I'm contributing to QUORA, a question and answer site that can be a bit addictive.
What is the biggest fraud in the history of mankind?
The Paris agreement of 2016 aims to spend more than $100 trillion in a hundred years to lower world temperature by less than half a degree centigrade.
The money will come from the world’s poorest in foregone opportunity. They will miss out on food, medicine and housing. This virtue signalling will make some green activists feel good, and filthy rich.
Ever wondered what will happen to your slow cooked meal left in a moderate oven for four hours, with the temperature reduced one degree celsius five minutes from the end? If we agree that it will not make a difference, that is what the Paris Agreement will result, except poor people around the world will suffer.
Worse, Carbon Dioxide is plant food and its’ plentiful supply means the growing season for farmers is expanded.
A daily column on what the ALP have as a policy, supported by a local member, and how it has 'helped' the local community. I'll stop if I cannot identify a policy. Feel free to make suggestions. Contact me on FB, not twitter. I have twitter, but never look at it.
Gabrielle Williams was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Carers and Volunteers, working with the Minister for Housing, Disability and Ageing and the Minister for Families and Children. Williams was given those titles when elected in 2014. It is difficult to find what value she has been to Dandenong, but clearly the ALP see her as the future. Today news reported that a university student is studying education, having achieved an ATAR of 17.9%. Such a low result would not have been possible to achieve ten years ago as the bottom places are assigned to students who decline an ATAR, meaning the lowest score possible was about 27. Time have changed and more people are applying to go to university than before as six years of ALP and three years of Turnbull has meant jobs for youth are not easily available. To have achieved such a low result, the student must have passed the courses they studied, handing in assignments, but achieving very low marks. There would be mitigating circumstances. However, the student has not yet shown mastery of topics. What would they teach? The university might pass them. Will they observe their students as well as they achieved in personal studies? The bio feedback of teaching is strong. Nobody wants to look foolish. Who benefits from this allocation of resourcing?
As part of the November 24th Vic election campaign I have a petition I want to bring before the Opposition Leader Matthew Guy. I believe Matthew will be the next premier of Victoria and so I am petitioning him as I raise the issues of Employment, Crime and Education in Dandenong. I am also seeking money for my campaign. I don't have party resources, and so my campaign is on foot, and on the internet. Any money I receive that is not spent on the campaign will go to Grow 4 Life. I am asking questions like "What do you love about Dandenong?" and "If you could change something in Dandenong to make it better, what would it be?" I'm not limiting the questions to state issues. I'm happy to discuss anything, and get things done.
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.
Oh but my love, a war to end all wars
Bright and brighter
Before my childs face
My grandfather fled there
Ukraine was where they built a bomb?
Oh but my love, a bomb ends all wars
Bright and brighter
Before my burning face
My grandfather fled there
And who was this girl?
Who gave in her grace
Who saved my grandfather
Not of her race
Everything is illuminated
Everyone was eliminated
Tell me my love, do dogs fight in wars?
Do they protest an unpopular cause?
Bright and brighter
From my puppy eyes
A photo, A girl's face
My grandfather fled there
Tell me my love, was this the land?
Oh but my love, they lost their cause
Bright and brighter
Before her burning eyes
My grandfather fled there
And who was this girl?
Who gave in her grace
Who saved my grandfather
Not of her race
Everything is illuminated
Everyone was eliminated
Did you see my love, we found in that place
Woah my love, the land gives pause
Bright and brighter
Before the burning graves
Grandfather's saviour lies there
And who was this girl?
Who gave in her grace
Who saved my grandfather
Not of her race
Everything is illuminated
Everyone was eliminated
Everything is illuminated
Everyone was eliminated
Everything is illuminated
Everyone was eliminated
This track came into being because of Didier's love for the movie, the theme.
His playing, his singing. I penned the lyric, following detail, online, about script
http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=58698
http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=61417
===
I was raised as an Atheist. I learned, after reading the Bible, that God loves me, and you. This is his song for you too. He loves you, and wants to be with you.
All the elements are me and mine. ARIA ISRC number AUAWA0704122
=== from 2017 ===
Some things should not happen, but they do. Kristina Keneally has a tv show on Sky Channel in Australia. Kristina is a former Premier of NSW for the ALP, and is Catholic and niece to a highly lauded writer. Kristina is like Canada. She could give amazing insights into political process from an ethical viewpoint not often explored. She is erudite and thoughtful. But just as Canada has many advantages with a possibility of French Cuisine, US know how and UK government, instead, disappointingly, Canada has US Cuisine, British lethargy and French style Government. Kristina offers no insights, but parrots ALP lines, often without thought. So in 2013, a plebiscite on SSM was good, but in 2017, a plebiscite on SSM was a waste of money. The only change being an ALP position based on opposition to conservatives. Sky are wasting their time, and their viewer's time, by letting this mouthpiece for activism have more time than real commentators.
Mostly my historical posts start explaining a battle, but this one is different. It involves a historical factoid that was probably not considered by anyone on the day or for many years or generations after. It is related to the Mayan calendar and the calendar of several of the MesoAmerican cultures. They were based on an 18 digit number system, thumbs being opposable, and if one counts to the start, today is the anniversary of the beginning of time, 3114 BC. According to Armenian tradition, 2492 BC Hayk beat Bel. Bel was written of in the Bible as Ba'al. Today is the day in 355 Claudius Silvanus is said to have declared himself Caeser. Silvanus was a Roman governor of Gaul and he had successfully suppressed raiding parties from across the Rhine which were hurting Roman prestige. Roman Emperor Constantius II might have been pleased, but his courtiers set up an intrigue suggesting Silvanus was planning to seize Rome. It may well be the case Silvanus never knew of the suppose plot. Constantius summonsed him and when Silvanus was praying at a church, he was dragged out and hacked to death (September 7th 355). Odoacer is considered the first King of Italy. Not much is known of the birth of King Odoacer, but he may have been the son of an ambassador for Attila. He was Aryan Christian when most of Rome was orthodox. Theoderic the Great was an Ostrogoth who had been raised as a hostage in Constantinople and given a privileged education. Theoderic was born the year Ostrogoths overthrew the Hun. His father was a tribal leader, and when he died in 473, Theoderic ruled well, and united the Ostrogoths in 484. With the German (Ostrogoth) power base, Theoderic fought Odoacer and defeated him in battle on this day in 490, taking Italy after the death of Odoacer in 493.
The Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332 was between the regent for the Scottish King David II and Edward Balliol, a grandchild of the widow of English King John. Edward III of England used Balliol as a puppet. Balliol defeated the regent on this day while the child David was in France, and Balliol had himself crowned King at Scone, given authority to Edward III for a pension. But the Scots had other ideas. Not much is known about Francis Light, not even who his dad was, but the English soldier daringly founded and managed the British colony of Penang in Malaysia on this day in 1786. A son, Colonel William Light was foundational surveyor general of South Australia, choosing the site for Adelaide. The Peninsular war was glorious for Arthur Wellesley, and is an example of fighting for national liberation and guerrilla warfare the first of its type in Europe. It meant Great Britain started income tax to pay for their troops. The Spanish and Portuguese fought to liberate themselves from France. In 1812, on this day, at the Battle of Majadahonda, the Portuguese cavalry did not acquit themselves well in a drawn encounter. Their commander suggested to Wellesley that they in future would walk behind their horses until they acquitted themselves well. Wellesley felt it was better to never use them again. In 1929 Babe Ruth made history scoring the 500th home run of his career. He would play until '35 and score 714 in total with a batting average of a phenomenal 0.342 and an ERA of 2.28. He wasn't a noted thinker, but a magnificent player. As great as Ruth was as a Bat, Hedy Lamarr was as a person. The Austrian born actress was beautiful and at only 18 years old was married to an Austrian arms industrialist and star of a movie, Ecstasy. A few nude scenes in Ecstasy and an orgasm expression made her famous. As wife to the industrialist in 1933, she went to dinner parties with Adolph Hitler and Mussolini, some lavishly held at her own home. She fled her husband to Paris, then London and went to Hollywood. In 1942, on this day, she got a patent for technology which helped missiles home despite jamming. Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum technology underpins Blue Tooth and Wi Fi. She was a pretty face in the thirties and forties, but her beautiful mind lives on long after she passed. In 1947, the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah gave a speech. He spoke of his hope for a Pakistan with religious freedom, rule of law and equality for all. Maybe Cassius Clay chose his name from that figure. It was a worthy dream for any nation, and sadly not part of modern Pakistan.
#CensusFail is an opportunity. A nimble, agile government would cancel all future census and devolve responsibility to local council. And the data collection should be continuous. Personal records should be available to individuals online. Voting could certainly be organised online, using a voting app as well as pre election paper options. The app would accept a vote, and modification up to a cut off period. Then, a verification is sent out for online voters. It is the verification handshake that forms the vote. It means that a vote, although private, is no longer secret. But it means that votes are collated in seconds, verifiable and corruption resistant. The ALP and Greens are expected to oppose it.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
1332 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.
1473 – The Battle of Otlukbeli: Mehmed the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empiredecisively defeats Uzun Hassan of Aq Qoyunlu.
1675 – Franco-Dutch War: Forces of the Holy Roman Empire defeat the French in the Battle of Konzer Brücke.
1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia.
1804 – Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria.
1812 – Peninsular War: French troops engage British-Portuguese forces in the Battle of Majadahonda.
1813 – In Colombia, Juan del Corral declares the independence of Antioquia.
1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barringtonaccompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
1898 – Spanish–American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens ends.
1920 – The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty, which relinquished Russia's authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed, ending the Latvian War of Independence.
1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in the city, killing one and wounding five.
1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan.
1959 – Sheremetyevo International Airport, the second-largest airport in Russia, opens.
1960 – Chad declares independence.
1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.
1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynskand crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners.
1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one passenger and injuring 15 others.
1984 – "We begin bombing in five minutes": United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.
2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
2003 – Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
2006 – The oil tanker M/T Solar 1 sinks off the coast of Guimaras and NegrosIslands in the Philippines, causing the country's worst oil spill.
2012 – At least 306 people are killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakesnear Tabriz, Iran.
Mostly my historical posts start explaining a battle, but this one is different. It involves a historical factoid that was probably not considered by anyone on the day or for many years or generations after. It is related to the Mayan calendar and the calendar of several of the MesoAmerican cultures. They were based on an 18 digit number system, thumbs being opposable, and if one counts to the start, today is the anniversary of the beginning of time, 3114 BC. According to Armenian tradition, 2492 BC Hayk beat Bel. Bel was written of in the Bible as Ba'al. Today is the day in 355 Claudius Silvanus is said to have declared himself Caeser. Silvanus was a Roman governor of Gaul and he had successfully suppressed raiding parties from across the Rhine which were hurting Roman prestige. Roman Emperor Constantius II might have been pleased, but his courtiers set up an intrigue suggesting Silvanus was planning to seize Rome. It may well be the case Silvanus never knew of the suppose plot. Constantius summonsed him and when Silvanus was praying at a church, he was dragged out and hacked to death (September 7th 355). Odoacer is considered the first King of Italy. Not much is known of the birth of King Odoacer, but he may have been the son of an ambassador for Attila. He was Aryan Christian when most of Rome was orthodox. Theoderic the Great was an Ostrogoth who had been raised as a hostage in Constantinople and given a privileged education. Theoderic was born the year Ostrogoths overthrew the Hun. His father was a tribal leader, and when he died in 473, Theoderic ruled well, and united the Ostrogoths in 484. With the German (Ostrogoth) power base, Theoderic fought Odoacer and defeated him in battle on this day in 490, taking Italy after the death of Odoacer in 493.
The Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332 was between the regent for the Scottish King David II and Edward Balliol, a grandchild of the widow of English King John. Edward III of England used Balliol as a puppet. Balliol defeated the regent on this day while the child David was in France, and Balliol had himself crowned King at Scone, given authority to Edward III for a pension. But the Scots had other ideas. Not much is known about Francis Light, not even who his dad was, but the English soldier daringly founded and managed the British colony of Penang in Malaysia on this day in 1786. A son, Colonel William Light was foundational surveyor general of South Australia, choosing the site for Adelaide. The Peninsular war was glorious for Arthur Wellesley, and is an example of fighting for national liberation and guerrilla warfare the first of its type in Europe. It meant Great Britain started income tax to pay for their troops. The Spanish and Portuguese fought to liberate themselves from France. In 1812, on this day, at the Battle of Majadahonda, the Portuguese cavalry did not acquit themselves well in a drawn encounter. Their commander suggested to Wellesley that they in future would walk behind their horses until they acquitted themselves well. Wellesley felt it was better to never use them again. In 1929 Babe Ruth made history scoring the 500th home run of his career. He would play until '35 and score 714 in total with a batting average of a phenomenal 0.342 and an ERA of 2.28. He wasn't a noted thinker, but a magnificent player. As great as Ruth was as a Bat, Hedy Lamarr was as a person. The Austrian born actress was beautiful and at only 18 years old was married to an Austrian arms industrialist and star of a movie, Ecstasy. A few nude scenes in Ecstasy and an orgasm expression made her famous. As wife to the industrialist in 1933, she went to dinner parties with Adolph Hitler and Mussolini, some lavishly held at her own home. She fled her husband to Paris, then London and went to Hollywood. In 1942, on this day, she got a patent for technology which helped missiles home despite jamming. Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum technology underpins Blue Tooth and Wi Fi. She was a pretty face in the thirties and forties, but her beautiful mind lives on long after she passed. In 1947, the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah gave a speech. He spoke of his hope for a Pakistan with religious freedom, rule of law and equality for all. Maybe Cassius Clay chose his name from that figure. It was a worthy dream for any nation, and sadly not part of modern Pakistan.
