Curriculum development day is getting distressing at extreme left wing schools in Victoria. Also, Trump Derangement Syndrome claims many intellectuals. Red Hen owner destroys their own business as Trump Derangement Syndrome claims another victim.
Reports are coming in Dr William McBride has died, but no links. He was one of Australia's greatest researchers who achieved fame for linking Thalidomide to birth defects. His later work was attacked for his advocacy. Almost as if he had not believed in AGW.
Rebel Wilson has had her damages cut for defamation. She cannot prove, legally, the damage she suffered from the defamation. She wasn't engaged with salaried work. The media are not innocent. The money should be given to charity, imho because the money had been given to charity anyway, so that seems like a fair resolution, if it is adopted. I see no reason why media should prosper from defamation. I have no sympathy for those robbers. All that has been said is that she has not proven her damages. But that is subject to judicial bias or competence and there is much calling that into question. Wilson should be niche because of her weight. However she had gained a teen audience despite that and that is why, apparently, she was targeted for defamation. She has now not got the audience as those who defamed her wish. And it won't come back. The accusation of unmerited damages is offensive to me, I have been victim to denial of justice as a whistleblower.
Anti immigrant idiots are screaming White Flight. However, the issue should be cultural assets. Cultural assets unite us, while minority advocacy divides us. Australia is culturally diverse and great for it. However, many recent migrants are xenophobes who do not like cultural diversity but like the money that flows from it. Australia's population is too small, but skewed to the eastern seaboard. Australia needs more people. Colour is irrelevant.
Effective craft are worth it for what they do, expand Australia's surveillance of blind spots. They don't need arms as Australia's airforce is potent. More red tape to address what is not happening in Australia. But, it will be more paperwork for 3000 businesses who trade here. Government tries to make sure companies are not involved with slavery. Greens move to remove Senate Prayer. What about outlawing thinking before decision making too? 'Nice girl', nurse accused of connection to IS. Nice soccer team lost. Australian Cricket team is really nice.
Via SW "The Labor Shadow Treasurer of Australia (Chris Bowen) actually said these words:
The PBO (Parliamentary Budget Office ) has clearly shown that the unfair Turnbull Government tax cuts offer no benefit to those who don’t pay tax.
This is plainly unfair that people should not get a tax cut just because they don’t pay tax.
God help Australia if we inherit this."
I am a decent man and don't care for the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.
Here is a video I made Touched by an Angel Maya Angelou
Poem read in the first season of Touched by an Angel by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou (pronounced /ˈmaɪ.ə ˈændʒəloʊ/; born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928) is an American autobiographer and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award. She has been awarded over 30 honorary degrees and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her 1971 volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie.
=== from 2017 ===
Some things should not happen, but they do. Dan Andrews deserves credit for working on level crossings. He is replacing level crossings where railway lines and roads meet and engineering solutions so that traffic is separated from the rail lines. This means fewer accidents. It is not Andrews' idea, Napthine's Liberal Government (and Baillieu) initiated the program and set in motion what is being done now. Andrews' government is doing it badly, inconveniencing commuters and spending big, creating a large bureaucracy to do it. But in doing it badly, Andrews gets credit for the work. But giving Andrews credit overstates the achievement. Victoria is suffering because of bad decisions Andrews has made. People are not safe, and do not feel safe at home, at work or at recreation activities. The only place with rising employment is public service bureaucracy. Business costs are rising and power is no longer reliable, thanks to Andrews government's decisions. Wholesale electricity prices are rising as much as five times what they were last year from 4 cents a kilowatt hour to 20 cents a kilowatt hour. Retail is worse. And base load provision is compromised without Hazlewood, yet the Andrews Government has banned exploration or development of reserves. So that once Victoria had the world's cheapest supply which she could export, now she must import expensive power. And the result will be loss of business and a high opportunity cost loss to Victoria's economy.
Jeff Kennett spoke at the Olympic Hotel Silver Room today at a business function led by Craig Ondarchie, Shadow Minister for Industry in Victoria. Kennett raised the above issues, but also praised Matthew Guy for getting together teams committed to rebuilding Victoria. It is hard to get a team together in opposition. One cannot pay essential personnel for their work. Ondarchie is doing magnificent work in preparation for a possible Liberal win in Victoria at the end of 2018. The Liberals under Matthew Guy will have policies and plans in place to hit the ground running. So that Victorians can feel safer everywhere. So that Victorians can work and profit from working. So that energy can, once again, be locally sourced, cheap and abundant. Craig Ondarchie took time out to endorse one of my history books.
1556, the thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs. 1743, War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: On the battlefield in Bavaria, George II personally led troops into battle. The last time that a British monarch would command troops in the field. 1759, General James Wolfe began the siege of Quebec. In 1905, Battleship Potemkin uprising: sailors started a mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war. 1941, Romanian governmental forces, allies of Nazi Germany, launched one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iaşi, (Romania), resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews. 1954, the 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turned violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game. 1974, U.S. president Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union. 1976, Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) was hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda. In 1980, Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously exploded in mid air while en route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster 1981, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong.
Jeff Kennett spoke at the Olympic Hotel Silver Room today at a business function led by Craig Ondarchie, Shadow Minister for Industry in Victoria. Kennett raised the above issues, but also praised Matthew Guy for getting together teams committed to rebuilding Victoria. It is hard to get a team together in opposition. One cannot pay essential personnel for their work. Ondarchie is doing magnificent work in preparation for a possible Liberal win in Victoria at the end of 2018. The Liberals under Matthew Guy will have policies and plans in place to hit the ground running. So that Victorians can feel safer everywhere. So that Victorians can work and profit from working. So that energy can, once again, be locally sourced, cheap and abundant. Craig Ondarchie took time out to endorse one of my history books.
1556, the thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs. 1743, War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: On the battlefield in Bavaria, George II personally led troops into battle. The last time that a British monarch would command troops in the field. 1759, General James Wolfe began the siege of Quebec. In 1905, Battleship Potemkin uprising: sailors started a mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war. 1941, Romanian governmental forces, allies of Nazi Germany, launched one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iaşi, (Romania), resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews. 1954, the 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turned violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game. 1974, U.S. president Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union. 1976, Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) was hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda. In 1980, Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously exploded in mid air while en route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster 1981, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong.
=== from 2016 ===
It is hard to kill a cockroach. Sometimes they are deceptively fast. They crawl into spaces that are hard to get to. Neil Prakash is like a cockroach. We thought he died in a drone strike. Malcolm Turnbull claimed it. But you can't trust a Malcolm Turnbull claim. Prakash was a Melbourne based lapsed Buddhist who embraced Daesh terror which some call Islam. He was wanted for the assassination of a Sydney police accountant Curtis Chang. Chang was killed by a 15 yo school boy who had been radicalised by Prakash. It is important Prakash face justice. Maybe Prakash feels he has reasons for his behaviour. It does not matter what they are. It is very disappointing that that drone strike missed him. He is not Gollum, from the Lord of the Rings. Gollum had a purpose. Prakash has a death cult.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
Cardinal Pell proves his innocence of ugly smears, again. Those who unjustly accused him and denounced him have not, and may never, apologise. The media have played a strong role in spreading the smears, a role that goes beyond the legal function of the media. They have discredited Pell without foundation and campaigned against him for no reason. It was a mistake for the ABC to put a jihadist on tv. Some mistakes are never redressed.
ISIL attacks. #Irodewithyou. "A normal Muslim family with no terror ties" beheaded a factory owner and tried to blow up the neighbourhood with a chemical attack, while carrying an ISIL flag. The father of three was known to authorities and had been on a watch list. The mother was on radio denouncing his arrest and making the claim. A compelling case, were yet another needed, for the reform movement of Islam of which there are very few. But the Paris attack was only one of three or four around the world, all claimed by ISIL and all claimed by those enthralled by the left to be inspired inflations of news media. The correct world response, according to some, would be to stop mining in Papua New Guinea and to stop talks on free trade in the Pacific. ISIL would love to conflate tragedy and exploit poverty. PNG needs to be cleaned of corruption. Pacific trade needs to be protected by a free trade agreement. But the real issue is the response to terror. In Tunisia, at a beach resort, a gunman who hid his weapon in a parasol killed 37. In Kuwait, at a mosque, a bomber killed many. Incoming reports are of a distressed flight on a plane bound from Europe to NYC. It is Ramadan, and the jihadists who cross dress to kill for their pathetic deity claim to be Islamic. So do many of their victims. If Waleed Ali claims that the terrorist attacks were wrong, one hopes he also explains why they weren't Islamic. And why the Islamic world should reject these Ramadan festivities. Meanwhile the Pope claims to recognise Palestine, the so called state of Jordanian refugees who pioneered the current reign of terror. It won't promote peace.
US adopts gay marriage and kills one fugitive. The fugitive had escaped from jail with another. Both killers. As many have found out recently, it is bad to resist arrest. He would still have been safe in jail, but one had promised a friendly guard he would kill her husband. And marriage is important to the identity of many. One hopes the new inductees will act to preserve the sanctity of union, and not now promote bestiality and multiple partners. Some say it is a human right, but the UN condemns torture in other circumstances. It is worth noting that Islam views marriage with multiple partners as acceptable. Time to see who is the more progressive? There are calls for Australia to recognise gay marriage. But she already does for those married elsewhere. Civil unions are already legally recognised. So the call for gay marriage is not a call for a new right in Australia, but for the state to dictate to churches. Some churches will embrace it anyway, not being allowed to perform services previously because the state would not let them. Why is there need by many for the state to approve their sex lives? As for state recognition, Gays have had a role in state since the time of Tiberius, according to Suetonius. Maybe it isn't gender that is the issue. Maybe, all a person need be in any community (except jihadi ones) is to be a good person, gracious kind and giving. In such a community, Gays fit in. If they want. But, not the fugitive killer who is still on the run.
Left struggling with truth. The existential threat of jihad is not the same as Islam. But Islam has a big problem it needs to address. Poverty is an existential threat that needs to be addressed. Climate Change is not a good excuse to make and keep people poor. Wealth redistribution is a failure. Wealth creation is the only way to lift the poor from poverty. Jordanian refugees have no connection to an ancient state called Palestine. Tax and big government do not make people happy, even if Stalin preferred it.
ISIL attacks. #Irodewithyou. "A normal Muslim family with no terror ties" beheaded a factory owner and tried to blow up the neighbourhood with a chemical attack, while carrying an ISIL flag. The father of three was known to authorities and had been on a watch list. The mother was on radio denouncing his arrest and making the claim. A compelling case, were yet another needed, for the reform movement of Islam of which there are very few. But the Paris attack was only one of three or four around the world, all claimed by ISIL and all claimed by those enthralled by the left to be inspired inflations of news media. The correct world response, according to some, would be to stop mining in Papua New Guinea and to stop talks on free trade in the Pacific. ISIL would love to conflate tragedy and exploit poverty. PNG needs to be cleaned of corruption. Pacific trade needs to be protected by a free trade agreement. But the real issue is the response to terror. In Tunisia, at a beach resort, a gunman who hid his weapon in a parasol killed 37. In Kuwait, at a mosque, a bomber killed many. Incoming reports are of a distressed flight on a plane bound from Europe to NYC. It is Ramadan, and the jihadists who cross dress to kill for their pathetic deity claim to be Islamic. So do many of their victims. If Waleed Ali claims that the terrorist attacks were wrong, one hopes he also explains why they weren't Islamic. And why the Islamic world should reject these Ramadan festivities. Meanwhile the Pope claims to recognise Palestine, the so called state of Jordanian refugees who pioneered the current reign of terror. It won't promote peace.
US adopts gay marriage and kills one fugitive. The fugitive had escaped from jail with another. Both killers. As many have found out recently, it is bad to resist arrest. He would still have been safe in jail, but one had promised a friendly guard he would kill her husband. And marriage is important to the identity of many. One hopes the new inductees will act to preserve the sanctity of union, and not now promote bestiality and multiple partners. Some say it is a human right, but the UN condemns torture in other circumstances. It is worth noting that Islam views marriage with multiple partners as acceptable. Time to see who is the more progressive? There are calls for Australia to recognise gay marriage. But she already does for those married elsewhere. Civil unions are already legally recognised. So the call for gay marriage is not a call for a new right in Australia, but for the state to dictate to churches. Some churches will embrace it anyway, not being allowed to perform services previously because the state would not let them. Why is there need by many for the state to approve their sex lives? As for state recognition, Gays have had a role in state since the time of Tiberius, according to Suetonius. Maybe it isn't gender that is the issue. Maybe, all a person need be in any community (except jihadi ones) is to be a good person, gracious kind and giving. In such a community, Gays fit in. If they want. But, not the fugitive killer who is still on the run.
Left struggling with truth. The existential threat of jihad is not the same as Islam. But Islam has a big problem it needs to address. Poverty is an existential threat that needs to be addressed. Climate Change is not a good excuse to make and keep people poor. Wealth redistribution is a failure. Wealth creation is the only way to lift the poor from poverty. Jordanian refugees have no connection to an ancient state called Palestine. Tax and big government do not make people happy, even if Stalin preferred it.
From 2014
I admire people who serve. One great man, who was a great boy, made a significant achievement on this day, aged 13, in 1899. AEJ Collins scored 628 not out for his house in schoolboy cricket, the highest innings of any form of cricket of all time. Purists might dispute that he had been dropped several times, and the scoring was haphazard, with one scorer declaring he had been robbed of at least 20 runs. It was scored over three days, in less than eight hours. Bowling in the same match, he took 11 for 63, and the house he captained won an innings and 688 runs. He never played first class cricket. As a man, he joined the army to serve. He was killed at Ypres in 1914. And his young widow lived for another fifty years. Because service sparks devotion. He was an orphan, and in centuries past, nobody would have bothered to educate him. But because of conspicuous wealth of the industrial revolution, education became essential to have employees capable of factory labour. And I salute that boy, who would become that man. He achieved any schoolboy's dream on this day in 1899, but earned it through service.
On this day in 1946, their parliament forever confused the Fairfax Press and ABC by defining what it meant to be Canadian. Terrorists captured a plane and redirected it to Entebbe on this day in 1976. Born on this day was John Monash (1865), Hellen Keller (1880), Michael Ball (1962) and JJ Abrams (1966). In this day in 1844, Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother were lynched in jail and killed. I am reminded of one of my favourite authors (Maps in a mirror, Orson Scott Card) that the faith has mythic elements like any religion, which doesn't bear scrutiny, but he retains his faith. I am not Mormon, but I know many fine people who are.
