewed server.
How could anyone so reckless, so careless and so deceitful be President of the United States? 
===

Turkish leader’s grim revision of our legacy

Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 28, 2014 (7:02pm)

TO the thousands of Australians eagerly anticipating attending the Gallipoli centenary commemoration next year, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk remains a potent historical figure. Not so, however, for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who not only is attempting to write the reformist Young Turk out of history but also openly supports the terrorist organisation Hamas.
 Continue reading 'Turkish leader’s grim revision of our legacy'
===

DIVERSITY DANGER

Tim Blair – Friday, August 29, 2014 (3:06pm)

In Canberra: 
A former public servant says she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after attending a workplace respect and diversity workshop four years ago. 
===

SILENCE OF THE DAMNED

Tim Blair – Friday, August 29, 2014 (4:44am)

The left doesn’t want to know about female genital mutilation. The left doesn’t want to know about books praising Hitler and shaming women. And the left doesn’t want to know about the systematic sexual torture of 1400 children in an English town: 
One thousand four hundred. Consider the weight of that number, feel its tragic heft. Picture 50 junior-school classes of little girls in Rotherham, once a respectable northern town, now a byword for depravity. We have seen child-grooming cases before, but the disgusting stories revealed in the report by Professor Alexis Jay amount to evidence of abuse on an industrial scale.
Men of Pakistani heritage treated white girls like toilet paper. They picked children up from schools and care homes and trafficked them across northern cities for other men to join in the fun. They doused a 15-year-old in petrol and threatened to set her alight should she dare to report them. They menaced entire families and made young girls watch as they raped other children. 
There were one or two inquiries during all of this, and a handful of convictions, but the attacks continued. That’s because these predators were protected by a politically-correct wall of silence: 
Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham from 1994 to 2012, actually admitted to the BBC’s World At One that “there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.”
MacShane recently spent several months in prison following an unrelated fraud conviction. He should be sent back there. Forever. Here’s a shocking line from Professor Alexis Jay’s report: 
Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so. 
Nobody likes being thought of as racist, but imagine the level of cowardice required to place that concern above the rape of young children. Thankfully, this cowardice is not universal. I was on the phone yesterday with a friend who has two young daughters. During a wide-ranging chat, I mentioned the Rotherham atrocity. He didn’t know of it, so I sent a few links. Suddenly he fell silent. I thought the line had dropped out, but he was speechless with horror. When he finally did speak, it was with an utterly intense fury. So long as their dad is around, two Sydney girls are very safe indeed. Further from James Delingpole: 
Q: When is the sexual abuse of children culturally, socially and politically acceptable?
A: When it’s committed with industrial efficiency by organised gangs of mainly Pakistani men in English Northern towns like Burnley, Oldham and Rotherham, of course.
But obviously you’re not allowed to admit this or you might sound racist. That’s why, for example, in today’s BBC report into the fact that at least 1400 children were subjected to “appalling” sexual abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, you have to wade 20 paragraphs in before finally you discover the ethnic identity of the perpetrators.
And even then, the embarrassing fact slips out only with the most blushing mealy-mouthedness … 
Only a tiny number of council officials have resigned, been fired, charged or even disciplined over this obscene mass crime: 
Rotherham council chief executive Martin Kimber offered a “sincere apology” but said he did not have evidence to discipline any individuals working for the council. 
No evidence? Really? Apart from, you know, 1400 destroyed lives? These people are sick, as is the entire left-driven culture of selective outrage.
UPDATE. The Guardian‘s response: 
The scale of the sexual exploitation revealed in the Jay inquiry is shocking, but let’s avoid racial stereotyping. 
They haven’t learned a thing.
===

LEADING CLIMATE STEYNTIST

Tim Blair – Friday, August 29, 2014 (3:05am)

It turns out that the latest climate consensus was led by Mark Steyn, who now finds that scientists agree with his prescient global warming discoveries. It took those idiots five years to catch up. In other climate news, this is the current storage level for Sydney’s dams:

In scientific circles, 90 per cent capacity is known as “the Flannery elevation.” Place your bets in comments on when it will be reached. 
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GET IT RIGHT OR GET READY FOR SURGERY

Tim Blair – Friday, August 29, 2014 (12:03am)

At the 36-second mark, rally driver Danila Belokons has a very brief time to make an extremely important decision:

(Via Jalopnik)
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What is it with Socialists and bullying?