=== from 2016 ===
It is Thursday night and the census was due Tuesday. The computer is up, accepting submissions now. The latest update has it that the Tuesday night collapse was a planned fail. What had happened was mass reporting at 7:30 pm had combined with an external threat so that the decision was made to take down the system. Some information had been obtained as it was supposed to, but geo-caching failed, so the administrators saw the information going but did not know who or where. The threat of data security breech, with the promise that information would be safe, meant a panic response. So millions of people who spent at least half an hour inputting data have lost everything and will have to do it again. And the anti internet voting lobby have been energised.
#CensusFail is an opportunity. A nimble, agile government would cancel all future census and devolve responsibility to local council. And the data collection should be continuous. Personal records should be available to individuals online. Voting could certainly be organised online, using a voting app as well as pre election paper options. The app would accept a vote, and modification up to a cut off period. Then, a verification is sent out for online voters. It is the verification handshake that forms the vote. It means that a vote, although private, is no longer secret. But it means that votes are collated in seconds, verifiable and corruption resistant. The ALP and Greens are expected to oppose it.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
The gay marriage vote among the conservative coalition is irrelevant, There are gay couples in Australia right now through civil union with full rights of married couples. The discussion is merely about wether churches can be sued for refusing to marry them. Some churches want to, others don't. The cowardly clerics are hiding behind state law. It will happen eventually, but regardless the press will say that Abbott's leadership is weakened by any decision.
The conservative coalition met as a whole. It included the National Party which is more socially conservative. Some say the outcome is the death of the Liberal party. It is merely rhetoric attacking Mr Abbott. One question not asked is regarding the ALP who, as a party, also oppose same sex marriage. But Mr Shorten's leadership is not similarly challenged by it.
From 2014
The apparent corruption of the Liberal Party regarding campaign donations is particularly disappointing. I note the involvement of Mike Gallacher and Joe Tripodi. Joe Tripodi is instrumental to my issue regarding a bungled pedophile investigation and the death of Hamidur Rahman. I approached Gallacher in 2011 regarding this issue and if he sidestepped me because of Joe Tripodi I'm very upset. I have lost my home over the injustice directly stemming from the failure of Gallacher to address the issue. If the LNP have clean hands over this issue I want them to show it to me.
A few days ago on the Bolt Report Supporters Group, a few admins, Stephanie and Mandy found a post by the hate group known as the Australian Defence League (ADL). Not much is known of the ADL who are also known as the Australian Tea Party. They have editors on wikipedia who restrict information about them. The press wisely has a policy of ignoring extreme right wing hate groups. The ADL have a US counterpart called the American Defense League (aka ADL) and more famous English counterparts English Defence League (EDL). They are related to the British National Party and fascists inspired by the Nazi Party. The Bolt Report Supporters Group have a policy of deleting such memes. Stephanie and Mandy noted that the post had been referred to the police. The admin team are often criticised for deleting items and sometimes not deleting items. We believe in freedom of speech, not of abuse. Often members get confused by the decisions which aren't arbitrary but may seem opaque. In the past, the admin team have attempted to supply reasons for deleted posts, but some trouble makers exploited Face Book rules to get them removed. And so we have procedural unfairness.
The offending post has been reported in the mainstream news. The post identified a Facebook User as a radical Islamic hate monger. But the police have located a 22 year old Australian of Turkish ethnicity who was unaware of the post and had not held those views. It looks as if the ADL have used an Islamic name to spread a hate meme. It may not be the first time they have done that, if that is what they have done. Some years ago, the leader of the ADL contacted me and tried to recruit me. I declined. He told me that the Australian Tea Party was started in the hopes of attracting US based political funding from the Tea Party which is a different organisation unrelated to the ADL. The victim in this instance has been stood aside from work pending an investigation. One hopes the investigation finishes soon, and those who have done wrong are appropriately prosecuted. I do not like 18c, preferring free speech, but this looks like a good case for which the legislation is addressed.
A few days ago on the Bolt Report Supporters Group, a few admins, Stephanie and Mandy found a post by the hate group known as the Australian Defence League (ADL). Not much is known of the ADL who are also known as the Australian Tea Party. They have editors on wikipedia who restrict information about them. The press wisely has a policy of ignoring extreme right wing hate groups. The ADL have a US counterpart called the American Defense League (aka ADL) and more famous English counterparts English Defence League (EDL). They are related to the British National Party and fascists inspired by the Nazi Party. The Bolt Report Supporters Group have a policy of deleting such memes. Stephanie and Mandy noted that the post had been referred to the police. The admin team are often criticised for deleting items and sometimes not deleting items. We believe in freedom of speech, not of abuse. Often members get confused by the decisions which aren't arbitrary but may seem opaque. In the past, the admin team have attempted to supply reasons for deleted posts, but some trouble makers exploited Face Book rules to get them removed. And so we have procedural unfairness.
The offending post has been reported in the mainstream news. The post identified a Facebook User as a radical Islamic hate monger. But the police have located a 22 year old Australian of Turkish ethnicity who was unaware of the post and had not held those views. It looks as if the ADL have used an Islamic name to spread a hate meme. It may not be the first time they have done that, if that is what they have done. Some years ago, the leader of the ADL contacted me and tried to recruit me. I declined. He told me that the Australian Tea Party was started in the hopes of attracting US based political funding from the Tea Party which is a different organisation unrelated to the ADL. The victim in this instance has been stood aside from work pending an investigation. One hopes the investigation finishes soon, and those who have done wrong are appropriately prosecuted. I do not like 18c, preferring free speech, but this looks like a good case for which the legislation is addressed.
Historical perspective on this day
3114 BC – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-ColumbianMesoamericancivilizations, notably the Maya, begins.
2492 BC – Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation.
106 – The south-western part of Dacia (modern Romania) becomes a Roman province: Roman Dacia.
355 – Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II.
490 – Battle of Adda: The Goths under Theodoric the Great and his ally Alaric IIdefeat the forces of Odoacer on the Adda River, near Milan.
2492 BC – Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation.
106 – The south-western part of Dacia (modern Romania) becomes a Roman province: Roman Dacia.
355 – Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II.
490 – Battle of Adda: The Goths under Theodoric the Great and his ally Alaric IIdefeat the forces of Odoacer on the Adda River, near Milan.
1332 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.
1473 – The Battle of Otlukbeli: Mehmed the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empiredecisively defeats Uzun Hassan of Aq Qoyunlu.
1675 – Franco-Dutch War: Forces of the Holy Roman Empire defeat the French in the Battle of Konzer Brücke.
1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia.
1804 – Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria.
1812 – Peninsular War: French troops engage British-Portuguese forces in the Battle of Majadahonda.
1813 – In Colombia, Juan del Corral declares the independence of Antioquia.
1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barringtonaccompanied by Christian Almer and Peter Bohren.
1898 – Spanish–American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens ends.
1920 – The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty, which relinquished Russia's authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed, ending the Latvian War of Independence.
1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in the city, killing one and wounding five.
1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan.
1959 – Sheremetyevo International Airport, the second-largest airport in Russia, opens.
1960 – Chad declares independence.
1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.
1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynskand crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners.
1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one passenger and injuring 15 others.
1984 – "We begin bombing in five minutes": United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.
2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
2003 – Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
2006 – The oil tanker M/T Solar 1 sinks off the coast of Guimaras and NegrosIslands in the Philippines, causing the country's worst oil spill.
2012 – At least 306 people are killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakesnear Tabriz, Iran.
=== 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 Uncle Norm. Born on the same day, across the years as Enid Blyton (1897), Alex Haley (1921), Claus von Bülow (1926), Steve Wozniak (1950), Joe Jackson (1954) and Chris Hemsworth (1983). On your day, Independence Day in Chad (1960)
1492 – The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Pope Innocent VIII.
1828 – William Corder was hanged at Bury St Edmunds, England, for the murder of Maria Marten at the Red Barn.
1945 – Amid rumors of kidnappings of children by Jews in Kraków, a crowd of Poles engaged in a pogrom, which resulted in one dead and five wounded victims.
1962 – Vostok 3 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev became the first person to float in microgravity.
1973 – At a party in the recreation room of a New York City apartment building, DJ Kool Herc began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip-hop music. I used to wonder what would succeed innocence. Corder got what he deserved too late. Don't listen to rumours. Float .. hop .. do what is hip. It made you the success you are.
1492 – The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Pope Innocent VIII.
1828 – William Corder was hanged at Bury St Edmunds, England, for the murder of Maria Marten at the Red Barn.
1945 – Amid rumors of kidnappings of children by Jews in Kraków, a crowd of Poles engaged in a pogrom, which resulted in one dead and five wounded victims.
1962 – Vostok 3 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev became the first person to float in microgravity.
1973 – At a party in the recreation room of a New York City apartment building, DJ Kool Herc began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip-hop music. I used to wonder what would succeed innocence. Corder got what he deserved too late. Don't listen to rumours. Float .. hop .. do what is hip. It made you the success you are.
- 1467 – Mary of York (d. 1482)
- 1648 – Jeremiah Shepard, American minister (d. 1720)
- 1667 – Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Italian wife of Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine (d. 1743)
- 1673 – Richard Mead, English physician (d. 1754)
- 1722 – Richard Brocklesby, English physician (d. 1797)
- 1748 – Joseph Schuster, German composer (d. 1812)
- 1778 – Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Prussian educator (d. 1852)
- 1892 – Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish poet (d. 1978)
- 1892 – Eiji Yoshikawa, Japanese author (d. 1962)
- 1897 – Enid Blyton, English author (d. 1968)
- 1897 – Louise Bogan, American poet (d. 1970)
- 1902 – Lloyd Nolan, American actor and singer (d. 1985)
- 1921 – Alex Haley, American historian and author (d. 1992)
- 1926 – Claus von Bülow, Danish-English lawyer
- 1933 – Jerry Falwell, American evangelist (d. 2007)
- 1937 – Patrick Joseph McGovern, American businessman, founded IDG (d. 2014)
- 1942 – Mike Hugg, English drummer and keyboard player (Manfred Mann and The Manfreds)
- 1944 – Ian McDiarmid, Scottish actor and director
- 1944 – Frederick W. Smith, American businessman, founded FedEx
- 1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.
- 1952 – Bob Mothersbaugh, American singer, guitarist, and producer (Devo)
- 1954 – Joe Jackson, English singer-songwriter
- 1964 – Jim Lee, South Korean-American author and illustrator
- 1965 – Shinji Mikami, Japanese video game designer, created Resident Evil
- 1977 – Gemma Hayes, Irish singer-songwriter
- 1983 – Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor
- 1984 – Melky Cabrera, Dominican baseball player
- 1989 – Gui Gui, Taiwanese singer and actress (Hey Girl)
- 1994 – Storm Sanders, Australian tennis player
Deaths
- 223 – Jia Xu, Advisor for the state of Cao Wei
- 353 – Magnentius, Roman usurper (b. 303)
- 449 – Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople
- 1259 – Möngke Khan, Mongolian emperor (b. 1208)
- 1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, English son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585)
- 1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835)
- 1937 – Edith Wharton, American author (b. 1862)
- 1939 – Jean Bugatti, German-Italian automobile designer and engineer (b. 1909)
- 1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
- 1965 – Bill Woodfull, Australian cricketer and educator (b. 1897)
Tim Blair
AS SURE AS KNIGHT FOLLOWS DAY
UPDATED Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight deserves to win multiple awards for his brilliant depiction of the Victorian government’s warped priorities.
BEAN BACKS BORIS: NO BURQA APOLOGY REQUIRED
Former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson found himself in trouble this week after writing that women wearing burqas resembled “bank robbers” and that they “go around looking like letter boxes”.
Andrew Bolt
WILL MEDIA WATCH ATTACK PAUL KELLY, TOO?
Bizarre. Paul Kelly takes a not-so-veiled swipe at me, but then concedes my point: "Net overseas migration is... adding about 1 per cent of the population each year... Some regions have more than 60 per cent overseas born with a third not able to speak the national language. Again, this is unacceptable." Will the ABC slime him as a racist, too?
TRUMP ACCUSER CAUGHT OUT
The evidence from her own book suggests - to me, at least - that Donald Trump's latest back-stabbing accuser is lying: "During the interview..., [Omarosa] Manigault Newman read the section aloud, then insisted it described her hearing the tape [of Trump allegedly using the 'n' word] rather than what the words on the page state."
WHAT ON EARTH IS THE POINT, MR TURNBULL?
The Turnbull Government dodges the basic questions about its planned cuts to our emissions. Chris Kenny: "Should we be doing this? What is the cost? What is the benefit?... So bizarrely distorted to the green Left is our national debate that there is more discussion about higher targets than there is about the futility of the Paris commitment."
AUSTRALIA, 1984
Janet Albrechtsen: "My son is studying George Orwell... This book is jumping to life all around him... This week’s live-streaming of Nineteen Eighty-Four comes to us from Australia’s biggest social laboratory where the Andrews Labor government has a tighter grip on thought crimes than on it does on... South Sudanese gangs." Read on.
