Happy birthday and many happy returns Keven Williams, born on the day which in 1830 had Andrew Jackson authorising the removal of Indians from their lands. Jackson was a Democrat. In 1936, Turing introduced his machine - trust me, it is amazing - as are you!
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Frightened 13-year-old hunted by a pack of wolves
Miranda Devine – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (7:49pm)
THE 13-year-old girl vilified for accidentally making a racist slur against indigenous footballer Adam Goodes is the daughter of a single mother on a disability pension, from one of the most underprivileged and powerless backgrounds possible.
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FROM PARLIAMENT TO THE PITS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (2:38pm)
What might Sarah Hanson-Young do if she’s voted out in September?
“I’d like to be a racing car driver,” she says. “We need to make ‘green’ cars sexy, and the best way to do that is to get them on the racing circuit.”I glance at her to see if she is joking.“I mean, it’s a dream, isn’t it?” she continues. “But maybe someone will go, ‘Yeah, she’s not in politics any more. Let’s put her behind the wheel.’”
In Hanson-Young’s case, we need a new, non-carbon term to replace “petrol head”.
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MOSQUE IT UP
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (2:33pm)
More mosques should be built to stop young Muslims becoming radicalised, Australia’s Grand Mufti has warned …“People need to understand a mosque is not a source of threat,’’ he said. “A mosque is not a radicalising factor. A mosque is a source of security. A person who has a connection to a mosque is also a person who is law-abiding, who is respectful to others.”
Seems to be working in Gaza. And Iraq. And Pakistan. And Iran. And especially London.
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NUMBER INVENTED
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (2:29pm)
A new numeric term just coined by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Parliament:
Twenteen
It’s another of those rare stumbles.
===
WEBDIARY REBORN!
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (1:30pm)
“Found someone to fund my work,” announces Margo Kingston. Actually, she’s found everyone to fund her “work”, or at least all of us who pay taxes:
Margo Kingston, one of Australia’s best-known political and investigative journalists, is partnering with Macquarie University to cover the upcoming Federal election using social media.
2013 is now officially perfect.
Kingston was the first Australian journalist to use online media to bring the voice of citizen journalists into the mainstream media with her Sydney Morning Herald-based website Webdiary.
Webdiary, for those unaware, was a kind of political forum for people who seemed unusually beset with social, emotional and substance abuse problems. Like many of its contributors, the site veered between manic enthusiasm and depressive hostility – one minute planning to change the world, the next despairing at the conspiracies that deny progress. Kingston presided over her followers in the manner of a guru. Then she went broke because of bold tags.
Her new project will build on this legacy and explore the role Twitter now plays in public debate and journalism.
Kingston is an unlikely Twitter expert. Only last year, she seemed to have little idea about how the service worked:
• Hi Peter. Why are you following me? I hardly ever tweet!• Hi Vicki. Why are you following me?• Hi Jan. Why are you following me?• Hi Sean. Why are you following me?• Hello - why are you following me? I’m new to this twitter thing....
Now she’s aiming to revive that old Webdiary magic:
“I see this as a successor to Webdiary,” Kingston says. “It will be grounded in the same charter, values and ethics.”
Webdiary loved charters and ethics and values. The site’s comments policy alone was more than 200 words longerthan the entire Declaration of Independence.
“It will be based on the citizen journalism model where I will work with citizens to report the news, investigate stories, comment and involve others citizens in commentary”.
The high point of Webdiary’s citizen journalism came with Kingston’s doomed 2005 attempt to establish a parallel judiciary in Australia.
Professor Catharine Lumby, herself a former journalist, will work with Kingston to analyse the opportunities and challenges that Twitter and social media present to professional journalists.
The personal distance between Kingston and Lumby, a professor of media at Macquarie University, isn’t as great as thegeographical distance. Let’s hope that, in the honest spirit of Webdiary, everyone involved in this appointment was appropriately open and transparent.
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HE SIMPLY FEELS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (4:10am)
Russell Brand considers the murder of Lee Rigby:
I simply feel that it is important that our reaction is measured.
Here are all the measurements you need, mate.
There is something about the arbitrary brutality, humdrum High Street setting and the cool rhetoric of the blood-stained murderer that evokes a powerful and inherently irrational response.
Someone’s had their head cut off. Let’s be rational about it.
Next, Brand considers Rigby’s killer:
Next, Brand considers Rigby’s killer:
In my view that man’s severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity — in this case the Koran.In the case of another mentally ill and desperate man — Mark Chapman — it was The Catcher In The Rye.This was the nominated text for his rationalisation of the murder of John Lennon in 1980.I’ve read that book and I’ve read some of the Koran, and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence.
Good for you, Russ! To this point, The Catcher In The Rye has provoked one fatality. The Koran’s body count is slightly higher.
What I think is that all over our country, all over our planet, there are huge numbers of people who feel alienated and sometimes victimised by the privileged and the powerful, whether that’s rich people, powerful corporations or occupying nations …Whenever we are looking for the solution to a problem we must identify who has power. By power, I mean influence and money.
Brand’s net worth is estimated at $15 million.
To demonstrate defiance in the face of this sad violence we must be loving and compassionate to one another.Let’s look beyond our superficial and fleeting differences.
The difference between Rigby and the bastards who killed him: they still have their heads attached. Speaking of “superficial and fleeting differences”, let’s imagine what would happen to Russell Brand if he phoned one of London’s more excitable mosques and told the imam about having sex with his granddaughter.
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CONVERSION UNDERWAY
Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 28, 2013 (2:21am)
Global oilman Tim Newman – nice bloke; I met him once in Kuwait – prepares for life in Australia.
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Promises kept by Gillard would make a shorter list
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:01pm)
Another broken promise, of course. But there’s been so many, who is keeping count?
TEMPERS have flared in a fiery caucus meeting as Labor MPs were briefed about proposed electoral-law changes that would swell the election year coffers of the major parties and cost taxpayers $58 million over the forward estimates.
A source of MP anger was a mooted $5,000 disclosure threshold, negotiated in secret between the ALP and Coalition parties as part of a suite of reforms, which falls far short of the $1000 level the government had previously outlined in legislation currently before the Senate.
That lower disclosure threshold also formed part of an agreement between Julia Gillard and the Australian Greens struck in September 2010 in the wake of the stalemate election. The disclosure threshold for the current financial year is $12,100…
In the agreement struck by the Greens with Labor in the wake of the stalemate August 2010 election, the second stated goal was: “Seek immediate reform of funding of political parties and election campaigns by legislating to lower the donation disclosure threshold from an indexed $11,500 to $1000...”
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Where are the “stolen” children, Robert?
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (6:03pm)
Robert Manne long
argued for an apology for the “stolen generation”, but his latest piece
seems to suggest the “stolen generation” is really a metaphor for a
wider “dispossession”:
What he doesn’t discuss in the piece is what might help to explain why he now prefers to discuss a wider apology for a more general offence to Aborigines.
I am referring, of course, to Manne’s failure to name even 10 of the children allegedly “stolen” from 1910 just for being Aboriginal, rather than for welfare concerns.
Should he not finally come clean on why he has failed to name just 10 “stolen” children not once, not twice but three times? Should he not concede that I can name more children who died because of the myth than he can name as truly “stolen”?
UPDATE
Robert Manne responds in comments below - but not by simply giving 10 names, 10 clear examples, which is all the response he’d need to demolish me:
Yes, some names are mentioned in an essay rich in personal abuse and, in my opinion, misrepresentation. Let’s just stick to the central issue - the 10 names I’ve challenged Manne for years to produce.
I did check names and cases. Here is some of what I found:
And he continues:
On he goes:
But check what happens when Manne does get specific. The cases vanish. As we’ve seen with other cases accepted by government.
Manne continues:
As for other cases cited by Manne, I found the reality very different to what he’d implied:
Check the names Manne still - after all this debate and all this research - presents as children stolen just for being Aboriginal, by white officials wanting to rescue them “from their Aboriginality” to keep Australia pure.
If you think this not fair or even honest, you are not alone.
It is more or less universally believed that Kevin Rudd’s finest hour was the apology he delivered in February 2008 to the stolen generations. There were, however, certain limitations. First, Rudd’s speech did not transcend the confusion that had developed between the general historical apology to the Indigenous people and the historically specific one owed to the victims of Aboriginal child removal.He writes this in The Guardian, which seems to believe its new Australian edition needs old Australian polemics.
What he doesn’t discuss in the piece is what might help to explain why he now prefers to discuss a wider apology for a more general offence to Aborigines.
I am referring, of course, to Manne’s failure to name even 10 of the children allegedly “stolen” from 1910 just for being Aboriginal, rather than for welfare concerns.
Should he not finally come clean on why he has failed to name just 10 “stolen” children not once, not twice but three times? Should he not concede that I can name more children who died because of the myth than he can name as truly “stolen”?
UPDATE
Robert Manne responds in comments below - but not by simply giving 10 names, 10 clear examples, which is all the response he’d need to demolish me:
On half a dozen occasions while Bruce Guthrie was editor of the Herald Sun I requested 1,000 words to reply to Andrew Bolt’s views on the ‘stolen generations’ I never received a positive response. I now renew my request. I have answered Andrew recently in a 4000 word-plus blog those among your readers who are interested in this question will be able to find by a simple google search of The Monthly magazine’s website.I think Manne is referring to this post.
Yes, some names are mentioned in an essay rich in personal abuse and, in my opinion, misrepresentation. Let’s just stick to the central issue - the 10 names I’ve challenged Manne for years to produce.
The article claimed that Lowitja O’Donoghue, an Indigenous woman involved in the fight for the recognition of the injustice done to these children, had “confessed” that she had not been “stolen” at all but had simply been “removed” by her white father to a South Australian Christian mission. According to Bolt, here was vital evidence that the left-wing stolen generations myth was indeed a fraud.O’Donoghue had been cited by Manne and others as a member of the “stolen generations”. In fact, as she conceded to me, she had been sent by her white father to Colebrook home, and she should not have called herself “stolen”. Her youngest sister was left with their mother, and her life turned out nowhere near as well as Lowitja’s.
I decided to send him a reasonably detailed list of mixed descent children removed in the different states and territories between 1900 and 1970.Note, Manne does not cite the actual names. I’ve dealt with them in the links I’ve given above on Manne’s names - and here. As I demonstrate, they do not include names of children stolen just for being Aboriginal, and not for welfare reasons. Let me be clear that this was once Manne’s own definition of the “stolen generations”:
But what do we mean by “stolen”. Let me tell how Robert has defined it.Manne’s blog essay continues:
Says he: “It was not from harm that the mixed-descent children were rescued but from their Aboriginality.” ... And, he said in one essay, this was overseen by authorities who “wished, in part through the child removal policy, to help keep White Australia pure”.
Here there were 12 names.I have dealt with those names here and here. Check the links. Again, Manne has not named 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal, and not for welfare reasons. He included children sent to school, rescued from neglect, unwanted by their mother. (Manne lists some later again in his post, and I deal with them specifically below).