On this day in 1946, their parliament forever confused the Fairfax Press and ABC by defining what it meant to be Canadian. Terrorists captured a plane and redirected it to Entebbe on this day in 1976. Born on this day was John Monash (1865), Hellen Keller (1880), Michael Ball (1962) and JJ Abrams (1966). In this day in 1844, Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother were lynched in jail and killed. I am reminded of one of my favourite authors (Maps in a mirror, Orson Scott Card) that the faith has mythic elements like any religion, which doesn't bear scrutiny, but he retains his faith. I am not Mormon, but I know many fine people who are.
Historical perspective on this day
In 1358, Republic of Dubrovnik was founded 1497, Cornish rebels Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank were executed at Tyburn, London, England. 1556, the thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs. 1743, War of the Austrian Succession: Battle of Dettingen: On the battlefield in Bavaria, George II personally led troops into battle. The last time that a British monarch would command troops in the field. 1759, General James Wolfe began the siege of Quebec. 1760, Cherokee warriors defeated British forces at the Battle of Echoee near present-day Otto, North Carolina during the Anglo-Cherokee War.
In 1806, British forces took Buenos Aires during the first British invasions of the Río de la Plata. 1844, Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, were killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail. 1895, the inaugural run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York, New York, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. 1898, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe was completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia. 1899, A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket.
In 1905, Battleship Potemkin uprising: sailors started a mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war. 1927, Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi led a conference to discuss Japan's plans for China; later, a document detailing these plans, the "Tanaka Memorial" was leaked, although it is now considered a forgery. 1941, Romanian governmental forces, allies of Nazi Germany, launched one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iaşi, (Romania), resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews. Also 1941, German troops captured the city of Białystok during Operation Barbarossa. 1946, in the Canadian Citizenship Act, the Parliament of Canada established the definition of Canadian citizenship.
In 1950, the United States decided to send troops to fight in the Korean War. 1952, Guatemala passed Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land. 1954, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the Soviet Union's first nuclear power station, opened in Obninsk, near Moscow. Also 1954, the 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turned violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game. 1957, Hurricane Audrey made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border, killing over 400 people, mainly in and around Cameron, Louisiana. 1971, after only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Grahamclosed the Fillmore East in New York, New York, the "Church of Rock and Roll". 1973, the President of Uruguay Juan María Bordaberry dissolved Parliament and established a dictatorship. 1974, U.S. president Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union. 1976, Air FranceFlight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) was hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda. 1977, France granted independence to Djibouti.
In 1980, Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously exploded in mid air while en route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster 1981, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong. 1982, Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4. 1985, U.S. Route 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System. 1988, Gare de Lyon rail accident In Paris a train collided with a stationary train killing 56 people. 1991, Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before was invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft starting the Ten-Day War. 2007, Tony Blair resigned as British Prime Minister, a position he had held since 1997. Also 2007, the Brazilian Military Police invaded the favelas of Complexo do Alemão in an episode which is remembered as the Complexo do Alemão massacre. 2008, in a highly scrutizined election President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe was re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters. 2013, NASA launched the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun.
In 1806, British forces took Buenos Aires during the first British invasions of the Río de la Plata. 1844, Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, were killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail. 1895, the inaugural run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York, New York, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. 1898, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe was completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia. 1899, A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket.
In 1905, Battleship Potemkin uprising: sailors started a mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin, denouncing the crimes of autocracy, demanding liberty and an end to war. 1927, Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi led a conference to discuss Japan's plans for China; later, a document detailing these plans, the "Tanaka Memorial" was leaked, although it is now considered a forgery. 1941, Romanian governmental forces, allies of Nazi Germany, launched one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iaşi, (Romania), resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews. Also 1941, German troops captured the city of Białystok during Operation Barbarossa. 1946, in the Canadian Citizenship Act, the Parliament of Canada established the definition of Canadian citizenship.
In 1950, the United States decided to send troops to fight in the Korean War. 1952, Guatemala passed Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land. 1954, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the Soviet Union's first nuclear power station, opened in Obninsk, near Moscow. Also 1954, the 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turned violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game. 1957, Hurricane Audrey made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border, killing over 400 people, mainly in and around Cameron, Louisiana. 1971, after only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Grahamclosed the Fillmore East in New York, New York, the "Church of Rock and Roll". 1973, the President of Uruguay Juan María Bordaberry dissolved Parliament and established a dictatorship. 1974, U.S. president Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union. 1976, Air FranceFlight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) was hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda. 1977, France granted independence to Djibouti.
In 1980, Italian Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 mysteriously exploded in mid air while en route from Bologna to Palermo, killing all 81 on board. Also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster 1981, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong. 1982, Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4. 1985, U.S. Route 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System. 1988, Gare de Lyon rail accident In Paris a train collided with a stationary train killing 56 people. 1991, Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before was invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft starting the Ten-Day War. 2007, Tony Blair resigned as British Prime Minister, a position he had held since 1997. Also 2007, the Brazilian Military Police invaded the favelas of Complexo do Alemão in an episode which is remembered as the Complexo do Alemão massacre. 2008, in a highly scrutizined election President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe was re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters. 2013, NASA launched the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun.
=== 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 Nana Lu, Cameron David and Indra Bayu Hapsoro. Born on the same day, across the years. It is Mixed Race Day in Brazil. In 1743, War of the Austrian Succession: In the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle, George II and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria. In 1844, Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith, Jr. and his brother Hyrum were killed by an armed mob who stormed the prison where they were incarcerated in Carthage, Illinois. In 1905, The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin began a mutiny against their oppressive officers. In 1952, The Congress of Guatemala passed Decree 900, redistributing unused lands of sizes greater than 224 acres (0.9 km2) to local peasants and having a major effect on the nation's land reform movement. Be like the kings of old and take responsibility for your day. Avoid confronting those who don't see eye to eye, but seek the path of peace. But if confronted with oppression, overthrow it and claim what is rightfully yours. Cheers.
- 1040 – Ladislaus I of Hungary (d. 1095)
- 1805 – Napoléon Coste, French guitarist and composer (d. 1883)
- 1865 – John Monash, Australian engineer and general (d. 1931)
- 1869 – Kate Carew, American caricaturist and journalist (d. 1961)
- 1880 – Helen Keller, American author and activist (d. 1968)
- 1886 – Charlie Macartney, Australian cricketer (d. 1958)
- 1906 – Catherine Cookson, English author (d. 1998)
- 1924 – Rosalie Allen, American singer (d. 2003)
- 1932 – Anna Moffo, American soprano and actress (d. 2006)
- 1932 – Magali Noël, French actress and singer
- 1941 – James P. Hogan, English author (d. 2010)
- 1942 – Bruce Johnston, American singer-songwriter and producer (The Beach Boys and Bruce & Terry)
- 1962 – Michael Ball, English actor and singer
- 1966 – J. J. Abrams, American director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1978 – Lolly, English singer and actress
- 1980 – Kevin Pietersen, South African-English cricketer
- 1983 – Dale Steyn, South African cricketer
- 1985 – Svetlana Kuznetsova, Russian tennis player
- 1985 – Nico Rosberg, German race car driver
- 1992 – Sohee, South Korean singer, dancer, and actress (Wonder Girls)
- 1999 – Chandler Riggs, American actor
Deaths
- 1162 – Odo II, Duke of Burgundy (b. 1118)
- 1831 – Sophie Germain, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1776)
- 1844 – Hyrum Smith, American religious leader (b. 1800)
- 1844 – Joseph Smith, American religious leader, founded the Latter Day Saint movement (b. 1805)
- 1878 – Sidney Breese, U.S. senator from Illinois known as the "father of the Illinois Central Railroad" (b. 1800)
- 1907 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, American educator, co-founder of Radcliffe College (b. 1822)
- 2005 – Shelby Foote, American historian and author (b. 1917)
June 27: Mixed Race Day in Brazil; Independence Dayin Djibouti (1977); Armed Forces Day in the United Kingdom (2015)
- 678 – Pope Agatho, later venerated as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, began his reign as Pope.
- 1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: In the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle, George II and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria.
- 1899 – A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket.
- 1905 – The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin (pictured) began a mutiny against their oppressive officers.
- 1952 – The Congress of Guatemala passed Decree 900, redistributing unused lands of sizes greater than 224 acres (0.9 km2) to local peasants and having a major effect on the nation's land reform movement.
He is a good father to many. George is a leader. Collins is the perfect servant. They mutiny for a reason, but it isn't a good reason. The trick to answering to a banana republic is not to ban bananas. Let's party.
Andrew Bolt 2018
SHORTEN MISTAKE NO BIG DEAL
COLUMN Bill Shorten is a victim of his own success. Under him, Labor has led the Turnbull government in the polls for a record-breaking 21 months. That’s bored journalists. Remember that when you read about his supposedly career-threatening mistake - when he blurted out the truth about his tax policy. Read on.
ON HANSON'S FLIP-FLOP AND SHORTEN'S WORD-VOMIT
Pauline Hanson and Bill Shorten are two leaders in trouble. But how much exactly? Is the media beating this up? My editorial from The Bolt Report:
WHY WE CAN'T RELY ON WIND
No wind power in South Australia or Tasmania at 1:45pm today. Next to none in Victoria. Prices soar, and coal-fired in Queensland comes to the rescue yet again.
KININMONTH ON CLIMATE POLICIES: THEY'LL ONE DAY ASK 'WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?'
William Kininmonth, former head of Australia's National Climate Centre, says the global warming scare has been exaggerated, and people in the future will look back at our climate policies and say" What were they thinking?" Watch.
HANSON DENIES FLIP-FLOPPING IN SAYING NO, YES, NO, ERR...
Wild. Pauline Hanson denies she flip-flopped on the Government's planned business tax cuts: "I haven't flip-flopped. I said no originally, then I said yes, then I said no and I stuck to it." And this morning she wouldn't rule out another change: “I will change my mind as many times as I want to ensure that I come up with the right decision."
LEFTIST THUGS NOW CONFRONT McCONNELL, THREATEN ADVISOR
This mob bullying by the Left is getting way out of hand. Now a mob confronts Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife at their home, and Trump advisor Stephen Miller's neighbour puts up abusive posters giving Miller's address. Meanwhile, Democrat Maxine Waters, who urged mobs to chase Trump officials, is chased by a reporter asking why.
GOAL TO ISRAEL
The Iranian team's performance in the World Cup inspires Israel's Prime Minister to deliver a very pointed message to the Iranian people about the fascists who control them:
TRADING EUTHANASIA FOR A UNION WATCHDOG
Odd priorities: "Turnbull has given a private assurance that Coalition MPs will be allowed a free vote on a bill that would restore territory rights to pass voluntary euthanasia laws under an agreement... to secure [Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm's] support for the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission."
TRUMP DEFEATS ACTIVIST JUDGES: TRAVEL BAN UPHELD
Donald Trump gets his law that so many activist judges tried to stop and so many journalists demonised and misrepresented: "A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries Tuesday, the conservative majority taking his side in a major ruling supporting his presidential power."
HERE IS THE ABC WEATHER REPORT: FORGET THIS COLD! WARMING IS REAL!
Global warming has stalled, and the ABC's weatherman must report "bitterly cold" weather in NSW and likely record low June temperatures for Broken Hill. He breaks off to sternly lecture any backsliders: "Global warming doesn't mean that cold temperatures won't be recorded but rather that record heat temperatures will be far more common."
PROBYN AGAIN, BIAS AGAIN
The ABC's Andrew Probyn makes yet another mistake betraying his Leftist bias: "The ABC has been forced to apologise for incorrectly claiming that Malcolm Turnbull was responsible for the decision to hold five federal by-elections on July 28, the same weekend that Labor planned to hold its national conference." That's a third strike.
TRUMP AND THE LYNCH MOB
Donald Trump's officials are being hounded at the homes and in restaurants by mobs of screaming Leftists, now egged on by Democrat congresswoman Maxine Waters. Both vicious and dumb: forced to choose between Trump and these vicious mobs, I know which side most voters would choose. My editorial from The Bolt Report.
ANGRY AND ASHAMED
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (4:31am)
The Sunday Mail‘s Steve Rice is furious:
A stunning decision by 52 per cent of voters to leave the European Union has, for the first time, made me angry and ashamed to be English …No one should truly have to feel like that about their homeland.
Steve has no need to feel embarrassed. After all, he now lives in … Adelaide.
UPDATE. By contrast, here’s Daniel Hannan:
I’ve never felt more proud to be British. Think of the sheer weight of the forces lined up to keep us in the EU.All the main parties. The CBI, the TUC and virtually every Brussels-funded trade association or lobby group.Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and the other megabanks and multi¬-nationals.Every foreign leader who owed David Cameron a favour.Think of the threats and the scare stories: recession, unemployment, environmental disaster, World War Three, “the end of Western civilization”.How did British voters react? With calm, common sense and courage.
And they won.
===
MONDAY NOTICEBOARD
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (3:48am)
Sydney:
===
BRILLIANT BREXIT BOMBSHELL
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (3:45am)
Last week’s Brexit vote in the UK was the finest nation-defending decision since the Manhattan Project was approved during World War II.
Not only has the rejection of Britain’s European Union membership commenced the UK’s restoration as an independent global power, but it is also serving as a brilliant sociological x-ray. In the wake of Brexit, we see the biases and prejudices of anti-democratic leftist snobs exposed in stunning, nuclear-lit clarity.
It was only a few years ago that leftists were demanding we pay attention to the incoherent whining of the Occupy movement. Their filthy tent cities represented the authentic voice of the people, apparently, and must be heeded.
Yet when the people of Britain actually did have their say last Thursday, leftists were furious at the result and dismissed Leave voters as ignorant racist fools. “The chavs are going out all over Europe,” sneered the ABC’s Jonathan Green, “chavs” being the British equivalent of bogans.
“The truth is this is modern politics: ignorance masquerading as firm belief,” Green continued. “What does Leave actually mean? It’s a proxy for prejudice.”
Rejection of the EU actually meant that a majority of British voters were sick of being dictated to, on immigration and many other issues, by unelected EU clowns.
On the morning of the referendum, a Sydney mate called his Uncle Johnny in the UK to wish him a happy 90th birthday and to ask how his WWII paratrooper uncle would be voting.