MONEY FIXES EVERYTHING
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (4:19pm)
Former public servant turned screamingly dull Guardian columnist Greg Jericho blames the census debacle on budget cuts:
The complete balls-up of the census on Tuesday night should be absolutely no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the way the Australian Bureau of Statistics has been run and how it has been treated by the government. It is the story of what happens when governments believe cutting funding has no consequence and that paying fewer people to do the same work is an “efficiency” regardless of quality.
Yep, the poor little ABS is really struggling:
Australian Bureau of Statistics head David Kalisch, whose official title is Australian Statistician, earns a base annual salary of $493,530 and a total salary of $705,030.The package, which is higher than Malcolm Turnbull’s $522,000 a year, was signed off in December by the Remuneration Tribunal …According to its most recent annual report, the ABS has 46 senior management personnel who were paid a total $11.08 million in 2015.
No wonder they can’t run a website. Finally, the multi-million dollar census machine currently appears to be operational.
DECADE OF HARBINGERS
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (3:13pm)
2006:
The fate of amphibians – whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes – is seen by scientists as a possible harbinger of global warming’s effects.
2007:
Scientists are to study spectacular ‘night-shining’ clouds thought by some to a harbinger of global environmental change.
2008:
Dying Whitebark Pine Next Harbinger of Climate Change.
2009:
Robins in winter a harbinger of global warming.
2010:
Are butterflies the silent harbingers of global warming?
2011:
Many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.
2012:
The Alaska marmot is uniquely suited to serve as a harbinger of the effects of climate change.
2013:
What is happening now in the Arctic provides a glimpse of our future, it is a harbinger of more devastating impacts.
2014:
The massive snowfall in Western New York this week is a harbinger of looming climate disaster.
2015:
‘A Harbinger Of The Future’: Climate Scientists Respond To Boston’s Record-Breaking Snow Season.
2016:
Record-shattering temperatures this summer have scorched countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather could be a harbinger of worse to come.
OTHER
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (5:12am)
As in 2006 and 2011, a certain faith is again omitted from the 2016 census:
Interestingly, Hinduism this year steps up from the “other” category.
Interestingly, Hinduism this year steps up from the “other” category.
UPDATE. Out of the loop:
When Malcolm Turnbull tweeted at 7.17pm on Tuesday that he and wife Lucy had filled in the census online and it was “v easy to do”, he had not been told that for more than nine hours the nation’s cyber security specialists had been battling a series of denial of service attacks on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ system.Just 28 minutes after the Prime Minister’s enthusiastic tweet, the ABS made the monumental decision to shut down the census website.Yet it was not until almost an hour later, at 8.32pm as he was hosting a private working dinner at his Point Piper home in Sydney, that Mr Turnbull received a call …
Everything ran more smoothly back in 1911.
THURSDAY NOTICEBOARD
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (4:41am)
Everything leftists say about climate change (which hasn’t killed a single person) would make perfect sense if they said it about Islamic terrorism (which has killed tens of thousands). Readers are invited to search for examples.
GUSTO BAN
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (4:05am)
Further to an earlier Daily Telegraph editorial about foam football issues in NSW, there are football gusto problemsin Western Australia.
CLOSING TIME IN THE LAST CHANCE SALOON
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (3:45am)
Pat Condell considers Europe’s options:
ARKANSAS GRIFTER FUND
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 11, 2016 (1:46am)
Not that further evidence is needed, but Hillary Clinton is one hell of a dicey, dollar-driven individual:
Hillary Clinton put the State Department up for sale, with top aides pulling strings and doing favors for fat-cat donors to the Clinton Foundation – including a shady billionaire, according to smoking-gun emails released Tuesday.The stunning revelations include how wealthy contributors seeking influence or prestigious government gigs could fork over piles of cash to get access to Clinton’s inner circle, including top aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.
Read on. Australia, of course, is a massive source of funds for the Clinton Foundation.
On The Bolt Report and radio tonight
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (5:04pm)
On The Bolt Report on Sky News Live at 7pm tonight:
===Editorial: Is the Turnbull Government covering up on the census scandal?On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
My guests:
Graham Richardson nearly died after radical surgery for his cancer. Well, he’s back - talking about what he’s learned. And about politics today, of course.Podcasts of the show here. Facebook page here.
Young Liberal federal secretary Aiden Depiazzi hits back at the Liberal critics who say the WA Young Liberal opposition to changing the constitution to divide us by race is itself racist.
In Culture Wars, Rowan Dean, editor ofSpectator Australia, on the green farce at Rio.
The panel: Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger and Labor frontbencher Stephen Conroy. Is the Turnbull Government racist for saying no to the Chinese purchase of the NSW electricity grid? Dissing Warren Truss.
Listen live here. Talkback: 131 873. Listen to all past shows here.
Two grieving parents, but only one story for the media
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (4:57pm)
Tony Thomas:
===The mainstream media, let alone the ABC, no longer even pretends it is providing an unbiased coverage of the presidential quests of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
As a case study in partisan journalism, this piece will look at media coverage of Khizr Khan, the Muslim father whose soldier son, Humayun, was killed in Iraq in 2004 while defending his squad. Then, by way of contrast, I’ll examine the attention given to bereaved mother Patricia Smith, who opposes Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House. Patricia who, you ask? Exactly! You have likely never heard of her, as she is definitely not part of the media narrative — despite, or because — her son was killed by terrorists who attacked the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi in 2012 during Hillary’s term as Secretary of State. So here we go…
Birthday invitation
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (4:54pm)
Help Quadrant to celebrate its 60th birthday. Party details here.
===So is the Turnbull Government racist, too?
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (4:23pm)
Last year:
===A union campaign against Chinese investment in New South Wales’ electricity assets is racist and puts trade relationships at risk, the state’s Treasurer says… The State Opposition has backed the union campaign, but Mr Constance said it represented a “racist rant” ...Today:
Premier Mike Baird [said] “… I mean this is just another desperate distraction from an opposition running the most negative scare campaign,” he said.
The Turnbull government has made a preliminary decision to reject the Chinese bids for a 99-year lease of Australia’s most valuable electricity network, Ausgrid, saying the proposals weren’t in the national interest.Maybe it’s just desperate.
Turnbull allegedly snubs Truss at farewell
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (8:54am)
Seriously? If true, then it is more than a terrible mistake. It is a frightening insight into how vindictive Malcolm Turnbull can be:
===Malcolm Turnbull has turned down an invitation to speak at a testimonial for former deputy prime minister Warren Truss, with Tony Abbott slated to step in to represent the government.
Senior Liberal National Party figures say the Prime Minister has snubbed Mr Truss for the event this month in Brisbane.
The testimonial for the long-serving Nationals leader will be held just hours after Mr Turnbull is expected to deliver a “federal report’’ to the annual LNP state convention at the same venue. LNP figures yesterday said they suspected Mr Turnbull had refused to attend the testimonial because of his lingering anger over last year’s defection of veteran Liberal MP Ian Macfarlane to the Nationals after he was dumped from cabinet.
Stevens: this kind of reckless spending must stop
Andrew Bolt August 11 2016 (8:13am)
Glenn Stevens has tried his best, but do you see any sign from the Turnbull Government or Labor that his warning will be heeded?
David Uren:
===David Uren:
Glenn Stevens has delivered a blunt warning that the nation cannot count on economic growth to fix the federal budget and says “we are kidding ourselves” that tough decisions can be avoided on cutting government spending.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
In a plea before he ends his 10-year term as Reserve Bank governor next month, Mr Stevens said it was imperative to staunch the flow of big budget deficits…
With Malcolm Turnbull due to face another populist Senate when parliament resumes in three weeks and the budget forecasting a deficit of almost $40 billion, Mr Stevens said decisions on savings had to be confronted…
Mr Stevens said the Reserve Bank had done about as much as it could to boost the economy…
He argued that government would be in a position to do more to boost the economy through investing in infrastructure, but only if it stopped borrowing to cover welfare and its running costs first. Official budget forecasts assume that economic growth will be enough to lift revenue to close the budget deficit. However, Mr Stevens said very low nominal GDP growth meant the path back to budget balance was “turning out to be a very long one”
The truth they tried to punish Bill Leak for telling
Andrew Bolt August 10 2016 (9:50pm)
THIS week proved cowards and hypocrites are using government power to destroy people trying to tell you a truth.
Worse, they are using that power to smear and silence people warning you some children are in terrible danger.
Last week, cartoonist Bill Leak, of The Australian, drew a cartoon in response to the media outrage over the alleged abuse of Aboriginal teenagers detained in the Northern Territory.
It showed an Aboriginal policeman lecturing a deadbeat Aboriginal dad with a beer in his hand to be a better father.
What an important question that is. Aboriginal children are 24 times more likely to be locked up, and it’s not because police are racist.
No. Too often it’s because their parents were no good, incapable of raising children to keep the law or show respect.
Leak’s cartoon cut to the quick of terrible truth — the collapse of good parenting in so many Aboriginal communities out bush.
Of course, there are many wonderful Aboriginal parents, too — and Leak’s cartoon showed an Aboriginal policeman rescuing a child — but that must not blind us to a crisis.
Yet Leak’s punishment for telling this truth has been savage.
(Read the full article here.)
===Worse, they are using that power to smear and silence people warning you some children are in terrible danger.
Last week, cartoonist Bill Leak, of The Australian, drew a cartoon in response to the media outrage over the alleged abuse of Aboriginal teenagers detained in the Northern Territory.
It showed an Aboriginal policeman lecturing a deadbeat Aboriginal dad with a beer in his hand to be a better father.
Leak’s message was clear. Those children in detention — where the hell were their parents?
What an important question that is. Aboriginal children are 24 times more likely to be locked up, and it’s not because police are racist.
No. Too often it’s because their parents were no good, incapable of raising children to keep the law or show respect.
Leak’s cartoon cut to the quick of terrible truth — the collapse of good parenting in so many Aboriginal communities out bush.
Of course, there are many wonderful Aboriginal parents, too — and Leak’s cartoon showed an Aboriginal policeman rescuing a child — but that must not blind us to a crisis.
Yet Leak’s punishment for telling this truth has been savage.
(Read the full article here.)
Turnbull turned off
Andrew Bolt August 10 2016 (9:41pm)
IT’S not fair to say Tuesday’s census fiasco was all the fault of this bumbling Turnbull Government, but when was politics fair?
For most Australians, the “agile” Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is responsible for what government does. Simple.
So his government will pay a high price for the cyber attacks that shut down the Australian Bureau of Statistics computers on Tuesday.
For a start, Turnbull has been made a laughing stock. Just minutes before the ABS computers collapsed, he tweeted: “We filled in the @ABSCensus tonight online — v easy to do.”
(Read the full column here.)
===For most Australians, the “agile” Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is responsible for what government does. Simple.
So his government will pay a high price for the cyber attacks that shut down the Australian Bureau of Statistics computers on Tuesday.
For a start, Turnbull has been made a laughing stock. Just minutes before the ABS computers collapsed, he tweeted: “We filled in the @ABSCensus tonight online — v easy to do.”
(Read the full column here.)
Tips for Thursday, August 11
Andrew Bolt August 10 2016 (9:29pm)
Tell us the news here.
UPDATE
My editorial from the latest The Bolt Report - on Malcolm Turnbull’s latest disaster:
UPDATE
Thanks very much to the Institute for Public Affairs, as well as to the Spectator Australia and the Australian Conservatives, for organising launches around the country for Worth Fighting For. Last Friday’s launch in Brisbane was another sell-out. To order on-line, and to get my Bolt Bulletins as well, go here.
===UPDATE
My editorial from the latest The Bolt Report - on Malcolm Turnbull’s latest disaster:
Mind you, since that editorial two experts have told me the census meltdown may not have been the result of a denial-of-service attack but simply a huge demand that the Australian Bureau of Statistics somehow failed to predict. If the Government has not told the truth about this, the political fall-out could be even worse.
UPDATE
Thanks very much to the Institute for Public Affairs, as well as to the Spectator Australia and the Australian Conservatives, for organising launches around the country for Worth Fighting For. Last Friday’s launch in Brisbane was another sell-out. To order on-line, and to get my Bolt Bulletins as well, go here.
THESE PEOPLE HAVE MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 11, 2015 (3:21pm)
Examples from the University of New Hampshire’s now-deleted bias-free language guide:
Problematic: foreigners
Preferred: international peopleProblematic: normal, able-bodied, healthy or whole
Preferred: “non-disabled" is the preferred term for people without disabilities.Problematic: rich
Preferred: person of material wealthProblematic: American
Preferred: U.S. citizen or Resident of the U.S.
(Via Elle Hardy.)
MEN ARE FROM COAL, WOMEN ARE FROM SOLAR
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 11, 2015 (2:10pm)
Climate change panic is officially girly:
Climate Institute research published on Monday confirms Australian men are more likely than women to believe climate change is not happening, and to prefer nuclear and coal as energy sources.Women, meanwhile, are more inclined than men to support wind and solar power, and take the view backed by the vast majority of the world’s scientists – that climate change is real.
