Reporting on world events from a Bairnsdale Conservative perspective.
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Sun Sep 24th Todays News
Don't give up on hope. Richmond Tigers won a game against Greater Western Sydney in AFL by six goals, despite conceding almost every statistic but the score. AFL is character building, and Tony Lockett has given an interview showing great character. Tony Abbott is a back bencher, but the ABC's insiders program devoted most of their hour to criticising him for his thoughts on SSM, AGW and just being him. In the past, the media have been encouraged to do this thanks to Malcolm Turnbull's team. I don't feel that hitting Tony Abbott will make Malcolm Turnbull popular again, even with the ABC on side. As for SSM bullying, a Melbourne coalition for marriage meeting was attacked by activists calling out "Crucify the Christians" and "Burn churches not queers." The slogans are telling for what the SSM survey vote is about. It is ok to say "no" even if you agree with the principle of SSM, because activists are leading the charge. An SMS for SSM is being spammed, and it is an example of bullying which will continue to the end of the survey period, long after victims have voted. Hell's Angels are being taught lessons in manners by NSW police. Victorian police, when unleashed by Andrews or whomever is Premier of Victoria, could learn much. Yesterday I shared a Fox News Insider article in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame apologised for an offensive retweet. I commented that it illustrated that the CIA was divided (not evenly) by Dem supporters loyal to Democrats and others loyal to USA. It always has been, and yet it has been effective when properly used, but paralysed by incompetents in the White House, usually Democrats. Much of what I write is supposition. I don't know Obama was a CIA rent boy groomed in Pakistan for high office. But I know he achieved high office with help and seedy associations. I also know that the CIA was compromised under Obama in China and many operatives were killed and it looked like payback for earlier activity involving Obama. It is worth remembering that although former counter intelligence Czar James J Angleton was highly criticised for denouncing Soviet moles like Pierre Trudeau and the infiltrated peace movement, he was right about Soviet activity. It is worth looking at what Plame was endorsing.
Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz says this story is "much, much worse" than the media has presented it. On "Fox & Friends" this morning, he said that the author of the article, Philip Giraldi, is a "well-known anti-Semite." "In this article, he says that Jews like me or Bill Kristol, when we appear on television, should have on the bottom of the screen identification saying we're Jews. And he says it's 'like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison. Ingest at your own peril,'" Dershowitz said. "All you have to do is read the first couple paragraphs: Jews control the media, Jews control politics," he continued. "This is just like what was written in Nazi Germany."
That is the level of sophistication of Democrat loyal CIA agents. 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 What the Lord has done in me By Your Side is the eighth album in the live praise and worship series of Praise & Worship by Hillsong Church.
By Your Side was recorded live at the Hills Christian Life Centre building (now known as the Hillsong Church Hub auditorium) by Darlene Zschech and the Hillsong team.
"What the Lord Has Done in Me" (Reuben Morgan) - 4:59http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.co...
=== from 2016 ===
So Miranda is standing up for victims of Safe Schools now, but not for me when I blew the whistle and subsequently lost everything and had to move interstate to find work again after nine years. Hitting Grant over greyhounds is harsh, when there are corrupt and murderous race fixers who desperately want their livelihood to continue, exploiting those greyhound owners who aren't corrupt.
Black lives matter is not about black lives mattering. It is an Alynski type vehicle to protect Hillary from criticism through diversion. It is very effective, even though it is absurd.
Penny Wong lost more as Finance Minister than Australia will accumulate in debt over the next three years. But those who cheered her on now think spending should be reigned in? Mixed messages much.
Because Obama is President, racism divides the United States. It did not used to. It is the shadow of Democrat minority politics. A vote for Hillary is a vote to continue racism. And the people who will suffer most are blacks. And Jews.
Congratulations priests of the AGW movement. You are shutting down a plant that contributes as much as 15% to the annual plant food harvest. And you are raising prices for energy by up to a quarter.
In ISIL an elderly woman was executed recently for showing her face. It was filmed as she was made to kneel before a religious figure and a sentence was read out. When she was shot dead by a pistol to the head at point blank range, the chant was "Allahu Akbar."Indeed, God is great, and one day there will be a reckoning. On whose side will these hucksters be on? I don't think God will know who they are.
=== from 2015 ===
A senate inquiry has been asked all the stupid questions regarding halal food funding. They have found that there is no evidence that it funds terrorism. Right wing extremists disbelieve the reality. It is tied up with Monsanto, GM foods, Agenda 21 and all refugees are terrorists. One could argue with those who believe, but one cannot reason with them. It isn't the same as faith. It is what happens when faith is removed and leaves a void. If one wants to argue, tell them the truth. Agenda 21 is merely code for local left wing corruption. Everywhere. GM foods are good and can help feed the world. Australia was built by migrants. It is ok for Islamic people to eat food. Preferable to them eating right wing extremists, even. For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
From 2014
It is difficult to know exactly what was going through Numan Haider's mind as he used a knife on two policeman, one federal and one Victorian State officer. Numan was supposed to report to police following allegations of terrorist support on his end. His passport had been withdrawn and he had been showing the ISIS flag at local community centres. ISIS recently called for a random Australian to be beheaded, and their body wrapped in a flag, shown on video as it is dragged around. Perhaps Numan thought he would use the larger knife he hadn't drawn to lop the head of one of the officers. Numan was 18 years old and radicalised. He had been born in Afghanistan and and raised in Australia. His clothing was later found to include an ISIS flag. Numan would have known some things, but not others. He would not have known why the anti semitic lobby were wrong to blame jews for imagined atrocities, because schools in Australia are very poor at covering that issue. He would have known the impotent Islamic leadership in Australia felt his radical viewpoint was legitimate. He would also have known that mainstream media were highly sympathetic with his views, and might have heard the ALP members who publicly stated they felt that the crackdown on terrorists prior to legislation was too convenient and seemed orchestrated to discredit Islamic peoples. If he had heard Mr Abbott channel President Bush saying that the crackdown was not against religion but against terrorism, he would almost certainly have heard a mainstream media person discredit that assertion. He possibly viewed it as an audition for ABC current affairs. He has badly hurt the federal officer, stabbing him many times in the head, neck and torso, while the state officer had arm wounds before drawing his weapon and shooting once. One bullet killed Numan. Already impotent Islamic leaders are demanding there be an investigation. Possibly Sarah Hanson-Young will demand to know why the phasers weren't set for stun.
Many confuse Islamo Fascism with Islam. Impotent Islamic leaders seem keen to claim the world is against them. Today is the birthday (1902) of the corrupt Islamic cleric Khomeini who abused Islamic process so as to persecute people for profit. Obama bombing Syrian terrorist outposts is a great way to celebrate that birthday. It isn't about religion that the west defends itself against terrorism. Great kindness and charity is given Islamic peoples. But also much is done for dignity of the Islamic character. The US even elected a confused apostate twice. Obama has not merely bombed targets identified by intelligence, instead Obama has got permission from Iraq and Syria to bomb them. Obama has also got interested local nations to join in. But that doesn't satisfy the Australian Broadcasting Commission who say that appeasement has not been given a chance for success. The adversarial Q and A program stooged a radical terrorist spokesperson in the audience of its' weekly program, and had panel members who questioned the obvious reality of terrorism. Media watch took the wrong side. And in another time and place, PETA approached a mosque suggesting vegetarian holy celebrations .. and got howled down.
Meanwhile world leaders, like Ban Ki Moon, march with AGW hysterics and claims he is secretary general of the people. Yet the science is not in, and in research on wind in California, so called local warming in recent decades is related to shifting wind patterns, not climate. Someone needs to tell the people's secretary general. There are many ways for people to fail. Bob Ellis is only ever right about electoral success when socialists win. This does not mean he has a fifty percent success rate. This means he is entirely biased. Senator Wilkie from Tasmania has failed to observe reality too. He is still fighting elections long after his lies were disproved. Corrupt former speaker Peter Slipper has been given hundreds of hours of community service for his attempted fraud that had been supported by Gillard. Gillard and Rudd relive their Itchy and Scratchy moments for posterity. And significantly, Gillard was exonerated by mainstream media for corruption, but her slush fund documents have become available for the Royal Commission.
From 2013
The murderous assault in Kenya is ending in its fourth day. In further developments, an off duty SAS soldier saved a hundred people, going into the kill zone a dozen times. A female, thought to be a widow of a London terrorist suicide bomber and planner of this assault is among the dead. But still fighting continues. Meanwhile in Australia, AGW believers are crying censorship because they are not being given public money to spread their hysteria. Flannery is threatening to start a commercial propagandist interest offering 'impartial' hysteric advice. Suzuki has been fact checked. He has been given many rostrum to spread his lies, but they are lies. Paul Barry has attacked independent voices who are critical of AGW hysteria. The NBN board has been asked to resign. It is anticipated that the NBN will continue, as is, short term, until someone can make it effective. A human rights lawyer verbally assaults those who don't think it is compassionate to drown desperate people. The government decision to not broadcast each boat arrival, but give a weekly report is denounced as censorship .. but it is merely silencing a siren call. Pru Goward is still effectively defending her reputation from the terrible slime of the ALP. The ALP are using leaks to show their ineffective administration had been killing children. In this case they accuse Pru Goward of using more case workers (they claim less, despite facts) to investigate serious cases. It is a cheap shot, but it hurts too. Nobody likes children dying from neglect. Really disturbing is the Australian Conservative Libertarian group dropping all pretence to Conservatism and Libertarianism, and embracing racism.
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.
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.
The judiciary is established. The army has won. His Majesty's ship was blown away. Hong Kong is now accessible by air. The Warren Commission missed the secret service agent had an accident. Time to party.
PIERS AKERMAN THE Yes-No debate on changing the meaning of the word marriage to include currently legal homosexual unions was always going to be about headbutting but civility was meant to have kept it metaphorical.
As challenges go, supplying cheap and reliable electricity to Australians ought to be as easy as providing sun to Californians, oil to the Middle East and wool to New Zealanders.
The book has interrupted its world tour to inspect our border defences with an anonymous reader. Here it poses at Christmas Island, home of the detention centre.
Emma-Kate Symons is right. Channel Seven and the Muslim hotheads they flew over to France to protest against the burkini ban should try a similar stunt in Saudi Arabia to protest against real bigots. Except they lack the guts.
Former Labor Minister Peter Baldwin calls on Europe to close its borders:
What Europe desperately needs but, crippled by a stupefying blend of political correctness and fear, seems incapable of having is a realistic debate about the long-term implications of all this. We see a kind of docile fatalism epitomised by a notorious radio interview in which the then Swedish minister for integration, Jens Orback, talked about accommodating Muslims now so that in the event they became a majority “we go a little bit safer”.
Any suggestion there might be any problem intrinsic to Islam has to be made with extreme care to avoid being accused of “Islamophobia”, an ill-defined term that is routinely conflated with racism … A realistic debate needs to acknowledge that Islam is not a race but a belief system, with tenets that many of its followers take extremely seriously …
If Europe is to avert a civilisational catastrophe it must close its borders to irregular flows urgently – as humanely as possible, but decisively.