The second category was of “half-caste” children seized in Queensland at the beginning of the 20th century… All these children were ‘half-castes’ who came to the attention of the Protector Walter Roth… In this category I provided Bolt with some 65 names.Again, no names are given. No details of each case - other than some details of a “Walter”. And no wonder.
I did check names and cases. Here is some of what I found:
They included a fatherless 12-year-old girl with syphilis, a 13-year-old who was seven months pregnant and working for no wages on a station, and a boy who was kept chained up in a back yard by white employers when he was bad. Shirleene Robinson says Roth also rescued children kept as virtual slaves: “These children were extremely vulnerable to exploitation because of their position as members of a colonised population and because of their youth. During the period from 1842 to 1902, large number of Aboriginal children were kidnapped and removed from their families and traditional localities for employment, received no remuneration and suffered abuse by their employers.”Manne has never corrected the record. He continues to present Topsy and children like her as examples of the “stolen generation”.
Or as Professor Gordon Briscoe (an Aboriginal academic) has written of some of the children Roth saved::
Children suffered in almost all locations in which Aborigines lived, as the Chief Protector reported to his Minister when he advised that many Aboriginal children were suffering from syphilis. The dilemma Roth faced in providing health care was that he lacked the legislative power to act. This remained a difficult issue. For example, Topsy, ‘a little girl, twelve years of age, from Magoura Station, suffered with syphilis. The station owner brought her to Normanton where [she was] joined by her sister in the local camp’. Roth reluctantly sent the children directly to Mapoon mission. His report to the Minister indicated that he asked Protector Galbraith toBe clear about Manne’s deceit here. He counts Topsy and children like her - sexually abused, diseased, enslaved and kidnapped - as children that were not saved by Roth, but as ones he stole to “breed out the colour”. This is not such a cheap semantic trick by the professor. It is a gross moral error.report as to the ability of the sister to provide Topsy’s wants....[Roth explained to the Minister about how he] did not care to trespass too much on the kindness of the Mapoon Mission people, to whom we have already sent diseased half-caste children; and if, ultimately, it may be desirable to send her there, I think it only fair that the Superintendent be consulted beforehand.
And he continues:
The third category was of children sent to “half-caste” institutions in the Northern Territory in the interwar period. As I explained to Bolt: “In the Northern Territory from the early 1920s ‘half-caste’ children were picked up by authorities of the Commonwealth government (which administered the Territory) and sent to one of two extraordinarily overcrowded ‘half-caste’ homes, in Darwin and Alice Springs. None of the children received any welfare assessment. None was taken before a court … The aspiration of the policy was to pick up all these children …” There were some 120 names in this group.Manne provides no details of each case. He does not give individual names in this post. In fact, the Federal Court judge in the Gunner-Cubillo “stolen generations” test case of removal practices in the Northern Territory ruled that while he did not deny there had been “stolen generations”, he could not say there had been such a policy in the Northern Territory:
However, I am limited to making findings on that the evidence that was presented to this Court in these proceedings; that evidence does not support a finding that there was any policy of removal of part Aboriginal children such as that alleged by the applicants: and if, contrary to that finding, there was such a policy, the evidence in these proceedings would not justify a finding that it was ever implemented as a matter of course in respect of these applicants.Lorna Cubillo, once named by Manne as a “stolen” child, was found in fact to have been rescued by authorities after being found in a bush camp with her mother dead, her father gone and her grandmother somewhere else. Peter Gunner, also named by Manne as stolen, was ruled to have been sent to a home in Alice Springs to get an education, with his mother signing a document after long negotiation to gain her permission. Why had Manne presented them as “stolen”? Why has he never apologised or recanted?
On he goes:
Finally in the fourth category I sent Bolt a list of 60 names of those who had been removed and had subsequently provided testimony to a Howard government-funded Stolen Generations Oral History Project.Again, what are the details of each case that prove Manne’s argument? Why does he not repeat the names here? All he need to it to cite 10 such. Just 10. Names and details.
But check what happens when Manne does get specific. The cases vanish. As we’ve seen with other cases accepted by government.
Manne continues:
The document collection quoted a magistrate in Cardwell, Queensland, in 1903 who was approached by an Aboriginal mother whose 14-year-old son, Walter, had been seized and who then wrote on her behalf to the Protector Roth: “All the sophistry you can bring to bear upon it, cannot alter it from what it is viz. a barefaced case of kidnapping, dare you assert that under English law you have a better right to this boy than the mother who reared and fed him…”This one name, one case, from 1903 that does trouble me of all the ones Manne has ever produced. That said, as I show in the links I’ve provided, Roth removed children who seemed neglected. We do not know his reasoning in this case.
The memoir of Margaret Tucker, If Everyone Cared, was quoted to show the tragic human impact of the post-1911 New South Wales removals policy. The conservative Christian memoir, Mt Margaret: A Drop in the Bucket, written by Margaret Morgan, the daughter of missionaries in Western Australia, documented the crippling fears of the police felt by mothers of the children of mixed descent. The memoirs of Bob Randall, Songman, and John Moriarty, Saltwalter Fella, showed vividly how the policy operated in the Northern Territory during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Randall was sent to the Bungalow at Alice Springs to the outrage and distress of his Aboriginal family. Moriarty was one day taken by authority from school at Roper River. His mother simply did not know what had befallen him. Doris Kartinyeri tells us in her memoir, Kick The Tin, how in South Australia in 1945, shewas removed to a mission after her mother died in childbirth. Her entire Indigenous family was distraught.I have dealt with these cases several times and am amazed Manne still cites them as examples of children stolen by racist officials just for being Aboriginal. As I have said:
Randall, son of white station owner Bill Liddle, and at age seven was sent to the Bungalow at Alice Springs, where he’d live while he got a schooling there he couldn’t get at the station. He says he was “stolen”, but the Federal Court in the Gunner-Cubillo test case found there was no government policy in the Northern Terrritory at that time to steal children just for being black, and nor could it find any example of any child taken for such reasons.(Links at the link.)
Doris Kartinyeri, of the family behind the “secret women’s business” scandal, claims she was stolen because her widowed father thought the form he was signing was an application for child endowment, and not a permission form to have her given to the care of Colebrook Home. In fact, other children raised at Colebrook, such as Nancy Barnes, have told me they do not remember Katrinyeri as having been stolen, and South Australian law did not allow Aboriginal children to be stolen, either, as the South Australian court found three years ago in the Bruce Trevorrow case. Manne chooses to believe Kartinyeri was stolen. Many others would not, and with good reason.
Manne also lists Rosalie Fraser, who in fact writes that she was made a ward of the state at two in 1961 - but why? To “breed out the colour”, as Manne suggests? Or because of some family dysfunction? Manne does not say, yet the fact that Fraser was removed by child welfare officers, not Aboriginal welfare, and sent with one of her sisters to live with her father’s relatives suggests Fraser’s sad story is not part of the “stolen generations” narrative.
So why is Donna Meehan, adopted by a loving white family, on this list? She, too, was removed or sent away by her mother, but no one can say why. Meehan herself says her mother did not, or could not, say why her children were “taken”, and in her book mentions her father only once, only to say she felt no “bonding”. We need to know far more before accepting this name on Manne’s list, too, Ruth Hegarty‘s story is no clearer.
As for other cases cited by Manne, I found the reality very different to what he’d implied:
Robert also lists as stolen the late Robert Riley, citing as his source the biography by Quentin Beresford.(Sources given at the link.)
Did you actually read that book, Robert? Beresford says he in fact doesn’t know why Riley went to Sister Kate’s home as a two year old, although a file letter to the Minister of Child Welfare at the time records he was simply “left at this home, by his mother”. A later report from a welfare officer notes that his mother “showed no interest at all in her son”. And some of those who knew Riley later said his mother actually sent him to Sister Kate’s because her then boyfriend said he’d kill him if she didn’t…
Margaret Tucker, now, was 13 in 1917, when she was sent to a girls’ home. If this was to save her from Aboriginality, why was it done so late? Could it be that the authorities were worried that Tucker’s father had in fact left, her mother had gone to Sydney and some auntie was looking after her - or kind of? ...
Then Robert lists John Moriarty, a successful designer whose single mother one day brought him to Roper River, from where he was sent south to go to a boarding school with, he says, aunties and uncles. Stolen? Or sent away?
Check the names Manne still - after all this debate and all this research - presents as children stolen just for being Aboriginal, by white officials wanting to rescue them “from their Aboriginality” to keep Australia pure.
If you think this not fair or even honest, you are not alone.
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Gillard breaches suppression order
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (4:23pm)
The Prime Minister made
a major gaffe in Parliament today, discussing a legal case in Question
Time that was apparently isubject to a suppression order. To make
things worse, she did so in response to a Dorothy Dixer, in an apparent
attempt in part to address an image problem caused by another line of
questioning by the Opposition.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in a press conference afterwards struggled to explain the cock-up. Did he have a role in it?
UPDATE
Thanks to a reader who knows:
(No comments.)
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in a press conference afterwards struggled to explain the cock-up. Did he have a role in it?
UPDATE
Thanks to a reader who knows:
This morning - The Australian Government Solicitor, whose shareholder ministers include Dreyfus - prepares application for a suppression orderFrom the media reports of a court case tonight, it seems the suppression order has since been relaxed or lifted.
11.30am - Application lodged
12.55pm - Application for interim order made by Magistrate
1pm - Media informed.
2pm - Question Time starts.
(No comments.)
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And they complain when we accuse them of groupthink
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (3:39pm)
Wild Left blogger Margo Kingston announces:
Found someone to fund my work.Is “someone”:
A: ReadersYou don’t really need to click the link, do you?
B. A private sponsor
C. A government-funded entity.
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More Labor-lite: health insurance rebate goes, climate change theory stays
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (2:24pm)
This is not only a
financial measure but a social one. I would expect the Liberals, in
office, to reveal policies more clearly Liberal, having compromised so
much already:
Right now in Question Time the Government is forcing Tony Abbott to say where he stands on global warming. A test, sprung by “independent” MP Rob Oakeshott and the Government…
UPDATE
Abbott reponds very well politically to this demand to state his position during question time. Says the question isn’t about man’s contribution - there is one - but what to do about it. Is it really to clobber the economy with a great big carbon tax?
Abbott wins. But for the sake of the country, I would have liked a clearer statement that the questions are actually how much difference man’s emissions make, whether that difference is dangerous and whether trying to “stop” warming is worth the pain. Abbott is instead sticking to his promise to spend money on cutting emissions, even though it will make no difference to the temperature. His one virtue - and not a small one - is that he will waste less money, and his programs will be easy to cut.
UPDATE
But the big puzzle is this: why did the Government think this was the issue to whack Abbott on? It truly wants to fight on the carbon tax and global warming?
Someone has really lost the plot.
UPDATE
Back to the start: I am not saying Abbott made the wrong choices politically with the baby bonus or the rebate. He wants to win, and his winning will be better for Australia. There is a difference between the two parties. It’s just that Abbot’s strategy now is to minimise the differences, not draw them - other than on competence, honesty, prudence and ending the politics of division. Which, of course, is reason enough to devoutly wish for Abbott’s win.