Further to this, here’s the SMH’s Peta Hartcher:
If you want to understand the frenetic claim and counter-claim you’re going to hear on this subject, you’ll find this simple, two-point guide indispensable. The political rubric is:1. If the argument is decided mainly on climate or environment considerations, Labor wins.2. If it’s decided mainly on electricity prices, the Coalition wins.So Labor will be telling us that we have to deal with dangerous climate change; it will promote its ambition to increase Australia’s renewable energy share to 50per cent over the next 15 years.And the government will be telling us that it is dealing responsibly with climate change, while Labor’s plan would be a giant wrecking ball shattering the economy. The winner is not the one who can provide the best answer. It’s the one who can set the question. If the election is a referendum on the environment, Labor wins.
Not mentioned by Hartcher: Australia’s total contribution to the planet’s human-generated alleged climate change emissions is barely more than one per cent.
Wilkie denies cash for comment
Andrew Bolt August 11 2015 (9:16am)
Sanctimony check:
===Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who has accused other politicians of accepting donations “with the expectation of payback”, has accepted money from donors who would financially benefit from policy changes he has advocated in parliament.Not the only example. Read on.
On February 6, 2013, Mr Wilkie called for an expansion of the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme, which reduces freight costs for exporters, and to make Bass Strait part of the national highway.
“The scheme is too narrow seeing as goods bound for international export are specifically excluded,” he said.
Cuthbertson Bros, which manufactures leather hides and sheepskins for export, called for an expansion of subsidies available under the scheme. In a submission to the Productivity Commission review, managing director Douglas Dickinson’s “remedy” was “to allow all goods for export, including when trans-shipping via Melbourne, the full subsidy”.
On February 12, 2013, Mr Wilkie gave notice of a parliamentary motion calling “on the government to extend the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme to include ... all trade intended for both domestic and international import and export”.
One week later, on February 19, Mr Wilkie received a $12,500 donation from Mr Dickinson. Another $12,500 donation from Mr Dickinson was received on July 3.
In a speech in federal parliament on February 6, Mr Wilkie said: “Special mention should also go to Doug Dickinson, who advocates tirelessly for remedying Tasmania’s freight woes.”
Hunt takes on the warmist ABC
Andrew Bolt August 11 2015 (7:37am)
It’s a miracle any Liberal government gets elected when the country’s biggest media organisation spruiks so hard for the causes of the Left.
Bravo to Environment Minister Greg Hunt for challenging every dodgy assumption and false claim put to him by AM as it tried to rubbish Simon Benson’s scoop on Labor’s $209-a-tonne carbon price:
UPDATE
Good point from reader John, noting the bias of the ABC starts from the very top:
===Bravo to Environment Minister Greg Hunt for challenging every dodgy assumption and false claim put to him by AM as it tried to rubbish Simon Benson’s scoop on Labor’s $209-a-tonne carbon price:
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: ...This modelling was done well before the last election…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
GREG HUNT: ... Labor aligned itself specifically through an amendment at its conference with the Climate Change Authority target of minus 40 to minus 60 per cent…
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: But nothing specific was adopted.
GREG HUNT: Well actually an amendment to section 249 of the Labor Party conference was expressed clear and absolute… That means $600 billion on Labor’s modelling for Labor’s target using Labor’s carbon tax by 2030; $5,000 almost, over $4,900 per family, per year, by 2030; and a 78 per cent increase in wholesale electricity prices on a $209 carbon tax: Their modelling, their figures, their target.
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: We’ll get to modelling in a minute, but the conference didn’t adopt the 40 to 60 per cent figure.
GREG HUNT: Well let me refer you to amendment 249a of the ALP conference, express, clear, absolute… Around the country they have been trumpeting the 40 to 60 per cent figure and now the moment they’re called to account on it they’re ashamed, they’re trying to hide it and yet the figures are there. Their modelling, their figures…
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well they say they haven’t committed to a figure but nonetheless…
GREG HUNT: Well what is their figure then?
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Well they haven’t put it out yet. That’s the point.
GREG HUNT: It is minus 40 to minus 60 which they’ve trumpeted ever since the conference.
UPDATE
Good point from reader John, noting the bias of the ABC starts from the very top:
What a publicly spirited man the ABC Managing Director and supposed Editor-in-Chief Mark Scott is.No rivalry in sight with the evil Murdoch press empire that many of his staff rail against.Here he was yesterday making sure to tweet the Newspoll slide for the Abbott government
Does anyone recall Mr Scott tweeting the Newspoll for Labor in the lead-up to the 2013 election?I am surprised he does not tweet other stories or columns from The Australian like for exampleChris Kenny’s Media Watch Watch.
Bishop’s flight causes Abbott’s crash
Andrew Bolt August 11 2015 (6:57am)
It’s the mistakes that have most hurt the Abbott Government, even though it is clearly better than what it replaced.
Dennis Shanahan:
===Dennis Shanahan:
Abbott actually managed to lead the government back to a reasonable position in the polls as Bill Shorten suffered a fall in popularity and standing.The Australian:
That improvement, demanded by his backbench after the failed leadership motion in February, has since been wiped out in the three weeks of furore that started with the revelation of Bronwyn Bishop’s $5000 helicopter ride and hasn’t ended with her resignation. A Newspoll that puts the ALP ahead on two-party-preferred terms 54 per cent to 46 per cent (the Coalition’s worst since March); continuing pressure from the public on MPs’ entitlements; Bishop’s inglorious end; renewed backbiting about Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin; and the painful, personal and parliamentary reminder of mortality through the condolences for WA Liberal Don Randall — these have coalesced into a renewed mood of Liberal frustration, pessimism and anger.
This week’s return to parliament could have been so different for the Coalition. The 2015 budget was not reassuring for anyone concerned about fiscal repair but its political appeal was greater than last year’s. Accelerated depreciation seemed a hit with “Tony’s tradies” and multiple interest groups were spared any “nasties”. Mr Abbott, Joe Hockey and Social Services Minister Scott Morrison worked harder to sell this budget (before the government went quiet during the long winter break). Meanwhile, the Coalition was able to watch with delight as Bill Shorten squirmed under questioning at the royal commission into trade union misbehaviour. At last month’s national conference in Melbourne, the once great Labor Party showed itself preoccupied with the boutique issues of the chattering classes: gay marriage, a minister for the republic, and an uncosted “aspirational” aim to generate half of all energy from renewable sources by 2030. All this suggested that, for once, the political momentum was with the Coalition. Yet the latest Newspoll has Labor extending its two-party preferred lead over the Coalition to 54-46.My guess is that the Abbott team may have no more than a month to make changes without seeming completely desperate and just trading concessions for survival. The urgency with which it changed around the time of the February scare vanished, and must be resumed.
Get more and better advice.
What’s the story?
Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Optimism.
What happened to those new faces that were being touted?
Stop talking about raising taxes.
Fewer useless fights. More full-hearted good ones.
The moral dimension of voting Liberal, and don’t tell me it’s dividing us by race. In fact, tell us the opposite.
Position Abbott more among his kind of people in the media strategy.
Loyalty to team, not individual.
Tony Nutt’s long-mooted shift to Canberra from the NSW party is becoming a totemic issue for Abbott’s critics. Why hand them this stick?
Look happy.
Don’t panic.
Labor would be a disaster.
Don’t keep selling the Government as having axed the carbon tax and stopped the boats. That was yesterday. Voters always ask: what will you do for us tomorrow?
National security is what governments are expected to do. Yes, make the changes we need and highlight differences with Labor. But amping up the rhetoric risks looking like you’re short of other ideas, and makes you seem less reassuring than you need to be in this space.
Pretending to stop global warming will cost another $660 million a year
Andrew Bolt August 11 2015 (6:46am)
Hundreds of millions of dollars sacrificed and jobs trashed, all to make a completely useless gesture to stop a warming of the atmosphere that actually paused around 18 years ago:
UPDATE
The media is full of glad chatter about another survey it claims show Australians are desperate to “Do Something” about global warming.
Alan Moran looks closer:
===The Abbott government will sharpen the political fight over climate change by outlining a compromise target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stepping back from more ambitious goals out of concern about the impact on the economy…But if you think that’s a shocking waste of money for merely gesture politics, wait until Labor gets going.
The Prime Minister negotiated the new target in a cabinet meeting last night that scaled back draft proposals to cut Australian emissions by 30 per cent by 2030..
In one scenario gaining support last night, ministers considered a 26 per cent reduction on today’s carbon emissions by 2030, clearing the way for the goal to be taken to a meeting of Coalition MPs as soon as today to be decided as official policy.
One submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated the 26 per cent target would cut economic output by 0.02 per cent at the end of the target period compared with “business as usual” without the new target, sources told The Australian last night. While the official modelling did not put a dollar figure on that outcome, it would mean a $660 million reduction in the size of the economy in 2030 and similar amounts every year thereafter when applied to the long-range forecasts issued by Treasury in the Intergenerational Report earlier this year.
UPDATE
The media is full of glad chatter about another survey it claims show Australians are desperate to “Do Something” about global warming.
Alan Moran looks closer:
The media was in a tizz today at the Wotif founder Graeme Wood’s Climate Institute’s promotion of its research into public perceptions of climate change, its friends and enemies…
The spin was that people want to reduce emissions, and Shorten is on a winner with his 50 per cent renewable goal since everyone loves solar and hates coal…
The report focusses on hype-belching answers to loaded questions, like:
I trust the science that suggests that the climate is changing due to human activities (astonishingly 17 per cent disagreed) I think that the Abbott government should take climate change more seriously (15 per cent were game enough to express disagreement with this)…Much is made of the [Galaxy] survey finding 31 per cent think humans are the main cause of climate change and only 20 per cent think it is natural cycles that are the main cause. But in Galaxy’s March 2014 survey for the IPA 37 per cent thought humans were the main culprit while 24 per cent though it was a natural cycle!
And with all the furore about preferred sources of fuel, the Climate Institute did not ask respondents how much they are prepared to pay, which was the feature in the Galaxy IPA survey in August 2014. The answer last August was that only 4 per cent would be prepared to pay over $1,000 a year (and it is doubtful that when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets they’d fork out even this much).
LET’S GET TOGETHER AND HOLD HEADS
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (4:24pm)
Labor’s Andrew Leigh considers today’s junior jihadi head-holding image, and decides to “celebrate the Australian Muslim community”:
“We need to celebrate the Australian Muslim community to recognise that there are many peoples of different faiths in the world and extremism comes in all sorts of guises. The Oklahoma bombing was carried out by a Christian.”
Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in 1995. Get back to us, Andrew, when you’ve added up all the deaths due to Islamic extremism since then. That should keep you busy for the rest of this parliamentary term. Current Labor leader Bill Shorten thinks it’s a parenting issue:
“As a parent, I have no idea how you could ever let your child be in that situation. I think that’s shocking,” the Opposition Leader said.
Mr Mummyblogger continues:
“I would be careful about using that shocking image, that shocking evil image, and trying to use it for purposes which it shouldn’t be used for,” Mr Shorten said.
Hello Kitty handbags? Adventure tourism brochures? A $5 million Clover Moore art installation? Shorten’s proscription is unclear.
NOTE. Image for celebration purposes only
Meanwhile, it’s Defence Minister David Johnston’s turn to hit the peaceful majority button:
NOTE. Image for celebration purposes only
Meanwhile, it’s Defence Minister David Johnston’s turn to hit the peaceful majority button:
“One of the things that I must stress here is this is an extreme minority in Muslims in Australia and around the world. The vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving and peaceful people,” Senator Johnston said.
Agreed, minister. But the peaceful majority is irrelevant.
BOB vs BIRMINGHAM
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (3:48pm)
Bob Ellis isn’t impressed by Mike Carlton’s replacement:
The smh immediately appointed John Birmingham, a foam-flecked Liberal flagellant (his brother a Liberal Senator) and infamous …
Link and some words omitted for legal reasons. Ellis is presumably talking about South Australian senator Simon Birmingham, who I don’t think is related to John at all. So why the animosity? It could be that Ellis simply isn’t a fan of weak beer:
(Label by Mike M.)
(Label by Mike M.)
UPDATE. Readers don’t care for Carlton Light, either:
HANDLES LIKE A PIG
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (3:46pm)
They’re oinking in Oregon at the annual Pig-N-Ford races.
(Via A.R.M Jones)
VLAD ALBERT
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (2:26pm)
Unions were against our troops in WWII, and at least one Labor MP was against us during the Cold War:
A federal Labor MP was among a list of secret KGB informants, according to newly released Russian intelligence archives.The former Labor member for the NSW electorate of Hunter, Albert James, is listed as an informant of the Soviet intelligence service in the papers of former KGB archivist and defector Vasili Mitrokhin, which were released by the Churchill College Archive in the United Kingdom last month.The late Mr James, a former NSW policeman and Labor MP who served in Federal Parliament from 1960 to 1980, is one of a number of Australians recorded in Mitrokhin’s list of KGB agents and informants active in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s.
The KGB gave Albert James the inventive codename of ... “Albert”.
SAVE OUR FLAVOURS
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (3:25am)
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has several problems at present, including rising unemployment, crises in Iraq and Ukraine, and the sudden removal of his spine over plans to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
One of his problems is intensely personal. Abbott’s favourite Indian restaurant, the excellent New India Times in Frenchs Forest, will soon be demolished to make way for road upgrades ahead of new hospital construction.
“The New Times of India is a fantastic restaurant,” an obviously grieving Abbott said. “I hope this critical road upgrade doesn’t mean the end.”
