Roseanne Barr has had her top rating tv show cancelled after tweeting comedy. Snowflakes are hyperventilating that a member of the swamp has been called a monkey. Since when do snowflakes hyperventilate, you ask? Since Soros received a broadside tweet too, regarding his survival of the holocaust at the expense of others? It was a popular show, not owned by Soros, but Soros has a reach that extends beyond the law and includes the swamp. Had Roseanne insulted Trump similarly she might have expected to host the White House correspondents dinner in 2019 (via TYGRRRR Express).
China is facing trade hurdles with the US after failing to guarantee property rights. Barnaby Joyce has done much for Australia, with the 100 dams project doing more for Australia's future than any other infrastructure project. But Joyce was offside of Malcolm Turnbull who has no achievement in office. Fans of the PM are overstating any shortcoming Joyce has. Joyce got paid for an interview, with money quarantined for his son. People with no right to be, are upset. What Joyce has been paid is less than 1% of Malcolm Turnbull's earnings from being a parasite. How can Turnbull show his face in public? Turnbull should resign from politics now.
Here is a video I made Say This City Has Ten Million Souls
Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 -- 29 September 1973, pronounced /ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/) who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
=== from 2017 ===
Some things should not happen, but they do. The Irish rebellion of 1798 had begun many years earlier. British rule was secular, in that they disenfranchised Catholics and non Anglican Protestants equally. A result being many ambitious young served the empire and made names for themselves abroad. One French revolutionary was Wolf Tone, who attempted to land in Ireland with a force of fourteen thousand veterans in 1796, but could not land because of a freak storm. In 1798, Tone landed three thousand men, and joined wth locals, but was overwhelmed. Sentenced to be hanged, after a firing squad was declined, Tone cut his own throat. Tone had provided the model of left wing newspapers everywhere who would rather not report in a balanced way. Atrocities in Ireland were committed, and some recorded. It was not idealism, but power. The people wanted freedom, but were only given a choice of servitude.
North Korea is embarrassing China who may soon be forced into action, to pre empt the US acting. Australia is to increase her presence in Afghanistan. This follows Turnbull not being more popular after the latest tax and spend budget. But to be fair, the budget is not the problem.
In 363, the Roman emperor Julian defeated the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but was unable to take the city. Julian died soon after, of wounds. The Sassanid's were a pre Islamic Iranian empire. 1108, Battle of Uclés: Almoravid troops under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf defeated a Castile and León alliance under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez. 1167, Battle of Monte Porzio – A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III was defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel. Ten thousand poorly armed Romans faced against 1500 well armed troops of the Empire. Rome lost badly, called by some a second Cannae. 1176, Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeated Emperor Frederick I. Nine years after the clash with Rome, the empire was weakened. An even fight saw the empire lose. 1414, Council of Constance was held which would last until 1418. It's main aim was to work out who was the real Pope and to execute a good man, Hus. It was successful. 1453, Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih captured Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. The first use of cannon.
In 1660, English Restoration: Charles II was restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives. 1727, Peter II became Czar of Russia. 1733, the right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves was upheld at Quebec City. 1780, American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continued attacking after the Continentals laid down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained. 1798, United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen were massacred by the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
1852, Jenny Lind left New York after her two-year American tour. She was called the "Swedish Nightingale" and was very popular around the world. 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 ("the Compromise") was born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1868, the assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade. 1886, the pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal. 1903, in the May coup d'état, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, were assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organisation. Another step had been made towards WWI. 1913, Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot as a young girl danced herself to death (in story) on stage. 1919, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, based on observations of a solar eclipse.
In 1931, Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, was executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. Michele was an anarchist. 1932, World War I veterans began to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945. FDR was a shallow man, and he claimed to be shocked that General MacArthur was prepared to use tans to clear the mob. MacArthur was transferred to the Philippines and denied aid at the start of WW2, allowing the Philippines to fall. 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra record Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the best-selling single in history. 1953, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. In 1964, the Arab League met in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO was created as a terrorist organisation and popularised aircraft hostage taking as well as assassination and indiscriminate bombing. 1993, the Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant was held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens.
North Korea is embarrassing China who may soon be forced into action, to pre empt the US acting. Australia is to increase her presence in Afghanistan. This follows Turnbull not being more popular after the latest tax and spend budget. But to be fair, the budget is not the problem.
In 363, the Roman emperor Julian defeated the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but was unable to take the city. Julian died soon after, of wounds. The Sassanid's were a pre Islamic Iranian empire. 1108, Battle of Uclés: Almoravid troops under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf defeated a Castile and León alliance under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez. 1167, Battle of Monte Porzio – A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III was defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel. Ten thousand poorly armed Romans faced against 1500 well armed troops of the Empire. Rome lost badly, called by some a second Cannae. 1176, Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeated Emperor Frederick I. Nine years after the clash with Rome, the empire was weakened. An even fight saw the empire lose. 1414, Council of Constance was held which would last until 1418. It's main aim was to work out who was the real Pope and to execute a good man, Hus. It was successful. 1453, Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih captured Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. The first use of cannon.
In 1660, English Restoration: Charles II was restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives. 1727, Peter II became Czar of Russia. 1733, the right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves was upheld at Quebec City. 1780, American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continued attacking after the Continentals laid down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained. 1798, United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen were massacred by the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
1852, Jenny Lind left New York after her two-year American tour. She was called the "Swedish Nightingale" and was very popular around the world. 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 ("the Compromise") was born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1868, the assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade. 1886, the pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal. 1903, in the May coup d'état, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, were assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organisation. Another step had been made towards WWI. 1913, Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot as a young girl danced herself to death (in story) on stage. 1919, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, based on observations of a solar eclipse.
In 1931, Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, was executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. Michele was an anarchist. 1932, World War I veterans began to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945. FDR was a shallow man, and he claimed to be shocked that General MacArthur was prepared to use tans to clear the mob. MacArthur was transferred to the Philippines and denied aid at the start of WW2, allowing the Philippines to fall. 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra record Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the best-selling single in history. 1953, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. In 1964, the Arab League met in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO was created as a terrorist organisation and popularised aircraft hostage taking as well as assassination and indiscriminate bombing. 1993, the Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant was held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens.
=== from 2016 ===
I have moved to a good home. I leave behind the ice house. Dan Andrews would rather I lived with an ice addict, and that you should too.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
Today is the anniversary of the Arab League (1964) creating the terrorist group Palestinian Liberation Organisation which went on to hijack planes, hijack ships, attack the Olympic Games and kill hostages, attack Israel, and create suicide bombers. Going back fifteen years or so, Pakistan and Israel came into being at about the same time. Pakistan has more people and gets more aid, and has more land. Pakistan's population density is 234 per square km, compared to Israel's 387 per square km. But the UN wants Israeli land for terrorists. The population of Pakistan nears 200 million. Israel is a little over 8 million. Israel's population includes Islamic peoples who prosper in Israel's democratic society. Some become members of the Israeli legislative body. In Pakistan, people are killed for not being Islam, or being the wrong type of Islam. Both are rumoured to have nuclear weapons, but only Pakistan has tried to arm North Korea and Iran with nuclear weapons. But in administrative terms it is interesting to see how the populations have fared. GDP per capita for Pakistan is about $1.3k pa, while in Israel is about $38k. The standard of living is much better for all people in Israel.
In religious terms, Israel is secular. Which is why all peoples can prosper there. Jewish custom is respected. Pakistan's state religion is Islam. Some minor Sharia courts routinely put people to death for reasons related to Islam. There is no other Jewish nation to compare Israel, but there are many Islamic nations to compare Pakistan, and Pakistan does ok compared to other Islamic nations, but abysmally despite natural resources and population. Israel compares well with any nation in the world. She is smart, innovative and a good citizen. There never was an Islamic state called Palestine. Rome once called the ancient Jewish land Palestine.
In religious terms, Israel is secular. Which is why all peoples can prosper there. Jewish custom is respected. Pakistan's state religion is Islam. Some minor Sharia courts routinely put people to death for reasons related to Islam. There is no other Jewish nation to compare Israel, but there are many Islamic nations to compare Pakistan, and Pakistan does ok compared to other Islamic nations, but abysmally despite natural resources and population. Israel compares well with any nation in the world. She is smart, innovative and a good citizen. There never was an Islamic state called Palestine. Rome once called the ancient Jewish land Palestine.
From 2014
None in 2014 because of Government and public service corruption related to the petitions
Historical perspective on this day
In 363, the Roman emperor Julian defeated the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but was unable to take the city. 1108, Battle of Uclés: Almoravid troops under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf defeated a Castile and León alliance under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez. 1167, Battle of Monte Porzio – A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III was defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel 1176, Battle of Legnano: The Lombard Leaguedefeated Emperor Frederick I. 1328, Philip VI was crowned King of France. 1414, Council of Constance. 1453, Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih captured Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.
In 1660, English Restoration: Charles II was restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives. 1727, Peter IIbecame Czar of Russia. 1733, the right of Canadians to keep Indianslaves was upheld at Quebec City. 1780, American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continued attacking after the Continentals laid down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained. 1790, Rhode Island became the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and was admitted as the 13th U.S. state. 1798, United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen were massacredby the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
In 1807,Mustafa IV became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam. 1848, Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state. 1852, Jenny Lind left New York after her two-year American tour. 1861, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce was founded, in Hong Kong. 1864, EmperorMaximilian I of Mexico arrived in Mexico for the first time. 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 ("the Compromise") was born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1868, the assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade. 1886, the pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.
In 1900, N'Djamena was founded as Fort-Lamy by the French commander Émile Gentil. 1903, in the May coup d'état, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, were assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand(Crna Ruka) organisation. 1913, Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot. 1914, the Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives. 1918, Armenia defeated the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarabad. 1919, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin. Also 1919, the Republic of Prekmurje was founded.
In 1931, Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, was executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. 1932, World War I veterans began to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945. 1935, first flight of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aeroplane. 1939, the Albanian fascistleader Tefik Mborja was appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations. 1940, the first flight of the Vought F4U Corsair. 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra record Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the best-selling single in history. 1945, first combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominatorheavy bomber. 1948, creation of the United Nations peacekeeping force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation. 1950, the St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 1953, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. 1954, first of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
In 1964, the Arab League met in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 1969, General strike in Córdoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest. 1973, Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California. 1982, Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral. Also 1982, Falklands War: British forces defeated the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green. 1985, Heysel Stadium disaster: Thirty-nine association football fans died and hundreds were injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses. Also 1985, Amputee Steve Fonyocompleted cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months. 1988, the U.S. President Ronald Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrived in Moscow for a superpower summit with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 1989, signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States, allowing the manufacture of parts of the F-16jet fighter plane in Egypt.
In 1990, the Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. 1993, the Miss Sarajevobeauty pageant was held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens. 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo took office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule. Also 1999, Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station. Also 1999, Charlotte Perrellirepresenting Sweden won Eurovision Song Contest 1999 in Jerusalem with the song Take Me to Your Heaven. 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments. 2004, the National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. 2008, a doublet earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, struck Icelandnear the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people. 2012, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people. 2014, Ignatius Aphrem II was enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
In 1660, English Restoration: Charles II was restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives. 1727, Peter IIbecame Czar of Russia. 1733, the right of Canadians to keep Indianslaves was upheld at Quebec City. 1780, American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continued attacking after the Continentals laid down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained. 1790, Rhode Island became the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and was admitted as the 13th U.S. state. 1798, United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen were massacredby the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
In 1807,Mustafa IV became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam. 1848, Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state. 1852, Jenny Lind left New York after her two-year American tour. 1861, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce was founded, in Hong Kong. 1864, EmperorMaximilian I of Mexico arrived in Mexico for the first time. 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 ("the Compromise") was born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 1868, the assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade. 1886, the pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.
In 1900, N'Djamena was founded as Fort-Lamy by the French commander Émile Gentil. 1903, in the May coup d'état, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, were assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand(Crna Ruka) organisation. 1913, Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot. 1914, the Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives. 1918, Armenia defeated the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarabad. 1919, Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin. Also 1919, the Republic of Prekmurje was founded.
In 1931, Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, was executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini. 1932, World War I veterans began to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945. 1935, first flight of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aeroplane. 1939, the Albanian fascistleader Tefik Mborja was appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations. 1940, the first flight of the Vought F4U Corsair. 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra record Irving Berlin's White Christmas, the best-selling single in history. 1945, first combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominatorheavy bomber. 1948, creation of the United Nations peacekeeping force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation. 1950, the St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 1953, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. 1954, first of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
In 1964, the Arab League met in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 1969, General strike in Córdoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest. 1973, Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California. 1982, Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral. Also 1982, Falklands War: British forces defeated the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green. 1985, Heysel Stadium disaster: Thirty-nine association football fans died and hundreds were injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses. Also 1985, Amputee Steve Fonyocompleted cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months. 1988, the U.S. President Ronald Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrived in Moscow for a superpower summit with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 1989, signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States, allowing the manufacture of parts of the F-16jet fighter plane in Egypt.
In 1990, the Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. 1993, the Miss Sarajevobeauty pageant was held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens. 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo took office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule. Also 1999, Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station. Also 1999, Charlotte Perrellirepresenting Sweden won Eurovision Song Contest 1999 in Jerusalem with the song Take Me to Your Heaven. 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments. 2004, the National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. 2008, a doublet earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, struck Icelandnear the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people. 2012, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people. 2014, Ignatius Aphrem II was enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
=== 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 Phi Pham, Yash Amarasekara and Phoutsavan Inthihuksa. Born on the same day, across the years. In 1953, Hillary and Norgay became the first known people to reach the summit of Everest. In 1453, Ottomans employed cannon for the first time in recorded history .. everyone else thought they were fire crackers .. and conquered Constantinople. You can reach the top. Try not to use cannon.
