Monday, September 25, 2017

Mon Sep 25th Todays News

Don't give up on hope. This time last year there was a debate between Clinton and Trump. The media awarded the debate to Clinton. She hadn't deserved it. Clinton did not have a policy for America to progress, only excuses for why things were the way they are. Trump had a cogent message of a way forward, but Clinton used a name calling tactic, saying he wasn't a politician, and therefore could not hope to improve things. Only Clinton could keep things as bad as they were. We will never know what Clinton would have done if she had become President. We know she was an incompetent Secretary of State. We also know that through Clinton's Benghazi decisions, ISIS acquired advanced weapons, while Clinton fingered the blame on a coptic film maker she knew was not involved, marking him for death. But twelve months have passed since the debate, and we see that Trump is doing what he said he would, which Clinton claimed could not be done. But one outstanding issue that Trump is addressing, but which he is not well equipped to fix, is the division of the Obama years and the hate movement called Black Lives Matter. 

 Black lives matter. America would not be great if they didn't. But the Alynski method was never to serve those he named. The awful joke of a Black policeman arresting a white activist wearing a Black Lives Matter T shirt highlights the issue. Black people are dying in unsafe neighbourhoods, and those who are charged with protecting and serving them are being harassed, and sometimes killed, by vicious activists who wish to campaign for Clinton and others like her. And this is where the kneeling during the US national anthem at NFL games expresses the national division. Those standing for the anthem, as professional players should, having been well remunerated by that great land, stand in respect for those who have sacrificed much, possibly all, for America. Those kneeling do so in political solidarity with liars profit from the deaths of Black peoples and make police work more difficult. It is a turn off for patriotic Americans who are becoming disenchanted with the sport. But NFL is a great game, and a national cultural asset. Cultural anarchists want to destroy it. Boycotting the games only benefits BLM liars who are politically profiting from the deaths of black peoples. Support the game. Let the sport punish those who bring the game into disrepute. That will help Trump drain the swamp. 
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 America the Beautiful

For Independence Day, USA 4th July "America the Beautiful" is an American patriotic song. The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates and the music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward. Bates originally wrote the words as a poem, Pikes Peak, first published in the Fourth of July edition of the church periodical The Congregationalist in 1895. At that time, the poem was titled America for publication. Ward had originally written the music, Materna, for the 19th century hymn O Mother dear, Jerusalem in 1882. Ward's music combined with the Bates poem was first published in 1910 and titled America the Beautiful. http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.co...
=== from 2016 === 
Dan Andrews is trying to steal Turnbull's thunder by getting gay marriage through first. Neither care for Australia or the views of their constituents. Personally, I don't want the government to approve or disapprove of my chosen mate. The law is not going to sway God.

Latino or Turkish, easy mistake for press to make. After all, Spanish terrorism is a thing. And I remember several Western films featuring Mexicans. It must be an annoyance or irritation for Walid Aly that four women died, and one man. But maybe it has nothing to do with religion. Like when that Turk shot JPII, or when that Palestinian shot Bobby Kennedy. 

The joke is on us for listening to left wing comics. And every joke they make sounds the same.

The Democrat convention was an example to all. They fenced the city of brotherly love. They stole passes from people who were conservative and worked in conventions for a living. Obama came and lied, claiming he had destroyed Trump. The head of the convention resigned soon after it turned out they had fixed polls for Hillary, and against Bernie Sanders, who endorsed Hillary anyway. But the people's anger is not against them. It is directed against anyone that is Muslim because Islamic leaders refuse to condemn terrorists who commit atrocities in the name of Allah. Many of those leaders have stolen money from their people and given some to Hillary. And we don't want people here like them because they are so like ALP voters anyway.
=== from 2015 ===
It is apparent that Nikki Savva has played a central role in rolling Mr Abbott, which explains why her commentary was so off key and hostile with his administration. Her husband is now part of Turnbull's fan club. Malcolm Turnbull is not as good a PM as Mr Abbott. He is too shaky and lacks cool judgement that made Mr Abbott an international statesman capable of making hard decisions quickly. But Mr Turnbull now has something that Mr Abbott did not. Loyalty. 

For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
This column is reliant on Facebook providing embed codes to users. Many of the comments made in each editorial reference those articles shared on Facebook and by denying the code, Facebook prevent the easy distribution of those articles and another way will have to be found. Meaning less time spent on Facebook. An expected fall back will be Twitter. Facebook are free to do anything they please. Those embed codes mean they have badged those articles I reference and it is good for them. And my moving away from Facebook to Twitter will mean less traffic long term, but also less traffic when my column takes off. Currently Sydney Conservative gets from a thousand hits a day to four thousand hits a day. Libertarianism is idealistic for adherents, but unlike other ideals, it isn't perfectly expressed. A Libertarian wants 'reduced regulation' but not 'no regulation,' which is anarchy. And Anarchy is very different to Libertarian. Markets don't need the distortion of over regulation, but they need sufficient to be markets which function as markets. So a person who calls themselves Libertarian is being dishonest if they say it means they don't like rules. There are some they think are sensible. The question remains which? Just as with Conservatives, Libertarians can have markedly different positions which fall under the umbrella. Unlike socialists which tend to converge to one opinion which fails to holistically retain expression sensibly. Ultimately, the Conservative Voice articles published under Sydney Conservative wants to be independent of Google, Facebook and their arbitrary rules. 

In Sydney an ADF guy was attacked by people who roughly fit the bill of Islamic. Because of that, it is lucky it is reported at all. The age has declined to report a couple of cars in Melbourne which stopped in a street and had occupants brawling. Had they not appeared to be Islamic, it might have been reported. People need to be aware of public disturbances so they know where they can be and make informed decisions, it is a basic part of freedom in Democracy. Already there are those who are obfuscating the issue and it will be the tension between Islam and terror. Terrorists claim to be Islamic. Islamic leaders embrace their values. But the activity of terrorists is not reflective of Islam according to Islamic peoples. There is a reason why young Islamic peoples are radicalised, and that reason is disputed by terrorist apologists. And for that the reason lies outside Islam. Because some of the worst killers in the Middle East are radicals raised in the West. The disturbing thought is that they are radicalised by the west towards Islam and it is important for us to know why. But apologists are obfuscating over the issue. The obvious reality is that truth is not part of the radical ideology. And in the west the left wing deconstructionists have disregarded truth in favour of opinion. Children like direction, and react badly when denied it. This is not to excuse the activity of terrorists as being upset children, but trying to understand their behaviour so as to address it. And media are not doing their job, and because of that, it exists.

Putting aside terrorism for a moment, mainstream media have done a bad job of explaining things to reasonable people. On Al Jazeera with a range of others exploring radicalisation of Islamic Youth was Jason Morison who is a reasonable bloke and 'centre right' in political outlook, although he often is too balanced and takes on left wing values at times. Like he did in this particular interview when he deplored the activity of radicalised youths participating in terrorism over seas. So the terrorist apologist asked him if he felt the same way about youths going to Israel to serve in the IDF. The panel convenor did not provide a framework for Morison and he made the common mistake of saying that there was equivalence between terrorism and serving in the IDF. Morison is not stupid and would be aware of his mistake, but in interview, destabilised by different apologists for terror, Morison agreed to something stupid. There is no equivalence between an IDF officer and a terrorist. An IDF officer is as well trained as any Australian Soldier and would not be party to what terrorists do. We are too conditioned to be reasonable when faced with terrorist lies. Because the truth is not discussed in mainstream media, it is not known that Palestinians are not a real people, but a UN construction only coming into existence after 1967. It is not known that Lebanon fought a civil war which impinged on Israel. It is not known that Israel is a peaceful nation beset by those wanting her destroyed. And the chaff thrown up by mainstream media means when faced with those truths, a reasonable person throws up their hands and says they don't know what to think. There are too many competing voices without truth for the obvious reality to be seen. And this is what is radicalising Islamic Youth. Not Islam, although the leaders seem confused on that issue. It is the ABC and Fairfax and mainstream media pushing excuses and memes for hungry radical leaders. The narratives drift at mainstream media hubs so as to satisfy the broader accusation of blood libel of Jews dating back before the Protocol of the Elders of Zion. Only that work was made as an anti semitic lie.

Has immigration brought terror to Australia? Should we blame Islam before Australia? Is terrorism protected by anti racism? Is the Wolf at the door .. or in the house? The Grand Mufti can't speak English or the language of his followers. The boy who was shot by police heavily identified with ISIS .. was he a terrorist? Certainly the person the Age identified was not a terrorist, but the child of a hero who, now he has been identified, is at risk of terrorists everywhere. Age suggests appeasement as a course of action and the Left fail to understand why kids are radicalised by leftwing rhetoric. A Frenchman is beheaded by terrorists and Darwin Muslims pray against terror. And finally we find Islamic leaders who preach the religion of peace. And bigots who hate Islam try to goad everyone into opposing Islam to oppose terrorism.

Generational welfare related to migration? University training too liberal? Nuclear power and dams are best for limiting plant food, Cate Blanchet gets an honorary science doctorate by spouting hysteric AGW lies. Meanwhile a union kicks out a whistleblower who reports on their corruption and an HSU boss testifies that he lied for ALP Vice President Williamson about bogus payments credited to Williamson from union members. 
From 2013
A stupid argument is dong the rounds. It is related to the large number of Christians being killed by terrorists around the world. The argument ignores the fact that terrorists shouldn't be allowed to kill *anyone* regardless of race or creed. But those stupid people have got extraordinary powers. The President of the USA opened the door recently, ordering Israel to release such killers into the community for a peace deal. One is reminded of how a foolish Moshe Dayan gave away Jerusalem for a peace that never eventuated. Obama's position is more sophisticated, but little different. This time, as Iran powers nuclear weapons, Obama is providing distractions. 

Obama distractions are pernicious. Benghazi was part of a pre-election attempt to show that AlQaeda had been defeated by surrendering to them. One possible result of that was the recent slaughter in Kenya. It is possible that the weapons used in Kenya weren't supplied by the US government. Similarly, a report into the August assassination of three Australian soldiers in Afghanistan by a Taliban aided insider has received comment today with the report that security was lax at the time. Family of the deceased and wounded are not happy that everything was done which might have prevented those deaths. The timing is critical. Australian government which was aligned with Obama at that time had no problem in sacrificing soldiers to preserve the myth so that Obama might be re-elected. At the time, the defence minister was at war with the department, and inflating sex allegations while soldiers were dying from bad policy. Awkward.

Follow the stupid argument as people take exception to Jewish attempts to protect her people from the predations of cultural monsters, abusing love and confusing marriage custom. Terrorists cannot speak for a culture, even if that culture, weakened by internal division, accepts it. The example of great people is not currently part of Islam. That does not mean all Islamic people are bad. But it does mean that responsible people can't give power to bad people. We cannot accept Iran becoming a nuclear power. We cannot accept Syria using chemical weapons on her own people. That doesn't mean we have to bomb Syria. Or listen to Iran delay examination of her nuclear facility. But it does mean dithering is not the optimal course. 