THE Coalition has dropped its long-held objections to Labor’s proposed cut to the 30 per cent health insurance rebate, citing emergency budgetary conditions.Ditching the baby bonus and the health insurance rebate is in accord with Labor philosophy, not Liberal. More evidence for my charge that the Coalition is presenting itself almost as Labor-lite - Labor, without the deceits, waste and stuff-ups.
The opposition has also resolved not to oppose legislation abolishing the baby bonus, or the proposed rise in the Medicare levy to help fund the national disability insurance scheme.
The change in the opposition’s position on the health rebate, agreed to in the Coalition partyroom today, will allow it to book a $700 million budget saving over the next four years.
Tony Abbott told the meeting the decision was contrary to the Coalition’s ingrained position but because of the “budget emergency” the opposition felt it must support the measure.
Right now in Question Time the Government is forcing Tony Abbott to say where he stands on global warming. A test, sprung by “independent” MP Rob Oakeshott and the Government…
UPDATE
Abbott reponds very well politically to this demand to state his position during question time. Says the question isn’t about man’s contribution - there is one - but what to do about it. Is it really to clobber the economy with a great big carbon tax?
Abbott wins. But for the sake of the country, I would have liked a clearer statement that the questions are actually how much difference man’s emissions make, whether that difference is dangerous and whether trying to “stop” warming is worth the pain. Abbott is instead sticking to his promise to spend money on cutting emissions, even though it will make no difference to the temperature. His one virtue - and not a small one - is that he will waste less money, and his programs will be easy to cut.
UPDATE
But the big puzzle is this: why did the Government think this was the issue to whack Abbott on? It truly wants to fight on the carbon tax and global warming?
Someone has really lost the plot.
UPDATE
Back to the start: I am not saying Abbott made the wrong choices politically with the baby bonus or the rebate. He wants to win, and his winning will be better for Australia. There is a difference between the two parties. It’s just that Abbot’s strategy now is to minimise the differences, not draw them - other than on competence, honesty, prudence and ending the politics of division. Which, of course, is reason enough to devoutly wish for Abbott’s win.
===
An MCG of boat people every four years
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (2:16pm)
From three boats a year under John Howard to a complete free-for-all disaster under Julia Gillard - with added deceit:
Labor has run out of money even to protect its citizens - and to protect them from the consequences of its own folly:
A survey reveals the depth of a suspicion most mainstream media refuse to legitimise or voice:
UPDATE
Just who is minding the door?
David Frum explains in dot points a week of riots in Sweden:
The immigration department vastly underestimated the number of asylum seekers expected to arrive in Australia this financial year, with up to 25,000 now expected – almost five times more than initial forecasts.UPDATE
Last year, the immigration department estimated just 5400 asylum seekers would arrive in Australia in 2012-13, before being forced to revise it to to 12,000 in February.
But immigration department secretary Martin Bowles told a budget estimates hearing on Monday that more than 22,500 had arrived in the 2012-13 financial year, about 2200 a month.
Labor has run out of money even to protect its citizens - and to protect them from the consequences of its own folly:
JULIA Gillard has been attacked by her own side for undermining the capabilities of national security agencies, with the chairman of a key intelligence committee, Labor MP Anthony Byrne, labelling austerity measures imposed on spies “disgraceful”.The head of ASIO confirms that the surge in boat arrivals under Labor - which recklessly dismantled John Howard’s border laws - has brought in people who threaten our national security:
Amid a surge in home-grown terror attacks in Western capitals, Mr Byrne said the 4 per cent efficiency dividend imposed on government agencies had hurt the operational capacity of Australia’s intelligence community…
“The agencies are tasked to protect our national security and I, frankly, find it astonishing that these agencies would have been effectively sequestered from funding to perform their tasks,” he said…
Former attorney-general and Mr Byrne’s fellow committee member Philip Ruddock said agencies such as ASIO were being diverted from their core work by soaring asylum-seeker arrivals…
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus rejected claims Labor had de-funded the security sector, pointing out that the committee’s inquiry covered the 2010-11 financial year.
A spokeswoman for Mr Dreyfus said the government had increased ASIO’s budget by $32.3 million, or 10 per cent. She said most of ASIO’s increased funding was for security assessments…
However, the Australian National University’s Clive Williams queried that claim, saying the agencies had received an across-the-board cut in the May budget.
Mr Irvine said while vetting asylum-seekers required a “a very, very considerable allocation of the organisation’s resources”, the money was well-spent, with ASIO identifying 58 people it believed posed a threat to national security.UPDATE
A survey reveals the depth of a suspicion most mainstream media refuse to legitimise or voice:
Despite many years of efforts by Swedish politicians and the legacy media to present Islam as an enrichment of the Swedish society, close to half of Swedes (48 percent) do not believe that Islam fits in with Sweden. Only 33 percent are fully or partially convinced that Islam fits in Sweden. Add to this that 35 percent of Swedes consider Islam a direct threat, while 14 percent have a similar opinion of Judaism, and 10 percent consider Christianity a threat.
These numbers are from a not yet published opinion poll conducted in 13 countries by the German Bertelsmann group.
Not saying it’s true or false. Just saying the impression is out there.
UPDATE
Just who is minding the door?
Federal bureaucrats have confirmed an Egyptian man wanted by Interpol spent almost a year in a low security immigration facility in South Australia.UPDATE
Immigration officials have confirmed the man, who has an Interpol “red notice”, arrived in Australia in May 2012 and was housed at the Inverbrackie centre in the Adelaide Hills until April this year.
The officials said they did not confirm suspicions about the red notice until that time.
The information emerged in Senate estimates hearings last night.
The officials also confirmed that an alleged Sri Lankan murderer was initially released into the community on a bridging visa, and that an accused Iranian drug trafficker has been moved from Nauru to a mental health hospital.
The Sri Lankan man, who was accused of murdering his girlfriend in Sri Lanka, was released into the community last September and was not detained until April.
David Frum explains in dot points a week of riots in Sweden:
- In 2012, Sweden accepted 44,000 asylum seekers, making Sweden relative to its size the world’s most open destination for refugees.(Thanks to readers Craig and Robert.)
- The 2012 asylum level represented a 50% jump over the rate of asylum acceptance just the year before.
- In less than a single decade, the foreign-born share of the Swedish population has risen from under 10% to over 15%.
- Unemployment among immigrants exceeds 16%; among native Swedes, it is only 6%.
- Despite a heavily redistributionist tax system and a generous welfare state, the wealth gap between natives and immigrants is wide and apparently widening.
- Sweden’s asylum seekers come almost entirely from very poor Muslim-majority countries, notably Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Syria.
- Swedish authorities are notoriously tight-lipped about the connection between immigration and crime. Sweden does not report data on crimes by foreign-born people, only by foreign passport holders - meaning that an immigrant who has been naturalized will be counted as a Swede for statistical purposes. Even on that restrictive basis, it’s apparent there is a real problem. In 2010, almost 30% of the people in Swedish prisons held foreign passports. A broader study of crime statistics from 1997-2001 - that is, well before the recent immigration surge - found that immigrants and children of immigrants together committed more than 40% of all Swedish crime.
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ABC gives Bill McKibben free reign for his climate scare
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (11:39am)
Jo Nova fisks Tony Jones soft-ball interview of warmist extremist Bill McKibben. Read the whole lot. But here is a taste of how a McKibben can get away with anything when interviewed by an ABC sympathiser:
UPDATE
Global warming predictions have proved false. The theory looks shaky. The carbon tax is crumbling. But the heavens still rain dollars on the bureaucracy, even when it’s being downsized for lack of interest:
Another green dream dies - killed by a fall in enthusiasm for the global warming scare and a boom in relatively cheap shale gas and shale oil:
TONY JONES: Let’s start with the statement most frequently used by climate change sceptics: the planet has stopped warming since 1998 and started to cool, actually cool, since 2003. True or false?Here is one more example for ABC managing director Mark Scott to consider of a presenter’s personal beliefs affecting the presentation of the news. And on few issues is ABC groupthink so stifling than on global warming.
[Tony Jones is offering a blatantly false position for McKibben to knock over.... skeptics most frequently point out that there has been no significant warming (there are 350 million google results for that compared to 10 million for global cooling since 2003). The UK Met office, and the head of the IPCC say the same thing. The issue that matters is the “pause” that the models didn’t predict. In 2008 NOAA said that pauses of 15 years or more didn’t fit with climate simulations (so if it went longer, we would know models are wrong). The umpire here is awarding a free kick to start the game. - Jo]BILL MCKIBBEN: Completely false. The data is unfortunately abundantly clear here. Not only is the air temperature continuing to go up, but a whole slew of studies in recent months have shown that in fact the rate of warming in the oceans is accelerating….
WHAT TONY JONES COULD HAVE ASKED: Bill, you say air temperatures are still warming but records from all five major datasets show no significant warming for a decade and a half. That’s RSS, UAH, Hadley in the UK, NCDC in the US, and NASA GISS. Even the UK Met Office and Rajendra Pachauri agree.
And when you talk about the ocean, isn’t it true that the new ARGO system which started in 2003, and finally measures ocean temperatures accurately for the first time, has not found much warming at all, indeed it’s found nothing like what the models predicted it would find, and the small amount that has occurred could be statistical noise. And there is, in this short record, no sign of acceleration even though China has been pouring out record levels of CO2.
UPDATE
Global warming predictions have proved false. The theory looks shaky. The carbon tax is crumbling. But the heavens still rain dollars on the bureaucracy, even when it’s being downsized for lack of interest:
THE merger of the federal climate change department into a new super department has led to 10 staff redundancies at a cost of nearly $500,000.UPDATE
Another green dream dies - killed by a fall in enthusiasm for the global warming scare and a boom in relatively cheap shale gas and shale oil:
Electric car company Better Place said on Sunday it had filed a motion in an Israeli court to wind up the company, bringing an end to a venture whose battery charging network had aimed to boost electric car sales…(Thanks to readers Brook and Roger.)
It raised more than $US850 million ($867 million) from top-tier investors and just two years ago said it was valued at $US2.25 billion.
But sales never took off, with only just over a thousand cars on the road in Israel and Denmark, the first two countries where it began operating.
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Nice principle. Why Media Watch’s inconsistency?
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (10:28am)
A Right-winger writes a manifesto explaining why he slaughtered young Norwegians.
The ABC publishes key passages citing Australian conservatives, of all things. No complaints from Media Watch.
Two Islamists explain on video why they hacked to death a soldier in London.
The media reports their words and references to the Koran. Media Watch complains.
A previous example…
Conservative bloggers cite initial media reports that a Norwegian terrorist is Muslim, but caution this is inconclusive. The reports are quickly corrected. Media Watch is savagely critical.
ABC hosts suggest the Boston bombers are probably Tea Party types or some other kind of Right-wingers. Those reports are not corrected. Media Watch says nothing.
The ABC publishes key passages citing Australian conservatives, of all things. No complaints from Media Watch.
Two Islamists explain on video why they hacked to death a soldier in London.
The media reports their words and references to the Koran. Media Watch complains.
A previous example…
Conservative bloggers cite initial media reports that a Norwegian terrorist is Muslim, but caution this is inconclusive. The reports are quickly corrected. Media Watch is savagely critical.