- 1594 – Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim, Bavarian field marshal (d. 1632)
- 1627 – Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier (d. 1693)
- 1630 – Charles II of England (d. 1685)
- 1675 – Humphry Ditton, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1715)
- 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English journalist, author, and playwright (d. 1936)
- 1893 – Max Brand, American author (d. 1944)
- 1894 – Beatrice Lillie, Canadian-born British singer and actress (d. 1989)
- 1903 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2003)
- 1905 – Sebastian Shaw, English actor, director, and playwright (d. 1994)
- 1914 – Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese mountaineer (d. 1986)
- 1917 – John F. Kennedy, American lieutenant and politician, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
- 1921 – Norman Hetherington, Australian cartoonist and puppeteer (d. 2010)
- 1926 – Katie Boyle, Italian-British actress and television host
- 1937 – Hibari Misora, Japanese singer and actress (d. 1989)
- 1945 – Gary Brooker, English singer-songwriter and pianist (Procol Harum and The Paramounts)
- 1947 – Joey Levine, American singer-songwriter and producer (Ohio Express and The Third Rail)
- 1949 – Francis Rossi, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (Status Quo)
- 1955 – John Hinckley, Jr., American attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan
- 1956 – La Toya Jackson, American singer-songwriter and actress
- 1958 – Annette Bening, American actress
- 1959 – Rupert Everett, English actor, singer, and producer
- 1959 – Steve Hanley, Irish-born English bass player and songwriter (The Fall and Tom Hingley and the Lovers)
- 1962 – Chloé Sainte-Marie, Canadian actress and singer
- 1967 – Noel Gallagher, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1975 – Mel B, English singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress (Spice Girls)
- 1978 – Pelle Almqvist, Swedish singer-songwriter and bass player (The Hives)
- 1978 – Sébastien Grosjean, French tennis player
- 1982 – Joanne Borgella, American singer and model (d. 2014)
- 1988 – Muath al-Kasasbeh, Jordanian Air Force pilot burned alive by ISIL (d. 2015)
- 1998 – Lucía Gil, Spanish singer and actress
- 1259 – Christopher I of Denmark (b. 1219)
- 1379 – Henry II of Castile (b. 1334)
- 1405 – Philippe de Mézières, French soldier and author (b. 1327)
- 1425 – Hongxi Emperor of China (b. 1378)
- 1453 – Ulubatlı Hasan, Ottoman commander (b. 1428)
- 1453 – Constantine XI Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (b. 1404)
- 1500 – Bartolomeu Dias, Portuguese explorer (b. 1451)
- 1546 – David Beaton, Scottish cardinal (b. 1494)
- 1593 – John Penry, Welsh martyr (b. 1559)
- 1660 – Frans van Schooten, Dutch mathematician and academic (b. 1615)
- 1892 – Bahá'u'lláh, Persian religious leader, founded the Bahá'í Faith (b. 1817)
- 1911 – W. S. Gilbert, English playwright and poet (b. 1836)
- 1942 – John Barrymore, American actor (b. 1882)
- 1951 – Fanny Brice, American singer and comedian (b. 1891)
- 1979 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded United Artists (b. 1892)
- 1988 – Salem bin Laden, Saudi Arabian businessman (b. 1946)
- 1989 – John Cipollina, American guitarist (Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Dinosaurs, and Man) (b. 1943)
- 1998 – Barry Goldwater, American general and politician (b. 1909)
- 2010 – Dennis Hopper, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1936)
- 1780 – American Revolutionary War: A mainly Loyalist force rejected the Continental Armytroops' surrender at the Battle of Waxhaws and continued killing the Patriot soldiers, including men who were not resisting.
- 1852 – Swedish operatic soprano Jenny Lind concluded a widely successful concert tour of the US under the management of showman P. T. Barnum.
- 1911 – English dramatist W. S. Gilbert of the songwriting duo Gilbert and Sullivan died while saving a young woman from drowning in his lake.
- 1935 – The Messerschmitt Bf 109 (pictured), the most produced fighter aircraft in history, had its first flight.
- 1953 – New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillaryand Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
We only deal with those who resist. Jenny taught us that. Gilbert without Sullivan is a sinking stone. We fly high. We climb on our birthday. Let's party.
Tim Blair 2018
POLITICAL CRAZYOMETER NUDGES RIGHT, SWINGS LEFT
Australian politics will become slightly less insane this August when interactive Soviet-era museum exhibit Lee Rhiannon finally quits federal Parliament.
STILL SHOUTY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Considering how much cash we’ve thrown their way, Midnight Oil never gave the impression of being all that fond of Australians.
NOW EVEN GOD IS GUILTY OF EYEBALL CRIMES
The court of social media is now in session. All appearing before the court will automatically be found guilty.
Short-sighted Shorten
Piers Akerman – Friday, May 29, 2015 (10:13am)
THE Chinese have placed weapons on an artificial island they have built in the South China Sea plumb in the middle of one of Australia’s most critical and busiest trade routes.
The NATO nations have run one of their largest ever war games on Russia’s Baltic border to counter the threat of further aggression such as Russia’s illicit invasion of the eastern Ukraine.
Islamist psychopaths now control half of Syria, threaten the Iraqi capital Baghdad and actively recruit young Australians to join them or conduct terrorist acts in Australia.
Thousands of Rohingya persecuted in Buddhist Myanmar (and thousands of Bangladeshi economic migrants) have created a humanitarian disaster in the Andaman Sea that threatens to restart people-smuggler activities in our waters.
And in Australia’s federal parliament, the man who styles himself as the nation’s alternate prime minister, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, uses his taxpayer-funded position to play petty politics on what he sees as the most important matter of the day — changing the age-old, culturally supported definition of marriage to permit homosexuals to co-opt yet another socially vital traditional institution. As Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in Question Time Wednesday in response to Shorten’s use of his first question to grab for the populist vote: “This is an important issue. It is not the only important issue facing our country right now, but it is an important issue.”
It is certainly not the only important issue facing our country right now and should never be ranked as anything more than a matter of minor national importance.
That it is making headlines at the moment is the end result of a long-running attempt by the left to undermine all the important institutions that serve as bulwarks to sound civilisation.
Marriage, and the stability it provides for the important act of procreation and the provision of a secure family environment, is going to be redefined.
In Ireland, the politicians were sure enough of their ground after years of social and political instability and a burst of economic good fortune to put the question to the people in a referendum.
Shorten doesn’t want the people to decide, he wants to belatedly place himself at the forefront of the left’s campaign to use the homosexual minority as a divisive wedge, outflanking the Greens in their inner-urban electorates.
With the left’s usual sly shifting of ground, the argument has moved from being against all marriage to essentially redefining the act into one of inconsequence stripped of the dignity and cultural significance as the basis of the family.
The left was until recently so mocking of the notion of marriage that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard just two years ago reminded us of her feminist critiques of the institution when she said: “We were critiquing marriage, and if someone had said to me as a 20-year-old, ‘What about you get into a white dress to symbolise virginity and you get your father to walk you down an aisle and give you away to a man who is waiting at the end of the aisle’, I would have looked with puzzlement like, ‘What on earth would I do that for?’”
As a student leader in early ‘80s she supported a policy that said, in part: “Prostitution takes many forms and is not only the exchange of money for sex. … prostitution in marriage is the transaction of sex in return for love, security and housekeeping.”
Shorten talks of marriage equality but to me the marriages he envisages aren’t equal to traditional marriage because they are unions between two people of the same sex.
A redefined marriage encompassing the union of a same-sex couple just cannot be the equal to the marriage of a couple of different sexes, capable of providing children with a mother and a father.
George Orwell’s vision of the future was based on his experiences with totalitarian states. His chilling novel, 1984, relied heavily on state-enforced censorship and the constant redefinition of traditional concepts until they dissolved into inconsequential banalities. Christian churches in the West have been as complacent about this dumbing down of traditional definitions as they have about the mass murders of followers of ancient Christian beliefs across the Middle East.
In their haste to be accepted by those who essentially don’t hold any faith, they accept that their core beliefs no longer matter.
Beyond the shrill squeals of the mardi gras marchers, beyond the understanding of the left, there are very real issues of security and economic prosperity which demand immediate attention.
Just don’t bother Bill Shorten with the big stuff.
COMMUNITY BETTER OFF
Tim Blair – Friday, May 29, 2015 (2:27pm)
Consider the offences committed by Melbourne’s Khodr Moustafa Taha:
[He] pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including using a carriage service to threaten, after he sent a series of tweets that included support for Sydney siege gunman Man Haron Monis between October and December last year …Taha also pleaded guilty to the attack on his mother in her own home, which left her head bruised.He later said he wanted to kill her and hoped for Allah to her grant her “death in this world and the next.”The Melbourne Magistrates’ Court heard Taha encouraged Islamic State to cut off the heads of captives and expressed hope an Australian execution would take place.Victoria Police e-crime experts alleged the computer owned by Taha, who was born in Australia but is of Lebanese heritage, contained material approving the actions of Iraqi death cult IS and the notorious terrorists Al-Qaida ...When Taha was interviewed by police he admitted to running the “Angel of Death” Twitter site and making threats to kill US President Barack Obama.He denied possessing child porn, but allegedly admitted to seeing the content online.
And now consider Taha’s sentence:
A terrorist sympathiser who bashed his elderly mother and threatened police is better off in the community than in jail, a magistrate has said …Deputy Chief Magistrate Jelena Popovic said the community was better served by having Taha treated outside of jail.
BLACKMAIL FOR HEALTH AND KNOWLEDGE
Tim Blair – Friday, May 29, 2015 (3:35am)
Apex in Albury is raising funds for hospital equipment and educational supplies in Cambodia. It’s a good cause run by good people, but an Albury friend reports that donations are currently below expectations: so far, only $1610. At that rate, Albury Apex will generate just $4930 of a hoped-for $15,000 by the time their fundraiser ends in June.
Let’s flex some capitalistic first-world muscle here. Donate to the appeal and, among other outcomes, help replace old timber operating tables with something slightly more in line with modern medical practice.
A small additional incentive: until donations hit the $5000 mark, there will be no new posts from me. No polls. No links. No nothing. Please donate.
UPDATE. Whoa! That was quick:
Much thanks to all who contributed.
Much thanks to all who contributed.
JOHNNY CAN’T READ
Tim Blair – Friday, May 29, 2015 (3:05am)
The ABC’s Jonathan Green was offended early yesterday by his perception of the Daily Telegraph‘s priorities:
A cyclist dies, and @dailytelegraph spends most of the story talking about the disruption to traffic.
In fact, of the article’s initial 243 words, including headline and captions, fully 65 per cent related to yesterday morning’s Rose Bay accident and only 26 per cent to traffic disruption – beginning in the seventh paragraph. A further nine per cent referred to an unrelated two-car crash in Epping. Additionally, all three photographs and an accompanying map were to do with the bike accident rather than traffic.
The story went through at least three updates during the day as events demanded. By the second, as morning traffic was no longer an issue, those lines were removed. By the third, the story contained extensive background on the victim and also details of a local cycling advocate’s desperate attempt to revive him at the accident scene.
By late last evening the story was the most-read at the Telegraph‘s site. And for good reason. It was a well-told and well-researched piece on a local tragedy that resonated with our online audience – who, as the story developed, certainly weren’t clicking in search of the latest traffic news.
One final point: any early coverage of a morning road fatality will inevitably contain information on resultant traffic conditions. Reporters provide information as it is available or discovered. Traffic delays are quickly apparent. The deeper human story takes rather longer to reveal.
THE PRIVILEGE/ENTITLEMENT DIVIDE
Tim Blair – Friday, May 29, 2015 (3:01am)
Robert Tracinski makes an important distinction:
Privilege is not the same thing as “entitlement.” Entitlement means taking one’s advantages in life for granted, as if they are part of the normal order of things, and not realizing where they came from or what made them possible. Which usually means frittering away all of those advantages by failing to take the initiative to accomplish anything of your own.In fact, one of the most important advantages you can give your kids is a lack of entitlement, the ethos of knowing that he has to work for what he wants in life. One of the great secrets of the middle class strivers is that they realize lack of entitlement is a “privilege” that will give their children a leg up on the spoiled rich kids.
It worked for me.
Gillon gets it: booing Adam Goodes was not racist. UPDATE: Goodes makes it worse
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (7:21pm)
Praise to Gillon McLachlan for not jumping on the bandwagon of sanctimony driven by the likes of Patrick Smith:
So why was Goodes booed? Other than for his past tripping of Hawthorn’s Josh Gibson, and his staging for free kicks, famously called out by Shane Warne and Matthew Llyod?
It’s so obvious.
It is time the AFL and the media admitted they overplayed their hand two years again in publicly identifying, threatening and vilifying a girl who was just 13 when she (wrongly) abused Goodes, who should himself have shown more tolerance of someone so much his inferior in power, and not called the child the “face” of racism in Australia.
She was just 13, for God’s sake. Yet see all those grown men and women tapdance on her reputation to prove themselves free of even the suspicion of racism. They just used this girl to make themselves look good. Did not one of them think how unfair this would seem to so many Australians?
Many football fans know that if racism was at play it was of the new and pitiless kind that reduces a young girl from a broken home to a cutout stereotype of a white racist monster, to be smashed as a warning to others.
Goodes might have won them back with some show of self-deprecation or humility. Instead, as Australian of the Year he rubbed salt in the wound by misusing his platform to demonise Australia and sneer at a past which so many Australians value.
Goodes played the race warrior, like so many in the “reconciliation” push, and divided and belittled people he could have united.
How can anyone claim to be surprised by the booing now? To dismiss it as mere racism is only to aggravate an irritation that should be soothed. McLachlan, I believe, secretly knows this.
UPDATE
Goodes just made it worse. He’s celebrated a goal against Carlton by improvising a kind of Aboriginal dance of aggression, slapping his arms and advancing at the Carlton fans before miming the brandishing of a spear at them. If it wasn’t Goodes and it wasn’t the indigenous round, the stunned commentators on Seven would have called it out as the loutish behaviour it was, a symbolic act of violence, couched in inflammatory race-based terms. An act of hatred.
No white player would have got away with such a provocative gesture. Yet next week again we’ll hear commentators wonder “why is the crowd booing Adam Goodes?” - secretly knowing exactly why, and how much Goodes has done to deserve it.
UPDATE
A Carlton fan who reacted to Goode’s taunts has been escorted from the ground by police.
Reconciliation isn’t meant to look like this.
UPDATE
A word to those who will instinctively feel Goodes must be excused and his critics vilified.
Imagine a white player capering up to predominantly Aboriginal supporters, shaking a fist and miming the shooting of a gun at them.
Can you begin to understand why so many people - even if not you - find what Goodes did offensive, and his supporters hypocrites?
Perhaps you still think what he did was excusable. But please don’t pretend to be surprised that others feel insulted and angry.
===AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has condemned the booing of Adam Goodes…Exactly the point I made the other day.
“It’s very disappointing to see Adam booed as a general comment. I am not sure that booing has a place in our game,’’ he said.
“...I have been wrestling with why people have been booing Adam. I don’t think anyone really likes it.” ... “People fear that [it is driven by racism]. I am not sure [the racist angle] is there. If you take the Hawthorn game, Cyril Rioli and Shaun Burgoyne have been the most loved and revered players in the Hawthorn playing group...”
So why was Goodes booed? Other than for his past tripping of Hawthorn’s Josh Gibson, and his staging for free kicks, famously called out by Shane Warne and Matthew Llyod?
It’s so obvious.
It is time the AFL and the media admitted they overplayed their hand two years again in publicly identifying, threatening and vilifying a girl who was just 13 when she (wrongly) abused Goodes, who should himself have shown more tolerance of someone so much his inferior in power, and not called the child the “face” of racism in Australia.
She was just 13, for God’s sake. Yet see all those grown men and women tapdance on her reputation to prove themselves free of even the suspicion of racism. They just used this girl to make themselves look good. Did not one of them think how unfair this would seem to so many Australians?
Many football fans know that if racism was at play it was of the new and pitiless kind that reduces a young girl from a broken home to a cutout stereotype of a white racist monster, to be smashed as a warning to others.
Goodes might have won them back with some show of self-deprecation or humility. Instead, as Australian of the Year he rubbed salt in the wound by misusing his platform to demonise Australia and sneer at a past which so many Australians value.