Hungary’s efforts to barricade itself were recently criticised as “un-European”, which rather misses the point. In fact, Hungary is trying very hard to remain European. Meanwhile, a debate has broken out over whether to describe Europe’s future rulers as migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. I prefer the attractive Australianism “reffo”, which deserves an international audience.
Of course, some view the term as offensive or pejorative. As a journo, I disagree.
… you care more about how climate change might harm the lives of people whose grandparents haven’t even been born yet than you do about lives already underway.
A far-right “ginger extremist” who fantasised about assassinating Britain’s Prince Charles so his red-haired son Harry might become king one day was found guilty Tuesday of plotting a terror attack.
Mark Colborne, 37, who felt marginalised due to his ginger hair, compared himself to the Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik and wrote in his notebook of his plans to kill Charles, the heir to the throne …
“I would sacrifice my life for that one shot. Kill Charles and William and Harry become king. Kill the tyrants,” he wrote.
“I want them to see my transition from poor red-haired victimised minority that is constantly walked over to a fully transformed military terrorist,” he wrote.
In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.
“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
The US military is evidently following the cowardly example of modern leftoids: “For decades, moral relativism has underpinned radical left-wing thought. This is particularly clear when we look at how abuses in Muslim communities are treated. When the Conservative government in Canada labeled female genital mutilation and forced marriages as ‘barbaric cultural practices,’ they were criticised by leading Canadian leftists.” Back to the NYT:
Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain … beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave …
After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan.
The United Nations is coming under fire for handing Saudi Arabia a key human rights role even though the Kingdom has “arguably the worst record in the world” on freedoms for women, minorities and dissidents… UN Watch, an independent campaigning NGO, has discovered that Mr Trad, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador at the UN in Geneva, has been elected as chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.
As head of a five-strong group of diplomats, the influential role would give Mr Trad the power to select applicants from around the world for scores of expert roles in countries where the UN has a mandate on human rights… The Saudis’ bid emerged shortly after it posted a job advertisement for eight new executioners, to cope with what Amnesty International branded a “macabre spike” in the use of capital punishment, including beheadings, this year. The HRC, the UN body responsible for promoting human rights around the world, has long been the subject of criticism for granting membership to countries with dubious human rights records. As well as Saudi Arabia, current members include China, Qatar, Russia and Venezuela.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt says the renewables industry should feel “very supported” under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, after they complained of investment instability fuelled by Tony Abbott’s hostility towards the sector. Mr Hunt has also said he would seek ways for Australia to “do more” on climate change with Mr Turnbull after the United Nations conference in Paris, and said the appointment of five new members of the Climate Change Authority board was delayed by the leadership spill. The former prime minister was frequently scathing of wind turbines and the renewable energy target… In a change of tack, Mr Hunt told The Australian Financial Review, “I think [the renewables industry] should feel that with myself, Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, they will be in a very, very supportive environment.” ... Mr Hunt also revealed he was about to appoint five new members to the Climate Change Authority board before last week’s leadership change delayed the decision… “Malcolm is passionate about the global climate challenge, and I am passionate about it.”
The ABC is hopeful the installation of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister will allow it to claw back some of the $250 million slashed from the broadcaster last year as tension between the government and broadcaster cools off. The shift from Tony Abbott to Mr Turnbull represents a change at the top of the government from one of the Coalition’s biggest critics of the ABC to one of its biggest supporters. “There will be no more culture wars,” a Liberal source said, flagging an end to the open hostilities between the government and the ABC during recent times.
How brazen is the ABC? More evidence that it really is too big and dangerous for a healthy democracy.
And the unnamed Liberal source claiming there will be “no more culture wars” is in fact announcing a surrender. The Liberals under Turnbull will not fight for beliefs counter to the ABC culture.
I hope this “source” is just a no-account nuff-nuff, because he or she has otherwise declared the Liberal party really has been taken over by the ABC.
UPDATE
Labor has no shame in using taxpayers’ money to subsidise commentators of the Left to create a suffocating climate of Leftist orthodoxy. The latest outrageous example:
The future of The Conversation will secured with today’s announcement that the Andrews Labor Government will provide a $3 million investment towards the news and commentary site. The funding commitment of $1 million per annum over 3 years will safeguard the jobs of 32 employees – including 26 Melbourne-based staff. Earlier this year, the website suffered a major setback after the Federal Liberal Government decided to end funding support for the highly regarded platform.
And for Labor’s money you get Labor’s messages, especially the global warming ones:
THE media Left is gloating. They’ve won and knuckle-dragging conservatives like me and Alan Jones have lost.
Our man, Tony Abbott, is gone as prime minister. Their man, Malcolm Turnbull, rules.
“Ha, ha, ha,” they point out.
Or as the ABC, the taxpayer-funded voice of the Left, put it on Monday, suck it up, Jones and Bolt.
“Once again, it’s remarkable that Abbott was felled despite their support,” crowed Media Watch host Paul Barry. “And it shows how little power they actually have.”
He’s right. Alan and I are shocked we couldn’t get every single Australian to back Abbott, when the only thing against us was the $1 billion-a-year ABC, the anti-Abbott smear factory of Fairfax and the rest of the army of media orcs: SBS, Guardian, Daily Mail, The Monthly, The Project, FM hosts, half the News Corp empire and the Canberra bureaus of every TV station.
Humiliating, I know, but Alan and I proved in the end surprisingly powerless against the others, too — the academics, the race industry, the professional victims, the climate cranks, the multicultural commissars, the free speech police and all the other arbiters of Good Taste.
So boo hoo hoo, we cry. We helped get Abbott elected, but couldn’t save him.
But at the ABC it’s party, party.
(Read full story here.)
The Liberal white-anters who did so much to vilify Peta Credlin and drag down her boss now threaten more of the same:
Liberal MPs have warned that ongoing commentary from Peta Credlin about her time as the former prime minister’s chief of staff risks triggering a bitter “slanging match” and disclosure of negative stories about her conduct in the job. Ms Credlin vented her frustration at what she believed were the unhelpful feminine stereotypes in which she had been characterised as chief of staff to Tony Abbott at an event hosted by The Australian Women’s Weekly on Tuesday night. Some Liberal MPs took issue yesterday with a statement in which she noted the role she played in engineering the Coalition victory in 2013. They warned that she was just as responsible for leading the government “into oblivion” and questioned why she did not do more to elevate women in the Abbott government… North Queensland MP Warren Entsch warned Ms Credlin against playing a spoiling role following the departure of Mr Abbott and raised the prospect of retribution against her.
I would in turn warn Entsch: your threats are worthless. What more can you guys do to Credlin that you haven’t done already?
Keep attacking her all you like, but Credlin has nothing more to lose. You guys, though, do. Your attacks on Credlin helped Turnbull when he needed to undermine Abbott, but now they invite counterattacks that will only hurt him.
Then there’s the hypocrisy. I have to laugh when the spoilers under Abbott warn Credlin not to be a spoiler to Turnbull.
UPDATE
Bill Shorten may be playing politics here, but he is absolutely right:
A surprise defender of Ms Credlin was Bill Shorten, who said yesterday the former chief of staff was the victim of “sexist” and “gutless” attacks that sought to airbrush the history of the Abbott government. “I think it is fair to say that Peta Credlin has been the victim, certainly in some cases, of a sexist attack because she was a strong woman doing a strong job in a very tough position,” the Opposition Leader said. “It is really gutless of some of the current Liberal government to blame everything that’s happened in the last two years on Peta Credlin.”
Malcolm Turnbull has made his first mistake in playing the uncomfortable role of a conservative - giving the impression he will soften our border laws.
Here is how his unguarded words have been heard and reported in Africa, a big source of asylum seekers, by the AllAfrica news aggregator:
New Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday he was concerned about the plight of asylum seekers in Australia’s offshore detention centres, and hinted at changes to the policy of his predecessor Tony Abbott… Abbott’s “stop the boats” policy was criticised for being too hardline, but also touted as one of the successes of his administration. In an interview with Sky News on his ninth day in office after ousting Abbott, Turnbull acknowledged the detention policy was “controversial”. “I have the same concerns about the situation of people on Manus and Nauru ... as I think all Australians do,” Turnbull said. “All policies change, but when we do make changes we will do so in a considered way and they will be made by the minister, myself [and] the cabinet.”
That is a green light, or amber, and seen as such by some Arab media, too. Egypt’s Ahramonline and Lebanon’s The Daily Star carry the same story:
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday he was “concerned” about the country’s controversial offshore immigration detention centres, although he stopped short of committing his government to reconsidering them… Turnbull, who criticised Abbott for making major policy decisions without consulting his ministers, acknowledged public concerns over the detention policies but indicated that any change would have to be taken up by cabinet.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned asylum seekers they ‘will never come to Australia’ on illegal boats despite voicing concerns about those in offshore detention centres. Mr Turnbull says it is ‘absolutely clear’ there’ll be no Australian resettlement of asylum seekers in centres on Manus Island and Nauru, while conceding the government’s policy is harsh. ‘But it has worked,’ he told ABC radio on Wednesday. Speculation that Mr Turnbull could take a more lenient approach to the processing of asylum seekers was sparked when he conceded he shared the public’s concern about offshore processing. He later clarified that didn’t mean the resettlement policy would change.
Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to reassert the government’s hardline border protection policy, after people-smugglers yesterday tested the new Prime Minister’s commitment to turning back boats. The bid to reach Christmas Island was foiled by Indonesian authorities as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton warned that people-smugglers would try to exploit the change in Australia’s leadership to revive their trade.
In 2004, Bernard Lewis, the distinguished historian of Islam and the Middle East, ruffled some European feathers when he predicted Europe would be majority Islamic by the turn of the century “at the very latest"… This view, often referred to as the “Eurabia thesis”, has been attacked as simplistic, since it relies on the linear projection of existing population growth rates… But predictions of gradual change are rendered irrelevant by the dramatic events of the past few months, especially German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s extraordinarily foolish decision to accommodate, indeed invite, the mass uncontrolled entry of people into Europe. If this policy stands it will transform the continent over the coming decades given the high likelihood of further rounds of violent conflict and exploding populations in the source regions, especially Africa… A realistic debate needs to acknowledge that Islam is not a race but a belief system, with tenets that many of its followers take extremely seriously. Key among those tenets is the requirement Muslims fight to make Islam dominant over other creeds and belief systems… Islam does not recognise separate civil and religious spheres. The modern notion of diversity is utterly foreign to it, at least in the sense of different belief systems coexisting as equals. How many, if any, of the several score Muslim-majority countries grant genuine civil and religious liberty and equality to non-Muslims? ... Anyone who asks what this would mean for Europe’s Judaeo-Christian tradition is branded a right-wing nativist, but the Enlightenment and everything the Left claims to value is on the line too… The goal should be to ensure decent living conditions for all the displaced people until they can be resettled safely, preferably in the region… If Europe is to avert a civilisational catastrophe it must close its borders to irregular flows urgently… As someone who sat opposite Tony Abbott in the federal parliament I acknowledge we owe him a considerable debt of gratitude on this score.