“When I was 20 I dropped into France to stop the Germans taking over my country,” he replied, “so I thought I’d better have another go at stopping them now.” Then the war hero put on his overcoat, strode out into the West Yorkshire rain, and cast his vote. He’d be one of those ignorant, prejudiced “chavs” Green was talking about, I suppose.
“Brexit proves how dangerous the fear peddled by hyper-conservatives and anti-immigration parties can be,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young babbled, although she was less concerned about danger following the deaths of 200 asylum seekers whose Australia-bound vessel sank in 2011. “Tragedies happen, accidents happen,” said Hanson-Young. So does democracy, Sarah. And it kills far fewer people.
It was touching to see a sudden concern from leftists about financial issues in the wake of the Leave vote’s success. “A billion dollars has wiped off the value of pension funds alone,” wept Guardian columnist Vanessa Badham. “Companies are withdrawing staff and investments. It’s huge.” Given that Badham is a Marxist, this represents something of a shift in values. Those poor, poor companies.
(Continue reading Brilliant Brexit Bombshell.)
===
POLL POSITIONS
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (3:25am)
With less than one week to go, a two-point break for the Coalition:
The Coalition enters the final week of the election leading Labor by 51 to 49 per cent in two-party terms according to the latest Newspoll … It is the first time the government has been in front during the campaign.The Coalition’s primary vote rose two points in the past week to 43 per cent … Despite Labor’s fierce scare campaign on Medicare, the opposition has made no gains and its support was unchanged at 36 per cent.The Greens fell one point to 9 per cent while support for independents and micro parties fell one point to 12 per cent.
In the US, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll gives Hillary Clinton a slender five-point advantage over Donald Trump while the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll puts Clinton 12 points up.
===
MAN IDENTIFIES AS GROCERIES
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (3:04am)
An unexpected produce incident in a US store:
A Seattle man is facing an indecent exposure charge after allegedly walking into a grocery store and plopping his genitals atop the scanner at a self-checkout station, police report.
It’s his decision, people. Don’t other him.
(Via Geoff M.)
===
BATTLE OF THE BEATEN
Tim Blair – Monday, June 27, 2016 (2:40am)
Judging by all available evidence, Labor and the Coalition have both been trying their very hardest to lose next Saturday’s election.
The Coalition’s Turnbull-centric campaign has seen the Prime Minister zap around the country attempting to induce comas with his “jobs and growth” mantra.
It’s so refreshing to hear a politician backing jobs and growth. Sure makes a change from everybody else calling for stagnation and death.
Overall, however, Labor’s bid for defeat has been more impressive. For the last couple of weeks they’ve been shrieking about stopping something that is in no real danger of happening.
One of these crobes will be our next elected PM. Nobody knows why.
“We will fight for Medicare,” Labor boss Bill Shorten vowed yesterday, which is a little like fighting for Uluru. Both are huge, monolithic and not going anywhere in a hurry.
One of these crobes will be our next elected PM. Nobody knows why.
“We will fight for Medicare,” Labor boss Bill Shorten vowed yesterday, which is a little like fighting for Uluru. Both are huge, monolithic and not going anywhere in a hurry.
“The single biggest risk to the Australian economy in the next three years is three more years of a divided Liberal government,” Shorten continued.
“We cannot afford a part-time prime minister who doesn’t lead his own party totally.”
“We cannot afford a part-time prime minister who doesn’t lead his own party totally.”
So says the man who knifed both previous Labor prime ministers.
(Continue reading Battle of the Beaten.)
===
LEAVE WINS A SECOND VOTE
Tim Blair – Sunday, June 26, 2016 (8:50pm)
It’s not just Britain’s ruling Conservative Party that is in turmoil after the nation voted last week to quit the European Union. The opposition Labour Party is restive, too, with festering criticism of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, coming to the surface.Early Sunday, Mr. Corbyn abruptly fired his shadow foreign secretary — the party’s spokesman on foreign affairs — to try to head off an internal coup begun by some Labour members of Parliament disappointed with Mr. Corbyn’s lackluster campaign to keep Britain in the bloc.
Corbyn’s only been leader for nine months. Click for updates.
UPDATE. Seven shadow cabinet ministers gone.
UPDATE II. “Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is a cult,” writes the UK Telegraph‘s James Kirkup. “Even losing his shadow cabinet won’t shake the faith of his disciples.”
UPDATE III. The Guardian‘s Zoe Williams calls for Corbyn’s removal: ”Corbyn has opposed the EU since the 1970s. Whatever came out of his mouth, nothing in his manner suggested he had, on this or indeed anything else, changed his mind.”
UPDATE IV. It’s a leave-o-rama: “In an unprecedented coup, 10 MPs have chosen to leave Jeremy Corbyn’s Cabinet in a historic, organised bid to bring down the leader of the Labour party.”
UPDATE V. The Independent‘s Matthew Norman: “The Labour Party is over and Jeremy Corbyn’s stupidity brought it down.”
UPDATE VI. Labour In For Britain chair Phil Wilson: “Corbyn sabotaged Labour’s remain campaign. He must resign.”
===
Frauds and foreigners help Leftists try to subvert Brexit vote
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (10:58am)
How does the Left deal with defeat in a poll? By enlisting liars and foreigners to overturn it:
Now Labour MPs are voting to leave leader Jeremy Corbyn:
(Thanks to reader George.)
The House of Commons petitions committee is investigating allegations of fraud in connection with a petition calling for a second EU referendum.UPDATE
Its inquiry is focused on the possibility that some names could be fraudulent - 77,000 signatures have already been removed.
More than 3.2 million signatures are on the petition, but PM David Cameron has said there will be no second vote…
A number of people on Twitter have pointed out that some people appear to have signed the petition from outside the UK. Only British citizens or UK residents are permitted to sign the petition, including Britons based abroad.
Now Labour MPs are voting to leave leader Jeremy Corbyn:
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he will stand in any new leadership election following the resignations of a string of shadow cabinet colleagues…This is a tricky issue for Labour. Many of its traditional supporters would have voted to leave European. Many of its members of the cosmopolitan elite - and media cheerleaders - would have voted to stay.
Labour MPs are due to discuss a no confidence motion against Mr Corbyn…
The mass resignations were triggered by the sacking of shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, in the early hours of Sunday, after he told Mr Corbyn he had lost confidence in him....
Those who have resigned are:
Lord Falconer, shadow justice secretary Chris Bryant, Shadow leader of the House of Commons
Heidi Alexander, shadow health secretary
Lucy Powell, shadow education secretary
Vernon Coaker, shadow Northern Ireland secretary
Ian Murray, shadow Scottish secretary - and Labour’s only MP in Scotland
Kerry McCarthy, shadow environment secretary
Seema Malhotra, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury
Lillian Greenwood, shadow transport secretary
Gloria de Piero, shadow minister for young people and voter registration
(Thanks to reader George.)
===
Tripping over Twitter
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (10:15am)
A Fairfax journalist discovers the perils of trusting to Twitter for political cues:
(Via Michael Smith News.)
Twitter skews Left and vicious. How often must it be said?
(Via Michael Smith News.)
===
Britons lose their chains. Elites freak that Australians might lose theirs
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (9:44am)
BRITAIN’S silent majority has struck. Now it’s our turn to give our own political elites a hiding for treating voters like morons and slaves.
Back off, bullies.
No wonder the British vote to leave the European Union has terrified our own ghastly class of multiculturalists, internationalists and punitive moralisers of the Left.
Democracy is back after a stunning 52 per cent of Britons voted to leave the European Union, that over-mighty supergovernment of 28 countries.
This is huge, and could change politics here, too, to the cost of both major parties.
Most Britons — in defiance of both their Prime Minister and the Labour leader, as well as most business barons — have voted for independence from foreign controls.
They voted for independence from the internationalist web that increasingly has foreign institutions interfering in domestic decisions.
They voted against foreign meddlers like US President Barack Obama, who travelled to Britain to threaten that it would go to the back of the “queue” in trade deals with America if it left the EU.
Shocked by the invasion of Europe last year by more than 1 million illegal immigrants from the Muslim Third World, Britons have particularly voted against mass immigration and Europe’s open borders.
(Read the full article here.)
UPDATE
The Left reacts with its normal respect for democracy - by jeering and screaming abuse at Boris Johnson.
Back off, bullies.
No wonder the British vote to leave the European Union has terrified our own ghastly class of multiculturalists, internationalists and punitive moralisers of the Left.
Democracy is back after a stunning 52 per cent of Britons voted to leave the European Union, that over-mighty supergovernment of 28 countries.
This is huge, and could change politics here, too, to the cost of both major parties.
Most Britons — in defiance of both their Prime Minister and the Labour leader, as well as most business barons — have voted for independence from foreign controls.
They voted for independence from the internationalist web that increasingly has foreign institutions interfering in domestic decisions.
They voted against foreign meddlers like US President Barack Obama, who travelled to Britain to threaten that it would go to the back of the “queue” in trade deals with America if it left the EU.
They have voted for the local and loved rather than rootless cosmopolitanism — that international citizenship of those with no particular ties of affection and custom.
Shocked by the invasion of Europe last year by more than 1 million illegal immigrants from the Muslim Third World, Britons have particularly voted against mass immigration and Europe’s open borders.
(Read the full article here.)
UPDATE
The Left reacts with its normal respect for democracy - by jeering and screaming abuse at Boris Johnson.
===
Fairfax journalist excuses: Waleed Aly is to Islam just what Taylor Swift is
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (9:00am)
Tim Dick says Waleed Aly is just the Taylor Swift of Islam in Australia. Or something like that:
My own:
Dick makes an absurdly false analogy - that Waleed Aly has a relationship to Islam that’s no different to Taylor Swift’s.
His response also rests on twin fallacies: that Aly has “spoken eloquently about Islam and terrorism” and that the “warped opinions of Sheikh Shady” are “self-evidently appalling”.
First, as Dick himself concedes, blind to the contradiction of his own analogy, Aly has indeed spoken often about Islam and may even be regarded at its most prominent media apologist here for the faith. Could Dick seriously claim the same for Taylor Swift?
In fact, Aly was spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria. He regularly appears on the ABC and The Project to explain away the role of Islam in terror attacks conducted by Islamists quoting Islamic scripture to justify their slaughter, and far from being eloquent he has been evasive and often misleading, even impenetrable, verging on blaming the victims. Moreover, Aly lectures on politics at Monash University’s centre on global terrorism and was invited with his wife to sit next to the Prime Minister at the Prime Minister’s Iftar dinner as the most acceptable face of Islam in Australia. Aly’s entire career rests on his presentation as a Muslim we can deal with.
It is perfectly reasonable to therefore ask for his opinions on the views of one of the other guest at that Iftar dinner, the president of the Australian National Imam’s Council which represents the Australian preachers of Aly’s own faith.
Indeed, Aly was even asked by the ABC to give a long lecture on his views on the Orlando massacre - a lecture which unaccountably failed to mention Islam or the gay hatred it expressed and which Sheikh Shady preaches.
Given Aly’s prominence in the media and his record of public apologetics for Islam, his silence on the Sheikh is significant.
Moreover, Dick is completely wrong to claim that the Sheikh’s preaching - that gays are wicked and spread diseases, adulterers deserve stoning under Muslim law, our political class oppress Muslims, and Christmas parties are Satanic celebrations - are so “self-evidently appalling” that Aly need not speak.
Maybe they are appalling to Dick and others raised in our Christian-based culture. But they are clearly not “self-evidently appalling” to many Muslims, given that several senior Muslim leaders have since condoned or defended the Sheikh and his teachings and none - not even Aly - have criticised them.
It is Aly’s right to be silent, of course. But that silence shouts. Dick now dismissing Aly as just some Taylor Swift says plenty, too.
UPDATE
The kind of thing Tim Dick is in denial over and on which Aly is silent:
Cameron Stewart on the dangerous denialism and self-censorship of the political class:
Taylor Swift discovered she had a duty to speak when she took a week to talk about the Orlando massacre. The pop star was condemned by many for “staying silent”, failing some new duty on everyone to publicly mourn, to quickly condemn to the world the self-evidently appalling…Supply your own answers to Dick’s questions in the comments.
The obligation to speak is not limited to expressing solidarity with mourning communities. It’s also imposed on the communities from which wrongdoers come.
Take Waleed Aly, the popular academic, broadcaster and columnist, and the second-most famous diner at the Prime Minister’s end-of-Ramadan dinner. He’s spoken eloquently about Islam and terrorism, yet was condemned for a failure to quickly condemn the prehistoric death-to-gays views of an imam.
The conservative columnist, Andrew Bolt, asked where Aly was…
Where lies the source of his obligation to say anything about the warped opinions of Sheikh Shady: in his faith, or in his fame? How often must he condemn the sheikh? Once? Twice? Daily?… What about other, less prominent Muslims: must they too publicly condemn the sheikh?
My own:
Dick makes an absurdly false analogy - that Waleed Aly has a relationship to Islam that’s no different to Taylor Swift’s.
His response also rests on twin fallacies: that Aly has “spoken eloquently about Islam and terrorism” and that the “warped opinions of Sheikh Shady” are “self-evidently appalling”.
First, as Dick himself concedes, blind to the contradiction of his own analogy, Aly has indeed spoken often about Islam and may even be regarded at its most prominent media apologist here for the faith. Could Dick seriously claim the same for Taylor Swift?
In fact, Aly was spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria. He regularly appears on the ABC and The Project to explain away the role of Islam in terror attacks conducted by Islamists quoting Islamic scripture to justify their slaughter, and far from being eloquent he has been evasive and often misleading, even impenetrable, verging on blaming the victims. Moreover, Aly lectures on politics at Monash University’s centre on global terrorism and was invited with his wife to sit next to the Prime Minister at the Prime Minister’s Iftar dinner as the most acceptable face of Islam in Australia. Aly’s entire career rests on his presentation as a Muslim we can deal with.
It is perfectly reasonable to therefore ask for his opinions on the views of one of the other guest at that Iftar dinner, the president of the Australian National Imam’s Council which represents the Australian preachers of Aly’s own faith.
Indeed, Aly was even asked by the ABC to give a long lecture on his views on the Orlando massacre - a lecture which unaccountably failed to mention Islam or the gay hatred it expressed and which Sheikh Shady preaches.
Given Aly’s prominence in the media and his record of public apologetics for Islam, his silence on the Sheikh is significant.