Goodes played the race warrior, like so many in the “reconciliation” push, and divided and belittled people he could have united.
How can anyone claim to be surprised by the booing now? To dismiss it as mere racism is only to aggravate an irritation that should be soothed. McLachlan, I believe, secretly knows this.
UPDATE
Goodes just made it worse. He’s celebrated a goal against Carlton by improvising a kind of Aboriginal dance of aggression, slapping his arms and advancing at the Carlton fans before miming the brandishing of a spear at them. If it wasn’t Goodes and it wasn’t the indigenous round, the stunned commentators on Seven would have called it out as the loutish behaviour it was, a symbolic act of violence, couched in inflammatory race-based terms. An act of hatred.
No white player would have got away with such a provocative gesture. Yet next week again we’ll hear commentators wonder “why is the crowd booing Adam Goodes?” - secretly knowing exactly why, and how much Goodes has done to deserve it.
UPDATE
A Carlton fan who reacted to Goode’s taunts has been escorted from the ground by police.
Reconciliation isn’t meant to look like this.
UPDATE
A word to those who will instinctively feel Goodes must be excused and his critics vilified.
Imagine a white player capering up to predominantly Aboriginal supporters, shaking a fist and miming the shooting of a gun at them.
Can you begin to understand why so many people - even if not you - find what Goodes did offensive, and his supporters hypocrites?
Perhaps you still think what he did was excusable. But please don’t pretend to be surprised that others feel insulted and angry.
A gay campaigner warns: he comes to destroy marriage, not embrace it
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (7:03pm)
Yesterday I challenged same-sex marriage supporters to show that the marriage tradition would be safe in their hands - and its most fundamental aspects defended.
One day later and Simon Copland, columnist for the Sydney Star Observerand former ACT convenor for the Greens, suggests my hope is misplaced:
Where are the gay advocates of same-sex marriage to publicly renounce Copland?
===One day later and Simon Copland, columnist for the Sydney Star Observerand former ACT convenor for the Greens, suggests my hope is misplaced:
Yet, as equality for lesbians and gays looks closer than ever, the real fight over marriage is only just about to begin.Are there really enough conservative gays and lesbians to trust with marriage? Or is Copland right - that same-sex marriage is just a Trojan horse to destroy the very institution that gays claims to want to embrace?
Andrew Bolt’s conversion to a same-sex marriage supporter [not actually true] this week came with a very important caveat. As gays and lesbians enter into the marriage fold, Bolt called on them to to do everything they can to ‘defend the institution as we conservatives tried.’
What does Bolt mean? ... Bolt’s first argument is that gays and lesbians need to do everything they can to ensure marriage continues to “protect children.” Ironic from a man whose movement has actively argued that same-sex couple are disastrous for children.
But what does that actually mean? In reality it means upholding the economic traditions of marriage, which have historically oppressed women… Marriage is seen as a contract — women trade access to the resources and protection they require for the promise of fidelity. Hence the continued economic oppression of women in our society…
But it’s not just about children. Bolt’s other demand is that gays and lesbians give up our “promiscuous lifestyle”. Conservatives want us all to accept monogamous marriage as the only acceptable form of relationship, abandoning our ideas of sexual freedom in the meantime. This is not new — Bolt has often railed against polyamorous relationships — a rejection of perfectly valid way to form unions (one that I practice) based on a narrow view of how sex and relationships should work. It is now, apparently, up to gays and lesbians to accept this position as well.
This is what the new fight over marriage will be about. We are once again about to see a great battle over sex, marriage and economics. A battle about sexual freedom, economic subjugation and the dominance of marriage as a relationship norm....
For years now the more promiscuous in the queer community have been told that gays and lesbians need to access marriage so we can ‘queer it up’. The best way to break down these traditions, we’ve been told, is from the inside…
This is where Bolt is clever in embracing gays and lesbians. The real marriage fight was never about homosexuality, but instead over the lifestyles conservatives find abhorrent… Marriage equality is now inevitable. But the fight has only really just begun.
Where are the gay advocates of same-sex marriage to publicly renounce Copland?
ABC bias: the musical
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (1:12pm)
The ABC’s bias is turned to good. ABC staffers riff on the allegations against them and enjoy that under-siege camaraderie:
===On The Bolt Report on Sunday, May 31
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (12:58pm)
On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm.
My guest: Major General (ret.) Jim Molan, former head of allied operations in Iraq, on the real war on jihadists - the one we’re actually losing.
Editorial: Same-sex marriage.With the battle over, where are the gay conservatives?
The panel: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger and Sean Kelly, former senior press secretary of Julia Gillard.
NewsWatch: Miranda Devine, Daily Telegraph columnist and 2GB colleague. On ABC boss Mark Scott giving the Liberals the two fingers, and on conservative commentators giving up on gay marriage - or not.
Plenty to debate: did the Government goof on Man Haron Monis, or did Labor pick a fight it will lose? Why give in to feminist victimology on the tampon tax? And when will the Sydney Morning Herald say sorry for its disgusting smear of the Prime Minister?
The videos of the shows appear here.
===My guest: Major General (ret.) Jim Molan, former head of allied operations in Iraq, on the real war on jihadists - the one we’re actually losing.
Editorial: Same-sex marriage.With the battle over, where are the gay conservatives?
The panel: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger and Sean Kelly, former senior press secretary of Julia Gillard.
NewsWatch: Miranda Devine, Daily Telegraph columnist and 2GB colleague. On ABC boss Mark Scott giving the Liberals the two fingers, and on conservative commentators giving up on gay marriage - or not.
Plenty to debate: did the Government goof on Man Haron Monis, or did Labor pick a fight it will lose? Why give in to feminist victimology on the tampon tax? And when will the Sydney Morning Herald say sorry for its disgusting smear of the Prime Minister?
The videos of the shows appear here.
As long as police aren’t doing the shooting, it’s fine
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (5:12am)
The race warriors get their wish. Police have stopped being heavy-handed in responding to calls to deal with the violent:
===A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore’s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city’s deadliest in 15 years.It seems improbable that black violence, not police brutality, is the real issue, so I’m sure the murder stats will fall soon.
Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year. Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffered in police custody, but they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six officers and a full-on civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that has officers working under close scrutiny.
The new tourists of Kos
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (5:00am)
The vast migration of people from poor countries to richer ones has transformed Kos, the Greek tourist magnet:
Ann Coulter summarises the findings of her latest book:
===Boat people from Syria and Afghanistan and British holidaymakers have clashed on Kos – as migrants have turned the Greek island, popular with cheap package deals, into a ‘disgusting’ hellhole.
As families – enjoying some summer sun with their kids during the half term break – relax on sun loungers on the beach, just a yards away scores of migrants have set up camp, sleeping on cardboard boxes with rubbish strewn everywhere…
Migrants from war-torn Afghanistan and Syria have taken shelter under arcades on the seafront in Kos town as they wait to receive security clearance for onward travel to mainland Greece. The wealthiest groups have smart phones and credit cards and are staying in local hotels for 10-15 euros a night - while the rest are camped out on the harbour side and at a derelict hotel on the edge of Kos town.
UPDATE
Ann Coulter summarises the findings of her latest book:
-- America has already taken in one-fourth of Mexico’s entire population.
-- In 1970, there were almost no Nigerian immigrants in the United States. Our country is now home to more Nigerians than any country in the world except Nigeria…
-- In Denmark, actual Danes come in tenth in criminals’ nationality, after Moroccans, Lebanese, Yugoslavians, Somalis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks, Iraqis and Vietnamese.
How Jonathan Green turned same-sex marriage into a conservative male conspiracy against women
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (3:48am)
ABC host Jonathan Green, who is offended and surprised when identified as a Leftist, now denounces the same-sex marriage push as sexist:
One of the most prominent same-sex marriage campaigners is actually a woman, Christine Forster, the Prime Minister’s sister.
One of the iconic couples of the movement is Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.
If men are more numerous in the campaign, that could be a function of the fact that - as the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society has found - for every one lesbian there are two gays.
There are also more gay couples than lesbian:
That - or maybe, just maybe, ABC boss Mark Scott is right and the ABC is stuffed to the gills with secret conservatives, pushing their male-privilege wheelbarrows:
(Thanks to reader John.)
===Same-sex marriage will win through, of course. As an issue it has two great advantages: it is an inherently conservative proposal and carries with it the hopes of that most politically significant of social cohorts, men.Is this actually true?
Doubt the last bit? Try a small thought experiment and wonder what level of urgent community concern - never mind political will - there would be for a campaign arguing the case of exclusively lesbian marriage. It would probably have as much chance of quick success as removing the GST from tampon sales. Or securing equal pay for all working women. Or decriminalising abortion in those Australian states in which it is either a crime or the gift of the medical profession.
As American poet, essayist and critic Katha Pollitt argues in The Nation: Lesbian couples account for the majority of same-sex marriages, but even the vernacular “gay marriage” types it as a male concern. That makes it of interest to everyone, because everything male is of general interest.
One of the most prominent same-sex marriage campaigners is actually a woman, Christine Forster, the Prime Minister’s sister.
One of the iconic couples of the movement is Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.
If men are more numerous in the campaign, that could be a function of the fact that - as the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society has found - for every one lesbian there are two gays.
There are also more gay couples than lesbian:
If the media refer to “gay marriage” rather than “same-sex marriage”, it could be that gay is actually understood to refer in this context to lesbians as well, as demonstrated by this interview by the gay newspaper Star Observer of married lesbians Jackie Stricker and Kerryn Phelps:
IN February 1998, Jackie Stricker got a phone call from a journalist at Sydney newspaper The Sunday Telegraph, who told her they were going to print a story outing her and her wife Kerryn Phelps as gay… “I actually thought that I might be gay, and I was talking to my father and I didn’t say it but he actually said it for me,” Stricker recalled.If newspapers use “gay marriage” rather than “same-sex marriage” in headlines and copy, it could also be simply that “gay marriage” is one word shorter, and space is tight.
That - or maybe, just maybe, ABC boss Mark Scott is right and the ABC is stuffed to the gills with secret conservatives, pushing their male-privilege wheelbarrows:
Really, Green has just managed to create an impeccably Leftist piece of sanctimonious victimology out of dodgy stats, improbable theorising and a wilful deafness to the meaning of words and the imperatives of snappy communication.
(Thanks to reader John.)
What Waleed Aly overlooks about this “utopia”
Andrew Bolt May 29 2015 (12:01am)
Waleed Aly, former spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria and now lecturer at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, overlooks one critical fact in asking us to treat returning jihadists as a “potential gift”:
This is why they are no “gift” to us, and why so many Australians both hate and fear those who return. Most know the Islamic State has actually delivered in full in all those bloody promises it made the jihadists, and that the disappointments of life under its rule are more likely to involve purely mundane matters of pay, food, comfort and loneliness that, frankly, are of little import or benefit to us.
Indeed, their greatest use now lies in being pariahs, a terrible warning of what awaits those who would follow.
===Take the other major recent development: Australians who’ve gone to Syria only to discover that beneath Islamic State’s utopian promise is a gruesome lie. Now they’re trying to get out and come home… But it’s telling that we can see nothing beyond this; that we so resolutely refuse even to acknowledge this potential gift because we’re too busy reiterating our hatred for these people… Are these people of more use to us stuck in Syria than they would be telling other Australians about the horrors of IS with vastly more credibility than anyone else?Here is what Aly overlooks: these Australians did not go to Syria on a “utopian promise” of peace and love. They went after being sold videos of decapitations, murders, crucifixions, mass murder and the enslavement of women. They went after hearing sermons promising death to infidels and hatred of countries such as ours.
This is why they are no “gift” to us, and why so many Australians both hate and fear those who return. Most know the Islamic State has actually delivered in full in all those bloody promises it made the jihadists, and that the disappointments of life under its rule are more likely to involve purely mundane matters of pay, food, comfort and loneliness that, frankly, are of little import or benefit to us.
Indeed, their greatest use now lies in being pariahs, a terrible warning of what awaits those who would follow.
We must all do the work & walk our own path. ~ <3 br="">Posted by Healing Light on Thursday, 28 May 2015
Did you know? Israeli bank notes have braille on them so the blind can identify them.This is just another example of how Israel accommodates those with disabilities!
Posted by Stand for Israel on Thursday, 28 May 2015
Corporate Australia joins forces and takes out full page ad in The Australian in support of same sex marriage.
Posted by Latika M Bourke on Thursday, 28 May 2015
These self-publishing veterans were asked to give one piece of advice to new indie authors. What would you add? http://bit.ly/1J9kQnx
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Thursday, 28 May 2015
I ALWAYS HAD A BACK SEAT
Posted by Pamela Jo Ellis on Thursday, 28 May 2015
Posted by The Idealist on Wednesday, 27 May 2015
===
FERGUSON QUITS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 29, 2013 (5:07pm)
One of Labor’s best jumps ship:
Senior Labor MP Martin Ferguson and key backer of Kevin Rudd has announced his resignation from Parliament.The member for Batman, who lost his Cabinet position after the failed leadership coup in March, shocked the parliament when he stood after question time to make his announcement.The former Resource Minister, regarded as one of the best ministers before he was dumped by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, is one of the parliament’s longest-serving MPs, first elected in 1995. He said he would not be recontesting the September election.
Andrew Bolt offers a fine farewell.
SOMETHING MISSING
Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 29, 2013 (11:38am)
“The racism was raw,” writes Guardian filler provider Antony Loewenstein:
In 2011, John worked inside the Villawood detention centre in Sydney, and had little time for asylum seekers and their plight. He believed they had more rights than he and his co-workers had been given. John was employed by MSS Security, a private company contracted by British multinational Serco for menial work. He claimed that the lack of accountability for the behaviour of his employer proved the immigration detention system was broken. It was his opinion that the Australian army should manage detainees, because companies such as Serco “balk at a problem and remain eternally paranoid about losing the contract with the government”. The racism expressed by John is commonplace …
Er, Antony … where’s the racism?
(Via JJ)
DR FLIPPER
Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 29, 2013 (11:27am)
As one commenter observes: “Giant predators. Blood in the water. Wiggly foodlike items. What could go wrong?”
Last month, Adam Barringer, 29, and his pregnant wife Heather, 27, boarded a plane for Hawaii. The couple traveled over 4,500 miles in the hopes of welcoming baby Bodhi into the world during a dolphin-assisted birth in Pohoa, Hawaii.The couple will stay and study with Star Newland, founder of The Sirius Institute, a consortium with the purpose of “dolphinizing” the planet.
(Via Simon G., who emails: “I hope the dolphins aren’t hungry.")
More Liberal than feared
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (5:16pm)
A more Liberal position, after all, that discriminates less against stay-at-home mothers. The savings should be made elsewhere, starting with the Direct Action schemes:
===JOE Hockey has been rolled by Coalition colleagues who have convinced Tony Abbott to accept a Labor family payment boost to partially replace the baby bonus.
The opposition treasury spokesman had publicly warned the Coalition would oppose the $2000 family payment boost to replace the $5000 baby bonus, which has bipartisan support. But opposition families spokesman Kevin Andrews has informed Families Minister Jenny Macklin that the Coalition will accept legislation to axe the baby bonus and boost to Family Tax Benefit A for new parents.