In Australia, the debate of AGW has been decided. The hysteria may continue, but the hysterics have lost. Similarly with the abuse of power that became the NBN. Students going to university have now got more money because they aren't going to be forced to pay union fees that go to supporting the ALP, not students. Tonight on 7:30 report, prospective ALP leader Albanese claimed that only thirty thousand votes separated the ALP from continuing government in the recent election. The denial that the ALP deserved to be in opposition on a hundred year low primary vote is dangerous for the future of the ALP. The ALP failed to reform after '96. It is union dominated, irrelevant to its supporter base, who aren't ignorant parasites, but are aspirational. The love media still support the ALP. 
Historical perspective on this day
275 – In Rome (after the assassination of Aurelian), the Senate proclaims Marcus Claudius Tacitus Emperor.
762 – Led by Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, the Hasanid branch of the Alids begins the Alid Revoltagainst the Abbasid Caliphate.
1066 – The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.
1237 – England and Scotland sign the Treaty of York, establishing the location of their common border.
1396 – Ottoman Emperor Bayezid I defeats a Christian army at the Battle of Nicopolis.

1513 – Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.
1555 – The Peace of Augsburg is signed in Augsburg by Charles V and the princes of the Schmalkaldic League.
1690 – Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, the first newspaper to appear in the Americas, is published for the first and only time.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Ethan Allen surrenders to British forces after attempting to capture Montreal during the Battle of Longue-Pointe. Benedict Arnold and his expeditionary company set off from Fort Western, bound for Quebec City.
1789 – The United States Congress passes twelve amendments to the United States Constitution: The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.
1790 – Peking opera is born when the Four Great Anhui Troupes introduce Anhui operato Beijing in honor of the Qianlong Emperor's eightieth birthday.

1804 – The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedition as a toll for allowing the expedition to move further upriver.
1868 – The Imperial Russian steam frigate Alexander Nevsky is shipwrecked off Jutlandwhile carrying Grand Duke Alexei of Russia.
1890 – The United States Congress establishes Sequoia National Park.

1906 – Leonardo Torres y Quevedo demonstrates the Telekino, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered to be the first use of a remote control.
1911 – An explosion of badly degraded propellant charges on board the French battleship Liberté detonates the forward ammunition magazines and destroys the ship.
1912 – Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is founded in New York City.
1915 – World War I: The Second Battle of Champagne begins.
1926 – The international Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery is first signed.
1929 – Jimmy Doolittle performs the first blind flight from Mitchel Field proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.

1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Eighth Route Army gains a minor, but morale-boosting victory in the Battle of Pingxingguan.
1942 – World War II: Swiss Police instruction dictates that "Under current practice ... refugees on the grounds of race alone are not political refugees", effectively denying entry to Jews trying to flee occupied Europe during the Holocaust.
1944 – World War II: Surviving elements of the British 1st Airborne Division withdraw from Arnhem in the Netherlands, thus ending the Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden.

1955 – The Royal Jordanian Air Force is founded.
1956 – TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system, is inaugurated.
1957 – Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops.
1959 – Solomon Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is mortally wounded by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama, and dies the next day.

1962 – The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.
1962 – The North Yemen Civil War begins when Abdullah al-Sallal dethrones the newly crowned Imam al-Badr and declares Yemen a republic under his presidency.
1963 – Lord Denning releases the UK government's official report on the Profumo Affair.
1964 – The Mozambican War of Independence against Portugal begins.
1969 – The charter establishing the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is signed.

1970 – Ceasefire between Jordan and the Fedayeen ends fighting triggered by four hijackings on September 6 and 9.
1974 – The first ulnar collateral ligament replacement surgery (Tommy John surgery) performed, on baseball player Tommy John.
1977 – About 4,200 people take part in the first running of the Chicago Marathon.
1978 – PSA Flight 182, a Boeing 727, collides in mid-air with a Cessna 172 and crashes in San Diego, killing 144 people.

1981 – Belize joins the United Nations.
1983 – Maze Prison escape: Thirty-eight IRA prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison.
1992 – NASA launches the Mars Observer, a $511 million probe to Mars, in the first U.S. mission to the planet in 17 years. Eleven months later, the probe would fail.
2003 – The 8.3 Mw Hokkaidō earthquake strikes just offshore Hokkaidō, Japan.
=== 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 Kathleen Kek, Lambert Okodeh and Tola Sun. Born on the same day, across the years, as 1968 – Will Smith, American actor, producer, and rapper (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince), 1961 – Heather Locklear, American actress and model, 1952 – Christopher Reeve, American actor (d. 2004), 1946 – Felicity Kendal, English actress, 1944 – Michael Douglas, American actor and producer, 1929 – Barbara Walters, American journalist, broadcaster, and author, 1929 – Ronnie Barker, English comedian and actor (d. 2005), 1921 – Robert Muldoon, New Zealand politician, 31st Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 1992), 1915 – Ethel Rosenberg, Soviet spy (d. 1953) and 1862 – Billy Hughes, Australian politician, 7th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1952). 
Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia
You have revolted and wrecked the frigate. Your market garden is defeated. But the surgery is a success. Finally you are free. Time to party. Enjoy your day.
Deaths
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Tim Blair 2017

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Andrew Bolt 2017

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Piers Ackerman

Left’s gender views defy Darwinian logic

IT’S not as though there is a lack of global problems (65.3m displaced people, 23m victims of human trafficking) but Australian leftists seem obsessed with sex, Piers Akerman writes. 
PIERS AKERMAN 25 Sep
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Andrew Bolt

Is it embarrassing to admit they're Left?

These comics - and Time - show either the same shyness or lack of self-awareness as so many ABC presenters. Or perhaps it is deceit. Why pretend they are not of the Left, hunting in a pack?
25 Sep  
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Money man Minister Scott Morrison

Piers Akerman – Friday, September 25, 2015 (12:19am)

WITH the accession of Malcolm Turnbull to the prime ministership, “their” ABC and the Fairfax media highlighted congratulatory messages from two quite irrelevant groups, the homosexual lobby and the republican movement, whose combined support could not swing a federal election.
 Continue reading 'Money man Minister Scott Morrison'
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THE FACEBOOK INCIDENT

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (7:01pm)

An unfriending leads to further action: 
The Fair Work Commission has found that a Tasmanian woman was bullied by a work colleague who unfriended her on Facebook after a confrontation in the workplace …
Rachael Roberts, a Launceston real estate agent, complained to the commission that she was bullied by her colleague Lisa Bird, leaving her with depression and anxiety.
The Facebook incident took place in January this year, after Ms Bird allegedly called Ms Roberts a “naughty little schoolgirl running to the teacher” during an aggressive meeting in the tea room.
Ms Roberts told the commission she left the office crying and when she later checked Facebook to see if Ms Bird has commented on Facebook about the incident, she found that Ms Bird had deleted her as a Facebook friend.
Fair Work Commission deputy president Nicole Wells said in her decision that the unfriending was unreasonable behaviour and that Ms Roberts had been bullied at work. 
This is ridiculous.
(Via J.F. Beck.)
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FIVE YEARS OF CARBON GUNSLINGING

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (3:23pm)

Labor’s Julia Gillard, 2010: 
There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead. 
Labor’s Julia Gillard, 2011: 
I’m determined to price carbon. 
Labor’s Julia Gillard, 2012: 
Carbon pricing starts today. 
Labor’s Kevin Rudd, 2013: 
Today we’ve taken the decision to terminate the carbon tax. 
Labor’s Julia Gillard, 2014: 
They’ve swept away carbon pricing and the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, but good reforms often take more than one go around and they’ll be back. 
Labor’s Bill Shorten, July 2015: 
It is not in our discussion paper, or in our view at all, to have a carbon tax. 
Labor’s Bill Shorten today: 
Labor has stuck to its guns and the tide is turning on real action on climate change. 
===

THEY LOVE HIM

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (1:38pm)

Following Leigh Sales’s extraordinarily polite interview with Malcolm Turnbull, other ABC identities declare their admiration for the new Prime Minister:

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UNSAFE AT ANY EID

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (1:29pm)

The number of people killed by Volkswagen’s diesel trickery: zero.
The number of people killed at this year’s Hajj pilgrimage: more than 700. 
A huge stampede has killed at least 700 people and injured hundreds more at the annual Hajj in Saudi Arabia, in the pilgrimage’s worst tragedy in a quarter of a century …
In the last major incident in January 2006, 364 pilgrims were killed in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina.
In 1990 a huge stampede in a tunnel at Mina after a failure in its ventilation system killed 1,426 pilgrims, mainly from Asia.
Thursday’s tragedy occurred outside the five-storey Jamarat Bridge, which was erected in the last decade at a cost of more than $1 billion and intended to improve safety during the pilgrimage. 
According to the New York Times, some officials blame the dead for this year’s disaster: “The Saudi health minister, Khalid al-Falih, said in a statement that the stampede may have been caused by ‘some pilgrims who didn’t follow the guidelines and instructions issued by the responsible authorities.’ “ Still, at least they weren’t driving diesel Golfs. 
===

A FESTIVAL OF AUDITORY PLEASURE

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (2:33am)

Just in time for your morning commute, here is this week’s Accidents Happen podcast starring me and Joe Hildebrand. Well, mainly starring me, obviously.
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AUSTRALIA WITH THE HANDBRAKE OFF

Tim Blair – Friday, September 25, 2015 (1:46am)

In this week’s Spectator: Lone Star state adventures involving your host, the great Iowahawk and many various others. Also in the Spectator, this compelling opening line from Rod Liddle: 
A friend of mine once watched Jeremy Corbyn try to rape an owl. 
Do read on.
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ABC killed Abbott, lauds Turnbull

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (5:41pm)

The ABC used its massive state power illegitimately to campaign against Tony Abbott. For now it is cheering his successor, Malcolm Turnbull, in the expectation he will restore some of its lost funding.
The adulation it is lavishing on him is approaching Pravda proportions, as Gerard Henderson notes:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'ABC killed Abbott, lauds Turnbull'
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Let the Pope do as he preaches on illegal immigrants

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (5:00pm)

This political Pope lectures the United States on illegal immigrants:
“Thousands of persons are led to travel north in search of a better life for themselves and for their loved ones, in search of greater opportunities. Is this not what we want for our own children?” he said. “We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’” 
How many illegal immigrants are in the US?
Census data also shows that the number of foreign-born residents in America is 40.3 million.... Pew Research estimates that there were 11.2 million illegal immigrants… The Department of Homeland Security… estimates 11.4 million
How many illegal immigrants has the Pope accepted into the Vatican, one of the richest countries in the world, per capita?
...the Vatican City said on Friday it had taken in a family that had fled the war in Syria. The family – a father, mother and their two children – came from Damascus...
What religion did they have to be to qualify?
The Syrian family of four, all Melkite Greek Catholics...
How tough are the Vatican’s own immigration rules?
The Vatican, for its part, welcomes millions of visitors a year — but allows only a very select few, who meet strict criteria, to be admitted as residents or citizens. Only about 450 of its 800 or so residents actually hold citizenship…
Hypocrite.
UPDATE
Gerard Henderson gets it said in his always readable Media Watch Dog blog:
Hendo happens to think that the last true pope was named Pius XII and that the present pontiff, Pope Francis, is a sandal-wearing eco-catastrophist Jesuit of the kind which drove Hendo out of the Church years ago.
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Can’t give credit: Fairfax said Abbott couldn’t stop the boats. Now it claims he didn’t

