I can help universities too. Universities need to communicate better with their feeder high schools in Australia. Only universities often fail to effectively do this because their staff are correctly engaged in research, or sidelined by poor praxis. Staff cannot be expected to engage students at schools individually. Except they can, if an effective structure for engagement is in place. What universities need is a unit capable of coordinating with staff and creating multimedia material which sells the university by addressing questions put to it by feeder high schools. University staff may be required to provide one or two minute videos addressing their specialty on an ongoing basis. The job of the unit would be to maintain the media, provide a liaison filter with schools structuring the content and allowing personal contact with cooperating staff and monitoring input so staff are not sidelined indefinitely for being popular. It may be the unit creates fun fairs where schools can visit and hear lectures or have questions answered posed by students. With appropriate standards in place to prevent abuse e.g. Atheist lecturer addressing Islamic school students and not being secular professional. The unit is similar in concept to my digital cultural museum idea. Badging a university and making the content freely available and searchable online could garner international kudos.
I am on partial disability, over 51 years old and 30% Australian Aboriginal by DNA (technically American Indian, but that is inexplicable, while Aboriginal is easily explained). So I should be able to get a job right? I want to work.
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 Going to see the Rabbit
A poem by Alan Brownjohn, a distant cousin by marriage between my uncle Jack Ball and his first wife, Peggy Brownjohn, dearly loved. We are Going to see the Rabbit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Brownjohn
http://learnenglishonline.yuku.com/topic/11111/To-See-the-Rabbit-by-Alan-Brownjohn#.T6c2qFo2ze7
David Ball4 years ago
The word I keep hearing is to persevere ..
David Ball4 years ago
Lots of things lead up to it. I'd become a Christian in 1985, but hadn't embraced the spiritual aspect of God the father. I had no career, having blown the whistle on the death of a student by school neglect which was being covered up, and a bungled pedophile investigation. I had no family and few reliable friends. I had no money and was in danger of losing my unit where I live to the bank. I thought I should leave my worries in God's hands. The next day, my money worries were fixed ..
Lots of things lead up to it. I'd become a Christian in 1985, but hadn't embraced the spiritual aspect of God the father. I had no career, having blown the whistle on the death of a student by school neglect which was being covered up, and a bungled pedophile investigation. I had no family and few reliable friends. I had no money and was in danger of losing my unit where I live to the bank. I thought I should leave my worries in God's hands. The next day, my money worries were fixed ..
=== from 2017 ===
IPA Review April 2017 has an article on Trumping Architecture by Darcy Allen on a speech by Patrik Schumacher, a world renowned architect. What Schumacher says of the need to deregulate planning is correct. Darcy's understanding of it is skew, in that he fails to identify the aspect of corruption which prevents effective planning. A case in point is Dandenong Council's pre election 2016 refusal to permit the building of a hundred medium density houses on land zoned for that purpose. The papers failed to report it until after the media blackout prevented election scrutiny. On the face of it, it is criminally absurd that a person may buy property in a land zoned for that purpose, only to have development denied for no reason beyond gut feelings it might not be appropriate. But council reasoning may be politically strategically sound. Had council approved the planning, they would not have benefited from the bottom line cash flow prior to election, and the improved budget bottom line would have been attributed to the old council and not the incoming one. This way, the incoming council can look more effective on paper. Meanwhile owners are stiffed many thousands of dollars and their project is pushed back six months for no reason. Doesn't that make the Green and ALP council look good? The unnecessary cost feeds back into housing affordability.
Some things should not happen, but they do. School children in Victoria face Safe Schools anti bullying program which promotes gender diversity at the expense of hetro-normative development. But what do children learn about functioning in society? Only one child in 80, across the ages of 13 to 17 was able to recognise the name of the state Premier, and none knew the name of the opposition leader in Victoria. A well raised 10 year old (later, at home) knew their names and their positions, but that child had not heard it from school. These days, a teacher can ask a child about masturbation experience, but cannot discuss political issues salient to the child. That is wrong. And when the child graduates, what will they say of themselves to their prospective employer if they cannot knowledgeably discuss politics on a surface level?
Some things should not happen, but they do. School children in Victoria face Safe Schools anti bullying program which promotes gender diversity at the expense of hetro-normative development. But what do children learn about functioning in society? Only one child in 80, across the ages of 13 to 17 was able to recognise the name of the state Premier, and none knew the name of the opposition leader in Victoria. A well raised 10 year old (later, at home) knew their names and their positions, but that child had not heard it from school. These days, a teacher can ask a child about masturbation experience, but cannot discuss political issues salient to the child. That is wrong. And when the child graduates, what will they say of themselves to their prospective employer if they cannot knowledgeably discuss politics on a surface level?
=== from 2016 ===
Going home after a full work day, and I had no cash on hand. So I thought I'd do some shopping and get cash. I could go to Melbourne Central, but the trains home are full by then, so I thought to go from Flagstaff in the other direction, one station, to Southern Cross. I ask a guard "Which platform to Southern Cross" and the guard looks surprised. "None. No train goes to Southern Cross. If you want to go to Southern Cross you have to catch a train to North Richmond and change." "Ok" I sigh, "so I can still go to Melbourne Central, right?" "No trains go to Melbourne Central. After 1 pm they change directions on the lines." Now I'm confused "I can still go to Pakenham, right" "Yes platform 2 in nine minutes." I ignored the guard and went to Melbourne Central. But I was inconvenienced, standing up all the way home.
It is the same with Malcolm Turnbull as the guard. "I want to cut spending" "No. You cannot cut spending. We will raise your taxes for you." "What if we are more efficient?" "There are no efficiencies in the economy anymore. We must tax something" Come election time, I will ignore him.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
It is the same with Malcolm Turnbull as the guard. "I want to cut spending" "No. You cannot cut spending. We will raise your taxes for you." "What if we are more efficient?" "There are no efficiencies in the economy anymore. We must tax something" Come election time, I will ignore him.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
In NSW the inept Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been told her pursuit of a magistrate was corrupt, and so the commission is asking for a change in law to allow it to continue the corrupt pursuit. The ICAC is begging to be wound up before it is forced to investigate corruption from the ALP that happened on its' watch. The judiciary in the ICAC is so biased it may never achieve that modest end. It is not dissimilar as to the corruption in the ALP in Queensland, where the Heiner enquiry was stymied not because the ALP was not corrupt, but because judges decided they weren't up to investigating it. The result is it becomes impossible to believe that anyone in the ALP is not corrupt, or the validity of any claims that a conservative is. It is a cancer at the heart of democracy in Australia. Former NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell has resigned as premier without being guilty of anything. Former Premier Nick Greiner was forced to go and he never even got the wine.
Another similar appalling situation involves jihadism and Islam. It is clear that the jihadis of ISIL have nothing to do with Islam, but impotent Islamic leadership are giving endorsement to jihadis, confusing western media. So that a jihadis assault on Charlie Hebdo which is a terrorist assault without foundation of reason is legitimised by Islamic preachers who claim that Allah is so weak as to have been hurt by images. According to modern preachers of Islam, Allah is pathetic, thin skinned, vengeful and perpetually angry and disappointed with his followers unless they cross dress, commit sodomy, kill innocent people. rape, drink alcohol, view porn and bring Islam into disrepute. Impotent Islamic leaders endorse lying about their faith. They don't believe in youth, but dismiss serious crimes as youthful excess. They have as much right to claim their pale jihadist philosophy as a religion as Scientologists. Which isn't to say that there aren't faithful Scientologists.
Disaster from floods across the NSW Coast. So far three people have died inland at Dungog, which has fame for having raised Australian batting great Doug Walters. Some are behaving really silly. Some children were playing in flood waters at Manly Beach. Some trucks and cars drive through flooded roads. Cabramatta is hardly beach side, but local creeks and roads have flooded. And more rain is predicted to be coming. It is frustrating that the infrastructure to correctly deal with the flood water isn't available. ALP refuse to build it. Instead we have a multi billion dollar desalination plant in mothballs. And still the outback is starved of fresh water.
On this day in 238, the Roman Senate outlawed emperor Maximinus for his resemblance to Kevin Rudd. Maximinus was useless, except as a parasite, corruptly stealing from all of Rome, including the very rich. He showed no judgement, but if a person was accused, they were condemned. It began the year of six emperors for Rome. Maximinus had not been killed. An elderly senator, Gordian I (80 yo) was picked by the senate to be emperor. He insisted his son join him jointly. His son (Gordian II) died fighting in Carthage, and so Gordian I suicided. A desperate senate wanting to prevent Maximinus from seizing the throne again appointed Pupienus and Balbinus, but they were dysfunctional, expecting the other to poison for sole authority. Pupienus marched to face Maximinus. Maximinus was killed by his personal guard who were immediately pardoned. Meanwhile Rome had an uprising which Balbinus failed to put down. Balbinus and Pupienus bickered among each other and were killed by their personal guards, and Gordian III was made emperor at 13 years of age, governing through advisors from the senate.
On this day in 1836, in the Texas Revolution, after Sam Houston's forces were successful against Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna was identified by one of his own men. The battle had been one sided. Houston was shot through the ankle and lost two horses in the fighting, but he had won a victory killing about 700 men, wounding 208 and imprisoning 730. Houston lost 9 men and thirty were wounded. They hadn't known they had captured Santa Anna until the prisoners began saluting him, calling him "El Presidente." In 1864, US Congress passed a coinage act, placing the words "In God We Trust" on their coins. In 1889, at high noon, thousands rushed to stake their claims in The Land Rush of 1889, founding the cities of Guthrie and Oklahoma overnight. In 1912, Pravda, the voice of the Soviet Party was founded in St Petersburg. It became a template for the Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In 1944, the 1st Commando Group first used Sikorsky Helicopters in combat in a Burma-India-China theatre. In 1945, Hitler stated there was nothing left for him to do but suicide. That had been true for decades. In 1954, McCarthy's interviews with communists was televised. In 1977, Optical Fibre was first used in telephone traffic. In 2000, Bill Clinton's goons seized a young boy and gave him to Cuba.
Another similar appalling situation involves jihadism and Islam. It is clear that the jihadis of ISIL have nothing to do with Islam, but impotent Islamic leadership are giving endorsement to jihadis, confusing western media. So that a jihadis assault on Charlie Hebdo which is a terrorist assault without foundation of reason is legitimised by Islamic preachers who claim that Allah is so weak as to have been hurt by images. According to modern preachers of Islam, Allah is pathetic, thin skinned, vengeful and perpetually angry and disappointed with his followers unless they cross dress, commit sodomy, kill innocent people. rape, drink alcohol, view porn and bring Islam into disrepute. Impotent Islamic leaders endorse lying about their faith. They don't believe in youth, but dismiss serious crimes as youthful excess. They have as much right to claim their pale jihadist philosophy as a religion as Scientologists. Which isn't to say that there aren't faithful Scientologists.
Disaster from floods across the NSW Coast. So far three people have died inland at Dungog, which has fame for having raised Australian batting great Doug Walters. Some are behaving really silly. Some children were playing in flood waters at Manly Beach. Some trucks and cars drive through flooded roads. Cabramatta is hardly beach side, but local creeks and roads have flooded. And more rain is predicted to be coming. It is frustrating that the infrastructure to correctly deal with the flood water isn't available. ALP refuse to build it. Instead we have a multi billion dollar desalination plant in mothballs. And still the outback is starved of fresh water.
On this day in 238, the Roman Senate outlawed emperor Maximinus for his resemblance to Kevin Rudd. Maximinus was useless, except as a parasite, corruptly stealing from all of Rome, including the very rich. He showed no judgement, but if a person was accused, they were condemned. It began the year of six emperors for Rome. Maximinus had not been killed. An elderly senator, Gordian I (80 yo) was picked by the senate to be emperor. He insisted his son join him jointly. His son (Gordian II) died fighting in Carthage, and so Gordian I suicided. A desperate senate wanting to prevent Maximinus from seizing the throne again appointed Pupienus and Balbinus, but they were dysfunctional, expecting the other to poison for sole authority. Pupienus marched to face Maximinus. Maximinus was killed by his personal guard who were immediately pardoned. Meanwhile Rome had an uprising which Balbinus failed to put down. Balbinus and Pupienus bickered among each other and were killed by their personal guards, and Gordian III was made emperor at 13 years of age, governing through advisors from the senate.
On this day in 1836, in the Texas Revolution, after Sam Houston's forces were successful against Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna was identified by one of his own men. The battle had been one sided. Houston was shot through the ankle and lost two horses in the fighting, but he had won a victory killing about 700 men, wounding 208 and imprisoning 730. Houston lost 9 men and thirty were wounded. They hadn't known they had captured Santa Anna until the prisoners began saluting him, calling him "El Presidente." In 1864, US Congress passed a coinage act, placing the words "In God We Trust" on their coins. In 1889, at high noon, thousands rushed to stake their claims in The Land Rush of 1889, founding the cities of Guthrie and Oklahoma overnight. In 1912, Pravda, the voice of the Soviet Party was founded in St Petersburg. It became a template for the Age and Sydney Morning Herald. In 1944, the 1st Commando Group first used Sikorsky Helicopters in combat in a Burma-India-China theatre. In 1945, Hitler stated there was nothing left for him to do but suicide. That had been true for decades. In 1954, McCarthy's interviews with communists was televised. In 1977, Optical Fibre was first used in telephone traffic. In 2000, Bill Clinton's goons seized a young boy and gave him to Cuba.
From 2014
Forty eight hours before challenging Rudd for leadership, Gillard wrote to him an email. It doesn't matter how she couched the words, but the issues she raised are salient. She titled the email to do with Climate change. She acknowledge the government was seen as being incompetent and out of control. She highlighted asylum seeker policy, a proposed internet filter and climate change. Soon after, on campaign, she promised there would be no Carbon tax. However, in government with independents, Gillard's leadership ensured no one was in control of government policy. It is hard to credit that what she did was not what she wanted to do, but through finesse rather than direct assertion. So that Carbon tax was implemented with her support, but against her expressed wishes. So that an anti semitic bigot was placed in charge of foreign policy. She claims she supports Israel. Press freedoms a free nation takes for granted were under assault. None of her proposed solutions to the appalling deaths from drowning of asylum seekers worked. The truth is, she never had a plan or policy that was worthwhile. Medicare Gold was a dud. A promise that would never have delivered benefits but which was very expensive. What people still fail to realise is that the bad policy of the six years of ALP government was not solely Rudd's or Gillards but the collective leadership of the ALP. That furniture has been retained. The empty promises, just like the ones delivered by Gillard regarding the Pacific Solution in '01, remain.
Empty promises of the ALP still threaten good government when they are not in government. Pru Goward has made a good policy protecting the welfare of many children by allowing adoption to be cheaper and more possible. She is now being savagely attacked for that with the use of empty promises made by the ALP based on useless policy which they put forward to get support. Children die and are hurt by neglect, and good people do nothing. There is opposition to migration as a result of the injustice of the previous government policy. Again, empty promises have created a greater expectation than good policy delivers. The truth is that the Pacific Solution, including turning back boats, is the best policy that government has.
One policy which needs to be addressed involves freedom of speech. The ALP promise of no one being offended is impossible, but the reality of, speech being limited, is real. There is no middle ground. The friends of the ALP will fight it (free speech), and use bad words. We cannot blink in our support of free speech.
Empty promises of the ALP still threaten good government when they are not in government. Pru Goward has made a good policy protecting the welfare of many children by allowing adoption to be cheaper and more possible. She is now being savagely attacked for that with the use of empty promises made by the ALP based on useless policy which they put forward to get support. Children die and are hurt by neglect, and good people do nothing. There is opposition to migration as a result of the injustice of the previous government policy. Again, empty promises have created a greater expectation than good policy delivers. The truth is that the Pacific Solution, including turning back boats, is the best policy that government has.
One policy which needs to be addressed involves freedom of speech. The ALP promise of no one being offended is impossible, but the reality of, speech being limited, is real. There is no middle ground. The friends of the ALP will fight it (free speech), and use bad words. We cannot blink in our support of free speech.