Martin Ferguson resigns
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (3:03pm)
Former Resources, Energy and Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson says he’s quitting at the election. A giant of Labor, representing its better side.
He takes a swing at those preaching “mindless class war rhetoric” - read Wayne Swan.
It’s a pity, though, that Ferguson never spoke out against global warming alarmism, although he quietly worked to moderate the damage it did.
Ferguson quits, Swan stays. Wrong way around.
Ferguson chokes up as he thanks his parents, both now gone.
I first knew Ferguson when he did me a great courtesy, despite not knowing me personally but knowing I was a conservative. He warned me about a smear campaign being run by a colleague, and said he would judge me as he found me and not as people advertised me.
I will never forget how he behaved, and everything I’ve seen of him since confirms for me he is a man of honour. I may have disagreed with him at times, but I’ve never had the slightest reason to question his sincerity or his character. He is the kind of person who, if he contradicts you, makes you first re-examine your position before questioning his.
A very fine man.
UPDATE
Another politician of great character, Tony Abbott, gives a terrific speech in praise of Ferguson. He apologises for having once criticised “Labor royalty”. He says he respects that tradition Ferguson represents.
Abbott also chokes up as he salutes Ferguson:
===He takes a swing at those preaching “mindless class war rhetoric” - read Wayne Swan.
We need to grow the pie to share it.He says we need to get costs under control, and says LNG is the future. This is the Liberal agenda, and Labor is dropping the challenge.
Many seek to demonise the resources industry.But its 60 per cent of our export income, he says. Another dig at Wayne Swan.
It’s a pity, though, that Ferguson never spoke out against global warming alarmism, although he quietly worked to moderate the damage it did.
Ferguson quits, Swan stays. Wrong way around.
Ferguson chokes up as he thanks his parents, both now gone.
I first knew Ferguson when he did me a great courtesy, despite not knowing me personally but knowing I was a conservative. He warned me about a smear campaign being run by a colleague, and said he would judge me as he found me and not as people advertised me.
I will never forget how he behaved, and everything I’ve seen of him since confirms for me he is a man of honour. I may have disagreed with him at times, but I’ve never had the slightest reason to question his sincerity or his character. He is the kind of person who, if he contradicts you, makes you first re-examine your position before questioning his.
A very fine man.
UPDATE
Another politician of great character, Tony Abbott, gives a terrific speech in praise of Ferguson. He apologises for having once criticised “Labor royalty”. He says he respects that tradition Ferguson represents.
Abbott also chokes up as he salutes Ferguson:
An honorable opponent and a great Australian.
Labor’s new Middle East strategy. I don’t think it helps us
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (11:41am)
Why has Foreign Minister Bob Carr spent three days this week in Lebanon? Is the Middle East really a foreign affairs priority, when there is so much to be done to repair relations with our near neighbours? Or is this part of Carr’s dangerous and divisive crusade to please Muslim voters in western Sydney?
Their tribe, “our” tribe. The demonisation of Israel supporters as a “political lobby group that is cancerous, malicious and seeks to deny, misinform and scaremonger”.
Remember - this is from a “moderate”, elected to the NSW Parliament with Labor’s help. You should hear the extremists.
27 May 2013Meanwhile, in Senate hearings this week, the Immigration Department secretary explains the Government’s new strategy to stop Middle Eastern people arriving by boat. It apparently involves getting more to come by plane:
Foreign Minister Bob Carr today condemned twin rocket strikes into Beirut’s southern suburbs yesterday (May 26), injuring five.25 May 2013
Speaking after Ministerial talks in Beirut last Friday, Senator Carr said the attacks demonstrated the risk of Syria’s conflict spreading across national borders.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr today announced $4.6 million to help Palestinian refugees, including those affected by the conflict in Syria.24 May 2013
Senator Carr announced Australian support during a meeting with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi in Lebanon today…
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr today announced an additional $12 million to help international relief agencies respond to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Syria and neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
Speaking from the Faour refugee camp in Lebanon, senator Carr said the funding lifted Australia’s humanitarian support for the Syrian crisis to more than $78 million.
Mr Bowles : Again, the humanitarian increase is part of a suite of measures under the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers. The greatest thing to confirm to people who are coming irregularly that there is another mechanism for them to get here is the lived experience. Let us not forget that this is the first year that this program has operated in this way with this number. Once we get through this—and we are confident that we will reach the 20,000 target this year, with significant increases of people, particularly out of the Middle East region—we will actually have an impact.Look at Stockholm this past week. Our Government is actively working to increase the number of exactly the kind of communities having most trouble integrating. Expect more of the us-vs-them preaching of the likes of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane this week:
On 21 May 2013 the Hon. Amanda Fazio and I had the honour and privilege are formally presenting the Holy Koran to the President, the Hon. Don Harwin, MLC, at an official ceremony in Parliament House attended by more than 100 senior members of the Muslim community, dignitaries and multicultural media.(My bold.)
It should be noted that this was the first time in the history of any Australian Parliament—and possibly any Parliament in a Western non-Muslim nation—that a motion was formally voted on and agreed that a copy of the Holy Koran be presented to the Presiding Officer…
I will always say and do what is right, even in the face of trash that I have read in the Australian Israeli media. One or two reporters writing in the Murdoch press—namely the Australian—have been attacking me and denying the truth of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the killing and dehumanising of the Palestinian people. That is utter garbage. I accept the right of people to express their views, even when they are wrong, naive, ill informed, indoctrinated and blinded by the power of a political lobby group that is cancerous, malicious and seeks to deny, misinform and scaremonger. What I do take exception to is foreigners intervening in the rights of Australian politicians to speak out. Therefore, I say to the Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, “Butt out and stay out. Your perceived right to bully as you do in the Middle East does not extend to the Australian political arena.” In today’s Australian Cassandra Wilkinson, lacking journalistic integrity and informed knowledge of Israeli occupation of Arab land, ... conveniently attacks others in the New South Wales Parliament who simply dare to criticise—as any ethical or moral person would do—the State of Israel’s illegal and criminal practices against the Palestinian people. I applaud all Muslim and Arab leaders for speaking out on these and other issues. I call on the Australian Arab Muslim community to unite and for once to speak with one Australian voice. I ask them to protect the right of their community to speak out and deliver a message of peace and citizenship on behalf of their community so that neither they nor their messages are misconstrued or misunderstood.
Their tribe, “our” tribe. The demonisation of Israel supporters as a “political lobby group that is cancerous, malicious and seeks to deny, misinform and scaremonger”.
Remember - this is from a “moderate”, elected to the NSW Parliament with Labor’s help. You should hear the extremists.
===
Shame on the witchhunters. UPDATE: Is Eddie “King Kong” McGuire now Adam Goodes’ “face of racism”?
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (11:20am)
Adam Goodes after a 13-year-old girl yelled “ape” at him during a game, for which she was publicly named, shown on national television, evicted, questioned by police for two hours, threatened with charges and vilified by sports officials, human rights commissars and media pundits:
Again the question: was this 13-year-old punished out of all proportion because of the New Racism that gives us such things as an Indigenous Round? Were the righteous invited to see her not as she was - the 13-year-old daughter of a single mother on a disability pension - but as the archetypal White Racist?
Are commentators likewise treating the 34-year-old Goodes as the archetypal Black Victim rather than a grown man reacting far too strongly to the stupid insult of a mere child?
Sinclair Davidson is damning:
UPDATE
How can any journalist write this?:
Defending a 13-year-old from a shameful pack-attack is evidence of loathesome racism to the noisily sanctimonious Fairfax journalist:
And should Richard Hinds really be abusing so many of his own readers as barking racists, lunatics full of hatred and insecurity? What an insecure response.
In this new Salem in the South, I am reminded again of Bertrand Russell’s maxim:
What is Hinds, then? A spokesman for the white race?
UPDATE
Just to cap off the farce:
No, wait. McGuire is an adult and media superstar, not some 13-year-old girl from a broken home.
Leave him alone.
UPDATE
This has become a complete farce. Is Eddie McGuire now “the face of racism”?
Go for him, Hinds. We are watching.
UPDATE
So much for the Indigenous Round bringing us closer together. I must say I’m astonished by McGuire’s comments, which are of the kind I’d never even dream of saying. But the only racism I think McGuire is guilty of is the New Racism. You know, the good sort:
===Racism had a face...and it was a 13-year-old girlMiranda Devine on the family of the child, who immediately apologised and said “ape” was not meant in a racist way:
THE 13-year-old girl vilified for accidentally making a racist slur against indigenous footballer Adam Goodes is the daughter of a single mother on a disability pension, from one of the most underprivileged and powerless backgrounds possible.How merciless are the conspicuously compassionate. Where is the humanity here?
Yet the elites of Australia’s sport and media have not stopped smashing her and her family as racist rednecks…
“She is just a child,” says her mother Joanne, who is on a disability pension, with agoraphobia, anxiety and depression. “It’s been a media circus for a single word she didn’t even understand was racist. He was a big bloke with a hairy face. That’s all she meant. It was one moment taken way out of proportion.” ...
“She was crying when (the security guards) took her away,” says Joanne…
So far she’s OK. Her sisters defend her from Facebook trolls, and the pastor from her small school of 138 students has visited.
“All the kids at the school have been great,” says [mother] Joanne. “They’ve turned it into a bit of a joke and everyone’s been calling each other ape.” Samantha is a “very outgoing, full-on kid. She’s one for blurting stuff out but she won’t be blurting things out any more. She’ll be in her shell, I think”.
Again the question: was this 13-year-old punished out of all proportion because of the New Racism that gives us such things as an Indigenous Round? Were the righteous invited to see her not as she was - the 13-year-old daughter of a single mother on a disability pension - but as the archetypal White Racist?
Are commentators likewise treating the 34-year-old Goodes as the archetypal Black Victim rather than a grown man reacting far too strongly to the stupid insult of a mere child?
Sinclair Davidson is damning:
Where I disagree with Miranda is on this:Davidson compares our “face of racism” with other faces of racism from other countries. It suggests we are doing pretty well.
Goodes is the least culpable, but his statement: “Racism had a face – and it was a 13-year-old girl” was hyperbole that fanned the hysteria, even if he did say it wasn’t her fault.Bullshit. Goodes had two opportunities to call off the witch-hunt. First when he ran back to point her out. On Saturday morning he claimed he could see that she was about 14. Yet the security guards who removed her from the stadium, the crowd who swore at her, and Victoria Police somehow couldn’t. Never mind – at that point he could have decided to back off, but he didn’t. The next morning, he could have said at the press conference that there had been an incident but the person involved had turned out to be a minor and that he didn’t want to make a fuss but rather the AFL etc. would be working with the girl and her family and then leave it at that. But no. He chose to carry on about his hurt – completely indifferent to the hurt he had imposed on a child – and the face of racism in Australia.
Later he tried to make amends by calling off the witch-hunt.
UPDATE
How can any journalist write this?:
The brave decision by indigenous player Adam Goodes to point out the 13-year-old girl to security guards...How can someone seriously write this?:
The young girl was being racist, whatever her intentions.UPDATE
Defending a 13-year-old from a shameful pack-attack is evidence of loathesome racism to the noisily sanctimonious Fairfax journalist:
However, before the Monday morning alarm, the zeitgeist had taken a subtle change. Predictably, the lunatic fringe in the media, social media and on the talk-back lines were twisting a straightforward event handled with aplomb to suit a putrid agenda.I’m surprised such people didn’t simply burn the 13-year-old at the stake to better advertise their superior feelings. Surely the fire would have given them a better light to demonstrate their finer features.
Somehow, through a prism of hate and insecurity, the 13 year-old girl who had called Goodes an “ape” became a victim. The supposed subject of belligerent bullying by the “PC crowd”. Merely a gormless girl whose words were born of ignorance rather than malevolence. Which made her a convenient martyr for those whose actions are far more sinister.
Goodes? It was no longer the colour of his skin, but its width, that was the issue. Too thin. Too sensitive. “Come on, Goodesy. You’ve got the entire crowd behind you. You’ve played a blinder. Why pick on some little kid who called you a silly name?”
Mischievously overlooked was that Goodes had, with rare empathy for someone who had the right to feel aggrieved, expressed his deep concern for the girl. Mindlessly, he was transformed, by some, into a “bully”. One report stated Goodes “has Aboriginal ancestry”. Not simply that he is Aboriginal. A wink-wink, nudge-nudge way of diminishing his credibility as a spokesman for his race. This was not a dog whistle, but a vicious bark.
And should Richard Hinds really be abusing so many of his own readers as barking racists, lunatics full of hatred and insecurity? What an insecure response.
In this new Salem in the South, I am reminded again of Bertrand Russell’s maxim:
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.Oh, and note the term “a spokesman for his race.” Note the New Racism in full flow.
What is Hinds, then? A spokesman for the white race?
UPDATE
Just to cap off the farce:
COLLINGWOOD Football Club president Eddie McGuire has dropped a clanger on Melbourne radio, suggesting it would be a good idea to get Adam Goodes in town to promote the new King Kong musical…Name him! Drag him off air! Get police to grill him for two hours! Threaten him with charges!
The comment came while McGuire was speaking with co-host and former AFL star Luke Darcy on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast show this morning while Darcy was talking about the new musical. “What a great promo that is, for King Kong,” he said.
To which McGuire replied: “Get Adam Goodes down for it, d’you reckon?"… McGuire tried to clarify his remarks during the conversation, saying he was “imagining the old days of trying to get people in for publicity ... so anyone who thought that I was having a go or being a smart alec I take that back”.
No, wait. McGuire is an adult and media superstar, not some 13-year-old girl from a broken home.
Leave him alone.
UPDATE
This has become a complete farce. Is Eddie McGuire now “the face of racism”?
Anyone who does not condemn McGuire is, of course, part of a “lunatic fringe in the media”, full of “hate and insecurity” with a “putrid agenda” of racism.
Go for him, Hinds. We are watching.
UPDATE
So much for the Indigenous Round bringing us closer together. I must say I’m astonished by McGuire’s comments, which are of the kind I’d never even dream of saying. But the only racism I think McGuire is guilty of is the New Racism. You know, the good sort:
Adam Goodes has refused to accept Eddie McGuire’s apology for his inappropriate comment about using the Swans star to promote the musical King Kong.
McGuire contacted Goodes in an attempt to explain away the comment, but it is understood Goodes remains deeply hurt, despite McGuire saying in a statement that Goodes had accepted the apology…
“Adam accepted my apology and acknowledged my strong commitment and record in tackling racial vilification not just on the football field but in the wider community.”
However, it is believed that Goodes sees the situation differently.
A visibly emotional Sydney coach John Longmire said he was “staggered” by McGuire’s King Kong reference to Swans champion Goodes on Melbourne radio…
“He (Goodes) is still trying to come to terms with how it could happen,” Longmire said. “We are all still trying to come to terms with it...”
[Collingwood player Harry] O’Brien, who has African and South American heritage, also used Twitter to give his opinion on McGuire’s comments.