Moreover, Dick is completely wrong to claim that the Sheikh’s preaching - that gays are wicked and spread diseases, adulterers deserve stoning under Muslim law, our political class oppress Muslims, and Christmas parties are Satanic celebrations - are so “self-evidently appalling” that Aly need not speak.
Maybe they are appalling to Dick and others raised in our Christian-based culture. But they are clearly not “self-evidently appalling” to many Muslims, given that several senior Muslim leaders have since condoned or defended the Sheikh and his teachings and none - not even Aly - have criticised them.
It is Aly’s right to be silent, of course. But that silence shouts. Dick now dismissing Aly as just some Taylor Swift says plenty, too.
UPDATE
The kind of thing Tim Dick is in denial over and on which Aly is silent:
Michael Smith explains:
It must be good advice because it’s published by an Islamic organisation which is an Australian Government registered tax-deductible gift recipient. How to kill gay men is brought to you by a charity organisation - exempt of any taxes courtesy of the Australian Government of Fools - the Imam Husain Islamic Centre at Earlwood.UPDATE
Cameron Stewart on the dangerous denialism and self-censorship of the political class:
The sensitivity of ASIO, the FBI and Obama over the term Islamic terrorism betrays a fear that many in the Muslim community cannot accept that those of the lunatic fringe of their faith are the problem. Yet if the Muslim community cannot accept the link between terror and Islam without seeing it as a broader attack on their religion, then the terror debate becomes mired in self-delusion.
===
Even Tony Windsor’s dog wouldn’t vote for him
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (8:32am)
Let voters do the same. Miranda Devine praises the political acumen of Mack, the border collie-cross of Independent candidate Tony Windsor:
He was easily the most handsome dog at the Great Nundle Dog Race, and appeared on screen initially refusing to sit when Windsor commanded him.
Mack then urinated on Windsor’s leg, which was either a gesture of anxious submission or non-verbal how-to-vote advice for New Englanders. This prompted some red-faced bluster from Windsor as his loyal wife Lyn went into plaintive damage control: “He’s weed on everybody! He’s weed on me!”. But wily Mack’s message was precisely targeted for the cameras.
===
It’s over. Labor killed by its mad spending
Andrew Bolt June 27 2016 (8:18am)
Newspoll confirms Labor will lose:
Worse, that’s even after Labor promises to tax us even harder than the Liberals to pay for part of its massive spending program.
This is a reckless program of tax and spend that is out of touch with the national need and the public mood.
UPDATE
And, of course, Labor is dogged by its past sins. Tom Switzer explains:
The Coalition has pulled ahead of Labor for the first time in the campaign, and enters the final week leading by 51 per cent to 49 per cent as the economy takes centre stage amid fallout from Brexit.I’m not sure that Brexit made much difference. I’d say this is entirely self-inflicted by Labor thinking it could continued its mad spending ways when the deficit is already dangerously high:
Labor has admitted its election policies will cause a $16.5 billion budget deficit blowout over the next four years, while revealing it has included in its costings $5bn in savings from the Coalition’s proposed superannuation reforms, while campaigning against them.This is an indictment of Labor. The debt is already huge, with the Liberals already promising to add another $85 billion to it over the next four years. Then along comes Labor promising to borrow not $85 billion more but $101 billion.
Under Bill Shorten’s leadership, Labor’s election policy costings released yesterday show the budget’s bottom line would not start improving until 2023-24, after three federal elections.
Worse, that’s even after Labor promises to tax us even harder than the Liberals to pay for part of its massive spending program.
This is a reckless program of tax and spend that is out of touch with the national need and the public mood.
UPDATE
And, of course, Labor is dogged by its past sins. Tom Switzer explains:
If the Coalition wins on Saturday, it will be due in no small part to a policy that commands broad support from not just conservatives but the Australian public at large.
I am, of course, referring to border protection. When Labor ended Howard’s Pacific Solution in 2008, more than 50,000 people arrived in unauthorised boats and more than 1000 people died at sea. That all changed in 2013 when Tony Abbott reintroduced many of the Howard-era policies.
The result: the boats have more or less stopped… Meanwhile, the British people have looked at the shambolic condition of immigration policy in Europe… Now they have decided to do things completely differently.
Listen to Boris Johnson, a great admirer of both Howard and Abbott. On Friday, the British prime minister-in-waiting declared that, thanks to Britain’s decision to leave the EU, “we can control our own borders in a way that is not discriminatory but fair and balanced – and take the wind out of the sails of the extremists and those who would play politics with immigration”.A clear majority of Australians agree. So does Turnbull, to his credit.
===
Coldest June day on record. But there’s no scaremongering, though
Andrew Bolt June 26 2016 (9:38pm)
Climate catastrophists are the first to jump on some weather record to scream “global warming”.
Not this time:
Not this time:
The Bureau of Meteorology reported that during the day on Sunday, Shepparton, with 8 degrees reported its coldest June maximum temperature on record, as did Yarrawonga, with 7.7 degrees, and Kilmore with 4.6 degrees.
===
HIDE THE DECLINE
Tim Blair – Saturday, June 27, 2015 (3:27pm)
Dismayed by a poll showing decreased support for Canberra’s light rail proposal, greenists Will Steffen and Barbara Norman adjust the numbers:
On the surface of it, the union poll of 1446 residents showed that only 38.8 per cent of Canberrans support light rail, while 46.3 per cent oppose it and 14.9 per cent are undecided.Buried in the detail of that outcome is the most striking number in the poll – only 15.8 per cent of intended Liberal voters support light rail, while for all of the other groups of intended voters (Labor, Greens, Others and Undecided) support for light rail varied between 42.0 and 63.5 per cent. That anomalously low level of support among intended Liberal voters immediately caught our attention and prompted us to do a reanalysis of the poll results …In our reanalysis, we used all the percentages reported in the Canberra Times article in terms of level of support for light rail according to intended voting patterns. We then removed the intended Liberal voters from the analysis, giving a total of 980 remaining respondents to the poll, comprising the categories Labor, Greens, Others and Undecided in terms of intended voting pattern …This gives a very different picture. Now a majority support light rail. In fact, for the more-than-two-thirds of Canberrans who are are not intending to vote for the Liberals, there is very strong support for light rail, a nearly 20 per cent lead over those who oppose it.
That’s just great, Will and Babs. Now put the Liberal voters back in.
===
FAWKER
Tim Blair – Saturday, June 27, 2015 (2:39pm)
From Fairfax’s latest online project:
Back in the day, the only person who cared enough to aerate their views in public was that one conservative whack job of a relative always searching for signals, much like a struggling wi-fi connection, for any opportunity to express their rancid views at what could have otherwise been a delightful family gathering.
Back in the day, Fairfax journalists knew the difference between “aerate” and “air”. The new site is a remarkably close Gawker duplication, right down to the witlessly literal headlines and the artless profanity.
===
BILL TELLS IT STRAIGHT
Tim Blair – Saturday, June 27, 2015 (2:25pm)
One of the Labor leader’s better interviews:
===
THE S IN SCOTT IS FOR STUPID
Tim Blair – Saturday, June 27, 2015 (1:10pm)
The ABC’s Mark Scott defends his hopeless staff-captured organisation:
Mr Scott directly answered a question Mr Abbott posed to the broadcaster earlier this week – “Whose side are you on?” – by saying the ABC is “clearly on the side of Australia”.“The A in ABC is for Australian,” he said.
This man is a genius. Further on the ABC’s toxic leftism from Chris Kenny.
===
HOLY MONTH
Tim Blair – Saturday, June 27, 2015 (12:56pm)
An attack on two tourist hotels in the Tunisian resort district of Sousse has killed at least 37 people, the interior ministry said …The carnage began on the beach when a lone gunman pulled out a machine gun hidden inside of a beach parasol and opened fire …Most of the dead are believed to be European tourists as it is currently the month of Ramadan.
An Islamic State suicide bomber struck a Shi’ite mosque in the Kuwaiti capital during Friday prayers, killing 27 people …The toll in the attack, carried out in the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, is one of the largest in Kuwait’s history.
A man has been decapitated and at least two more injured at a gas product factory in France by a man carrying an Islamic State banner …France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the attack “Islamist terrorism”.
These attacks follow Islamic State incitement:
“Muslims, embark and hasten toward jihad,” said the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, in an audio message released this week. “Oh mujahedeen everywhere, rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels.”
Not that this has anything to do with Islam, of course.
UPDATE. Somalia:
At least 30 people have been killed after gunmen attacked an African Union military base in southern Somalia, witnesses say.A suicide car bomber drove into the main gates of the base in Leego, along the main road connecting the capital, Mogadishu and the city of Baidoa.The militant Islamist group al-Shabab says its fighters have taken control of the base but this is not confirmed.
(Via wazsah)
===
Bill Shorten’s best interview
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (6:36pm)
===
Memo to the Left: find a better martyr than Mallah. You’e embarrassing yourselves
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (5:58pm)
Feminist Anne Summers says the Prime Minister should use Zaky Mallah to inspire young Muslim men:
Because, as with so many of the tribal Left, the calculus is simple: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
UPDATE
Greg Barns, unaccountably a columnist with News Corp, is a lawyer so should know much better than to offer this very misleading defend of Mallah:
...shouldn’t we be using potential assets such as ex-militant Zaky Mallah to warn off Muslim teenagers from signing up with the jihadists?Recent tweets of Summers’ pick of teacher to disaffected Muslims:
So why would Summers the feminist defend Mallah against the Abbott Government, which she attacks?
Because, as with so many of the tribal Left, the calculus is simple: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
UPDATE
Greg Barns, unaccountably a columnist with News Corp, is a lawyer so should know much better than to offer this very misleading defend of Mallah:
“Vilified” merely for being a “suspect”? False. He was actually convicted of threatening to kill and sentenced to two and a half years jail:
Mallah had been refused an Australian passport on the grounds that he was likely to engage in conduct that might prejudice the security of Australia or of a foreign country (he was interviewed by ASIO officers and during that interview he told those officers that he could not rule out joining a jihad). He was very upset as a result of his application being refused and began behaving erratically and appearing on television and radio making provocative statements. He purchased a rifle and ammunition and the police became aware of this. They executed a search warrant and:Did Barns not know these facts or did hatred of the Government make him reluctant to give the real and full story?
The rifle and ammunition were found along with a number of documents, including a handwritten will, a printed document ‘How can I prepare myself for Jihad’, a handwritten letter which appears to have been a message to ASIO, and a typed manifesto setting out his grievances and identifying ASIO as his target, as well as a copy of a job application and supporting documents which he had sent to ASIO.[66]Mallah was arrested and charged with firearms offences for which he was fined. The trial attracted more media attention and he appeared on various television shows and was also interviewed by various newspapers (including The Australian). In the course of these numerous interviews he
showed, or sold, to the journalists copies of some of the documents which police had earlier seized, as well as some photographs of himself in dramatic poses, holding a knife, and wearing the kind of garb which, it seems, he considered appropriate for a would-be terrorist or suicide bomber. It is also evident that he made it known that he had made a videotape which, amongst other things, included recitations from the Koran, images of himself, and a recitation of what purportedly was to be his last message to the world.[67]As a result of this behaviour, New South Wales Counter-Terrorist Coordination Command undertook an undercover operation to see if Mallah was in fact planning a terrorist related offence. An operative ‘Greg’ posed as a freelance journalist who wanted to write a story on Mallah. He made phone contact and met several times with Mallah over a period of days. They negotiated a price of $3000 for the videotape and photos and other items that related to a seige he said he was planning of an ASIO or DFAT building during which he planned to take and kill hostages. It appears that Mallah also expected to be shot and killed by police during the seige.
At trial, Mallah pleaded guilty to the s 147.2 offence (which had been an offence under the Criminal Code since well before the enactment of the terrorism provisions).[68] The jury acquitted him of both counts of the s 101.6 offence. Mallah was sentenced to two years six months with release to be subject to entering a good behaviour bond with conditions attached.[69]
===
Savaging Shorten
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (3:14pm)
The Abbott Government has fingered the biggest weakness Labor has, releasing this damning attack video:
This one will, because the facts are only too obvious.
Every party attacks the leader of the other side. But not all attacks work.
This one will, because the facts are only too obvious.
===
Another false claim against Pell disproved. Can the witch hunt now stop?
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (10:08am)
Yet another false allegation against Cardinal George Pell is disproved. The sliming of this man has been truly disgraceful - an outrage:
A former child victim of a paedophile Christian Brother has claimed that in 1969 Dr Pell, who was then a young priest, heard him pleading for help a few weeks after he had been raped.
The cardinal has this week given the Herald Sun access to a copy of his full passport showing his travel between the 1960s and 1970s. The passport makes it clear that Cardinal Pell was not in Australia in 1969. The Herald Sun reported on Monday that Paul Lyons, 55, had challenged the cardinal to prove he was not in Ballarat at the time he told priests at St Alipius Presbytery of his rape.
Mr Lyons, who has previously made the claims through his lawyer at a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse, went public on the weekend saying: “I want Pell to produce the pages of his passport as proof that he was visiting Australia at the time.’’
The travel documents now prove that Dr Pell was studying in Oxford at the time Mr Lyons has said he was brutally raped, at age 9, in St Alipius Primary School by Christian Brother teacher Robert Best…
Mr Lyons is still expected to address the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse when it reconvenes in Ballarat later this year…In 2011, Best was jailed for six years for the crime he perpetrated against Mr Lyons, along with a further eight years and nine months for sex offences against 10 other schoolboys.
===
On The Bolt Report tomorrow, June 28
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (9:40am)
On Channel 10 tomorrow at 10am and 3pm.
Editorial: How to tame the ABC and make it obey the law?
My guest: The man the ABC tried to ambush. Steven Ciobo on ABC boss Mark Scott’s excuses. (The attack in France makes the ABC’s timing particularly bad.)
The panel: Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian and Michael Kauter, former deputy campaign director of the Nationals.
NewsWatch: Nick Cater, Australiancolumnist director of the Menzies Research Centre.
So very much to discuss, including Bill Shorten’s lie and the Sydney Morning Herald’s half-baked global warming scare.
Plus: in praise of Malcolm Turnbull.
The videos of the shows appear here.
Editorial: How to tame the ABC and make it obey the law?
My guest: The man the ABC tried to ambush. Steven Ciobo on ABC boss Mark Scott’s excuses. (The attack in France makes the ABC’s timing particularly bad.)