Historical perspective on this day
In 238, Year of the Six Emperors: The Roman Senate outlawed emperor Maximinus Thrax for his bloodthirsty proscriptions in Rome and nominated two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, to the throne. 1500, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil. 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés established a settlement at Veracruz, Mexico. 1529, Treaty of Zaragoza divided the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas. 1622, the Capture of Ormuz by the East India Company ended Portuguese control of Hormuz Island.
In 1809, the second day of the Battle of Eckmühl: The Austrian army was defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France and driven over the Danube in Regensburg. 1836, Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston identified Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Annaamong the captives of the battle when one of his fellow captives mistakenly gave away his identity. 1864, the U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandated that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency. 1876, the first ever National League baseball game was played in Philadelphia. 1889, at high noon, thousands rushed to claim land in the Land Rush of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie were formed with populations of at least 10,000. 1898, Spanish–American War: The USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.
In 1906, the 1906 Summer Olympics, not now recognised as part of the official Olympic Games, opened in Athens. 1911, Tsinghua University, one of mainland China's leading universities, was founded. 1912, Pravda, the "voice" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began publication in Saint Petersburg. 1915, the use of poison gas in World War Iescalated when chlorine gas was released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres. 1930, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
In 1944, the 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters staged the first use of helicopters in combat with combat search and rescue operations in the China-Burma-India theater. 1944, World War II: Operation Persecution was initiated: Allied forces landed in the Hollandia (currently known as Jayapura) area of New Guinea. 1945, World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolted. Five hundred twenty were killed and 80 escaped. Also 1945, World War II: Führerbunker: After learning that Soviet forces had taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admitted defeat in his underground bunker and stated that suicide was his only recourse. 1948, Arab–Israeli War: Haifa, a major port of Israel, was captured from Arab forces.
In 1951, Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army began assaulting positions defended by the Royal Australian Regiment and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry at the Battle of Kapyong. 1954, Red Scare: Witnesses began testifying and live television coverage of the Army–McCarthy hearings began. 1964, the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opened for its first season. 1969, British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnstonwon the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completed the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.
In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated. 1972, Vietnam War: Increased American bombing in Vietnam prompted anti-war protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. 1977, Optical fiber was first used to carry live telephone traffic. 1983, the German magazine Stern claimed that the "Hitler Diaries" had been found in wreckage in East Germany; the diaries were subsequently revealed to be forgeries. 1992, in an explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico, 206 people were killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 left homeless. 1993, Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser was released. 1997, Haouch Khemisti massacre in Algeriawhere 93 villagers were killed. Also 1997, the Japanese embassy hostage crisis ended in Lima, Peru. 1998, Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States.
In 2000, in a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami. Also 2000, the Big Number Change took place in the United Kingdom. 2004, two fuel trains collided in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people. 2005, Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologised for Japan's war record. 2008, the United States Air Force retired the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service. 2013, six people died in a shooting in Belgorod, Russia. Also 2013, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested and charged two men with plotting to disrupt a Toronto area train service in a plot claimed to be backed by Al-Qaeda elements. 2014, more than 60 people were killed and 80 were seriously injured in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province.
In 1809, the second day of the Battle of Eckmühl: The Austrian army was defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France and driven over the Danube in Regensburg. 1836, Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston identified Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Annaamong the captives of the battle when one of his fellow captives mistakenly gave away his identity. 1864, the U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandated that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency. 1876, the first ever National League baseball game was played in Philadelphia. 1889, at high noon, thousands rushed to claim land in the Land Rush of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie were formed with populations of at least 10,000. 1898, Spanish–American War: The USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship.
In 1906, the 1906 Summer Olympics, not now recognised as part of the official Olympic Games, opened in Athens. 1911, Tsinghua University, one of mainland China's leading universities, was founded. 1912, Pravda, the "voice" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, began publication in Saint Petersburg. 1915, the use of poison gas in World War Iescalated when chlorine gas was released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres. 1930, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
In 1944, the 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters staged the first use of helicopters in combat with combat search and rescue operations in the China-Burma-India theater. 1944, World War II: Operation Persecution was initiated: Allied forces landed in the Hollandia (currently known as Jayapura) area of New Guinea. 1945, World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolted. Five hundred twenty were killed and 80 escaped. Also 1945, World War II: Führerbunker: After learning that Soviet forces had taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admitted defeat in his underground bunker and stated that suicide was his only recourse. 1948, Arab–Israeli War: Haifa, a major port of Israel, was captured from Arab forces.
In 1951, Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army began assaulting positions defended by the Royal Australian Regiment and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry at the Battle of Kapyong. 1954, Red Scare: Witnesses began testifying and live television coverage of the Army–McCarthy hearings began. 1964, the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opened for its first season. 1969, British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnstonwon the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completed the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.
In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated. 1972, Vietnam War: Increased American bombing in Vietnam prompted anti-war protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. 1977, Optical fiber was first used to carry live telephone traffic. 1983, the German magazine Stern claimed that the "Hitler Diaries" had been found in wreckage in East Germany; the diaries were subsequently revealed to be forgeries. 1992, in an explosion in Guadalajara, Mexico, 206 people were killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 left homeless. 1993, Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser was released. 1997, Haouch Khemisti massacre in Algeriawhere 93 villagers were killed. Also 1997, the Japanese embassy hostage crisis ended in Lima, Peru. 1998, Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States.
In 2000, in a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami. Also 2000, the Big Number Change took place in the United Kingdom. 2004, two fuel trains collided in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people. 2005, Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologised for Japan's war record. 2008, the United States Air Force retired the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service. 2013, six people died in a shooting in Belgorod, Russia. Also 2013, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested and charged two men with plotting to disrupt a Toronto area train service in a plot claimed to be backed by Al-Qaeda elements. 2014, more than 60 people were killed and 80 were seriously injured in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January.
Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?
January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?
January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4 The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows a free kindle version.
List of available items at Create Space
The Amazon Author Page for David Ball
UK .. http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01683ZOWGFrench .. http://www.amazon.fr/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Japan .. http://www.amazon.co.jp/-/e/B01683ZOWG
German .. http://www.amazon.de/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Happy birthday and many happy returns Andreas Herrmann, Leane Stitzinger, Melody Wu and Karina Sy. Born on the same day, across the years, when Pedro Cabral landed in Brazil and claimed the land for portugal. Commemorated with delicious chicken.
Deaths
- 1451 – Isabella I of Castile (d. 1504)
- 1592 – Wilhelm Schickard, German mathematician (d. 1635)
- 1658 – Giuseppe Torelli, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1709)
- 1724 – Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (d. 1804)
- 1757 – Alessandro Rolla, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1841)
- 1870 – Vladimir Lenin, Russian politician (d. 1924)
- 1891 – Harold Jeffreys, English mathematician, geophysicist, and astronomer (d. 1989)
- 1899 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American author (d. 1977)
- 1904 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (d. 1967)
- 1923 – Bettie Page, American model and actress (d. 2008)
- 1936 – Glen Campbell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
- 1943 – Louise Glück, American poet
- 1950 – Peter Frampton, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The Herd and Humble Pie)
- 1995 – Victoria Rodríguez, Mexican tennis player
- 296 – Pope Caius
- 1616 – Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author, poet, and playwright (b. 1547)
- 1833 – Richard Trevithick, English engineer (b. 1771)
- 1519 – Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (pictured) established a settlement in Mexico, naming it "Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz" ("Rich village of the True Cross").
- 1864 – The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the minting of a two-cent coin, the first U.S. coin to bear the phrase "In God we trust".
- 1930 – France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty, regulating submarine warfare and limiting military ship building.
- 1951 – Korean War: The People's Volunteer Army of China attacked positions occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting the Battle of Kapyong.
- 1983 – The West German news magazine Sternpublished excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries.
Piers Akerman 2018
War heroes didn’t die for virtue signalling
PIERS AKERMAN ALLOWING women to lead Anzac Day marches is such a virtue-signalling move it could have only been cooked up over kale and quinoa with Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull.
===Miranda Devine 2018
SSM has led exactly where we were warned it would
MIRANDA DEVINE OPPONENTS of same-sex marriage warned it would lead to kids being taught “gender fluidity” in schools, and so it has come to pass, writes Miranda Devine.
An army should not be coy about its purpose
MIRANDA DEVINE AN army that bans death symbols but promotes rainbow pins risks its credibility as a fighting force, and disrespects soldiers past and present, writes Miranda Devine.
Morrison: Folau has shown strength of character
MIRANDA LIVE FEDERAL treasurer Scott Morrison has backed embattled rugby star Israel Folau, saying the practising Christian was a good man who had shown great strength of character in the recent controversy surrounding his views on homosexuals.
Miranda Live: ScoMo on that ‘Santa Claus’ tag
LIVE PODCAST IT’S fair to say Treasurer Scott Morrison wasn’t ho-ho-ho-ing when he heard the acting Prime Minister’s claims of a “Santa Claus” Budget. Find out his full views from 4pm today.
Greens’ latest ploy reeks of desperation
MIRANDA DEVINE THEY demand respect for science when it comes to global warming, but the Greens have no problem ignoring the evidence on cannabis, writes Miranda Devine.
Culture war can’t be fought with heads in the sand
MIRANDA DEVINE WITH Tim Soutphommasane’s term as race discrimination commissioner coming to an end, the government has the opprtunity to right the wrongs, writes Miranda Devine.
Should we legalise cannabis?
MIRANDA LIVE THE Greens are pushing to legalise marijuana — despite the Federal Health Minister calling it a “dangerous” plan. Miranda Live talks to an expert on the matter, asking “should we make weed legal?”.
Frydenberg stands behind Abbott smackdown
MIRANDA LIVE ENERGY Minister Josh Frydenberg’s broadside at former PM Tony Abbott say him under attack from the most unlikely of places — but he’s told Miranda Live he stands by his call for unity.
Frydenberg talks sharks, energy and Abbott
MIRANDA LIVE ENERGY Minister Josh Frydenberg came out swinging against former PM Tony Abbott last week — now, he talks those comments, the National Energy Guarantee and sharks on Miranda Live.
‘If you don’t agree Susie is a girl, you’re a bully’
MIRANDA LIVE ANTI-BULLYING programs are indoctrinating young students about gender identity theory, according to a US author.
Molan: ‘Nobody wants another fight like Iraq’
MIRANDA LIVE FORMER Australian Army major general — and Liberal Senator — Jim Molan says he does not believe there is a military role in Syria for Australia “in any way, shape or form”.
Are we going to war with Syria?
MIRANDA LIVE Is Australia ready for war? In the wake of Donald Trump’s air strikes on Syria, Liberal Senator — and former major general in the Australian Army — Jim Molan will join Miranda Devine to discuss where that leaves Australia?
Russell Crowe’s auction says a lot about divorce
MIRANDA DEVINE WHERE most Hollywood couples separate with tell-all interviews and wars of words, Dannielle Spencer and Russell Crowe are a testament to calling it a day, writes Miranda Devine.
Tim Blair 2018
STAY AWAY FROM THE SEWER
Rita Panahi, a rare sane presence on social media, presents the conservative case for joining Twitter.
===Andrew Bolt 2018
ABC SHAMELESSLY LEFT UNDER TURNBULL'S MATE
Malcolm Turnbull made his good mate Justin Milne chairman of the ABC, our biggest broadcaster and a foe of Tony Abbott. Milne in his first interview declared the ABC was not biased. Did he watch Insiders this morning - seven hosts and panellists of the Left, and not a single conservative.
WHY IS CASH THERE?
If Jobs Minister Michaelia Cash is too shy or scandal-prone to give interviews in a key portfolio in what seems an election year, then why is she there?
JUST BLAME ABBOTT, MALCOLM
Another shocking week for the Turnbull Government. Time to blame Tony Abbott again. It's clearly his fault that shocking evidence at the royal commission shows Turnbull was wrong to protect the banks; the Treasurer got angry with the Nationals leader for calling him "Santa" and Kelly O'Dwyer just gave a car-crash interview.
KELLY O'DWYER HAS A TRAINWRECK
Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer was disastrous on Insiders today, five times refusing to answer whether the government wrong to stall for nearly two years on calling a royal commission into the banks, given last week's appalling evidence. She also didn't answer why she'd once predicted it would be just an "endless talkfest"
OILY BIRD GETS THE BURN
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (3:30pm)
This week the Minerals Council of Australia launched a campaign to promote uranium. The Guardian‘s Vanessa Badham responded with a series of tweets – several of which now seem to be deleted – depicting what she claimed were nuclear disasters:
That’s the Cosmo Oil refinery fire in Chiba, Japan, following the 2011 tsunami.
Another shot of the Cosmo Oil fire. Nothing to do with uranium.
This appears to be a separate, but similarly non-nuclear related, fuel storage blaze resulting from the tsunami.
That’s the Deepwater Horizon oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico six years ago. Remember, everybody, that when you’re presenting an argument it’s important to research what you wish to discuss.
That’s the Cosmo Oil refinery fire in Chiba, Japan, following the 2011 tsunami.
Another shot of the Cosmo Oil fire. Nothing to do with uranium.
This appears to be a separate, but similarly non-nuclear related, fuel storage blaze resulting from the tsunami.
That’s the Deepwater Horizon oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico six years ago. Remember, everybody, that when you’re presenting an argument it’s important to research what you wish to discuss.
(Via David Reimers.)
===
DON’T MESS WITH NATURE – OR THE LAW
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (2:31pm)
Remember the good old days, when Tara Brown’s biggest problem was polar bears trying to eat her because of global warming? As 60 Minutes reported at the time, it was “a graphic lesson in what happens when we mess with nature.”
===
THE GREAT DIE-OFF
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (2:08pm)
To celebrate Earth Day, let’s review predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day celebration in 1970:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
===
ERNIE EARNINGS
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (1:50pm)
Need a welcome to country ceremony this weekend? How about a ceremonial cleansing? It’ll cost you:
In Melbourne’s inner-city suburb of Abbotsford, the Wurundjeri Tribe Land & Compensation Cultural Heritage Council Inc. quotes $570 for a Welcome to Country (Community not for profit clients, $470); $300 for a Smoking /Cleansing Ceremony ($300); $820 for a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony ($720); $1700 for Jindyworabak Dancers ($1700) and $250 for didgeridoo player ($250). Travel and parking are included; 10% GST to be added.Sydney’s Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council quotes Welcome to Country speeches at $385-450, with a 20% surcharge after 5pm and weekends. Dancers, didgeridoo players and smoking-ceremony handlers are not supplied by this council and come at extra expense. The council warns that its three “uncles” providing welcomes “are in high demand”, unsurprising given that welcomes are becoming mandatory.
Presumably Ernie Dingo receives royalties.
===
PRINCE
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (5:19am)
Guitarist and singer Prince is reported to have died:
The hugely popular and acclaimed musician Prince has died at his home in Minnesota at the age of 57, his publicist has said.
Police were called to a medical emergency at his Paisley Park estate earlier on Thursday, US media reported. An investigation is underway.
Here’s a review of a brilliant 2012 Prince show in Sydney.
===
INTERNAL MEMO
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (3:40am)
Attention all Victorian agents,
Phase one of Operation Stretchpants is complete.
The device has been disassembled and its components rendered harmless following our standard post-capture procedure.
Agents are advised that phase two is now initiated.
Meanwhile, Operation Swayback remains on hold until appropriate disposal facilities are secured.
Remain vigilant.
Yours in liberty,
Central Command.
PS: Anyone who hasn’t contributed yet for Megan’s wedding gift is reminded to pay Amanda in reception. Also the third floor refrigerator is still broken, so it would be appreciated if staff using the fridge on floor two would clear out any unwanted food and create a little more space.
===
RAISE THE VOTING AGE TO 35
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (3:04am)
Proof, if further proof be needed, that too many young people are idiots:
The Greens have amassed record support from Australia’s youngest voters.At 32 per cent, the Greens’ primary vote among 18 to 24-year-olds is seven points ahead of the Coalition and just one point behind Labor’s 33, highlighting the century-old social democratic party’s problem with losing voters from the left.