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (5:22pm)

Socialists brawl with police, and abuse and jostle people going to a fundraiser. Can you imagine a nation run by people with such an authoritarian streak?  I mean, apart from the Soviet Union and Mao’s China?
THREE anti-East West Link protesters have been charged with assaulting policeafter demonstrators clashed with officers at a Liberal Party fundraiser in the Melbourne CBD.
Startled guests attending the function at the Regent Theatre Plaza on Collins St — among them Coalition MPs — had to be pushed through a crowd of about 50 demonstrators by police and security guards, as protesters linked arms to prevent them entering…
A series of scuffles ensued as police pushed protesters forward to make paths for frightened-looking guests to get inside....
Among the guests forced to push their way into the function were Transport Minister Terry Mulder and Health Minister David Davis. Both were jostled by protesters. ...protest leader Anthony Main ... said protesters intended for tonight’s picket to be “peaceful”. “We had a hundred or more coppers here tonight pushing and shoving people around,” he said. 
Oh, really? Had the protesters not menaced other citizens the police would not have had to lift a finger.  The totalitarian streak is a mile wide.
And remember, this is the kind of morality brought to you by the Socialist Party, of which Main has been a member and election candidate.
UPDATE
What kind of scum gets off on pack-attacking like this?
The wife of Liberal MP Brad Battin was left in tears after being pushed and shoved at Thursday night’s heated anti-East West Link protest… 
Mr Battin said he and his wife were separated by the protesters as they entered the event at the Regent Plaza Ballroom in Collins Street, with his wife pushed into a corner.

He said his wife was in tears after the incident and was now being trolled on social media.
And to think such protesters actually think they represent a higher morality rather than a low-rent thuggery.
UPDATE
What is is with the far-Left and bullying? Why the use of force and physical intimidation to stop people from simply speaking?
Opponents of the hard-right World Congress of Families have vowed to block attendees from getting into its conference on Saturday, although they do not know where it will be held.... 
The Coalition to Beat Back the Far-Right says it has already scored victories, with at least three cancelled venues for the forum… Radical Women spokeswoman Debbie Brennan said the group expected thousands of people to protest… She said the protest was not designed to be violent. Other members of the coalition include Equal Love and the Council of Single Mothers and their Children.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s sympathetic coverage of people prepared to use force to shut down meeting is a terrible indictment of a newspaper which should be in the business of the free discussion of ideas.  
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The Bolt Report on Sunday, August 31

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (1:40pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial:  The Left learned the wrong lessons from Iraq, and now we must pay.
My guest:  Dick Warburton, slimed as a denier, on the renewable energy target he’s investigated for the Abbott Government..
The panel:  Health Services Union manager Kimberley Kitching and author and Australian columnist Niki Savva.
NewsWatch:  The Australian’s media editor Sharri Markson.  Why did the ABC give a platform to an Islamist extremist?  And did the Canberra press gallery protect Julia Gillard from the AWU scandal?
Lots more, including the shortcomings of grubby Paul Keating, Liberal divisions and a great sign of hope for the Abbott Government - signs of crumbling of the farcial Palmer “United” Party.
The videos of the shows appear here.
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Islamists seize 43 UN peacekeepers

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (9:29am)

The UN is now learning what Israel is up against:
ISLAMIST militants have seized 43 UN peacekeepers on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights and surrounded another 81, according to the UN. 
The US has accused the Al-Qaeda-affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front of kidnapping the peacekeepers, who were from Fiji, and who were taken hostage near the Quneitra crossing on the border of Israel on Thursday.
Another 81 Filipino peacekeepers refused to disarm, the Filipino defence department said. “This resulted in a standoff which is still the prevailing situation at this time as UN officials try to peacefully resolve the situation,” said the statement from Manila.
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Macdonald should forget the career and work for respect

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (8:59am)

Graham Richardson has advice for LNP Senator Ian Macdonald:
The Queensland senator was passed over by Tony Abbott for the ministry. The good senator has been around forever. He was there when I was there and I left more than 20 years ago. When you stay as long as he has in parliament you get institutionalised. Perhaps this is his greatest fear. No one would be too interested in hiring him, so life on the outside would not entice. So he stays on, a bitter old man intent on revenge on a PM who failed to recognise his genius. Macdonald is an embarrassment to himself and his party and he should just go. It is too late to go gracefully but he should go nonetheless.
I’d say only that Macdonald now has no career. He has only his reputation. He should stop grieving for the first and start restoring the second. There are far worse fates than to be considered one of the party’s wise elders.  
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Poll: one in six French citizens back Islamic State

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (8:41am)

France has spent years importing the seeds of strife - even of civil war, if the worst comes to the very worst:
One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found. 
The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24…
The survey also ... found that 7% of British citizens responded favourably to ISIS… Positive attitudes to ISIS in Germany showed less divergence, remaining between 3% and 4% for all age groups.
Newsweek’s France Correspondent, Anne-Elizabeth Moutet, was unsurprised by the news. “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds,” she said, “unemployed to the tune of 40%, who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda.” She pointed to a correlation between support for ISIS and rising anti-Semitism in France, adding that “these are the same people who torch synagogues”. France is home to an estimated 5 million Muslims, largely of North African descent...
I do caution, though, that the poll samples were low, with large margins of error.
(Thanks to reader Paul.) 
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Why do even the ABC’s errors help the Left?