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (2:45pm)

Fairfax, June 2013:
Abbott plan to stop boats ‘won’t work’
Fairfax, July 2013:
Like his vow to repeal the carbon tax, Abbott’s promise to ‘’stop the boats’’ is one on which his credibility rests. 
Fairfax, July 2013:
Say we vote to turn back those boats. What next? Abbott’s long-standing pledge has become an election credibility issue for his party...
Fairfax now:
Did Tony Abbott stop the boats? New analysis casts doubt on claims
Fairfax now says Labor stopped the boats. So transparent. So sad. 
===

China pretends it will cut emissions, while making sure we cut our throats

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (2:28pm)

Bottom line: China’s emissions will keep growing. Feeding the global warming scare means encouraging its Western rivals to cut their own growth, giving China a strategic long-term advantage:
Environment Minister Greg Hunt has cast doubt on China’s willingness to impose an effective price on greenhouse gas emissions, noting its regional cap-and-trade schemes have given almost all of their carbon credits away for free. 
Speaking after reports that China was moving toward an emissions trading scheme, Mr Hunt told Sky News: “A quarter of the world’s emissions are coming from China and that is set to increase by 150 per cent from 2005 to 2030.
“If China takes action to reduce emissions that’s good, but it’s up to each country to work out how they do it.
“I’d be very interested to know what percentage of permits are given away for free; it’s 99 to 100 per cent for the pilot schemes, and that may well be the case here.” China President Xi Jinping will announce later today a cap-and-trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions in a landmark commitment, according to The New York Times.
With Malcolm Turnbull now Prime Minister, global warming turns from a negative to a positive for Labor leader Bill Shorten:
If China thinks that the sort of policies Labor’s recommending are a good idea, if the Americans are going down the same path, and if Labor is going in lock-step with rest of the world, why is Malcolm Turnbull the only person who is chasing after Tony Abbott’s discredited schemes? 
Malcolm Turnbull, in order to capture the Liberal Party and replace Mr Abbott, has had to sign up to a dirty deal to implement Tony Abbott’s failed policies on climate change.
So much posturing, and the maddening thing is that 97 per cent of journalists refuse to see the satellite data that’s right under their nose - data showing no real warming for 18 years:
Chances are that that some modest warming will resume at some stage, but what is unquestionable is that what we’ve seen is way less than the models predicted. But so much pride and money is now at stake that few warmists dare admit it. 
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Strangely, British voters aren’t keen on mad socialists and green puritans

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (9:08am)

Labor opened up its leadership contest to let couch activists vote. This would be more “democratic”. The result was Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist and friend of terrorists.
The choice hasn’t proved half as popular with the public:
Jeremy Corbyn’s poll ratings are worse than any Labour leader for more than 30 years, a damning new survey reveals. 
Every leader from Michael Foot to Ed Miliband started in the job with a positive approval rating - with more people saying he is doing a good job than a bad one. But Mr Corbyn’s debut in an IpsosMORI poll shows he has a negative rating of -3 per cent, with less than a third of voters thinking he is a capable leader. 
But what’s not to like about a bunch of socialists and greens wanting to impose their beliefs on everyone else?
Meat should be treated like tobacco with a public campaign to stop people eating it, Jeremy Corbyn’s new vegan shadow farming minister has suggested. Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, has irked the British farming industry with her veganism ...
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 
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Another reason Abbott should have sacked this shameless woman

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (9:04am)

And this shameless woman still has the hide to claim Tony Abbott was wrong to dump her, for which she punished him with betrayal in the leadership vote:
The Finance Department audit of Bronwyn Bishop’s travel expenses will report on a $4510 private flight to northern NSW, where she shared political war stories at a function co-hosted and sponsored by a state Coalition MP. 
Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal­ the then Speaker chartered the twin-propeller Beech 58 plane from Canberra to the International Women’s Day charity fundraiser in Port Macquarie, and then home to Sydney on March 6.
The previously unreported flight is the fourth of Mrs Bishop’s charter claims to come under scrutiny since July, when she was ­pilloried for claiming $5770 for a luxury helicopter ride from Melbourne to a Liberal fundraiser near Geelong…
Karen Archer, president of the Hastings Business Women’s Network, which organised the ­Hast­ings Heroines function, said Mrs Bishop’s address contained “a mix of everything”.
“There were little anecdotes about her time in the Howard years and her preselection and all different things like that,” she said…
Mrs Bishop ... justified using charter ­entitlements to attend Liberal fund­raisers at Geelong, Nowra and Young because she was educating community groups about parliamentary procedure. Several one-hour commercial flights between Port Macquarie and Sydney are available each day.
Just leave Parliament, Bronwyn. You’re through. 
===

Making it a crime to doubt the warmist faith

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (8:58am)

The Inquisition persecuted Galileo for doubting the faith. Now apostles of the warming faith demand President Barack Obama persecute sceptics:
The risks posed by climate change, including increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidity – and potential strategies for addressing them – are detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States… We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. 
We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. 
The names of the scientists who signed this shameful document, and make themselves enemies of free inquiry:
Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
(continued on page 2)
Letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren
David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT
(Via the IPA.) 
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, September 27

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (8:37am)

Waffles for breakfast on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am (reheated at 3pm).
NewsWatch:  Rowan Dean, editor of the Spectator Australia and columnist for the Courier Mail. Waffle tips for Turnbull. And on how he’s stealing Abbott’s credit:
Editorial:  My Malcolm Turnbull.
My guest: New Energy and Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, an Abbott loyalist kept on by Turnbull and even promoted.
The panel:  former Labor campaign strategist Bruce Hawker, who knows better than most about post-coup fury, and John Roskam, head of the Institute of Public Affairs.

And a quiz in our special section on the decline of the West: guess how many trained insurgents Barack Obama has fighting the Islamic State in Syria: 40,000, 4000, 400 or four?
Some analysis of this, too:
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

How Volkswagen was caught

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (8:06am)

Harry Tucker on how Volkswagen was caught out cheating on emissions from its diesel cars:
In the Autumn of 2014, researchers from the West Virginia University in America were given a grant to do the first ever evaluation of the tailpipe emissions of diesel cars in America made by European manufacturers. The team consisted of two university professors, Gregory Thompson and Dan Carder as well as two students, Marc Besch and Arvind Thiruvengadam…

They tested three cars: a BMW X5, Volkswagen Jetta and Volkswagen Passat, while travelling over 2400kms on each car to get their results.
After driving from Los Angeles to Seattle and back they noticed something odd about their Passat. Going by Volkswagen’s claims, it should easily have let out the least amount of pollution between those three cars — it had a more modern catalytic reduction system which is meant to convert toxic fumes into safer ones — but that wasn’t the case. The nitrogen oxide that came out of the Passat was in fact 20 times more than the baseline levels permitted by the California Air Resources Board.
The team was puzzled. There was no way it could be wrong. They triple-checked the accuracy of their equipment after the Volkswagen Jetta they tested showed readings 30 times more than the claimed pollution rating.
The BMW, though, gave off the exact results they expected.
At the time, the team had no idea why the cars were emitting so much pollution… “...We didn’t point and say, ‘Volkswagen has a defeat device’,” Thiruvengadam told Autoblog.
However, a few months later at a 2014 conference in San Diego, they presented their research to an audience that just happened to have several EPA officials in it. The officials immediately started an investigation…

Eventually they found software called “the switch” which tracks the position of the steering wheel, vehicle speed, how long the engine is on, and air pressure to determine if it is being subjected to an emissions exam.
Finally, on September 3 2015, the EPA presented mountains of evidence to Volkswagen and forced them to confess the vehicles were loaded with software to cheat on emissions testing.
===

The Turnbull network emerges

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (7:50am)

The Australian’s Niki Savva welcomes the move she’s long demanded, and the demise she long advocated:
A good sign, a smart move, was the early engagement of Tony Nutt to help manage the transition for Turnbull. Nutt, the NSW Liberal Party state director and former principal private secretary to John Howard, finally made it back into the PM’s office on Tuesday… Arthur Sinodinos will be brought in from the cold…

Peta Credlin ... ended up destroying [Abbott].
Will Glasgow adds context:
First Tony Nutt reunited with Arthur Sinodinos… Then Nutt favourite and legendary Liberal advancer Vincent Woolcock reappeared at Malcolm Turnbull’s signing in last Tuesday… 
“You know order has been restored when Vincent is opening and closing doors,” a relieved Liberal told us.  Woolcock is the husband of political columnist at The Oz, Niki Savva.
More:
Vincent Woolcock, a former staffer to Mr Costello....
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

The gates of Europe are open. The guards have fled. The people welcome their end

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (6:55am)

Mark Steyn on the invasion of Europe - and the blindness of the Europeans welcoming this advancing army:
Twelve years ago, it was said that the western armies in Iraq would be welcomed as liberators. (They were - for a while.) Today in Germany, another conquering army are being welcomed as liberators - liberators from the residual moral stain of what remains of ethnic nationalism and cultural identity. Watching European news broadcasts right now is like an insane demotic inversion of the Emperor’s new clothes. “To a fool these thousands of fit young Muslim men appear well dressed and well fed. But a wise man such as Your Majesty can easily see that they are desperate starving refugees in rags.” And so as the trains pull in to German railway stations to disgorge men who meet no known definition of “refugees” they are greeted on the platform by volunteers offering food and second-hand clothes. The cameras do their best to alight on a telegenic moppet or a covered woman, but, even when they do, you notice that they’re surrounded by a sea of confident vigorous males - who, according to the UN, make up 75 per cent of the “refugees”. 
That would be an unusual demographic distortion in most emergency situations. If 75 per cent of the Titanic’s survivors had been men who’d left their women and children back on the ship, there might have been a few disapproving comments. But not here. And why complain that the Syrian refugees aren’t really “refugees”? After all, they’re not Syrian either. Only one in five of the arriving migrants are Syrians fleeing the implosion of their country.
Key line:
If everyone goes to Germany, there will be no Germany to go to. 
(Via Steve Kates.) 
===

Ask the immigration minister why cities are choked

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (6:26am)