We are in the midst of the biggest defence acquisition program in our history in peacetime. We are replacing the surface fleet, the submarines and many of the army’s fighting vehicles. The decision making process is on right now. The Defence Department is implementing the reforms of the First Principles Review, the most far-reaching changes in decades. Our armed forces are in combat in Syria and Iraq, with a presence in Afghanistan. The emergence of China, the expansion of regional arms capability, and questions over US security commitments all put our strategic situation in greater flux than at any time since the end of the Vietnam War. And so, now, in Marise Payne we get the fourth defence minister in two years… There was no case to appoint Payne. The senior leadership of the Defence organisation made it known to the incoming government that they wanted Kevin Andrews to stay; they wanted ministerial stability. Yet most of the media has treated the Payne appointment with euphoria, as though it were self-evidently brilliant. Almost none of the commentary has shown any awareness of defence policy issues, the dynamics involved or just what is at stake… Payne has been in parliament for 20 years and made almost no public impression on anything To give defence to a junior minister with barely two years’ experience, no public profile, no political authority and no particular traction in the system is a big and dangerous downgrade for defence. A news report in The Age this week said Payne’s appointment had been “universally applauded”. This is grotesque and demonstrates that the reporter talks to no one of consequence in the Defence organisation or in defence industry, or that, as usual, The Age is distorting reality to fit its prejudices. In fact, the senior reaches of defence made it abundantly clear they wanted Andrews to stay. This view was shared by many in defence industry.
MALCOLM Turnbull said last week that he would “explain” things to voters because he respected the voters’ intelligence.
“We need advocacy, not slogans,” he declared, in a dig at the defeated Tony Abbott.
But Turnbull’s first TV interview as Prime Minister confirmed he often waffles at voters because he does not respect their valuable time.
Take his reply to the basic question for any politician: what did he stand for?
(Read full article here.)
UPDATE
Rowan Dean in the Spectator Australia makes the same point:
He pauses, he stutters, he umms and he ahhs. Hesitant moments as his hands wave meaninglessly in the air; awkward body shifts and gestures attempt to make up for the lack of substantive comment. No, it’s not Tony Abbott on a bad day: it’s Malcolm Turnbull. Not since Kevin Rudd last graced our TV screens have we had a prime minister who a) has so many words to deploy and b) has so little to say with them.
Get the Speccie to read the rest. Or hear Rowan on The Bolt Report on Sunday.
Malcolm Turnbull will make Australia’s disturbingly high rates of violence against women his first order of business, declaring “real men don’t hit women” and that the scourge that has already accounted for 63 deaths this year has been “overlooked for too long”.... He is preparing to unveil a new commitment expected to exceed $100 million, aimed at raising awareness, forcing the issue into the open, and forcing the violent men at its heart to confront their own weakness.
Truth is, Abbot hadn’t overlooked the deaths at all, and has already said real men don’t hit women:
What exactly does Turnbull mean when he says domestic violence has been “overlooked too long”? Why does Kenny let him get away with this self-serving untruth?
In fact, Abbott had already decried the rate of family violence deaths, put the issue on the national agenda, raised it with the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, appointed an inquiry and put together this very package, which he was due to release in the week he was toppled. From September 13, the day before the Turnbull coup:
TONY Abbott has declared “enough is enough” on family violence, warning that partners who bash women are “not men’’ and urging fathers to teach to their sons, mates and colleagues that it is never OK. Shocked by the deaths of three Queensland women in the past few days, including mother-of-four Karina Lock, 49, ... the Prime Minister has confirmed he will fast-track domestic violence reforms. “Enough is enough,” he told The Sunday Telegraph… “My message to everyone — to our brothers, to our sons, to our mates, is: no more. Never, ever again.” The measures are expected to include GPS tracking of violent offenders in some instances to give women peace of mind that apprehended violence orders will not be breached. Doctors, health workers and police may also be offered better training to help victims and avoid allowing women to slip through the cracks when they make the brave decision to seek help… The government is also considering plans to deliver one-stop-shop services for domestic violence survivors that would co-locate social workers at women’s legal services offering support and legal advice… The Prime Minister in May convened a COAG advisory panel to reduce violence against women chaired by Victorian Police Commissioner Ken Lay and Australian of the Year Rosie Batty.
Does “overlooked too long” actually mean that nothing has really been done unless Turnbull has done it?
UPDATE
Shame on Minister for Woman Michaelia Cash for this morning on AM seeming to use this package to contrast the Turnbull Government with Abbott’s. Are we really to believe this package was all Turnbull’s idea, whipped up in just one week?
A little more graciousness might heal rifts faster.
(Thanks to reader Peter H.)
Take Peter Hartcher, political correspondent of Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald, who in May falsely claimed Abbott had a possible “homophobic moment” when he allegedly snubbed the gay partner of our ambassador to France. (In fact, far from snubbing him, Abbott took him to dinner.) Hartcher was at it again on Friday, falsely claiming “the Prime Minister, without consulting his Cabinet, decided to launch Friday’s ham-fisted assault on Australians’ freedom of movement” — until his paper issued a grovelling correction admitting Abbott had known nothing about this “assault” Hartcher claimed he’d personally ordered… Just a week ago, Fairfax journalists turned the Liberal candidate for next month’s by-election in Canning, former SAS captain Andrew Hastie, into a suspected war criminal despite him having been nowhere near the scene of a (non) crime over which he was completely cleared.
Now that Malcolm Turnbull is prime minister, Fairfax political writers still write false stories - but as yet not with hostile intent:
To get one major story political story wrong may be regarded as misfortune. Mark Kenny and Peter Martin, Fairfax Media, Tuesday:
Malcolm Turnbull is facing a perfect storm in coming weeks with … a difficult mini-budget pencilled in for October to facilitate tough policy changes … Fairfax Media understands Mr Turnbull and new Treasurer Scott Morrison are planning to bring forward the mid-year fiscal and economic outlook from its usual December release to reset key policy directions, with education and taxation among the areas set for change.
I don’t know where that speculation comes from … That speculation is wrong and it must be coming from people who don’t really appreciate what is involved in putting together a budget update in an orderly fashion.
Two in two days looks like carelessness. Mark Hawthorne, Fairfax Media, yesterday:
In one of his first acts after becoming Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull last week secretly suspended all work on the Abbott government’s white paper on taxation, just weeks before it was due to deliver its first preliminary report. Stunned bureaucrats at the federal Treasury, the Tax White Paper Taskforce and the Board of Taxation, were last week told work on the white paper — instigated by former treasurer Joe Hockey in 2014 — would come to a complete halt.
Turnbull, Facebook, also yesterday:
This story … is not true. We have not stopped work on the tax white paper — quite the contrary, as I said earlier in the week tax reform is at the centre of our efforts to make Australia a more innovative, productive and prosperous economy.
Turnbull has to figure out how to deal with the day that Fairfax decides to do to him what it did to Abbott. Using Facebook and Twitter to deal with the white paper falsehood was smart.
YOUNG suicide bomber has been filmed crying over fears of failure before blowing himself up in an attack on a Syrian village. Jafar al-Tayyar drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the defences of the town ofFua in Idlib Province on September 18. Fighting with al-Qaeda-aligned rebels, the Uzbeki jihadi cried as he embraced supporters. “Jafar, my brother, don’t be afraid. When you are scared, remember Allah,” an Uzbek-speaking militant is heard encouraging him. Tayyar, reportedly in his 20s, responded: “I’m just scared I won’t succeed.”
Miranda Devine – Wednesday,September 24,2014 (1:34am)
A DANGEROUS parallel universe now exists alongside the reality of what the Police Commissioner calls the “clear and present threat” of homegrown Islamic terrorism.
This sham reality has been constructed by the “progressive” Left-leaning establishment of academics, politicians, journalists, media organisations and activists who have inexplicably joined forces with Islamic ideologues to downplay the threat, undermine our security and accuse those trying to keep us safe of Islamophobia and fearmongering.
In their eyes, the terror raids last week were suspiciously timed to distract from the Abbott government’s troubles and somehow to justify sending troops to the Middle East to help Iraq confront the Islamic State.
In politicising a security issue, they are wilfully deaf, dumb and blind to the assessments of those who actually are privy to the intelligence which led to last week’s terror raids.
“Let me tell you that matter (leading to the terror raids) that we dealt with last week was well past being a thought bubble,” NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione tells me.
“There was a clear and present threat that was very soon to be delivered. We know in Queensland only the week before, again, a matter of days before it was to be delivered.
“… It’s such a difficult call that the experts in the counterterrorism command area have to make.
“It’s a matter of waiting to get as much evidence as possible but ensuring that nothing happens. And we will always err on the side of going a little bit early because … if that attack that was planned last week had been successful. this nation’s history would have changed forever.”
That’s the reality which the tinfoil hat crowd deny, on the basis of zero evidence.
They ignore Monday’s order by Islamic State extremists to their supporters to kill Australians in whatever way they can.
For a view into the belly of this tinfoil beast, go no further than Monday night’s Q & A on ABC-TV. It distilled every delusion and pernicious idea about Muslim victimhood into one hour of dangerous insanity.
Western imperialism is to blame. Israel is to blame. “Team Australia” is to blame.
Two belligerent Muslim women controlled the conversation: sociologist and Islamophobia specialist Randa Abdel-Fattah and Anne Azza Aly, a social science research fellow at Curtin University, who was billed by the ABC as a “terrorism expert”.
Fattah claimed the terror raids were like an NCIS episode, “whipping people up into a frenzy of hysteria of war fever”.
“(They) reinforced this wider narrative of Muslims as criminals,” she said.
Then, after being the font of all wisdom for 50 minutes, Fattah said it was too complex to explain why Iraq asked for Australia’s help to stop Islamic State beheading, crucifying and raping its citizens.
“I’m not an expert because I’m too busy battling Islamophobia,” she said.
Aly, meanwhile, described terrorism as “theatre”.
Fellow panellist and Greens MP Scott Ludlam agreed the timing of the raids was an “amazing coincidence” and the terror threat was a beat-up hatched by “tabloid papers” which are “hurling fear” at people.
“Divisiveness” and fear is what terrorism is all about, he said, that “corroding and undermining of the underpinnings of society”.
Silly you if you thought terrorism was about chopping off heads and blowing up people.
Mark Dreyfus, Julia Gillard’s former attorney general, accused the government of “overstating” the jihadist threat,
Justice Minister Michael Keenan did a valiant job rebutting the nonsense but he was outnumbered five to one, and his most effective opponent was the host.
Tony Jones cut across Keenan, allowed guests to badger and interrupt him, and at one stage made the most extraordinary intervention. He interrupted Keenan to quiz a Muslim woman in the audience whom he imagined had claimed that “ASIO” had threatened to behead her, rape her corpse and slit her children’s throats.
Who would believe such a thing?
It turned out the woman’s claims were about “right-wing Nazis” on social media.
Even the audience laughed at Jones then.
The ABC could have brought in any number of sensible Muslims who understand the terrorist threat. It could have brought in Christian Assyrians or Afghan refugees or actual terrorism experts.
Instead the taxpayer-funded broadcaster chose deliberately to sow community disharmony, to smear Australians as racists and bigots, and to feed the sense of misplaced grievance and victimhood that justifies radicalism.