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (8:28am)

Note the pattern of the errors. Every one comes the ABC making assumptions you’d expect from the Left:
Hamas just targeting Israeli settlements the lefties don’t approve of? ABC Radio’s AM, July 14: 
AT least 160 Palestinians have died in the six days Israel has been pounding Gaza with air strikes. Rockets continue to pour out of the Palestinian territory aimed at Israeli settlements but its Iron Dome defensive system is holding.
Aunty tries to correct the record without noting Hamas rockets are too crude to target anything and Israeli settlements are all in the West Bank surrounded by Palestinians and almost out of reach. ABC Corrections and Clarifications: 
AM: On 11 and 14 July, in stories about conflict between Israel and Hamas, the presenter’s introduction referred to Hamas rockets being aimed at “settlements”. This was incorrect given the areas targeted included the central and southern districts of Israel.
But wait, there’s more. ABC Corrections and Clarifications: 
AM and News24:On 29 July, when reporting on the proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland, the ABC included comments from Tim Buckley from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, without pointing out that he is also the manager of a clean energy fund.
ABC Corrections and Clarifications:
THE World Today: On May 29, in a story about the length of time it takes to repay university debt, the ABC based the story on modelling by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education. The modelling claimed that under the Coalition government’s proposed deregulated fee system a student with a debt of $50,000 and an average lifetime salary of $80,000, would take around 43 years to repay the debt. The author of the study has subsequently revised the centre’s data modelling, and has concluded the correct duration for debt repayment is 11 years, not 43.
No wonder Aunty is confused — groups that support mining and tourism! ABC Corrections and ­Clarifications: 
NEWS Online: On June 6 the ABC published a story on a challenge to mining in the Tarkine region. Since this article was first published, the ABC has been contacted by the Tarkine National Coalition, who say that they support responsible mining projects in the North West of Tasmania and are actively involved in government projects aimed at boosting tourism and economic growth.
And to this day ABC boss Mark Scott insists the Leftist bias of his presenters makes no difference. 
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Why talk about Australian jihadists when we could spend months more arguing over a 1 cent levy?

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (8:23am)

Just government spin, says Labor’s Kim Carr, Melissa Parke and Sue Lines. Why aren’t we talking about Budget and the Budget alone?
FIVE men with links to Islamic terrorists or carrying jihadist material have been detained this week trying to leave the country from Sydney and Melbourne airports. 
In one instance, $30,000 in cash was found on a man ­believed to have links to the terrorist armies fighting in Iraq and Syria, and Australian jihadists claiming to have ­beheaded their enemies.

Immigration minister Scott Morrison yesterday confirmed a further three people had been stopped this week after the apprehension of a man on Sunday trying to leave Sydney for Beirut with Islamic State (IS) propaganda on his mobile phone and ­images of beheadings. The following day another man tried to leave from Melbourne.
The confirmation came as horrific images of atrocities committed by militants in northern Iraq were handed to the government. Well-placed sources said the material — captured by US satellites and unmanned spy planes over the village of Kojo and surrounds — includes images of beheadings, crucifixions and mass shootings. There is also evidence from spies on the ground that people have been buried alive.
UPDATE
Islamic State terrorists refusing to discuss the Budget:
UPDATE
So let’s discuss again the planned 1 cent a litre rise in petrol excise:
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ABC and Fairfax smear sceptic, shill for green carpetbaggers

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (7:49am)

Note how the Sydney Morning Herald frames the debate:
Tony Abbott has been given cover to break an election promise not to touch Australia’s renewable energy target after his hand-picked review panel recommended the scheme be dramatically cut back. 
Clean energy industry leaders said the findings of the review, headed by businessman and climate sceptic Dick Warburton, represented the “worst case scenario” and would cost thousands of jobs and more than $10 billion in investment if the government adopted its recommendations.
The paper suggests Warburton has a vested interest and a bias, being a “businessman”, “hand-picked” and a “climate sceptic”.
But the clean-energy carpet-baggers who have so far hoovered $9 billion in subsidies from taxpayers to make no difference to the climate and are desperate to keep the rort rolling on are presented merely as “clean energy industry leaders”. Not alarmists. Not people with their hands in your pocket up to their elbows.
The ABC’s presentation is even more biased. From  Lateline’s report:
KERRY BREWSTER: When the Prime Minister announced a review led by former Caltex chairman and climate change sceptic Dick Warburton, investment in clean energy projects dried up… Last weekend, locals packed a hall to hear former Liberal Party leader John Hewson explain why the Government should not touch the target. 
JOHN HEWSON, FORMER LIBERAL LEADER (Last weekend): You can’t play around with these things. These are long-term structural decisions. ...
Now Warburton is an oil man (follow the money!) as well as a sceptic. Bias, bias, bias.
But John Hewson? Well he’s just a former Liberal Party leader, which suggests he must be impartial in this debate since he’s attacking the Liberals.
In fact, the ABC has refused to declare Hewson’s interests in the same way it outlined Warburton’s. Hewson is a warming alarmist and chairman of the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, “an independent global not-for-profit organisation whose objective is to protect members’ retirement savings from the risks posed by climate change”.
Why is Warburton presented as the man with an agenda and vested interests but Hewson not?
And note that both stories omitted the central fact identified by Warburton’s review of the Renewable Energy Target - the fact that explains the screams of horror from the renewable energy sector and their media spruikers:
The report said the current RET would require a $22 billion cross-subsidy to the renewables sector in addition to $9.4bn provided from 2001 to 2013...
That’s your money, grabbed by clean energy spruikers. And what even Warburton fails to add is that it makes no damn difference to the climate anyway.
UPDATE
Worse than any of the above was ABC Radio Breakfast host Fran Kelly this morning. Her attack on Dick Warburton seemed driven by panic. Her attacks on his credentials and alleged vested interests were almost frantic. She seemed unable to comprehend the point that he patiently repeated again and again: that the RET would demand another $22 billion in subsidies to achieve what could be done in other ways at vastly less cost. 
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President Vacuum