The most important minister is missing from Turnbull’s “gang of three”:
The Turnbull government is launching talks with the states on a new agenda to “unclog” the nation­’s major cities, in the next step of a $50 billion infrastructure plan that abandons Tony ­Abbott’s­ veto of public transport… 
Malcolm Turnbull has ­assigned three ministers to lead the agenda, out of concern that the biggest cities are choking… “One thing we want the state governments to do is to actually give us projects,” Jamie Briggs, the new Minister for Cities and the Built Environment, told The Australian… The new Major Projects Minister, Paul Fletcher, told The Australian the new projects would be judged on their national signif­icance… Environment Minister Greg Hunt ...  will be responsible for the urban policy in cabinet. 
The missing minister? Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. It is insane to be importing a net 173,000 people a year when unemployment is so high and the cities so full. 
===

Iran attacks Saudis over 700 pilgrim deaths

Andrew Bolt September 25 2015 (6:06am)

A disaster, and used by Iran to further undermine Saudi Arabia:
IRAN’S supreme leader says Saudi Arabia is responsible for the stampede during the annual hajj which left more than 700 Muslim pilgrims dead, including 90 Iranians. 
Laying the blame for the deaths on “improper measures” and “mismanagement,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced three days of mourning… The deadly stampede comes less than two weeks after more than 100 were killed and hundreds more injured when fierce winds collapsed an enormous construction crane onto Mecca’s Grand Mosque, marring preparations for this year’s hajj.
Mind you, Iran has a point about the organisation of the hajj. Or is there a cultural issue that produces - or accepts - so many deadly stampedes?:
In January 2006, 364 pilgrims died in a stampede during the stoning ritual in Mina. 
A crush of pilgrims at Mina killed 244 pilgrims and injured hundreds on the final day of the hajj ceremonies in 2004.
About 180 pilgrims were trampled to death in panic after several of them fell off an overpass during the final stoning ritual at Mina in 1998.
A year earlier, 340 pilgrims were killed in a fire at the tent city of Mina as the blaze was aided by high winds. More than 1,500 were injured.
Some 270 pilgrims died in a stampede in Mina in 1994. The worst hajj-related tragedy claimed 1426 lives in a stampede in an overcrowded pedestrian tunnel in 1990.
===

The wolf isn’t at the door, it’s in the house

Piers Akerman – Thursday, September 25, 2014 (6:39pm)

THANKS to the publicly funded ethnic lobby and its supporters at the ABC, SBS and Fairfax, Australians were denied the opportunity to examine and possibly root out the evil of Islamo-fascism when it first came to public attention during the so-called Cronulla riots of December 2005.

 Continue reading 'The wolf isn’t at the door, it’s in the house'
===

UNIFORMOPHOBIA

Tim Blair – Thursday, September 25, 2014 (5:30pm)

Police attacked in Melbourne, and now an Australian Defence Force officer attacked in Sydney: 
An Australian Defence Force officer has been assaulted by two men in Sydney’s west.
Police say the 41-year-old ADF serving member was in full uniform when he was allegedly approached by two men of Middle Eastern appearance in Bella Vista on Thursday morning.
The officer told police he was threatened and assaulted about 6.30am, leaving him with minor bruising. 
Certain groups in the community are facing severe prejudice, and they ain’t Middle Eastern.
===

NOT A TERRORIST

Tim Blair – Thursday, September 25, 2014 (2:27pm)

The family of a heroic Afghan Australian killed by a terrorist suicide bomber is furious that the man’s grandson has been mistakenly labelled a “teenage terrorist” by Fairfax Media.
Close relatives of the teenager pictured on the front pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald today are demanding an explanation and apology for what they call a stupid and avoidable error …

The youth pictured beside the headline “Teenage Terrorist” in coverage of the Endeavour Hills stabbings is the third son of a successful academic family highly respected in Australia’s Afghani community. He works in an outer suburban Hungry Jacks store three days a week to support his full time education at Minaret College in Springvale.
Fairfax has since “unreservedly apologised” for the error …
The boy’s grandfather Hakim Taniwal was killed with a nephew and two others near Kabul in 2006, four years after he agreed to return from refuge in Australia to act as a Governor of a troubled province. 
(Via Wilbur)
UPDATE. Great headline at Quadrant: “A case of Numan error.”
UPDATE II. The SMH has now involved celebrity chef Jamie Durie in this debacle.
===

A MOMENT OF CONSIDERATION

Tim Blair – Thursday, September 25, 2014 (1:54pm)

Clementine Ford puts on her thinking pants: 
Surely it would make some kind of sense to consider WHY young people are becoming radicalised enough to want to ‘fight’? 
Maybe it’s something they’ve read. Who knows?
UPDATE. Vanessa Badham’s description of attempted murderer Numan Haider: 
… the teenager shot by the cops. 
What were the police meant to do, Vanessa? Throw a toasted sandwich at him?
===

NO COMMIES, NO CARBON

Tim Blair – Thursday, September 25, 2014 (1:42pm)

According to the Economist, nuclear power and dams are two of the most effective ways to cut carbon dioxide:

Also handy: getting rid of communism (see the 12th item on the above list). Which makes these people look even more ridiculous, if that is even possible.
===

AWFUL AWFULNESS

Tim Blair – Wednesday, September 24, 2014 (8:07pm)

A classic Fairfax reaction from senior Age correspondent Daniel Flitton: 
Victoria’s police chief Ken Lay was absolutely right to promise a swift response to any racism or prejudicial crime after the awful assault and shooting of Numan Haider in Endeavour Hills …
Frankly, the whole country can afford a little calm perspective. What happened on Tuesday night was a crime, which needs to be properly investigated. 
Yep. A solid dose of “calm perspective” will stop these jihadis.
UPDATE. Back in 2012, thousands of global Islamist murders ago, Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Uthman Badar had this to say following that year’s Sydney riots: 
A sense of perspective is missing here. 
Fairfax is completely on the same page as the Hizbies, right down to identical evasive terminology.
UPDATE II. Further from Flitton: 
We are confronted by two threats in Australia. One is extremists. The other is far more insidious. 
Far more insidious than maniacs attempting to murder police? This guy is gold.
UPDATE III. Fairfax makes some changes to Flitton’s copy: 
Victoria’s police chief Ken Lay was absolutely right to promise a swift response to any racism or prejudicial crime after the awful assault and subsequent shooting of Numan Haider in Endeavour Hills. 
And: 
What happened on Tuesday night appears to have been a crime when the 18-year-old rushed police, and needs to be properly investigated. 
My corrections invoice is in the mail.
===

Haider’s family has a disturbing preacher visit

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (7:16pm)

The family of the 18-year-old terror suspect shot dead by police are visited by a Muslim cleric with a radical past:
Director of the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah Association of Australia, Sheikh Abu Ayyman, visited the grieving family of Numan Haider, but said he’d never met the Endeavour Hills teenager…

Sheikh Abu Ayyman said it wasn’t just the Muslim community losing young people to crime.
“I don’t say Muslim community, I say all Australians are losing their kids to drugs, to crimes, whatever you name it. It’s not only the Muslim community,” he said.
“It’s not a different crime to other crimes, all of it is a crime. Any criminal should be dealt with in the proper way… but to make it only a Muslim community problem is unacceptable on every scale.” Sheikh Abu Ayyman said the Muslim community was saddened by what had occurred, but has been left “full of questions without answers.”
Ayman, better known as Mohammed Omran, has had some very suspect connections and made some equally suspect statements.
For instance:
”I dispute any evil action linked to Bin Laden, again I don’t believe that even September 11 from the beginning, I [don’t] believe it [was] done by any Muslim at all,” he said.
Later:
He (bin Laden) is a good man in some ways, and not in other ways.
Then there was this, from 2003: 
Reporter: Is it a good Muslim’s duty to go and fight the coalition forces for jihad in Iraq at the moment? 
Sheikh Mohammed Omran: I would say yes. 
And:
Somali community figures said Mr Ali was one of 30 or 40 Australian Somalis who have returned to fight since last December… 
His mother accused Mohammed Omran - the head of the fundamentalist Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jammah association who describes Osama bin Laden as a “good man” - of turning Mr Ali into a hardliner… 
UPDATE
The would-be killer becomes a victim, in a culture that seems to revel in victimhood. Channel 9’s Seb Costello reports:
We have a much more serious problem that some of the media outlets want you to believe.
Take the ABC’s PM, for instance. It made the astonishing decision to lead tonight’s show with an eight-minute report on Fairfax’s mistake of publishing the picture of an innocent (and alive) Afghan man instead of the dead Haider. It was nothing more than a transparent attempt to beat up an innocent mistake into a narrative of picking on Muslims. 
===

Blame Islam before you blame Australia

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:43pm)

TWO policemen are stabbed in Melbourne after offering to shake the hand of a Muslim terror suspect and who do Muslim leaders attack?

Yes, the police. Again.
The Islamic Council of Victoria’s reaction yesterday is a disgrace and only too typical of the Muslim leadership that has so betrayed Australia.
Here are the facts about the incident in Endeavour Hills on Tuesday, in which one officer was nearly killed after being knifed in the head, stomach and arm before the attacker was shot dead by the other officer, also wounded.
(Read full column here.) 
===

The Left’s slanders now put us in danger

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:42pm)

 HERE’S one easy way to fight jihadists so we don’t need to fear having our throat cut just walking down the street.
Memo to the Left, especially to the ABC and Independent MP Andrew Wilkie.
Stop slandering our country.

For decades the Left has tried to make Australia look hateful. It’s falsely claimed we committed genocide. It’s falsely claimed we stole up to 100,000 children just because they were Aboriginal – even though activists still cannot name even 10 examples.
Consider: if you were a child of immigrants from a proud culture would you give your loyalty instead to this wicked land?

This is now a question with a potentially deadly answer.
(Read full article here.) 
===

Immigration gave us a country where the armed forces no longer dare wear uniforms in our street

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (5:32pm)

This is no longer the Australia we knew. This is no longer something to be dismissed as just a problem with a tiny, unrepresentative minority:
A MEMBER of the Australian defence forces has been assaulted and threatened by two men of Middle Eastern appearance in Bellavista in north-western Sydney. 
The attack follows the knife attack on two police officers in Victoria that ended with an 18-year-old Islamic extremist being shot dead in Victoria.
NSW Police confirmed today that they were investigating the alleged attack on a member of the Australian Defence Force in full navy uniform at 6 o’clock this morning.
It is understood punches were thrown and threats of beheading were made.
A police spokesman confirmed the 41-year-old man allegedly suffered minor bruising in the attack and reported it later by telephone to Kings Cross police.
“The two men were described as being of middle eastern appearance,” the spokesman said. Defence force families have already been put on high alert after an incident in Western Sydney in which two men of Middle Eastern appearance approached the house of a serving soldier and asked if defence force personnel lived there. 
===

What else does The Age refuse to report in case you get the right idea about immigration?