It doesn’t matter if you are a school teacher, a doctor or even the president of my football club I will not (cont) tl.gd/n_1rkhm62
— Harry O’Brien (@harry_o) May 29, 2013 He continued: “ ... tolerate racism, nor should we as a society. Im extremely disappointed with Eddie’s comments and do not care what position he holds, I disagree with what came out his mouth this morning on radio.
The Met drops basis for claim of “significant” warming
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (8:26am)
It took six attempts in the House of Lords before the Met Office finally revealed the rise in temperature we’d seen seems statistically insignificant, despite all the claims of an apocalypse in the making:
The issue here is the claim that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”, which was made by the Met Office in response to the original Question (HL3050). The basis for that claim has now been effectively acknowledged to be untenable. Possibly there is some other basis for the claim, but that seems extremely implausible: the claim does not seem to have any valid basis.(Thanks to many readers.)
Plainly, then, the Met Office should now publicly withdraw the claim. That is, the Met Office should admit that the warming shown by the global-temperature record since 1880 (or indeed 1850) might be reasonably attributed to natural random variation....
Lastly, it is not only the Met Office that has claimed that the increase in global temperatures is statistically significant: the IPCC has as well. Moreover, the IPCC used the same statistical model as the Met Office, in its most-recent Assessment Report (2007)… To conclude, the primary basis for global-warming alarmism is unfounded. The Met Office has been making false claims about the significance of climatic changes to Parliament—as well as to the government, the media, and others — claims which have seriously affected both policies and opinions. When questioned about those claims in Parliament, the Met Office did everything feasible to avoid telling the truth.
===
Why believe a word this government says?
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (8:21am)
What is a Gillard promise? Well, here’s another example:
===Rail commuters and motorists will wait longer for vital infrastructure after the Gillard government quietly shifted $2 billion earmarked for the Parramatta-Epping line into a fund for projects not due to be built until after 2019… Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the Parramatta-Epping line 10 days before the Keneally government lost the election in 2010.
The “blackest day in Australian sport” turns into a joke
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (7:53am)
I am astonished that so many leading sports writers couldn’t see through the stunt. As I wrote in February:
Really?
===IT IS mad, how recklessly some politicians last week trashed the reputation of Australian sport.I am astonished that so many leading sports writers had such little respect for the principle of innocent until proven guilty:
Don’t blame athletes or officials for making sports codes seem riddled with “endemic corruption” - from rampant drug use to match-fixing and gangsters. Blame instead the Gillard Government and commentators who on Thursday ballyhooed a desperately thin Australian Crime Commission report.
The good name of Australian sport has been utterly trashed - over allegations so thin that no police anywhere are yet investigating.Now even Labor MPs accept the Government went too, too far:
The head of the Australian Crime Commission believes the high-profile drugs-in-sport operation has been “misunderstood” and would still be a success even if no criminals are caught.All sorts of criminal behaviour were alleged, yet the government thinks it’s no sign of failure that not a single criminals is caught?
The comments reveal a softening from the rhetoric used by Justice Minister Jason Clare and Sports Minister Kate Lundy in the February media conference dubbed “the blackest day in sport” when the ministers promised to hunt down criminals and drug cheats.
Fairfax Media can also reveal a heated cabinet meeting in which Labor ministers criticised Mr Clare for using “overblown rhetoric” and tarring thousands of sportspeople with accusations of widespread drug use. Colleagues advised Mr Clare to step away from the investigation until there was more evidence, a cabinet source said… Three months later, with no prosecutions, the government argues the main sign of success is “behaviour change” rather than catching criminals.
Really?
Gillard surrounded by bush fires. Rudd still ready to rescue
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (7:37am)
Simon Benson senses a familiar rumbling:
===KEVIN Rudd backers have again been accused of engaging in a final attempt to destabilise Prime Minister Julia Gillard before the election…To add to the pattern, former Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, another Rudd supporter, yesterday went on Sky to give veiled criticism of government cuts to security agencies and a lack of frankness over China in the latest Defence White Paper.
Rudd supporters have been accused of trying to inflame a sledging match in caucus after Senator John Faulkner condemned new laws which give political parties an extra $58 million in taxpayer-subsidised campaign funds and go soft on disclosure rules. Mr Faulkner called the laws a “disgrace”.
MPs were also taken by surprise when retiring MP Steve Gibbons, a fan of neither Ms Gillard or Mr Rudd, put a motion to the caucus calling for the PM to be stripped of her powers to choose her Cabinet - powers first granted to Mr Rudd in 2007… Mr Rudd yesterday backed Mr Gibbons’ call… The outbreak of dissent followed an unprecedented spray on Monday from another Labor MP, key Rudd supporter and chair of the intelligence and security committee Anthony Byrne, who also labelled as “disgraceful” budget cuts to intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies.
The answer to Islamism is truth and pride
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (7:20am)
The rise of radical Islam is helped by the fashionable disdain for the West promoted by the West’s intelligentsia:
===A study by the University of Melbourne’s David Malet—Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civil Conflicts—looking at “outside combatants” in conflicts across the past 200 years has found foreign fighters are becoming an increasing menace in countries such as Australia and more needs to be done to keep them engaged in the country in which they are citizens…Former Islamist radical Maajid Nawaz agrees a lack of strong identity - and a big dash of victimology - turned him into a menace, too:
Dr Malet argues that insurgent groups would have a harder time conscripting fighters if the likely recruits had a stronger sense of citizenship in their own country. “While some view nationalism as a threatening phenomenon, it presents an alternative to transnationalism, which is a driving force behind the rise of foreign fighters,” he said.
Add this to my own internal identity crisis - I didn’t know if I was British or Pakistani, Muslim or agnostic - and my disenfranchisement from mainstream society was complete.Writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim whose friend Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director, was murdered by an Islamist:
However, it’s what happened next that sealed my fate. I needed someone who could guide a broken and confused 16-year-old. Instead, I came across a charismatic recruiter espousing HT’s cause who sold me the ideology of Islamism in the name of Islam.
But Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society. To achieve this, Islamism uses political grievances, such as mine, to alienate and then provide an alternative sense of belonging to vulnerable young Muslims. Preying on the grievances of disaffected young men is the bedrock of Islamism.
Like all bigoted ideologies, it plays on the identity politics game, creating a “them and us”, in order to provide a home for the “us” against the alien “other” and control the community by acting as the sole “representative” of Muslims. One of the Woolwich jihadists ranted to onlookers: “You” have occupied “Our” lands. Spreading this sense of exclusive Muslim victimhood is crucial to the radicalisation process.
I’VE seen this before. A Muslim terrorist slays a non-Muslim citizen in the West, and representatives of the Muslim community rush to dissociate themselves and their faith from the horror.Governments seen as too weak against Islamist threats risk the public taking matters into its own hands - with ugly results:
After British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death last week in south London, Julie Siddiqi, for the Islamic Society of Britain, stepped before the microphones to attest that all good Muslims were “sickened” by the attack, “just like everyone else”.
This happens every time. Muslim men wearing suits and ties or women wearing stylish headscarves are sent out to reassure the world that these attacks have no place in real Islam, that they are aberrations and corruptions of the true faith.
But then what to make of Omar Bakri? He, too, claims to speak for the true faith, though he was unavailable for cameras in England last week because the Islamist group he founded, Al Muhajiroun, was banned in Britain in 2010. Instead, he talked to the media from Tripoli in Lebanon, where he now lives.
Michael Adebolajo - who was seen on a video at the scene of the Woolwich murder, talking to the camera while displaying his bloody hands and a meat cleaver - was Bakri’s student a decade ago… The teacher was impressed to see in the grisly video how far his shy disciple had come, “standing firm, courageous, brave. Not running away… May God reward (Adebolajo) for his actions . . . I don’t see it as a crime as far as Islam is concerned.”
The question requiring an answer at this moment in history is clear: which group of leaders really speaks for Islam. The officially approved spokesmen for the “Muslim community”? Or the manic street preachers of political Islam who indoctrinate, encourage and train the killers - then bless their bloodshed?… Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary.
TENSIONS over the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby rose yesterday with a firebomb attack on an Islamic building, the defacing of war memorials and various protest marches…
There were also marches by the English Defence League and associated right-wing groups. In the largest, EDL supporters chanted anti-Muslim slogans and clashed with police and anti-fascists outside Downing Street…
The rallies came as Scotland Yard made its 10th arrest since the soldier was murdered in Woolwich, southeast London. A 50-year-old man was being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. He was arrested in nearby Welling after buying a newspaper. A local address was being searched. A 22-year-old man, arrested on Sunday in Highbury Grove, North London, was still being questioned on suspicion of the same offence. Six other men, all in their 20s, have been arrested and bailed, while two women arrested last week face no further action.
Al-Ahmadzai is just one of that tiny minority
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (6:58am)
He was born here:
(No comments.)
A YOUNG Sydney Muslim threatened to “slit the throat” and “crack the neck” of an intelligence officer and has been under surveillance since he was 19, it was revealed in court yesterday.He denies being a threat and no weapons were found in his house.
Milad Bin Ahmad-Shah Al-Ahmadzai, 23, is alleged to have made the threat to a member of the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) over the phone two weeks ago.
“I’m gonna crack your neck,” the man is alleged to have said in a telephone conversation on May 2.
“Come near my family again, I’m gonna slit your throat, you pig."…
He has previously been identified as a terror threat to soldiers on Australian soil… Magistrate Margaret Quinn refused bail, saying there was evidence the accused had contact with the alleged victim’s family.
(No comments.)
===
Peter FitzSimons charged $8000 for … what?
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (6:52am)
The allegations of drinking and boorishness are one thing. What surprises me more is this detail:
In small mitigation:
===He said [Fairfax columnist Peter] FitzSimons, who is the husband of Today host Lisa Wilkinson, was paid $8000 to act as master of ceremonies at the ball, held at Brisbane’s Mercure hotel on May 18.I have considerably less money than Peter. Yet the day will never come that I charge to help a charity for children so desperately ill.
Childhood Cancer Support raises money for families of children who have been diagnosed with cancer.
In small mitigation:
Childhood Cancer Support chief executive Michael Luke said yesterday several guests had told him Mr FitzSimons’ behaviour was “a bit ordinary”.
He said the charity would not hire Mr FitzSimons again, although he appreciated that he had signed up to be a monthly donor to the charity.
Pricing ourselves out of billion-dollar business
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (6:47am)
We have squandered the future through greed, complacency and poor government, and I fear we will pay over the next three years:
===AUSTRALIA’S high-cost liquefied natural gas projects - the investment backbone of the nation’s economy - are under increasing pressure from Asian buyers demanding steeper discounts amid evidence at least $60 billion worth of gas supply deals have fallen over.
As burgeoning supply centres emerge in the US and east Africa, operators of Australia’s $200bn project pipeline of LNG plants on the northwest coast of Western Australia and in Gladstone in Queensland will find keener pricing on supply deals, industry leaders warn… The prices now being demanded by the big Asian buyers often do not cover the cost of higher-priced Australian projects. The industry has already warned that $100bn of potential LNG investment is at risk as higher labour bills and regulatory burdens push costs in Australia up to 30 per cent higher than competing regions.
Green carpetbaggers load up in Labor’s last four months
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (6:41am)
They are risking our money on risky loans for projects that won’t lower the temperature anyway, under a scheme almost certain to be scrapped in four months:
THE Clean Energy Finance Corporation is planning to write up to $800 million in green loans before the election, defying the Coalition’s call for the agency not to sign contracts before September 14 because Tony Abbott has vowed to scrap it.Why doesn’t the Gillard Government stop this reckless waste of scarce money?
The CEFC has revealed it is in “active discussions” with 50 projects seeking $2 billion and that an additional 119 project proponents have presented proposals that are seeking finance worth $3.3bn. The figures are contained in an email from the CEFC to the opposition pleading its case not to be scrapped if the Coalition wins the election.
===
Importing beggars
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (6:14am)
A consequence of Labor’s new “compassionate” border policies, which left the door wide open:
A new underclass of 100,000 asylum seekers, living on as little as $220 a week and with no rights to work, could be created in just five years if current trends continue.We are importing a very big social problem.
Charities have warned they are unable to cope with the rising tide of impoverished asylum seekers, with one centre in Melbourne’s south-east closing its doors to new clients after being ‘’swamped’’ with requests for food aid…
Since October 2011, 16,477 people have been released on bridging visas while their claims for protection are considered. Of these, 7256 are subject to the government’s no-advantage policies, meaning they have no rights to work and are eligible for just 89 per cent of the dole - about $220 a week.Immigration Department secretary Martin Bowles insisted at a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday there had been no ‘’freeze’’ on processing asylum seekers’ refugee applications - even though not one of the 19,760 who arrived after August 13 has had their claim processed.
===
Where are the “stolen” children, Robert?
Andrew Bolt May 29 2013 (12:03am)
[BUMPED FROM YESTERDAY]
Robert Manne long argued for an apology for the “stolen generation”, but his latest piece seems to suggest the “stolen generation” is really a metaphor for a wider “dispossession”:
What he doesn’t discuss in the piece is what might help to explain why he now prefers to discuss a wider apology for a more general offence to Aborigines.
I am referring, of course, to Manne’s failure to name even 10 of the children allegedly “stolen” from 1910 just for being Aboriginal, rather than for welfare concerns.
Should he not finally come clean on why he has failed to name just 10 “stolen” children not once, not twice but three times? Should he not concede that I can name more children who died because of the myth than he can name as truly “stolen”?
UPDATE
Robert Manne responds in comments below - but not by simply giving 10 names, 10 clear examples, which is all the response he’d need to demolish me:
Yes, some names are mentioned in an essay rich in personal abuse and, in my opinion, misrepresentation. Let’s just stick to the central issue - the 10 names I’ve challenged Manne for years to produce.
I did check names and cases. Here is some of what I found:
And he continues:
On he goes:
But check what happens when Manne does get specific. The cases vanish. As we’ve seen with other cases accepted by government and activists.
Manne continues:
As for other cases cited by Manne, I found the reality very different to what he’d implied:
Check the names Manne still - after all this debate and all this research - presents as children stolen just for being Aboriginal, by white officials wanting to rescue them “from their Aboriginality” to keep Australia pure.
If you think this not fair or even honest, you are not alone.
Robert Manne long argued for an apology for the “stolen generation”, but his latest piece seems to suggest the “stolen generation” is really a metaphor for a wider “dispossession”:
It is more or less universally believed that Kevin Rudd’s finest hour was the apology he delivered in February 2008 to the stolen generations. There were, however, certain limitations. First, Rudd’s speech did not transcend the confusion that had developed between the general historical apology to the Indigenous people and the historically specific one owed to the victims of Aboriginal child removal.He writes this in The Guardian, which seems to believe its new Australian edition needs old Australian polemics.
What he doesn’t discuss in the piece is what might help to explain why he now prefers to discuss a wider apology for a more general offence to Aborigines.
I am referring, of course, to Manne’s failure to name even 10 of the children allegedly “stolen” from 1910 just for being Aboriginal, rather than for welfare concerns.
Should he not finally come clean on why he has failed to name just 10 “stolen” children not once, not twice but three times? Should he not concede that I can name more children who died because of the myth than he can name as truly “stolen”?