Andrew Bolt August 29 2014 (7:39am)

Is Barack Obama the most useless president in US history?
About the slaughter in Syria and now Iraq that’s been luring jihadists from around the world:
President Barack Obama has told reporters he has no strategy yet to launch a broader attack against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria. 
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” the President told reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon before heading into a meeting with his National Security Council. “We don’t have a strategy yet.”
About the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Speaking on the crisis in Ukraine Mr Obama declared Russia to be responsible for the ongoing and increasing violence… 
He said he had just spoken with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who agreed with the his assessment. But he did not go as far as referring to the action as an “invasion"… He said he would be meeting with America’s NATO allies next week in Wales...
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Russian forces reportedly invade Ukraine

Andrew Bolt August 28 2014 (9:05pm)

Putin moves, no doubt figuring that timid Barack Obama is too preoccupied battling - belatedly - Islamists in Iraq:
UKRAINIAN President Petro Poroshenko has confirmed Russian forces have invaded the war-torn east part of the country, and has called an emergency meeting of Ukraine’s security and defence council. 
He has also cancelled a working trip to Turkey, and comes after the US ambassador in Kiev declared Russia was"directly involved” in fighting in the war-torn east of Ukraine. “An increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting in Ukrainian territory,” Geoffrey Pyatt wrote on Twitter, adding that Moscow was “directly involved in the fighting” and had sent in its “newest air defense systems including the SA-22”.

Pyatt’s tweets come after a NATO diplomat also comfirmed the Russian missile defence system has been detected in a rebel-held area of Ukraine, after a huge convoy of tanks and weaponry came through the nation’s southeast.
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Don’t “enrage” the protesters by pointing out they wreck stuff

Andrew Bolt August 28 2014 (8:50pm)

Er, whose side are the reporters on? Who should be the enraged ones here?
THE Victorian Liberal Party has used the “threatening and shameful behaviour” of protesters who stormed its Melbourne headquarters to call for donations. 
In a brazen move that is likely to enrage the protesters, an email was sent to members last night about the damage done to photos and property in the Liberal office.
“This angry, threatening and shameful behaviour should never be accepted or tolerated,” the email says…“Donate today to say NO to this behaviour and help the Napthine Government be re-elected in November.” 
“Brazen”? Perfectly reasonable, really. In fact, why aren’t the protesters made to pay for what they unlawfully damaged? Or would paying their own way “enrage” them? 
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Work life balance is a serious discussion issue in management research these days. I was an outstanding teacher because I gave extra. But a lot don't. For every teacher that devotes their life to their charges there are many that don't .. they have lives that preclude it, or they have learned to switch off, or they are old and don't have to try, to put in effort. But recognising good teachers is very difficult, not because it is hard to grade teachers, but because teachers unions won't let it happen. Public testing is so precise in Sydney that examiners can identify which teachers of year 12 classes use which textbooks, give regular homework and or rely on tutors to boost student performance. But that information isn't shared with teachers, executive, parents or government. Kids know. And those that suffer from neglect are ignored. - ed
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Woah! Hold your horses, Barack. Before we go to war with Syria can we be absolutely surely sure that we've got our pretext right? Only we've made a horrible mistake about WMDs before…
The official UK/US narrative on the conflict in Syria is this. Last year, we drew a red line in the sand: if the regime uses chemical weapons then it makes itself a legitimate target for military action. Last week, it apparently did just that – murdering hundreds of people, including children, in a suburb of Damascus. John Kerry described this slaughter as defying "any code of morality", and he demanded "accountability" from the Assad regime. There could, he insisted, be no doubt that the government is culpable – and anyone saying otherwise is a tool of cold blooded killers. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, etc, etc.
Kerry's narrative is full of holes. First, we've yet to ascertain that chemical weapons really were used by Assad – specifically we've not determined a) what kind of WMDs they were or b) who actually did it. The situation is complicated by how difficult it's proving to get to the site of the attack to carry out tests. But this is a war zone, and forensic tests take longer and are more complicated to execute when you're surrounded by people trying to blow each other up. So it's going to take time.
Second, why would the Assad regime do something so stupid? It must know that by using chemical weapons it would isolate itself from any international support and invite a Western military response. More importantly, Assad was already winning the war – so why bother to use WMDs during the last lap to victory? Indeed, the only people who have anything to gain by Assad using chemicals are the rebels, because that would internationalise the conflict in a way that they have long lobbied for.
Third, why is the West obliged to act even if Assad did use chemical weapons? We are not under any such treaty obligations and the subject sure doesn't feature as a trigger for war in the US constitution. The red line itself has slimmed and thickened over time. When Obama first laid it down, it was thin to the point of invisible, quote:
We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised… That would change my equation.”
So all Assad had to do to get America's attention was move a "whole bunch" of WMDs around a bit. He didn't even have to use them. But while Obama was shockingly vague when he made that statement back in August 2012, now Kerry uses very precise language to denounce a specific action that hasn't even been verified as being Assad's fault. By the way, if the West was looking for a pretext to intervene in Syria on humanitarian grounds then it's had plenty already: Assad's been killing tens of thousands of innocents for two years. So what difference would one chemical attack make?
Maybe Kerry is right and maybe the Syrian government did use WMDs on its own people. But we've got one very good reason to doubt his accuracy: Iraq. Remember that back in 2003, the then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told the UN in no uncertain terms that Iraq definitely had WMDs. Definitely, definitely, definitely. We now know that it didn't. We now know that the CIA got its intelligence wrong, that because Saddam Hussein used to lie about having chemical weapons the US judged that he still was. It's true that when dealing with a dictatorship built upon fabrications, trusting its word is almost impossible – but it's not logical to assume that we must proceed on the basis that everything it ever says is a lie. There is a scintilla of a possibility that Assad is innocent of this particular war crime. Should we go to war on the basis of a false accusation, we would be guilty of what TS Eilot called "the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason".