Continue reading 'SAVE OUR FLAVOURS'CONFLICT CONDENSED
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (3:18am)
A fine sign at yesterday’s pro-Israel rally in Melbourne, via Nilk:
UPDATE. Just in case there was any doubt over that whole civilisation vs barbarism thing:
UPDATE. Just in case there was any doubt over that whole civilisation vs barbarism thing:
Khaled Sharrouf’s son, a child raised in the suburbs of Sydney, struggles with both arms to hold up the decapitated head of a slain Syrian soldier.
In a conflict awash with gruesome images, this single photograph – posted on Twitter by a proud father with the words “Thats my boy!” – may come to symbolise the savagery that has become the hallmark of the Islamic State and the depravity of its army of foreign fighters.
Sharrouf, of course, is a leading member of Australia’s tax-funded bludjahideen. This explains why his child is “struggling” to hold up that severed head. He’s planning a workplace injury claim.
UPDATE II. Melbourne ABC morning presenter Jon Faine has his head in the sand.
THE LAW WON
Tim Blair – Monday, August 11, 2014 (3:07am)
More than a decade ago, after noticing the way stupid people and ideas attracted other stupid people and ideas, I came up with a notion that was quickly dubbed Blair’s Law: “The ongoing process by which the world’s multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force.”
This describes, for example, the way September 11 conspiracy theorists are impressed by climate change alarmism, and far-left types unite in support for David Hicks. The Gillard government was a literal expression of my law, featuring not only the least competent front bench in Australian history but also supportive Greens and independents, all drawn together in ridiculous unity.
That spectacular assembly was always going to be difficult to beat, at least in terms of Blair’s Law illustration. But last week saw a case that might come close to matching Julia’s government.
Continue reading 'THE LAW WON'ABC caves to Rudd pressure
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (3:01pm)
Labor ensures the ABC gets a more sympathetic journalist to tell its story:
===ABC senior journalist Sarah Ferguson is working on a new political documentary series for the national broadcaster. The project, which will follow a style similar to the series Labor in Power and The Howard Years will explore the Rudd/Gillard years of Australian politics..Remember this story, in June?:
The ABC’s Labor in Power Mark 2 ... is back on track after destabilisation (only naturally) by Kevin Rudd… Chris Uhlmann was shelved because Rudd wouldn’t talk to him.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Are there any more like Sharrouf back home? UPDATE: Why won’t Jon Faine discuss the picture?
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (11:06am)
Born in Australia:
Do not mention the war. Melbourne ABC morning presenter Jon Faine went to ludicrous lengths on his show this morning to avoid discussing the picture of a seven-year-old Australian Muslim boy holding a severed head - a picture that challenges his Leftist pieties about multiculturalism, immigration and the role of Islam in a pluralistic Western country.
Observe, and imagine Faine’s reaction had the boy holding the head been an Israeli....
And we thought that sign at the Sydney protest was just a rhetorical flourish:
Labor leader Bill Shorten’s response is pathetic:
===KHALED Sharrouf’s son, a child raised in the suburbs of Sydney, struggles with both arms to hold up the decapitated head of a slain Syrian soldier.Back in Sydney, men sigh in envy:
In a conflict awash with gruesome images, this single photograph — posted on Twitter by a proud father with the words “Thats my boy!” — may come to symbolise the savagery that has become the hallmark of the Islamic State and the depravity of its army of foreign fighters.
Wassim Haddad… spoke to Sharrouf just a few hours ago. Sharrouf, he says, is happy, ecstatic. “He says that he loves what he is doing over there,” explains Haddad, who runs the hardline al-Risalah Islamic Centre in Bankstown, which Sharrouf and Elomar had attended.The West must know this war will return to our streets:
“He says he is doing the work of Allah in establishing an Islamic caliphate… Why wouldn’t he be happy? He is fulfilling his obligations to Islam. He pretty much called us (other Islamic youth in Sydney) cowards for not being there.” Dozens more would follow, Haddad reckons, but they have had their passports seized by ASIO.
Up to 3,000 Westerners, including Europeans, are now thought to have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or other militant groups working to overthrow the Bashar Assad regime, unidentified U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times in a Saturday article. Between several dozen and 100 of these Western militants are thought to be U.S. citizens.UPDATE
Do not mention the war. Melbourne ABC morning presenter Jon Faine went to ludicrous lengths on his show this morning to avoid discussing the picture of a seven-year-old Australian Muslim boy holding a severed head - a picture that challenges his Leftist pieties about multiculturalism, immigration and the role of Islam in a pluralistic Western country.
Observe, and imagine Faine’s reaction had the boy holding the head been an Israeli....
After 35 minutes: Faine reads out a text from a listener wondering why he has not mentioned the picture. Faine does not provide an answer and moves on immediately to talking about the right pronunciation of “Essendon”.UPDATE
After 60 minutes: Faine does mention race or religious prejudices - but that allegedly of white Australians again Asians, not of a Sharrouf against anyone not sufficiently Muslim.
After 72 minutes: Faine discusses another issue of racial politics - of white Australians needing to do more for Aborigines.
After 75 minutes: Faine asks, “Do you suffer from unconscious bias?” No, he’s not asking about the bias of a Sharrouf against infidels, but of Australians against Asians.
After 85 minutes: Faine announces there has been a “slashing spree”, No, he’s still not talking about Australian jihadists such as Sharrouf slashing throats but about people in Melbourne slashing tyres.
After 87 minutes: Faine does another interview about ethnic troubles. No, he’s still not talking about Australian jihadists but about other Australians allegedly not giving Asians a go.
After 101 minutes: Faine and his guest discuss a clash of nations and “appalling mortality rates”. But they are discussing the Commonwealth Games. Still no discussion of Islamists like Australia’s Sharrouf hacking off heads and giving them to children to hold.
After 107 minutes: Faine and his guest worry about “too much head contact”. They are talking about football.
After 131 minutes: Faine does very briefly mention the photo, saying only that it is “disturbing” but claiming it is “not new”. Faine does not say when he first knew of the picture himself or explain why he never raised it at the time. “What do you make of it?” he asks listeners, but offers no further comment himself. He spends perhaps 30 seconds on the topic and then moves on to promoting his next guests.
After 139 minutes: Faine interviews someone wanting help to “solve a murder”. They are not talking about the murder of the Syrian man whose head is in the hands of Sharrouf’s son, but of a Melbourne man in February.
After 156 minutes: Whew! Faine has got to the safety of the Conversation Hour without having had a single substantive mention of the photograph, and no discussion about it with anyone. He’s now discussing poetry in schools.
After 210 minutes: Faine’s show is over. He’s got through the whole show without any discussion of the photo other than to note it’s there, say it’s old, call it “disturbing” and read out a reader’s text wondering why he won’t disciss it. He’s dealt with the matter in less than one minute of 210.
And we thought that sign at the Sydney protest was just a rhetorical flourish:
UPDATE
Labor leader Bill Shorten’s response is pathetic:
I would be careful about using that shocking image, that shocking evil image, and trying to use it for purposes which it shouldn’t be used for.
Mass immigration from the Third World means Jews are outvoted. As well as muzzled
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (9:24am)
Labor is changing policies on Israel to please Muslim voters in key marginal seats.
Britain is urged to do the same:
I tried to tease out some of these issues in my interview yesterday with Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles:
===Britain is urged to do the same:
David Cameron will fail to win a majority at the next election because he has not done enough to woo minority ethnic voters, former cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi has warned.Other voices want more profound changes to British laws to accommodate the new arrivals:
Lady Warsi – who unexpectedly resigned last week over the government’s “morally indefensible” policy on Gaza – said her party is ignoring “electoral reality” by relying on white voters.
Are Jewish Australians watching - and calculating what further immigration means to their safety and this country’s support for Israel? Do they understand how any concerns they may have are dangerous to express, thanks to section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act?
I tried to tease out some of these issues in my interview yesterday with Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles:
(Thanks to reader Brian.)
Why should Obama worry about Iraq when there’s Martha’s Vineyard?
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (9:16am)
A perfect snap-shot of the disengaged presidency of Vacationer-in-Chief Barack Obama:
Even Hillary Clinton is now attacking Obama for his lethal lack of leadership:
===The U.S. military campaign launched in Iraq Friday could go on for months, President Barack Obama said Saturday from the White House, but noted that he would not provide a specific timeline.Reader cynical1:
“I’m not going to give a particular timetable,” Obama said before leaving for a two-week summer vacation at Martha’s Vineyard.
Rome, meet Nero.UPDATE
Even Hillary Clinton is now attacking Obama for his lethal lack of leadership:
President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion…But I suspect the right call was actually the one Russia took. Hold your nose and back Assad.
Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the “failure” that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising. “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
So privileged that we didn’t own our home until I’d left it
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (8:52am)
Once again I have to ask why anyone believes a word Mark Latham says:
===Never let the facts get in the way of a good smear. PT reviews Mark Latham’s book The Political Bubble in The Saturday Paper, Saturday:
LATHAM (writes) “The fact (is) that most conservative … media commentators come from privileged backgrounds …” Andrew Bolt, Nick Cater, Janet Albrechtsen …Privileged? John Van Tiggelen, Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 2011:
(ANDREW) Bolt snr’s teaching career took the family into Australia’s searing interior … Darwin … Tarcoola … Warramboo … Tailem Bend …Privileged? Hope 103.2, June 5, 2013:
LEIGH Hatcher: I want you to sketch for us the kind of place ... in which you grew up at Southampton …Privileged? The Age, February 26, 2005
Nick Cater: It was very much a lower middle class sort of enclave. People worked at the oil refinery … My parents were teachers …
ALBRECHTSEN … grew up in a strongly left-wing household in Adelaide. “My father was a builder, and my mother, she was a tailor…"…Educated at Seacombe High School, in Adelaide’s southern suburbs …
Labor MP named as Soviet informant
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (8:36am)
How trustworthy has Labor been with our security? How reliable has it been in opposing the great totalitarian ideologies now - or then?
Troy Bramston meanwhile recalls:
===The former Labor member for the NSW electorate of Hunter, Albert James, is listed as an informant of the Soviet intelligence service in the papers of former KGB archivist and defector Vasili Mitrokhin, which were released by the Churchill College Archive in the United Kingdom last month.UPDATE
The late Mr James, a former NSW policeman and Labor MP who served in Federal Parliament from 1960 to 1980, is one of a number of Australians recorded in Mitrokhin’s list of KGB agents and informants active in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s…
James was highly critical of the United States, strongly opposed Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and praised Fidel Castro’s communist regime…In an oral history recorded in 1984, James declared that ‘‘the greatest threat to world peace is USA imperialism’’ and claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency had tried to remove Prime Minister John Gorton from office.
Troy Bramston meanwhile recalls:
Arthur Gietzelt [had a] career dedicated to politics, serving as a Labor alderman (1956-71), senator (1971-89) and minister in the Hawke government (1983-87) ...
As extensive ASIO files document, verified by on-the-record interviews and other archival sources here and abroad, Gietzelt was a secret operative for the Communist Party of Australia inside the ALP…
In the 60s, it was reported that Gietzelt was being paid $2000 a year by the Communist Party for intelligence on the Labor Party ...When Gietzelt was appointed to parliament’s joint defence and foreign policy committee in late 1975, as the Whitlam government teetered through its final months, US diplomats feared he would pass defence secrets to Soviet and Chinese communist representatives.
Do Jews really feel safer now 18c won’t be scrapped?
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (8:04am)
I have long warned Jewish leaders that 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act chills debate on a great demographic, religious and ideological threat to their own community without actually doing much to save Jews from vilification.
They would not listen, but many other Jews have heard. From a pro-Israel rally yesterday:
Yes, a war to save civilisation, but where is the Left? From Syria last week:
===They would not listen, but many other Jews have heard. From a pro-Israel rally yesterday:
More on this yesterday:
UPDATEThis is indeed a war of civilisation against barbarism:
Militants in north-western Iraq have buried women and children alive during their offensive against the Yazidi ethnic minority, according to Iraq’s minister for human rights.UPDATE
The bodies were reportedly found in a mass grave in the wake of Isis’s push towards the Sinjar mountain range, where tens of thousands of Kurdish-speaking refugees have been trapped to the point of starvation.
Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said his government had evidence that 500 Yazidi civilians had been killed so far, and that some of the victims had been buried alive. A further 300 Yazidi women have been kidnapped as slaves, he added.
Yes, a war to save civilisation, but where is the Left? From Syria last week:
A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress.(Via Tim Blair. Thanks to readers Gab and John.)
None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did it themselves, pelting Faddah Ahmad with stones until her body was dragged away.
How Liberal is this Abbott Government really?
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (7:16am)
TELL me how Liberal the Abbott Government really is. Or, if you’re the Prime Minister, tell the deflated party members.
After all, this Liberal Government last week dropped its plans to restore free speech, frightened off by the Muslim lobby.
True, the Government also had no hope of getting those plans through a rabid Senate, so I’d cut it some slack.
But, sadly, there’s lots more.
(Read full article here.)
===After all, this Liberal Government last week dropped its plans to restore free speech, frightened off by the Muslim lobby.
True, the Government also had no hope of getting those plans through a rabid Senate, so I’d cut it some slack.
But, sadly, there’s lots more.
(Read full article here.)
Blackest day in sports politics
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (7:13am)
WE didn’t need last week’s astonishing revelations of Gillard government meddling to know the “blackest day in Australian sport” was a political stunt. Even a fix.