In other election news, it turns out that some older people are also idiots:
===
EMAIL EDIOT
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (2:54am)
A toxic tale of bullying and harassment, beautifully told by Hedley Thomas.
===
IT’S A MIXED UP MUDDLED UP SHOOK UP WORLD
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 2016 (2:08am)
Transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want, Donald Trump said Thursday.
His own, for example. Or a bathroom for infants.
===
Welcome to what’s actually your country - and to an ancient ceremony invented the other day
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (2:34pm)
Tony Thomas checks out the rates charged for a brand new ancient tradition by the Wurundjeri Tribe Land & Compensation Cultural Heritage Council:
This reinvented superstition invades even an organisation once devoted to science but now gripped with a global warming alarmism which its boss warns ”almost sounds more like a religion”:
Good business.
This reinvented superstition invades even an organisation once devoted to science but now gripped with a global warming alarmism which its boss warns ”almost sounds more like a religion”:
Even the CSIRO, an organisation nominally pledged to rational inquiry and scientific rigour (OK, there is that climate-change hysteria), has bought in to the ‘welcome’ business, having issued guidelines for pay rates and accommodations when its laboratories need to be cleansed of “evil spirits” by an ochred contractor waving fiery foliage. Exposed and widely ridiculed, those guidelines were quietly removed for the internet. They remain available via Wayback Machine’s web archive, however, and can be read in full here.Yet:
The supposedly ancient ‘welcome’ tradition goes back 30-40 years, whereas the House of Commons goes back nearly 700 years. Indigenous entertainers Ernie Dingo and Richard Whalley, of the Middar Aboriginal Theatre, claim to have invented the “welcome to country” in 1976 because two pairs of Maori visitors from NZ and the Cook Islands wanted an equivalent of their own traditional ceremony before they would dance at the Perth International Arts Festival. Another version is that activists shrewdly created the ceremony at about the same time to buttress land-rights claims. And Aboriginal Rhoda Roberts, head of indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House, says the ceremonies were developed in the 1980s by members of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust which she co-founded. Her speaker-for-hire profile claims she personally invented the term “welcome to country” along with the protocols involved. She would like welcomes to include marking guests with ochre and Aboriginal sweat.
Anthropologists and early settlers failed to record anything much resembling “welcome to country” ceremonies. Bess Price, CLP Aboriginal member of the Northern Territory Parliament and Minister for Community Services, has described “welcomes” as “not particularly meaningful to traditional people anyway. We don’t do that in communities. It’s just a recent thing. It’s just people who are trying to grapple at something that they believe should be traditional.”Note: Tony Thomas’s new book of essays, That’s Debatable, will be launched at 6.30pm Thursday, May 19, at Il Gamberos Restaurant, 166 Lygon St, Carlton.
Anthropologist Ron Brunton found in WA some evidence for permissions being required to enter neighbouring clans’ land (although more honoured in the breach these days) but saw no evidence of any welcome-to-countries in the state where the ceremonies were (probably) first invented.
Adelaide archival researcher and geologist Alistair Crooks says,
“During years of geological site inspections, I have never seen or heard of a welcome ceremony being performed when entering tribal land (invited), nor have I seen the ceremony performed when transporting Aborigines into or across various tribal boundaries. Nor is any such ceremony described by any of the early explorers or anthropologists that I am aware of.”
===
The Bolt Report, starting on Monday
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (12:41pm)
We’re back. Weekdays at 7pm on Sky News Live - with this mission statement:
To get on Foxtel go here.
===
Turnbull is right
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (12:18pm)
Malcolm Turnbull is perfectly correct:
Law enforcement agencies will “no doubt” take an interest in the Nine Network’s “most unwise” activities in Lebanon, Malcolm Turnbull says, noting overseas corruption is an offence under Australian law…
“Nobody is above the law and if you break the law in other parts of the world, you may well be breaking Australian law as well.” Mr Turnbull declined to comment further on the specific case, but noted federal law prohibited overseas corruption just as it forbade Australians joining foreign wars.
===
Not classy
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (12:12pm)
A serious male conservative commentator would not gratuitously say something so ungentlemanly and nasty. Nor would the feminist victim industry allow him to do so without being vilified in return.
So I await with interest the reaction to this nasty crack by Paul Bongiorno, the ABC commentator and former priest:
So I await with interest the reaction to this nasty crack by Paul Bongiorno, the ABC commentator and former priest:
(Thanks to reader Dean and others.)
===
The new colonisation of Australia
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (11:52am)
My argument, as stated again last week:
Immigration is now becoming colonisation. Some immigrant groups are now so big that they can create self-sustaining communities.The latest examples:
Such multiculturalism – never popular with the public – has been pushed by politicians desperate for votes mustered by ethnic bosses. Surely they must promote what unites us, not fund and cheer what divides. Governments should promote pride in Australia rather than in rival cultures we’ve imported.
HIGH demand from migrant groups for places at top public high schools is putting pressure on student enrolments amid a property boom in key suburbs.In Europe:
Schools such as Glen Waverley SC, Balwyn High and McKinnon SC are highly sought after by Asian families, who are paying a premium to buy or rent in the popular school zones.
An astonishing 86 per cent of Glen Waverley SC students have a non-English-speaking background, with Chinese the dominant group. At Balwyn High the figure is 66 per cent, Mt Waverley SC (55 per cent), Brentwood SC (47 per cent) and McKinnon SC (45 per cent), according to the MySchool website.
The Turkish consulate in Rotterdam has infuriated Dutch MPs by calling on Turkish groups in the Netherlands to inform it of insults against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.(Thanks to reader Lachie.)
Several MPs complained of the “long arm of the Turkish state” while the Dutch PM said it was a “strange” move.
Last week, Germany allowed the prosecution of a top satirist for insulting Mr Erdogan to proceed.
Jan Boehmermann had read a crude poem on TV, aimed at testing German law.
Both Germany and the Netherlands have old lese majeste laws against insulting the head of a friendly head of state.
===
Mirabella smeared. UPDATE: Then smears herself
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (11:45am)
A very damaging claim about Liberal candidate Sophie Mirabella in the Benalla Ensign, as reported by editor and former ABC broadcaster Libby Price:
UPDATE
Pretty low rent for McGowan on Sky News Live tonight to refuse to confirm - on TV - what her office conceded in a press statement earlier today that there was no push. It struck me as an attempt to benefit from a smear by not publicly denying it.
Not the act of a morally brave person.
UPDATE
Wow, who is actually showing the aggressive body language here? Watch McGowan reveal herself in debate with Mirabella:
But then Mirabella makes a claim that reinforces that bully stereotype that on last night’s performance might properly apply to her opponent:
… [Mirabella] took exception to the current Member for Indi, Cathy McGowan, asking to have her photo taken with Mr (Ken) Wyatt in front of the Cooinda plaque commemorating the opening {of a new wing at a retirement home]. Mrs Mirabella very publicly pushed Ms McGowan out of the way to obstruct the photo being taken. All politicians had been invited by Cooinda Village to attend. Ms McGowan did get her photo with the rather bewildered Mr Wyatt, but not in front of the plaque.Pushed? Really? Mirabella denies it and even independent MP McGowan doesn’t make that claim:
She said Ms Mirabella ”intervened to prevent the photo being taken”.The Guardian does not repeat the “push” claim:
Witnesses claim that Mirabella “aggressively” blocked McGowan – the independent candidate who deseated her at the 2013 federal election – from taking a photo with Wyatt at the plaque commemorating the opening.Price, who claims she had four witnesses to back her account, may need to apologise for the slur, which is incredibly damaging for Mirabella. And she should say which “witnesses” gave her the story, and if any have links to McGowan.
According to McGowan Mirabella said the sitting MP could not get a photo with the minister because the wing was funded by the federal government, led by her party, the Liberals.
UPDATE
Pretty low rent for McGowan on Sky News Live tonight to refuse to confirm - on TV - what her office conceded in a press statement earlier today that there was no push. It struck me as an attempt to benefit from a smear by not publicly denying it.
Not the act of a morally brave person.
UPDATE
Wow, who is actually showing the aggressive body language here? Watch McGowan reveal herself in debate with Mirabella:
UPDATE
But then Mirabella makes a claim that reinforces that bully stereotype that on last night’s performance might properly apply to her opponent:
The Coalition has been accused of putting “political payback” ahead of constituents’ health needs, after former MP Sophie Mirabella claimed voters missed out on $10 million in health funding because they chose independent Cathy McGowan over her.
Mrs Mirabella last night claimed the Coalition would have announced $10 million for Wangaratta’s hospital the week after the 2013 election, had she not been defeated by Ms McGowan in the northwest Victorian seat of Indi. “That is $10 million that Wangaratta hasn’t had because Cathy got elected,” Mrs Mirabella, who is campaigning to reclaim the seat, told a live Sky News debate.
===
Is this the Rudd Government?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (11:10am)
Malcolm Turnbull has not unveiled any new spending cuts of any substance. But with the Budget deep in deficit he had unleased billions more in spending:
UPDATE
IPA boss John Roskam gives up - and brings a warning to Turnbull from the Liberal heartland:
The budget will have to find savings to cover more than $10 billion of fresh spending since Malcolm Turnbull gained power last September, before being able to fund any election promises or new budget commitments…You’d think the Government wasn’t actually deep in debt, wouldn’t you?
Over the four-year budget estimate period, new defence spending totals $1.4bn, but ... but 2025-26, when money will be pouring into the submarine project along with naval shipbuilding and strike fighters, the new defence commitments will be costing $7.2bn a year. This is more than the surplus Treasury has projected for that year…
The budget will also contain a further $1bn to refinance military deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East…
The agreement to lift the commonwealth’s spending on hospitals ... will cost $2.9bn out to 2019-20…
Mr Turnbull’s backdown on Mr Abbott’s plan to abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will also have a budget cost, although the decision to retain the Clean Energy Finance Corporation should be roughly revenue-neutral…
Mr Turnbull’s innovation package, launched in December, was costed at $1.1bn, but this went out only to 2018-19, with spending rising rapidly in the last two years…
The government has boasted of adding more than 1000 new drugs to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme… The full cost of new listings in the past six months will be included in the budget, but the decision to add a new and highly effective hepatitis drug alone is estimated to cost $1bn.
Although the government has been looking to the health portfolio for savings, it was also responsible for a further $910m cost, with the funding of a further 17,400 aged-care places.
Other smaller commitments include yesterday’s announcement of $230m for cyber security, a $300m action plan on ice addiction, a $100m campaign on domestic violence and a $21m initiative on healthcare of chronic conditions…
The budget is expected to include funding for the upgrade of the Adelaide-to-Tarcoola rail line, which was announced by Industry Minister Christopher Pyne without any costing. At an estimate of $500,000 per kilometre, it would reach $300m.
UPDATE
IPA boss John Roskam gives up - and brings a warning to Turnbull from the Liberal heartland:
In September when Malcolm Turnbull took the prime ministership he said he’d lead a “thoroughly Liberal Government”. What’s “thoroughly Liberal” about increasing taxes on superannuation is anyone’s guess.Frustration, too, at the Financial Review:
In the Fairfax press on Wednesday, the journalist Peter Martin summed up just how far Turnbull and the federal Liberal Party has fallen.
“The Turnbull government is preparing to trump Labor in the budget by cracking down harder on high-income superannuation tax concessions to raise four times as much as the opposition’s policy. Labor has promised to cut the income tax threshold for more heavily taxing contributions from $300,000 to $250,000. The Coalition now plans to cut it to $180,000.”Unbelievable. But true. The Liberals are now in a bidding war with the ALP as to who can increase taxes on superannuation the most…
Even more bizarre is that virtue of the fact they’re planning to increase superannuation taxes by less than the Liberals, the ALP now has a better policy on superannuation than the government. Labor’s tax increases will affect 110,000 Australians. The Liberals’ tax increase will hit more than double that number.
[AFR] economics editor Alan Mitchell neatly summed up what appears to be the calculation behind the tax increase. He said it would not be politically costly because, “the people who will be paying the extra tax are rusted-on Coalition supporters. They have nowhere else to go"…
Make no mistake. If Turnbull goes ahead with the sort of tax increases Morrison is talking about it will be the equivalent of Tony Abbott’s section 18C, deficit levy, and Prince Philip mistakes all rolled into one.
Abbott did himself enormous damage among the Liberal Party rank-and-file when he reneged on his commitment to remove legal restrictions on freedom of speech and when he broke his promise not to raise taxes… The situation is worse for Turnbull than Abbott. Liberal Party branch members were merely disappointed with Abbott – they didn’t distrust him…
Turnbull presented himself as a reformer and an economic liberal. So far, precious little of that has been seen. As diverse as the Liberal Party is, one of the things that unites party members is the Liberals’ commitment to fiscal responsibility. Not many Liberals regard higher taxes as economic reform. There is enormous frustration that, as yet, neither Turnbull nor Morrison look like they have any sort of credible plan to put the budget into surplus, or reduce government debt, or reform the industrial relations system… Liberal Party branch members are asking themselves the question not whether the Turnbull government will be re-elected, but whether it deserves to be.
Months before finishing one of the most eventful double terms of any Reserve Bank of Australia governor, Glenn Stevens has issued a sharp message to other central bankers and economic policymakers… [A]re global central bankers and policymakers really so desperate that they would consider even more extraordinary measures, such as the “helicopter drop” of central bank money into the bank accounts of individual citizens in order to encourage them to spend?(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Surely not, suggests the Reserve Bank governor… Stevens’ message should ... be heard in Australia as our federal election campaign threatens to degenerate into class-based populism. It’s a call for less funny money and more of the conventional focus on the basics of lifting productivity, tackling the barriers to economic growth and encouraging investment in activities that will drive prosperity.
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97 per cent false, and only a fraud or fool would keep parrotting it
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (7:32am)
Don Aitkin debunks the myth of the 97 per cent- again. If global warmists are capable of this dodgy stuff, what else are they saying that’s false?:
How can any serious person - especially any serious scientist - disputethis claim that so offends a Fairfax climate pilgrim:
(Via Rafe Champion at Catallaxy Files.)
The crème de la crème comes with the work (if that is right term for it) of John Cook, occasionally aided by Stefan Lewandowsky…In 2013 Cook et al and a team of volunteers looked at more than 12,000 abstracts, rated them according to whether or not they implicitly or explicitly endorsed the view that human activity had caused (wait for it) some of the warming, and again found the magic 97 per cent. See — it’s true! Surely those three separate ratings of 97 per cent have something going for them.UPDATE
On the face of it, no. Unfortunately for Cook, Legates and others later in the same year published a rebuttal. They found that only 41 papers – 0.3% of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0% of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1% – had been found to endorse the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils-Axel Morner and other climate scientists protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work. Cook has been trying to defend his results ever since, but more and more scorn has, in my view quite rightly, been poured on the work. You can read some of the objections here, here and here, for starters. As I have said before, this is terrible stuff methodologically, the worst I’ve ever seen in a peer-reviewed journal.
How can any serious person - especially any serious scientist - disputethis claim that so offends a Fairfax climate pilgrim:
Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash ... told Sky News there were “varying views” on climate science and she was of the opinion it was still up for debate.This isn’t a religion, guys. Rational people are allowed to doubt. In fact, it’s a mark of intelligence.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily settled but I think we certainly think we should be taking every precaution possible to ensure that the planet is healthy,” she said.
Earlier in the week, Senator Brandis told the Senate there were still questions about the nature and causes of climate change, though he acknowledged he was not a scientist.
Addressing Labor’s Kim Carr, Senator Brandis said: “Senator Carr, you’re the one who says the science is settled. I don’t.”
(Via Rafe Champion at Catallaxy Files.)
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Has Turnbull handed the Senate to Labor and the Greens?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (7:04am)
This analysis suggests the Turnbull Government - by calling a double-dissolution election - has thrown away a Senate it could work with to one where the Greens and Greens-leaning Nick Xenophon will call the shots:
The present Senate has been feral, true. Yet the Government has been able to get some big reforms through it - especially the scrapping of the carbon and mining taxes. Just this week it got the Senate to agree to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal that threatened to put independent truckies out of business, even though Labor and the Greens voted to save it.