Good article and hardly a repudiation of conservative values. The truth is that Obama failed to act appropriately and now has to appear tough. He is dealing with a puppet of Iran, and instead of pulling the strings early, he drew a line in the sand and dared Syria to cross it. It matters nothing that rebels may be using Syria's stockpiles. Syria should never have stockpiled it. Possession of the material is a war crime. It is ironic that it is probably Saddam's personal stash. Democrats wanting to use it on a pretext that they denounced Republicans for. - ed
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"The truth is there is no apartheid in Israel," said Meshoe. "My parents suffered through apartheid."
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revisiting .. The history in the article is wrong. Schools were created in an attempt to raise literacy .. everyone in Great Britain was to read and write to a year 8 standard. Catholic church initiated a similar program at about the same time. In the US the revolutionary war of independence resulted in schools created to allow adults to function in a democracy. From early 1800's to mid 1800's, students became teachers of the younger years .. boot strapping .. and records were kept of attainments .. rewards given on assembly. Then in mid 1800's, teacher training began at university to make teachers who would inculcate moral values .. this article is asinine .. I use it as a counter example of good scholarship .. it mixes anecdotes with partisan assertions on research. One thing the article ignores is the overwhelming benefits of schooling. Some schools are dysfunctional .. very few are catastrophic. For the worst afflicted, schools are an opportunity to get away from dysfunctional homes. They show lives that get shared with others that may be different, and positive. Curriculum is what it is .. pedagogy can improve .. but to say that the structure is harmful is to misrepresent what is actually happening. - ed
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Like I said, we think he’s nuts; he thinks we’re nuts. Right now, there’s a petition on the Internet seeking to persuade the United States government to reclassify Hasan’s “workplace violence” as an act of terror. There are practical consequences to this: The victims, shot by an avowed enemy combatant in an act of war, are currently ineligible for Purple Hearts. The Pentagon insists the dead and wounded must be dishonored in death because to give them any awards for their sacrifice would prejudice Major Hasan’s trial and make it less likely that he could be convicted.
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(NEW YORK) — The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorism organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game for surveillance.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least a dozen “terrorism enterprise investigations” into mosques, according to interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known, is a police tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the like.
Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise.
The documents show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an enterprise investigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials.
The strategy has allowed the NYPD to send undercover officers into mosques and attempt to plant informants on the boards of mosques and at least one prominent Arab-American group in Brooklyn, whose executive director has worked with city officials, including Bill de Blasio, a front-runner for mayor.
Read more: http://nation.time.com/2013/08/28/nypd-designates-mosques-as-terrorism-organizations/#ixzz2dMJLQLY3
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tiny Jewish population continues to dwindle due largely to a dangerous increase in antisemitism
. >
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<Paul Kelly on the debate. Rudd desperately courts the loony Right and Katter agrarian socialists. Abbott now looking positively reasonable and Prime Ministerial. Oh, the irony.>
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Indeed, we’ve been posting frequently on the sympathetic portrayal, by some in the media, of the the 104 pre-Oslo prisoners who Israel has agreed to release – all of whom were convicted of murder, attempted murder, or being an accessory to murder, and the dearth of information about the victims and their families. And, in fact, Zayid spends most of the space allotted to her commenting on the pain felt by the recently released murderers – in “the middle of the night”!, we are reminded – and the ‘feelings’ of their families.
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Reuven Kossover

Good morning! When you focus on the forcible breakup of the Ottoman Empire, which is the event that really plunged Europe (and the rest of the world ) into war in the 2nd decade of the 20th Century, you realize that the conflict really began in 1911, when the Italians invaded and attempted to conquer Libya from the Ottomans, and then continued in 1912, when Balkan countries ganged up on the Ottoman Empire to drive it out of Europe. The foolish murder of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 was an effort to expand Balkan nationalism against Austria-Hungary. When you examine the "war aims" of the Entente Cordial and the Central Powers, your rapidly realize that they centered on breaking up the Ottoman Empire and breaking up the Russian Empire. Were it not for militant Communism, the Russian Empire would have been broken up into something like what it looks like today. The Ottoman Empire had no chance of surviving a war that was really about how it was to be divvied up. Every time I see that Wahhabi fascist pig, Erdogan, railing against Israel, I'm reminded that the Turkish flag once flew where I live.