The panel: Janet Albrechtsen of The Australian and Michael Kauter, former deputy campaign director of the Nationals.
NewsWatch: Nick Cater, Australiancolumnist director of the Menzies Research Centre.
So very much to discuss, including Bill Shorten’s lie and the Sydney Morning Herald’s half-baked global warming scare.
Plus: in praise of Malcolm Turnbull.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===
Abbott recovers and Credlin redeemed
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (9:37am)
Greg Sheridan is right and the critics proved wrong:
(Thanks to reader brett t r.)
In the space of 18 months in office, Tony Abbott has matured a great deal as a leader and a politician. Even in national security, the area of his greatest strength, he is a better Prime Minister now than he was 12 months ago…I’ve always said that the problem wasn’t Credlin but the lack of more Credlins.
The recipe for the remarkable political resurgence of the Abbott government over the last few months has been to concentrate on the things that matter in people’s lives, and to run a constantly activist government.
It is worth pausing parenthetically to note how strong Abbott’s recovery has been. Those of us who thought this would require the departure of his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, have been proven wrong. She has been central to the recovery.
(Thanks to reader brett t r.)
===
The ABC should return the A
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (9:00am)
Prime Minister Tony Abbott:
Talk about missing the point.
Mark Scott gave a major speech on Thursday defending the ABC.
UPDATE:
Chris Kenny:
The issue for the ABC, our national broadcaster, is whose side are you on? Because all too often the ABC seems to be on everyone’s side but Australia’s.ABC boss Mark Scott:
The A in ABC is for Australian.Brilliant riposte from the Daily Telegraph:
So is the A in CPA. The first two letters stand for Communist Party.UPDATE
Talk about missing the point.
Mark Scott gave a major speech on Thursday defending the ABC.
Number of times he mentioned “independent” or “independence” - 26Takeout: Scott is not interested in the slightest in fixing the bias or imbalance in the ABC and will scream “independence” when asked to.
Number of times he mentioned “bias”, “balance” or “balanced” - 1.
UPDATE:
Chris Kenny:
This was not about free speech — Zaky Mallah has made his views known in previous media interviews, in Youtube posts and in vile, misogynistic and threatening Twitter posts. He has continued to air his views — even repeating his repulsive view that two prominent female columnists he describes as “whores” should be “gang banged”.(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Scott.)
Mallah’s free speech is not under threat and never has been. Scott was not defending this man’s free speech, he was defending the responsibility of the ABC’s choices. And in that task he utterly failed… This is not a debate about excluding views. This is a debate about the views Q&A;chose to promote.
Scott was seeking not only to change the argument but to change the transgression.... To quote Voltaire and cite Charlie Hebdo in these circumstances is not only misdirected but cowardly…
The independence argument was a hysterical distraction from Scott’s task of explaining an irresponsible choice by the ABC, why such errors keep occurring and how he will rectify the situation… [W]hether it is false claims that our navy tortured asylum-seekers, orchestrated campaigns with animal rights activists to shut down an export industry or the ignoring of important scientific stories about a hiatus in global warming, it is passing strange that the ABC’s major transgressions seem always to reflect a Green-Left agenda.
===
From the soil of the Left grows the jihadist plant
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (8:36am)
A former Islamist links the Left to radical Islam:
Just a different horse.
EMMA ALBERICI: You were only 15 years old. Was that what was attracting you back then to Hizb ut-Tahrir?Same urge to dominate. Same pleasure in sacrificing the individual to the cause. Same disdain for freedom and the West.
RASHAD ALI: Sure. I mean - sure. I think I guess I always explain it as a number of things. First is growing up in - I grew up in Sheffield, which is a city in the North of England and it’s an old industrial city, it was a very left-wing city, so I grew up in an atmosphere which was fairly normally anti-establishment. The difference was I guess I grew up within - coming from a Muslim heritage and a Muslim background.
Just a different horse.
===
Does the Left really want Abbott to follow the Pope?
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (8:17am)
Gerard Henderson wonders why the Left is so keen to urge us to heed the Pope’s encyclical on the environment:
The Age in Melbourne has been publishing piece after piece in its printed edition urging readers to follow the encyclical.Another hypocrite:
It seems that The Age’s editor is blissfully unaware that the Pope has urged the faithful to avoid “the use of plastic and paper” (Section 211).
Greens senator Larissa Waters ... declared that [the Pope’s encyclical] “calls for an urgent moral response to the scientific reality of global warming...”. [and] Tony Abbott “should listen to the leader of his own church and abandon attacks on the clean energy target”....
Waters believes that because Abbott is a Catholic, he should abide by Laudato Si’. This suggests that she has not read the full document. According to the encyclical, “concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion” (Section 120). Moreover, Francis restates the Catholic Church’s opposition to artificial contraception (Section 50). Not much for Waters to cheer for here.
===
Obama’s finest hour
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (8:13am)
For me, the most moving (and bravest) thing President Barack Obama has done - this, at the funeral of South Carolina State Senator and preacher Clementa Pinckney, murdered by a racist:
===
Shorten must think voters are mushrooms, too
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (7:49am)
Labor leader Bill Shorten used to thunder that the Liberals’ wicked WorkChoices laws would strip workers of overtime and conditions, and cost some their jobs. Yet his union was itself signing deals which did just that with companies which donated money to the union in return.
Another example today:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Another example today:
Bill Shorten’s union brokered a deal to install 300 temporary labour-hire workers at a Melbourne mushroom-picking business which delivered at least $150,000 in tax-free payments to the Australian Workers Union.More:
The pact led to unfair-dismissal action by permanent workers who were sacked under the scheme. The deal, struck in 2003 when Mr Shorten was the AWU’s Victorian state secretary, was enshrined in an enterprise bargaining agreement in 2004, despite concerns from lawyers at the time that it was potentially anti-competitive.
Over the next three years the “union-friendly” labour-hire firm Oneforce supplied nearly 700 AWU members to Chiquita Mushrooms Pty Ltd, a business majority owned by the Costa Group. At the heart of the agreement, which raises ethical questions about some tactics the AWU has used to bolster the membership of its Victorian base, was the plan to use Oneforce to exclusively supply private labour hire at the company’s mushroom farms....
... from the 12 months to June 30, 2013, the records show a burst of almost weekly payments for union dues to the AWU, amounting to $82,142.50, before the company abruptly dissolved into liquidation, leaving a superannuation debt of $560,000 for its own casual workforce… The total known payments to the AWU from Oneforce amount to more than $150,000.
The Victorian branch of the AWU has moved to explain a $47,500 payment it received in 2007 that was described in its accounts as a “donation” made by mining company Roche…This threatens to get extremely ugly for Shorten.
It now says the payment was from AWU members who worked at the company and was to cover legal costs associated with a dispute. A spokeswoman said the members had made the payment “voluntarily”. No explanation was provided for why the payment was attributed to the company in the accounts.
The donation was made the same year Bill Shorten ended his time as national secretary of the union.
The AWU has still provided no explanation for a $22,700 payment described in its 2003 accounts as a “glassworkers service fee”. The source of this payment is unknown…
The accounts show a spike in membership dues in 2006, when they rose nearly $900,000 to just over $6 million, even though membership fell slightly in the same period. The union has told the ABC this reflected a greater proportion of members becoming “financial members” in 2006, the final year of Mr Shorten’s tenure as state secretary.
The accounts show the union categorised more than $700,000, or nearly 10 per cent of its total revenue, as “other income” in each of the accounting years 2010 and 2011. In all other years, “other income” was used to describe just 1 per cent or less of the total. The AWU was unable to explain this.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===
What are Muslim leaders doing to reform their faith?
Andrew Bolt June 27 2015 (7:12am)
Muslim apologists here and abroad like to explain each outrage as a reflection of some crime by the West - oppression, imperialism, marginalisation, demonisation.
But whatever the excuse, each fresh massacre - so many and now so florid with cruelty - gives the world reason to associate Islam with hatred and violence:
The only way Islam can be made to seem a faith compatible with the West and not a threat is for Muslim leaders to reform it, not excuse it.
The number of such leaders here doing the work seem pitifully few. Does that mean the case is hopeless? The will missing?
Grave consequences must flow from the answer.
But whatever the excuse, each fresh massacre - so many and now so florid with cruelty - gives the world reason to associate Islam with hatred and violence:
AN ATTACK on two tourist hotels in the Tunisian resort district of Sousse has killed at least 37 people, the interior ministry said.In France:
The carnage at the popular Mediterranean resort of Port el Kantaoui on Friday came the same day as a suicide bomber killed 25 people at a Shi’ite mosque in Kuwait and a suspected Islamist attacked a factory in France....
The carnage began on the beach when a lone gunman pulled out a machine gun hidden inside of a beach parasol and opened fire…
The Health Ministry said the 37 dead included Tunisians, British, Germans and Belgians, without giving a breakdown.
A delivery man with known Islamist connections beheaded his boss and left the body, daubed with Arabic writing, at the site of a U.S.-owned gas factory in southeast France before trying to blow up the complex.In Kuwait:
The assailant rammed his delivery van into a warehouse containing gas canisters, triggering an initial explosion, and was arrested minutes later as he tried to open canisters containing flammable chemicals, prosecutors said on Friday.
Police found the head of the victim, the 54-year-old manager of the transport firm that employed the suspect, dangling from a fence.
“The head was discovered hanging on the factory’s wire fence, framed by two flags that included references to the shahada, or (Muslim) profession of faith,” Paris public prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference…
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve named the suspect as Yassin Sahli. He said Sahli did not have a criminal record but had been under surveillance from 2006 to 2008 on suspicion of having become radicalized by Islamist associates.
The death toll from a suicide attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in the Kuwaiti capital has risen to at least 27, the interior ministry says.In the Islamic State - and appealing to some Muslims here:
Another 227 people were wounded, it added. Images circulating online show bodies on the mosque floor amid debris....
An Islamic State- (IS) affiliated group said it was behind the attack. IS has carried out similar recent attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
However, this is the first attack on a Shia mosque to take place in the small Gulf state.
“Don’t worry brothers, she won’t dissappoint you,’’ Australian jihadist Mohamed Elomar declared in his misspelled tweet, posted with an image of the young captive with sad and tortured eyes.It is simply pointless to argue that Islamism and the reputation of Islam can be tackled by some show of goodwill from the non-Muslim West. First, it’s not true, but,, just as importantly, few non-Muslims would now believe it to be true.
She was almost certainly Yazidi, one of seven slaves of Islamic State he claimed to have for sale for $2500 each…
The twice-married Elomar, 29, was reaching out to young Muslims to join him in the combat zone in Syria and Iraq and enjoy the same spoil of war: sex. ..
The uncomfortable questions for the Western world, including Australia, are why this debased appeal seems to be gaining traction with Islamic State’s target audience, which increasingly includes women, and why it’s not challenged more stridently in the public arena.
In an internet chat room recently, monitored by US researchers covertly keeping tabs on a presumed Islamic State recruiter, the discussion was explicit about the earthly pleasures available to young men who got into the fight…
Long persecuted because some of their beliefs derived from the Bible, [Yazidis] were branded devil worshippers by the Islamists and systematically rounded up. Up to 5000 Yazidi men were murdered and at least that number of women enslaved, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated…
Dilara, 20, was taken to a wedding hall and held with about 60 other terrified Yazidi women and children. “From 9.30 in the morning men would come to buy girls to rape them … they were like animals … they would rape them and bring them back to exchange for new girls. The girls’ ages ranged from eight to 30 years … only 20 girls remained in the end."…
Islamic State has sought to justify the sexual violence by claiming that Islam permits sex with non-Muslim “slaves”.
The only way Islam can be made to seem a faith compatible with the West and not a threat is for Muslim leaders to reform it, not excuse it.
The number of such leaders here doing the work seem pitifully few. Does that mean the case is hopeless? The will missing?
Grave consequences must flow from the answer.
===
LIFE, LIBERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. right here. right now.
Posted by Mimi Imfurst on Friday, 26 June 2015
===
Share a picture of your child reading for a chance to win a Kindle prize pack for the whole family! Contest ends June 29 at 11:59pm PDT → http://bit.ly/1Rw43Ms
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Friday, 26 June 2015
===
• There Are Two Kinds of People In The World...#DevRangehttp://www.healthy4u.net/
Posted by Psychology & Human Development on Friday, 8 May 2015
===
CirculationShot in Canadian TX during a lull in activity after a series of funnels dropped from this wall cloud in it'...
Posted by Matt Granz on Friday, 26 June 2015
===
Don't mess with this Kangaroo
Posted by Graduate Fasttrack on Saturday, 19 July 2014
===
BAND-MAIDBuy Album: http://bit.ly/1DKYYJuOfficial Facebook: https://facebook.com/bandmaidMore Japanese media in --> Jrock Radio
Posted by Jrock Radio on Sunday, 5 April 2015
===
Amazing...
Posted by The Houston Zombie Walk on Monday, 27 April 2015
===
Mark Kenny should just say he was blinded by Gore
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (9:36am)
Fairfax reporter Mark Kenny co-wrote a front page story yesterday falsely claiming Clive Palmer would save the carbon tax - showing Kenny, a warmist, had just listened with his eyes at a press conference featuring warmist evangelist Al Gore:
Mark Kenny today scrabbles out of his hole:
And Kenny then gives evidence that suggests the Government itself is not at all alarmed by this “chaos” it’s allegedly been plunged into:
UPDATE
The Australian laughs:
Clive Palmer has thrown into chaos Tony Abbott’s plan to abolish the carbon tax, demanding the Prime Minister instead create an emissions trading scheme that would swing into action when Australia’s major trading partners adopt similar measures.In fact, Palmer wants the carbon tax gone, even if his doomed plan for an emissions trading scheme on the never-never is rejected.
Mark Kenny today scrabbles out of his hole:
There are two schools of thought regarding the status of Tony Abbott’s climate change promises in light of Clive Palmer’s delphic pronouncements on Wednesday…“Most people within the politico-media community” is just Kenny’s grandiose way of describing the Canberra press gallery’s group thinkers and their pet warmists, yet again out of touch with reality.
(O)ne theory holds that because Palmer has signed the death warrant of the carbon price, the decision is a clear win for Abbott. End of story.
The other holds that Abbott’s ...‘‘direct action’’ has been scuttled, while other crucial pieces of the Labor/Greens architecture will be left in place. Taken as a whole, therefore, his climate policy has been plunged into chaos.