ABC hosts suggest the Boston bombers are probably Tea Party types or some other kind of Right-wingers. Those reports are not corrected. Media Watch says nothing.
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Doesn’t give a dam for farmers
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (10:11am)
Tony Eastley tries to pin down a green extremist who won’t name a single specific irrigation area he actually supports:
TONY EASTLEY: ... Dr Tim Seelig, the Queensland Water Minister says the new Gulf irrigated food bowl strikes the right balance: that is environmental protection and economic development. Do you agree?
TIM SEELIG: No, we don’t agree… It won’t guarantee, in our view, sustainable environmental flow, and for us, it’s the beginning. It’s the thin end of the wedge to try and develop a northern food bowl…
TONY EASTLEY: Are you against the whole notion of the northern food bowl?
TIM SEELIG: Look, our view is that the science doesn’t sustain the case for it. The soils are very poor in northern Australia, the rainfall is monsoonal, it’s not regular, the river systems are just not designed for this sort of intensive development.
TONY EASTLEY: Isn’t it better to develop this agricultural area where water is plentiful though, rather than persist with dryer areas further south?
TIM SEELIG: We’re clearly not learning anything from the Murray-Darling basin experience, where we go out and allocate water that we think will be there but in fact is not guaranteed each year.
TONY EASTLEY: But Dr Tim Seelig, is there anywhere in Australia where you support irrigation?
TIM SEELIG: Well look, there are established farming areas where irrigated agriculture is sustainable and I guess the problem for those areas is that they are now being targeted by coal seam gas and coal mining, so I think we’re better off protecting our existing farming areas and making them more productive and making them sustainable ...
TONY EASTLEY: But those current areas, are they sustainable with water being pulled out of rivers there?
TIM SEELIG: Well look unfortunately, not all of our rivers are in fantastic condition...
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End the car subsidies con now. Billions wasted, Ford gone
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (10:04am)
Peter Hartcher is surely right about the car subsidies con:
Peter Costello:
Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott argue a lot but agree on one point. The Prime Minister tells us “I think supporting the car industry is important for our nation’s future.”Not even failure can shake sense into our politicians:
The Opposition Leader says that “above all else, without a motor industry [this] is not an Australia that makes things any more and is not a first-class economy”.
Both declare they will continue paying taxpayer subsidies to a sector that has already received $19 billion in handouts and tariff protection over the past decade.
It’s odd because no one seems to have explained the centrality of car-making to Switzerland. Or Singapore. Or Norway. Or Denmark. None of these has any car manufacturing whatsoever.
Yet all of them are first-class economies. All are among the top 10 richest countries, as is Australia, measured by income per person.
In January last year, Gillard announced a fresh payment of $34 million and trumpeted it as “keeping Ford jobs here”. Six months later, Ford sacked 330 workers. Now it has announced it will be closing manufacturing operations altogether in 2016 with the loss of 1200 jobs.I didn’t know of this sterling example:
Gillard defends the $34 million. It is “payment for the work that is continuing until October 2016”, when Ford shuts up shop. This sounds more like government-paid piecework than free enterprise. The whole thing was a hoax on the workers who were given false assurance.
...truck maker AB Volvo has invested $25 million in a plant in Brisbane that assembles trucks, employs 500 workers, makes money and does not seek subsidies.UPDATE
Peter Costello:
The object of the carbon tax is to make high energy users pay more for electricity from coal-fired power stations. Eventually, as the cost rises, they will stop using it. This policy could be on the verge of working.(Thanks to reader Craig.)
The Ford motor car company will be closing in Geelong in 2016 and Alcoa’s aluminium smelter (also in Geelong) is reviewing its operations.
The closure of Ford and Alcoa would make a large reduction in our carbon emissions. The Greens should be happy about that.
I have looked carefully and been unable to find any statement where they welcome it. They should. It is evidence that their policies are working.
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O’Farrell suddenly worries he fell for a Gonski conski
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (9:17am)
Christopher Pyne may well be right. The Gillard Government seems to have conned the NSW Government:
NSW is seeking details about the funding for non-government schools under the Gonski education reforms in the first sign of doubt over the state’s $5.1 billion deal with Julia Gillard.
After meeting Catholic and independent school representatives yesterday, the O’Farrell government has sought to clarify the details of its agreement with the federal government for the next school year and beyond…
Catholic and independent schools fear the Gonski model will lead to cuts to non-government school funding in the short term, with uncertainty about the amount schools will receive next year…
... the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia have ... argued that there appear to be funding cuts in at least the first two years of the Gonski changes and that they cannot reconcile Labor’s public statements about school funding with the proposed models.
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I was there, and Gebhardt should apologise to Abbott for this “racist” smear
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:49am)
Peter Gebhardt, a former judge and poet, has a very vivid imagination - and a dangerous propensity for labelling others racist.
I’ve noted this before:
But what stuns me most is Gebhardt’s portrayal of a conversation to which he was not a witness.
I have only a vague recall of Diggle barrelling up to Abbott and me, but I do not recall that he “took us on”. I recall a rather insistent young man taking a very long amount of Abbott’s time to discuss in a roundabout way some issues involving Aboriginal health and his career prospects. I was struck by his sense of entitlement to so much of Abbott’s time, but I was struck even more by Abbott’s generosity. Both he and I encouraged the young man in his career, and agreed there was much to be done.
No fair person witnessing that conversation could have possibly concluded that this was between racists and an Aboriginal youth who “took them on”. Gebhardt’s portrayal is unfair, offensive, ill-founded and unbecoming of a former judge.
He should apologise.
(Thanks to reader Jamie and others.)
UPDATE
Reader Jack:
I’ve noted this before:
It’s Australia Day on Saturday. Time for The Age to celebrate it in the usual way, with this year’s dirge written by Peter Gebhardt:Gebhardt today does it again - writing a nasty smear piece for a grateful Age. The headline sums up the charge:
What might an Aboriginal person say of Australia Day? Why should the Aborigines celebrate that day?Aborigines might well be grateful to The Age for getting a white writer to sum up what they are all collectively thinking - every one of them. After all, much better for The Age to have a white describe their thoughts than to let some Aboriginal writer speak for themselves and risk him or her straying off the ideological reservation.
It was the day that marked the theft of a land (terra nullius), the day that marked the theft and abduction of a people, of a culture, the day that initiated the pathways to the Stolen Children and, to our ultimate shame, the deaths in custody. It is a day that stands as a reminder of massacres. The wind-stench of bodies burned in bonfires hangs heavy upon the nation’s conscience and in the clouds.
But let’s address the extraordinary Gebhardt hyperbole.
In fact, “Stolen Generation” activists to this very day still cannot name even 10 children stolen just for being Aboriginal. A royal commission found Aborigines are no more likely than whites to die in custody, and black prisoners are more likely to die outside of jail than in it. And which bodies were burned in bonfires exactly?
I’d expect a former judge to be rather more careful with evidence.
We have racist attitudes and we need to stop sweeping them under the carpet.By “we”, of course, Gebhardt and Fairfax mean “you” - not them. In fact, Gebhardt has two people in particular in mind:
Since 2008 I have had the good fortune to work with four young Aboriginal men who studied at the University of Melbourne. I was described as a ‘’mentor’’…Suggesting Abbott is a racist is lower than low, given his record of service in Aboriginal communities. I may well criticise Abbott giving in to what I term the New Racism with his support for a race-based change to the Constitution, but I doubt very much this is what Gebhardt wants to smear him for.
Two of the young men were medical students, one from Darwin, the other from Cairns.. I have had my ‘’ups and downs’’ with them, they with me…
This year one of the medical students, Ryen Diggle, is studying in a hospital and Melbourne University rural academic centre. Diggle is very intelligent, very reflective and very Aboriginal in his physiognomy. One day when we were lunching at Southgate, he saw Andrew Bolt with Tony Abbott and he went across and took them on. He was just 19. There are those who think Abbott has a new approach to Aboriginal affairs because of his friendship with Noel Pearson and his media sorties into communities to rant and flaunt his boys’ own manual attitudes.
But what stuns me most is Gebhardt’s portrayal of a conversation to which he was not a witness.
I have only a vague recall of Diggle barrelling up to Abbott and me, but I do not recall that he “took us on”. I recall a rather insistent young man taking a very long amount of Abbott’s time to discuss in a roundabout way some issues involving Aboriginal health and his career prospects. I was struck by his sense of entitlement to so much of Abbott’s time, but I was struck even more by Abbott’s generosity. Both he and I encouraged the young man in his career, and agreed there was much to be done.
No fair person witnessing that conversation could have possibly concluded that this was between racists and an Aboriginal youth who “took them on”. Gebhardt’s portrayal is unfair, offensive, ill-founded and unbecoming of a former judge.
He should apologise.
(Thanks to reader Jamie and others.)
UPDATE
Reader Jack:
Can’t agree more. You and Abbot are encouraging the bloke, Gebhart is giving him a mental ball and chain. Feeling sorry for yourself is the greatest handbrake in life. It makes excuses before you even have a go let alone give a task a fair go.So he owes not only you and Abbot an apology but also this young bloke.
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Bad government and $500,000 wages will strangle our LNG investments
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:43am)
Unions, helped by Labor’s laws, are recklessly helping to price us out of business. Ask a Labor Minister:
Terry McCrann on the crunch to come. Are the Liberals prepared to deal with what Labor has, in part, wrought?
Read it all. We could well be headed to a fall in national income and living standards.
UPDATE
Andrew Liveris, chief executive of Dow Chemicals, says government needs to make natural gas an asset and not just an export:
Federal Resources Minister Gary Gray admitted “unreasonable” pay demands from trade unions were driving cost blow-outs in the LNG industry...UPDATE
“We have to be conscious that unreasonable wage demands place pressures on projects,” he said…
Mr Gray, a former national secretary of the Labor Party, said his comments were not “anti-union” but any pay rises had to improve productivity too – and big increases pushed through by the Maritime Union of Australia in West Australia did not.
His predecessor in the resources and energy portfolio, Martin Ferguson, was also critical of the direction of union leadership and their wage demands. Other ministers, including Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, support the Maritime Union’s wages push…
Major gas companies said Australia was not only the most expensive place to recruit, but unions also insisted on “ratcheting” – demanding additional conditions in the agreement that were more generous than exactly the same worker at another site.
As well as being paid between $200,000 and $500,000 a year, some get paid extra for just appearing for work which is known as a “Madonna bonus”.
Terry McCrann on the crunch to come. Are the Liberals prepared to deal with what Labor has, in part, wrought?
THE Australian economy is heading for a potentially catastrophic collapse from a devastating squeeze between a sudden and dramatic drop in demand for our major resource exports and a crippling increase in the cost of new projects.
Ground zero is now the exploding LNG (liquified natural gas) sector…
This was expected to pick up from where our two major exports - iron ore and coal - left off, as they, again hopefully, levelled off in terms of the dollars they earned us.
Coal has already well and truly ‘levelled off’. Actual export volumes have fallen, and with collapsing prices, overall income will be down dramatically. And, especially for energy coal, will stay down.