What we are seeing today is a re-run of the events that plunged the world into war a century ago. And like the "Great War", it too, began in 2011 (a century after 1911) only a few hundred kilometers west of the Italian invasion site in Libya, in Tunisia. Unless events grossly speed up (which they appear to be doing), the world-wide conflict that we are to see in the second decade of the 21st Century will start next year, in 2014, or possibly this year. Looking at the Rabbinic Calendar, that conflict began in late 5674. In a few days, we will see the dawning of 5774. It may well be the Rabbinic Calendar that governs these events, rather than the Gregorian one.

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CANBERRA Raiders winger Sandor Earl may be banned for life after the NRL revealed he had admitted to the use and trafficking of peptides.
Earl is facing a two-year ban for peptide use and four years to life for trafficking, after NRL boss Dave Smith said the player had admitted to using and trafficking the substance CJC-1295 - promoted as a substance that helps reduce fat and repair injured tissue.
ASADA told News Corp that CJC-1295 was considered by the World Anti-Doping Agency to be a substance that triggers the release of growth hormone.
Earl has been issued an infraction notice by the NRL and become the code's first major scalp of the ASADA investigation. He can accept a looming NRL sanction or fight it in a tribunal.

It is outrageous that his name is linked with the Jason Clare smear. Prima facie, Earl may have admitted inadvertent transgression while Clare alleged an organised crime involved match fixing and drug use. The failure to find any such animal as Clare alleges should have Clare removed from office. ed
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Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Affairs Minister Senator Bob Carr have gone underground since Carr announced on 8 August at the  Lakemba Mosque in Sydney that Rudd personally as well as the Labor Party had adopted as policy that Jews had no right to legally live in the West Bank…writes David Singer.
“I’ve been to Ramallah, I’ve spoken to the Palestinian leadership, and we support their aspirations to have a Palestinian state in the context of a Middle East of peace. And that means respect for the right of Israel to exist. But we want that Palestinian state to exist, in the context of a peace in the Middle East, and that’s why we say, unequivocally, all settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law and should cease. That is the position, of Kevin Rudd, the position of the Federal Labor Government, and we don’t make apologies for it.”
Attempts to elicit whether Rudd personally and the Labor Party had adopted this policy prior to Carr’s announcement have ended in total confusion.
Labor’s candidate for the seat of Stirling – Dan Caddy – received no answers from Carr when he asked those pertinent questions.
An embarrassed Caddy wrote to the constituent seeking such information:
“I have received advice from our (Foreign) Minister’s office which I have included below. I appreciate that it does not specifically address the questions you have posed, but I hope it clearly articulates what the position is.”
Caddy’s response was however seriously undermined when sitting Labor Member for Melbourne Ports – Michael Danby – spoke out a few days later:
“There’s a narrow view in the Department of Foreign Affairs, in their legal section, that the settlements are illegal. It’s not the view of the government as I understand it.
“He [Carr] has accepted their [the legal department’s] view. The Prime Minister hasn’t accepted that view as far as I understand it.
 “I disagree with the Foreign Minister’s interpretation of this. I was disappointed; of course I was disappointed.”
Rudd could clear up this apparent confusion very easily by issuing a one sentence press release affirming or denying that the Lakemba Mosque Declaration represents his personal view and Labor Party policy.
However Rudd has remained silent in the face of angry protests lodged by peak Jewish organisations and the Opposition spokesperson on Foreign Affairs – Julie Bishop.
One can only conclude in the face of such Prime Ministerial silence that Carr’s Lakemba Mosque Declaration was shoddy policy made on the run with the knowledge and acquiescence of the Prime Minister in an attempt to secure the votes of the Moslem community in the elections to be held on 7 September.
The Moslem vote for the Labor Party is by no means assured following another hastily cobbled together policy announced by Rudd in July regarding asylum seekers – making it clear newcomers would no longer be re-settled in Australia under any circumstances – but would be transferred to Papua New Guinea for processing and re-settlement.
This heartless policy would be anathema to all Moslems already in Australia – especially families of potential asylum seekers dreaming of one day being re-united with other family members.
Predictably one could reasonably expect a backlash in the voting intentions of all  ethnic and religious groupings in Australia impacted by this policy reversal.
$3 million dollars had reportedly been spent on an advertising blitz in the Australian media explaining the new refugee plan for six days before any similar ads were placed in the countries-of-origin of asylum seekers.
The advertising campaign is going to cost a staggering $30 million – and will now controversially run at taxpayer cost during the election period.
youwontbesettled2A Department of Immigration spokesman has confirmed the intention of the advertising.
“The advertisements are aimed to speak to ethnic communities in Australia which are the main boat people source.  They include Afghans, Iranians, Sri Lankans, Iraqis and more recently Vietnamese people though there are of course other communities.”
He said the aim was to spread the message through “word of mouth” from Australia back to those communities.
The Labor Party holds a number of seats by very small margins where Moslems and different ethnic groups comprise a significant proportion of the voters.
It is becoming increasingly evident that a bizarre balancing act was performed by Carr at the Lakemba Mosque – announcing unequivocally and without apology as Labor Party policy that Jews are not legally entitled to live in the West Bank – thereby hoping to placate and ameliorate Moslem concerns with another Labor Party policy denying Moslem asylum seekers any legal entitlement to live in Australia.
To further impress Moslem voters – Carr added an assurance that this anti-Jewish policy concerning  the West Bank was personally embraced by Prime Minister Rudd and so would remain unchanged if the Labor Party is returned to power.
His assurances seem to have fallen on deaf Moslem ears – if the results of recently published polls in those tightly held Labor marginal seats are any guidance.
Carr – and Rudd – have amazingly managed to alienate Jews, Moslems and other ethnic groups  – who will consider as immoral and inhumane – and be motivated to vote against – Labor policies that deny Jews the right to settle in the West Bank or asylum seekers the right to settle in Australia.
Hastily conceived policies drawn up in the heat of an election campaign appear set to hit the Labor Party with devastating effect.
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
Speak up Rudd and Carr, it is an election campaign .. we need to know ed
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Egypt's Example