The Government always had some chance with this Senate of overcoming such a Greens/Labor block. It “just” needed to persuade six of the remaining eight crossbench Senators to support it, and sometimes it could.
That advantage has now been thrown away by calling a double disssolution election that will probably throw out most of those cross benchers three years early. The new Senate will most likely be dominated completely by Labor and the Greens or, at best, by them and the Left-leaning Xenophon. And it will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. Conservative government will become near impossible.
Number crunchers from the major parties say Senator Xenophon’s profile could help elect two or even three candidates alongside him in South Australia....What have the Liberals done?
The Coalition is likely to win a minimum of 31 seats in the 76-seat Senate, and possibly as many as 35 seats.
Under this scenario, securing Senator Xenophon’s vote would give the Coalition either 38 seats — a blocking majority — or 39 seats, an outright majority.
Labor expects to win a minimum of 26 seats, while the Greens could expect a minimum of nine, giving them a potential block of 35 — again putting Senator Xenophon in a balance-of-power position. The likely maximum for Labor of 29 seats, and 11 for the Greens, would give them an outright majority, which would not require Senator Xenophon’s vote.
The present Senate has been feral, true. Yet the Government has been able to get some big reforms through it - especially the scrapping of the carbon and mining taxes. Just this week it got the Senate to agree to abolish the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal that threatened to put independent truckies out of business, even though Labor and the Greens voted to save it.
The Government always had some chance with this Senate of overcoming such a Greens/Labor block. It “just” needed to persuade six of the remaining eight crossbench Senators to support it, and sometimes it could.
That advantage has now been thrown away by calling a double disssolution election that will probably throw out most of those cross benchers three years early. The new Senate will most likely be dominated completely by Labor and the Greens or, at best, by them and the Left-leaning Xenophon. And it will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. Conservative government will become near impossible.
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Ransom paid for 60 Minutes
Andrew Bolt April 22 2016 (6:49am)
Sounds like ransom money to me, but more fool Channel Nine for having to pay it:
CHANNEL Nine paid US$500,000 to Lebanese father Ali Elamine in the official settlement registered with the prosecuting judge following their botched kidnapping attempt, News Corp Australia has learned.This is off:
Further undisclosed monies were also paid directly to Elamine’s family to encourage him to drop charges against the 60 Minutes crew, a person close to the negotiations said. The source said Elamine was initially offered $350,000, an amount he scoffed at. It wasn’t until Nine raised the prospect of an under the table amount that he became serious in the negotiations.
Documents obtained by The Australian show Nine paid for the failed kidnapping of the two young children of Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner and her Lebanese-American ex-partner Ali Elamine, and the company was aware of the reason for the payment, having included the reference “Investigation Into My Missing Child’’. One of these documents shows the ANZ logo, and details of a Swift International Transfer Payment of $69,000 from the Nine account held in ANZ’s Park Street branch in Sydney to the personal company of child-abduction recovery specialist Adam Whittington, IPCA Ltd in Stockholm. Joe Karam, the lawyer for Mr Whittington who received the payment and orchestrated the kidnap plan, slammed Nine for leaving his client and three of his colleagues to languish in prison despite negotiating the freedom of the network’s staff.
“It is not appropriate for Channel Nine to arrange a deal and not include the men they asked to execute it,” Mr Karam told The Australian.
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The real humanity is that these boats went to sea on the first place
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (12:47am)
THERE is a sickening familiarity in the tragedy off the coast of Italy in which as many as 900 refugees drowned.
Continue reading 'The real humanity is that these boats went to sea on the first place'
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ICAC commissioner Megan Latham: A game of threats
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (12:46am)
USUALLY people who wield enormous power are discreet about the pleasures of exercising it. Not ICAC commissioner Megan Latham. Just watch the video of her speaking at a NSW Bar Association seminar for young lawyers last year.
Continue reading 'ICAC commissioner Megan Latham: A game of threats'
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BUSTED BELLE
Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (5:06pm)
Belle Gibson, who launched a global “lifestyle and wellness” business on the back of claims that her brain tumour was cured by natural therapies, finally ‘fesses up:
In an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, Ms Gibson was asked if she had, or ever had cancer. “No. None of it’s true,” she told the magazine.
Next question: what happens to all the money?
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PUMPING OUT THOSE AMPS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (4:47pm)
Demonstrating the same thoughtfulness that brought Sydney a desalinisation plant we didn’t need, the Climate Council now dreams of massive solar panel arrays:
Given Sydney’s current weather, there may be one slight flaw in the Climate Council’s thinking. Incidentally, the rain here isn’t quite this bad:
Given Sydney’s current weather, there may be one slight flaw in the Climate Council’s thinking. Incidentally, the rain here isn’t quite this bad:
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HAPPY EARTH DAY, EARTHICANS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (1:20pm)
Harry Flowers is exempt from Earth Day:
On Earth Day I’ll leave lights on all over the house and burn truck tyres in my garden as much as I want and I’ll tell you why.
My township in New Hampshire is 95 per cent forested, but you can never have too many trees, so on Earth Day I always like to plant a couple more, get the tree cover round here up to 97, 98 per cent, whatever it takes to send climate change into reverse. Of course, it’s always a big pain in the neck the morning after Earth Day, when the holiday’s over, and it’s time to take down the trees. So these days I generally just plant artificial trees with the nice silvery tinselly branches, and then you can just take them down and put ‘em in the attic till next year’s Earth Day. Just a helpful ecological tip from yours truly.
Hybrid owners are celebrating Earth Day by ditching their embarrassing eco-buggies and buying SUVs. Personally, I’ll mark the great occasion with a delicious dish of dirt.
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THEY LIKE TO PLAY WITH NUMBERS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (12:10pm)
Our warmy pals at the ABC will never let go of their per capita security blankie:
Australia’s emissions are less than 1.5 per cent of global emissions, but per capita Australia is the biggest emitter of all developed nations.
As previously noted, two things are wrong with that per capita claim. One, it’s an irrelevant figure intended only to make Australia’s carbon dioxide contribution seem larger than it is. And two, it appears not to be true.
(Via J.F. Beck)
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SUPERVAN VII
Tim Blair – Wednesday, April 22, 2015 (11:32am)
An apparent solar conflagration in Sussex, England:
George Dalmon, who was in Hove Town Hall at the time of the fire told the Brighton Argus: “There was big black smoke billowing out, it looks quite major. Everyone has been evacuated out of the building. Somebody said something about it being a solar panel.”
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Hockey open to yet another Labor tax. But it’s all still just fiddling
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (6:09pm)
Not quite the ringing condemnation from the Treasurer that low-tax Liberals may have hoped for:
So the total tax to be raised by the only two tax policies Labor has released is less than $2 billion a year, when the deficit is roaring at around $40 billion a year.
Where’s the other $38 billion a year going to come from, Mr Shorten? What you’re offering so far is peanuts.
Asked about Labor’s proposal to slap on a 15 per cent tax on super earnings Mr Hockey said: ”We will have a look at the details, but I am always sceptical about Labor coming up with a plan that increases taxes.”And note Labor’s pathetic trick of inflating the tax raised its super plan by giving a per-decade number, rather than the usual per-year:
Opposition leader Bill Shorten said the plan could save $14 billion over a decade.In fact, any Labor attempt to claw back super is almost certain to have significant leakage as the rich rearrange their tax affairs. But let’s pretend Labor’s costings are right. What it’s then saying is that its big hit-the-rich super changes will raise just $1.4 billion a year, to add to the equally improbable $500 million a year it hopes to raise from its proposed new tax on multinationals.
So the total tax to be raised by the only two tax policies Labor has released is less than $2 billion a year, when the deficit is roaring at around $40 billion a year.
Where’s the other $38 billion a year going to come from, Mr Shorten? What you’re offering so far is peanuts.
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When will Tim Flannery say sorry?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (8:31am)
A third day of heavy rain and floods in NSW:
Not - again - what we were told to expect.
Tim Flannery keeps being quoted by the ABC and Fairfax as a global warming guru. So it’s important that we keep confronting the Climate Council head with his spectacularly dud predictions.
In 2005:
In 2005:
UPDATE
Melbourne ABC presenter Jon Faine, a fervent warmist, has advertised he will later today discuss what the NSW rain says about changes to our climate. It is yet to be seen if he links global warming to this rain, but Melbourne readers might wish to ensure any scaremongering is challenged (1300 222 774). Here are some facts and admissions worth noting from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some key passages:
On thunderstorms:
A second storm cell is developing off New South Wales and the Central Coast, with heavy rain and damaging winds expected along the coast from Illawarra to Hunter…Sydney’s water catchments today are 83.6 per cent full, and rising fast.
In the Hunter town of Dungog families have been left without any belongings as whole homes were swept away… Police have urged people on Sydney’s north shore to remain calm amid reports that Manly Dam is at risk of overflowing, as storms lash parts of NSW.
Not - again - what we were told to expect.
Tim Flannery keeps being quoted by the ABC and Fairfax as a global warming guru. So it’s important that we keep confronting the Climate Council head with his spectacularly dud predictions.
In 2005:
I’m afraid that the science around climate change is firming up fairly quickly . . . we’ve seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment—if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since 98 the water has been in virtual freefall, and they’ve got about two years of supply left . . .(UPDATE: HELP WANTED! THE VIDEO OF THE ABOVE INTERVIEW McKEW DID WITH FLANNERY NO LONGER APPEARS ON THE ABC SITE. DOES ANYONE HAVE A COPY OF IT FOR ME TO SHOW ON TV?)
Maxine McKew: But. . . we won’t see a return to more normal patterns?
Flannery: . . . they do seem to be of a permanent nature. I don’t think it’s just a cycle. I’d love to be wrong, but I think the science is pointing in the other direction.
McKew: So does that mean, really, we’re faced with—if that’s right—back-to-back droughts and continuing thirsty cities? Flannery: That’s right.
In 2005:
Perth is facing the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the city’s water supply… I’m personally more worried about Sydney than Perth. Where does Sydney go for more water? At least Perth has a buffer of underground water sources. Sydney doesn’t have any backup. And while Perth is forging ahead with a desalination plant, Sydney doesn’t have any major scheme in place to bolster water. It also has nowhere to put the vast infrastructure of a desalination plant.,,In 2007:
There’s only two years’ water supply in Warragamba Dam… If the computer models are right then drought conditions will become permanent in eastern Australia.
So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems...Since then, of course, there have been repeated floods with dams in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra filled to overspilling.
UPDATE
Melbourne ABC presenter Jon Faine, a fervent warmist, has advertised he will later today discuss what the NSW rain says about changes to our climate. It is yet to be seen if he links global warming to this rain, but Melbourne readers might wish to ensure any scaremongering is challenged (1300 222 774). Here are some facts and admissions worth noting from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some key passages:
On thunderstorms:
In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.On heavy rain events:
In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.On cyclones and storms:
Over periods of a century or more, evidence suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific… Several studies suggest an increase in intensity, but data sampling issues hamper these assessments… Callaghan and Power (2011) find a statistically significant decrease in Eastern Australia land-falling tropical cyclones since the late 19th century although including 2010/2011 season data this trend becomes non-significant ...On extreme weather events:
For instance, evidence is most compelling for increases in heavy precipitation in North America, Central America and Europe, but in some other regions—such as southern Australia and western Asia—there is evidence of decreases.On the warming pause, now 17 years:
The discrepancy between simulated and observed GMST trends during 1998–2012 could be explained in part by a tendency for some CMIP5 models to simulate stronger warming in response to increases in greenhouse-gas concentration than is consistent with observations… Almost all CMIP5 historical simulations do not reproduce the observed recent warming hiatus.Remember, all these quotes come not from sceptics but from the IPCC, the United Nations body most responsible for spreading panic about global warming - and the body with a strong vested interest in keeping that panic alive.
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Censoring Greg Hunt’s correction: another reason never to trust Fairfax on global warming
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (8:14am)
Fairfax this week ran this complete beat-up as part of its campaign to force the Abbott Government to waste even more money on pointless global warming schemes:
The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including China and the US, have questioned the credibility of Australia’s climate change targets and “direct action” policy in a list of queries to the Abbott government.Environment Minister Greg Hunt was astonished by the errors and blatant distortions in the article, and wrote a correction. But the Sydney Morning Herald flatly refused to publish anything that identified exactly how it had misled readers and removed all the lines in bold, leaving only an anodyne response:
In the latest sign of diplomatic pressure over Canberra’s stance on global warming, China accused Australia of doing less to cut emissions than it is demanding of other developed countries, and asked it to explain why this was fair.
Suggestions the credibility of Australia’s climate change policy is being questioned by other countries are blatantly false (‘China on offensive over climate’, 20 April).The final - and neutered - version of Hunt’s correction which the Sydney Morning Herald published today:
Questions from China about our policies and plans are almost identical to the hundreds of questions China has asked other countries.
The Fairfax article completely airbrushes the fact that this is a standard United Nations consultation process.
We’ve always said we will consider action being taken by other countries in the setting of our own targets for the post-2020 period. We’ll be asking questions of other countries and understandably, other countries are doing the same.
This will be factored into the setting of our targets for the post-2020 period – which we’ll announce mid-year. We’re also currently undertaking consultation with the community on these targets.
But promises to cut emissions mean nothing if they can’t actually be met. In this regard, we can be proud of our track record.
Unlike many countries, Australia beat its target under the first Kyoto commitment period.
By contrast, the United States committed to reducing emissions by seven per cent, but in fact emissions actually went up by around eleven per cent. They overshot by 18 per cent.
And China recently announced its emissions will continue to rise over the coming decades, while Australia has committed to reducing our emissions.
For the period leading up to 2020, we will achieve our target of reducing emissions by five percent from 2000 levels. This is the equivalent of a 13 per cent reduction from 2005 levels, and we’ll achieve it with the Emissions Reduction Fund.
This policy commitment was passed by Parliament last year and will continue in perpetuity. In fact, later this week details will be released of projects to cut emissions through to 2025.
Therefore, claims by Fairfax that Australia does not have a post-2020 policy to combat climate change are completely false.
We want a strong global agreement in Paris. Australia will absolutely play its part.
We will continue to take strong action to combat climate change – but we’ll do it without hurting families and business with a carbon tax.
- Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment
I refer to your article on questions lodged with the United Nations in the lead-up to December’s climate summit ("US, China question climate policy”, April 20). This is a standard UN consultation process. We’ll be asking questions of other countries and understandably, other countries are doing the same.Another reason not to trust a single unverified word the Sydney Morning Herald publishes on global warming.
This will be factored into setting our targets for the post-2020 period – which we’ll announce mid-year. We’re also consulting with the community on these targets.
For the period up to 2020, we will achieve our target of reducing emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels. This is the equivalent of a 13 per cent reduction from 2005 levels, and we’ll achieve it with the Emissions Reduction Fund.
This policy commitment was passed by Parliament last year and will continue in perpetuity. We want a strong global agreement in Paris. Australia will absolutely play its part. We will continue to take strong action to combat climate change – but we’ll do it without hurting families and business with a carbon tax.
Greg Hunt Minister for the Environment, Canberra (ACT)
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Any bets?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (8:11am)
File away this line from an interview Charlie Pickering about his new ABC comedy show:
It’s not going to be a left-wing show — Pickering gets very passionate about the need to be a swinging voter...Clearly a new resolution since leaving The Project.
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Kevin Andrews may well wonder who’s leading the Islamic State
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (7:36am)
Defence Minister Kevin Andrews and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key last week couldn’t name the Islamic State leader.
Maybe no one knows just yet who’s in charge:
Maybe no one knows just yet who’s in charge:
The leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, sources have told the Guardian.
A source in Iraq with connections to the terror group revealed that Baghdadi suffered serious injuries during an attack by the US-led coalition in March. The source said Baghdadi’s wounds were at first life-threatening, but he has since made a slow recovery. He has not, however, resumed day-to-day control of the organisation.
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Labor after more taxes to replace what it blew last time
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (7:30am)
Having wasted billions of our taxes when last in office, Labor reaches into your savings for yet more:
High-income earners will lose $14 billion in superannuation tax concessions over the next decade under a Labor policy that it says is needed to keep the system sustainable and restore equity.