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (2:32pm)

Mass immigration from the Middle East has given us so much that is new. Like newspapers now too scared to reveal facts that help to explain strangely wild brawls.
Note the missing details in The Age:
A dozen people have been arrested after a violent brawl broke out in Melbourne’s north in the early hours of this morning. 
The fight, which occurred in Mackellar Drive in Roxburgh Park around 1am, also left six people in hospital.
Police spokeswoman Leonie Johnson said police understand that everyone involved in the brawl knew each other.
“Police believe several people pulled up in the street in two cars and a fight ensued between some occupants of a house in the street,” she said.
Both men and women were involved in the brawl and were aged between 17 to 64 years of age, Ms Johnson said…
One man was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with serious head injuries. Four other men also sustained head injuries and one woman in her late teens was taken to the Austin Hospital with abdomen injuries.
A number of people remain under police guard in hospital, Ms Johnson said… 
“Everyone involved in the brawl knew each other.” As close as The Age gets to acknowledging an obvious tribal dimension.
The Herald Sun fills in the blanks:
SIX people are in hospital and 12 have been arrested after a family, including a pregnant woman, was attacked by a gang in Melbourne’s north. 
Members of the Al Nasera family said they feared they would die when up to 10 people surrounded their Roxburgh Park home and began brutally assaulting them in the street.
The family, who are Iraqi migrants, slammed police for failing to protect them after they called triple zero a number of times.
The family has accused three men from Wandong of organising the attack, motivated by “tribal thinking”.
Police confirmed officers arrested 12 people after a brawl in Mackellar Drive, but a spokeswoman said none had been charged…
Mr Al Nasera said he received a threatening phone call about 11pm from men he had known for five years “through the community”. He refused to detail what may have motivated the group, except to say it was “family”.
And when The Age does finally start to name names...:
THE family of a heroic Afghan Australian killed by a terrorist suicide bomber is furious that the man’s grandson has been mistakenly labelled a “teenage terrorist” by Fairfax Media.  
Close relatives of the teenager pictured on the front pages of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald today are demanding an explanation and apology for what they call a stupid and avoidable error.
(Thanks to readers Andrew and Steve.)  
===

In the welfare queue. Their children, too

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (11:26am)

Reader Geoff:
A couple of interesting ‘clients’ at the emergency relief centre where my wife volunteers, yesterday. 
The first was a couple. She was intellectually handicapped to the extent that she was incapable of completing a form which provided basic contact details and Centrelink number. Her ‘partner’ was similarly handicapped to the extent that he was in the charge of a carer. [The local] Hospital has confirmed that she is pregnant with twins. The second was a mother and daughter. The daughter was in her early twenties and the mother was seeking assistance because there were sons 12 and 14 at home and, since it was school holidays, she did not have enough money to feed them. The daughter was in a similar situation with insufficient money to feed the three children she already had—and she was about to give birth to a fourth!
===

Sheridan on Q&A: “immature and unworthy”

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (7:38am)

I’d go even further than Greg Sheridan and add that Q&A, by peddling inflammatory conspiracy theories favoured by jihadists, is actually putting lives at risk:
Overall, Australia’s institutions have responded intelligently to a challenging situation. One partial exception has been the ABC’s Q&A program and some of the ABC’s chat forums. Q&A should realise a minister, a shadow minister and assorted nuts does not constitute a balanced, mainstream, reasonable or even very intelligent panel. 
The sub-Noam Chomsky nonsense of many ABC guests is OK for stuff that doesn’t matter. But terrorism and community relations are too important for such irresponsible treatment. Q&A had a discussion this week about whether the anti-terror raids in Sydney and Brisbane involved a sinister conspiracy of timing to assist the government. This was immature and unworthy of a serious program on the taxpayer-funded broadcaster. Will the next Q&A discuss a fantasy conspiracy to provoke the Melbourne attack to assist the government? Such allegations are close to obscene. It’s a pity the national broadcaster can’t do as well as the nation’s political leadership.
===

Muslim stabs two policemen. And it’s all our fault?

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (7:26am)

A Muslim man takes two knives and an Islamic State flag to a meeting with two police and stabs them both, nearly killing one.
The Islamic Council of Victoria then disgraces itself, blaming everyone but the boy and everything but Islam:
The Islamic council of Victoria has refused to condemn the actions of a man who was fatally shot after stabbing two anti-terrorism police… 
Council secretary Ghaith Krayem has also criticised the government for adopting an “enforcement” approach to managing the threat of home-grown terrorism, describing underlying issues as social, rather than religious and in need of greater scrutiny.
“There needs to be no hint whatsoever that anything other than the complete truth about the events of yesterday are what comes out,” Mr Krayem said, after branding police comments made immediately after the tragedy as “disappointing"…
“We have a young man who is no longer with us and we have a family who today has woken up to some very terrible events and headlines which, quite frankly, at this stage there doesn’t appear to be objective justification for."…
Mr Krayem warned against making assumptions, saying that brandishing a flag and making disparaging comments about Australian agencies did not mean Mr Haider was a terrorist. Nor did being young, angry and immature, he said. “While I don’t know the young man personally, I do know many young men at that age and they can be brash, they can be angry, they can be immature.  None of those things make him a terrorist.”
More needed to be done to understand disaffected youths and bring them back into the community, rather than drive them further out by “treating them as criminals”, he said…
Mr Krayem blamed “inappropriate language” from senior members of the Abbott government and recent “ill-informed comments” from Senator Jacqui Lambie, as well as increased terror alerts, for mounting anxiety and fear in the community. 
Utterly shameful.
UPDATE
The Grand Mufti of Australia yesterday damned the Islamic State. And that’s good.
Unfortunately he spoke in a language most Muslims here don’t understand.
Reader the Village Idiot (Reformed): 
What’s the point of having a Grand Mufti who can’t speak English, when the majority of the followers of Islam can’t speak Arabic? 
The 2001 Census broke up Muslims ethnicity as follows: 
1. Australia: 36% 2. Lebanon: 10% 
3. Turkey: 8% 
4. Afghanistan: 3.5% 
5. Bosnia-Herzegovina: 3.5% 
6. Pakistan: 3.2% 
7. Indonesia: 2.9% 
8. Iraq: 2.8% 
9. Bangladesh: 2.7% 
10. Iran: 2.3% 
11. Fiji: 2.0%
Of course these figures ignore the substantial Afghan, Iraqi and Iranian influx under Rudd and Gillard. But my problem is that the Grand Mufti speaks only to a minority of Muslims –those that speak Arabic.
Only Lebanon and Iraq speak Arabic out of all the above Muslims. That’s 12.8% using the 2001 figures.
How can he control his flock when he can’t even communicate with them?
===

The key issue isn’t placating Morrison’s rivals but stopping terrorism

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (7:08am)

Niki Savva is right, and what she suggests should make sense to a Prime Minister so committed to the nation’s security:
Unnamed government sources were cited at the weekend saying Tony Abbott was keen to replicate the Operation Sovereign Borders model to address structural gaps in the bureaucracy in the wake of a review of counter-terrorism agencies… 
The success of OSB has derived from its clear objectives, its uncluttered structure and, equally importantly, the right personnel implementing it. It has one minister and one chief “bureaucrat” whose authority stems directly from a PM who has trusted them implicitly to do the job.
The two people who have made it work are the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Scott Morrison and the highly respected senior defence officer, Lt. General Angus Campbell.
The person who helped put them on the path was another distinguished officer, retired Major General Jim Molan, who designed OSB in conjunction with Morrison before last year’s election.
Interviewed on Ten’s Bolt Report on Sunday, Molan was adamant that in order to work best, any restructure of intelligence, policing, customs and border protection had to retain the simplicity of the structure of OSB, with one minister in charge. No prizes for guessing who he thinks that should be…
Part of the problem confronting the Prime Minister is the politics which would flow from such a major reorganisation. Attorney-General George Brandis would lose a chunk of his portfolio responsibilities. Before Tuesday night at least, the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, needed convincing a “homeland security-type” department was necessary. My column last week saying Morrison’s prominence on national security issues had lent weight to speculation inside the bureaucracy that he could be put in charge of such a department triggered a spike in paranoia. According to those who know him well Abbott lacks the paranoia gene. 
The main concern for Abbott would not be whether Morrison’s leadership ambitions are given too much of a boost for his rivals’ comfort. It is whether any reorganisation would help prevent the terrorist attacks Abbott has pledged himself to preventing.
===

A plague of dunces

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:25am)

Professor Ian Plimer calls for more elitism in universities:
[T]he University of Adelaide mining geologist said government spending should focus on the “hard sciences” that underpinned economic growth rather than “useless degrees that don’t increase the nation’s wealth”. 
“Although degrees in fine arts and politics and sociology may well be important, they are probably breaks brakes on the economy rather than stimuli to grow the economy,” Prof Plimer said…

...universities were churning out students who lacked a broad education and had little chance of finding work in their study area, he said. “That is the plague we have, the plague of dunces,” he said.
UPDATE 
===

Frenchman beheaded

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:20am)

That tiny, unrepresentative minority seems to have barbaric crazies everywhere:
JIHADISTS linked to the Islamic State group have beheaded a Frenchman abducted in Algeria in a video posted online, after Paris rejected their demand to halt air strikes in Iraq.

PRESIDENT Francois Hollande on Wednesday condemned the “cruel and cowardly” murder of Herve Gourdel and said it would only strengthen France’s resolve to pursue its air war against the Islamic State group. 
The 55-year-old was kidnapped on Sunday by Jund al-Khilifa, or “Soldiers of the Caliphate,” while hiking in a national park that became a sanctuary for Islamists… Gourdel only arrived in Algeria on Saturday and was seized the following day while hiking in the heart of the Djurdjura National Park, whose dense forests, deep gorges and picturesque lakes were once a major attraction for tourists.
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The real crime is to notice the knife at your throat

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:17am)