By Nonie Darwish 
How many revolutions does a nation need to correct its course? Some nations undergo the pain of one revolution and flourish, while others achieve change by allowing themselves to evolve through self-examination, correction, awakening, and enlightenment, followed by a working consensus on the course the country will take. But when it comes to much of the Muslim world, unfortunately, coup d'etat, revolution, bloodshed and violence are a way of life, approved by Islamic law, and in harmony with the example of the prophet of Islam, Mohammed. Egypt has undergone revolutions in 1919, 1952, 2011 and then a counter-revolution at the present. That does not include periods of instability, wars, and assassinations and attempted assassination on all heads of state. The reason King Farouk abdicated the throne and left Egypt in 1952 was because he refused to engage in bloody confrontation against his own citizens. And now the United States Government pretends it is perplexed and frozen on how to define the current situation in Egypt; is it or is it.... (Read Full Article)

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/egypts_example_comments.html#disqus_thread#ixzz2dMEpY7cn
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
slow learners? In Australia I heard a joke "What is the difference between a NZ and a computer? .. answer "You need only punch information into a computer once" - ed
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<The blood-soaked internecine turmoil convulsing the Arab realm – from the Maghreb to Mesopotamia – has nothing to do with Jews, with Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement or with Israel, the Jewish state. The carnage is spawned by internal Arab ethnic, religious, clannish and political conflicts. Each side reinforces its case by recruiting throngs of volatile and violent demonstrators. This rent-a-mob fest is palmed off to clueless foreigners as democracy-in-action.

In some local arenas, as in Syria, the inner strife is exacerbated by blatant outside intervention, underscoring the broader and deeper schisms within the Arab/Islamic world.

In rational and realistic terms, all this cannot be remotely linked to Israel. But expediency can overrule reason and indeed create an inner logic all its own. It works like this: hatred of the Zionist endeavor had served since the 19th century as the powerful glue of Arab nationalism, crucially buttressed by prevailing religious xenophobia.>
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CONVERTING a church into a house is so last year. What the adventurous home buyer wants now is a water tower.
Character conversions of warehouses, churches and barns are no longer extraordinary, or a challenge for those with vision to transform one-offs into comfortable living spaces.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/realestate/investing/water-towers-converted-into-homes/story-fndbarft-1226706538731#ixzz2dMANPn26
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CAN you solve this classic algebra problem?
Two trains start from the same point and travel in the same direction. One leaves 48 minutes later, travels 10 miles per hour faster than the other, and overtakes the first train in 4 hours. Find the rate of each train.*
Carson Huey-You, an 11-year-old boy genius from Texas, could work that problem out with ease.
In fact, he has been solving algebra problems since he was a toddler, and now uses this division of mathematics "to relax".
The pint-sized child prodigy has just embarked on a university degree in quantum physics and soon will be tackling problems like this:
Prove that taking the limit as h→0 for the average quantum mechanical energy (hν e hν k B T −1) yields the average classical energy (k B T ).**
Carson, who is also taking classes in calculus, history and religion, has just begun his first semester at the Texas Christian University (TCU) in Dallas.
He is expected to graduate as a quantum physicist at the age of 15 or 16 and may go one to complete a PhD, by the age of 20.
Carson attends classes with his mother, Claretta, and was so young he could not apply for university entry online because the software would not accept an applicant born in 2002.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/child-genius-carson-hueyyou-11-studying-quantum-physics/story-fndir2ev-1226706742607#ixzz2dMCeuv25
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Why storytelling is crucial
The ability to tell good stories is a timeless skill. Now more than ever, businesses, workers, and leaders have opportunities to stand out, spread messages, and change things through storytelling.
Good stories surprise us. They make us think and stick in our minds in a way numbers and graphs never will. Unfortunately, in the era of PowerPoint and status updates, many of us have forgotten how to tell a good story.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/worklife/the-most-important-business-skill-to-master/story-e6frfm9r-1226706493686#ixzz2dMCoWhf2
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TONY ABBOTT STOPS HOMOPHOBIA IN SCHOOL #headlinesyouwontseeinTheAge'

<The policy was now under review, according to Christian Schools Australia, which says the wording has been ''misunderstood'' and that gay and lesbian students are treated with care.