The government, and frankly most people within the politico-media community, lean towards the former…
And Kenny then gives evidence that suggests the Government itself is not at all alarmed by this “chaos” it’s allegedly been plunged into:
it seems the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation - which the government desperately wants to scrap - and the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target, will stay. Neither is popular in the Coalition party-room but their retention will not cause the government too much heartache“I was wrong” or “I was fooled” would have been much shorter.
UPDATE
The Australian laughs:
CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded…
That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist…
SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity…
If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively…
Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate… Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening.
===
A racist ban on knowledge
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (9:32am)
How can any one “race” ban the acquiring of knowledge?
(Thanks to reader A Happy Little Debunker.)
Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) has removed a controversial part of an installation that invited DNA testing for Aboriginality.The Enlightenment is being rolled back.
The exhibit by Swiss artist Christoph Buchel had been on a stand offering DNA testing with a sign that read: “Are you of Aboriginal descent?"… MONA said it had removed the stall after consulting Aboriginal elders who had raised concerns about the concept. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said it was disappointed it had not been consulted before the exhibit went public.
(Thanks to reader A Happy Little Debunker.)
===
Greste is innocent, but why is Waleed Aly whitewashing al Jazeera?
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (8:28am)
Peter Greste is completely innocent and the victim of a show trial in Egypt. He worked for Al-Jazeera’s English service, which is a legitimate broadcaster. He must be freed.
But ABC host Waleed Aly, our leading Muslim apologist, typically turns the case into an attack on the West and a whitewash of Al Jazeera’s darker side - its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and the preaching on its Arabic service of bigotry, extremism and anti-Egypt conspiracy theories involving Jews:
Here are two notorious videos of Al Jazeera throwing a party for a jihadist who killed a four-year-old Jewish girl and hosting a preacher, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideoiogist, who praises what Hitler did to the Jews and offers to shoot some himself:
Why is an ABC presenter whitewashing a broadcaster guilty of such bigotry?
But ABC host Waleed Aly, our leading Muslim apologist, typically turns the case into an attack on the West and a whitewash of Al Jazeera’s darker side - its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and the preaching on its Arabic service of bigotry, extremism and anti-Egypt conspiracy theories involving Jews:
Greste’s problem is simply that he works for al-Jazeera – which the Egyptian regime deems to be a mouthpiece for the Brotherhood. He has every reason to protest that he was merely reporting the news, but that necessarily means exposing some of the regime’s excesses and in Egypt that’s enough to make you a lying, terrorist supporter. And that’s exactly what the charges were: supporting the Brotherhood and spreading false news....I am becoming seriously alarmed by Waleed Aly’s excuse-making and wilful blindness to Islamist extremism, as in blaming the Boston bombing on American Right-wingers, refusing to identify Boko Haram as Muslim and refusing to blame Boko Haram for kidnapping schoolgirls.
Al-Jazeera! Once upon a time not so very long ago, it was Western politicians – like Donald Rumsfeld – describing them as the “mouthpiece of al-Qaeda”. And it was their propagandists – like Bill O’Reilly – brandin it a terrorist organisation that shouldn’t be allowed in America. Last year he even warned its anchors that “they behead you” if you “misbehave”. “Sure,” you retort, “but these are just words – not the imprisonment of journalists after a sham trial”. And that’s true. But it probably doesn’t mean much to Sami al-Hajj, the al-Jazeera cameraman who was locked up in Guantanamo Bay for six years without any trial at all – even a sham one – before the Bush administration decided there was nothing to charge him with. Greste was held in solitary confinement. If you believe al-Hajj’s lawyer, he was physically and sexually abused.
In those days al-Jazeera’s main crime was that it broadcast statements from Osama bin Laden to which they had gained exclusive access – which is to say that it broadcast what any news organisation would regard as news. That was al-Jazeera’s argument then, in exactly the way it is its argument now. In both cases it’s an argument with force…
Here are two notorious videos of Al Jazeera throwing a party for a jihadist who killed a four-year-old Jewish girl and hosting a preacher, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideoiogist, who praises what Hitler did to the Jews and offers to shoot some himself:
Why is an ABC presenter whitewashing a broadcaster guilty of such bigotry?
===
20 Syrian fighters have returned to Australia
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (8:18am)
I really do not understand why we have immigration policies which expose us to this danger and this expense:
ASIO director-general David Irvine warned that extremists fighting in the Iraq-Syria theatre may soon turn their attention towards targets in the West....
Intelligence agencies estimate that about 150 Australians are participating in the Iraq-Syria conflict, either overseas or via activities here in Australia such as recruiting fighters. The number thought to be in Iraq is small, fewer than 10.
Among them are convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf and his companion Mohamed Elomar, both of whom are fighting with ISIS.
Elomar and Sharrouf are suspected of having participated in mass executions conducted by ISIS against captured Iraqi prisoners in northern Iraq about two weeks ago…
Mr Irvine confirmed that a number of Australians who fought in Syria had since returned. The Australian understands they number about 20.
===
Clive Palmer feeds his favorite journalist a falsehood
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:58am)
Hedley Thomas on the false claims Clive Palmer made to his favourite interviewer:
Read on, as Thomas explains these court documents which prove Palmer is peddling porkies:
Graham Richardson says voters will one day work out Palmer is feeding them bull:
The ABC’s Tony Jones is an interviewer, not an investigator like Woodward or Bernstein, but the flagship program he presents (and on which Palmer loves appearing) has the staff and the resources to be properly informed by publicly available court documents about a very serious matter. A few hours after Palmer’s appearance with former US vice-president Al Gore in Canberra, Jones put to him that “it seems to be an allegation made by your partners (Citic Pacific) that $12 million has gone missing from …’’
Palmer replied: “Well that’s just not true. There’s no allegation made by them. There’s no action taken by them. There’s no action against us in any of these matters. It’s just rubbish.’’
No allegation by the Chinese? No action taken by them? All those matters in all those court proceedings must be make-believe, too. Along with the large sums of money currently being spent by Palmer on lawyers to defend him in the same proceedings.
Read on, as Thomas explains these court documents which prove Palmer is peddling porkies:
UPDATE
Graham Richardson says voters will one day work out Palmer is feeding them bull:
I asked him how he could explain the disastrous business performance of his resort at Coolum. The occupancy rate when he booted Hyatt out of the resort (after losing yet another court case where he falsely accused Hyatt of stealing $20 million from him) was 58 per cent and now it is 0 per cent.
Palmer laughed it off and replied that he was a billionaire who could buy any home he liked. There was no mention of the 350 people who no longer had a job or the unit owners and part-owners who had been locked out. They are all suing Palmer and they must win. The payout for damages, reparation and legal fees will be massive. Those pockets will need to be very deep indeed. Perhaps his greatest publicity stunt has been the Titanic replica he has been going to build for the past few years. When I asked him to nominate the shipyard he had contracted to build it, Clive nominated the same shipyard this newspaper had reported as denying that any such contract existed.
===
The Bolt Report on Sunday, June 29
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:54am)
On Sunday on Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial: Spot the biggest fraud this week.
My guest: Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews on reforming welfare.
The panel: former Gillard media advisor Sean Kelly and former Howard chief of staff Grahame Morris. Was this Tony Abbott’s big breakthrough week? And why was it so easy this week for Clive Palmer to fool so many journalists?
NewsWatch: Gerard Henderson on giving extremists a platform - and the anti-Murdoch witch-hunt.
Plus spin of the week and more.
And a question: how come the mud isn’t sticking to Bill Shorten?
The videos of the shows appear here.
Editorial: Spot the biggest fraud this week.
My guest: Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews on reforming welfare.
The panel: former Gillard media advisor Sean Kelly and former Howard chief of staff Grahame Morris. Was this Tony Abbott’s big breakthrough week? And why was it so easy this week for Clive Palmer to fool so many journalists?
NewsWatch: Gerard Henderson on giving extremists a platform - and the anti-Murdoch witch-hunt.
Plus spin of the week and more.
And a question: how come the mud isn’t sticking to Bill Shorten?
The videos of the shows appear here.
===
Ricky Muir could still save the carbon tax
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:45am)
Almost every non-Government senator now wants to be bought off, meaning the Senate is disposed to spend billions more than we have - and a double dissolution election could be best for the national interest:
I’d like to know the terms of the memorandum of understanding Muir signed with Palmer, and what costs Muir might have to repay in pulling out.
CLIVE Palmer’s alliance with incoming Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party senator Ricky Muir may unravel on the very first vote of the new Senate after July 1.That would be stripping money from healthy businesses to prop up dying ones, with taxpayers the losers.
The Australian understands that Mr Muir plans to vote against the carbon tax repeal bills unless the Abbott government supports the automotive transformation scheme…
Mr Muir may be supported in his stance by independent senator Nick Xenophon and Democratic Labour Party senator John Madigan — with the bloc potentially deciding the outcome of the vote.
If the Abbott government refuses to revive the $700m automotive transformation scheme that Kim Carr set up as industry minister during the previous Labor government, the combined votes of Labor, the Greens and the three crossbenchers would defeat the carbon tax repeal bills.
This could force the Abbott government to go to a double-dissolution election to honour its election commitment to scrap the carbon tax. Mr Muir, Senator Madigan and Senator Xenophon are believed to favour reviving the automotive transformation scheme to assist components parts manufacturers in the wake of the decisions by Holden, Toyota and Ford to cease building cars in Australia.
I’d like to know the terms of the memorandum of understanding Muir signed with Palmer, and what costs Muir might have to repay in pulling out.
===
National Imams Council finally denounces extremists
Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:33am)
I don’t for a second buy the excuse for the silence but am glad it is now finally broken:
AUSTRALIA’S Islamic leaders have demanded radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir stop voicing its vile sermons in public, hate-filled messages which they claim are tarnishing the entire Muslim community…Why such a belated response, and then only after Hizb ut-Tahrir has been denounced by everyone else?
For years Australia’s often divided coterie of imams have been loathe to publicly scold Hizb ut-Tahrir’s tiny but vocal members, shaking their heads in private but preferring to preach freedom of expression.
Now the religion’s chief authority — the Australian National Imams Council — has had enough.
The stance follows The Daily Telegraph’s revelations Hizb ut-Tahrir’s spokesman Uthman Badar was stopped from giving a speech at the Sydney Opera House that debated the moral justification of honour killing, while the group was also found to have sickening views that men could “morally’’ marry pre-teen girls and that the US and Australia were terrorist nations for invading Iraq and Afghanistan.“They send the wrong message about Islam and they should refrain and have better judgment about preaching a message of inflammatory nature,’’ said Imam Mohammadu Nawas, a spokesman for both the ANIC and the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed.
Prominent Islamic leader Ameer Ali, former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said all Muslim groups, leaders and mosque preachers should be resoundingly denouncing the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir.I’d like far more argument to not just shut up Hizb ut-Tahrir but to prove them wrong.
“But I don’t hear it yet. I don’t hear people coming out in sermons denouncing them. They need to do this and be at the forefront of demolishing these ideas,’’ he said. “Indeed, most Muslims are horrified by what they are saying. So why aren’t the council of Imams stopping them? That’s surprising to me.’’
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
===
Joel Rubinfeld, the Brussels-born co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament, said, “The reports concerning this case are extremely disconcerting: It sounds like something from 1930s Germany. Especially disquieting is the authorities’ apparent inaction.”
Earlier this month, prosecutors in Brussels decided not to file charges in a 2011 case in which a 15-year-old Jewish girl was attacked outside her school by five boys who called her a “dirty Jew” before hitting her repeatedly in the face.
“A pattern of indifference emerges,” Rubinfeld said.
Earlier this month, prosecutors in Brussels decided not to file charges in a 2011 case in which a 15-year-old Jewish girl was attacked outside her school by five boys who called her a “dirty Jew” before hitting her repeatedly in the face.
“A pattern of indifference emerges,” Rubinfeld said.
Subsequent detail suggests the attack may be homophobic, not anti semitic. Regardless, we know it was bigoted and the bigots have broken the law. Although some excuse such attacks.. -ed
===
Chris Heins'
Stuck in my head: "Solomon Grundy,
He was week - ed
===
===
Romanian Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa writes that high ranking Soviet politician Yuri Andropov, through an initiative to seed the Muslim world with anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment, sent hundreds of agents and thousands of copies of propaganda literature to Muslim countries during the decade.
According to Pacepa: “By 1972, Andropov’s disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom.
According to Pacepa: “By 1972, Andropov’s disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom.
===
===
Makena Monk
I hope people are aware that once you go to our Club in Second Life and Vote for the Songs that are played.. they have a chance to end up in the Second Life's Top 40!!! http://www.shxonline.com/
===
Larry Pickering
A VILE PIECE OF TRASH CALLED SUMMERS
I received a call from the Brisbane Courier mail, “Larry Pickering? Anne Summers says people like you are responsible for Jill Meagher’s rape and murder, do you have a reply to that?” They couldn’t print my reply.
At the time I hadn’t heard of this unhinged man-hating dragon, mainly because I don’t read the socialist Press or Fairfax.
Now I hope you don’t mind because I can’t bring myself to call her a woman (real women are wonderful) so I will refer to her as “thing”.
It’s this “thing” who encouraged Julia Gillard to embark on a fateful gender tirade that contributed to her knifing.
It was this “thing” who encouraged Government payouts of $5,000 for late/full term abortions (covered here two posts back).
It’s this thing who enjoys degrading men by shagging toy boys less than half her age.
This “thing” plasters lipstick all over her filthy mouth in an attempt to appear human but it doesn’t work, and someone should explain the purpose of lipstick and rouge, the colour red in humans and primates, is to indicate arousal to the opposite sex (and I can’t see that working either).
But this “thing” has now turned on her own kind, criticising Labor’s women politicians who are refusing to jump ship in sympathy with Gillard. Only men, in thinly veiled disgust, have so far tossed in the towel.
Even lesbians like Wong have turned their backs on Gillard.
Julia sits alone, banished to a back bench, mulling over what might have been without her coterie of gender terrorists.
If you wish to dry retch and peruse the sewage that pours from this “thing”’s noisy red orifice you will have to read today's Fairfax Press or watch the ABC, because only the far Left will stomach her disgusting, vile drivel.
Understand this, Summers, it’s obnoxious vermin like you who emboldened Gillard to take the misogynist road.
It was you who applauded that nauseating crap and it is you who are responsible for her downfall. Live with it!