UPDATE
Robert Manne responds in comments below - but not by simply giving 10 names, 10 clear examples, which is all the response he’d need to demolish me:
On half a dozen occasions while Bruce Guthrie was editor of the Herald Sun I requested 1,000 words to reply to Andrew Bolt’s views on the ‘stolen generations’ I never received a positive response. I now renew my request. I have answered Andrew recently in a 4000 word-plus blog those among your readers who are interested in this question will be able to find by a simple google search of The Monthly magazine’s website.I think Manne is referring to this post.
Yes, some names are mentioned in an essay rich in personal abuse and, in my opinion, misrepresentation. Let’s just stick to the central issue - the 10 names I’ve challenged Manne for years to produce.
The article claimed that Lowitja O’Donoghue, an Indigenous woman involved in the fight for the recognition of the injustice done to these children, had “confessed” that she had not been “stolen” at all but had simply been “removed” by her white father to a South Australian Christian mission. According to Bolt, here was vital evidence that the left-wing stolen generations myth was indeed a fraud.O’Donoghue had been cited by Manne and others as a member of the “stolen generations”. In fact, as she conceded to me, she had been sent by her white father to Colebrook home, and she should not have called herself “stolen”. Her youngest sister was left with their mother, and her life turned out nowhere near as well as Lowitja’s.
I decided to send him a reasonably detailed list of mixed descent children removed in the different states and territories between 1900 and 1970.Note, Manne does not cite the actual names. I’ve dealt with them in the links I’ve given above on Manne’s names - and here. As I demonstrate, they do not include names of children stolen just for being Aboriginal, and not for welfare reasons. Let me be clear that this was once Manne’s own definition of the “stolen generations”:
But what do we mean by “stolen”. Let me tell how Robert has defined it.Manne’s blog essay continues:
Says he: “It was not from harm that the mixed-descent children were rescued but from their Aboriginality.” ... And, he said in one essay, this was overseen by authorities who “wished, in part through the child removal policy, to help keep White Australia pure”.
Here there were 12 names.I have dealt with those names here and here. Check the links. Again, Manne has not named 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal, and not for welfare reasons. He included children sent to school, rescued from neglect, unwanted by their mother. (Manne lists some later again in his post, and I deal with them specifically below).
The second category was of “half-caste” children seized in Queensland at the beginning of the 20th century… All these children were ‘half-castes’ who came to the attention of the Protector Walter Roth… In this category I provided Bolt with some 65 names.Again, no names are given. No details of each case - other than some details of a “Walter”. And no wonder.
I did check names and cases. Here is some of what I found:
They included a fatherless 12-year-old girl with syphilis, a 13-year-old who was seven months pregnant and working for no wages on a station, and a boy who was kept chained up in a back yard by white employers when he was bad. Shirleene Robinson says Roth also rescued children kept as virtual slaves: “These children were extremely vulnerable to exploitation because of their position as members of a colonised population and because of their youth. During the period from 1842 to 1902, large number of Aboriginal children were kidnapped and removed from their families and traditional localities for employment, received no remuneration and suffered abuse by their employers.”Manne has never corrected the record. He continues to present Topsy and children like her as examples of the “stolen generation”.
Or as Professor Gordon Briscoe (an Aboriginal academic) has written of some of the children Roth saved::
Children suffered in almost all locations in which Aborigines lived, as the Chief Protector reported to his Minister when he advised that many Aboriginal children were suffering from syphilis. The dilemma Roth faced in providing health care was that he lacked the legislative power to act. This remained a difficult issue. For example, Topsy, ‘a little girl, twelve years of age, from Magoura Station, suffered with syphilis. The station owner brought her to Normanton where [she was] joined by her sister in the local camp’. Roth reluctantly sent the children directly to Mapoon mission. His report to the Minister indicated that he asked Protector Galbraith toBe clear about Manne’s deceit here. He counts Topsy and children like her - sexually abused, diseased, enslaved and kidnapped - as children that were not saved by Roth, but as ones he stole to “breed out the colour”. This is not such a cheap semantic trick by the professor. It is a gross moral error.
report as to the ability of the sister to provide Topsy’s wants....[Roth explained to the Minister about how he] did not care to trespass too much on the kindness of the Mapoon Mission people, to whom we have already sent diseased half-caste children; and if, ultimately, it may be desirable to send her there, I think it only fair that the Superintendent be consulted beforehand.
And he continues:
The third category was of children sent to “half-caste” institutions in the Northern Territory in the interwar period. As I explained to Bolt: “In the Northern Territory from the early 1920s ‘half-caste’ children were picked up by authorities of the Commonwealth government (which administered the Territory) and sent to one of two extraordinarily overcrowded ‘half-caste’ homes, in Darwin and Alice Springs. None of the children received any welfare assessment. None was taken before a court … The aspiration of the policy was to pick up all these children …” There were some 120 names in this group.Manne provides no details of each case. He does not give individual names in this post. In fact, the Federal Court judge in the Gunner-Cubillo “stolen generations” test case of removal practices in the Northern Territory ruled that while he did not deny there had been “stolen generations”, he could not say there had been such a policy in the Northern Territory:
However, I am limited to making findings on that the evidence that was presented to this Court in these proceedings; that evidence does not support a finding that there was any policy of removal of part Aboriginal children such as that alleged by the applicants: and if, contrary to that finding, there was such a policy, the evidence in these proceedings would not justify a finding that it was ever implemented as a matter of course in respect of these applicants.Lorna Cubillo, once named by Manne as a “stolen” child, was found in fact to have been rescued by authorities after being found in a bush camp with her mother dead, her father gone and her grandmother somewhere else. Peter Gunner, also named by Manne as stolen, was ruled to have been sent to a home in Alice Springs to get an education, with his mother signing a document after long negotiation to gain her permission. Why had Manne presented them as “stolen”? Why has he never apologised or recanted?
On he goes:
Finally in the fourth category I sent Bolt a list of 60 names of those who had been removed and had subsequently provided testimony to a Howard government-funded Stolen Generations Oral History Project.Again, what are the details of each case that prove Manne’s argument? Why does he not repeat the names here? All he need to it to cite 10 such. Just 10. Names and details.
But check what happens when Manne does get specific. The cases vanish. As we’ve seen with other cases accepted by government and activists.
Manne continues:
The document collection quoted a magistrate in Cardwell, Queensland, in 1903 who was approached by an Aboriginal mother whose 14-year-old son, Walter, had been seized and who then wrote on her behalf to the Protector Roth: “All the sophistry you can bring to bear upon it, cannot alter it from what it is viz. a barefaced case of kidnapping, dare you assert that under English law you have a better right to this boy than the mother who reared and fed him…”This one name, one case, from 1903 that does trouble me of all the ones Manne has ever produced. That said, as I show in the links I’ve provided, Roth removed children who seemed neglected. We do not know his reasoning in this case.
The memoir of Margaret Tucker, If Everyone Cared, was quoted to show the tragic human impact of the post-1911 New South Wales removals policy. The conservative Christian memoir, Mt Margaret: A Drop in the Bucket, written by Margaret Morgan, the daughter of missionaries in Western Australia, documented the crippling fears of the police felt by mothers of the children of mixed descent. The memoirs of Bob Randall, Songman, and John Moriarty, Saltwalter Fella, showed vividly how the policy operated in the Northern Territory during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Randall was sent to the Bungalow at Alice Springs to the outrage and distress of his Aboriginal family. Moriarty was one day taken by authority from school at Roper River. His mother simply did not know what had befallen him. Doris Kartinyeri tells us in her memoir, Kick The Tin, how in South Australia in 1945, shewas removed to a mission after her mother died in childbirth. Her entire Indigenous family was distraught.I have dealt with these cases several times and am amazed Manne still cites them as examples of children stolen by racist officials just for being Aboriginal. As I have said:
Randall, son of white station owner Bill Liddle, and at age seven was sent to the Bungalow at Alice Springs, where he’d live while he got a schooling there he couldn’t get at the station. He says he was “stolen”, but the Federal Court in the Gunner-Cubillo test case found there was no government policy in the Northern Terrritory at that time to steal children just for being black, and nor could it find any example of any child taken for such reasons.(Links at the link.)
Doris Kartinyeri, of the family behind the “secret women’s business” scandal, claims she was stolen because her widowed father thought the form he was signing was an application for child endowment, and not a permission form to have her given to the care of Colebrook Home. In fact, other children raised at Colebrook, such as Nancy Barnes, have told me they do not remember Katrinyeri as having been stolen, and South Australian law did not allow Aboriginal children to be stolen, either, as the South Australian court found three years ago in the Bruce Trevorrow case. Manne chooses to believe Kartinyeri was stolen. Many others would not, and with good reason.
Manne also lists Rosalie Fraser, who in fact writes that she was made a ward of the state at two in 1961 - but why? To “breed out the colour”, as Manne suggests? Or because of some family dysfunction? Manne does not say, yet the fact that Fraser was removed by child welfare officers, not Aboriginal welfare, and sent with one of her sisters to live with her father’s relatives suggests Fraser’s sad story is not part of the “stolen generations” narrative.
So why is Donna Meehan, adopted by a loving white family, on this list? She, too, was removed or sent away by her mother, but no one can say why. Meehan herself says her mother did not, or could not, say why her children were “taken”, and in her book mentions her father only once, only to say she felt no “bonding”. We need to know far more before accepting this name on Manne’s list, too, Ruth Hegarty‘s story is no clearer.
As for other cases cited by Manne, I found the reality very different to what he’d implied:
Robert also lists as stolen the late Robert Riley, citing as his source the biography by Quentin Beresford.(Sources given at the link.)
Did you actually read that book, Robert? Beresford says he in fact doesn’t know why Riley went to Sister Kate’s home as a two year old, although a file letter to the Minister of Child Welfare at the time records he was simply “left at this home, by his mother”. A later report from a welfare officer notes that his mother “showed no interest at all in her son”. And some of those who knew Riley later said his mother actually sent him to Sister Kate’s because her then boyfriend said he’d kill him if she didn’t…
Margaret Tucker, now, was 13 in 1917, when she was sent to a girls’ home. If this was to save her from Aboriginality, why was it done so late? Could it be that the authorities were worried that Tucker’s father had in fact left, her mother had gone to Sydney and some auntie was looking after her - or kind of? ... Then Robert lists John Moriarty, a successful designer whose single mother one day brought him to Roper River, from where he was sent south to go to a boarding school with, he says, aunties and uncles. Stolen? Or sent away?
Check the names Manne still - after all this debate and all this research - presents as children stolen just for being Aboriginal, by white officials wanting to rescue them “from their Aboriginality” to keep Australia pure.
If you think this not fair or even honest, you are not alone.
===
Promises kept by Gillard would make a shorter list
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:01pm)
Another broken promise, of course. But there’s been so many, who is keeping count?
===TEMPERS have flared in a fiery caucus meeting as Labor MPs were briefed about proposed electoral-law changes that would swell the election year coffers of the major parties and cost taxpayers $58 million over the forward estimates.
A source of MP anger was a mooted $5,000 disclosure threshold, negotiated in secret between the ALP and Coalition parties as part of a suite of reforms, which falls far short of the $1000 level the government had previously outlined in legislation currently before the Senate.
That lower disclosure threshold also formed part of an agreement between Julia Gillard and the Australian Greens struck in September 2010 in the wake of the stalemate election. The disclosure threshold for the current financial year is $12,100… In the agreement struck by the Greens with Labor in the wake of the stalemate August 2010 election, the second stated goal was: “Seek immediate reform of funding of political parties and election campaigns by legislating to lower the donation disclosure threshold from an indexed $11,500 to $1000...”
Gillard breaches suppression order
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (4:23pm)
The Prime Minister made a major gaffe in Parliament today, discussing a legal case in Question Time that was apparently isubject to a suppression order. To make things worse, she did so in response to a Dorothy Dixer, in an apparent attempt in part to address an image problem caused by another line of questioning by the Opposition.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in a press conference afterwards struggled to explain the cock-up. Did he have a role in it?
UPDATE
Thanks to a reader who knows:
(No comments.)
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in a press conference afterwards struggled to explain the cock-up. Did he have a role in it?
UPDATE
Thanks to a reader who knows:
11.30am - Application lodgedFrom the media reports of a court case tonight, it seems the suppression order has since been relaxed or lifted.
12.55pm - Application for interim order made by Magistrate
1pm - Media informed.
2pm - Question Time starts.
(No comments.)
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"Alice Walker was front and center with Roger Waters as the two of them attempted to block Carnegie Hall from hosting the Israeli Philharmonic in October, 2012. Now Alice Walker is scheduled to appear at the 92nd Street Y on Thursday, May 30." - Lori Lowenthal Marcus, jewishpress.com
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"Hezbollah has used German territory to raise funds for the families of suicide bombers involved in killing Israelis. A 2009 report from the European Foundation for Democracy, titled Hizbullah’s Fund-raising Organization in Germany, revealed that the Orphans Project Lebanon (Waisenkinderprojekt Libanon e.V.), situated in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, is “the German branch of a Hezbollah suborganization” that “promotes suicide bombings” and aims to destroy Israel.
The Federal Republic still allows the Waisenkinderprojekt Libanon e.V. to operate but eliminated its tax subsidy several years ago.
Germany has a large Hezbollah organization on its soil. According to a German domestic-intelligence agency, there are an estimated 950 members as of 2011.
It is unclear if Germany’s interior ministry will evict Hezbollah members from Germany and shut down the Hezbollah-controlled Orphans Project Lebanon." - Benjamin Weinthal, 27th May 2013 - The Jerusalem Post
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"Hussein Fayyad, one of the commanders of the terror group that carried out the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, revealed on Tuesday that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had appointed him as one of his advisers.
The attack, which led to the killing of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, was planned and carried out by Abbas’s Fatah faction." - Khaled Abu Toameh, jpost, 29 May 2013
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Did you know "listen" and"silent" use the same letters?
Do you also know that the words"race car" spelled backwards still spells
"race car?"
And that "eat" is the only word that if you take the first letter and move
it to the last, it spells its past tense "ate"?
===
As the election nears, Pickering returns to the old horse - ed
TONY’S NOSE IN THE SAME TROUGH... but is he thinking ahead?
It will now cost you one dollar to vote for a major party in a Federal election. You won’t have to pay at the booth but as a taxpayer you will certainly have to pay, and this iniquitous bastardry has the support of Abbott. Why? In this election it gives Gillard a distinct advantage!
Private and corporate donations will remain but a windfall of $14 million will be available for more political advertising to convince you who to vote for.
Of course the reason given for this dastardly legislation is to promote integrity in political funding. That’s just a load of frog droppings!
The corporate sector’s donations are relative to the chances of a given party winning office.
In this election Gillard cannot rely on private donations because it is assumed she will lose. Therefore she will not be in a position to repay any favours due.
Abbott’s ability to raise corporate funds will be substantial as, in Government, he will be in a position to look kindly on donors. At least that’s the donor’s perception and remember, it didn’t work with Clive Palmer
When I stood in a Federal election I received sums of money from the private sector.