It will be a long day downunder before we see another energy coal mine built. More ominously, the reason—the squeeze between falling prices and soaring project costs - prefigures what’s happening with LNG.
The bell has been ringing for some time. The Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics ominously identified an 11 per cent surge in project costs after green lights had been given to them.
Most of this is happening in LNG projects, where new research from McKinsey & Co identified extraordinary levels of wages being paid. Like $200,000 for junior tradesmen, as much as $500,000 for highly specialised skills.
Read it all. We could well be headed to a fall in national income and living standards.
UPDATE
Andrew Liveris, chief executive of Dow Chemicals, says government needs to make natural gas an asset and not just an export:
Natural gas in the volume Australia has should make manufacturing competitive, especially on power costs, and that underpins the opportunity to build scale as a competitive exporter of finished high-quality goods…A huge potential resource looks like being bungled - and not just by Labor:
Transformed through the manufacturing process, natural gas actually creates eight times more value for the economy than when it is burned or exported… Australia, with its stability and rule of law, should be a haven for such industries…
(The) laws of supply and demand may drive my business, but that is not what drives the natural gas export market in Australia.
Because of high transaction costs in transporting natural gas, there is no “world price” of natural gas, only contracted prices. And these prices, set to the world oil price, are then imported back to our shores, forcing Australia’s homes and factories to pay an unnecessary premium for energy.
On the supply side, challenges in Australia’s domestic gas market are even more basic…
In Australia, the gas in the ground is owned by the state, which allows permits for exploration and production. And the bulk of these permits are held by oil and gas companies… Australia’s pipeline infrastructure is limited and its ownership is heavily concentrated.
As you can see, this is not a simple argument. We are not only deciding whether to encourage more LNG exports or to set aside more natural gas for domestic use. This debate is bigger than that. This is a debate about Australia’s economic future.
THE federal Coalition has blasted NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell for leading the nation’s biggest state into an energy crisis that could add 30 per cent to household bills…(Thanks to reader Hmmm.)
The dispute broke out in public yesterday after months of frustration as federal Coalition leaders, backed by Tony Abbott, urged their state allies to unlock huge gas reserves to create thousands of resource jobs and cut costs for manufacturers.
As industry executives warned that policy mistakes made a gas shortage inevitable, Coalition resources spokesman Ian Macfarlane urged Mr O’Farrell and his ministers to act urgently to keep the damage to a minimum. “They better get busy. They’re facing an enormous crisis,” Mr Macfarlane said…
Mr O’Farrell’s policy reversals have been blamed for freezing investment after his government imposed an “exclusion zone” around coal-seam gas projects, startling investors.
The decision has been blamed for forcing two companies, Metgasco and Dart Energy, out of the state while creating uncertainty at Santos about whether to commercialise its deposit in the Pilliga region near Narrabri in the state’s northeast.
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“Traumatised” refugee punished less for raping his new neighbours
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:11am)
Strange, how “trauma” made the refugee not more compassionate but more cruel.
And stranger still that refugees granted a haven here from violence are punished less for visiting some of that violence on us:
Doesn’t someone’s status as a refugee impose an even higher obligation on them to respect the laws of the land which accepted them?
I think judgements like this shake confidence in our refugee problem.
From the Court of Appeal finding:
And stranger still that refugees granted a haven here from violence are punished less for visiting some of that violence on us:
AN Afghan refugee who raped two women within a week in 2008 has won a reduced sentence because of his traumatic upbringing.Question: if Australians know the deal is that bringing in refugees makes it more likely Australian women will be raped by the “traumatised”, or are punished less for doing so, would they agree to our high humanitarian intake?
Esmatullah Sharifi, 32, was originally sentenced to 14 years jail in April 2012, with a minimum of 11 years, for the rape of two women in late December 2008.
The first victim was a woman he offered a lift to outside a night club in Frankston.
The second was a woman from whom he asked directions on Christmas day.
But the Court of Appeal today cut the minimum sentence to eight years and six months after accepting he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after a brutal upbringing in Afghanistan.
“Although (the sentencing judge) accepted that the appellant suffer[ed] from a post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of [his] experiences in Afghanistan and consequent depression and anxiety, his Honour does not appear to have related this finding to the burden of imprisonment upon the appellant,’’ the Court of Appeal ruled.
Doesn’t someone’s status as a refugee impose an even higher obligation on them to respect the laws of the land which accepted them?
I think judgements like this shake confidence in our refugee problem.
From the Court of Appeal finding:
10 The appellant’s family are Shia Muslims of Hazara ethnicity, who are at odds with the Taliban, who are Sunni Muslims of Pashtun ethnicity.(Thanks to reader Greg.)
11 When he was a child, the appellant saw soldiers take away his father. He never saw his father again. His father’s brother also disappeared. Later on, the appellant’s older brother was killed by the Taliban, apparently to facilitate a petty theft. The appellant was an eye-witness to this killing… On four occasions, he appellant was beaten with cables by the Taliban, twice losing consciousness....
12 The appellant left Afghanistan and travelled to Pakistan, Indonesia and then to Australia. In 2005, he gained a permanent protection visa ...
13 The appellant has never received an education… After being released from the detention centre in Australia, the appellant obtained work in a plastics factory and then as a welder. He lost jobs because of his illiteracy. He applied for other jobs, but his illiteracy and very limited spoken English worked against him…
16 In all of the circumstances which we have described, it is perhaps no great surprise that in 2007 the appellant was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. His general practitioner prescribed anti-depressant medication. Unfortunately, the appellant did not persist in attending his doctor…
18 A report dated 13 March 2012 by a psychologist, Mr Coffey, was tendered in the course of a plea…
19 On the one hand, Mr Coffey stated that the appellant’s ability to work full-time in 2008 suggested that he was not then suffering from a seriously disabling mental illness. At interview in 2012, there was no marked cognitive impairment. Nor was there evidence of personality disorder…
20 Further, having noted the appellant’s assertion that he had believed, albeit wrongly, that the sex he had with the complainant was consensual, the witness stated that the facts outlined in the prosecution opening made it ‘very difficult to accept [the appellant’s] assertion as anything other than an attempt to diminish his responsibility.’
21 It was in the context of his detailed assessment of the offending and the offender that Mr Coffey said this:
Mr Sharifi has no experience in forming relationships with women out of which a real relationship might develop. In discussing the forming of consensual sexual relationships he appeared unsophisticated and uncertain....And
...while [the appellant] did not suffer from a mental disorder which explains the offence, his anxious and depressed state; his alienation and sense of failure; his social isolation and lack of support; his emotional immaturity and complete inexperience of sexual relations as part of courtship and friendship – these variables in combination probably heightened the risk that [the appellant] would engage in non-consensual sex and that he would be reckless as to whether the victim was consenting.And
The psychological sequelae of his childhood experiences have been post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression in adulthood. These mental disorders remained largely untreated after his arrival in Australia, and this affected his ability to settle and adapt to his new environment. He did not find stable employment for seven years, he was unable to bring his family to Australia, and he became socially estranged and very isolated.29 Counsel for the appellant submitted that bearing in mind the attitudes of the culture in which the appellant was raised, his limited experience of women and his isolation, the sentencing judge could not have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant planned to detain the complainant, and to rape her, from a time before she entered his vehicle.
[The appellant] suffered depressive and post-traumatic symptoms at the time of the offence. He was very isolated. He was inexperienced in forming relationships with women and possessed an unclear concept of what constitutes consent in sexual relations. These factors in combination heightened the probability of the commission of the offence…
30 The appellant’s actions were capable of suggesting that early on he formed the intention of engaging in sexual intercourse with the complainant irrespective of her wishes. Consider what happened when they were in the vehicle. The appellant made no attempt to engage the victim in consensual sexual activity. He parked the car, took the complainant’s mobile telephone, telling her that she could have it later when she stopped making a noise, immediately moved on top of her, put one hand over her mouth and the other around her throat and told her, ‘If you shut up, I’ll move my hands’ and proceeded to rape her…
32 The judge did not accept Mr Coffey’s opinion that the offending was the product of ‘an unclear concept of what constitutes consent in sexual relations’. He concluded that the appellant ‘well knew that the victim was not consenting’ to the act of sexual penetration…
34 In the event, it appears to us that the judge erred by concluding to the criminal standard that the appellant intended to rape the complainant before she entered his vehicle. Having regard to the entire picture, other inferences could not be safely excluded. The fact that, some days later, the appellant raped another victim in circumstances which were somewhat different to those with which this appeal is concerned, did not enable the his Honour to arrive at the impugned conclusion.
35 The conclusion, adverse to the appellant, bore upon the extent of his moral culpability and criminality…
52 The judge made findings adverse to the appellant which we consider, for reasons already discussed, were erroneous. As we have indicated, he underweighed mitigating circumstances. Beyond what we have thus far said, although he accepted that the appellant ‘suffer[ed] from a post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of [his] experiences in Afghanistan and consequent depression and anxiety’, his Honour does not appear to have related this finding to the burden of imprisonment upon the appellant.
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I refuse to share Goodes’ view on “race”
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (8:03am)
I believe the 13-year-old girl so savagely punished for yelling “ape” at the bearded Adam Goodes is a victim of racism.
Only racism - or a collective hysteria - could explain why the girl was treated as one of the great white racist monsters, and not just as a 13-year-old, shouting a word whose import she did not fully understand.
She was just 13, for heaven’s sake.
Racism used to be defined as seeing a particular “race” as inherently superior to another. Speaking of which, here are comments from 2008:
(Thanks to reader Greg.)
Only racism - or a collective hysteria - could explain why the girl was treated as one of the great white racist monsters, and not just as a 13-year-old, shouting a word whose import she did not fully understand.
She was just 13, for heaven’s sake.
Racism used to be defined as seeing a particular “race” as inherently superior to another. Speaking of which, here are comments from 2008:
SYDNEY Swans star Adam Goodes has been branded a racist by AFL historian Gillian Hibbins, for claiming indigenous players are “born to play"…But, hey, let the whole Australian nation savage a 13-year-old girl instead.
And in a heartfelt essay on what it means to be an indigenous footballer, for the new official history of the game to mark the 150th anniversary, [Goodes] writes: “I know that when Aborigines play Australian Football with a clear mind and total focus, we are born to play it.”
In an interview on National Indigenous Television last Wednesday, the dual Brownlow medallist added: “When we play football, there’s that connection to the land that we are on and the way that we play.
“When you see two brothers or three brothers playing on the same team, you can just see this natural ability shine through.
“I think that comes from thousands and thousands of years of history there.”
But Melbourne sports history scholar Hibbins, a major contributor to the AFL’s new The Australian Game of Football Since 1858, said of Goodes’ assertion: “I’m sorry to say that I think it’s a racist comment.”
In a debate on the origins of Aussie rules on last Thursday’s Marngrook Footy Show, on Foxtel’s Channel 180, she added: “If you define racism as believing a race is superior in something, this is what he was doing.”
(Thanks to reader Greg.)
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Remember when doubting a 6 degree rise made you a “denier”?