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The strangest analogy yet to convince you Islamism is no big deal
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (7:14am)
Of all the absurd analogies offered by the wilfully blind:
George Megalogenis, who has written a book and produced a documentary linking Australia’s economic success to its immigration program, said ... the recent spate of terrorism-related arrests should not affect Australia’s attitudes to Muslim migration any more than the Martin Bryant massacre should affect mainland attitudes towards Tasmania.We have about as many Tasmanians as we do Muslims.
Number of Tasmanians jailed for plotting to commit mass murder at the MCG? 0
Number of Tasmanians jailed for plotting to commit mass murder at the Holsworthy army base? 0
Number of Tasmanian leaders citing religious texts to justify a war against mainlanders? 0
Number of Tasmanians volunteering to join mass-murdering groups on the mainland? 0
Number of Tasmanians stopped from flying out to join mass-murdering groups? 0
Number of Tasmanians killed while fighting for mass-murdering groups? 0
Number of bookshops in Tasmania selling texts justifying war against mainlanders? 0
Number of reporters threatened with death by Tasmanians? 0
Number of Tasmanian leaders who have hailed suicide killers as heroes? 0
Number of Tasmanians arrested for allegedly plotting to kill police on Anzac Day? 0
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ABC bias may not be selling
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (6:37am)
An interesting admission in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Incidentally, thanks to the many listeners who gave Steve Price and me probably our best ratings yet in the same period. Curious contrast.
It’s situation normal with the latest Sydney radio ratings, apart from a curious trend developing at ABC 702 Sydney. Overall the broadcaster has shed 1.7 points, down from 10 last survey to 8.3 … 702’s local content manager, Andy Henley, believes many listeners may have temporarily departed to escape the station’s comprehensive coverage of the NSW election.Did its bias not sell?
Incidentally, thanks to the many listeners who gave Steve Price and me probably our best ratings yet in the same period. Curious contrast.
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Can business afford a Labor government determined to string them up as scapegoats?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (6:27am)
Business leaders should know that Labor has a policy of scapegoating them as tax cheats, hoarders, thieves and the cause of the nation’s financial troubles:
If the answer is no, get off the fence.
Labor senator Sam Dastyari has been accused of ambushing colleagues and threatened with a privileges investigation after he bypassed Senate protocols tounilaterally send a warning letter to the heads of the nation’s big four banks.Can you really afford the return of a Labor party so vindictive, destructive and essentially deceitful over the true cause of our massive deficits?
Senator Dastyari’s actions have led to a fresh outbreak of claims the ambitious former NSW ALP general secretary is using his role as the chairman of the high-profile Senate economics reference committee to further his own ambitions.
It is the same committee which a fortnight ago clashed with technology giants Apple, Google and Microsoft over tax evasion, and has led to questions about whether Senator Dastyari’s aggressive chairmanship has the potential to harm Labor’s relationship with big business.
The deputy chair of the committee, Liberal senator Sean Edwards, is incensed that Senator Dastyari wrote to bank chiefs without the committee’s knowledge and that his intentions to pursue a particular line of questioning were revealed in a newspaper column.
If the answer is no, get off the fence.
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Three reasons not to trust a word of Fairfax’s latest warming warning
Andrew Bolt April 22 2015 (5:51am)
The Sydney Morning Herald’s story:
It is appalling that this kind of deceptive propaganda now passes for news.
Australia has been urged to rapidly accelerate its cuts to greenhouse gases, with the independent Climate Change Authority recommending the Abbott government adopt an ambitious 30 per cent reduction target on 2000 levels by 2025.First reason not to trust a word of what follows:
The “independent Climate Change Authority”?Second reason not to trust a word of what follows:
The authority with these members, all deliberately hand-picked by Labor for their global warming alarmism, is “independent”?:
Tell me why Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics who is a former Greens candidate and absurd catastrophist, was an “independent” pick?
Why militant warmist David Karoly, with his history of predictions, his denial of the warming pause and his dud paper, was an “independent” pick?
Why John Quiggin, a warmist who had to admit to grossly exaggerating the difference our carbon tax could actually make, was an “independent” pick?
This graphic:Third reason not to trust a word of what follows:
Any newspaper which illustrates a story about emissions of carbon dioxide, an invisible gas, with pictures of some alarming form of smoke, heavy in particulates, is either deliberately deceitful or appallingly ignorant.
This admission:Oh, and the argument itself is, of course, baloney.
“The report was given to media outlets ahead of its release on conditions that prevented Fairfax Media from seeking comment from the Abbott government.”In other words, the Authority did not want readers to have the other side of its rickety argument, and the Sydney Morning Herald agreed not to go look for it.
In a report to be published on Wednesday, the authority has also declared Australia is falling far short of the task required to cut emissions by 2020 if it wants to match the efforts of other countries to halt global warming.Global warming halted 17 years ago. Our own cuts to emissions would make essentially not the slightest difference anyway, being too small. In any event, our efforts to cut our emissions in fact more than match those of China and India, the world’s biggest and third-biggest emitters, both of which say they are not cutting total emissions but increasing them.
It is appalling that this kind of deceptive propaganda now passes for news.
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There should be no doubt why Numan Haider was shot
Andrew Bolt April 21 2015 (7:59pm)
I think this appeal, though welcome, lacks something:
This simply feeds the lethal victimology of some Muslims.
Here, for clarity, is why Numan Haider was shot:
UPDATE
This kind of hysterical language from Muslim academic, and published by the ABC, risks further inflaming an already dangerous sense of victimhood. The author is Shakira Hussein, who, far from being “vomited from the body politic” and “purged”, is embedded in it as the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne:
This is a very disturbing detail and I wonder if those responsible for showing the corpse in this manner knew how provocative and inflammatory it would be:
UPDATE
How reckless of the Islamic Council of Victoria to encourage dangerously paranoid suspicions it should actually defuse:
THE devastated parents of a knife-wielding teen shot dead by police have appealed for radicalised young Australians not to inflict terror in their son’s name.Don’t think their son was a terrorist? Don’t know why he was shot?
Numan Haider’s parents called for “only peace’’… following reports that five teenagers arrested over allegations of an Anzac Day terrorist plot against police had planned it to avenge their son…
Asked if they had seen the teens at their son’s funeral at Doveton mosque last year, Haider’s father replied: “We have no idea. There were 800 people there.
“But our son was not a terrorist....”
Still wearing mourning black, his mother said through tears that she had been “shocked and upset” to read of the arrests of the teenagers. “I just don’t understand it. I feel confused — we still don’t know why the police killed our son....”
This simply feeds the lethal victimology of some Muslims.
Here, for clarity, is why Numan Haider was shot:
When met by two counter-terrorism police officers outside the station Haider pulled a knife from his pocket, the court heard.I think that is so perfectly clear that anyone claiming to be mystified is not to be trusted.
He stabbed the Victorian officer in the left arm and then the Australian Federal Police officer in the face, chest and shoulder.
When the federal police officer fell to the ground Haider climbed on top of him and continued to stab him.
The inquest heard the Victorian officer shouted at him to stop before shooting Haider once in the head.
UPDATE
This kind of hysterical language from Muslim academic, and published by the ABC, risks further inflaming an already dangerous sense of victimhood. The author is Shakira Hussein, who, far from being “vomited from the body politic” and “purged”, is embedded in it as the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne:
Yet the campaign against halal certification impacts on our lives, too. Its message is that, however discrete our presence, however well-integrated we may believe ourselves to be, we are not welcome here. The anti-Muslim racists behind the campaign want us to know that our absorption into Australian society makes them gag. We must be rejected, spat out, vomited from the body politic. In other words, purged.UPDATE
This is a very disturbing detail and I wonder if those responsible for showing the corpse in this manner knew how provocative and inflammatory it would be:
Many young Muslim men in the Melbourne’s far south-eastern suburbs where Haider grew up and died, are openly sceptical of the police version of the events of that night. These are people with no connection to terrorism, but who already feel marginalised by the political and media depiction of their religion.So many critics are calling on the police to do more to ease tensions. It strikes me we should ask instead why some in the community are actually stoking them.
After Haider’s body was seen by many in the open casket at his funeral with a huge bullet hole in his head, the topic has become an ongoing obsession for some.
“Everyone feels sorry for him and even people in my [Shiite] community talk about it a lot,” young Afghan community activist Mohammad Ali Baqiri told Fairfax Media.
“They say there were federal police there, two police officers, and they say he’s only got a knife, so why shoot him in the head? [There’s] always rumours that something was going on.” A senior member of the al-Furqan mosque, believed to be the epicentre of radical Islam in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, said: “I don’t understand why would the police actually shoot him in the head, why not shoot him somewhere else? It sounds a bit suspicious.”
UPDATE
How reckless of the Islamic Council of Victoria to encourage dangerously paranoid suspicions it should actually defuse:
Islamic Council of Victoria Kuranda Seyit.... [said] Haider’s death should have “very limited impact” on recruitment to Islamic State. But the longer that question marks lurk around the investigation [into Haider’s death], “there will always be young people ... who have conjectures about what happened”.(Thanks to reader Dean.)
“Unless an independent investigation brings more light, those questions will linger, and it’s not healthy for community relations.”
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Please enjoy this squirrel attempting to hide a nut... inside a dog's fur
Posted by Lost At E Minor on Thursday, 5 March 2015
Please enjoy this squirrel attempting to hide a nut... inside a dog's fur
Posted by Lost At E Minor on Thursday, 5 March 2015
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Stunning Sapphire & Diamond Dress Rings from our jewellery collection http://bit.ly/1yWoWXq#sapphire #rings #love
Posted by Diamond Imports on Tuesday, 21 April 2015
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Meanwhile, in Australia. Snapchat me @PazPaz
Posted by Paz on Monday, 20 April 2015
Meanwhile, in Australia. Snapchat me @PazPaz
Posted by Paz on Monday, 20 April 2015
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Michael Smith’s site down after attack
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (11:40am)
Michael Smith’s website is down. I originally thought it was singled out for a hacker-attack as a tribute to his dogged investigation of union and Labor scandals.
But a reader says:
Smith is posting updates on his Facebook page.
But a reader says:
The attacks are not on Michael’s site in particular but on the Typepad service in general, which runs on thousands of websites around the world, including those of major media companies such as as ABC (USA), MSNBC, the CBC, the BBC, and Sky News. As the official announcement says, “Update 21-April-2014 9:45AM PT: We’re sorry to inform you that Typepad was attacked again overnight. Our team has been working around the clock to restore service. While most blogs are available and the application is up, some mapped domains are showing a message that the domain is “unknown”, but there is no problem with the domain itself.”I have modified the original post as a consequence.
Smith is posting updates on his Facebook page.
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The new tribalists attack even our Anzac tradition
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (11:30am)
Nick Cater discovers the Left has truly stormed the institutions when Anzac deniers are among the official custodians of our military history:
But even if we accept Stanley’s crude and fashionable identity politics - that modern Australians can only identify with those of their “race” - then he’s still wrong to claim non Anglo-Saxon Australians are excluded.
Here’s part of Melbourne’s Order of March for Friday:
Meet General Sir John Monash, perhaps our greatest Anzac. Not Anglo-Saxon, but a Jew of Prussian ancestry whose funeral brought out 250,000 mourners.
UPDATE
Meet Captain Reg Saunders, another soldier who wasn’t Anglo-Saxon.
Reader Gray:
I’m surprised to read that quotation from Peter Stanley, and would like to see it in context. In previous interviews he’s seemed more respectful than that quote suggests. UPDATE: Or maybe not.
Anzac deniers [are] the belligerent band of revisionist historians who see the Anzac tradition as a jingoistic myth, and look to the centenary of World War 1 as a chance to put the record straight.It does? I’m not an Anglo-Saxon and certainly don’t feel excluded. In fact, no citizen of this country should feel excluded from a ceremony to honor those who gave their lives in defence of this land, its friends and its values. We are not yet a nation of tribes - are we?
In his recent book Anzac’s Long Shadow, [former Captain] James Brown speaks of a “discordant, lengthy and exorbitant four-year festival for the dead” that he describes as “a military Halloween”.
Craig Stockings accuses his fellow Australians of falling for “zombie myths” about military history, “monsters of the mind” that must be exorcised with “the holy water (of) reasoned arguments”.
Stockings lectures (heaven help us) at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Anzac revisionism is the mainstream position in the military history academies in Canberra.
Peter Stanley, a former senior historian at the war memorial and now a research professor at the Australian National University, criticises what he calls “Anzackery” and questions the special commemoration of the war dead. “Arguably more Australians have been touched by the trauma of car accidents killing loves ones, friends or neighbours,” he writes.
To single out those who died in defence of their country is “peculiar at best and grotesque at worst”. The Anzac tradition is an “essentially minority interest” that excludes “non Anglo-Saxon Australians”, he writes.
But even if we accept Stanley’s crude and fashionable identity politics - that modern Australians can only identify with those of their “race” - then he’s still wrong to claim non Anglo-Saxon Australians are excluded.
Here’s part of Melbourne’s Order of March for Friday:
UPDATE
Meet General Sir John Monash, perhaps our greatest Anzac. Not Anglo-Saxon, but a Jew of Prussian ancestry whose funeral brought out 250,000 mourners.
UPDATE
Meet Captain Reg Saunders, another soldier who wasn’t Anglo-Saxon.
Reader Gray:
The Australian Army commissioned indigenous Australian soldier Reg Saunders MBE as an officer in WWII, with then Captain Saunders returning to serve as a Company commander in the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, in the Korean War.UPDATE
It has never been clear to me why the story of a brave indigenous soldier like Reg Saunders is not better known, especially as he commanded an infantry company at Kapyong (and refused a decoration!), which is still 3RAR’s proudest battle honour. I know the ABC types love to hate the armed forces but when did the ABC or Fairfax first employ an indigenous Australian as a prominent broadcaster, editor or corporate officer? I suspect a long time after the Australian Army promoted Reg Saunders.
I’m surprised to read that quotation from Peter Stanley, and would like to see it in context. In previous interviews he’s seemed more respectful than that quote suggests. UPDATE: Or maybe not.
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The difference between Gillard and a conservative? A couple of years and a leaked email
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (11:29am)
Troy Bramston’s new book says Julia Gillard was privately telling Kevin Rudd of failings that wicked conservatives were describing publicly:
Even as Prime Minister Gillard pretended for a long time that the sharp rise in boat people under Labor was caused by not Labor’s weakening of our border laws but by “push factors” overseas:
From Ray Hadley’s interview today with Immigration Minister Scott Morrison:
TWO days before Julia Gillard challenged Kevin Rudd’s position as prime minister, she told him in writing that the Labor government was perceived as “incompetent and out of control” and was headed towards electoral oblivion.Note something specific that Gillard was saying privately but refusing to admit publicly - that under Rudd there had been a “loss of control of the borders”.
An extraordinary email sent by Ms Gillard to Mr Rudd at 9.49am on Monday, June 21, 2010, reveals she was deeply troubled about the government’s performance, even panicked, and expressed “a great deal of anxiety” over asylum-seeker policies…
“To state the obvious — our primary is in the mid-30s; we can’t win an election with a primary like that and the issue of asylum-seekers is an enormous reason why our primary is at that low level,” Ms Gillard wrote in the email. “It is an issue working on every level — loss of control of the borders feeding into a narrative of a government that is incompetent and out of control. As you know I have been raising this with a great deal of anxiety and I remain desperately concerned about lack of progress."…
The never-before-published email, sent to Mr Rudd and his chief of staff, Alister Jordan, is included in a new book, Rudd, Gillard and Beyond, published next week…
She offers Mr Rudd advice on how to lead the government after a series of meetings was scheduled and cancelled, and work on “a draft narrative document” to be undertaken in the prime minister’s office was not completed ... on “our key negative areas”, which were identified as asylum-seeker policy, the proposed internet filter and climate change. Again, the work was not completed.