We real men adore real women and a thousand “thing”s like you will never drive a wedge between us.
===
Why was Nik Wallenda praising Jesus during his death-defying walk? His answer may surprise you:http://tinyurl.com/qdb67kt
During the Grand Canyon stunt, Wallenda’s mic picked up what he was saying. “Praise God” and “Praise you, Jesus” were among the phrases uttered.
At one point, Wallenda thanked God for calming the wind. But, he told Sean, “I believe that God’s given me a very unique talent and I use it to give glory to Him. [...] I don’t believe that God holds me on that wire in any way. It’s not as though I’m praising God’s name while I’m walking, saying ‘God hold me up here, I’m going to fall.’”
Hannity asked why so many people have a fear of heights. Wallenda answered, “You call it fear, I call it respect. […] I go on top of a skyscraper and I look over the edge, and I believe just like anyone else, I look and say I don’t want to go down there. But I’ve trained my whole life to stay on that wire.”
===
===
- 1556 – The thirteen Stratford Martyrs were burned at the stake near London for their Protestant beliefs.
- 1760 – Anglo-Cherokee War: Cherokee warriors defeated British forces at the Battle of Echoee near present-dayOtto, North Carolina, US.
- 1927 – Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi (pictured) led a conference to discuss Japan's plans for China, out of which came theTanaka Memorial, a strategic document detailing these plans (now believed to be a forgery).
- 1986 – In Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justiceruled that the United States had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government.
- 1989 – The International Labour Organization Convention 169, a major binding international convention concerning indigenous peoples, and a forerunner of the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, was adopted.
- 1358 – The Republic of Ragusa is founded.
- 1497 – Cornish rebels Michael An Gof and Thomas Flamank are executed at Tyburn, London, England.
- 1556 – The thirteen Stratford Martyrs are burned at the stake near London for their Protestantbeliefs.
- 1743 – In the Battle of Dettingen, George II becomes the last reigning British monarch to participate in a battle.
- 1759 – General James Wolfe begins the siege of Quebec.
- 1760 – Cherokee warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Echoee near present-day Otto, North Carolina during the Anglo-Cherokee War.
- 1806 – British forces take Buenos Aires during the first of the British invasions of the River Plate.
- 1844 – Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith, are killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail.
- 1864 – Confederate forces defeat Union forces during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain during the Atlanta Campaign of the American Civil War.
- 1895 – The inaugural run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.
- 1898 – The first solo circumnavigation of the globe is completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.
- 1905 – During the Russo-Japanese War, sailors start a mutiny aboard the Russian battleship Potemkin.
- 1927 – Prime Minister of Japan Tanaka Giichi convenes an eleven-day conference to discuss Japan's strategy in China. The Tanaka Memorial, a forged plan for world domination, is later claimed to be a secret report leaked from this conference.
- 1941 – Romanian authorities launch one of the most violent pogroms in Jewish history in the city of Iași, resulting in the murder of at least 13,266 Jews.
- 1941 – German troops capture the city of Białystok during Operation Barbarossa.
- 1946 – In the Canadian Citizenship Act, the Parliament of Canada establishes the definition of Canadian citizenship.
- 1950 – The United States decides to send troops to fight in the Korean War.
- 1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land.
- 1954 – The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the Soviet Union's first nuclear power station, opens in Obninsk, near Moscow.
- 1954 – The 1954 FIFA World Cup quarterfinal match between Hungary and Brazil, highly anticipated to be exciting, instead turns violent, with three players ejected and further fighting continuing after the game.
- 1957 – Hurricane Audrey makes landfall near the Texas–Louisiana border, killing over 400 people, mainly in and around Cameron, Louisiana.
- 1971 – After only three years in business, rock promoter Bill Graham closes Fillmore East in New York, the "Church of Rock and Roll".
- 1973 – The President of Uruguay Juan María Bordaberry dissolves Parliament and establishes a dictatorship.
- 1974 – U.S. president Richard Nixon visits the Soviet Union.
- 1976 – Air France Flight 139 (Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris) is hijacked en route to Paris by the PLO and redirected to Entebbe, Uganda.
- 1977 – France grants independence to Djibouti.
- 1980 – Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870, also known in Italy as the Ustica disaster, mysteriously explodes in mid-air while en route from Bologna, to Palermo, Italy, killing all 81 on board.
- 1981 – The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issues its "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", laying the blame for the Cultural Revolution on Mao Zedong.
- 1982 – Space Shuttle Columbia launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final research and development flight mission, STS-4.
- 1988 – The Gare de Lyon rail accident in Paris, France, kills 56 people.
- 1991 – Slovenia, after declaring independence two days before is invaded by Yugoslav troops, tanks, and aircraft starting the Ten-Day War.
- 1994 – Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult release sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan. Seven people are killed, 660 injured.
- 2007 – Tony Blair resigns as British Prime Minister, a position he had held since 1997.
- 2007 – The Brazilian Military Police invades the favelas of Complexo do Alemão in an episode which is remembered as the Complexo do Alemão massacre.
- 2008 – In a highly scrutizined election President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe is re-elected in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai had withdrawn a week earlier, citing violence against his party's supporters.
- 2013 – NASA launches the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a space probe to observe the Sun.
- 2014 – At least fourteen people are killed when a Gas Authority of India Limited pipeline explodes in the East Godavaridistrict of Andhra Pradesh, India.
- 2015 – A midair explosion from flammable powder at a recreational water park in Taiwan injures at least 510 people with about 183 in serious condition in intensive care.
- 2022 – HD sends goodmorning message.
- 850 – Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Aghlabid emir (d. 902)
- 1350 – Manuel II Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (d. 1425)
- 1430 – Henry Holland, 3rd Duke of Exeter, Lancastrian leader (d. 1475)
- 1462 – Louis XII, king of France (d. 1515)
- 1464 – Ernst II of Saxony, Archbishop of Magdeburg (1476–1513) (d. 1513)
- 1497 – Ernest I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (d. 1546)
- 1550 – Charles IX, king of France (d. 1574)
- 1596 – Maximilian, Prince of Dietrichstein (d. 1655)
- 1696 – William Pepperrell, American merchant and soldier (d. 1759)
- 1717 – Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, French botanist and physicist (d. 1799)
- 1767 – Alexis Bouvard, French astronomer and academic (d. 1843)
- 1805 – Napoléon Coste, French guitarist and composer (d. 1883)
- 1806 – Augustus De Morgan, English mathematician and logician (d. 1871)
- 1817 – Louise von François, German author (d. 1893)
- 1828 – Bryan O'Loghlen, Irish-Australian politician, 13th Premier of Victoria (d. 1905)
- 1838 – Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Indian journalist, author, and poet (d. 1894)
- 1838 – Paul Mauser, German weapon designer, designed the Gewehr 98 (d. 1914)
- 1846 – Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish politician (d. 1891)
- 1850 – Jørgen Pedersen Gram, Danish mathematician and academic (d. 1919)
- 1850 – Lafcadio Hearn, Greek-Japanese historian and author (d. 1904)
- 1862 – May Irwin, Canadian-American actress and singer (d. 1938)
- 1865 – John Monash, Australian engineer and general (d. 1931)
- 1869 – Kate Carew, American illustrator and journalist (d. 1961)
- 1869 – Emma Goldman, Lithuanian-Canadian philosopher and activist (d. 1940)
- 1869 – Hans Spemann, German embryologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1941)
- 1870 – Frank Rattray Lillie, American zoologist and embryologist (d. 1947)
- 1872 – Heber Doust Curtis, American astronomer (d. 1942)
- 1872 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, American author, poet, and playwright (d. 1906)
- 1880 – Helen Keller, American author, academic, and activist (d. 1968)
- 1882 – Eduard Spranger, German philosopher and academic (d. 1963)
- 1884 – Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher and poet (d. 1962)
- 1885 – Pierre Montet, French historian and academic (d. 1966)
- 1885 – Guilhermina Suggia, Portuguese cellist (d. 1950)
- 1886 – Charlie Macartney, Australian cricketer and soldier (d. 1958)
- 1888 – Lewis Bernstein Namier, Polish-English historian and academic (d. 1960)
- 1888 – Antoinette Perry, American actress and director (d. 1946)
- 1892 – Paul Colin, French illustrator (d. 1985)
- 1899 – Juan Trippe, American businessman, founded Pan American World Airways (d. 1981)
- 1900 – Dixie Brown, British boxer (d. 1957)
- 1901 – Merle Tuve, American geophysicist and academic (d. 1982)
- 1905 – Armand Mondou, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1976)
- 1906 – Catherine Cookson, English author and philanthropist (d. 1998)
- 1906 – Vernon Watkins, Welsh-American poet and painter (d. 1967)
- 1907 – John McIntire, American actor (d. 1991)
- 1908 – João Guimarães Rosa, Brazilian physician and author (d. 1967)
- 1911 – Marion M. Magruder, American Marine officer, commander of the VMF(N)-533 squadron. (d. 1997)
- 1912 – E. R. Braithwaite, Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat (d. 2016)
- 1913 – Elton Britt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1972)
- 1913 – Philip Guston, American painter and academic (d. 1980)
- 1913 – Willie Mosconi, American pool player (d. 1993)
- 1914 – Robert Aickman, English author and activist, co-founded the Inland Waterways Association (d. 1981)
- 1914 – Helena Benitez, Filipina academic and administrator (d. 2016)
- 1914 – Margaret Ekpo, Nigerian women's rights activist, social mobilizer and politician (d. 2006)
- 1914 – Giorgio Almirante, Italian journalist and politician (d. 1988)
- 1915 – Grace Lee Boggs, American philosopher, author, and activist (d. 2015)
- 1915 – Aideu Handique, Indian actress (d. 2002)
- 1915 – John Alexander Moore, American zoologist and academic (d. 2002)
- 1916 – Robert Normann, Norwegian guitarist (d. 1998)
- 1918 – Adolph Kiefer, American swimmer (d. 2017)
- 1919 – Amala Shankar, Indian danseuse
- 1920 – Fernando Riera, Chilean football player and manager (d. 2010)
- 1921 – Muriel Pavlow, English actress
- 1922 – George Walker, American composer
- 1923 – Jacques Berthier, French organist and composer (d. 1994)
- 1923 – Elmo Hope, American pianist and composer (d. 1967)
- 1924 – Bob Appleyard, English cricketer and businessman (d. 2015)
- 1925 – Leonard Lerman, American geneticist and biologist (d. 2012)
- 1925 – Doc Pomus, American singer-songwriter (d. 1991)
- 1925 – Wayne Terwilliger, American second baseman, coach, and manager
- 1927 – Bob Keeshan, American actor and producer (d. 2004)
- 1928 – James Lincoln Collier, American journalist and author
- 1928 – Rudy Perpich, American dentist and politician, 34th Governor of Minnesota (d. 1995)
- 1929 – Dick the Bruiser, American football player and wrestler (d. 1991)
- 1929 – Peter Maas, American journalist and author (d. 2001)
- 1930 – Ross Perot, American businessman and politician
- 1931 – Charles Bronfman, Canadian-American businessman and philanthropist
- 1931 – Martinus J. G. Veltman, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1932 – Eddie Kasko, American baseball player and manager
- 1932 – Anna Moffo, American operatic soprano (d. 2006)
- 1932 – Hugh Wood, English composer
- 1936 – Lucille Clifton, American author and poet (d. 2010)
- 1937 – Joseph P. Allen, American physicist and astronaut
- 1937 – Otto Herrigel, Namibian lawyer and politician (d. 2013)
- 1937 – Kirkpatrick Sale, American author and scholar
- 1938 – Bruce Babbitt, American lawyer and politician, 47th United States Secretary of the Interior
- 1938 – Shirley Anne Field, English actress
- 1938 – David Hope, Baron Hope of Craighead, Scottish lieutenant and judge
- 1938 – Yevgeniy Ivchenko, Ukrainian race walker (d. 1999)
- 1938 – Konrad Kujau, German illustrator (d. 2000)
- 1939 – R. D. Burman, Indian singer-songwriter (d. 1994)
- 1939 – Neil Hawke, Australian cricketer and footballer (d. 2000)
- 1940 – Ian Lang, Baron Lang of Monkton, Scottish politician, Secretary of State for Scotland
- 1941 – Bill Baxley, American lawyer and politician, 24th Lieutenant Governor of Alabama
- 1941 – James P. Hogan, English-Irish author (d. 2010)
- 1941 – Krzysztof Kieślowski, Polish director and screenwriter (d. 1996)
- 1942 – Bruce Johnston, American singer-songwriter and producer
- 1942 – Frank Mills, Canadian pianist and composer
- 1942 – Danny Schechter, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2015)
- 1943 – Ravi Batra, Indian-American economist and academic
- 1944 – Angela King, English environmentalist and author, co-founded Common Ground
- 1944 – Patrick Sercu, Belgian cyclist
- 1945 – Joey Covington, American drummer, songwriter, and producer (d. 2013)
- 1945 – Norma Kamali, American fashion designer
- 1948 – Camile Baudoin, American guitarist
- 1949 – Vera Wang, American fashion designer
- 1951 – Ulf Andersson, Swedish chess player
- 1951 – Julia Duffy, American actress
- 1951 – Gilson Lavis, English drummer (Squeeze) and portrait artist
- 1951 – Mary McAleese, Irish academic and politician, 8th President of Ireland
- 1952 – Madan Bhandari, Nepalese politician (d. 1993)
- 1953 – Igor Gräzin, Estonian academic and politician
- 1953 – Alice McDermott, American novelist
- 1954 – Richard Ibbotson, English admiral
- 1955 – Isabelle Adjani, French actress
- 1956 – Heiner Dopp, German field hockey player and politician
- 1957 – Gabriella Dorio, Italian runner
- 1958 – Lisa Germano, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1958 – Jeffrey Lee Pierce, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1996)
- 1959 – Dan Jurgens, American author and illustrator
- 1959 – Lorrie Morgan, American singer
- 1960 – Craig Hodges, American basketball player and coach