But the reality remains that we have a serious terrorist problem and the people charged with keeping us safe must not be distracted by spurious claims of Islamophobia and legal threats.
Were police not supposed to question three men at the football who were pointed out to them by spectators because the men might hire lawyer Adam Houda and threaten civil action?
Were they supposed to ignore two carloads of bearded Muslim men stopped near the Lucas Height nuclear reactor?
This isn’t a game. It’s not politics. It’s about saving lives.
“There are tough times ahead,” Scipione says.
“We can never become complacent. Just because something’s been thwarted … doesn’t mean the threat has gone away. In fact every day … that you don’t read about it is one day closer to the day when the attack will happen.
Miranda Devine – Wednesday,September 24,2014 (1:32am)
“I’VE become the Secretary General of the people,” the excited United Nations boss Ban Ki-moon said this week while parading through Manhattan in a climate protest. “Now I’m walking for the people”.
Miranda Devine – Tuesday,September 23,2014 (1:03am)
THERE’S a lot you could say about Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie’s call to have John Howard tried for “conspiracy to commit mass murder” over the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Liberal backbencher Andrew Nikolic, for instance, says Wilkie, “should be tried for the most appalling rhetorical overeach in living memory!”
Unlike Wilkie, Brigadier Nikolic knows a thing or two about war, having earned a Conspicuous Service Cross for boots on the ground service as deputy commander in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But if we are going to play at rhetorical overreach, how about this: Andrew Wilkie should be tried over the deaths of 1100 asylum seekers who drowned because of the border protection policies of the Gillard government - which he propped up.
Police suspect the 18-year-old man shot dead outside the Endeavour Hills police stationed planned to behead officers and post the images online.
Numan Haider used a small knife to attack an Australian Federal Police officer and a Victorian policeman before he was shot dead with a single shot.
When Haider was searched he was found to be carrying a larger knife and an Islamic State flag.
Police believe the plan was to follow instructions from the international terror group Islamic State and behead the officers, cover the bodies in the flag and then take photos to post via the internet.
We reject the notion that Muslims are terrorists and we suggest that the real threat to the majority of Australians (Muslims, workers, the unemployed, women, LGBTI people and so on) is the Abbott government and the ruling elite.
Come down this Friday at 5.30pm, at City Square on Swanston Street, join the group and speak out against right wing anti-Muslim dog whistling, and speak up for Muslim rights all around this country!
UPDATE. Islamic Council of Victoria secretary Graith Krayem:
“I’m a little disappointed. I think it was a little too pre-emptive. The police have come out very clearly and almost have said it’s all the young man’s fault.”
That’s because it was his fault. Further details of the attack:
Counter-terrorism officers met Haider outside Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s southeast about 7.45pm after the teen told police he felt uneasy about taking in the station’s foyer.
He greeted the officers with a handshake before stabbing an AFP agent in the neck, abdomen and upper body. He then stabbed a Victoria Police officer twice in the arm.
A terror suspect, 18, who allegedly made threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been shot dead by police after stabbing a Victoria Police officer and federal agent.
The man, who security sources said had recently had his passport cancelled, met officers from the joint counter terrorism team outside the Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s southeast.
It is understood he had been under surveillance for having allegedly made threats against Mr Abbott.
The joint counter-terrorism operation was aimed at detaining and questioning the man in relation to the threats, sources said …
It is believed he was well known to police and was alleged to have displayed IS – or Islamic State – flags in a local Dandenong shopping centre.
One of the injured police officers is said to be in a critical but stable condition. The Age:
Onlookers at the scene – who did not want to be named – said the dead man had been shouting insults at Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the Australian government in general in the moments before he was shot.
One man at the scene said the dead man was of Muslim appearance, but this was not independently confirmed.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (Peta) first shot at religious activism – a call to Muslims to observe a vegetarian Eid this October – has misfired. It met with violent protests here on Monday …
Peta woman volunteer “Benazir Suraiya” attempted to make an appeal to Muslims to go vegetarian at the legendary Taj-ul-Masajid, said to be one of Asia’s largest mosques.
Camouflaged in a green hijab, to highlight the importance of vegetarianism, she walked towards the mosque gates with a couple of PETA volunteers holding a placard in Urdu and English which read: “Make Eid Happy for All. Try Vegan”.
With less than a dozen policemen deployed, locals took the opportunity and shouted slogans asking her to turn back. She was forced to take cover along with another PETA volunteer in the market outside the mosque.
Within minutes the crowd swelled and Suraiya was left to fend for herself as PETA supporters fled the scene.
Naturally occurring changes in winds, not human-caused climate change, are responsible for most of the warming on land and in the sea along the West Coast of North America over the last century, a study has found.
The analysis challenges assumptions that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been a significant driver of the increase in temperatures observed over many decades in the ocean and along the coastline from Alaska to California.
Crikey suffers from Bolt Derangement Syndrome.
Crikey yesterday:
Andrew Bolt used his blog yesterday to attack Muslims and journalists who support individual freedoms in the face of government attacks, including Wendy Bacon and Crikey’s own Bernard Keane for suggesting the government had embraced national security as a means of distraction from its domestic political difficulties, saying we were peddling “a conspiracy so barking mad that you’d have to think the US, Britain, France, Italy and Saudi Arabia were all donating their armed forces to this war, too” [to help out Abbott]. Sadly for Bolt, even a quick Google would have told him Australia’s dear allies the Saudis—also noted for their beheading prowess—have as yet committed no armed forces against IS. Not a plane, not a soldier. And if Bolt wants a source he can trust on that, he could ask one of his proprietors, News Corp’s second biggest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al- Waleed Bin Talal Al Saud (yes folks, never forget News Corp and 21st Century Fox are both US-Saudi controlled companies). Al-Waleed told CNN on the weekend that despite having 135,000 troops, boots on the ground was the not “the way forward for his country”. He said: “I think Saudi Arabia will not be involved directly in fighting Isis in Iraq or Syria, because this does not really affect our country explicitly.” Facts, of course, aren’t things that really affect Bolt explicitly, either.
Hours later, Saudi planes join an attack on the Islamic State in Syria::
Another military spokesman, Lieutenant General William Mayville Jr., said that Arab nations - including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - took part in the second and third waves of attacks. He said the Arab countries’ actions ranged from combat air patrols to strikes on targets… Saudi Arabia sent British-made Tornados, fighter jets were supplied by Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and Qatar provided a forward airbase.
Saudi Arabia will host a camp to train 5,000 vetted Syrian fighters… Saudi Arabia has agreed openly to do that training in Saudi Arabia.
Chances of apology?
UPDATE
Actually, Crikey yesterday had two attacks on me. Seems it got zero from two.
Crikey yesterday:
Things that out-rated Howard Pt 2. The strong ratings for Channel Seven’s interview with John Howard showed how silly the ABC was to turn down the interview, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt wrote yesterday. He compared the ratings for the ABC’s Keating interviews, conducted by Kerry O’Brien which aired on Thursday, October 31 last year, with those of the Sunday Night’s John Howard interview. On this comparison, Howard (1.058 million viewers, see Media Briefs yesterday) beat Keating (886,000 viewers). “So why didn’t the ABC run the Howard interview, since that would have also helped to address the impression—the reality, really—that it is hopelessly biased,” Bolt wrote. Of course, on the very night of the Howard interview, the ABC actually had the higher-rating show. Political thriller The Code had 1.161 million viewers on Sunday (see TV ratings yesterday).—Myriam Robin
Crikey today:
Crikey writes: Re. “Howard and Keating” (yesterday). Crikey confused the national and metro figures for the Howard interview in an earlier version of this media brief. On national terms, the Howard interview got 1.679 million views, beating The Code. Which makes Crikey’s earlier quip about The Code beating the Howard interviews inaccurate.
Bolt 2, Crikey 0. And that’s when they’re really, really trying to prove me wrong.
Chances of two apologies?
(Thanks to reader RI.)
Book now. Brilliant sociologist Frank Furedi - whose latest column on radicalism is a cracker - will be in conversation with Nick Cater and John Roskam on Monday 6 October in Melbourne.
To book, go here.
Two policeman are stabbed by an alleged Muslim extremist, days after Australian Muslims were urged to kill non-believers. This produces the usual ABC report:
FEDERAL Justice Minister Michael Keenan says a teenager shot dead in Melbourne was “a known terror suspect who was a person of interest to law enforcement and intelligence agencies”. The 18-year-old Narre Warren man, who police believe may have previously displayed an ISIS flag, met the officers outside Endeavour Hills police station on the city’s outskirts on Tuesday night. He then stabbed one, an AFP officer, a number of times, before twice stabbing a Victorian officer in the forearm.
The alleged ringleader of a plot to execute a random person on Australian soil was ... Mohammad Ali Baryalei, ... now Australia’s most senior Islamic State leader… Baryalei ... went from being an Afghan refugee to senior Islamic State militant… His family fled Afghanistan in 1981 when he was just 40 days old and they arrived at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre when he was seven.
I think we need to understand that these are people who are in many cases born and bred Australians. Now, many of them have linkages back to the Middle East, Afghan in particular...
THEY are the “dangerous sons” who make up one of Western Sydney’s newest self-styled radicalised Islamic street gangs. With a combination of teenage bravado, US crime culture swagger and extreme Islamic ideology, the “Fourtwozero (420)” gang is Hezbollah meets Hollywood. Nearly a dozen sons of refugees who fled war-torn countries such as Afghanistan have embraced the violent culture of their homeland through a modern silver-screen lens to roam Parramatta’s streets as “soldiers”. The number 420 is a nationally recognised “bad” number in Afghanistan, used to describe someone who is dangerous and dishonest.
From the Facebook page of one of the arrested gang members:
MUSLIM leaders have called for a full investigation into the fatal shooting of a teenage Muslim man after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers in Melbourne last night… The AFP officer was stabbed a number of times, and the Victorian police officer was stabbed twice in the arm before he shot the man dead… Ghaith Krayem, Secretary of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said he was a “little disappointed” with the police press conference after the incident… “The police have come out very clearly and almost have said it was the young man’s fault, and I don’t know in the fall of time that may prove to be the case, but I think within a couple of hours I was disappointed...”
The Islamic Council of Victoria expressed “deep sorrow” over the incident, which left the officers in hospital in a stable condition… “There needs to be a full and objective investigation into this incident to ensure that such a tragedy is never repeated,” the council said in a statement today. “This tragedy highlights the real cost of a failure to deal with these serious issues and why we have made numerous calls on the Australian government to deal with the root causes of alienation and disaffection of people such as this.”
The police are the problem? The failure is ours? The “root cause” is alienation, not Islam and some of its reckless representatives?
This blame-shifting happens to regularly from Muslim leaders that it now seems not a misjudgement but a tenet of their ideology.