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (7:30am)
Even the alarmists are sounding less alarming:
Six degrees of warming. The Sydney Morning Herald, May 8, 2001:
The SMH, December 8 last year:
THE CSIRO has dramatically increased its projections of the extent of global warming, suggesting average Australian temperatures could rise as much as six degrees by 2070.
ACCORDING to David Karoly, an atmospheric scientist at Melbourne University and a lead author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global projections may not give a true picture of how we will experience global warming. “The problem we have is that, even if our best estimate is four degrees of warming this century, that is a global average and most of the globe is water,” he says. “Four degrees on average means probably three degrees over the oceans, and five or six degrees on average over the land.”Roger Bodman and David Karoly on The Conversation site yesterday:
OUR recent study has revisited these results ... Once we reduced the uncertainty, we found there is an increased risk of exceeding a lower temperature change threshold, but a reduced chance of exceeding a high threshold. That is, for business-as-usual emissions of greenhouse gases, exceeding 6C global warming by 2100 is now unlikely, while exceeding 2C is virtually certain.
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Roger Corbett fails to defend Fairfax from the ABC. Too “controversial”
Andrew Bolt May 28 2013 (12:01am)
I don’t think Roger Corbett is defending his shareholders or his journalists as he should. Fancy a newspaper boss refusing to say what needs saying on the grounds it could be “controversial”:
Why not say so?
The taxpayer-funded ABC should be limited in its scope of activities, says Fairfax Media chairman Roger Corbett.My goodness, that’s weak. The obvious example is, of course, the ABC running what’s effectively an on-line newspaper - a free website for news and views and lots of current affairs - in direct competition with Fairfax, which must sell a very similar product to the very same Left-leaning audience..
If the organisation received unlimited funding from the government, it would eventually challenge the commercial interests of free enterprise media outlets, he told journalists in Adelaide on Monday…
“If it gives it a total funding, a total scope of activities, then very clearly others are going to find it impossible to operate against it,” he said.
He said the ABC should be relatively confined to “places where free enterprise could not afford to pay for those services”.
But he would not give any examples of what areas it should be confined to, saying to do so would be very controversial.
Why not say so?
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Why so scared? If people like the ABC, surely they’ll pay for it
Andrew Bolt May 27 2013 (5:32pm)
So scared of alarming the enemy:
Victorian Arts Minister Heidi Victoria “liked” a Facebook page run by a state Liberal MP that calls for the ABC to be privatised.
The Minister abruptly left the Facebook group “Privatise the ABC” this afternoon and said someone added her to the page without her knowledge.”
“I certainly don’t think the ABC should be privatised,” she said.
Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn created the Facebook group last week and its 60 members include Federal Liberal MPs Sophie Mirabella and Kevin Andrews.
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There's been an upgrade at the Doctor Who Experience...
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I was in the Old Parliament House today which is now an excellent museum on Australia's political history.
Well worth the visit and feeling the sense of history.
This was taken in the old government parliamentary room today where those in government discussed, argued and planned their strategies.
Everything is original right down to the IBM golf ball typewriters and bakelite telephones.
Note the incredible irony yet ?
Check the date ?
Only this year it's Saturday. The federal election date !
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Bigots should be uncomfortable
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Playlist 28th of May 2013 for the Sun Radio Station..Morning sessions
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Everyday, Julia Gillard and Labor demonstrate why they can’t be trusted to keep their word.
Whether it’s the broken promise on the Carbon Tax or promising on over 500 occasions to deliver a Budget surplus this year, Julia Gillard and Labor are incapable of keeping their promises. Go here for more info: http://ow.ly/lrE7m
Please ‘SHARE’ and ‘LIKE’ our Dirty Dozen of Labor’s broken promises.
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4 her
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Hasan Instructing his first Fairfield class! A young man of exceptional skill and will power to train harder than hard! #team9lives #9livesparkour
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WELCOME TO FACEBOOK The place where people add you as a FRIEND but walk past you in the street. Where RELATIONSHIPS are perfect. LIARS believe they are telling the truth. Your ENEMIES visit your profile the most. Yet your FRIENDS & FAMILY block you. And even though you write what you are really thinking, Someone always takes it the wrong way... people think your status is for them when it's not!
Will Smith
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Suddenly, a wild Beyonce appears!
(•_•)
<) )╯all the single ladies
/ \
(•_•)
\( (> all the single ladies
/ \
(•_•)
<) )╯oh oh oh
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Superslide into the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily, Italy
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Wanna be a part of Makena Monk's Morning Sessions for The Sun Radio Station? send in your songs to: the.sun.loves.you@gmail.com
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Howard W. VAN Loan
Sergeant, U.S. Army
102nd Sanitary Trains, 27th Division
Entered the Service from: New York
Died: October 25, 1918
Buried at: Plot A Row 32 Grave 10
Somme American Cemetery
Bony, France
Thank you - ed
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Kindness is a language every age and culture understands. It builds bridges and can turn an enemy into a friend.Try it.
Pastor Rick Warren
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Pond scum for fuel? A new study shows the United States has enough water resources to produce up to 25 billion gallons of algae-based fuel per year, which would be one-twelfth of the country's yearly needs. http://bit.ly/1251eOX
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You can't force someone to awaken. Your job is to love, not correct. Fascinate them with your love, for the energy of love carries with it all that needs to be known.
Spirit Science and Metaphysics
Spirit Science
Earth. We are one.
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ALCOPOPS TAX – ANOTHER LABOR FAILURE
A University of Queensland study has found that Labor’s Alcopop’s Tax has failed, with the number of 15-29 year olds with alcohol related injuries not falling.
The study analysed 87,665 alcohol related visits to hospital emergency departments between 2008-2011.
Researchers said, “the increased tax on ‘alcopops’ was not associated with any reduction in hospital admissions for alcohol-related harms in Queensland for 15 to 29-year-olds.”
Data shows drinkers were switching pre-mixed drinks for pure spirits.
Consumption of pre-mixed drinks fell 31 per cent in the first three years the tax was introduced and found Australian’s were drinking 20 per cent more in pure spirits.
Lead researcher, UQ School of Population Health professor Steve Kisely, said, “If teenagers are looking for a good time and find their favourite tipple of alcopops has doubled in price, they’re not going to go home and have a hot mug of chocolate…….They’re going to find something else- it’s generally spirits.”
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The Memorial will be paying tribute to Corporal Harry Thorpe MM, at today's Last Post Ceremony, as part of Reconciliation Week. Cpl Thorpe MM, died of wounds in France on 9 August, 1918.
Cpl Thorpe MM, is buried in the Heath Cemetery, Harbonnieres, France, with his friend William Rawlings, another Aboriginal soldier who was also awarded the Military Medal, and was killed on the same day.
The ceremony will be streamed live via webcam at 4.55 pm (AEST). www.awm.gov.au/events/
www.awm.gov.au/research/
www.awm.gov.au/collection/
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At the Australian Directors Guild Awards were 3 projects i worked on where nominated and one of them won! congrats to the Van Vuuren Bros!-
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Why does creation still groan with earthquakes, tsunamis and other calamities if God is love? Is He not also fully in charge of the earth? Get the answers to these burning questions in this must-hear message by Joseph Prince. Learn what creation is eagerly waiting and crying for, and what all the drama in the Bible is about. You will gain wisdom and understanding to face and take charge of the fallen earth as you step into your high calling as sons of God!
Find us at:
http://www.facebook.com/JosephPrince
http://www.twitter.com/JosephPrince
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He might not be the worst. It is hard to judge between eras. I personally feel Carter was worse in one term. Clinton in two. FDR in four terms. But it is unarguable that he is a pathetic excuse for humanity.
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4 her
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By Mark Steyn
On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed "Allahu Akbar!" as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much roadkill.
As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street, gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: it took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his "fellow Britons" about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver.
If you're thinking of getting steamed over all that, don't. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of The Times of London, cautioned against "mass hysteria" over "mundane acts of violence."
That's easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there on an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly "mundane" in Somalia and Sudan, but it's the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London – at least as unusual as, say, blowing up 8-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was "mundane" only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cellphones and start filming.
Once, long ago, I was in an altercation where someone pulled a switchblade, and ever since have been mindful of Jimmy Hoffa's observation that he'd rather jump a gun than a knife. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing passivity to this scene: a street full of able-bodied citizens being lectured to by blood-soaked murderers who have no fear that anyone will be minded to interrupt their diatribes. In fairness to the people of Boston, they were ordered to "shelter in place" by the Governor of Massachusetts. In Woolwich, a large crowd of Londoners apparently volunteered to "shelter in place," instinctively. Consider how that will play when these guys' jihadist snuff video is being hawked around the bazaars of the Muslim world. Behold the infidels, content to be bystanders in their own fate.
This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette's that seems to be a chronic side-effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC's Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being "of Muslim appearance," but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there's anything "of Muslim appearance" about a guy waving a machete and saying "Allahu Akbar." A man is on TV, dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing "by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," yet it's the BBC reporter who's apologizing for "causing offence." To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby's horrific end was "not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. ... There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act."
How does he know? He doesn't seem the most-likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman's show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words "Magna Carta," which has quite a bit to do with that "British way of life" he's so keen on. But apparently it's because he's been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night, sweating for Shariah 101. So has Scotland Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that "Islam and terrorism don't go together," and the Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian Prime Minister: "You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody," he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. "It's a very peaceful religion."
That's why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the past week, Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by "youths." Any particular kind of "youth"? The Swedish Prime Minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as "hooligans." But don't worry: The "hooligans" and "youths" and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, "they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values." Actually, they've already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both Prime Ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, "The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day." But what do they know? They're only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called "Key Points," declined to mention the "Allahu Akbar" bit or the "I-word" at all: Allah who?
Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don't have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a schoolboy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you're lucky, it's not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it's all so "mundane," in Simon Jenkins' word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next "Satanic Verses" decides it's not worth the trouble. But don't worry, they'll never defeat our "free speech" and our "way of life."
One in 10 Britons under 25 now is Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British born and bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in south-east Vienna. Today, the dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That's a "betrayal" all right, but not of Islam.
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Sydney University .. right before Dementors attack
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A big thank you to the wonderful flight attendants and crew on our US Airways flight today from Indianapolis who gave heartfelt shout-outs over the intercom to our military and to veterans who’ve sacrificed so much for our freedom. The airlines offered our service members onboard free food and asked us all to pass along a special thank you to those we know in the service. It was so encouraging to see open and genuine respect for our men and women in uniform who so richly deserve the respect and honor of a grateful nation.
- Sarah Palin
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"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." - Gerald Ford
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Arlington National Cemetery – America’s most hallowed ground (Video)
http://
Arlington National Cemetery, resting place for more than 240,000 American military men and women and their dependents, is the most honored burial ground, consecrated by the famous and the everyman, with a history that links George Washington to Robert E. Lee to John F. Kennedy. The most famous burial at Arlington is unknown. The tomb of the Unknown Soldier includes the remains of unidentified soldiers from World War I, World War II and the Korean War, and honors those fallen soldiers “known but to God.”
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We're the magazine for freelance writers. We send you reviews of companies hiring, and articles to build your career.