A Fairfax reaction:
We are confronted by two threats in Australia. One is extremists. The other is far more insidious. 
Translation: It was bad that the two policemen were stabbed and nearly killed. Bit it would be far more insidious if they resented Islam for putting them in hospital.
An Age headline writer confirms:
After Endeavour Hills, we must confront the threat within ourselves
I might behead myself?
UPDATE
It is bizarre that the founding president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils speaks more frankly about the real threat than do the non-Muslim apologists on The Age:
Haset Sali ... has attacked what he sees as the corrosive force of widespread corruption in many of Australia’s Muslim schools. 
He says the lack of functioning Muslim institutions is forcing many young Muslims toward the teachings of extremist imams preaching “Islamic fascism”.
Australian Muslim schools have been the centre of a series of financial of corruption scandals, with five of Sydney’s Muslim schools previously having their funding frozen or placed under government or police investigations for financial mismanagement…
“It gives way to all sorts of splinter groups, and the rise of — I would go as far to say — fascist imams who are not necessarily qualified. Unfortunately a lot of the young people of who have seen what has happened to Islamic ­society in Australia have been attracted to these groups."… Mr Sali said “the current situation that has evolved has triggered that rise of what I bluntly call Islamic fascists”. “If this goes unchecked in Australia, in the Middle East or anywhere else, the dangers are extreme,” he said. 
Feeling nervous? Thank the wilful blindness of the politicians who supervised the mass immigration programs that imported this threat. And, of course, the journalists who for years pretended there wasn’t one.
UPDATE
Paul Sheehan on the threat so many tried to ignore for so long:
The warning signs have grown more ominous for a long time. On November 1, 1998, Lakemba police station in Sydney was peppered with gunfire in a drive-by shooting. Sixteen shots were fired from four different weapons by men in a stolen car. Those charged included several Lebanese-Australians including Michael Kanaan, Wassim El-Assaad and Saleh Mahmoud Jamal. 
Kanaan, a Maronite Catholic, would later be convicted of three murders, among multiple other violent crimes. In a bizarre footnote to his bloody career, the former magistrate, Pat O’Shane, infamously discharged Kanaan from standing trial over shooting a police officer, describing the decision by two officers to pull over his car, then return gun fire, as “stupid, reckless and foolhardy”. She said their conduct had “indicated police harassment of youth”.
Saleh Jamal, a former drug dealer, fled Australia to Lebanon on a stolen passport in 2004. In Lebanon, he was jailed for weapons charges. Before being extradited back to Australia, he told a reporter he had wanted to undertake a terror attack in Sydney in the name of Islam.
Wassim El-Assaad, like Jamal and many Muslims who enter the criminal milieu here and overseas, gravitated to Islamic fundamentalism. He belongs to a group of Muslims serving long-term sentences who espoused jihad. Police have named El-Assaad (convicted murderer), Bassam Hamzy (convicted murderer), Rabeeh Mawas (convicted murderer) and Emad Sleiman (convicted murderer), among others, of espousing sympathy for jihad.
Muslims are over-represented in Goulburn’s super max prison and were prominent in an outbreak of violence last Sunday when prisoners reacted to a clamp-down of security. The cry of “Allah Akbah”, the rallying call of jihadists, was reportedly shouted by a number of inmates as they threatened guards.
Since the shootings at Lakemba police station there have been numerous terror plots, terror convictions and acts of social intimidation by Muslims in Australia, undercutting the widely preferred mantra of victimology of Muslims in Australia.
On Wednesday, Fairfax Media ran an opinion piece by a Muslim woman who wrote: “I still feel the scars of the Cronulla riots, where the flag of my beloved country was used as a symbol of pure hatred, of thuggery and racism.”
This is ironic given that ... the demonstration and fracas at Cronulla beach, on December 11 [2005], was sparked by hundreds of incidents of harassment and violence by young Lebanese-Australian men, mainly directed at young women in bikinis or short skirts…
On December 12, on the night after the fracas, dozens of cars congregated at Punchbowl Park in south-west Sydney. Most of the men had armed themselves with a variety of weapons. Some left messages written on the street: “AUSSI TO DIE”. “INTIFADA”. “IT’S WAR”. “WE FEAR NO OZY DOGS”. Two convoys of cars then headed off to the eastern beaches. For the next several hours an estimated 200 men, predominantly Lebanese Muslims, engaged in a show of force, smashing hundreds of cars and windows, stabbing or bashing several people and threatening women with rape. 
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Thank Anthony Roberts as your gas bills soar

Andrew Bolt September 25 2014 (6:14am)

Another politician sacrificing jobs to pander to a green scare:
ENERGY Minister Anthony Roberts will today extend a six-month freeze on new coal seam gas operations by another year… 
The decision comes despite fears of price rises and gas shortages in the next few years....
The Minister, who oversaw an 11.2 per cent increase in gas bills this year, said the extension would allow the Office of Coal Seam Gas time to “complete its comprehensive examination of current PELAs [petroleum exploration licence ­applications]”.
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The former NSW Labor government spent, on average, $116.2 million a year on advertising from 2007-2011 – nearly double that of the Liberal Party's expenditure in its first year of office, according to a report by the NSW Auditor-General.
Spending on advertising was the lowest in 14 years, Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat said in his report, released on Monday.
He assessed two government advertising programs – Rail Corporation's "Fixing the Trains" recruitment plan and the Cancer Institute's anti-smoking "Break the Chain" campaign – and said both were effective, economic and efficient.
He also found a significant decrease in party-political advertising since the introduction of laws in October which forced parties to pay back public money if they breached the prohibition.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/nsw-labors-ad-spending-double-that-of-ofarrell-team-20130924-2ubvx.html#ixzz2ftHqCPt2
ALP had nothing to say, but said it a lot - ed

John Tran ...nothing to say like.. we didn't mean to forget you.. don't give libs too much power..?

David Daniel Ball that was the QLD election .. the NSW campaign was "we are sticking with Kristina Kenneally to the end (of the election)"

John Tran Funny how the whole Labor infrastructure has just imploded, it's a sign that the core belief system has lost relevance.. or is it more about conflicting interests being taken over.. Greens and islamsist influencing factions.. like when communist tried to take over Labour within??

David Daniel Ball The ALP are in denial .. they've done that in the recent past .. they will come back unchanged, claiming to have renewed. As an example, look at how they are targeting Pru Goward for the ALP's mistakes.
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The sights, sounds and scents of Jerusalem are kaleidoscopic and ever changing. When I first arrived in Israel in 2006, I realized that it would take a lifetime to see and appreciate the endless array of cityscapes, holy sites, museums, gardens, archeological digs and – most wonderful of all – the colorful people that surrounded me.
I suppose that’s why I wasn’t all that impressed at the sight of some ugly, spray-painted graffiti a friend pointed out to me in Bethlehem. “It’s Arabic,” she explained. “And it means, ‘First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday.’”
“And that means…what?”
“It’s a jihadi slogan. It means, more accurately, ‘On Saturday we kill the Jews; on Sunday we kill the Christians.’”
It is wrong to accept attacks on anyone. - ed
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Attacks on Christians and other minorities in the Muslim-majority world are increasing and an already terrible situation is worsening.
The most recent attack was Sunday in Peshawar in Pakistan, where the historic All Saints Church was attacked by two suicide bombers, an attack for which the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. 
The explosions were triggered to cause the maximum number of deaths and maimings-- when the congregation left the morning service in the city's Kohati Gate district to receive a free meal of rice. The latest toll is 85 dead and over 140 wounded, but both these numbers have been rising as rescuers search through the rubble.
This is probably the most deadly attack on Christians in Pakistan’s entire history. There have been ongoing deadly mob attacks on Christians and Christians and Ahmadis have suffered disproportionately from Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, but there have been few attacks on churches and other Christian sites since a spate of bombings a decade ago. 
The argument is stupid. It matters not who terrorists target. Terrorists do not have a faith, although they may claim one. What is tragic is when a faith accepts them. - ed
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s third consecutive electoral victory  has profound consequences for Israel’s support in Europe and its security cooperation with the Federal Republic.
To understand German- Israeli relations under Merkel, it helps to compare her positions with those of her adversaries. Merkel’s party – the Christian Democratic Union (along with its sister party the Christian Social Union) – is the only German party to strictly oppose the new EU settlement guidelines. Her party’s statements on the guidelines, which bar EU cooperation with Israeli entities beyond the Green line, declare that the guidelines are not “objective requirements” and urge the EU to modify its regulations.
Merkel’s principal opponent, the Social Democrats, issued a statement to the main German-Jewish newspaperJüdische Allgemeine, declaring the party’s support for the EU sanctions targeting Israel’s work in the disputed territories.
The radical Left Party and the Green Party strongly favor the EU sanctions imposed on the Jewish state.
Merkel’s coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), wrote that there “are no EU sanctions against Israel” and the FDP rejects sanctions against the “only functioning democracy in the Middle East.”
The FDP did not explicitly declare the EU guidelines to be non-objective and simply called on Israel and the EU to reach an agreement.
- See more at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/analysis-what-does-angela-merkels-election-win-mean-for-israel/#sthash.So4sBkmM.dpuf
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Almost every commentator and news organization the public considers even marginally conservative or holding traditional values was blasted as being anti-Islamic in a 149-page report released Thursday.
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Former Congressman Allen West believes that we should we just kill all terrorists.  To many, this is a no brainer, do you agree with him?

Breitbart reported: And America is entertaining Hillary Clinton as President after she took part in abandoning Americans to die in Benghazi? Santayana said, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Keep electing these weaklings, America, and more Americans will be attacked, and unfortunately lose their lives. The only way to deal with Islamists is to kill them, as the Al Shabab attackers stated, “there will be no negotiations.” I concur! -Allen West

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Libertarian Girl
Someone asked what I mean by "free markets." It's easy to come across as portraying some mythical Capitalist entity when we discuss the free market. There is no cure all for every single societal ailment. There will always be governmental failures and market failures. However, market failures have fewer unintended negative consequences because they aren't forced onto society as a whole. I define "free markets" as individuals in their respective industry or trade engaging in voluntary and mutually beneficial exchanges of value. A truly free market would be a beautiful thing full of innovation and prosperity. But don't ever confuse that with an unrealistic idea of what individuals are capable of. I have so much faith in humanity. We should trust that when individuals pursue their separate interests the benefits for society will be much greater than can ever be produced by any distant government agency.

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They know what they do ..  ed

Elliot Prior, from Windsor, Berkshire, told one of the terrorists that he was a''very bad man'' as he protected his mother, Amber, who had been shot in the leg, and six-year-old sister Amelie, the Daily Mail UK reports.
The gunman then handed the boy and his sister Mars bars before telling them: ''Please forgive me, we are not monsters''.
The amazing story emerged as Kenyan troops tightened their grip on Islamists making their final stand in the deadly shopping mall siege, on the fourth day of the attack.
Sporadic shooting at the upmarket Westgate mall broke out again at dawn, hours after officials had claimed Kenyan troops were in "control" of the sprawling complex.
Islamist al-Shabab fighters claimed they are still holding hostages inside.>


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/kenyan-troops-tighten-grip-on-beseiged-shopping-mall/story-fndir2ev-1226725654896#ixzz2foYUHU8u
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Take a moment to imagine that you will need to survive for the next 5 years. Now imagine you had to buy it all today.
Part of my job is to look at the landscape of everything that is going on in the world and make decisions for future workflows and technology purchases that will us maintain a competitive edge in a market that is growing and changing each and every day.
So what’s next in video production?
It’s hard to tell for sure. We are an industry tied to technology which can seemingly pop out of nowhere and forever alter things. But based on conversations within the industry, current product line ups and things yet unseen. I am betting on UltraHD ( 2K,4K 5K ) being the next big wave in media industry. So at NBC we are building out a full end to end 4K production facility.
Now most people think of production in a liner mindset starting at acquisition. But before you can really make those choices you have to think about where you’re going to store all this footage.

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There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
Mandy Mclean no, mums are wise to this trick
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Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin'
Father,I thank You for being with me even in the hard times. Today I commit every area of my life to You. I trust that You will make up the difference in my life and supply everything I need to fulfill Your purposes. I praise You because You are faithful, and I know You are leading and guiding me into victory all the days of my life in Jesus’ name. Amen.
=
In the Hard Times,You Will Survive.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me..(Psalm 23:4, NIV)

After the birth of Moses, the king ordered that all the male babies were to be killed. You can imagine how devastated his mother must have been. She could have easily given up, but instead, she chose to believe that God was still in control. She put Moses into a little basket and sent him down the Nile River. It just so happened that Pharaoh’s daughter was out taking a bath — at the right place and the right time. She heard the cries coming from the basket. She opened it up and saw baby Moses and fell in love with the boy. She was so excited and said, “I’m going to take him as my own.” She looked at her maids and said, “We need to find somebody that can nurse the baby.”