- 1960 – Robert King, English harpsichordist and conductor
- 1960 – Jeremy Swift, English actor
- 1962 – Michael Ball, English actor and singer
- 1962 – Sunanda Pushkar, India-born Canadian businesswoman (d. 2014)
- 1963 – Wendy Alexander, Scottish politician, Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning
- 1963 – Johnny Benson, Jr., American race car driver
- 1963 – Paul Roos, Australian footballer and coach
- 1964 – Stephan Brenninkmeijer, Dutch director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1964 – Chuck Person, American basketball player and coach
- 1965 – Simon Sebag Montefiore, English journalist, historian, and author
- 1965 – S. Manikavasagam, Malaysian politician and social activist
- 1965 – Óscar Vega, Spanish boxer
- 1966 – J.J. Abrams, American director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1966 – Jörg Bergen, German footballer and manager
- 1966 – Jeff Conine, American baseball player and sportscaster
- 1966 – Aigars Kalvītis, Latvian politician, businessman, and former Prime Minister of Latvia
- 1967 – Sylvie Fréchette, Canadian swimmer and coach
- 1967 – Vasiliy Kaptyukh, Belarusian discus thrower
- 1967 – Phil Kearns, Australian rugby player and sportscaster
- 1968 – Kelly Ayotte, American lawyer and politician, New Hampshire Attorney General
- 1969 – Viktor Petrenko, Ukrainian figure skater
- 1970 – Régine Cavagnoud, French skier (d. 2001)
- 1970 – John Eales, Australian rugby player and businessman
- 1970 – Jim Edmonds, American baseball player and sportscaster
- 1971 – Jo Frost, English nanny, television personality, and author
- 1971 – Serginho, Brazilian footballer
- 1972 – Dawud Wharnsby, Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer
- 1973 – Olve Eikemo (Abbath Doom Occulta), Norwegian musician
- 1973 – Simon Archer, English badminton player
- 1974 – Christian Kane, American singer-songwriter and actor
- 1974 – Christopher O'Neill, English-American businessman
- 1975 – Ace Darling, American wrestler
- 1975 – Bianca Del Rio, American drag queen & comedian
- 1975 – Sarah Evanetz, Canadian swimmer
- 1975 – Tobey Maguire, American actor
- 1975 – Daryle Ward, American baseball player
- 1976 – Johnny Estrada, American baseball player
- 1976 – Leigh Nash, American singer-songwriter
- 1977 – Arkadiusz Radomski, Polish footballer
- 1978 – Apparat, German musician
- 1980 – Hugo Campagnaro, Argentinian footballer
- 1980 – Jennifer Goodridge, American keyboard player
- 1980 – Alexander Peya, Austrian tennis player
- 1980 – Kevin Pietersen, South African-English cricketer
- 1980 – Craig Terrill, American football player
- 1981 – Andrew Embley, Australian footballer
- 1983 – Jim Johnson, American baseball player
- 1983 – Dale Steyn, South African cricketer
- 1983 – Nikola Rakočević, Serbian actor
- 1984 – Khloé Kardashian, American model, businesswoman, and radio host
- 1984 – D.J. King, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1985 – James Hook, Welsh rugby player
- 1985 – Svetlana Kuznetsova, Russian tennis player
- 1985 – Nico Rosberg, German race car driver
- 1986 – Sam Claflin, British actor
- 1986 – Drake Bell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
- 1986 – Bryan Fletcher, American skier
- 1987 – India de Beaufort, English actress
- 1987 – Ed Westwick, English actor
- 1988 – Stefani Bismpikou, Greek gymnast
- 1988 – Matthew Spiranovic, Australian footballer
- 1988 – Kate Ziegler, American swimmer
- 1989 – Hana Birnerová, Czech tennis player
- 1989 – Matthew Lewis, English actor
- 1992 – Ahn So-hee, South Korean singer and actress
- 1992 – Karthika Nair, Indian film actress
- 1993 – Johanna Talihärm, Estonian biathlete
- 1993 – Alberto Campbell-Staines, Australian athlete
- 1994 – Anita Husarić, Bosnian tennis player
- 1996 – Lauren Jauregui, Cuban-American singer
- 992 – Conan I of Rennes, Duke of Brittany
- 1162 – Odo II, Duke of Burgundy (b. 1118)
- 1194 – King Sancho VI of Navarre (b. 1132)
- 1296 – Floris V, Count of Holland (b. 1254)
- 1458 – Alfonso V of Aragon (b. 1396)
- 1497 – Michael An Gof, rebel leader
- 1497 – Thomas Flamank, rebel leader
- 1574 – Giorgio Vasari, Italian historian, painter, and architect (b. 1511)
- 1601 – Henry Norris, 1st Baron Norreys (b. 1525)
- 1603 – Jan Dymitr Solikowski, Polish archbishop (b. 1539)
- 1627 – John Hayward, English historian, journalist, and politician (b. 1564)
- 1636 – Date Masamune, Japanese strongman (b. 1567)
- 1654 – Johannes Valentinus Andreae, German theologian (b. 1586)
- 1655 – Eleonora Gonzaga, Holy Roman Empress (b. 1598)
- 1672 – Roger Twysden, English historian and politician (b. 1597)
- 1720 – Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu, French poet and author (b. 1639)
- 1794 – Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg (b. 1711)
- 1794 – Philippe de Noailles, French general (b. 1715)
- 1827 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German theologian and academic (b. 1754)
- 1829 – James Smithson, English chemist and mineralogist (b. 1765)
- 1831 – Sophie Germain, French mathematician and physicist (b. 1776)
- 1839 – Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire (b. 1780)
- 1844 – Hyrum Smith, American religious leader (b. 1800)
- 1844 – Joseph Smith, American religious leader, founded the Latter Day Saint movement (b. 1805)
- 1878 – Sidney Breese, American jurist and politician (b. 1800)
- 1894 – Giorgio Costantino Schinas, Maltese architect and civil engineer (b. 1834)
- 1896 – John Berryman, English soldier, Victoria Cross recipient (b. 1825)
- 1905 – Harold Mahony, Scottish-Irish tennis player (b. 1867)
- 1907 – Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz, American educator, co-founded Radcliffe College (b. 1822)
- 1911 – Victor Surridge, English motorcycle racer (b. 1882)
- 1912 – George Bonnor, Australian cricketer (b. 1855)
- 1917 – Karl Allmenröder, German soldier and pilot (b. 1896)
- 1919 – Peter Sturholdt, American boxer (b. 1885)
- 1920 – Adolphe-Basile Routhier, Canadian lawyer and judge (b. 1839)
- 1934 – Francesco Buhagiar, Maltese politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Malta (b. 1876)
- 1935 – Eugene Augustin Lauste, French-American inventor (b. 1857)
- 1944 – Milan Hodža, Czech journalist and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia (b. 1878)
- 1946 – Wanda Gág, American author and illustrator (b. 1893)
- 1949 – Frank Smythe, English botanist and mountaineer (b. 1900)
- 1950 – Milada Horáková, Czech politician, victim of judicial murder (b. 1901)
- 1952 – Max Dehn, German-American mathematician and academic (b. 1878)
- 1957 – Hermann Buhl, Austrian soldier and mountaineer (b. 1924)
- 1960 – Lottie Dod, English tennis player, golfer, and archer (b. 1871)
- 1962 – Paul Viiding, Estonian author, poet, and critic (b. 1904)
- 1967 – Jaan Lattik, Estonian pastor and politician, 9th Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia (b. 1878)
- 1970 – Daniel Kinsey, American hurdler and scholar (b. 1902)
- 1975 – G.I. Taylor, English mathematician and physicist (b. 1886)
- 1986 – George Nepia, New Zealand rugby player and referee (b. 1905)
- 1987 – Billy Snedden, Australian lawyer and politician, 17th Attorney-General for Australia (b. 1926)
- 1989 – A. J. Ayer, English philosopher and academic (b. 1910)
- 1991 – Milton Subotsky, American-English screenwriter and producer (b. 1921)
- 1996 – Albert R. Broccoli, American film producer (b. 1909)
- 1998 – Gilles Rocheleau, Canadian businessman and politician (b. 1935)
- 1999 – Georgios Papadopoulos, Greek colonel and politician, 169th Prime Minister of Greece (b. 1919)
- 2000 – Pierre Pflimlin, French lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of France (b. 1907)
- 2001 – Tove Jansson, Finnish author, illustrator, and painter (b. 1914)
- 2001 – Jack Lemmon, American actor (b. 1925)
- 2001 – Joan Sims, English actress (b. 1930)
- 2002 – John Entwistle, English singer-songwriter, bass guitarist, and producer (b. 1944)
- 2002 – Robert L. J. Long, American admiral (b. 1920)
- 2003 – David Newman, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1937)
- 2004 – George Patton IV, American general (b. 1923)
- 2004 – Darrell Russell, American race car driver (b. 1968)
- 2005 – Shelby Foote, American historian and author (b. 1917)
- 2005 – Ray Holmes, English lieutenant and pilot (b. 1914)
- 2005 – John T. Walton, American businessman, co-founded the Children's Scholarship Fund (b. 1946)
- 2006 – Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, Mexican serial killer (b. 1959)
- 2007 – William Hutt, Canadian actor (b. 1920)
- 2008 – Sam Manekshaw, Indian field marshal (b. 1914)
- 2009 – Gale Storm, American actress (b. 1922)
- 2010 – Corey Allen, American film and television actor, writer, director, and producer (b. 1934)
- 2011 – Mike Doyle, English footballer (b. 1946)
- 2012 – Stan Cox, English runner (b. 1918)
- 2012 – Rosemary Dobson, Australian poet and illustrator (b. 1920)
- 2013 – Stefano Borgonovo, Italian footballer (b. 1964)
- 2013 – Bill Robertson, American businessman and politician (b. 1938)
- 2013 – Ian Scott, English-New Zealand painter (b. 1945)
- 2014 – Edmond Blanchard, Canadian jurist and politician (b. 1954)
- 2014 – Allen Grossman, American poet, critic, and academic (b. 1932)
- 2014 – Leslie Manigat, Haitian educator and politician, 43rd President of Haiti (b. 1930)
- 2014 – Violet Milstead, Canadian World War II aviator and bush pilot (d. 2014)[1]
- 2014 – Rachid Solh, Lebanese politician, 48th Prime Minister of Lebanon (b. 1926)
- 2015 – Zvi Elpeleg, Polish-Israeli diplomat, author, and academic (b. 1926)
- 2015 – Knut Helle, Norwegian historian and professor (b. 1930)
- 2015 – Chris Squire, English musician (bass guitarist), singer and songwriter, member of the rock band Yes (b. 1948)
- 2016 – Bud Spencer, Italian swimmer, actor, and screenwriter (b. 1929)
- 2017 – Peter L. Berger, Austrian sociologist (b. 1929)
- Christian feast day:
- Canadian Multiculturalism Day (Canada)
- Commemoration Day for the Victims of the Communist Regime (Czech Republic)
- Day of Turkmen Workers of Culture and Art (Turkmenistan)
- Helen Keller Day (United States)
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Djibouti from France in 1977.
- Mixed Race Day (Brazil)
- National HIV Testing Day (United States)
- National PTSD Awareness Day (United States)
- Seven Sleepers' Day or Siebenschläfertag (Germany)
- Unity Day (Tajikistan)
““‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:18 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
What must be the apostate professor's doom when his naked soul appears before God? How will he bear that voice, "Depart, ye cursed; thou hast rejected me, and I reject thee; thou hast played the harlot, and departed from me: I also have banished thee forever from my presence, and will not have mercy upon thee." What will be this wretch's shame at the last great day when, before assembled multitudes, the apostate shall be unmasked? See the profane, and sinners who never professed religion, lifting themselves up from their beds of fire to point at him. "There he is," says one, "will he preach the gospel in hell?" "There he is," says another, "he rebuked me for cursing, and was a hypocrite himself!" "Aha!" says another, "here comes a psalm-singing Methodist--one who was always at his meeting; he is the man who boasted of his being sure of everlasting life; and here he is!" No greater eagerness will ever be seen among Satanic tormentors, than in that day when devils drag the hypocrite's soul down to perdition. Bunyan pictures this with massive but awful grandeur of poetry when he speaks of the back-way to hell. Seven devils bound the wretch with nine cords, and dragged him from the road to heaven, in which he had professed to walk, and thrust him through the back-door into hell. Mind that back-way to hell, professors! "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith." Look well to your state; see whether you be in Christ or not. It is the easiest thing in the world to give a lenient verdict when oneself is to be tried; but O, be just and true here. Be just to all, but be rigorous to yourself. Remember if it be not a rock on which you build, when the house shall fall, great will be the fall of it. O may the Lord give you sincerity, constancy, and firmness; and in no day, however evil, may you be led to turn aside.
Evening
Vanish forever all thought of indulging the flesh if you would live in the power of your risen Lord. It were ill that a man who is alive in Christ should dwell in the corruption of sin. "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" said the angel to Magdalene. Should the living dwell in the sepulchre? Should divine life be immured in the charnel house of fleshly lust? How can we partake of the cup of the Lord and yet drink the cup of Belial? Surely, believer, from open lusts and sins you are delivered: have you also escaped from the more secret and delusive lime-twigs of the Satanic fowler? Have you come forth from the lust of pride? Have you escaped from slothfulness? Have you clean escaped from carnal security? Are you seeking day by day to live above worldliness, the pride of life, and the ensnaring vice of avarice? Remember, it is for this that you have been enriched with the treasures of God. If you be indeed the chosen of God, and beloved by him, do not suffer all the lavish treasure of grace to be wasted upon you. Follow after holiness; it is the Christian's crown and glory. An unholy church! it is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell's laughter, heaven's abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. O Christian, the vows of God are upon you. You are God's priest: act as such. You are God's king: reign over your lusts. You are God's chosen: do not associate with Belial. Heaven is your portion: live like a heavenly spirit, so shall you prove that you have true faith in Jesus, for there cannot be faith in the heart unless there be holiness in the life.
"Lord, I desire to live as one
Who bears a blood-bought name,
As one who fears but grieving thee,
And knows no other shame."
===
Today's reading: Job 5-7, Acts 8:1-25 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Job 5-7
1 "Call if you will, but who will answer you?To which of the holy ones will you turn?
2 Resentment kills a fool,
and envy slays the simple.
3 I myself have seen a fool taking root,
but suddenly his house was cursed.
4 His children are far from safety,
crushed in court without a defender.
5 The hungry consume his harvest,
taking it even from among thorns,
and the thirsty pant after his wealth.
6 For hardship does not spring from the soil,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
7 Yet man is born to trouble
as surely as sparks fly upward.
Today's New Testament reading: Acts 8:1-25
1 And Saul approved of their killing him.
The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison....
No comments:
Post a Comment