Subscribe now (free):
http://
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I had a terrific day yesterday - Cabinet in the morning followed by an afternoon of meetings. Then I joined the Governor of Western Australia to launch reconciliation week. It was a wonderful occasion, with over 300 people attending - to recognise the significant work that is being done in our community to overcome the gap between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people. Today, off to visit a couple of schools in the electorate of Forrestfield with my good friend and new local member, Nathan Morton. This afternoon I will Chair the first meeting of the new Cabinet Sub Committee for Aboriginal Affairs. As a government we are genuinely making a positive difference for Aboriginal people in Western Australia.
Peter Collier
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In the kitchen with Masterchef Maddi and the lovely Tracey. #kitchenwhiz #filming #Masterchef #channel9
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Very emotional tribute to babylon 5 tonight.....a reminder of all of the friends we have made through this show...
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Heavenly Father, today I lift my eyes to You for You are the source of my help. I trust that Your plans are to prosper me and give me a future and a hope. I believe that You have good things in store for me, and so I look for Your favor upon my life. Use me today for Your glory as I keep my heart and mind stayed on You. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
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- 1830 – U.S. President Andrew Jacksonsigned the Indian Removal Act into law, authorizing him to negotiate with Native Americans for their removal from their ancestral homelands.
- 1936 – English mathematician Alan Turing introduced theTuring machine (model pictured), a basic abstract symbol-manipulating device that can simulate the logic of any computer algorithm.
- 1940 – World War II: On the same day that Belgium surrendered to Germany, Allied forces gained their first major victory on land when they recaptured Narvik, Norway.
- 1977 – A fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, US, killed 165 patrons.
- 2003 – As a result of criticism of his conduct, Peter Hollingworth resigned from his post as Governor-General of Australia.
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Events [edit]
- 585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battlingCyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.
- 621 – Battle of Hulao: Li Shimin, the son of the Chinese emperor Gao Zu, defeats the numerically superior forces of Dou Jiande near the Hulao Pass (Henan).
- 1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married according to a Papal Bull by Pope Alexander VI. A Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England signed on that occasion results in a peace that lasts ten years.
- 1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleynvalid.
- 1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port).
- 1644 – Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby.
- 1754 – French and Indian War: in the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under the 22-year-old Lieutenant ColonelGeorge Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.
- 1830 – President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which relocates Native Americans.
- 1871 – The Paris Commune falls.
- 1892 – In San Francisco, California, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.
- 1905 – Russo-Japanese War: The Battle of Tsushima ends with the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo Heihachiro and theImperial Japanese Navy.
- 1907 – The first Isle of Man TT race was held.
- 1918 – The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Armenia declare their independence.
- 1926 – 28th May 1926 coup d'état: Ditadura Nacional is established in Portugal to suppress the unrest of the First Republic.
- 1932 – In the Netherlands, construction of the Afsluitdijk is completed and the Zuiderzee bay is converted to the freshwater IJsselmeer.
- 1934 – Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne; they will be the first quintuplets to survive infancy.
- 1936 – Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication.
- 1936 – Klaipėda Radio Station begins regular broadcasting.
- 1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.
- 1937 – Volkswagen (VW), German automobile manufacturer was founded
- 1940 – World War II: Belgium surrenders to Germany to end the Battle of Belgium.
- 1940 – World War II: Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces recapture Narvik in Norway. This is the first allied infantry victory of the War.
- 1942 – World War II: in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people.
- 1951 – The British radio comedy programme The Goon Show was broadcast on the BBC for the first time.
- 1952 – The women of Greece are given the right to vote.
- 1958 – Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro's 26 July movement, heavily reinforced by Frank Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero.
- 1961 – Peter Benenson's article The Forgotten Prisoners is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International.
- 1964 – The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed.
- 1974 – Northern Ireland's power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement collapses following a general strike by loyalists.
- 1975 – Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, creating the Economic Community of West African States.
- 1977 – In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 people inside.
- 1979 – Constantine Karamanlis signs the full treaty of the accession of Greece with the European Economic Community.
- 1987 – The 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow. He is immediately detained and will not be released until August 3, 1988.
- 1991 – The capital city of Addis Ababa falls to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and theEthiopian Civil War.
- 1993 – Eritrea and Monaco join the United Nations.
- 1995 – The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least 2,000 people, half of the total population.
- 1996 – The U.S. President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and theGovernor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.
- 1998 – Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of nuclear tests by India with five of its own codenamed Chagai-I, prompting the United States,Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions. Pakistan celebrates Youm-e-Takbir annually.
- 1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display.
- 2002 – NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance.
- 2002 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars.
- 2003 – Peter Hollingworth becomes the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct.
- 2004 – The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, as prime minister of Iraq's interim government.
- 2008 – The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally declares Nepal a republic, ending the 240-year reign of the Shah dynasty.
- 2010 – In West Bengal, India, a train derailment and subsequent collision kills 141 passengers.
- 2012 – The discovery of Flame, a complex malware program targeting computers in Middle Eastern countries, is announced.
Births [edit]
- 1140 – Xin Qiji, Chinese poet, military leader, and statesman (d. 1207)
- 1371 – John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1419)
- 1524 – Selim II, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1574)
- 1582 – William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, English statesman (d. 1662)
- 1588 – Pierre Séguier, French statesman, Chancellor of France (d. 1672)
- 1641 – Janez Vajkard Valvasor, Slovenian polymath (d. 1693)
- 1660 – George I of Great Britain (d. 1727)
- 1676 – Jacopo Riccati, Italian mathematician (d. 1754)
- 1692 – Joseph Butler, English philosopher (d. 1752)
- 1692 – Geminiano Giacomelli, Italian composer (d. 1740)
- 1738 – Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French physician (d. 1814)
- 1759 – William Pitt the Younger, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1806)
- 1763 – Manuel Alberti, Argentine priest (d. 1811)
- 1779 – Thomas Moore, Irish poet (d. 1852)
- 1807 – Louis Agassiz, Swiss zoologist and geologist (d. 1873)
- 1818 – P.G.T. Beauregard, American Confederate general (d. 1893)
- 1836 – Alexander Mitscherlich, German chemist (d. 1918)
- 1836 – Friedrich Baumfelder, German composer, conductor, and pianist (d. 1916)
- 1837 – George Ashlin, Irish architect (d. 1921)
- 1837 – Tony Pastor, American impresario and theater owner (d. 1908)
- 1841 – Sakaigawa Namiemon, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 14th Yokozuna (d. 1887)
- 1853 – Carl Larsson, Swedish painter (d. 1919)
- 1858 – Carl Richard Nyberg, Swedish inventor and industrialist, developed the blow torch (d. 1939)
- 1872 – Marian Smoluchowski, Polish physicist (d. 1917)
- 1878 – Paul Pelliot, French sinologist and explorer (d. 1945)
- 1879 – Milutin Milanković, Serbian geophysicist (d. 1958)
- 1883 – Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Indian politician (d. 1966)
- 1883 – Clough Williams-Ellis, English-Welsh architect, designed the Portmeirion Village (d. 1978)
- 1884 – Edvard Beneš, Czech politician (d. 1948)
- 1886 – Santo Trafficante, Sr., Sicilian-American mobster (d. 1954)
- 1888 – Jim Thorpe, American athlete (d. 1953)
- 1888 – Kaarel Eenpalu, Estonian journalist and politician, Prime Minister of Estonia (d. 1942)
- 1888 – Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, English governess and writer (d. 1947)
- 1889 – Richard Réti, Austrian-Czech chess player (d. 1929)
- 1892 – Josef Dietrich, German SS general (d. 1966)
- 1896 – Konstantin Märska, Estonian cinematographer and film director (d. 1951)
- 1900 – Tommy Ladnier, American trumpeter and writer (d. 1939)
- 1908 – Léo Cadieux, Canadian politician (d. 2005)
- 1908 – Ian Fleming, English author (d. 1964)
- 1909 – Red Horner, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 2005)
- 1910 – Georg Gaßmann, German politician (d. 1987)
- 1910 – Rachel Kempson, English actress (d. 2003)
- 1910 – T-Bone Walker, American singer-songwriter, musician, and composer (d. 1975)
- 1911 – Thora Hird, English actress (d. 2003)
- 1911 – Fritz Hochwälder, Austrian playwright (d. 1986)
- 1912 – Ruby Payne-Scott, Australian physicist and astronomer (d. 1981)
- 1912 – Patrick White, Australian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
- 1912 – Herman Johannes, Indonesian scientist and politician (d. 1992)
- 1914 – W. G. G. Duncan Smith, English pilot (d. 1996)
- 1915 – Joseph Greenberg, American linguist (d. 2001)
- 1916 – Walker Percy, American author (d. 1990)
- 1917 – Barry Commoner, American biologist and politician (d. 2012)
- 1917 – Papa John Creach, American violinist (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and The Dinosaurs) (d. 1994)
- 1918 – Johnny Wayne, Canadian comedian and writer (d. 1990)
- 1921 – Heinz G. Konsalik, German novelist (d. 1999)
- 1922 – Lou Duva, American boxing trainer
- 1922 – Roger Fisher, American educator and author
- 1922 – Tuomas Gerdt, Finnish soldier, last living Knight of the Mannerheim Cross
- 1923 – György Ligeti, Hungarian composer (d. 2006)
- 1923 – Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, Indian actor and politician (d. 1996)