Mr Abbott said he disagreed with the Statement of Faith but said Penrith Christian School was a ''good school''.

''Look, this is a good school and it is a school which has been supported by people like [Labor MPs] David Bradbury and Peter Garrett.

''I respectfully disagree with lots of things that are said on that particular subject and obviously I disagree with that one.''>

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Glenn Beck
Our history is so much better when you know the truth. It's what unites us — the good and the bad parts. We must know history so we can learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.
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Calling all Sydneysiders, the #DoctorWho Exhibition at the ABC Centre Ultimo is open this Father's Day weekend from 10am. Bring Dad along for a trip through space and time and come face-to-face with a Dalek, the TARDIS, costumes and more! 

Check out the gallery and get more info on doctorwho.tv:http://bit.ly/DWABCUltimo
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Michael Faraday
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“Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”” John 6:29NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Oil for the light."
Exodus 25:6
My soul, how much thou needest this, for thy lamp will not long continue to burn without it. Thy snuff will smoke and become an offence if light be gone, and gone it will be if oil be absent. Thou hast no oil well springing up in thy human nature, and therefore thou must go to them that sell and buy for thyself, or like the foolish virgins, thou wilt have to cry, "My lamp is gone out." Even the consecrated lamps could not give light without oil; though they shone in the tabernacle they needed to be fed, though no rough winds blew upon them they required to be trimmed, and thy need is equally as great. Under the most happy circumstances thou canst not give light for another hour unless fresh oil of grace be given thee.
It was not every oil that might be used in the Lord's service; neither the petroleum which exudes so plentifully from the earth, nor the produce of fishes, nor that extracted from nuts would be accepted; one oil only was selected, and that the best olive oil. Pretended grace from natural goodness, fancied grace from priestly hands, or imaginary grace from outward ceremonies will never serve the true saint of God; he knows that the Lord would not be pleased with rivers of such oil. He goes to the olive-press of Gethsemane, and draws his supplies from him who was crushed therein. The oil of gospel grace is pure and free from lees and dregs, and hence the light which is fed thereon is clear and bright. Our churches are the Saviour's golden candelabra, and if they are to be lights in this dark world, they must have much holy oil. Let us pray for ourselves, our ministers, and our churches, that they may never lack oil for the light. Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love, these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Ghost.

Evening

"Sing, O barren."
Isaiah 54:1
Though we have brought forth some fruit unto Christ, and have a joyful hope that we are "plants of his own right hand planting," yet there are times when we feel very barren. Prayer is lifeless, love is cold, faith is weak, each grace in the garden of our heart languishes and droops. We are like flowers in the hot sun, requiring the refreshing shower. In such a condition what are we to do? The text is addressed to us in just such a state. "Sing, O barren, break forth and cry aloud." But what can I sing about? I cannot talk about the present, and even the past looks full of barrenness. Ah! I can sing of Jesus Christ. I can talk of visits which the Redeemer has aforetimes paid to me; or if not of these, I can magnify the great love wherewith he loved his people when he came from the heights of heaven for their redemption. I will go to the cross again. Come, my soul, heavy laden thou wast once, and thou didst lose thy burden there. Go to Calvary again. Perhaps that very cross which gave thee life may give thee fruitfulness. What is my barrenness? It is the platform for his fruit-creating power. What is my desolation? It is the black setting for the sapphire of his everlasting love. I will go in poverty, I will go in helplessness, I will go in all my shame and backsliding, I will tell him that I am still his child, and in confidence in his faithful heart, even I, the barren one, will sing and cry aloud.

Sing, believer, for it will cheer thine own heart, and the hearts of other desolate ones. Sing on, for now that thou art really ashamed of being barren, thou wilt be fruitful soon; now that God makes thee loath to be without fruit he will soon cover thee with clusters. The experience of our barrenness is painful, but the Lord's visitations are delightful. A sense of our own poverty drives us to Christ, and that is where we need to be, for in him is our fruit found.
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Today's reading: Psalm 123-125, 1 Corinthians 10:1-18 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 123-125

A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to you,
to you who sit enthroned in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt.
4 We have endured no end
of ridicule from the arrogant,
of contempt from the proud....

Today's New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1-18


Warnings From Israel's History

1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: "The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry." 8We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did-and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. 9 We should not test Christ, as some of them did-and were killed by snakes. 10And do not grumble, as some of them did-and were killed by the destroying angel.
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