One of the maids said, “I know just who to get.” She went and found who? Moses’ mother. Moses’ mother was not only able to raise her son, but she got paid for doing it on top of that. Only God could orchestrate all of that.It is my prayer that you will be at the right place and at the right time.

Today, remember that even in loss, heartache or disappointment, God will order your steps. He’ll line up the right people and the right opportunities and lead you into victory all the days of your life.What happened to Moses mother will happen to you in Jesus Name,Amen.

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Pastor Rick Warren
When you forgive someone, you give them a gift while giving yourself a bigger one.

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Sarah Palin'
The U.S. Senate has some arcane procedural rules, and as ordinary Americans our eyes glaze over trying to decipher them. But it’s important for us to understand that Sen. Ted Cruz’s efforts to defund Obamacare are worthwhile and doable. 

We shouldn’t preemptively surrender the fight to those who rammed through this outrageously burdensome and unaffordable ploy for government control of health care even though some are trying to convince us that the fight is futile. Just because a fight isn’t easy, doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting.

This defund movement boils down to a very simple request. As Andrew McCarthy recently pointed out: “Obama himself has already unilaterally and unconstitutionally defunded aspects of Obamacare, including repugnant accommodations for big corporations, Obama insiders, and members of Congress.” All we’re asking is that the rest of America “get the same relief from this awful law that Obama cronies, the ruling class, and the politically-connected get.”

Please call your senators and politely ask them to stand with Senator Cruz. This is especially important if your senator is a Democrat up for re-election in a red state in 2014. That would be Senators Mark Begich (D-AK), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Kay Hagan (D-NC). Remind them politely that we are watching their votes very carefully and even a procedural vote that shuts down this debate will be regarded as a vote for Obamacare, and there will be consequences for them at the ballot box next year. The same goes for Republicans up for re-election. We definitely expect them to stand shoulder to shoulder with Senator Cruz through thick and thin.

The number for the Capitol Hill Switchboard is 202-224-3121. Ask for your senator’s office. You can also find their contact information and contact them online at
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Remember, we elected these senators precisely for moments like this. If they can’t do anything with the power we’ve given them through their elected office, then perhaps it’s time for them to retire and let someone else have a go.

Opposition to Obamacare carried us to victory in 2010. And 2014 is just around the corner.

- Sarah Palin

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The Abbott government plans a drastic overhaul of the higher education system, including axing the compulsory fee collected by universities to support student services and scrapping Labor's targets to lift participation by disadvantaged students.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/christopher-pyne-reveals-university-shakeup-20130924-2ucag.html#ixzz2ftOINX00
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https://newmatilda.com/2013/09/24/abbott-has-got-culture-war-he-wanted
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Through its Maritime Intelligence Network and Rogue Vessel Analysis (MINERVA) system, UANI conducts real-time tracking and course prediction of every Iranian and Iran-related vessel, including clandestine vessels, anywhere in the world. UANI utilizes MINERVA to expose the regime's efforts to smuggle oil and cargo in circumvention of international sanctions. UANI’s MINERVA system was also featured in the New York Times.
Recent oil and shipping sanctions, in addition to the Iranian regime’s gross economic mismanagement, have severely hurt Iran’s economy. For example, the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, has plummeted. Iran has therefore resorted to numerous shipping and smuggling schemes including the use of fraudulent documentation, front companies, illegal flagging and bogus insurance and classification providers to uphold its last significant standing source of income – oil export revenues.

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A SECRET internal defence report into the murders of three soldiers in Afghanistan by a Taliban “sleeper” has revealed it was incompetence that exposed the three Australian sons to danger — and ultimately cost them their lives.
Lance Corporal Stjepan “Rick’’ Milosevic, 40, Sapper James “Marto’’ Martin, 21, and Private Robert “Poatey’’ Poate, 23 were murdered in cold blood at Patrol Base Wahab on August 29 last year as they played cards.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/army-fails-diggers-in-afghanistan-finds-secret-report/story-fncynjr2-1226726503890#ixzz2ftFolViC
ALP failed to protect its soldiers while playing down terrorism role during US election - ed
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A MAN found dead inside his car at a university parking lot had googled chest pain symptoms just hours before he died.
The 38-year-old was found dead inside his car, where he had been living, at Grand Valley State University, Michigan yesterday.
Police said the man, identified as Phu Quoc Theiu Tran, had died overnight from cardiovascular disease.
His body was found by a university security staff member.
It is understood he was a student at Grand Rapids Community College and had been using the university’s computer lab just hours before he was found.
Police confirmed he had been googling symptoms related to heart attacks.
“It appears that he had been using the university’s computer lab and was researching health issues, actually specific symptoms of a health problem, which may give us an indication of what was going on, ” Lt. Patrick Merrill told CBS Local News.
It is understood he then got back into his car before covering himself with a blanket and passing away, WoodTV reported.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/north-america/man-googled-heart-attack-symptoms-only-to-be-found-dead-hours-later/story-fnh81jut-1226726794860#ixzz2ftG2ob8J
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A SHOP worker has described how a woman resembling the 'White Widow' sprayed bullets in her direction during the terrorist attack on a Kenyan mall.
The witness says she was cowering under boxes when an AK-37-wielding, pale-skinned woman with long dark hair locked eyes with her.
She then opened fire from a balcony.
The witness, named only as Caroline, told the Daily Mail she managed to escape unharmed as the terrorists advanced through the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi.
"She was high up but not far from me, close enough that I saw her looking along the floor where I was until she saw me," Caroline said.
"She stopped and aimed at me and then opened fire."
The shop assistant said the woman was wearing a baggy black top and had long black hair.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/kenyan-president-declares-victory-against-westgate-mall-shopping-centre-terrorist-attack/story-fndir2ev-1226726616173#ixzz2ftGUgFvk
Witnesses claim they saw a woman, but Al-Shabbab insist their members dress up like women. - ed
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TREASURER Joe Hockey is going to show you the money.
In one of his first acts as Treasurer, Mr Hockey will instruct the Australian Tax Office to send taxpayers a personalised and itemised receipt thanking them for their tax dollars and detailing where the money was spent.
The receipts will show, in dollar terms, how much of a person’s tax bill was spent on welfare, health, education and other areas.
The level of gross government debt will also be displayed prominently with a break-down per person.
Treasurer Hockey said the receipts, which will be sent at tax time starting next year, would boost transparency and hold government to account.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/joe-hockey-orders-ato-to-tell-taxpayers-where-their-money-goes/story-e6frfm1i-1226726341854#ixzz2ftGrz2Xj
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Your God is not powerless...He is powerfull and able to raise from your sickness, problems and weaknesses...Just TRUST HIM

إلهك ليس إله عاجز...بل هو قادر أن ينهظك من مرضك, مشاكلك و ضعفاتك...فقط ثق به 
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Sarah Palin

Looking forward to talking with Sean Hannity tonight on Fox at 9pm ET about @SenTedCruz's efforts to #MakeDCListen & #DefundObamacare.
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MUST-SEE: The crybaby tweet of a Democratic U.S. Senator whining tonight that he had to work for TWO WHOLE HOURS because of Ted Cruz's marathon stand against Obamacare. ==>

http://twitchy.com/2013/09/25/wahmbulance-alert-sen-chris-murphy-whines-about-working-late-because-of-cruz/
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Islamist Lobbies’ Washington War on Arab and Muslim Liberals

" The most dramatic oppression of the region’s civil societies and the Arab Spring is not by means of weapons, or in the Middle East. It is not led by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali, Saleh, or Assad. It is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington DC. "

The most dramatic oppression of the region’s civil societies and the Arab Spring is not by means of weapons, or in the Middle East. It is not led by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali, Saleh, or Assad. It is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington DC. People may find my words curious if not provocative. But my arguments are sharp and well understood by many Arab and middle eastern liberals and freedom fighters. Indeed, we in the region, who are struggling for real democracy, not for the one time election type of democracy have been asking ourselves since January 2011 as the winds of Arab spring started blowing, why isn’t the West in general and the United States Administration in particular clearly and forcefully supporting our civil societies and particularly the secular democrats of the region? Why were the bureaucracies in Washington and in Brussels partnering with Islamists in the region and not with their natural allies the democracy promoting political forces?

Months into the Arab Spring, we realized that the Western powers, and the Obama Administration have put their support behind the new authoritarians, those who are claiming they will be brought to power via the votes of the people. Well, it is not quite so.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Nahda of Tunisia, the Justice Party of Morocco and the Islamist militias in Libya’s Transitional National Council have been systematically supported by Washington at the expense of real liberal and secular forces. We saw day by day how the White House guided carefully the statements and the actions of the US and the State Department followed through to give all the chances to the Islamists and almost no chances to the secular and revolutionary youth. We will come back to detail these diplomatic and financial maneuvers which are giving victory to the fundamentalists while the seculars and progressives are going to be smashed by the forthcoming regimes.

In the US, there are interests that determine foreign policy. And there are lobbies that put pressure to get their objectives met in foreign policy. One of the most powerful lobbies in America under the Obama Administration is the Muslim Brotherhood greater lobby, which has been in action for many years. This lobby has secured many operatives inside the Administration and has been successful in directing US policy towards the Arab world. Among leading advisors sympathetic to the Ikhwan is Daliah Mogahed (Mujahid) and her associate, Georgetown Professor John Esposito. Just as shocking, there is also a pro-Iranian lobby that has been influencing US policy towards Iran and Hezbollah in the region.

One of the most important activities of the Islamist lobby in the US is the waging of political and media wars on the liberal Arabs and Middle Eastern figures and groups in America. This battlefield is among the most important in influencing Washington’s policies in the Arab world. If you strike at the liberal and democratic Middle Eastern groups in Washington who are trying to gain support for civil societies in the region, you actually win a major battle. You will be able to influence the resources of the US Government to support the Islamists in the Middle East and not the weak democrats. This huge war waged by the Islamist lobbies in America started at the end of the Cold war and continued all the way till the Arab spring. The two main forces of this lobby are the Muslim Brotherhood fronts and the Iranian fronts. According to research available in the US, the Ikhwan fronts such as CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), led by Hamas supporter Nihad Awad, as well as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Society of North America, and others waged their political war to block the representatives of Arab liberals and Muslim moderates from making their case to the American public. The Iranian lobby, exemplified by the National Iranian American Committee (NIAC), led by Trita Parsi, has been hitting at Iranian exiles.