The affair stank from the start — February 7 last year — when then sports minister Kate Lundy and justice minister Jason Clare called a media conference to claim Australian sport was riddled with match-fixing, crime and illicit performance-enhancing drugs.
They’d even dragged in the chiefs of our five biggest sports codes to act like the guilty, and prime minister Julia Gillard called the allegations “sickening”.
In fact, neither the Government nor the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority knew of a single fixed match nor drugged athlete.
This was all so obvious that just a fortnight later, I demanded AFL boss Andrew Demetriou — a long-time friend of Labor, like many on the AFL board — “get back on that stage”, “fix the damage done to your game and say you were conned”.
But the AFL already knew Gillard wanted a deal.
(Read full column here.)
===The affair stank from the start — February 7 last year — when then sports minister Kate Lundy and justice minister Jason Clare called a media conference to claim Australian sport was riddled with match-fixing, crime and illicit performance-enhancing drugs.
They’d even dragged in the chiefs of our five biggest sports codes to act like the guilty, and prime minister Julia Gillard called the allegations “sickening”.
In fact, neither the Government nor the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority knew of a single fixed match nor drugged athlete.
This was all so obvious that just a fortnight later, I demanded AFL boss Andrew Demetriou — a long-time friend of Labor, like many on the AFL board — “get back on that stage”, “fix the damage done to your game and say you were conned”.
But the AFL already knew Gillard wanted a deal.
(Read full column here.)
Print sales up for Murdoch, down for the rest
Andrew Bolt August 11 2014 (7:00am)
Rupert Murdoch just strengthened his wicked dominance in print media - by offering Australians newspapers they prefer to buy over the Fairfax alternative. Should there now be a law forcing readers to buy The Age instead?
===NEWS Corp Australia has bucked the trend of declining newspaper print readership to post a 2 per cent increase across its national, metropolitan and regional titles over the past year, well above the 4 per cent decline across all major newspaper print mastheads…Add on-line and the picture looks better, not least for Fairfax:
The first year-on-year comparisons under the Enhanced Media Metrics Australia audience measurement system show ... the Daily Telegraph’s print readership, boosted by big-selling editions such as its front-page story on the brawl between billionaire James Packer and Nine boss David Gyngell, was up 1.5 per cent on weekdays to 1.191 million, while The Herald Sun and The Courier-Mail both rose by 0.4 per cent to 1.452 and 716,000 respectively…
The [Murdoch] Herald Sun was up 1.0 per cent on Saturdays to 1.205 million, but its direct competitor, The Saturday Age [Fairfax], experienced the biggest drop in absolute numbers over the year, losing 81,000 readers — a decline of 10.7 per cent.
The Sunday Age was down 9.3 per cent to 582,000 and The Sun Herald fell 8.6 per cent to 828,000 but The Sunday Herald Sun [Murdoch] was up 2.3 per cent to 1.156 million. Fairfax’s Weekend Financial Review experienced the biggest decline in percentage terms, losing almost one in three readers (30.6 per cent) to 118,000 readers. The Sydney Morning Herald was down 7.2 per cent to 755,000 readers Monday to Friday and down 7.4 per cent on Saturdays to 850,000.
Print readership of major titles was 12.7 million, down 4 per cent, and digital audiences rose by 11 per cent to 10.7 million a month.The trouble is making on-line pay. And the question is how you can command long-term reader loyalty if your print product goes.
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===Being called the “Missouri Miracle” – a 19-year-old girl survives being hit by a drunk driver and many say it’s thanks to a mystery priest. A community is now searching for a man who appeared to be dressed like a Catholic priest. He prayed with the young girl at the scene of the crash as her vital signs were failing.
Read more: http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/08/10/priest-appears-missouri-crash-scene-pray-victim-mysteriously-disappearing#ixzz2besS6HbO
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ObamaCare: Some Democrats are signing on to bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to effectively ration health care for seniors. So Sarah Palin was right about those death panels after all?
Palin was mocked by liberals when at a Tea Party rally in Reno, Nev., in late 2010, shortly before the GOP retook the House of Representatives, she told attendees: "Don't be thinking that we've got victory for America in the bag yet. ... We can't party like it's 1773."
Leftist know-it-alls insisted that 1776 was the correct year, when in fact Palin was right: The Boston Tea Party she referred to — a protest of British oppressive taxation — happened on Dec. 16, 1773.
Palin was right as well, and also took a lot of heat, when she referred to ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) as a death panel whose decisions would result in health care rationing.
(Under ObamaCare, IPAB's board of 15 presidentially appointed "experts" will be empowered to make arbitrary Medicare spending-cut decisions with virtually no congressional oversight or control.)
Dr. Donald Berwick, who headed the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, admitted as much when he opined: "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open."
Berwick also said: "We can make a sensible social decision and say, 'Well, at this point, to have access to a particular additional benefit (new drug or medical intervention) is so expensive that our taxpayers have better use for those funds.'"
In an op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal that Palin could have written, Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee, called IPAB "essentially a health care rationing body" and said he believes it will fail.
"The IPAB will be able to stop certain treatments its members do not favor by simply setting rates to levels where no doctor or hospital will perform them," wrote Dean, who is also a physician. "Getting rid of the IPAB is something Democrats and Republicans ought to agree on."
Indeed, a growing number of Democrats — many of whom face tough re-election bids next year — agree.
Over the past three months, 22 have signed on to the House IPAB repeal bill. They include lawmakers such as Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., a longtime GOP target.
Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, R-Ark., is co-sponsoring the Senate repeal bill this year after spending the previous three defending IPAB. The Senate and House measures now have 32 and 192 co-sponsors, respectively.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/080913-667073-sarah-palin-vindicated-as-democrats-oppose-ipab.htm#ixzz2berEU5wL
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
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I disapprove of Obama's bigotry. Go figure. - ed
The United States said on Thursday that it was against Israeli approval of new Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.
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A war crime the UN endorses - ed
I have been getting a lot of questions lately about the whole “polio situation” here in Israel, so I thought I would try and shed some light on the situation and try to calm some fears and correct some misinformation. Given that I’m an ER doc with a sprinkle (dollop) of ADHD, my attention span is relatively short and my espresso long. Therefore I thought this topic might be best addressed Q&A style.
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Ask him to move it, sister. If He wants you to walk over it you will - ed
I was very challenged, reading an article yesterday. It was about a woman who had a baby which was born with a complication to its intestines. The complication needed routine surgery. Doctors discovered the baby had lost its' bowel .. and would starve to death in a day. There was nothing the parents could do. They cried to God, comforted each other, and held their baby as it died. Reading that story, my heart was torn. As I imagine God's was too. He holds that baby now. Too soon. But I give thanks to Him he is there to hold the lost, and guide them home. Later in the day, I was watching Dr Phil. A woman, 20 years ago when she was 17, working in a service station next to her boyfriend was approached by a 14 yo girl with a shotgun. The 14 yo demanded money and while the 17 yo was giving it to her, the shotgun went off and blew the jaw off the 17 yo girl. 20 years passed, and the 17 yo has two children and is married to her boyfriend, but she has no face and people make fun of her and taunt her children. She suffers anxiety every time she passes the scene in her small town, USA. Dr Phil has both the 17 yo and 14 yo talk about their stories and meet. The 14 yo has become a Christian and served jail time for the robbery. Initially, the 14yo sounds defensive, and says the 17 yo should forgive her. They cry, and hold each other. I don't know the future. But my heart is full .. I struggle with the past, but have faith God is here. - ed
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*shudder* the dismal view of teens I dislike intensely. They aren't the same as younger children. They are, when treated right, kind, thoughtful and generous. "What did I forget to tell them?" Probably to ignore every preachy meaningless feel good thought that entered your vacuous head. - ed
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CTV News in Atlantic Canada reports that a Cure For Cancer is found and it has been censored just like Dr Burzynski's Cure for Cancer from Houston, Texas.
Dr. Evangelos Michelakis at the University of Alberta, talks about a drug called DCA that has been found to reduce the size of cancerous tumors. Dr. Dario Alterieri from the University of Massachusetts agrees that it should be tested for side effects and safety issues. However, since there is no patent, no pharmaceutical company can own this drug and drug companies will not bring it out on the market or conduct studies, due to the fact that they can't make profit off a drug that can be inexpensively produced.
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Dichloroacetic acid, often abbreviated DCA, is the chemical compound with formula CHCl
2COOH. It is an acid, an analogue of acetic acid, in which two of the three hydrogen atoms of the methyl group have been replaced bychlorine atoms. The salts and esters of dichloroacetic acid are called dichloroacetates. Salts of DCA have been studied as potential drugs because they inhibit the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase.[citation needed]
2COOH. It is an acid, an analogue of acetic acid, in which two of the three hydrogen atoms of the methyl group have been replaced bychlorine atoms. The salts and esters of dichloroacetic acid are called dichloroacetates. Salts of DCA have been studied as potential drugs because they inhibit the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase.[citation needed]
Although preliminary studies have shown DCA can slow the growth of certain tumors in animal studies and in vitrostudies, "Available evidence does not support the use of DCA for cancer treatment at this time."[2]
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Where God leads, He guides and where He guides, He provides.
===Larry Pickering
RUDD’S BAD HAIR DAY IS EVERY DAY
Uncle Kev has always reminded me of everyone’s unfortunate dim uncle. You know, the one you had to take to weddings. Sooner or later you had to take him out the back, slap him around the chops, and tell him to stop playing with his donger in public!
The NSW Catholic Right faction, headed by Carr, Richardson, Dastyari and a bevvy of Gillard hangers on who have disappeared into thin air, has relented and agreed to the return of the hapless and hated Rudd.
Only now is the NSW Right recalling how Rudd had taken public masturbation to new heights, and so too are voters twigging.
Not a thing has changed with good old Uncle Kev!
His (hal al certified and foreign owned) Vegemite trick was pathetic in terms of a GST increase.
Not only has Abbott said the GST will not be touched unless he takes it to an ensuing election, (Tony is no Julia) the GST is a States’ tax and needs States’ approval. Something highly unlikely with State elections looming.
[Anyway why is Vegemite hal al certified? It’s a vegetable extract. Do Islamists also kill their vegetables in a certain way now?]
Poor Uncle Kev last week found it “necessary” to sack another two endorsed candidates. One of whom, Geoff Lake, in the red-ribbon set of Hotham, was found to have verbally abused a female councillor many years ago. Tch tch.
Labor ministers including Mark Dreyfus and Tanya Plibersek defended Mr Lake yesterday, saying, "...it was a long time ago, when he was 22, and he had apologised many times".
The interesting thing about Kevin Rudd is that he has just “endorsed” Peter Beattie at the expense of Des Hardman in the seat of Forde.
Poor ol’ Des has done nothing wrong! It’s just that Uncle Kev’s chances at re-election are improved with Peter Beattie’s endorsement. (Or so he thinks.)
But Peter Beattie’s indiscretions far outweigh those of dumped Mr Lake. And Uncle Kev is very familiar with those indiscretions.
The formerly secret diary of journo, Patricia Gillespie, is a long and interesting X-rated read and details the extra-marital exploits of Peter Beattie in all its sordid glory.
It’s no wonder his wife has his measurements for a pine box.
Pat Gillespie, who it appears was bonking everyone in QLD Labor, except Bill Ludwig, (and even that’s not certain) uses diary pseudonyms:
Uncle Kev’s name is Dr Death and Beattie’s is Danny and Danny had a “during and after hours” wandering appendage that would put Alvin Purple to shame.
A fascinating diary that has somehow escaped the safe-keeping of a Queensland solicitor and itemises, in graphic detail, the decadence of Beattie and QLD Labor.
So, what to make of all this?
Well, our duplicitous Uncle Kev seems quite prepared to overlook far worse political indiscretions when it comes to his own interests.
Hmmm, did someone say we have a new Uncle Kev this time round?
===
Clint Eastwood: Obama Is ‘Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On The American People’
http://
“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”
===
Abbott spoke well, and finished speaking as a leader who can talk to Australian people. Rudd looked lost without a child to hurt. - ed
===
A military field hospital has been erected by Israel near the Syria border next to Quneitra. More than 400 civilians and soldiers from
both sides in the civil war have been treated and difficult cases are sent to the Sieff Hospital in Tzfad or the Rambam Hospital in Haifa.
Syria population as well as all armed groups know that Israel is offering the wounded safe skies that can save their lives. Wounded fighters receive strict orders not to bring with them weapons of any kind to the field hospital.
Civilians and fighters that recovered are returned to Syria.
In the civil war in Syria the conflicting parties do not take prisoners, or they kill them on the spot or kill them by torture. In this sense the Israeli humanitarian action is a light in a dirty war.
===
quotestagram's photo http://t.co/29mq7shwKV
Being positive won't guarantee you will succeed, but being negative will guarantee you won't.
===
It's not what you did, but what you could have done if you allowed the Lord to work His will in your life.
A. W. Tozer
===
The campaign SBS backed was a trade off of ethnicity to promote change on drug policy. The name (Better Man) was an insult to the twin brother. The grieving mother was not consulted .. probably a good cast did a good job .. probably well produced. I didn't watch it so I will never know.
===
- 2492 BC – According to legend, Armenian culture hero Hayk slew the giant king Bel with a shot from a longbow near Lake Van (in modern Turkey).
- 1492 – The first papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Pope Innocent VIII.