Tony Abbott did not attend Tuesday’s United Nations climate change summit in New York. But he will, of course, be in New York on Wednesday to help decide what to do about the Islamic State of the Levant… ISIL, as the federal Attorney-General told the ABC last week, “represents or seeks to be an existential threat to us”. An existential threat!… ISIL is brutal, and merciless. It undoubtedly threatens the lives and well-being of some hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of people in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. It has made clear that it wants its followers to kill Australians too. But, whatever it “seeks to be”, it is not and never will be an existential threat to Australia. Yet so far as I know, only Crikey’s Bernard Keane has called George Brandis out on his alarmism...It was one call ... that precipitated last week’s raids ... and ... one young man was charged with a terrorism offence. As the government made sure we knew in double quick time, he had been urged by an ISIL activist in Syria to cut off the head of an innocent Australian. One Australian. There’s an existential threat for you… More and more laws to stop terrorists; fewer and fewer measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Hours after filing this tosh, we got this:
POLICE say they had “no choice” but to shoot dead a Melbourne teenage terror suspect after he stabbed two officers from the Joint Counter Terrorism Team. The 18-year-old Narre Warren man, under surveillance for making threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott, met a Victorian police officer and an AFP agent outside Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s southeast about 7.45pm. The Muslim man greeted the two officers with a handshake before attacking them, police say. He stabbed the AFP officer a number of times before twice stabbing the Victorian officer in the forearm, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius said.
A GOVERNMENT employee sitting at the front counter of a Government agency could have been the victim of a vicious terrorist plot in Queensland. The Courier-Mail can reveal an alleged terrorist plot involved the possible beheading of a “government official” who would be chosen at random. Police allege the plot is linked to 21-year-old Logan man Agim Kruezi. It is also understood federal police had established a link between Kruezi – arrested south of Brisbane two weeks ago – and Omarjan Azari, 22, who is accused of ordering the beheading of a random non-believer in Sydney. It is understood Kruezi was just days away from carrying out his plan before he was arrested and charged two weeks ago.
I’d say that the Islamist threat, if it causes Australians here to die, will more profoundly damage the way we live and deal with each other than any man-made warming.
It’s also more likely to end your existence.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The party of solidarity turns out to be a nest of vipers, who bite and bite and bite again. Rudd blasts Gillard:
MONTHS after Kevin Rudd was deposed as prime minister, and in the wake of Labor’s disastrous 2010 election campaign, he wrote a blistering assessment of Julia Gillard, arguing that voters saw her as a “backstabber” lacking legitimacy who had led the government to near annihilation. Mr Rudd described his toppling in June 2010 as a “Shakespearean” plot-line riddled with falsehoods about his government’s performance… “This was an entirely fabricated post-facto rationale for a leadership change that was driven in large part by political ambition — an attempt to elevate the reasons for leadership change above crude politics to the highest reasons of state,” Mr Rudd said… Mr Rudd wrote that one of the strongest supporters of the coup was former minister Tony Burke, who was motivated to turn on him by the prospect of becoming deputy prime minister. He wrote that Mr Burke “offered himself unsuccessfully” as a running mate to Ms Gillard two months before the coup.
JULIA Gillard has described Kevin Rudd as deeply flawed because of his difficult childhood and concluded that he could never get “enough applause, approval, love’’ despite rising from humble roots to become prime minister. In a withering character assessment in her autobiography, due out today, Ms Gillard said her one-time ally — who would not have become Labor leader “without my intervention’’ — was “tragically incapable of changing his behaviour’’ and had to be dumped… Reprising years of Labor infighting, Ms Gillard reveals in My Story that she had been exposed to Mr Rudd’s “menacing, bullying words” in the past and came to the conclusion in February 2010 that he was not coping with his job. She insists in the book that she refused to discuss a leadership change with any of her colleagues until June 23 that year, when a newspaper report questioned her loyalty to the leader. On that day she turned to Tony Burke, a key leader in the NSW Right, to discuss whether she should resign or challenge for the leadership. “I left that discussion knowing that if I did seek the leadership, Tony would support me,” she said. “To feel such loyalty and support helped stiffen my spine.”
Two weeks after many journalists of the Left announced Julia Gillard had performed brilliantly at the royal commission and the AWU slush fund scandal was all a beat-up with no more left to learn:
For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails…
The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: 0 Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! ...
When Islam will retake possession of [the means to] guide the life [of the Muslims], it will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam…
With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others… They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there… There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it… There is no way out except pooling together all the forces and energies to face this despicable Nazi-Tatar invasion.
LEIGH SALES: ...(H)ow will you have a two-state solution if you’re not prepared to negotiate with Hamas? BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, I don’t negotiate with people who want to destroy me ... People who are out to destroy you are not candidates for negotiation. You make peace but only with an enemy that wants peace. An enemy that wants to eradicate you from the face of the Earth: there’s nothing to negotiate about. We want to talk to those Palestinians who reject Hamas. That’s why I’ve asked president Abbas to reject Hamas and espouse peace. You can’t have Hamas and peace. You have to choose one or the other. We choose peace. LEIGH SALES: But you have to negotiate with who is the representative of 1.8 million Gazans and that is Hamas, otherwise there is no prospect for a two-state solution? BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Hamas is not the representative. Hamas is their jailer. Hamas has oppressed them. There was only one election in Gaza: once. After that, there are no elections; there are executions. Hamas executed dozens of Palestinians who don’t agree with them during the last war that they forced on their people, using them as civilian shields and when people protested they put a bullet in their heads… They don’t represent anyone in Gaza. They rule them with an iron fist. This is a terrorist tyranny. I will not accord them any legitimacy. Neither should anyone else.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
Considering how plainly the Israeli Prime Minister stated the reality, Sales’ follow-up question was quite remarkable. It was as though she mustn’t have heard Netanyahu’s answer to her first question.
It’s in the water. ABC host Virginia Trioli on the “realistic” way to deal with terror leader Osama bin Laden:
What if that involved bringing him somewhere, absolutely safely, sitting down with him, treating him like a human being and talking about it, and then Osama bin Laden going home again, not bombing the hell out of bin Laden?
The ABC’s Q&A on Monday threw petrol onto the fire by getting together Muslim firebrands and others to portray Australia as a country run by war criminals and xenophobes, helping to kill Muslims abroad and persecute them at home with politically motived police raids.
One of the most savage indictments of Australia and its institutions came from an unnamed woman in the audience. Note how the Greens and Labor MPs tended to believe and endorse her incendiary claims, and host Tony Jones even assumed the woman was being persecuted by ASIO::
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [The Australian Defence League] make threats to myself and my family, telling them that they want to behead me. So everything you’re saying right now is very insulting. MICHAEL KEENAN [Justice Minister]: Well, if that is the case, then you need to alert the authorities. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have reported it to police numerous times, thank you. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well, let me assure you, we don’t police in a way in this country that targets one group over another. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, you do. MICHAEL KEENAN: I can assure you that that is the case. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, you do. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well… SCOTT LUDLAM [Greens Senator]: I’m not sure the message is getting through, whether you sense the reaction of the room when you said that for the first time. I’m not sure, if that is the strategy, that it’s getting through to people… MICHAEL KEENAN: We do not target the Muslim… TONY JONES: Michael Keenan, can I just interrupt for a second, because that was a pretty extraordinary allegation. I’d just like you to - are you saying that an official of the security forces did this? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I reported it to Bankstown Police Station on numerous occasions. They’ve called to slit my - the - my - my children’s throats and rape my dead ‘caucus’ on the side of the road. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well… TONY JONES: So are you’re saying - sorry, you’re saying this is coming from racist groups? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well, I mean, I can assure you that threats of that nature would be followed up. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I am trolled 24 hours a day on Facebook and social media because of these right-wing Nazis, okay. My life is not pleasant right now living in this country and no-one seems to care because I am Muslim and they’re not. It’s all right for the non-Muslims to give me a hard time. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well, it’s not. AUDIENCE MEMBER: But when I complain about it, it’s not the same. MICHAEL KEENAN: It is absolutely not. Look, there’s absolutely no excuse for anyone in the community to attack another Australian in an unprovoked way. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I’d like to see the evidence that you are actually doing something about it… TONY JONES: I’m just confirming you’re not saying that was security officials. You’re saying that was a racist group that’s made these threats against you? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, it - look, it’s the ADL, yes. MICHAEL KEENAN: Well, I can assure you that will be followed up. TONY JONES: Right, I beg your pardon. You said ADL. I thought you said ASIO. Okay, no, I thank you - thank you so much… MICHAEL KEENAN: For clarifying. TONY JONES: Thank you so much for clarifying that. But we’ve got a question on a similar - we’ve got - I’m sorry, that was a misunderstanding. We’ve got a question on a similar subject. It’s from Asme Fahmi… MARK DREYFUS [Labor’s shadow attorney-general]: ...The police investigate crimes and threatened crimes wherever they occur but the fact that some people, including many people in this audience, have the impression that there is uneven policing raises, for me, a really big question which is about confidence in our agencies, confidence in the intelligence work, confidence in the police, and part of the job of Government and part of the job of every politician in Australia is to make sure that the community has that confidence and I fear, from what you’ve said and what you’ve also said, Asme, is that there’s a gap. Clearly, there is a gap. There’s a whole lot more work to be done and it fits together, as it happens, with countering violence extremism.
In fact, the unnamed woman is Rebecca Kay, an activist and convert:
She was also a guest in another TV debate to discuss a violent riot by Muslim protesters in 2012 and leaped to some wild conclusions:
Joe Hildebrand says all the acceptable things about the Sydney riot - unrepresentative minority, protest hijacked, most Muslims reject the violence, the Koran preaches peace (well, “mostly") - yet he still cops it in the Today Tonight debate from a Muslim lady who was at the protest with her children:
Rebecca Kay: But it’s very easy for people to say like, Joe, no offence, Joe, to say that. You have restrictions against your religion. You can’t say anything bad about Jewish people. We don’t have them kind of protections. Hildebrand: I’m not Jewish. Kay: Oh, aren’t you? Are you sure?
The mistake is funny. But what is not funny is that Kay thought Joe’s perfectly sane criticism of the protest was driven by his alleged Jewish faith - and that Jews have protections here that Muslims don’t. No, not funny at all. Think I read too much into that? Here Kay again, from 4:28:
It takes two to tango… The police force was equally as aggressive.
And here Kay explains away the infamous picture of a mother at the protest photographing her child holding up a sign calling for the beheading of those who offend Mohammad:
I personally believe that that sign was left on the floor for that child to pick it up.
I would like to know the other side of the story before believing her allegations of police ignoring lurid threats to kill her.
I’d also like to know how Kay came to be in the audience, and why she was not identified, allowing her to seem like some typical Muslim woman just vilified and threatened as she went on her quiet way.
And that goes to the wider issue: how and why did the ABC get together such a collection of Muslim firebrands savaging Australia? How grossly irresponsible to give viewers the impression that every Muslim in our country was like every Muslim on Q&A – militant, damning of Australia and full of excuses for extremists. How dangerous to give any extremists the idea that their rage against this wicked country was justified.
(Thanks to reader BrettW.)