Since the 1990s CAIR and its allies have attacked Copts, Southern Sudanese, Lebanese, Syrian reformers, Assyrians and Chaldeans, and Muslim dissidents in the United States. The Ikhwan of America demonized any publication, book, article, or interview in the national media or local press raising the issue of secular freedoms in the Middle East. The Islamists wanted to eliminate the liberal cause in the Arab world and replace it with the cause of the Islamists. What is also shocking is that CAIR and its allies stood by the oppressive regimes and visited them, claiming they speak on behalf of the peoples. CAIR and the Brotherhood fronts in America destroyed systematically every project that would have defended the seculars and liberals originating from the Middle East. The notorious and well-funded Islamists of the US allowed no book, documentary, or show on the liberals in Arab civil societies to see the light.

Thanks to this powerful lobbying campaign, the American public was not given a chance to learn about the deep feelings on the youth in the region. Americans were led to believe that all Muslims, all Arabs and all Middle Easterners were a strange species of humans who cannot appreciate freedom. Instead, the American Islamists, helped by apologists on the petrodollars payrolls, convinced the mainstream media that the Arab world has authoritarians and Islamists only.

Dr Shawki Karas, president of the American Coptic Association, told me in the late 1990s how he was harassed by Islamist activists for speaking up against the Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in America. He was threatened with losing his job at the college where he taught. Reverend Keith Roderick, who has assembled a coalition of more than 50 group rights from the Muslim world, was severely attacked by the Islamists and was threatened to be removed from his church position. Muslim American leaders who are conservative and secular, such as Dr Zuhdi Jasser, were crucified by CAIR and the Brotherhood for daring to challenge the Party line of the Isl.amists in America and claiming that the Jihadists are the problem in the region. Muslim liberal dissidents such as Somali Ayan Hirsi Ali, Saudi Ali al Yammi, Syrian Farid Ghadri, Iranian Manda Ervin, and many others were trashed by the Islamist lobbies to block them from defending the causes of secular liberty in the US. Egyptian liberals as well as seculars and democracy activists from Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and other countries have been attacked by CAIR and allies. The pro-Iranian lobby targeted most Iranian-American groups and tried to discredit them, particularly with the rise of the Green Revolution in Iran. By smearing the Muslim liberal exiles, the Islamists were trying to destroy their causes in the mother countries. In the 1990s and the years that followed 9/11 the region’s dictators supported the efforts by Islamist lobbies to crush the liberal exiles. The Mubarak, Bashir, Gaddafi, Assad, and Khomeinist regimes fully supported the so-called Islamophobia campaign waged by CAIR and its Iranian counterpart NIAC against dissidents for calling for secular democracy in the region. The dissidents were accused of being pro-Western by both the Islamists and the dictators.

The Islamist lobbies also severely attacked members of the US Congress such as Democrats Tom Lantos, who has since passed away, Eliot Engel, Howard Berman, Gary Ackerman, and Joe Lieberman as well as Republicans Frank Wolfe, Chris Smith, Trent Franks, John McCain, Rick Santorum, and Sam Brownback for their efforts in passing legislative acts in support for democracy and liberty in the Middle East. CAIR and NIAC heavily savaged President Bush’s speeches on Freedom Forward in the Middle East, deploying all the resources they had to block US support to liberal democrats in the region. Islamist lobbies in Washington are directly responsible for killing any initiative in the US Government to support Darfur, southern Sudan, Lebanon, the Kurds, liberal women in the Muslim world, and true democrats in the Arab world and Muslim Africa.

In the think tank world, CAIR and its allies aggressively attacked scholars who raised the issue of persecution against seculars or minorities in the Arab world and Iran. Among those attacked were Nina Shea and Paul Marshal from the Hudson Institute and the founder of an anti-slavery group, Dr Charles Jacobs, who was exposing the Sudan regime for its atrocities. Last but not least is the Islamists’ relentless campaign to stirke at top scholars who advise Government and appear in the media to push for democratic liberation in the region. The vast and vicious attacks leveled against Professor Walid Phares—initially by CAIR’s Nihad Awad and then widened by pro-Hezbollah and Muslim Brotherhood operatives online—has revealed to Arab and Middle Eastern liberal and seculars how ferocious is the battle for the Middle East in the US. Phares’s books, particularly the latest one, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (2010), hit the Islamist agenda hard by predicting the civil society revolts in the Middle East and then predicting how the Islamists would try to control them. Phares was attacked by an army of Jihadist militia online like no author since Samuel Huntington in the 1990s. As a freedom activist from the Middle East, Mustafa Geha, wrote, Phares is a hero to Muslim liberals. Along with dissidents, lawmakers, experts, and human rights activists, Phares is a force driving for a strategic change in US foreign policy towards supporting secular democracies in the region. This explains why the Islamists of America are fighting the battle for the forthcoming regimes with all the means they have.

Dr. Essam Abdallah is an Egyptian liberal intellectual who teaches at Ain Shams University and writes for the leading Arab liberal publication Elaph.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=53331&pageid=44&pagename=Slices
They aren't mindless, those lefties, but they frighteningly adhere to memes and bully those who aren't and don't. - ed
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Originally published at Sultan Knish.
The majority of Americans do not want to invade or bomb Syria. The majority of American leaders do. Such a disparity between the leaders and the people is not wholly unique, but it arises in this case not from the usual disparities of power or corruption.
Americans don’t want to fight Syria because it is no threat to them. American leaders admit that Syria is no threat to America. They want to bomb Syria because they feel that they ought to do it. And they feel that way because behind the power of the West stands the will of the East.Long before Animal Farm of 1984, George Orwell wrote a short essay about his time in the east. It’s titled “Shooting the Elephant.”
Orwell’s narrator is told of an elephant that has run riot and he dutifully follows up the report. “We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.
“Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant.”
Substitute chemical weapons for elephant and the story becomes a familiar one.
The criticism of the GOP, while apt, is unfair. The GOP don't have the presidency. Because of that, the party is not galvanised between one leader, but fighting over lesser issues in order to achieve an advantage come election time for their platform. So the press will report they are in favor of bad choices, when in fact some members will be in favor of any choice. - ed
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A right-wing, anti-assimilation organization that campaigns to prevent Arab men from dating Jewish women has opened a hotline enabling members of the public to inform on women so that they can be persuaded to end the relationship.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/hotline-lets-callers-inform-on-jewish-arab-couples/#.UkHoPHq7Xvo.facebook

I am Jewish, raised in an Orthodox home in Borough Park, Brooklyn, the daughter of Polish immigrants. My dad worked door-to-door selling soda and seltzer.
But none of this matters. We don't talk about religion. Instead, we stay up all night discussing film, opera and theater. We are bohemians.
We date for two years. Then, when I express my desire to travel, he asks me to marry him.
"There is no other way for us to travel together in the Muslim world," he says.
- See more at: http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/books/my-life-of-hell-in-an-afghan-harem-phyllis-chesler/story-fnhod202-1226724821753#sthash.DJwgVOcw.dpuf
Things have changed since '59 when Phyllis sets her story .. but people haven't .. nowadays she would have probably been killed as an embarrassment - ed
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Israel’s UN delegation to absent itself during Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s address before the UN General Assembly, set to take place on Tuesday afternoon New York time.
Iran was asking the world to look away from its nuclear power industry. Obama promised in '08 that as President he would deal with this issue, Iran is asking him to abrogate that responsibility .. which is a threat to Iran's existence. - ed
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“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.” Hebrews 10:35-36 NIV
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Morning

"For I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the way: because we had spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him."
Ezra 8:22
A convoy on many accounts would have been desirable for the pilgrim band, but a holy shame-facedness would not allow Ezra to seek one. He feared lest the heathen king should think his professions of faith in God to be mere hypocrisy, or imagine that the God of Israel was not able to preserve his own worshippers. He could not bring his mind to lean on an arm of flesh in a matter so evidently of the Lord, and therefore the caravan set out with no visible protection, guarded by him who is the sword and shield of his people. It is to be feared that few believers feel this holy jealousy for God; even those who in a measure walk by faith, occasionally mar the lustre of their life by craving aid from man. It is a most blessed thing to have no props and no buttresses, but to stand upright on the Rock of Ages, upheld by the Lord alone. Would any believers seek state endowments for their Church, if they remembered that the Lord is dishonoured by their asking Caesar's aid? as if the Lord could not supply the needs of his own cause! Should we run so hastily to friends and relations for assistance, if we remembered that the Lord is magnified by our implicit reliance upon his solitary arm? My soul, wait thou only upon God. "But," says one, "are not means to be used?" Assuredly they are; but our fault seldom lies in their neglect: far more frequently it springs out of foolishly believing in them instead of believing in God. Few run too far in neglecting the creature's arm; but very many sin greatly in making too much of it. Learn, dear reader, to glorify the Lord by leaving means untried, if by using them thou wouldst dishonour the name of the Lord.

Evening

"I sleep, but my heart waketh."
Song of Solomon 5:2
Paradoxes abound in Christian experience, and here is one--the spouse was asleep, and yet she was awake. He only can read the believer's riddle who has ploughed with the heifer of his experience. The two points in this evening's text are--a mournful sleepiness and a hopeful wakefulness. I sleep. Through sin that dwelleth in us we may become lax in holy duties, slothful in religious exercises, dull in spiritual joys, and altogether supine and careless. This is a shameful state for one in whom the quickening Spirit dwells; and it is dangerous to the highest degree. Even wise virgins sometimes slumber, but it is high time for all to shake off the bands of sloth. It is to be feared that many believers lose their strength as Samson lost his locks, while sleeping on the lap of carnal security. With a perishing world around us, to sleep is cruel; with eternity so near at hand, it is madness. Yet we are none of us so much awake as we should be; a few thunder-claps would do us all good, and it may be, unless we soon bestir ourselves, we shall have them in the form of war, or pestilence, or personal bereavements and losses. O that we may leave forever the couch of fleshly ease, and go forth with flaming torches to meet the coming Bridegroom! My heart waketh. This is a happy sign. Life is not extinct, though sadly smothered. When our renewed heart struggles against our natural heaviness, we should be grateful to sovereign grace for keeping a little vitality within the body of this death. Jesus will hear our hearts, will help our hearts, will visit our hearts; for the voice of the wakeful heart is really the voice of our Beloved, saying, "Open to me." Holy zeal will surely unbar the door.
"Oh lovely attitude! He stands
With melting heart and laden hands;
My soul forsakes her every sin;
And lets the heavenly stranger in."
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Today's reading: Song of Solomon 4-5, Galatians 3 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Song of Solomon 4-5

He
1 How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from the hills of Gilead.
2 Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn,
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin;
not one of them is alone.
3 Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is lovely.
Your temples behind your veil
are like the halves of a pomegranate.
4 Your neck is like the tower of David,
built with courses of stone;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors.
5 Your breasts are like two fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle
that browse among the lilies.
6 Until the day breaks
and the shadows flee,
I will go to the mountain of myrrh
and to the hill of incense.
7 You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
there is no flaw in you....

Today's New Testament reading: Galatians 3

Faith or Works of the Law
1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? 4Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain?5 So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? 6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith....
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