- 1786 – Captain Francis Light founded the British colony ofPenang, beginning more than a century of British involvement inMalaya.
- 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr (pictured) and composer George Antheil received a patent for their "Secret Communications System", an early technique of frequency-hopping spread spectrum that later became the basis for many forms of today'swireless communication systems.
- 2012 – At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.
- 3114 BC – The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-ColumbianMesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya, begins.
- 2492 BC – Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation.
- 106 – The south-western part of Dacia (modern Romania) becomes a Roman province: Roman Dacia.
- 355 – Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II.
- 490 – Battle of Adda: The Goths under Theodoric the Great and his ally Alaric II defeat the forces of Odoacer on the Adda River, near Milan.
- 1332 – Wars of Scottish Independence: Battle of Dupplin Moor: Scots under Domhnall II, Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.
- 1473 – The Battle of Otlukbeli: Mehmed the Conqueror of the Ottoman Empire decisively defeats Uzun Hassan of Aq Qoyunlu.
- 1675 – Franco-Dutch War: Forces of the Holy Roman Empire defeat the French in the Battle of Konzer Brücke.
- 1786 – Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia.
- 1804 – Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria.
- 1812 – Peninsular War: French troops engage British-Portuguese forces in the Battle of Majadahonda.
- 1813 – In Colombia, Juan del Corral declares the independence of Antioquia.
- 1858 – The Eiger in the Bernese Alps is ascended for the first time by Charles Barrington accompanied by Christian Almerand Peter Bohren.
- 1898 – Spanish–American War: American troops enter the city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
- 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens ends.
- 1920 – The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty, which relinquished Russia's authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed, ending the Latvian War of Independence.
- 1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.
- 1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison on Alcatraz Island.
- 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrumcommunication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
- 1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in the city, killing one and wounding five.
- 1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan.
- 1959 – Sheremetyevo International Airport, the second-largest airport in Russia, opens.
- 1960 – Chad declares independence.
- 1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union TerritoryDadra and Nagar Haveli.
- 1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity.
- 1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
- 1968 – The Fifteen Guinea Special became the last main-line passenger train to be hauled by steam locomotive power on British Rail.
- 1969 – The Apollo 11 astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine following their liftoff from the moon.[1]
- 1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
- 1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin.
- 1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk and crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners.
- 1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one passenger and injuring 15 others.
- 1984 – "We begin bombing in five minutes": United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for re-election, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio.
- 1999 – A total solar eclipse occurs.
- 2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
- 2003 – Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
- 2006 – The oil tanker M/T Solar 1 sinks off the coast of Guimaras and Negros Islands in the Philippines, causing the country's worst oil spill.
- 2012 – At least 306 people are killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.
- 2017 – At least 41 people are killed and another 179 injured after two passenger trains collide in Alexandria, Egypt.
- 1086 – Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1125)
- 1384 – Yolande of Aragon (d. 1442)
- 1472 – Nikolaus von Schönberg, Catholic cardinal (d. 1537)
- 1510 – Margaret Paleologa, Sovereign Marchioness of Montferrat (d. 1566)
- 1673 – Richard Mead, English physician and astrologer (d. 1754)
- 1718 – Frederick Haldimand, Swiss-English general and politician, 22nd Governor of Quebec (d. 1791)
- 1722 – Richard Brocklesby, English physician (d. 1797)
- 1748 – Joseph Schuster, German composer (d. 1812)
- 1778 – Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Prussian gymnast, educator, and politician (d. 1852)
- 1794 – James B. Longacre, American engraver (d. 1869)
- 1807 – David Rice Atchison, American general, lawyer, and politician (d. 1886)
- 1808 – William W. Chapman, American lawyer and politician (d. 1892)
- 1816 – Frederick Innes, Scottish-Australian politician, 9th Premier of Tasmania (d. 1882)
- 1833 – Robert G. Ingersoll, American soldier, lawyer, and politician (d. 1899)
- 1833 – Kido Takayoshi, Japanese samurai and politician (d. 1877)
- 1836 – Warren Brown, American historian and politician (d. 1919)
- 1837 – Marie François Sadi Carnot, French engineer and politician, 4th President of the French Republic (d. 1894)
- 1855 – John Hodges, Australian cricketer (d. 1933)
- 1858 – Christiaan Eijkman, Dutch physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1930)
- 1860 – Ottó Bláthy, Hungarian engineer and chess player (d. 1939)
- 1870 – Tom Richardson, English cricketer (d. 1912)
- 1874 – Princess Louise Charlotte of Saxe-Altenburg (d. 1953)
- 1877 – Adolph M. Christianson, American lawyer and judge (d. 1954)
- 1878 – Oliver W. F. Lodge, English poet and author (d. 1955)
- 1881 – Aleksander Aberg, Estonian wrestler (d. 1920)
- 1884 – Hermann Wlach, Austrian-Swiss actor (d. 1962)
- 1885 – Stephen Butterworth, English physicist and engineer (d. 1958)
- 1891 – Stancho Belkovski, Bulgarian architect and educator (d. 1962)
- 1891 – Edgar Zilsel, Austrian historian and philosopher of science, linked to the Vienna Circle (d. 1944)
- 1892 – Hugh MacDiarmid, Scottish poet and linguist (d. 1978)
- 1892 – Eiji Yoshikawa, Japanese author (d. 1962)
- 1897 – Enid Blyton, English author, poet, and educator (d. 1968)
- 1897 – Louise Bogan, American poet and critic (d. 1970)
- 1898 – Peter Mohr Dam, Faroese educator and politician, 3rd Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (d. 1968)
- 1900 – Philip Phillips, American archaeologist and scholar (d. 1994)
- 1902 – Alfredo Binda, Italian cyclist (d. 1986)
- 1902 – Lloyd Nolan, American actor (d. 1985)
- 1905 – Erwin Chargaff, Austrian-American biochemist and academic (d. 2002)
- 1905 – Ernst Jaakson, Estonian diplomat (d. 1998)
- 1907 – Ted a'Beckett, Australian cricketer and lawyer (d. 1989)
- 1908 – Don Freeman, American author and illustrator (d. 1978)
- 1908 – Torgny T:son Segerstedt, Swedish sociologist and philosopher (d. 1999)
- 1909 – Yūji Koseki, Japanese composer (d. 1989)
- 1909 – Uku Masing, Estonian philosopher and theologian (d. 1985)
- 1911 – Thanom Kittikachorn, Thai field marshal and politician, 10th Prime Minister of Thailand (d. 2004)
- 1912 – Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer and academic (d. 1954)
- 1912 – Raphael Blau, American screenwriter and producer (d. 1996)
- 1913 – Paul Dupuis, Canadian actor (d. 1976)
- 1913 – Bob Scheffing, American baseball player and manager (d. 1985)
- 1913 – Angus Wilson, English author and academic (d. 1991)
- 1915 – Morris Weiss, American author and illustrator (d. 2014)
- 1916 – Johnny Claes, English-Belgian race car driver and trumpet player (d. 1956)
- 1919 – Luis Olmo, Puerto Rican-American baseball player and manager (d. 2017)
- 1920 – Mike Douglas, American singer and talk show host (d. 2006)
- 1920 – Chuck Rayner, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2002)
- 1921 – Alex Haley, American historian and author (d. 1992)
- 1922 – John "Mule" Miles, American baseball player (d. 2013)
- 1923 – Stan Chambers, American journalist and actor (d. 2015)
- 1925 – Floyd Curry, Canadian ice hockey player and manager (d. 2006)
- 1925 – Arlene Dahl, American actress, businesswoman and writer
- 1926 – Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-English chemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1927 – Raymond Leppard, English harpsichord player and conductor
- 1927 – Stuart Rosenberg, American director and producer (d. 2007)
- 1932 – Fernando Arrabal, Spanish actor, director, and playwright
- 1932 – Izzy Asper, Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician, founded Canwest (d. 2003)
- 1932 – Geoffrey Cass, English businessman
- 1932 – Peter Eisenman, American architect, designed the City of Culture of Galicia
- 1932 – John Gorrie, English director and screenwriter
- 1933 – Jerry Falwell, American minister and television host (d. 2007)
- 1933 – Jerzy Grotowski, Polish director and producer (d. 1999)
- 1933 – Tamás Vásáry, Hungarian pianist and conductor
- 1934 – Bob Hepple, South African lawyer and academic (d. 2015)
- 1936 – Andre Dubus, American short story writer, essayist, and memoirist (d. 1999)
- 1936 – Bill Monbouquette, American baseball player and coach (d. 2015)
- 1936 – Jonathan Spence, English-American historian and academic
- 1937 – Anna Massey, English actress (d. 2011)
- 1937 – Patrick Joseph McGovern, American businessman, founded International Data Group (d. 2014)
- 1939 – Ronnie Dawson, American singer and guitarist (d. 2003)
- 1940 – Glenys Page, New Zealand cricketer (d. 2012)
- 1941 – John Ellison, American-Canadian musician and songwriter
- 1942 – Mike Hugg, English drummer and keyboard player
- 1943 – Jim Kale, Canadian bass player
- 1943 – Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani general and politician, 10th President of Pakistan
- 1943 – Denis Payton, English saxophonist (Dave Clark Five) (d. 2006)
- 1944 – Martin Linton, Swedish-English journalist and politician
- 1944 – Frederick W. Smith, American businessman, founded FedEx
- 1944 – Ian McDiarmid, Scottish actor
- 1946 – John Conlee, American singer-songwriter
- 1946 – Marilyn vos Savant, American journalist and author
- 1947 – Theo de Jong, Dutch footballer, coach, and manager
- 1947 – Georgios Karatzaferis, Greek journalist and politician
- 1948 – Don Boyd, Scottish director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1949 – Eric Carmen, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1949 – Tim Hutchinson, American lawyer and politician
- 1949 – Ian Charleson, Scottish-English actor and singer (d. 1990)
- 1950 – Erik Brann, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2003)
- 1950 – Gennadiy Nikonov, Russian engineer, designed the AN-94 rifle (d. 2003)
- 1950 – Steve Wozniak, American computer scientist and programmer, co-founded Apple Inc.