(T)he Australian debate is bedevilled by three truly ludicrous myths peddled variously and in different combinations, by Greens, lefties, professional anti-Americans, and that great undifferentiated and largely uninformed cadre of general commentators on everything who figure so ubiquitously, and so repetitively, on the ABC. The myths are: that the rise of Islamic State in Iraq is a consequence of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq; that recent US counter-terrorist activities and aggressive actions in the Middle East have spurred the terrorist threat on; and that Israel remains the core issue, or the root cause, of the Middle East’s problems… Professing, as opposed to actually believing, these myths offers a high level of psychological comfort, because they give you the two favourite pantomime villains of international politics: the US and Israel… The most important and destructive dynamic in the Middle East today is the sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia… Israel’s role in the basic Shia-Sunni hostilities is absolutely zero…Israel is the licensed grievance in many Arab nations, which the public is allowed to talk about. Criticising Israel is also a good way for Westerners to demonstrate their concern for the Middle East without having to take any difficult decisions.
A MAN has been shot dead and two police officers wounded after an incident during a joint agency investigation outside Endeavour Hills police station tonight.
A Victoria Police officer and Australian Federal Police agent are believed to have been stabbed by an occupant of a car they pulled over outside the police station in Melbourne’s southeast… A Monash Health spokeswoman confirmed one of the officers was taken to Dandenong Hospital in a stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries.
UPDATE
In fact, one policeman is in a critical condition. [Other reports say stable..]
It is reported that the man shot dead had had his passport cancelled. I’m afraid my secret suspicion - that this was another Islamist attack - may be correct.
UPDATE The full stereotype confirmed:
A TERROR suspect who allegedly made threats against Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been shot dead by police tonight after stabbing a Victoria Police officer and federal agent.
The man, who security sources said had recently had his passport cancelled, was stopped by counter-terrorism police outside the Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne’s southeast. It is understood he had been under surveillance for having allegedly made threats against Mr Abbott… It is believed police were in the process of detaining him when the incident happened. It is believed he was well known to police and was alleged to have displayed IS - or Islamic State - flags in a local Dandenong shopping centre.
I am sorry that anyone from the Assyrian community here in Australia is involved with criminal gangs. The police and the media are not at fault for calling them out on being Assyrian. Those captured in the raids today are the ones that identify themselves as being of Assyrian heritage, by the clothes they wear, the tattoos they get, the things they say. They have made their heritage fair gang by forming an ethnically based gang. I am proud the police have been able to take more criminals of the street today, regardless of their ethnicity. 99% of the Assyrian community here is hardworking, decent God-fearing Christians. My message to the other one percent is you are not "sick-$!#$" because you are in a gang. Get out and get a job. Learn a trade and live a honest life. Crime does not pay. The police have made it clear they will go to any length to find you.
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The idea that solving the Israel/Palestinian question is the key to unlocking the problems of the region was what everyone who wanted to sound as if they knew what they were saying was most delighted to say: "What was that about Yemen? Well of course the real problem we need to solve is the Israel/Palestinian issue." Rarely in diplomatic history has so much been got so wrong by so many people for so long.
With the civil war in Syria grinding through its third year, Egypt descended into ethnic and inter-religious barbarism, and the American Secretary of State reduced to promising "unbelievably small" action by the world's only super-power, it is hard to find any chinks of light. But one, perhaps, exists. It is that we may finally have seen the explosion of one of the most embedded and central myths of our time: the idea that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the "key" to sorting out the problems of the Middle East.
After seeing what has happened since the "Arab Spring" began, this might be an appropriate moment to ask whether or not every Western foreign minister deserves simply to be sacked and sent back to school. Rarely in diplomatic history has so much been got so wrong by so many people for so long.
For at least the twenty years since the Oslo Accords, the idea that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the "key" to unlocking the problems of the Middle East was the leitmotif of any discussion about the Middle East and North Africa areas. So pervasive was it that people could refer to the "Middle East" problem as though everyone agreed that there was only one problem across that whole set of benighted lands.
While of course it would be nice if all disputes could be solved — Cyprus, Kashmir, Turkey, Morocco, Tibet -- what is worse is that the allegation came from every side of the political spectrum. Politicians of the left said it. Politicians of the right said it. The idea that solving the Israel/Palestinian question was the key to unlocking the problems of the region was what everyone who wanted to sound as if they knew what they were saying was most delighted to say: "What was that about Yemen? Well of course the real problem we need to solve is the Israel/Palestinian issue." "A bomb was planted in which Western city? Well what we really need to do is solve that border dispute issue of the Israelis."
Further, one of the oddest things about all this is that for some reason, when the alleged centrality of the issue should have been swept aside most completely, it became instead even more central.
After 9/11, when Western cities began to be places on the frontline of a global effort to express innumerable Islamist grievances and extort endless Islamist demands, the free world's leaders instead decided to play this long-defunct tune one more time.
===
As Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz hosted an event in his sukkah for IDF generals, he gave an exclusive interview to Arutz Sheva, in which he lambasted the current negotiations with thePalestinian Authority (PA). He also spoke about recent terrorist incidents, and the threat posed by Iran.
Commenting on the negotiations between Israel and the PA, which are being led by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Katz said: "I don't know all of the details, but while it is perhaps possible to hold talks in secret, it is not legitimate to hold talks with a secret ideology."
The Minister added: "For the Likud, there is a path forward, our path is different from that of Tzipi Livni. Her way is not our way. The Likud has to fix the guiding principles for negotiations." He added that there was a need to stress to the US that there are red lines, and that Israel is not prepared to cross those red lines.
Katz also expressed his staunch opposition to a Palestinian state, saying: "The existential threat to our existence does not come from Iran, or Syria or other Arab states, but rather from the establishment of a Palestinianstate, which we can not allow to take place."
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Danon said that Israel should demand that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemn the murders of two soldiers over the past two days before any peace negotiations can resume.
===
The Afghan interpreter who finally received a visa for a new life in the U.S.could have it revoked after only two weeks -- and has gone into hiding amid fears he and his family have become targets of the Taliban.
Janis Shinwary already had quit his job as a translator for the U.S. military stationed in Afghanistan and sold all of his family’s possessions in anticipation for moving stateside. But the process to obtain the visa, which already put him and his loved ones in harm’s way, has apparently stalled with no explanation from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
“If you are getting a visa, you are expecting a new life,” Shinwary said to FoxNews.com via phone from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. “I started to sell everything we owned–even my kids’ toys.”
===
AN EXPECTANT father was naked, drunk, had drugs in his system and was driving to hospital at twice the speed limit when he crashed his car, killing his fiancee and unborn child, a court has heard.
Lisa Smith, 23, was pregnant with her third child when a car driven by John Ceruto crashed into a Stobie pole at Woodville Park in January this year, during a hospital dash after Ms Smith complained of severe abdominal pain.
The baby, a boy, had been due March 10.
Ms Smith left behind two children, Hannah and Blake, who now live with their grandparents.
Today Ceruto, 31, of Woodville Park, faced the District Court for sentencing submissions.
He had previously pleaded guilty to one aggravated count of causing Ms Smith’s death by dangerous driving, and to driving unlicensed.
In court, a victim-impact statement written by Ms Smith's mother, Kerri-Anne, was read aloud.
“I find it difficult to know the only people who helped Lisa after the crash were the strangers to whom I am so grateful,” Mrs Smith wrote.
SAMANTHA Lewthwaite has emerged as a prime suspect behind the bloodshed in Kenya but who is the 29-year-old woman thought responsible for so much carnage?
Dubbed the 'White Widow' by Britain's media, the mother-of-four has emerged as the prime suspect in the Nairobi massacre.
The widow of suicide bomber Jermaine Lindsay, Lewthwaite is believed to have ordered the Nairobi attack or even led it herself.
Soldiers said a white woman wearing a veil was shouting orders to gunmen in Arabic during the bloody massacre inside the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, theDaily Mailreports.
As soldiers closed in on the terrorists, one said the scene is "all being controlled by this muzungu [Swahili for white] woman. She is ordering them what to do. We are getting closer to them".
Some survivors say a veiled woman was commanding the al-Shabaab militants as they attacked people in the Nairobi mall while other survivors simply say saw a "white woman" among the hostage-takers.
Police have told reporters that they are still investigating the possibility the woman may have been a hostage dressed in one of the terrorists' clothes as a "decoy" during the attack which saw Kenyan authorities regain control of most of the four-storey shopping mall.
However Kenyan anti-terror police revealed yesterday that Lewthwaite may be the brains behind the operation to bring terror to the heart of Kenya, theDaily Mail reports.
KENYAN troops are battling the Islamists making their final stand in a 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.
"The hostages who were being held by the mujahedeen inside Westgate are still alive, looking quite disconcerted but, nevertheless, alive," the Shebab said in a message posted on their latest Twitter account.
At least 62 shoppers and staff have been killed and close to 200 wounded in the siege, but concerns are high that the toll may yet rise.
Security sources said "one or two" militants were taking a final stand against special forces in or around a casino on one of the upper floors of the complex.
Government spokesman Manoah Esipisu told AFP early today the siege was close to being declared over, with special forces "sanitising" the complex in case "there are a couple of them hiding in a remote room or corner."
As the interior ministry said early Tuesday that all hostages trapped by the militants are believed to have been freed, Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said that several American nationals and a British woman were among the fighters.
The latest developments come after an off-duty member of Britain's special forces reportedly helped save a hundred lives as terrorists launched their attack.
The Daily Mail reports sources as crediting the soldier as a hero of the Nairobi siege after intervening with a handgun as his only weapon.
The soldier was reportedly having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by a group of 10 to 15 terrorists.
Abdullah Amar, father of the terrorist Nadal Amar, condemned the actions of his son and expressed regret that he had killed IDF soldier Tomer Hazan. “I am speaking from the depths of my heart,” he told Israeli reporters Sunday. “If the army would give me a machine gun, I would shoot my son in the head, without a court's permission.”
Hazan was abducted Friday and murdered in Samaria by Amar, with the motive said by IDF officials to be a plan by the terrorist to trade Hazan's body for the freedom of his brother, a Fatah terrorist who has been in jail in Israel for the last ten years. The soldier went missing Friday, and after a Shabak investigation, soldiers descended on the home of Nadal in the village of Bayt Amin, near Kakilya.
Hazan had worked together with Amar at a restaurant in Bat Yam. On Friday, Hazan met Nadal in the Jewish town of Shaare Tikvah in central Samaria, from where both proceeded to Nadal's village, where Israeli officials said that the IDF soldier was killed immediately. Nadal dumped Hazan's body in a pit near the village. He along with six others were arrested Saturday morning, after the Shabak gathered information on the attack.
Nadal Amar had been working in Israel since he was 17, his father said, and the family was extremely upset and distressed at what he had done. “I and all the members of my family, from young to old, strongly condemn what my son did, killing an unarmed man who came here,” said Abdullah Amar. “Nadal never even hurt a cat, I never imagined he could hurt a person. But I wish to tell the Israeli public that if he committed a crime, he must pay for it as a court orders. He killed a man for no reason,” the elder Amar said.
Nadal Amar has been on his own for decades, his father said, coming to visit his family for short periods only once every few months. “He has never been in jail, was never associated with Hamas or Fatah or the Jihad groups.” Nadal Amar has a wife and eight children in the Israeli Arab town of Jaljuliya, the elder Amar said.