Even as Prime Minister Gillard pretended for a long time that the sharp rise in boat people under Labor was caused by not Labor’s weakening of our border laws but by “push factors” overseas:
CHRIS UHLMANN: ...you had a solution that did stop the boats - 288 boats over five years before you came to government; after you came to government - 288 people, I should say. After you came to government, 11,600. You had a solution; you dismantled it. Surely that’s where the problem started.UPDATE
JULIA GILLARD: Well, Chris, that’s a gross oversimplification of all of the things that have happened. For example, you’ve forgotten the civil war in Sri Lanka, which got people on the move. So there are a broad range of circumstances here, global circumstances that cause people to move.
CHRIS UHLMANN: So it was all push factors?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, regional circumstances that cause people to move.
CHRIS UHLMANN: It had nothing to do with you?
JULIA GILLARD: Well, Chris, I don’t think you can pretend there wasn’t unrest in Sri Lanka that caused people to get on the move and caused us ...
CHRIS UHLMANN: But can you pretend that the changes that you made - can you pretend that the changes that you made had no effect? JULIA GILLARD: Well, Chris, let’s be frank about this: there will always be global factors and regional factors that cause people to get on the move. We’ve seen one in our own region in the last few years in relation to Sri Lanka. We are still seeing people from Afghanistan turn up on our shores in boats. We’re seeing increasing numbers from Iran. So this is a problem that moves and changes depending on global circumstances and what’s happening in different parts of the world.
From Ray Hadley’s interview today with Immigration Minister Scott Morrison:
HADLEY: We are coming up to the end of the fourth month. We haven’t had a boat since the 19th of December, correct?
MINISTER MORRISON: That’s right, well that is more than four months since the 19th but obviously this year we are getting towards the end of April ...
HADLEY: How many had arrived at the same stage between mid-December and this period, so the end of April in 2013? MINISTER MORRISON: Oh, over 100 boats and well over 6,000 people.... So this is, we’re well into the post monsoon phase now Ray I believe. I mean people might want to debate the weather but I mean over March and April of last year there was over 2,000 in both of those months.
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A killer gets a fourth chance?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (11:15am)
Once again I am stunned by the faith some judges have in the ability of evil men to repent - and give chances for which other Australians must pay:
For the past 17 years [Reginald Kenneth Arthurell] has been [in] a NSW prison cell but even behind bars he has been at the centre of another murder investigation.At least three people killed in three separate attacks and he still has the right to walk free? And if he’d been made to serve his first manslaughter charge in full, probably two lives would have been saved.
Police named him as the major suspect in the murder of Catherine Mary Page, an 82-year-old woman bashed to death in her Coonamble home at the height of the 1971 floods ...
Ms Page may well have been Arthurell’s first victim…
In May, 1974, he was in Sydney visiting his mother when he bumped into his ex-stepfather Thomas Thornton. They ended up back at Thornton’s home in Guildford, where the stepfather was later found stabbed to death…
In November, 1981, the partly decomposed body of a young sailor, Ross Browning, 19, was found with massive head wounds off the Barkly Highway near Tennant Creek.
As the Northern Territory police hunted Arthurell, who they discovered had been given a lift by Browning, Queensland police announced they wanted to question him over the “Wolf Creek-style” shooting deaths of two men and a woman near Mt Isa in 1978…
In late November, 1981, Arthurell was arrested ... [and] pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Browning and a murder charge was dropped. In May, 1988, he was released from jail, having served six and a half years of a 12-year sentence.
NSW detectives immediately extradited him to Sydney where he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, this time on the grounds of provocation, for killing his stepfather.
In July, 1989, he was jailed for a minimum of four and a half years with a maximum period of 11 years as Justice Peter McInerney remarked on Arthurell’s “remarkable transformation” after he had been baptised in a Darwin jail.
As early as April, 1991, he was released on parole after he was befriended by a naive but loving Christian prison visitor, Venet Raylee Mulhall, 54… One of the conditions of his release was that he live with Mulhall and the couple were briefly engaged. In February, 1995, she was found bashed to death at her home in Coonabarabran. Arthurell killed her because she wouldn’t give him her car.
He was convicted of murder but still not jailed for life. Finding the killing was not in the “worst-case” category, Justice David Hunt jailed him for 24 years with a minimum of 18. Arthurell can apply for parole in May next year.
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How the “reconciliation” industry is working
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (11:07am)
We should be free to discuss this absurd and dangerous retribalisation of Australia:
It is a shame we have moves to legitimise these sentiments in our Constitution:
“You know the ones that were here first? The black fellas, the Kooris, which I am. This is our country mate.”(No comments.)
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Where’s Rudd’s war with Indonesia?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (8:20am)
Remember Kevin Rudd’s utterly reckless warning - to both us and Indonesia - last June?
KEVIN Rudd has claimed that electing Tony Abbott as prime minister could spark conflict with Indonesia that could escalate…In fact we’ve seen not such thing as Abbott fixes what Rudd wrecked with his open borders, rudeness and spying:
Prime Minister Mr Rudd said the opposition’s plan to turn back asylum-seeker boats risked “some sort of conflict with Indonesia"…
“What I am talking about is diplomatic conflict. But I am always wary about where diplomatic conflicts go,” he said, before referring to the 1962-66 Indonesia-Malaysia conflict.
“Konfrontasi with Indonesia evolved over a set of words, and turned into something else.’’
Pressed on the claim, Mr Rudd suggested the opposition’s boats policy could lead to a naval showdown.
INDONESIAN Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa says there is now a “body of evidence” that Australia will honour undertakings not to engage in intelligence activity against his country’s interests.We should never forget that disgraceful scare-mongering. ABC1’s 7.30, June 28:
Dr Natalegawa ... also acknowledged it was “absolutely” the case that the Abbott government’s clampdown on asylum-seekers arriving by boat had heavily reduced the traffic through Indonesia and the risk of deaths at sea…
After opening an international conference on the protection of asylum-seekers at sea, Dr Natalegawa said he wouldn’t ask for confirmation of military chief General Moeldoko’s claim that the Australians had undertaken to stop sending asylum-seekers back by life boats. “No, I think sometimes there is constructive ambiguity (that) can be very, very useful as well,” he said with a smile. Indonesia was very keen to work closely with the Abbott government on the shared issue of irregular immigration movements by sea.
CHRIS Uhlmann: There is no doubt what [Rudd] was suggesting today. A vote for Tony Abbott risks war with Indonesia.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
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No more pretending to “stop” global warming
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (8:08am)
Clive Palmer is absolutely right to want to block this waste - but I wish he’d just use the savings to retire debt:
CLIVE Palmer has warned he will scupper the government’s direct action climate change plan in the Senate, saying the money would be better spent on pensioners…
The Coalition said it would cost $3.2 billion by 2018. Mr Palmer, the leader of the Palmer United Party, said the scheme was a waste of money. “Direct action is a token gesture to addressing carbon issues — it is not a game-changer one bit,” he said yesterday.
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Help make a film about a killer the media didn’t really want to mention
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (7:56am)
I’ve promoted this movie project before:
You will probably know the filmmakers from their FrackNation, Not Evil Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business.
At record-breaking speed, public donations to fund a movie about the nation’s worst abortionist, Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell, have reached over $1 million, making the project one of the biggest “crowd sourced” movies in history.Donate here. If the film does not go ahead, the money is returned.
In just three weeks, the producers of “Gosnell” have reached $1,092,000 of the $2.1 million they are seeking to make a TV movie about the man they’ve dubbed “the most prolific serial killer in American history.”
With the help of some Hollywood stars, the producers expect to raise the money by May 12, the deadline set by the online crowdsourcing fundraiser indiegogo.com.Filmmaker Phelim McAleer ... decided to seek donations from the public because Hollywood and the mainstream media have shown little interest in the story of Gosnell, convicted last year of murder. In court, he faced charges of handling several late-term abortions and mutilating babies born alive.
You will probably know the filmmakers from their FrackNation, Not Evil Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business.
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Sydney could build a cheap second airport at, er, Mascot
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (7:33am)
Terry McCrann says Sydney’s second airport will just waste more billions:
There are two ways to solve Sydney’s airport capacity challenge and neither of them is building a NSW version of Victoria’s Avalon mini-port.Mind you, says McCrann, for real waste check out the latest numbers on Labor’s NBN:
The first is to make the existing airport at Mascot work properly. Last year Sydney processed 36 million passengers. Compare that with the similarly sized Singapore, which processed around 50 per cent more passengers, at 53 million, on the way comfortably to 60 million-plus.
Apart from the general working practice inefficiencies endemic across the Australian economy, achieving Singapore-level usage requires two things.
The first is to end the curfew. The second is to change the limitations on plane movements per hour. Do that, and spend some more dollars on infrastructure at Mascot, and we have built our second Sydney airport.
If such a step into the reality of the 21st century is considered still a step too far, the alternative is to do what Hong Kong did. Build a second airport, a real second airport, and close Mascot… If we did commit to a real airport at Badgerys Creek, much of the funding could come from the redevelopment and sale of the prime land at Mascot. Why, I imagine we could realise at least billions from selling property there to Chinese buyers.
The amount spent so far, an impressive $8.4bn; total number of users, just 166,642.And with increasing evidence that mobile and other competing technologies will kill the income forecasts.
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A rich gift from a lobbyist is not one to forget - or accept
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (7:23am)
Laurie Oakes is forgiving - to a point:
Andrew Clennell:
I think O’Farrell is probably telling the truth when he blames “a massive memory fail” for his unequivocal denials that he received the expensive wine from Nick Di Girolamo, a Liberal fringe-dweller and fundraiser trying to get a billion dollar public-private partnership deal for his water infrastructure company.True, but Di Girolamo did get a board position on the Sydney Water Corporation. Oakes continues:
What Liberals call O’Farrell’s “get-out-of-jail-free card” is the fact that his government rejected the deal Di Girolamo was after.
But ordinary punters, to whom $3000 is a great deal of money, will find it hard to understand how anyone could forget a gift of such value. They might also think it odd that a premier would accept gifts from people seeking government favours in the first place.Spot on.
And they could be forgiven for wondering whether there is much difference between $3000 in a bottle and $3000 in a brown paper bag…
Had the “thank you” note that cost O’Farrell his job been for cash-in-hand, no-one would be complaining that ICAC exceeded its remit in pursuing the matter.
Andrew Clennell:
To give you an idea of how gifts are routinely handled, O’Farrell’s predecessor Kristina Keneally received a bottle of 2001 Grange at her office while disability services Minister in 2007.
She declared the wine, valued at $450, on the pecuniary interest register…
O’Farrell had been in parliament for 16 years at the time the parcel arrived at his doorstep. As if he didn’t know how to handle such a gift…
Alarm bells rang when O’Farrell, having pledged higher standards, initially kept Greg Pearce on after The Daily Telegraph proved he had used taxpayer money to attend a Photios function in Canberra, after the premier had given him a final warning.
Pearce had to pay back $200 for the difference between a public fare and the government fare.
After an inquiry, O’Farrell said: “You can steal $200 or $2 million and the courts will give you different penalties. What I’m saying is this is a minor breach, he’s repaying the funds and I think what he’s gone through over the past two weeks is punishment enough.” What an attitude. It’s all right as long as you don’t rort millions. Food for thought as we reflect on Grangegate.
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Boy lost. Parents blame police
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (6:19am)
A boy lost, and you wonder how he can ever be rescued:
UPDATE
In Perth, a child better off without this “father”:
A BOY, 14, with a rap sheet spanning three states, and who was once jailed for a horrific box-cutter attack on a young father and his pregnant wife, is in trouble again.With someone so young, we should look at cultural factors - especially how they were parented. Here’s the boy’s mother in January:
He had been out on parole for only about a week when he was arrested in the city for karate-kicking a stranger in the head in an unprovoked and alcohol-fuelled attack.
A 34-year-old father who had been out with friends was knocked unconscious for up to 15 seconds when attacked in Bourke St around 1.30am last Thursday…
Police sources say that in recent years the teen has spent more time in detention than at home with his family, and has been to a drug and rehabilitation centre at least three times.
“We’re not bad people. He’s not a bad person. He’s just made bad decisions because he doesn’t understand what he is doing.”There are some clues already.
The 13-year-old hasn’t attended school in two years.
His dad has not worked in a year to look after his son and take him to medical appointments.
Both parents claim their son is a victim of racist police officers and plan to make an official complaint.
A previous complaint in November is already being investigated. It was revealed by the Herald Sun last Wednesday the 13-year-old had been granted bail seven times despite facing more than 60 outstanding charges including arson, armed robbery, robbery and aggravated burglary.
UPDATE
In Perth, a child better off without this “father”:
A POLICE officer plucked a three-year-old girl from a stolen car that was on fire after her father allegedly crashed the vehicle and left her in the front passenger seat with internal bleeding…
Police claim they found her dad hiding nearby a short time later…
The man, 25, ... has been charged with 10 offences including assault for allegedly hitting his niece with a baseball bat and dangerous driving causing harm. Superintendent Byrne said ... [the girl] underwent emergency surgery to repair her bladder, torn on impact in the crash, and was yesterday in a spinal splint at Perth’s children’s hospital.
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Without the unions, what is Labor’s great cause?
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (6:05am)
This does remove a potentially distorting influence - but could also mean removing a brake on the Left:
And then there’s this consideration: if Labor doesn’t believe in unions, what will it believe in? After all, the green thing is covered, isn’t it?
LABOR leader Bill Shorten is to announce today a symbolic break with the trade union movement issuing a warning that his party must reform or it will die.It’s actually Labors policies rather than its internal rules that cost it the last election.
Admitting Labor could no longer be seen as the political wing of “anything” — in a direct reference to the industrial movement — he says it’s time to face up to some “hard truths”.
Starting with the scrapping of compulsory union tickets for ALP members and MPs, ... Mr Shorten will also announce further moves to dilute the influence of unions and factions.
US primary style preselections of candidates, which began in NSW, would be trialled in all currently non-held seats across the country, giving the local community a say in preselections. A new rule would also give branch members a majority say — up to a 70/30 split over the party machine — in preselecting candidates at a state and federal level.
And then there’s this consideration: if Labor doesn’t believe in unions, what will it believe in? After all, the green thing is covered, isn’t it?
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Matt Ridley: to get rich is glorious. And good for the planet
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (5:45am)
Matt Ridley says we’ll be so rich by 2100 that global warming probably won’t hurt - unless we suddenly start breeding like rabbits:
In the past 50 years, world per capita income roughly trebled in real terms, corrected for inflation…
In 2012, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to generate five projections for the economy of the world… The average per capita income of the world in 2100 is projected to be between three and 20 times what it is today in real terms.
The OECD’s “medium” scenario, known as SSP2, ...is a world in which, in the OECD’s words, “trends typical of recent decades continue” with “slowly decreasing fossil fuel dependency”, uneven development of poor countries, delayed achievement of Millennium Development Goals, disappointing investment in education and “only intermediate success in addressing air pollution or improving energy access for the poor”.
And yet this is a world in which by 2100 the global average income per head has increased 13-fold to $100,000 (in 2005 dollars) compared with $7,800 today… The average Indonesian, Brazilian or Chinese will be at least twice as rich as today’s American…
The IPCC has done its own projections to see what sort of greenhouse gas emissions these sorts of world would produce, and vice versa. The one that produces the lowest emissions is the one with the highest income per head in 2100 — a 16-fold increase in income but lower emissions than today: climate change averted. The one that produces the highest emissions is the one with the lowest GDP — a mere trebling of income per head. Economic growth and ecological improvement go together. And it is not mainly because environmental protection produces higher growth, but vice versa. More trade, more innovation and more wealth make possible greater investment in low-carbon energy and smarter adaptation to climate change.
Next time you hear some green, doom-mongering Jeremiah insisting that the only way to avoid Armageddon is to go back to eating home-grown organic lentils cooked over wood fires, ask him why it is that the IPCC assumes the very opposite.
In the IPCC’s nightmare high-emissions scenario, with almost no cuts to emissions by 2100, they reckon there might be north of 4 degrees of warming. However, even this depends on models that assume much higher “climate sensitivity” to carbon dioxide than the consensus of science now thinks is reasonable… And in this storyline, by 2100 the world population has reached 12 billion, almost double what it was in 2000. This is unlikely, according to the United Nations: 10.9 billion is reckoned more probable....