- 1952 – Reid Blackburn, American photographer (d. 1980)
- 1952 – Bob Mothersbaugh, American singer, guitarist, and producer
- 1953 – Hulk Hogan, American wrestler
- 1953 – Wijda Mazereeuw, Dutch swimmer
- 1954 – Bryan Bassett, American guitarist
- 1954 – Vance Heafner, American golfer and coach (d. 2012)
- 1954 – Joe Jackson, English singer-songwriter and musician
- 1954 – Tarmo Rüütli, Estonian footballer, coach, and manager
- 1954 – Yashpal Sharma, Indian cricketer and umpire
- 1955 – Marc Bureau, Canadian politician, 16th Mayor of Gatineau
- 1955 – Sylvia Hermon, Northern Irish academic and politician
- 1955 – Alamgir (pop singer), pop singer of Pakistan
- 1956 – Pierre-Louis Lions, French mathematician and academic
- 1957 – Ian Stuart Donaldson, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1993)
- 1958 – Steven Pokere, New Zealand rugby player
- 1958 – Jah Wobble, English singer-songwriter and bass player
- 1959 – Gustavo Cerati, Argentinian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (d. 2014)
- 1959 – Yoshiaki Murakami, Japanese businessman
- 1959 – Taraki Sivaram, Sri Lankan journalist and author (d. 2005)
- 1959 – Richard Scudamore, English businessman
- 1959 – László Szlávics, Jr., Hungarian sculptor
- 1961 – David Brooks, American journalist and author
- 1961 – Craig Ehlo, American basketball player and coach
- 1962 – Brian Azzarello, American author
- 1962 – Charles Cecil, English video game designer and co-founded Revolution Software
- 1962 – John Micklethwait, English journalist and author
- 1962 – Rob Minkoff, American director and producer
- 1963 – Hiromi Makihara, Japanese baseball player
- 1964 – Jim Lee, South Korean-American author and illustrator
- 1964 – Grant Waite, New Zealand golfer
- 1965 – Marc Bergevin, Canadian ice hockey player and manager
- 1965 – Embeth Davidtz, American actress
- 1965 – Viola Davis, American actress
- 1966 – Nigel Martyn, English footballer and coach
- 1966 – Juan María Solare, Argentinian pianist and composer
- 1967 – Massimiliano Allegri, Italian footballer and manager
- 1967 – Enrique Bunbury, Spanish singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1967 – Joe Rogan, American actor, comedian, and television host
- 1967 – Petter Wettre, Norwegian saxophonist and composer
- 1968 – Sophie Okonedo, British actress
- 1968 – Charlie Sexton, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1970 – Dirk Hannemann, German footballer and manager
- 1970 – Gianluca Pessotto, Italian footballer
- 1971 – Alejandra Barros, Mexican actress and screenwriter
- 1971 – Tommy Mooney, English footballer
- 1973 – Kristin Armstrong, American cyclist
- 1974 – Marie-France Dubreuil, Canadian figure skater
- 1974 – Hadiqa Kiani, Pakistani singer, songwriter and philanthropist
- 1974 – Audrey Mestre, French biologist and diver (d. 2002)
- 1974 – Carolyn Murphy, American model and actress
- 1975 – Chris Cummings, Canadian singer-songwriter
- 1976 – Iván Córdoba, Colombian footballer and manager
- 1976 – Bubba Crosby, American baseball player
- 1976 – Will Friedle, American actor and screenwriter
- 1976 – Ben Gibbard, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1976 – Ľubomír Višňovský, Slovak ice hockey player
- 1977 – Gemma Hayes, Irish singer-songwriter
- 1977 – Dênio Martins, Brazilian footballer
- 1978 – Spyros Gogolos, Greek footballer
- 1978 – Charlotte Leslie, British politician
- 1978 – Lillian Nakate, Ugandan politician
- 1978 – Isy Suttie, English comedian, musician, actress, and writer
- 1979 – Walter Ayoví, Ecuadorian footballer
- 1980 – Daniel Lloyd, English cyclist and sportscaster
- 1980 – Lee Suggs, American football player
- 1981 – Daniel Poohl, Swedish journalist
- 1983 – Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor
- 1983 – Luke Lewis, Australian rugby league player
- 1983 – Pavel 183, Russian painter (d. 2013)
- 1984 – Melky Cabrera, Dominican baseball player
- 1984 – Lucas di Grassi, Brazilian race car driver
- 1984 – Mojtaba Abedini, Iranian sabre fencer
- 1985 – Jacqueline Fernandez, Sri Lankan actress
- 1986 – Mokhtar Benmoussa, Algerian footballer
- 1986 – Pablo Sandoval, Venezuelan baseball player
- 1987 – Dany N'Guessan, French footballer
- 1987 – Drew Storen, American baseball player
- 1988 – Rabeh Al-Hussaini, Filipino basketball player
- 1988 – Patty Mills, Australian basketball player
- 1988 – Mustafa Pektemek, Turkish footballer
- 1989 – Junior Heffernan, Irish cyclist and triathlete (d. 2013)
- 1989 – Sebastian Huke, German footballer
- 1990 – Lenka Juríková, Slovak tennis player
- 1991 – Cristian Tello, Spanish footballer
- 1994 – Storm Sanders, Australian tennis player
- 1994 – Anton Cooper, New Zealand cross-country cyclist
- 1994 – Joseph Barbato, French footballer
- 480 BC – Leonidas I, Agiad King of Sparta
- 223 – Jia Xu, Chinese politician (b. 147)
- 353 – Magnentius, Roman usurper (b. 303)
- 449 – Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople
- 979 – Gero, Count of Alsleben
- 991 – Byrhtnoth, English soldier (b. 956)
- 1044 – Sokkate, king of the Pagan dynasty of Burma (b. 1001)
- 1204 – Guttorm of Norway (b. 1199)
- 1253 – Clare of Assisi, Italian follower of Francis of Assisi (b. 1194)
- 1259 – Möngke Khan, Mongolian emperor (b. 1208)
- 1268 – Agnes of Faucigny, Dame ruler of Faucigny, Countess consort of Savoy
- 1332 – Domhnall II, Earl of Mar
- 1332 – Robert II Keith, Marischal of Scotland
- 1332 – Thomas Randolph, 2nd Earl of Moray
- 1332 – Murdoch III, Earl of Menteith
- 1332 – Robert Bruce, Lord of Liddesdale
- 1456 – John Hunyadi, Hungarian general and politician (b. 1387)
- 1464 – Nicholas of Cusa, German cardinal and mystic (b. 1401)
- 1465 – Kettil Karlsson, regent of Sweden and Bishop of Linköping (b. 1433)
- 1486 – William Waynflete, English Lord Chancellor and bishop of Winchester (b. c. 1398)
- 1494 – Hans Memling, German-Belgian painter (b. 1430)
- 1519 – Johann Tetzel, German preacher (b. 1465)
- 1556 – John Bell, English bishop
- 1563 – Bartolomé de Escobedo, Spanish composer and educator (b. 1500)
- 1578 – Pedro Nunes, Portuguese mathematician and academic (b. 1502)
- 1596 – Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare (b. 1585)
- 1614 – Lavinia Fontana, Italian painter (b. 1552)
- 1656 – Ottavio Piccolomini, Austrian-Italian field marshal (b. 1599)
- 1725 – Prince Vittorio Amedeo Theodore of Savoy (b. 1723)
- 1774 – Charles-François Tiphaigne de la Roche, French physician and author (b. 1722)
- 1813 – Henry James Pye, English poet and politician (b. 1745)
- 1851 – Lorenz Oken, German botanist, biologist, and ornithologist (b. 1779)
- 1854 – Macedonio Melloni, Italian physicist and academic (b. 1798)
- 1868 – Halfdan Kjerulf, Norwegian pianist and composer (b. 1815)
- 1886 – Lydia Koidula, Estonian poet and playwright (b. 1843)
- 1890 – John Henry Newman, English cardinal and theologian (b. 1801)
- 1892 – Enrico Betti, Italian mathematician and academic (b. 1813)
- 1903 – Eugenio María de Hostos, Puerto Rican-American sociologist, philosopher, and lawyer (b. 1839)
- 1908 – Khudiram Bose, Indian Bengali revolutionary (b. 1889)
- 1919 – Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Carnegie Steel Company and Carnegie Hall (b. 1835)
- 1921 – Mary Sumner, English philanthropist, founded the Mothers' Union (b. 1828)
- 1936 – Blas Infante, Spanish historian and politician (b. 1885)
- 1937 – Edith Wharton, American novelist and short story writer (b. 1862)
- 1939 – Jean Bugatti, German-Italian engineer (b. 1909)
- 1939 – Siegfried Flesch, Austrian fencer (b. 1872)
- 1945 – Stefan Jaracz, Polish actor and theater producer (b. 1883)
- 1953 – Tazio Nuvolari, Italian race car driver and motorcycle racer (b. 1892)
- 1956 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (b. 1912)
- 1961 – Antanas Škėma, Lithuanian-American author, playwright, actor, and director (b. 1910)
- 1963 – Otto Wahle, Austrian-American swimmer and coach (b. 1879)
- 1965 – Bill Woodfull, Australian cricketer and educator (b. 1897)
- 1969 – Miriam Licette, English soprano and educator (b. 1885)
- 1972 – Max Theiler, South African-American virologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)
- 1974 – Vicente Emilio Sojo, Venezuelan conductor and composer (b. 1887)
- 1977 – Frederic Calland Williams, British co-inventor of the Williams-Kilborn tube, used for memory in early computer systems (b. 1911)
- 1979 – J. G. Farrell, English author (b. 1935)
- 1980 – Paul Robert, French lexicographer and publisher (b. 1910)
- 1982 – Tom Drake, American actor and singer (b. 1918)
- 1984 – Alfred A. Knopf Sr., American publisher, founded Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (b. 1892)
- 1984 – Paul Felix Schmidt, Estonian–American chemist and chess player (b. 1916)
- 1986 – János Drapál, Hungarian motorcycle racer (b. 1948)
- 1988 – Anne Ramsey, American actress (b. 1929)
- 1989 – John Meillon, Australian actor (b. 1934)
- 1991 – J. D. McDuffie, American race car driver (b. 1938)
- 1994 – Peter Cushing, English actor (b. 1913)
- 1995 – Phil Harris, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1904)
- 1996 – Rafael Kubelík, Czech conductor and composer (b. 1914)
- 1996 – Ambrosio Padilla, Filipino basketball player and politician (b. 1910)
- 2000 – Jean Papineau-Couture, Canadian composer and academic (b. 1916)
- 2001 – Percy Stallard, English cyclist and coach (b. 1909)
- 2002 – Galen Rowell, American photographer and mountaineer (b. 1940)
- 2003 – Armand Borel, Swiss-American mathematician and academic (b. 1923)
- 2003 – Herb Brooks, American ice hockey player and coach (b. 1937)
- 2006 – Mike Douglas, American singer and talk show host (b. 1920)
- 2008 – George Furth, American actor and playwright (b. 1932)
- 2008 – Dursun Karataş, founding leader of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) in Turkey (b. 1952)
- 2009 – Eunice Kennedy Shriver, American activist, founded the Special Olympics (b. 1921)
- 2012 – Red Bastien, American wrestler, trainer, and promoter (b. 1931)
- 2012 – Michael Dokes, American boxer (b. 1958)
- 2012 – Lucy Gallardo, Argentinian-Mexican actress and screenwriter (b. 1929)
- 2013 – Raymond Delisle, French cyclist (b. 1943)
- 2013 – Zafar Futehally, Indian ornithologist and author (b. 1919)
- 2013 – David Howard, English ballet dancer and educator (b. 1937)
- 2014 – Vladimir Beara, Croatian footballer and manager (b. 1928)
- 2014 – Raymond Gravel, Canadian priest and politician (b. 1952)
- 2014 – Kika Szaszkiewiczowa, Polish author and blogger (b. 1917)
- 2014 – Robin Williams, American actor and comedian (b. 1951)
- 2015 – Serge Collot, French viola player and educator (b. 1923)
- 2015 – Harald Nielsen, Danish footballer and manager (b. 1941)
- 2015 – Richard Oriani, Salvadoran-American metallurgist and engineer (b. 1920)
- 2017 – Yisrael Kristal, Polish-Israeli supercentenarian; oldest living Holocaust survivor and one of the ten oldest men ever (b. 1903)
- 2017 – Segun Bucknor, Nigerian musician and journalist (b. 1946)
- Christian Feast Day:
- Flag Day (Pakistan)
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Chad from France in 1960.
- Mountain Day (Japan)
“For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. According to alamoth. A song. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
Paul's marvellously rich expression indicates, that Christ is the source of our life. "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." That same voice which brought Lazarus out of the tomb raised us to newness of life. He is now the substance of our spiritual life. It is by his life that we live; he is in us, the hope of glory, the spring of our actions, the central thought which moves every other thought. Christ is the sustenance of our life. What can the Christian feed upon but Jesus' flesh and blood? "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." O wayworn pilgrims in this wilderness of sin, you never get a morsel to satisfy the hunger of your spirits, except ye find it in him! Christ is the solace of our life. All our true joys come from him; and in times of trouble, his presence is our consolation. There is nothing worth living for but him; and his lovingkindness is better than life! Christ is the object of our life. As speeds the ship towards the port, so hastes the believer towards the haven of his Saviour's bosom. As flies the arrow to its goal, so flies the Christian towards the perfecting of his fellowship with Christ Jesus. As the soldier fights for his captain, and is crowned in his captain's victory, so the believer contends for Christ, and gets his triumph out of the triumphs of his Master. "For him to live is Christ." Christ is the exemplar of our life. Where there is the same life within, there will, there must be, to a great extent, the same developments without; and if we live in near fellowship with the Lord Jesus we shall grow like him. We shall set him before us as our Divine copy, and we shall seek to tread in his footsteps, until he shall become the crown of our life in glory. Oh! how safe, how honoured, how happy is the Christian, since Christ is our life!
Evening
Behold one of the great Physician's mightiest arts: he has power to forgive sin! While here he lived below, before the ransom had been paid, before the blood had been literally sprinkled on the mercy-seat, he had power to forgive sin. Hath he not power to do it now that he hath died? What power must dwell in him who to the utmost farthing has faithfully discharged the debts of his people! He has boundless power now that he has finished transgression and made an end of sin. If ye doubt it, see him rising from the dead! behold him in ascending splendour raised to the right hand of God! Hear him pleading before the eternal Father, pointing to his wounds, urging the merit of his sacred passion! What power to forgive is here! "He hath ascended on high, and received gifts for men." "He is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins." The most crimson sins are removed by the crimson of his blood. At this moment, dear reader, whatever thy sinfulness, Christ has power to pardon, power to pardon thee, and millions such as thou art. A word will speak it. He has nothing more to do to win thy pardon; all the atoning work is done. He can, in answer to thy tears, forgive thy sins today, and make thee know it. He can breathe into thy soul at this very moment a peace with God which passeth all understanding, which shall spring from perfect remission of thy manifold iniquities. Dost thou believe that? I trust thou believest it. Mayst thou experience now the power of Jesus to forgive sin! Waste no time in applying to the Physician of souls, but hasten to him with words like these:--
"Jesus! Master! hear my cry;
Save me, heal me with a word;
Fainting at thy feet I lie,
Thou my whisper'd plaint hast heard."
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Today's reading: Psalm 79-80, Romans 11:1-18 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Psalm 79-80
1 O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble.
2 They have left the dead bodies of your servants
as food for the birds of the sky,
the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild.
3 They have poured out blood like water
all around Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury the dead.
4 We are objects of contempt to our neighbors,
of scorn and derision to those around us....
they have defiled your holy temple,
they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble.
2 They have left the dead bodies of your servants
as food for the birds of the sky,
the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild.
3 They have poured out blood like water
all around Jerusalem,
and there is no one to bury the dead.
4 We are objects of contempt to our neighbors,
of scorn and derision to those around us....
Today's New Testament reading: Romans 11:1-18
The Remnant of Israel
1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don't you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah-how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me"? 4 And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." 5So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace....
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Sosthenes
[Sŏs'thenēs] - of sound strength orsaviour from "i save."
[Sŏs'thenēs] - of sound strength orsaviour from "i save."
- The chief ruler of the synagogue at Corinth who suffered at the hands of the Hellenistic Greeks when Gallio dismissed the case against Paul (Acts 18:17 RV).
- The believer or "brother" whom Paul unites with himself in addressing the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. 1:1 ). Perhaps both references are to the same man, Sosthenes of Acts 18:17 becoming a Christian after the Gallio outburst.
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