=== My thanks to
נתניאל פיינגולד
"When evil is perpetrated against a human being - by taking his life - then vengeance becomes not only the erasing of evil but one way of honoring the dead by showing that his life was indeed precious to us, that we are indeed shaken by his death, that his life and blood were not cheap in our eyes. One does not forget or forgive murder. To do so is to spit in the grave of the murdered, no matter what the rationalizations. And to do so is to hold in contempt the lives of others who will be murdered tomorrow for our refusal to burn out the murderers today." - R' Meir Kahane 1983 ===
A former member of the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion, in which Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kobi – shot in the course of routine security duty in Hebron on Sunday – served, offers a personal tribute to the young man he never knew.
By Ido Antar
“Yesterday evening, the name of the soldier killed in Hebron was released to the public – Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kobi, who served in the Rotem Battalion of the Givati Brigade.
I didn’t know him.
Two years have passed since I was released, and he only then enlisted.
I won’t be at the funeral, and I probably also won’t attend the shiva. I will not be reciting the mourner’s Kaddish.
Today, I will go for a run like every other day, and I will go to the gym like every other day. But instead of wearing a Nike or Adidas shirt like on a normal day, I pulled out from the depths of my closet the shirt of the Rotem battalion.
Every person that I pass by on my run – I will point behind me with my thumb so that they will all know. So that they’ll know that the IDF as a whole, and the Rotem Battalion in particular, are strong, tough, and remember every single fighter. That’s my small tribute for all to see.
But not so that they’ll be proud of me – but rather proud of him.
If this post happens to reach Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kobi’s family, know that your dear one was a courageous hero, there is no other like him, he will always be remembered in a heroic light earned by so few. With all the pain and sorrow, he was killed for a hallowed goal, in defense of the homeland.
To the lowly terrorist who did this – I trust and am certain that your whereabouts are known, and indeed very likely that you’ve already been caught. I hope very much that you get what you deserve.
===
=== Iran Human Rights, September 21: Eight prisoners, including three women, were hanged in Yazd Prison (central Iran) on September 19 andfour more prisoners were hanged in Qazvin Prison (west of Tehran) on September 21, reported Iranian state media.
According to the official website of the Iranian Judiciary in Yazd, the eight prisoners hanged in Yazd Prison were convicted of drug related charges. The eight prisoners have been identified as:
"R. H." and "M. Sh.", for participation in the possession and trafficking of 10 kilograms of heroin.
"T. Y.", for trafficking 920 grams of heroin.
"R. B.", for possession and trafficking 2800 grams of heroin.
"Z. S."(woman), for possession and trafficking 4 kilograms of heroin.
"N. S." (woman), for possession and trafficking 2050 grams of crack and 495 grams of heroin.
"S. H." (woman), for participation in the possession and trafficking of 1970 grams of heroin.
"Z. S.", for drug addiction and the possession and trafficking of 630 grams of heroin and 51 grams of opium and cannabis.
The official website of the Iranian Judiciary in Qazvin had reported the hanging ofthe four prisoners in Qazvin Prison. Three of the prisoners were reportedly convicted of drug related charges and the fourth prisoner was reportedly convicted of murder. The prisoners have been identified as:
"F. N." (28), for possession of "some amounts of Crystal" and involvement in the manufacturing of alcoholic beverages and other drugs.
"B. N." (43), for possession of 2387 grams of crystal
"R. M." (34), for possession of 938 grams of crystal
"B. A." (26), convicted of murder in 2008
Additionally, at least five prisoners were hanged in Zahedan Prison (southeastern Iran) on September 21, according to "Human Rights and Democracy Activists in Iran" (HRDAI).
Except, because the rule of law is not strong in Iran it is not known if those executed were merely prisoners of conscience ed
===
During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community,one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:
We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.
===
Remember when candidate Barack Obama promised his acolytes that they were only “five days away fromfundamentally transforming the United States of America”? That was back in October 2008, when the hectic flush of Obamamania was at its peak. To be fair, it’s taken a bit longer than five days, but here we are, five years into the most destructive presidency in the country’s history, and we can see that fundamental transformation at work just about everywhere.
The economy: During Obama’s first term, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded by S&P for the first time in history. That might seem pretty abstract: who cares about a country’s credit rating? But then there’s news like this: According to a report released in 2012 by the Federal Reserve, Americans have seen their wealth plummet by 40 percent over the past few years. Hope & Change!
President Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR], reversing the policy of four presidents and six of their Secretaries of State not to recognize the Soviet government, in 1933 extended “normal diplomatic relations” to the Soviet Union, the totalitarian slaughterhouse of Josef Stalin. As meticulously researched by Diana West in her new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character,” the reasoning behind Roosevelt’s decision was never made clear; what was clear, however, since the 1917-1919 Bolshevik seizure of the Russian government by force, was the Soviet reign of blood and terror. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, by the late 1930s, Stalin’s regime was shooting tens of thousands of people per month. Yet, for reasons that remain murky, FDR was influenced, inspired, or somehow persuaded to normalize U.S. relations with Stalin, in exchange for a page of Soviet concessions, not worth the paper they were written on, which pledged that the USSR “would not attempt to subvert or overthrow the U.S. system.”
What West documents is the subsequent process of infiltration, influence, and “occupation” by an army of communist agents and fellow travelers; here, however, the focus is on what that original 1933 decision has meant for future generations, most especially our own, when confronted with decisions about whether or not to recognize enemies who make no secret of their enmity and intention to destroy us.
===
Bulletin Sept. 10, 2013
Fatah: Replace today's "whores"
with yesterday's Martyrs - killers of Israelis from the past
Fatah's Facebook page continues to promote killing of Israelis and praises terrorists, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch. The administrator of "Fatah - The Main Page" expressed longing for the return of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who participated in attack that killed 37, and for suicide bombers Ayyat Al-Akhras, Andalib Takatka and Wafa Idris, who in total killed 9 and wounded more than 200. This was expressed as part of an overall condemnation of Palestinian women who demonstrated against the renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The demonstrators were referred to as "whores."
Female fighters of the past with their guns (left) and today's "whores" (right)
The Fatah page administrator addressed the terrorist killers and asked them to "come back" to teach Palestinians to use violence against Israel and die willingly as Martyrs for Palestine:
"Come back here, my sisters, in Allah's name. Teach yesterday's whores [at the demonstration] how the struggle is carried out, how to sacrifice for Palestine. Teach them how the Palestinian woman acts like Al-Khansa... Come back, oh you modest [women], and teach these whores that the homeland needs sacrifice and blood and not a modeling show..."
The reference to Al-Khansa encourages Palestinian parents to happily sacrifice their children in battle. Al-Khansa is a famous Arab female poet from the early Islamic period (7th century). She is honored in Islamic tradition for sending her four sons into battle and rejoicing when they all died as Martyrs.
The Fatah Facebook page also compared the "modest" women of the past, the terrorist killers, to "the whores," the Palestinian women demonstrators of today:
"Shame on the whores who led the demonstration yesterday [Aug. 28, 2013], and this morning I find no way to describe them but as whores on the sidewalks of the Muqata'a' (i.e., the PA's Presidential Headquarters)."
PMW has documented that Fatah uses its Facebook page excessively to glorify violence and terrorists.
The following is the text on Fatah's Facebook page, posted the day after Palestinians demonstrated against renewed peace talks between Israel and the PA:
In photo: The female fighters of the past with their guns and today's "whores."
Text: "Where are you, Dalal [Mughrabi]? Swear in Allah's name that you will return, if only for a moment. On your way, bring Ayyat Al-Akhras, Andalib Takatka and Wafa Idris with you. Bring the Martyrs with you. Come back here, my sisters, in Allah's name. Teach yesterday's whores [at the demonstration] how the struggle is carried out, how to sacrifice for Palestine. Teach them how the Palestinian woman acts like Al-Khansa and not like some young whore standing in the streets in the ugliest way, [using] the dirtiest words. Come back, oh you modest [women], and teach these whores that the homeland needs sacrifice and blood and not a modeling show and vulgar words and obscenities that [even] men are ashamed to utter. Rest in peace, [you] Al-Khansas of Palestine, our female Martyrs, our female fighters and Dalal [Mughrabi]'s sisters. Shame on the whores who led the demonstration yesterday [Aug. 28, 2013], and this morning I find no way to describe them but as whores on the sidewalks of the Muqata'a' (i.e., the PA's Presidential Headquarters)."
[Facebook, "Fatah - The Main Page," Aug. 29, 2013]
Dalal Mughrabi - led the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history in 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children.
Ayyat Al-Akhras - the youngest female Palestinian suicide bomber (age 17). She killed 2 Israelis and injured 28 in a suicide bombing near a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29, 2002.
Andalib Takatka - female suicide bomber who killed six and wounded more than 80 in her attack on Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda outdoor market on April 12, 2002.
Wafa Idris - was the first Palestinian female suicide bomber. She killed one and injured over 100 in her attack in central Jerusalem on January 27, 2002. As a volunteer for the Palestinian Red Crescent, she was able to bypass Israeli security and enter Jerusalem in a Palestinian ambulance.
Al-Khansa - famous Arab woman and poet from the earliest period of Islam (7th century), honored in Islamic tradition for sending her four sons to battle and for rejoicing when they all died as Martyrs. She has been lauded by the PA and is often presented as a role model for mothers.
Note: The Facebook page where this item was posted, called "Fatah - The Main Page," is an official Fatah Facebook page. The page defines itself as belonging to the Fatah Mobilization and Organization Commission. Each Fatah commission has an official website. The official website of Fatah's Mobilization and Organization Commission links to this Facebook page.
CAIR failed to file required annual reports, known as form 990s, detailing their revenues and expenses, for three consecutive years. CAIR had been a non-profit on its own, but in 2007, the IRS approved a separate tax-exempt CAIR Foundation. The foundation never filed any subsequent reports. Both the foundation and CAIR nationalare on the purge list.
The CAIR Foundation won exempt status in 2007 and then never filed any annual reports. That year, theWashington Times reported that CAIR's membership plummeted by 90 percent, from a high of 29,000 people in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. CAIR vehemently denied the report when it was issued. But a year later, when the organization sought to have its name removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas-financing prosecution, CAIR attorneys tied the diminishing support to the 2007 co-conspirator list.
The delegation included CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, then-board chairman Parvez Ahmed, and current chairman Larry Shaw.
Where are CAIR's tax returns? Who is giving them millions to fund their Islamic supremacist machine? Their mother organization, the Muslim Brotherhood? Al Qaeda?
We want to see the jihad millions (billions, perhaps) and where their dirty dough is coming from. Before they stopped obeying US tax law and filing returns, we know that one Saudi wahhabi prince gave Hamas-CAIR 50 million dollars back in 2007.
Today they released another ridiculous report concerning the pathetic islamophobia financial network here. How wrong did they get it? They have me as President of Jihad Watch, need I say more?
The bottom line is that America needs to know who is funding these terror supporters. It's a national security issue. Release the returns. What is it that Hamas-CAIR is hiding and doesn't want us to see?
There is no greater accessory than an adorable pooch by your side. Try all you want to make a case for a chic tie, a killer watch, or a unique piece of jewellery – nothing will make you look better, and more attractive to the ladies, than a dog. These are our picks for the 10 coolest dog breeds, and if you're in the market for a pup of your own, please also consider adopting your new best friend from The Lost Dogs Home or the RSPCA.