My opponent received 3 and 4 times the amount I did, from the same donors, simply because my opponent was 3 or 4 times more likely to win. It was the very safe Labor seat of Fraser.
Had the donors known I would register a record 16% swing, the ratio of donations would have been very different, probably enough for me to win the seat, which would have scared crap out of me. I’m no backbencher.
Anyway that’s the way it works. So, why has Abbott agreed to revisit the trough when the advantage will clearly be with Gillard?
She will not attract private funding because no-one but she believes she can win!
Even the unions are a little circumspect and not keen to waste money on Gillard. They have demanded a levy from their members rather than dip into their untaxed slush accounts.
Well Abbott knows that one day, as an underdog, those taxpayer funds will be needed by the LNP and he can’t expect Labor to agree to this sort of legislation then.
And right now he knows he has a sufficient lead for it not to affect the outcome of this election.
Don’t ya just love politics?
===
"A bipartisan letter from members of Congress objecting to Iran assuming the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament is being ignored by United Nations officials.
The meetings of the Conference are held at the United Nations building in Geneva, the Palais des Nations. Etc. And the UN Secretary-General still thinks he has no responsibility to call on UN member states to ensure that a state bent on acquiring nuclear weapons is not heading the body tasked with preventing their acquisition." - http://www.humanrightsvoices.org/
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For USA Viewers, sometimes FRONTLINE will post a documentary online
In Pakistan, women and girls who allege rape are often more strongly condemned than their alleged rapists. Some are even killed by their own families. For this unforgettable documentary, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann spent years tracing one alleged rape victim's odyssey through Pakistan’s flawed justice system—as well as her alleged rapists’ quest to clear their names.
===
"What happens in a tornado, stays in a tornado"
===
PRAY ALONG!
Father God,I thank You for speaking through me. Thank You for using me to be a blessing to others. Thank You for encouraging my heart as I find ways to encourage the people around me. I love You and bless Your holy Name. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
===
Let The Encouragement Share You Up!
Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up(Proverbs 12:25)
Our words can be what keeps a person going; our compliments can put a spring back into their step. Now more than ever, we need to automatically let the encouragement flow. We need to tell others how much we love them, how we value them, and tell them that they are talented and creative. Always remember, with your words you carry life-giving water. You carry hope, healing, encouragement and new beginnings, and you can pour it out everywhere you go.God bless you.
===
- 1453 – With the conquest of Constantinople, theByzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans.
- 1852 – Swedish operatic soprano Jenny Lind (pictured)concluded a widely successful concert tour of the US under the management of showman P. T. Barnum.
- 1900 – N'Djamena, now the capital of Chad, was founded as Fort-Lamy by French commander Émile Gentil.
- 1953 – New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-IndianSherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
- 1982 – Falklands War: Approximately 1,000 Argentine forces surrendered, ending the Battle of Goose Green.
- 363 – The Roman emperor Julian defeats the Sasanian army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sasanian capital, but is unable to take the city.
- 1108 – Battle of Uclés: Almoravid troops under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf defeat a Castile and León alliance under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez.
- 1167 – Battle of Monte Porzio: A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel.
- 1176 – Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeats Emperor Frederick I.
- 1328 – Philip VI is crowned King of France.
- 1453 – Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.
- 1660 – English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
- 1733 – The right of settlers in New France to enslave natives is upheld at Quebec City.
- 1780 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continue attacking after the Continentals lay down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained.
- 1790 – Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.
- 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are executed as rebels by the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
- 1807 – Mustafa IV became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.
- 1848 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
- 1852 – Jenny Lind leaves New York after her two-year American tour.
- 1861 – The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce is founded, in Hong Kong.
- 1864 – Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico arrives in Mexico for the first time.
- 1867 – The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 ("the Compromise") is born through Act 12, which establishes the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
- 1868 – Mihailo Obrenović III, Prince of Serbia is assassinated.
- 1886 – The pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.
- 1900 – N'Djamena is founded as Fort-Lamy by the French commander Émile Gentil.
- 1903 – In the May Coup, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand(Crna Ruka) organization.
- 1913 – Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
- 1914 – The Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with the loss of 1,012 lives.
- 1918 – Armenia defeats the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarabad.
- 1919 – Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin.
- 1931 – Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini.
- 1932 – World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.
- 1935 – First flight of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aeroplane.
- 1945 – First combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber.
- 1950 – The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
- 1953 – Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday.
- 1964 – The Arab League meets in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
- 1973 – Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California.
- 1982 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral.
- 1982 – Falklands War: British forces defeat the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green.
- 1985 – Heysel Stadium disaster: Thirty-nine association football fans die and hundreds are injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses.
- 1985 – Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
- 1988 – The U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
- 1989 – Signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States, allowing the manufacture of parts of the F-16 jet fighter plane in Egypt.
- 1990 – The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
- 1993 – The Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant is held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens.
- 1999 – Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
- 1999 – Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.
- 2001 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments.
- 2004 – The National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
- 2008 – A doublet earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, strikes Iceland near the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people.
- 2012 – A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hits northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people.
- 1421 – Charles, Prince of Viana (d. 1461)
- 1439 – Pope Pius III (d. 1503)
- 1443 – Victor, Duke of Münsterberg, Reichsgraf, Duke of Münsterberg and Opava, Count of Glatz (d. 1500)
- 1504 – Antun Vrančić, Croatian archbishop (d. 1573)
- 1555 – George Carew, 1st Earl of Totnes, English Earl, general and administrator (d. 1629)
- 1568 – Virginia de' Medici, Italian princess (d. 1615)
- 1594 – Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim, Bavarian field marshal (d. 1632)
- 1627 – Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, French princess (d. 1693)
- 1630 – Charles II of England (d. 1685)
- 1675 – Humphry Ditton, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1715)
- 1716 – Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, French zoologist and mineralogist (d. 1800)
- 1722 – James FitzGerald, 1st Duke of Leinster, Irish soldier and politician (d. 1773)
- 1730 – Jackson of Exeter, English organist and composer (d. 1803)
- 1736 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia (d. 1799)
- 1780 – Henri Braconnot, French chemist and pharmacist (d. 1855)
- 1794 – Johann Heinrich von Mädler, German astronomer and selenographer (d. 1874)
- 1823 – John H. Balsley, American carpenter and inventor (d. 1895)
- 1860 – Isaac Albéniz, Spanish pianist and composer (d. 1909)
- 1871 – Clark Voorhees, American painter (d. 1933)
- 1873 – Rudolf Tobias, Estonian organist and composer (d. 1918)
- 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, poet, and playwright (d. 1936)
- 1880 – Oswald Spengler, German historian and philosopher (d. 1936)
- 1892 – Alfonsina Storni, Swiss-Argentinian poet and author (d. 1938)
- 1893 – Max Brand, American journalist and author (d. 1944)
- 1894 – Beatrice Lillie, Canadian-English actress, singer and writer (d. 1989)
- 1894 – Josef von Sternberg, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1969)
- 1897 – Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Czech-American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1957)
- 1899 – Douglas Abbott, Canadian lawyer and politician, 10th Canadian Minister of Defence (d. 1987)
- 1902 – Harry Kadwell, Australian rugby league player and coach (d. 1999)
- 1903 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2003)
- 1904 – Hubert Opperman, Australian cyclist and politician (d. 1996)
- 1905 – Sebastian Shaw, English actor, director, and playwright (d. 1994)
- 1906 – T. H. White, Indian-English author (d. 1964)
- 1907 – Hartland Molson, Canadian captain and politician (d. 2002)
- 1908 – Diana Morgan, Welsh-English playwright and screenwriter (d. 1996)
- 1910 – Ralph Metcalfe, American sprinter and politician (d. 1978)
- 1913 – Tony Zale, American boxer (d. 1997)
- 1914 – Stacy Keach Sr., American actor (d. 2003)
- 1914 – Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese-Indian mountaineer (d. 1986)
- 1915 – Karl Münchinger, German conductor and composer (d. 1990)
- 1917 – John F. Kennedy, American lieutenant and politician, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
- 1917 – Marcel Trudel, Canadian historian, author, and academic (d. 2011)
- 1919 – Jacques Genest, Canadian physician and academic (d. 2018)
- 1920 – John Harsanyi, Hungarian-American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2000)
- 1920 – Clifton James, American actor (d. 2017)
- 1921 – Norman Hetherington, Australian cartoonist and puppeteer (d. 2010)
- 1922 – Joe Weatherly, American race car driver (d. 1964)
- 1922 – Iannis Xenakis, Greek-French composer, engineer, and theorist (d. 2001)
- 1923 – Bernard Clavel, French author (d. 2010)
- 1923 – John Parker, 6th Earl of Morley, English colonel and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Devon (d. 2015)
- 1923 – Eugene Wright, American jazz bassist
- 1924 – Lars Bo, Danish author and illustrator (d. 1999)
- 1924 – Miloslav Kříž, Czech basketball player and coach (d. 2013)
- 1924 – Pepper Paire, American baseball player (d. 2013)
- 1926 – Katie Boyle, Italian-English actress and television host (d. 2018)
- 1926 – Halaevalu Mataʻaho ʻAhomeʻe, Queen Consort of Tonga (d. 2017)
- 1926 – Abdoulaye Wade, Senegalese academic and politician, 3rd President of Senegal
- 1927 – Jean Coutu, Canadian pharmacist and businessman, founded the Jean Coutu Group
- 1929 – Harry Frankfurt, American philosopher and academic
- 1929 – Peter Higgs, English-Scottish physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1929 – Roberto Vargas, Puerto Rican-American baseball player, coach, and manager (d. 2014)
- 1932 – Paul R. Ehrlich, American biologist and author
- 1932 – Richie Guerin, American basketball player and coach
- 1933 – Helmuth Rilling, German conductor and educator
- 1933 – Tarquinio Provini, Italian motorcycle racer (d. 2005)
- 1934 – Bill Vander Zalm, Dutch-Canadian businessman and politician, 28th Premier of British Columbia
- 1935 – André Brink, South African author and playwright (d. 2015)
- 1935 – Sylvia Robinson, American singer and producer (d. 2011)
- 1937 – Charles W. Pickering, American lawyer and judge
- 1937 – Irmin Schmidt, German keyboard player and composer
- 1937 – Alwin Schockemöhle, German show-jumper
- 1937 – Harry Statham, American basketball player and coach
- 1938 – Christopher Bland, English businessman and politician (d. 2017)
- 1938 – Fay Vincent, American lawyer and businessman
- 1939 – Pete Smith, Australian radio and television announcer
- 1939 – Al Unser, American race car driver
- 1940 – Taihō Kōki, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 48th Yokozuna (d. 2013)
- 1940 – Farooq Leghari, Pakistani politician, 8th President of Pakistan (d. 2010)
- 1941 – Doug Scott, English mountaineer and author
- 1941 – Bob Simon, American journalist (d. 2015)
- 1942 – Pierre Bourque, Canadian businessman and politician, 40th Mayor of Montreal
- 1942 – Kevin Conway, American actor and director
- 1943 – Robert W. Edgar, American educator and politician (d. 2013)
- 1944 – Bob Benmosche, American businessman (d. 2015)
- 1944 – Quentin Davies, English soldier and politician, Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
- 1945 – Gary Brooker, English singer-songwriter and pianist
- 1945 – Peter Fraser, Baron Fraser of Carmyllie, Scottish lawyer and politician, Solicitor General for Scotland (d. 2013)
- 1945 – Julian Le Grand, English economist and author
- 1945 – Martin Pipe, English jockey and trainer
- 1945 – Joyce Tenneson, American photographer
- 1945 – Jean-Pierre Van Rossem, Belgian scholar and author
- 1946 – Fernando Buesa, Spanish politician (d. 2000)
- 1947 – Anthony Geary, American actor
- 1948 – Michael Berkeley, English composer and radio host
- 1948 – Keith Gull, English microbiologist and academic
- 1949 – Robert Axelrod, American actor and screenwriter
- 1949 – Francis Rossi, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1950 – Rebbie Jackson, American singer and actress
- 1953 – Danny Elfman, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor
- 1954 – Robert Beaser, American composer and educator
- 1954 – Jerry Moran, American lawyer and politician
- 1955 – Frank Baumgartl, German runner (d. 2010)
- 1955 – John Hinckley Jr., American attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan
- 1955 – David Kirschner, American animator, producer, and author
- 1955 – Gordon Rintoul, Scottish historian and curator
- 1955 – Ken Schrader, American race car driver and sportscaster
- 1956 – Mark Lyall Grant, English diplomat, British Ambassador to the United Nations
- 1956 – La Toya Jackson, American singer-songwriter and actress
- 1957 – Steven Croft, English bishop and theologian
- 1957 – Jeb Hensarling, American lawyer and politician
- 1957 – Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iranian film director
- 1958 – Annette Bening, American actress
- 1958 – Juliano Mer-Khamis, Israeli actor, director, and activist (d. 2011)
- 1958 – Uwe Rapolder, German footballer and coach
- 1958 – Mike Stenhouse, American baseball player and sportscaster
- 1959 – Rupert Everett, English actor and novelist
- 1959 – Mel Gaynor, English drummer
- 1959 – Steve Hanley, Irish-English bass player and songwriter
- 1960 – Thomas Baumer, Swiss economist and academic
- 1960 – Mike Freer, English politician
- 1961 – Melissa Etheridge, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist
- 1961 – John Miceli, American drummer
- 1962 – Fandi Ahmad, Singaporean footballer, coach, and manager
- 1962 – Eric Davis, American baseball player
- 1962 – Carol Kirkwood, Scottish journalist
- 1962 – Chloé Sainte-Marie, Canadian actress and singer
- 1963 – Blaze Bayley, English singer-songwriter
- 1963 – Zhu Jianhua, Chinese high jumper
- 1963 – Ukyo Katayama, Japanese race car driver
- 1963 – Claude Loiselle, Canadian ice hockey player and manager