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If $6 is too much then you don’t need to go
Andrew Bolt April 22 2014 (5:38am)
A visit to the doctor has got to be worth $6 - and if it’s not, then don’t go:
A CO-PAYMENT of $6 for bulk-billed visits to GPs will be included in the Abbott government’s first budget with the aim of saving $750 million over the next four years.
The expenditure review committee has decided to go ahead with the co-payment, including a proposal to cap it at 12 visits, meaning a maximum extra cost of $72 a year for patients… The annual Medicare bill has risen in the past 10 years from $8.1 billion to $17.8bn, and the frequency of GP visits has jumped from 4.3 a person in 2003-04 to 5.6 between April 2012 and March last year.
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Larry Pickering - WHY GREENS TASTE TERRIBLE
Labor legislation to excise our borders, with Opposition support, has been languishing in the Senate for months. Now, why would that be?
Aussies are paying interest on a ballooning $8 billion (that’s 8,000 millionaires) debt to support 34,000 illegal arrivals.
The excise legislation would assist to curb the current illegal invaders by denying them free access to our court system. That’s the intent of the proposed border sequestration.
At last count almost $9 million has flowed into Labor law firms’ coffers to overturn ASIO security risk assessments by referring them to the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT).
The RRT is comprised of human rights advocates and ASIO determinations of “security risks” are invariably overturned.
There is no cost to the illegal immigrants who are given instructions how to manipulate the system prior to departing Indonesia.
Corrupt interpreters ensure they follow the procedure after arriving.
The Gillard Government is loathe to publicise that foreign interests are actually arranging for the overturning of ASIO’s “security risk” rulings.
The excise legislation, currently gathering cobwebs in the Senate, would put a stop to this but the Greens are bitterly opposed to it on human rights grounds and Labor seems happy to allow them to have their way.
In the meantime our security agency’s processing has become a pointless exercise.
The burdensome task of determining whether people without any form of identity are security risks or not is completely negated by an ensuing corrupted appeals process.
ASIO has become basically obsolete and, understandably, is handing their processing procedures to Labor lawyers and the human rights dominated, UN sanctioned, Refugee Review Tribunal.
This matter has become so serious even the Gillard Government has, with the Opposition’s support, rushed this remedial legislation through the Lower House.
On the one occasion that Gillard has realised her folly and taken measures to correct it, she runs slap bang into a coven of Green gophers in the Senate who are demanding the measures not be passed..
On the one occasion that Gillard has realised her folly and taken measures to correct it, she runs slap bang into a coven of Green gophers in the Senate who are demanding the measures not be passed.
Oh well, the Green nightmare can cause Abbott sleepless nights soon.
===
- 1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabraland his crew landed in present day Brazil and claimed the land for Portugal.
- 1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km2) in theUnassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma, entirely founding the brand-new Oklahoma City.
- 1911 – Tsinghua University ("The Old Gate" pictured), one of the leading universities in mainland China, was founded, funded by an unexpected surplus in indemnities paid by the Qing Dynasty to the United States as a result of the Boxer Rebellion.
- 1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston won the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race to complete the first solo non-stopcircumnavigation of the world.
- 2004 – Flammable cargo exploded at Yongcheon Station inRyongchon, North Korea, killing 160 people.
- 238 – Year of the Six Emperors: The Roman Senate outlaws emperor Maximinus Thrax for his bloodthirsty proscriptions in Rome and nominates two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, to the throne.
- 1500 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral lands in Brazil.
- 1519 – Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés establishes a settlement at Veracruz, Mexico.
- 1529 – Treaty of Zaragoza divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas.
- 1622 – The Capture of Ormuz by the East India Company ends Portuguese control of Hormuz Island.
- 1809 – The second day of the Battle of Eckmühl: The Austrian army is defeated by the First French Empire army led by Napoleon and driven over the Danube in Regensburg.
- 1836 – Texas Revolution: A day after the Battle of San Jacinto, forces under Texas General Sam Houston identify Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna among the captives of the battle when one of his fellow captives mistakenly gives away his identity.
- 1864 – The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandates that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.
- 1876 – The first game in the history of the National League was played at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. This game is often pointed to as the beginning of the MLB.
- 1889 – At noon, thousands rush to claim land in the Land Rush of 1889. Within hours the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie are formed with populations of at least 10,000.
- 1898 – Spanish–American War: The USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship.
- 1906 – The 1906 Intercalated Games, not now recognized as part of the official Olympic Games, open in Athens.
- 1915 – The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
- 1930 – The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
- 1944 – The 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters stage the first use of helicopters in combat with combat search and rescue operations in the China Burma India Theater.
- 1944 – World War II: Operation Persecution is initiated: Allied forces land in the Hollandia (currently known as Jayapura) area of New Guinea.
- 1945 – World War II: Prisoners at the Jasenovac concentration camp revolt. Five hundred twenty are killed and around eighty escape.
- 1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitleradmits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicide is his only recourse.
- 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: Haifa, a major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces.
- 1951 – Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army begin assaulting positions defended by the Royal Australian Regiment and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry at the Battle of Kapyong.
- 1954 – Red Scare: Witnesses begin testifying and live television coverage of the Army–McCarthy hearings begins.
- 1969 – British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston wins the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race and completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.
- 1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated.
- 1972 – Vietnam War: Increased American bombing in Vietnam prompts anti-war protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
- 1977 – Optical fiber is first used to carry live telephone traffic.
- 1983 – The German magazine Stern claims the "Hitler Diaries" had been found in wreckage in East Germany; the diaries are subsequently revealed to be forgeries.
- 1992 – In a series of explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico, 206 people are killed, nearly 500 injured and 15,000 left homeless.
- 1993 – Eighteen-year-old Stephen Lawrence is murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall, Eltham.
- 1997 – Haouch Khemisti massacre in Algeria where 93 villagers are killed.
- 2000 – In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami.
- 2004 – Two fuel trains collide in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.
- 2005 – Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for Japan's war record.
- 2008 – The United States Air Force retires the remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft in service.
- 2013 – The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrest and charge two men with plotting to disrupt a Toronto area train service in a plot claimed to be backed by Al-Qaeda elements.
- 2014 – More than 60 people are killed and 80 are seriously injured in a train crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province.
- 2016 – The Paris Agreement is signed, an agreement to help fight global warming
- 1412 – Reinhard III, Count of Hanau (1451–1452) (d. 1452)
- 1444 – Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk (d. 1503)
- 1451 – Isabella I of Castile (d. 1504)
- 1518 – Antoine of Navarre (d. 1562)
- 1592 – Wilhelm Schickard, German astronomer and mathematician (d. 1635)
- 1610 – Pope Alexander VIII (d. 1691)
- 1658 – Giuseppe Torelli, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1709)
- 1690 – John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville, English politician, Lord President of the Council (d. 1763)
- 1707 – Henry Fielding, English novelist and playwright (d. 1754)
- 1711 – Paul II Anton, Prince Esterházy, Austrian soldier (d. 1762)
- 1724 – Immanuel Kant, German anthropologist, philosopher, and academic (d. 1804)
- 1732 – John Johnson, English architect and surveyor (d. 1814)
- 1744 – James Sullivan, American lawyer and politician, 7th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1808)
- 1757 – Alessandro Rolla, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1841)
- 1766 – Germaine de Staël, French philosopher and author (d. 1817)
- 1812 – Solomon Caesar Malan, Swiss-English orientalist (d. 1894)
- 1816 – Charles-Denis Bourbaki, French general (d. 1897)
- 1832 – Julius Sterling Morton, American journalist and politician, 3rd United States Secretary of Agriculture (d. 1902)
- 1844 – Lewis Powell, American soldier, attempted assassin of William H. Seward (d. 1865)
- 1852 – William IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (d. 1912)
- 1854 – Henri La Fontaine, Belgian lawyer and author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1943)
- 1860 – Ada Rehan, Irish-American actress (d. 1916)
- 1870 – Vladimir Lenin, German/Swedish-Russian lawyer and founder of the Soviet Union (d. 1924)
- 1872 – Princess Margaret of Prussia (d. 1954)
- 1873 – Ellen Glasgow, American author (d. 1945)
- 1876 – Róbert Bárány, Austrian-Swedish otologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
- 1876 – Georg Lurich, Estonian wrestler and strongman (d. 1920)
- 1879 – Bernhard Gregory, Estonian-German chess player (d. 1939)
- 1884 – Otto Rank, Austrian-American psychologist and academic (d. 1939)
- 1886 – Izidor Cankar, Slovenian historian, author, and diplomat (d. 1958)
- 1889 – Richard Glücks, German SS officer (d. 1945)
- 1891 – Laura Gilpin, American photographer (d. 1979)
- 1891 – Vittorio Jano, Italian engineer (d. 1965)
- 1891 – Harold Jeffreys, English mathematician, geophysicist, and astronomer (d. 1989)
- 1891 – Nicola Sacco, Italian-American anarchist (d. 1927)
- 1892 – Vernon Johns, African-American minister and activist (d. 1965)
- 1899 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born novelist and critic (d. 1977)
- 1900 – Nellie Beer, British politician, Lord Mayor of Manchester from 1966-67 (d. 1988) [1]
- 1904 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and academic (d. 1967)
- 1905 – Robert Choquette, American-Canadian author, poet, and diplomat (d. 1991)
- 1906 – Eddie Albert, American actor (d. 2005)
- 1906 – Eric Fenby, English composer and educator (d. 1997)
- 1906 – Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten (d. 1947)
- 1908 – Ivan Yefremov, Russian paleontologist and author (d. 1972)
- 1909 – Rita Levi-Montalcini, Sephardic Jewish-Italian neurologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012)
- 1909 – Indro Montanelli, Italian journalist and historian (d. 2001)
- 1909 – Spyros Markezinis, Greek politician, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 2000)
- 1910 – Norman Steenrod, American mathematician and academic (d. 1971)
- 1912 – Kathleen Ferrier, English operatic singer (d. 1953)
- 1912 – Kaneto Shindo, Japanese director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2012)
- 1914 – Baldev Raj Chopra, Indian director and producer (d. 2008)
- 1914 – Jan de Hartog, Dutch-American author and playwright (d. 2002)
- 1914 – José Quiñones Gonzales, Peruvian soldier and pilot (d. 1941)
- 1914 – Michael Wittmann, German SS officer (d. 1944)
- 1916 – Hanfried Lenz, German mathematician and academic (d. 2013)
- 1916 – Yehudi Menuhin, American-Swiss violinist and conductor (d. 1999)
- 1917 – Yvette Chauviré, French ballerina (d. 2016)
- 1917 – Sidney Nolan, Australian painter (d. 1992)
- 1918 – William Jay Smith, American poet and academic (d. 2015)
- 1918 – Mickey Vernon, American baseball player and coach (d. 2008)
- 1919 – Donald J. Cram, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2001)
- 1919 – Carl Lindner, Jr., American businessman and philanthropist (d. 2011)
- 1922 – Richard Diebenkorn, American soldier and painter (d. 1993)
- 1922 – Charles Mingus, American bassist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1979)
- 1922 – Wolf V. Vishniac, American microbiologist and academic (d. 1973)
- 1923 – Peter Kane Dufault, American soldier, pilot, and poet (d. 2013)
- 1923 – Bettie Page, American model and actress (d. 2008)
- 1923 – Aaron Spelling, American actor, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2006)
- 1924 – Nam Duck-woo, South Korean politician, 12th Prime Minister of South Korea (d. 2013)
- 1926 – Charlotte Rae, American actress and singer
- 1926 – James Stirling, Scottish architect, designed the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Seeley Historical Library (d. 1992)
- 1927 – Laurel Aitken, Cuban-Jamaican singer (d. 2005)
- 1929 – Michael Atiyah, English-Lebanese mathematician and academic
- 1929 – Robert Wade-Gery, English diplomat, British High Commissioner to India (d. 2015)
- 1930 – Enno Penno, Estonian politician, Prime Minister of Estonia in exile (d. 2016)
- 1931 – John Buchanan, Canadian lawyer and politician, 20th Premier of Nova Scotia
- 1931 – Ronald Hynd, English dancer and choreographer
- 1933 – Anthony Llewellyn, Welsh-American chemist and astronaut (d. 2013)
- 1935 – Christopher Ball, English linguist and academic
- 1935 – Paul Chambers, African-American bassist and composer (d. 1969)
- 1935 – Bhama Srinivasan, Indian-American mathematician and academic
- 1936 – Glen Campbell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 2017)
- 1936 – Pierre Hétu, Canadian pianist and conductor (d. 1998)
- 1937 – Jack Nicholson, American actor and producer
- 1937 – Jack Nitzsche, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and conductor (d. 2000)
- 1938 – Alan Bond, English-Australian businessman (d. 2015)
- 1938 – Gani Fawehinmi, Nigerian lawyer and activist (d. 2009)
- 1938 – Issey Miyake, Japanese fashion designer
- 1938 – Adam Raphael, English journalist and author
- 1939 – Mel Carter. American singer and actor
- 1939 – John Foley, English general and politician, Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey
- 1939 – Ray Guy, Canadian journalist and author (d. 2013)
- 1939 – Jason Miller, American actor and playwright (d. 2001)
- 1939 – Theodor Waigel, German lawyer and politician, German Federal Minister of Finance
- 1941 – Greville Howard, Baron Howard of Rising, English politician
- 1942 – Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher and academic
- 1942 – Mary Prior, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Bristol
- 1943 – Keith Crisco, American businessman and politician (d. 2014)
- 1943 – Janet Evanovich, American author
- 1943 – Louise Glück, American poet
- 1943 – John Maples, Baron Maples, English lawyer and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence (d. 2012)
- 1943 – Scott W. Williams, American mathematician and professor
- 1944 – Steve Fossett, American businessman, pilot, and sailor (d. 2007)
- 1944 – Doug Jarrett, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2014)
- 1944 – Joshua Rifkin, American conductor and musicologist
- 1945 – Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Indian civil servant and politician, 22nd Governor of West Bengal
- 1945 – Demetrio Stratos, Egyptian-Italian singer-songwriter (d. 1979)
- 1946 – Steven L. Bennett, American captain and pilot, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1972)
- 1946 – Paul Davies, English physicist and author
- 1946 – Louise Harel, Canadian lawyer and politician
- 1946 – Archy Kirkwood, Baron Kirkwood of Kirkhope, Scottish lawyer and politician
- 1946 – Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford, English economist and academic
- 1946 – John Waters, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1948 – John Pritchard, English bishop
- 1950 – Peter Frampton, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
- 1950 – Jancis Robinson, English journalist and critic
- 1951 – Paul Carrack, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1951 – Aivars Kalējs, Latvian organist, composer, and pianist
- 1951 – Ana María Shua, Argentinian author and poet
- 1952 – François Berléand, French actor
- 1952 – Dave Loveridge, New Zealand rugby player
- 1952 – Phil Smith, American basketball player (d. 2002)