I am not Superwomen, I can't do everything... I am not Google, I can't answers all questions, I can't perform miracles, I can't solve your problems, I can't save you!!! ~But I do serve a God, through whom all things are possible; in whom all answers can be found and who is the source of all miracles. His name is Jesus!~
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Brilliant meme. There is no excuse for rape. Courts disproportionately give light sentences for the crime. ===
Pray Along, Father, I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Thank You for ordering my steps and ordaining my future. I trust You as You lead and guide me into victory in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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Go Out With Boldness As Your Days Are Ordained. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.(Psalm 139:16, NIV) God has already planned out every detail of your life right down to the very second.Our God is not an approximate God. He is an exact God, a detailed God, a precise God. He has planned out your life not just to the years or the months or the days, but down to the very second. In your future, He has marked moments where time and eternity are going to come together, and you will be at the right place and get the break you need.
Scripture says that before you were born, God knew you. He knew every one of your days before they ever took shape. Trust Him and stay in peace because your days are ordained by the Lord.God bless you.
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Oftentimes, we have to go through the wilderness before we reach our promised land. Oftentimes, like Joseph, we feel like we are in a pit long before we ever see the palace. Maybe you’re in a season right now where you don’t see anything happening. You think, “I’ve been praying and believing for a year, five years, ten years. It’s never going to work out.”
No, be encouraged today. Stay the course. Keep believing. You may be tired, discouraged and tempted to be frustrated, but don’t give up on your future. Stay on the high road. Our God is a faithful God. It may be taking a long time, but what He started He will finish in your life. Scripture says the eyes of the Lord search to and fro to find someone who will be faithful on His behalf. Be the person He finds faithful. Keep believing, keep praying, keep obeying and stay the course because He is leading you in the path of victory.Amen.
Just10 kicks off tomorrow at Kingsgate Peterborough 9.15am + 11.30am - to watch from anywhere in the…http://t.co/W7vfeB9sUv ===
COMPULSIVE users of porn show the same signs of addiction in their brain as those hooked on booze or drugs, according to researchers.
The brains of young men who are obsessed by online pornography 'lit up like Christmas trees' upon being shown erotic images, a pioneering study has found.
The area stimulated - the part of the brain involved in processing reward, motivation and pleasure - is the same part that is highly active among drug and alcohol addicts.
The Cambridge University research, the first of its kind in the world, coincides with a survey which revealed that watching porn online is the norm for boys as young as 13.
Campaigners have also warned that increasing porn use among teenagers warps their view of sex and prompts boys to treat girls as sex objects.
However, until now the actual effects of pornography on the brain have been unclear. Dr Valerie Voon, a Cambridge University neuroscientist specialising in addictions, studied 19 self-confessed compulsive pornography users. The men, aged 19 to 34, had tried and failed to break their habit and had lost relationships and jobs as a result.
All fed their habit using online porn. When they were shown erotic video clips, a part of their brains lit up called the ventral striatum.
It is the same part of the brain that springs to life when a drug addict sees a dealer or an alcoholic sees an advert for drink.
When they were shown non-erotic but exciting sports images, the men's brains reacted far less strongly.
Similarly, the reaction was weak in men who were not obsessed by porn.
Dr Voon plans to look at whether learning more about the brain will lead to new ways of treating or breaking an addiction to pornography. Her research will feature in documentary Porn On The Brain, presented by Martin Daubney, the former editor of lads' mag Loaded.
Mr Daubney spent a year talking to scientists, teenage boys and teachers for the documentary which will be screened next Monday.
"The age of innocence is over," he said. "The internet is now a rolling buffet of online depravity. Given what we now know about porn seemingly being addictive, it's like leaving heroin around the house for kids to take."
Some doctors have argued that heavy users of porn show the same traits of addiction as alcoholics and drug addicts.
In evidence to the United States Congress in 2008, psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover said that "Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction: only the delivery system is different."
Thurman Winston, born in Oklahoma, seems to have lived a pleasant life, and his obituary lovingly made that clear. At least, in the first 38 lines.
But in the final two sentences, for those keen beans who read right to the end, the note launched a stunning attack on his grandchildren.
The obituary, which has stirred up the natives on Reddit, begins waxing lyrical:
"Thurman moved his family home to Spencer so his kids could experience the love of their remaining grandparents.
"He has a passion for cars, motorcycles and entertaining family and friends, hunting, fishing and remodelling. His motto: 'Accomplish what you can because tomorrow ain't promised'."
"He stayed busy. He leaves to cherish his memories of his wife, children and grandkids, a host of backstabbing mother f*****s that still owe him money."
Dear Heavenly Father as I come before you this afternoon I just bless you for taking us safely all throughout this day. Thank you for food, for keeping us in our right minds and for never leaving us even in the darkest hour. Now Lord I life up all those in need of prayer. I bring before you sick bodies, hurting hearts, tired minds and all those that stand in need of something. I ask you to make your power real to them. Make the rest of this day a beautiful one. Let your peace reign. We give you all glory, honor and praise. Amen...
Someone who sees an inferior race; or Someone who sees a race who are at least equal.
Which is more racist out of the two? Rhyce Gawronski One step off shipping them off to the ghettos because they are "dangerous". Now I suppose you would defend Hitler because he saw the Jews as being strong enough to be a threat hmmm? This is where such logic leads. I'm not defending Labor their view holds people down and I agree is both racist and totally incompatible to the ideals of a free society, but then so are Pauline Hanson's fear mongering tactics. David Daniel Ball I will not condone racism .. or accept degrees of it .. the moral high ground is not carried by those who follow Hanson. so I am off this site. Rhyce Gawronski The group seems more conservative than libertarian most of the time to me. David Daniel Ball it isn't conservative to be racist .. it is radical .. ===
WASHINGTON – The former FBI agent who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges earlier this year will also plead guilty to leaking classified information about an Al Qaeda bomb plot to The Associated Press - in a case of spilled secrets that the Justice Department called one of the most serious in U.S. history.
Donald John Sachtleben of Carmel, Ind., a former FBI technician and government contractor, has signed plea agreements in both cases, the U.S. attorney’s office said Monday.
“I am deeply sorry for my actions,” Sachtleben said in a written statement. “While I never intended harm to the United States or to any individuals, I do not make excuses for myself. I understand and accept that today’s filings start the process of paying the full consequences of my misconduct, and I know that the justice system I once served so proudly will have its say."
Charges in the child pornography case against Sachtleben were filed in May 2012 after law enforcement officials said they found child porn they were able to trace to his home computer. That complaint alleges that an examination of Sachtleben’s laptop revealed the presence of about 30 images of child porn that he is accused of trading with other people using the email address pedodave69@yahoo.com.
Nine days before those charges were filed, prosecutors say Sachtleben gave up national defense information to a news reporter related to a disrupted terrorist plot.
Charging documents allege Sachtleben knew that information would compromise national security. They also claim the information related to a foiled plot by Yemen-based terrorist organization Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner.
“We were given the task of uncovering who had threatened a sensitive intelligence operation and endangered lives by illegally disclosing classified information relating to a disrupted Al Qaeda suicide bomb plot,” U.S. Attorney Ron Machen said. “That plot could not have been more serious. … This prosecution demonstrates our deep resolve to hold accountable anyone who would violate their solemn duty to protect our nation’s secrets and to prevent future, potentially devastating leaks by those who would wantonly ignore their obligations to safeguard classified information.”
The investigation into who leaked top secret information to the AP began a national debate over the rights of the press.
AP President Gary Pruitt said at the time that “there can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.”
Sachtleben had been employed in the Department of Forensic Sciences at Oklahoma State University. He spent over 25 years as a special agent bomb technician in the FBI before retiring in 2008. He specialized in counter terrorism and bombing investigations.
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Romans 5:3-4NIV
What a state of privilege! It includes our justification before God, but the term "acceptance" in the Greek means more than that. It signifies that we are the objects of divine complacence, nay, even of divine delight. How marvellous that we, worms, mortals, sinners, should be the objects of divine love! But it is only "in the beloved." Some Christians seem to be accepted in their own experience, at least, that is their apprehension. When their spirit is lively, and their hopes bright, they think God accepts them, for they feel so high, so heavenly-minded, so drawn above the earth! But when their souls cleave to the dust, they are the victims of the fear that they are no longer accepted. If they could but see that all their high joys do not exalt them, and all their low despondencies do not really depress them in their Father's sight, but that they stand accepted in One who never alters, in One who is always the beloved of God, always perfect, always without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, how much happier they would be, and how much more they would honour the Saviour! Rejoice then, believer, in this: thou art accepted "in the beloved." Thou lookest within, and thou sayest, "There is nothing acceptable here!" But look at Christ, and see if there is not everything acceptable there. Thy sins trouble thee; but God has cast thy sins behind his back, and thou art accepted in the Righteous One. Thou hast to fight with corruption, and to wrestle with temptation, but thou art already accepted in him who has overcome the powers of evil. The devil tempts thee; be of good cheer, he cannot destroy thee, for thou art accepted in him who has broken Satan's head. Know by full assurance thy glorious standing. Even glorified souls are not more accepted than thou art. They are only accepted in heaven "in the beloved," and thou art even now accepted in Christ after the same manner.
Evening
"Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe." Mark 9:23
A certain man had a demoniac son, who was afflicted with a dumb spirit. The father, having seen the futility of the endeavours of the disciples to heal his child, had little or no faith in Christ, and therefore, when he was bidden to bring his son to him, he said to Jesus, "If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us." Now there was an "if" in the question, but the poor trembling father had put the "if" in the wrong place: Jesus Christ, therefore, without commanding him to retract the "if," kindly puts it in its legitimate position. "Nay, verily," he seemed to say, "there should be no if' about my power, nor concerning my willingness, the if' lies somewhere else." "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." The man's trust was strengthened, he offered a humble prayer for an increase of faith, and instantly Jesus spoke the word, and the devil was cast out, with an injunction never to return. There is a lesson here which we need to learn. We, like this man, often see that there is an "if" somewhere, but we are perpetually blundering by putting it in the wrong place. "If" Jesus can help me--"if" he can give me grace to overcome temptation--"if" he can give me pardon--"if" he can make me successful? Nay, "if" you can believe, he both can and will. You have misplaced your "if." If you can confidently trust, even as all things are possible to Christ, so shall all things be possible to you. Faith standeth in God's power, and is robed in God's majesty; it weareth the royal apparel, and rideth on the King's horse, for it is the grace which the King delighteth to honour. Girding itself with the glorious might of the all-working Spirit, it becomes, in the omnipotence of God, mighty to do, to dare, and to suffer. All things, without limit, are possible to him that believeth. My soul, canst thou believe thy Lord tonight?
Today's Old Testament reading: Song of Solomon 1-3
1 Solomon’s Song of Songs.
She
2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— for your love is more delightful than wine. 3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! 4 Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers.
Friends
We rejoice and delight in you; we will praise your love more than wine....
1 Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. 2 I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain. 3 Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. 4 This matter arose because some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. 5 We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you....
The last of the early kings of Edom ( 1 Chron. 1:50, 51). This is the Hadar of Genesis 36:39 who, as a child, escaped massacre under Joab, David's general.
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