- 1964 – Howard Mills III, American academic and politician
- 1967 – Noel Gallagher, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1967 – Mike Keane, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1967 – Steven Levitt, American economist, author, and academic
- 1968 – Torquhil Campbell, 13th Duke of Argyll, Scottish politician
- 1968 – Tate George, American basketball player
- 1968 – Jessica Morden, English politician
- 1968 – Hida Viloria, American activist[1]
- 1970 – Natarsha Belling, Australian journalist
- 1970 – Roberto Di Matteo, Italian footballer and manager
- 1971 – Éric Lucas, Canadian boxer
- 1971 – Bernd Mayländer, German race car driver
- 1971 – Jo Beth Taylor, Australian television host and actress
- 1971 – Rob Womack, English shot putter and discus thrower
- 1972 – Bill Curley, American basketball player and coach
- 1972 – Simon Jones, English singer and bass player
- 1973 – Tomoko Kaneda, Japanese voice actress, singer, and radio personality
- 1973 – Mark Lee, American guitarist and songwriter
- 1973 – Alpay Özalan, Turkish footballer
- 1974 – Steve Cardenas, American martial artist and retired actor
- 1974 – Stephen Larkham, Australian rugby player and coach
- 1974 – Aaron McGruder, American author and cartoonist
- 1974 – Myf Warhurst, Australian radio and television host
- 1974 – Jenny Willott, English politician
- 1975 – Jason Allison, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1975 – Mel B, English singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress
- 1975 – Sven Kubis, German footballer
- 1975 – Sarah Millican, English comedian
- 1975 – Anthony Wall, English golfer
- 1975 – Daniel Tosh, American comedian, television host, actor, writer, and executive producer
- 1976 – Caçapa, Brazilian footballer and manager
- 1976 – Jerry Hairston Jr., American baseball player and sportscaster
- 1976 – Raef LaFrentz, American basketball player
- 1976 – Yegor Titov, Russian footballer
- 1977 – Massimo Ambrosini, Italian footballer
- 1977 – Marco Cassetti, Italian footballer
- 1977 – António Lebo Lebo, Angolan footballer
- 1978 – Pelle Almqvist, Swedish singer-songwriter
- 1978 – Sébastien Grosjean, French tennis player
- 1978 – Lorenzo Odone, Italian-American adrenoleukodystrophy patient who inspired the 1992 film, Lorenzo's Oil (d. 2008)
- 1978 – Adam Rickitt, English singer
- 1979 – Arne Friedrich, German footballer
- 1979 – Brian Kendrick, American wrestler
- 1979 – John Rheinecker, American baseball player
- 1980 – Ernesto Farías, Argentinian footballer
- 1981 – Andrey Arshavin, Russian footballer
- 1982 – Ana Beatriz Barros, Brazilian model
- 1982 – Nataliya Dobrynska, Ukrainian heptathlete
- 1982 – Matt Macri, American baseball player
- 1982 – Kim Tae-kyun, South Korean baseball player
- 1984 – Carmelo Anthony, American basketball player
- 1984 – Funmi Jimoh, American long jumper
- 1984 – Andreas Schäffer, German footballer
- 1984 – Ina Wroldsen, Norwegian singer and songwriter
- 1985 – Nathan Horton, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1987 – Lina Andrijauskaitė, Lithuanian long jumper
- 1987 – Issac Luke, New Zealand rugby league player
- 1987 – Kelvin Maynard, Dutch footballer
- 1987 – Noah Reid, Canadian actor, producer, and screenwriter
- 1987 – Rui Sampaio, Portuguese footballer
- 1988 – Muath Al-Kasasbeh, Jordanian captain and pilot (d. 2015)
- 1988 – Cheng Fei, Chinese gymnast
- 1988 – Steve Mason, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1989 – Ezekiel Ansah, Ghanaian-American football player
- 1989 – Diego Barisone, Argentinian footballer (d. 2015)
- 1989 – Riley Keough, American model and actress
- 1990 – Davit Gharibyan, Armenian model and actor,
- 1990 – Joe Biagini, American baseball pitcher
- 1992 – Sarah Moundir, Swiss tennis player
- 1993 – Jana Čepelová, Slovak tennis player
- 1993 – Maika Monroe, American actress and kiteboarder
- 1993 – Grete Šadeiko, Estonian heptathlete
- 1998 – Markelle Fultz, American basketball player
- 1999 – Park Ji-hoon, South Korean singer and actor
- 931 – Jimeno Garcés of Pamplona
- 1040 – Renauld I, Count of Nevers
- 1259 – Christopher I of Denmark (b. 1219)
- 1311 – James II of Majorca (b. 1243)
- 1320 – Pope John VIII of Alexandria, Coptic pope
- 1327 – Jens Grand, Danish archbishop (b. c. 1260)
- 1379 – Henry II of Castile (b. 1334)
- 1405 – Philippe de Mézières, French soldier and author (b. 1327)
- 1425 – Hongxi Emperor of China (b. 1378)
- 1453 – Ulubatlı Hasan, Ottoman commander (b. 1428)
- 1453 – Constantine XI Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (b. 1404)
- 1500 – Bartolomeu Dias, Portuguese explorer and navigator (b. 1451)
- 1500 – Thomas Rotherham, English cleric and minister (b. 1423)
- 1546 – David Beaton, Scottish cardinal and politician, Lord Chancellor of Scotland (b. 1494)
- 1593 – John Penry, Welsh martyr (b. 1559)
- 1660 – Frans van Schooten, Dutch mathematician and academic (b. 1615)
- 1691 – Cornelis Tromp, Dutch admiral (b. 1629)
- 1790 – Israel Putnam, American general (b. 1718)
- 1796 – Carl Fredrik Pechlin, Swedish general and politician (b. 1720)
- 1814 – Joséphine de Beauharnais, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte (b. 1763)
- 1829 – Humphry Davy, English-Swiss chemist and academic (b. 1778)
- 1847 – Emmanuel de Grouchy, Marquis de Grouchy, French general (b. 1766)
- 1866 – Winfield Scott, American general, lawyer, and politician (b. 1786)
- 1873 – Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine (b. 1870)
- 1892 – Bahá'u'lláh, Persian religious leader, founded the Bahá'í Faith (b. 1817)
- 1896 – Gabriel Auguste Daubrée, French geologist and academic (b. 1814)
- 1903 – Bruce Price, American architect, designed the Château Frontenac and American Surety Building (b. 1845)
- 1910 – Mily Balakirev, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1837)
- 1911 – W. S. Gilbert, English playwright and poet (b. 1836)
- 1914 – Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving, English author and playwright (b. 1871)
- 1914 – Henry Seton-Karr, English explorer, hunter, and author (b. 1853)
- 1917 – Kate Harrington, American poet and educator (b. 1831)
- 1919 – Robert Bacon, American colonel and politician, 39th United States Secretary of State (b. 1860)
- 1920 – Carlos Deltour, French rower (b. 1864)
- 1921 – Abbott Handerson Thayer, American painter and educator (b. 1849)
- 1935 – Josef Suk, Czech violinist and composer (b. 1874)
- 1939 – Ursula Ledóchowska, Austrian-Polish nun and saint, founded the Congregation of the Ursulines of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus (b. 1865)
- 1941 – Léo-Pol Morin, Canadian pianist, composer, and educator (b. 1892)
- 1942 – John Barrymore, American actor (b. 1882)
- 1946 – Martin Gottfried Weiss, German SS officer (b. 1905)
- 1948 – May Whitty, English actress (b. 1865)
- 1951 – Fanny Brice, American singer and comedian (b. 1891)
- 1951 – Dimitrios Levidis, Greek-French soldier and composer (b. 1885)
- 1953 – Morgan Russell, American painter and educator (b. 1886)
- 1957 – James Whale, English director (b. 1889)
- 1958 – Juan Ramón Jiménez, Spanish poet and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
- 1963 – Netta Muskett, English author (b. 1887)
- 1966 – Ignace Lepp, Estonian-French priest and psychologist (b. 1909)
- 1968 – Arnold Susi, Estonian lawyer and politician, Estonian Minister of Education (b. 1896)
- 1970 – John Gunther, American journalist and author (b. 1901)
- 1970 – Eva Hesse, American artist (b. 1936)
- 1972 – Moe Berg, American baseball player, coach, and spy (b. 1902)
- 1972 – Stephen Timoshenko, Ukrainian-American engineer and academic (b. 1878)
- 1973 – George Harriman, English businessman (b. 1908)
- 1977 – Ba Maw, Burmese politician, Prime Minister of Burma (b. 1893)
- 1979 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded United Artists (b. 1892)
- 1979 – John H. Wood Jr., American lawyer and judge (b. 1916)
- 1982 – Romy Schneider, Austrian actress (b. 1938)
- 1983 – Arvīds Pelše, Latvian-Russian historian and politician (b. 1899)
- 1987 – Charan Singh, Indian politician, 5th Prime Minister of India (b. 1902)
- 1988 – Salem bin Laden, Saudi Arabian businessman (b. 1946)
- 1989 – George C. Homans, American sociologist and academic (b. 1910)
- 1993 – Billy Conn, American boxer (b. 1917)
- 1994 – Erich Honecker, German lawyer and politician (b. 1912)
- 1996 – Tamara Toumanova, American ballerina and actress (b. 1919)
- 1997 – Jeff Buckley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1966)
- 1998 – Barry Goldwater, American general, activist, and politician (b. 1909)
- 2003 – David Jefferies, English motorcycle racer (b. 1972)
- 2004 – Archibald Cox, American lawyer and politician, 31st United States Solicitor General (b. 1912)
- 2004 – Samuel Dash, American academic and politician (b. 1925)
- 2005 – John D'Amico, Canadian ice hockey player and referee (b. 1937)
- 2005 – Hamilton Naki, South African surgeon (b. 1926)
- 2005 – George Rochberg, American soldier and composer (b. 1918)
- 2006 – Jacques Bouchard, Canadian businessman (b. 1930)
- 2007 – Dave Balon, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (b. 1938)
- 2007 – Lois Browne-Evans, Bermudian lawyer and politician (b. 1927)
- 2008 – Luc Bourdon, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1987)
- 2008 – Harvey Korman, American actor and comedian (b. 1927)
- 2010 – Dennis Hopper, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1936)
- 2011 – Sergei Bagapsh, Abkhazian politician, 2nd President of Abkhazia (b. 1949)
- 2011 – Bill Clements, American soldier and politician, 42nd Governor of Texas (b. 1917)
- 2011 – Ferenc Mádl, Hungarian academic and politician, 14th President of Hungary (b. 1931)
- 2012 – Mark Minkov, Russian composer (b. 1944)
- 2012 – Kaneto Shindo, Japanese director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1912)
- 2012 – Doc Watson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1923)
- 2013 – Richard Ballantine, American-English journalist and author (b. 1940)
- 2013 – Françoise Blanchard, French actress (b. 1954)
- 2013 – Andrew Greeley, American priest, sociologist, and author (b. 1928)
- 2013 – Mulgrew Miller, American pianist and composer (b. 1955)
- 2013 – Henry Morgentaler, Polish-Canadian physician and activist (b. 1923)
- 2013 – Franca Rame, Italian actress and playwright (b. 1928)
- 2013 – Ludwig G. Strauss, German physician and academic (b. 1949)
- 2013 – Wali-ur-Rehman, Pakistani commander (b. 1970)
- 2014 – Christine Charbonneau, Canadian singer-songwriter (b. 1943)
- 2014 – Walter Jakob Gehring, Swiss biologist and academic (b. 1939)
- 2014 – Peter Glaser, Czech-American scientist and engineer (b. 1923)
- 2014 – Miljenko Prohaska, Croatian composer and conductor (b. 1925)
- 2014 – Herman Rattliff, American businessman and politician (b. 1926)
- 2014 – William M. Roth, American businessman (b. 1916)
- 2015 – Henry Carr, American football player and sprinter (b. 1942)
- 2015 – Doris Hart, American tennis player (b. 1925)
- 2015 – Betsy Palmer, American actress (b. 1926)
- 2017 – Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general and politician, Military Leader of Panama (b. 1934)
- 2017 – Mordechai Tzipori, Israeli Lieutenant General and minister (b. 1924)
- 2017 – Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Greek politician and prime minister (b. 1918)
- Army Day (Argentina)
- Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh (Bahá'í Faith) (Only if Bahá'í Naw-Rúz falls on March 21 of the Gregorian calendar)
- Christian feast day:
- Bona of Pisa
- Maximin of Trier
- Pope Alexander of Alexandria (Eastern Orthodox Church)
- Theodosia of Constantinople (Eastern Orthodox Church)
- Helena Dragaš (Saint Hypomone; Eastern Orthodox Church)
- Ursula Ledóchowska
- May 29 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- Democracy Day (Nigeria)
- Earliest day on which Feast of the Sacred Heart can fall, while July 2 is the latest; celebrated 19 days after Pentecost. (Catholic Church)
- International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers (International)
- Oak Apple Day (England), and its related observance:
- Statehood Day (Rhode Island and Wisconsin)
- Veterans Day (Sweden)
- World Digestive Health Day
- May 29 – June 1 Ludi Fabarici (Ancient Rome)
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” - Romans 12:15
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
Here is a precious truth for thee, believer. Thou mayest be poor, or in suffering, or unknown, but for thine encouragement take a review of thy "calling" and the consequences that flow from it, and especially that blessed result here spoken of. As surely as thou art God's child today, so surely shall all thy trials soon be at an end, and thou shalt be rich to all the intents of bliss. Wait awhile, and that weary head shall wear the crown of glory, and that hand of labour shall grasp the palm-branch of victory. Lament not thy troubles, but rather rejoice that ere long thou wilt be where "there shall be neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." The chariots of fire are at thy door, and a moment will suffice to bear thee to the glorified. The everlasting song is almost on thy lip. The portals of heaven stand open for thee. Think not that thou canst fail of entering into rest. If he hath called thee, nothing can divide thee from his love. Distress cannot sever the bond; the fire of persecution cannot burn the link; the hammer of hell cannot break the chain. Thou art secure; that voice which called thee at first, shall call thee yet again from earth to heaven, from death's dark gloom to immortality's unuttered splendours. Rest assured, the heart of him who has justified thee beats with infinite love towards thee. Thou shalt soon be with the glorified, where thy portion is; thou art only waiting here to be made meet for the inheritance, and that done, the wings of angels shall waft thee far away, to the mount of peace, and joy, and blessedness, where,
"Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in,"
thou shalt rest forever and ever.
Evening
"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope."
Lamentations 3:21
Lamentations 3:21
Memory is frequently the bond slave of despondency. Dispairing minds call to remembrance every dark foreboding in the past, and dilate upon every gloomy feature in the present; thus memory, clothed in sackcloth, presents to the mind a cup of mingled gall and wormwood. There is, however, no necessity for this. Wisdom can readily transform memory into an angel of comfort. That same recollection which in its left hand brings so many gloomy omens, may be trained to bear in its right a wealth of hopeful signs. She need not wear a crown of iron, she may encircle her brow with a fillet of gold, all spangled with stars. Thus it was in Jeremiah's experience: in the previous verse memory had brought him to deep humiliation of soul: "My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me;" and now this same memory restored him to life and comfort. "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope." Like a two-edged sword, his memory first killed his pride with one edge, and then slew his despair with the other. As a general principle, if we would exercise our memories more wisely, we might, in our very darkest distress, strike a match which would instantaneously kindle the lamp of comfort. There is no need for God to create a new thing upon the earth in order to restore believers to joy; if they would prayerfully rake the ashes of the past, they would find light for the present; and if they would turn to the book of truth and the throne of grace, their candle would soon shine as aforetime. Be it ours to remember the lovingkindness of the Lord, and to rehearse his deeds of grace. Let us open the volume of recollection which is so richly illuminated with memorials of mercy, and we shall soon be happy. Thus memory may be, as Coleridge calls it, "the bosom-spring of joy," and when the Divine Comforter bends it to his service, it may be chief among earthly comforters.
===Today's reading: 2 Chronicles 4-6, John 10:24-42 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: 2 Chronicles 4-6
The Temple's Furnishings
1 He made a bronze altar twenty cubits long, twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high. 2 He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. 3Below the rim, figures of bulls encircled it--ten to a cubit. The bulls were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea....
Today's New Testament reading: John 10:24-42
24 The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly."
25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one."
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