- 1953 – Valeri Bondarenko, Estonian footballer and coach
- 1953 – Richard Broadbent, English businessman
- 1955 – David Collier, English businessman
- 1957 – Donald Tusk, Polish journalist and politician, 14th Prime Minister of Poland
- 1959 – Keith Boanas, English footballer and manager
- 1959 – Terry Francona, American baseball player, coach, and manager
- 1959 – Catherine Mary Stewart, Canadian actress
- 1959 – Ryan Stiles, American-Canadian actor and producer
- 1960 – Lloyd Honeyghan, Jamaican-English boxer
- 1960 – Mart Laar, Estonian historian and politician, 9th Prime Minister of Estonia
- 1960 – Randall L. Stephenson, American businessman
- 1961 – Alo Mattiisen, Estonian composer (d. 1996)
- 1961 – Ann McKechin, Scottish lawyer and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland
- 1961 – Dewey Nicks, American photographer and director
- 1962 – Danièle Sauvageau, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1963 – Rosalind Gill, English sociologist and academic
- 1963 – Magnús Ver Magnússon, Icelandic weightlifter and strongman
- 1964 – Paul Baxter, English footballer
- 1965 – Miguel Leal, Portuguese footballer and manager
- 1965 – Peter Zezel, Canadian ice hockey and soccer player (d. 2009)
- 1966 – Mickey Morandini, American baseball player and manager
- 1966 – Jeffrey Dean Morgan, American actor
- 1967 – David J. C. MacKay, English physicist, engineer, and academic
- 1967 – Sherri Shepherd, American actress and talk show panelist
- 1967 – Harvey Williams, American football player
- 1968 – Jo Angel, Australian cricketer
- 1968 – Bimbo Coles, American basketball player and coach
- 1968 – Zarley Zalapski, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1969 – Dion Dublin, English footballer and sportscaster
- 1970 – Erkki Bahovski, Estonian journalist
- 1971 – Eric Mabius, American actor
- 1971 – Spencer Prior, English footballer
- 1972 – Sabine Appelmans, Belgian tennis player
- 1972 – Owen Finegan, Australian rugby player and coach
- 1972 – Milka Duno, Venezuelan race car driver and engineer
- 1972 – Sergei Hohlov-Simson, Estonian footballer and manager
- 1972 – Willie Robertson, American hunter and businessman
- 1973 – Adem Poric, English-Australian footballer
- 1973 – Ofer Talker, Israeli footballer and manager
- 1974 – Shavo Odadjian, Armenian-American bass player, songwriter, and producer
- 1975 – Greg Moore, Canadian race car driver (d. 1999)
- 1975 – Carlos Sastre, Spanish cyclist
- 1975 – Anders Nyström, Swedish guitarist and songwriter
- 1976 – Dan Cloutier, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1976 – Paul Henderson, Australian footballer
- 1976 – Michał Żewłakow, Polish footballer
- 1977 – Mark van Bommel, Dutch footballer
- 1978 – Paul Malakwen Kosgei, Kenyan runner and coach
- 1978 – David Masters, English cricketer
- 1978 – Matt Orford, Australian rugby league player
- 1978 – Jason Stollsteimer, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1978 – Esteban Tuero, Argentinian race car driver
- 1979 – Zoltán Gera, Hungarian footballer
- 1979 – Daniel Johns, Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1980 – Igor Budan, Croatian footballer
- 1980 – Clarke Dermody, New Zealand rugby player
- 1980 – Nicolas Douchez, French footballer
- 1980 – Courtney Friel, American journalist
- 1980 – Carlos Hernández, Venezuelan baseball player
- 1980 – Quincy Timberlake, Kenyan-Australian activist, engineer, and politician
- 1981 – Madis Kallas, Estonian decathlete and activist
- 1981 – Rafael Sperafico, Brazilian race car driver (d. 2007)
- 1981 – Jonathan Trott, South African-English cricketer
- 1982 – Kaká, Brazilian footballer
- 1982 – Cassidy Freeman, American actress and musician
- 1982 – Joel Monaghan, Australian rugby league player
- 1982 – David Purcey, American baseball player
- 1982 – Aidas Reklys, Lithuanian figure skater
- 1982 – Aleksander Saharov, Estonian footballer
- 1982 – Noriko Shitaya, Japanese voice actress
- 1983 – Remi Ayodele, American football player
- 1983 – Sam W. Heads, English-American entomologist and palaeontologist
- 1983 – Jos Hooiveld, Dutch footballer
- 1983 – Matt Jones, American football player
- 1983 – Vangelis Mantzios, Greek footballer
- 1984 – Amelle Berrabah, English singer-songwriter
- 1985 – Kristin Fairlie, Canadian actress
- 1986 – Amber Heard, American actress and producer
- 1986 – Marshawn Lynch, American football player
- 1986 – Dušan Šakota, Serbian-Greek basketball player
- 1986 – Sandy, Egyptian Singer
- 1987 – David Luiz, Brazilian footballer
- 1987 – David Mateos, Spanish footballer
- 1988 – Dee Gordon, American baseball player
- 1989 – DeJuan Blair, American basketball player
- 1989 – Jasper Cillessen, Dutch footballer
- 1989 – Aron Gunnarsson, Icelandic footballer
- 1990 – Óscar González, Mexican boxer (d. 2014)
- 1990 – Machine Gun Kelly, American rapper and actor
- 1991 – Jordi Murphy, Irish international rugby player
- 1991 – Braydon Smith, Australian boxer (d. 2015)
- 1992 – Kenny Stills, American football player
- 1992 – Joonas Vaino, Estonian basketball player
- 1992 – Dyro, Dutch DJ and EDM producer
- 1993 – Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, Australian footballer
- 1993 – Ngani Laumape, New Zealand rugby player
- 296 – Pope Caius
- 536 – Pope Agapetus I
- 591 – Peter III of Raqqa
- 613 – Saint Theodore of Sykeon
- 846 – Wuzong, Chinese emperor (b. 814)
- 1208 – Philip of Poitou, Prince-Bishop of Durham
- 1322 – Francis of Fabriano, Italian writer (b. 1251)
- 1355 – Eleanor of Woodstock, countess regent of Guelders, eldest daughter of King Edward II of England (b. 1318)
- 1585 – Henry of Saxe-Lauenburg, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen, Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück and Paderborn (b. 1550)
- 1616 – Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1547)
- 1672 – Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish linguist and poet (b. 1598)
- 1699 – Hans Erasmus Aßmann, German poet (b. 1646)
- 1758 – Antoine de Jussieu, French botanist and physician (b. 1686)
- 1778 – James Hargreaves, British inventor (b. 1720)
- 1806 – Pierre-Charles Villeneuve, French admiral (b. 1763)
- 1821 – Gregory V of Constantinople, Greek patriarch and saint (b. 1746)
- 1833 – Richard Trevithick, English engineer and explorer (b. 1771)
- 1850 – Friedrich Robert Faehlmann, Estonian philologist and physician (b. 1798)
- 1854 – Nicolás Bravo, Mexican general and politician, 11th President of Mexico (b. 1786)
- 1877 – James P. Kirkwood, Scottish-American engineer (b. 1807)
- 1892 – Édouard Lalo, French violinist and composer (b. 1823)
- 1893 – Chaim Aronson, Lithuanian businessman and author (b. 1825)
- 1894 – Kostas Krystallis, Greek author and poet (b. 1868)
- 1896 – Thomas Meik, English engineer, founded Halcrow Group (b. 1812)
- 1908 – Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Scottish-English merchant and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1836)
- 1925 – André Caplet, French composer and conductor (b. 1878)
- 1929 – Henry Lerolle, French painter and art collector (b. 1848)
- 1932 – Ferenc Oslay, Hungarian-Slovene historian and author (b. 1883)
- 1933 – Henry Royce, English engineer and businessman, co-founded Rolls-Royce Limited (b. 1863)
- 1944 – Nikolaos Roussen, Greek captain (b. 1913)
- 1945 – Wilhelm Cauer, German mathematician and academic (b. 1900)
- 1945 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter and sculptor (b. 1867)
- 1946 – Lionel Atwill, English-American actor (b. 1885)
- 1946 – Harlan F. Stone, American lawyer and jurist, 12th Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1872)
- 1949 – Charles Middleton, American actor (b. 1874)
- 1950 – Charles Hamilton Houston, American lawyer and academic (b. 1895)
- 1951 – Horace Donisthorpe, English myrmecologist and coleopterist (b. 1870)
- 1956 – Walt Faulkner, American racing driver (b. 1918)
- 1968 – Stephen H. Sholes, American record producer (b. 1911)
- 1978 – Will Geer, American actor (b. 1902)
- 1980 – Jane Froman, American actress and singer (b. 1907)
- 1980 – Fritz Strassmann, German chemist and physicist (b. 1902)
- 1983 – Earl Hines, American pianist and bandleader (b. 1903)
- 1984 – Ansel Adams, American photographer and environmentalist (b. 1902)
- 1985 – Paul Hugh Emmett, American chemist and academic (b. 1900)
- 1985 – Jacques Ferron, Canadian physician and author (b. 1921)
- 1986 – Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian and author (b. 1907)
- 1987 – Erika Nõva, Estonian architect (b. 1905)
- 1988 – Grigori Kuzmin, Russian-Estonian astronomer and academic (b. 1917)
- 1988 – Irene Rich, American actress (b. 1891)
- 1989 – Emilio G. Segrè, Italian-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905)
- 1990 – Albert Salmi, American actor (b. 1928)
- 1994 – Richard Nixon, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 37th President of the United States (b. 1913)
- 1995 – Jane Kenyon, American poet and author (b. 1947)
- 1996 – Erma Bombeck, American journalist and author (b. 1927)
- 1996 – Jug McSpaden, American golfer and architect (b. 1908)
- 1998 – Kitch Christie, South African rugby player and coach (b. 1940)
- 1999 – Chan Canasta, Polish-English magician (b. 1920)
- 1999 – Munir Ahmad Khan, Pakistani-Austrian physicist and engineer (b. 1926)
- 2002 – Linda Lovelace, American porn actress and activist (b. 1949)
- 2003 – Felice Bryant, American songwriter (b. 1925)
- 2003 – James H. Critchfield, American CIA officer (b. 1917)
- 2003 – Martha Griffiths, American lawyer, judge, and politician, 58th Lieutenant Governor of Michigan (b. 1912)
- 2003 – Mike Larrabee, American runner (b. 1933)
- 2004 – Jason Dunham, American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1981)
- 2004 – Pat Tillman, American football player and soldier (b. 1976)
- 2005 – Erika Fuchs, German translator (b. 1906)
- 2005 – Philip Morrison, American physicist and academic (b. 1915)
- 2005 – Eduardo Paolozzi, Scottish sculptor and artist (b. 1924)
- 2006 – Henriette Avram, American computer scientist and academic (b. 1919)
- 2006 – D'Iberville Fortier, Canadian diplomat (b. 1926)
- 2006 – Alida Valli, Italian actress (b. 1921)
- 2007 – Juanita Millender-McDonald, American educator and politician (b. 1938)
- 2008 – Cameron Argetsinger, American race car driver and lawyer (b. 1921)
- 2008 – Ed Chynoweth, Canadian businessman (b. 1941)
- 2009 – Jack Cardiff, British cinematographer, director and photographer (b. 1914)
- 2010 – Richard Barrett, American lawyer and activist (b. 1943)
- 2011 – Hazel Dickens, American singer-songwriter, bassist and guitarist (b. 1935)
- 2012 – John Amabile, American football player and coach (b. 1939)
- 2012 – Bill Granger, American author (b. 1941)
- 2012 – Buzz Potamkin, American director and producer (b. 1945)
- 2012 – George Rathmann, American chemist, biologist, and businessman (b. 1927)
- 2013 – Dave Gold, American businessman, founded 99 Cents Only Stores (b. 1932)
- 2013 – George Stanley Gordon, American businessman (b. 1926)
- 2013 – Richie Havens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1941)
- 2013 – Lalgudi Jayaraman, Indian violinist and composer (b. 1930)
- 2013 – Mike Smith, English footballer (b. 1935)
- 2013 – Robert Suderburg, American pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1936)
- 2013 – J. S. Verma, Indian judge, 27th Chief Justice of India (b. 1933)
- 2014 – Allen Jacobs, American football player and coach (b. 1941)
- 2014 – Jovan Krkobabić, Serbian politician, Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia (b. 1930)
- 2014 – Mohammad Naseem, Pakistani-English activist (b. 1924)
- 2014 – Werner Potzernheim, German cyclist (b. 1927)
- 2014 – Oswaldo Vigas, Venezuelan painter (b. 1926)
- 2015 – Dick Balharry, Scottish environmentalist and photographer (b. 1937)
- 2015 – Gennadi Vengerov, Belarusian-Russian actor (b. 1959)
- 2017 – Erin Moran, American actress (b. 1960)
- 2017 – Donna Leanne Williams, Australian writer, artist, activist (b. 1963)[2]
- Christian feast day:
- Discovery Day (Brazil)
- Earth Day (International observance) and its related observance:
- Holocaust Remembrance Day (Serbia)
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”” - John 10:28-30
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Gershom
[Gûr'shŏm] - a stranger there.
1. The first-born son of Moses and Zipporah. He was born in Midian (Exod. 2:22; 18:3; 1 Chron. 23:15-16).
2. The eldest son of Levi, and referred to as Gershon (Gen. 46:11;Josh. 21:6).
3. One of the family of Phinehas, and one of the "heads of houses" who returned with Ezra from Babylon (Ezra 8:2).
4. Father of Jonathan, the Levite who became priest to the Danites who settled at Laish (Judg. 18:30). The Danite tribe was guilty of the evil of setting up a graven image.
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
The marrow of Job's comfort lies in that little word "My"--"My Redeemer," and in the fact that the Redeemer lives. Oh! to get hold of a living Christ. We must get a property in him before we can enjoy him. What is gold in the mine to me? Men are beggars in Peru, and beg their bread in California. It is gold in my purse which will satisfy my necessities, by purchasing the bread I need. So a Redeemer who does not redeem me, an avenger who will never stand up for my blood, of what avail were such? Rest not content until by faith you can say "Yes, I cast myself upon my living Lord; and he is mine." It may be you hold him with a feeble hand; you half think it presumption to say, "He lives as my Redeemer;" yet, remember if you have but faith as a grain of mustard seed, that little faith entitles you to say it. But there is also another word here, expressive of Job's strong confidence, "I know." To say, "I hope so, I trust so" is comfortable; and there are thousands in the fold of Jesus who hardly ever get much further. But to reach the essence of consolation you must say, "I know." Ifs, buts, and perhapses, are sure murderers of peace and comfort. Doubts are dreary things in times of sorrow. Like wasps they sting the soul! If I have any suspicion that Christ is not mine, then there is vinegar mingled with the gall of death; but if I know that Jesus lives for me, then darkness is not dark: even the night is light about me. Surely if Job, in those ages before the coming and advent of Christ, could say, "I know," we should not speak less positively. God forbid that our positiveness should be presumption. Let us see that our evidences are right, lest we build upon an ungrounded hope; and then let us not be satisfied with the mere foundation, for it is from the upper rooms that we get the widest prospect. A living Redeemer, truly mine, is joy unspeakable.
Evening
He who was once despised and rejected of men, now occupies the honourable position of a beloved and honoured Son. The right hand of God is the place of majesty and favour. Our Lord Jesus is his people's representative. When he died for them, they had rest; he rose again for them, they had liberty; when he sat down at his Father's right hand, they had favour, and honour, and dignity. The raising and elevation of Christ is the elevation, the acceptance, and enshrinement, the glorifying of all his people, for he is their head and representative. This sitting at the right hand of God, then, is to be viewed as the acceptance of the person of the Surety, the reception of the Representative, and therefore, the acceptance of our souls. O saint, see in this thy sure freedom from condemnation. "Who is he that condemneth?" Who shall condemn the men who are in Jesus at the right hand of God?
The right hand is the place of power. Christ at the right hand of God hath all power in heaven and in earth. Who shall fight against the people who have such power vested in their Captain? O my soul, what can destroy thee if Omnipotence be thy helper? If the aegis of the Almighty cover thee, what sword can smite thee? Rest thou secure. If Jesus is thine all-prevailing King, and hath trodden thine enemies beneath his feet; if sin, death, and hell are all vanquished by him, and thou art represented in him, by no possibility canst thou be destroyed.
"Jesu's tremendous name
Puts all our foes to flight:
Jesus, the meek, the angry Lamb,
A Lion is in fight.
"By all hell's host withstood;
We all hell's host o'erthrow;
And conquering them, through Jesu's blood
We still to conquer go."
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Today's reading: 2 Samuel 12-13, Luke 16 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: 2 Samuel 12-13
Nathan Rebukes David
1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity...."
Today's New Testament reading: Luke 16
The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
1 Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
3 "The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg-- 4 I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
5 "So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
6 "'Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied.
"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty....'
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Today's Lent reading: John 19-20 (NIV)
View today's Lent reading on Bible GatewayJesus Sentenced to Be Crucified
1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe 3 and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they slapped him in the face.
4 Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him." 5 When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, "Here is the man!"
6 As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, "Crucify! Crucify!"
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