- 1924 – Paul Hébert, French-Canadian actor
- 1925 – Bülent Ecevit, Turkish politician, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, Prime Minister of Turkey (d. 2006)
- 1925 – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, German baritone and conductor (d. 2012)
- 1931 – Carroll Baker, American actress
- 1933 – John Karlen, American actor
- 1934 – Annette Dionne, Canadian quintuplet
- 1934 – Cecile Dionne, Canadian quintuplet
- 1934 – Emilie Dionne, Canadian quintuplet (d. 1954)
- 1934 – Marie Dionne, Canadian quintuplet (d. 1970)
- 1934 – Yvonne Dionne, Canadian quintuplet (d. 2001)
- 1935 – Anne Reid, English actress
- 1936 – Claude Forget, French-Canadian politician
- 1936 – Ole K. Sara, Norwegian politician (d. 2013)
- 1936 – Betty Shabazz, American educator and activist (d. 1997)
- 1938 – Jerry West, American basketball player
- 1938 – Prince Buster, Jamaican singer-songwriter, musician, and producer
- 1940 – Shlomo Riskin, American rabbi, founder of the Lincoln Square Synagogue
- 1940 – Maeve Binchy, Irish novelist (d. 2012)
- 1941 – Beth Howland, American actress
- 1942 – Stanley B. Prusiner, American neurologist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1943 – Terry Crisp, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
- 1943 – Elena Souliotis, Greek soprano (d. 2004)
- 1944 – Rudy Giuliani, American politician, 107th Mayor of New York City
- 1944 – Gladys Knight, American singer-songwriter and actress (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
- 1944 – Jean-Pierre Léaud, French actor
- 1944 – Rita MacNeil, Canadian singer (d. 2013)
- 1944 – Patricia Quinn, Irish actress
- 1944 – Gary Stewart, American singer-songwriter and musician (d. 2003)
- 1944 – Billy Vera, American singer-songwriter and actor
- 1944 – Faith Brown, English actress
- 1945 – Patch Adams, American physician, activist, diplomat, and author, founded the Gesundheit! Institute
- 1945 – John N. Bambacus, American politician
- 1945 – John Fogerty, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Golliwogs)
- 1945 – Jean Perrault, Canadian politician
- 1946 – Satchidanandan, Indian poet
- 1946 – Skip Jutze, American baseball player
- 1947 – Sondra Locke, American actress
- 1947 – Zahi Hawass, Egyptian archaeologist
- 1947 – Lynn Johnston, Canadian cartoonist
- 1947 – Leland Sklar, American singer-songwriter, bassist, and composer (The Section and Era)
- 1948 – Pierre Rapsat, Belgian singer-songwriter (d. 2002)
- 1949 – Wendy O. Williams, American singer (Plasmatics) (d. 1998)
- 1950 – Ian Bradley, English writer and academic
- 1950 – Kamala, American wrestler
- 1952 – Roger Briggs, American composer, conductor, pianist, and educator
- 1953 – Pierre Gauthier, Canadian ice hockey manager
- 1953 – Arto Lindsay, American singer, guitarist, producer, and composer (DNA, The Golden Palominos, The Lounge Lizards, and Ambitious Lovers)
- 1954 – John Tory, Canadian politician
- 1954 – Townsend Coleman, American voice actor
- 1954 – Andy Hamilton, English comedian, director, and screenwriter
- 1954 – Youri Egorov, Russian pianist (d. 1988)
- 1955 – John McGeoch, Scottish guitarist (Magazine, Visage, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Ltd., and The Armoury Show) (d. 2004)
- 1955 – Mark Howe, American ice hockey player
- 1956 – Julie Peasgood, English actress
- 1956 – Jerry Douglas, American musician and producer (The Country Gentlemen and Strength in Numbers)
- 1956 – Markus Höttinger, Austrian race car driver (d. 1980)
- 1957 – Kirk Gibson, American baseball player
- 1957 – Ben Howland, American basketball coach
- 1957 – Colin Barnes, English footballer
- 1959 – John Morgan, English etiquette expert and author (d. 2000)
- 1960 – Mark Sanford, American politician, 115th Governor of South Carolina
- 1961 – Michelle Collins, English actress
- 1962 – Roland Gift, English singer and actor (Fine Young Cannibals and Akrylykz)
- 1962 – Brandon Cruz, American actor
- 1962 – James Michael Tyler, American actor
- 1963 – Houman Younessi, Iranian scientist
- 1963 – Gavin Harrison, English musician (Porcupine Tree, King Crimson, and OSI)
- 1964 – Jeff Fenech, Australian boxer
- 1964 – Armen Gilliam, American basketball player (d. 2011)
- 1964 – Christa Miller, American actress
- 1964 – David Baddiel, American-English comedian, actor, and author
- 1964 – Phil Vassar, American singer-songwriter and pianist
- 1964 – Zsa Zsa Padilla, Filipino singer and actress (Hotdog)
- 1965 – Chris Ballew, American singer and bassist (The Presidents of the United States of America and Caspar Babypants)
- 1966 – Ashley Laurence, American actress
- 1967 – Glen Rice, American basketball player
- 1967 – Emma Kennedy, English actress
- 1968 – Kylie Minogue, Australian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
- 1969 – Mike DiFelice, American baseball player
- 1969 – Justin Kirk, American actor
- 1969 – Rob Ford, Canadian politician, 64th Mayor of Toronto
- 1970 – Morgan Fox, Canadian model and actress
- 1970 – Jimi Goodwin, English singer-songwriter and musician (Doves and Sub Sub)
- 1970 – Ian Cashmore, English paranormal investigator and actor
- 1970 – Glenn Quinn, Irish actor (d. 2002)
- 1970 – Bobby Bognar, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (The Piper Downs)
- 1970 – Paul Sinha, English comedian and broadcaster
- 1971 – Isabelle Carré, French actress
- 1971 – Marco Rubio, American politician
- 1971 – Ekaterina Gordeeva, Russian figure skater
- 1972 – Michael Boogerd, Dutch cyclist
- 1972 – Kate Ashfield, English actress
- 1972 – Doriva, Brazilian footballer
- 1973 – Marco Paulo, Portuguese footballer
- 1974 – Alicia Minshew, American actress
- 1974 – Hans-Jörg Butt, German footballer
- 1974 – Romain Duris, French actor
- 1975 – Charmaine Sheh, Hong Kong actress
- 1975 – Misbah-ul-Haq, Pakistani cricketer
- 1976 – Roberto Goretti, Italian footballer
- 1976 – Glenn Morrison, Australian rugby player
- 1976 – Alexei Nemov, Russian gymnast
- 1976 – Liam O'Brien, American voice actor
- 1977 – Jeremy Borash, American wrestling announcer
- 1977 – Elisabeth Hasselbeck, American talk show host and author
- 1978 – Rufa Mae Quinto, Filipino actress and comedian
- 1979 – Jesse Bradford, American actor
- 1979 – Ronald Curry, American football player
- 1979 – Joeri Jansen, Belgian athlete
- 1979 – Monica Keena, American actress
- 1979 – Abdulaziz al-Omari, Saudi hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11 (d. 2001)
- 1980 – Mark Feehily, Irish singer-songwriter and pianist (Westlife)
- 1980 – Miguel Pérez, Spanish footballer
- 1980 – Jørgen Strickert, Norwegian comedian, writer, and radio host
- 1981 – Daniel Cabrera, Dominican baseball player
- 1981 – Eric Ghiaciuc, American football player
- 1981 – Adam Green, American singer-songwriter, musician, and filmmaker (The Moldy Peaches)
- 1981 – Aaron Schock, American politician
- 1981 – Victoria Legrand, American singer-songwriter and keyboardist (Beach House)
- 1982 – Alexa Davalos, American actress
- 1982 – Jhonny Peralta, Dominican baseball player
- 1982 – Desiree del Valle, Filipino actress
- 1983 – Steve Cronin, American soccer player
- 1983 – Toby Hemingway, English actor
- 1983 – Humberto Sanchez, Dominican baseball player
- 1984 – Beth Allen, New Zealand actress
- 1985 – Colbie Caillat, American singer-songwriter and musician
- 1985 – Pablo Andrés González, Argentine footballer
- 1985 – Kostas Mendrinos, Greek footballer
- 1985 – Carey Mulligan, English actress
- 1986 – Berrick Barnes, Australian rugby player
- 1986 – Tyler Black, American wrestler
- 1986 – Joseph Cross, American actor
- 1986 – Jaslene Gonzalez, Puerto Rican model
- 1986 – Charles N'Zogbia, French footballer
- 1986 – Michael Oher, American football player
- 1988 – NaVorro Bowman, American football player
- 1988 – Percy Harvin, American football player
- 1988 – Craig Kimbrel, American baseball pitcher
- 1988 – Meisa Kuroki, Japanese actress, model, and singer
- 1988 – David Perron, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1990 – Kyle Walker, English footballer
- 1993 – Bárbara Luz, Portuguese tennis player
- 1993 – Jonnie Peacock, English sprinter
- 1993 – Mason Shefa, American director, writer, and producer
- 1995 – Jacob Kogan, American actor
- 1998 – Riho Sayashi, Japanese singer (Morning Musume)
- 1999 – Cameron Boyce, American actor and dancer
Deaths [edit]
- 576 – Germain of Paris, French bishop (b. 496)
- 1023 – Wulfstan, English archbishop and writer
- 1357 – Afonso IV of Portugal (b. 1291)
- 1509 – Caterina Sforza, Italian noblewoman (b. 1463)
- 1556 – Saitō Dōsan, Japanese daimyo (b. 1494)
- 1672 – John Trevor, English politician (b. 1626)
- 1747 – Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, French writer (b. 1715)
- 1750 – Emperor Sakuramachi of Japan (b. 1720)
- 1787 – Leopold Mozart, Austrian composer (b. 1719)
- 1805 – Luigi Boccherini, Italian composer (b. 1743)
- 1808 – Richard Hurd, English Bishop of Worcester and writer (b. 1720)
- 1811 – Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, Scottish lawyer and politician (b. 1742)
- 1816 – Wolde Selassie, Ethiopian warlord (b. 1745)
- 1828 – Daikokuya Kōdayū, Japanese castaway (b. 1751)
- 1831 – William Carnegie, 7th Earl of Northesk, English admiral (b. 1756)
- 1843 – Noah Webster, American writer and lexicographer (b. 1758)
- 1849 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet (b. 1820)
- 1864 – Simion Bărnuţiu, Romanian philosopher and politician (b. 1808)
- 1878 – John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1792)
- 1916 – Ivan Franko, Ukrainian writer (b. 1856)
- 1927 – Boris Kustodiev, Russian painter (b. 1878)
- 1937 – Alfred Adler, Austrian psychologist (b. 1870)
- 1940 – Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse (b. 1868)
- 1946 – Carter Glass, American politician (b. 1858)
- 1947 – August Eigruber, Austrian war criminal (b. 1907)
- 1948 – Unity Mitford, English fascist sympathizer (b. 1914)
- 1952 – Philippe Desranleau, Canadian archbishop (b. 1882)
- 1953 – Hori Tatsuo, Japanese writer (b. 1904)
- 1968 – Fyodor Okhlopkov, Soviet sniper (b. 1908)
- 1971 – Audie Murphy, American actor and soldier (b. 1924)
- 1971 – Jean Vilar, French actor (b. 1912)
- 1972 – Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
- 1975 – Ezzard Charles, American boxer (b. 1921)
- 1976 – Steffan Danielsen, Faroese painter (b. 1922)
- 1978 – Arthur Brough, English actor (b. 1905)
- 1980 – Rolf Nevanlinna, Finnish mathematician (b. 1895)
- 1981 – Stefan Wyszyński, Polish prelate, Primate of Poland (b. 1901)
- 1981 – Mary Lou Williams, American pianist, composer, and arranger (b. 1910)
- 1982 – H. Jones, English army officer, recipient of the Victoria Cross (b. 1940)
- 1983 – Erastus Corning 2nd, American politician, 72nd Mayor of Albany, New York (b. 1909)
- 1984 – Eric Morecambe, English comedian and actor (b. 1926)
- 1988 – Sy Oliver, American trumpeter, composer, and bandleader (b. 1910)
- 1994 – Julius Boros, American golfer (b. 1920)
- 1994 – Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr., American writer (b. 1916)
- 1998 – Phil Hartman, Canadian actor and comedian (b. 1948)
- 2000 – George Irving Bell, American physicist, biologist, and mountaineer (b. 1926)
- 2001 – Francisco Varela, Chilean biologist and philosopher (b. 1946)
- 2001 – Joe Moakley, American politician (b. 1927)
- 2001 – Francis Bebey, Cameroonian-French guitarist and novelist (b. 1929)
- 2002 – Mildred Benson, American journalist and children's writer (b. 1905)
- 2002 – Jean Berger, German pianist, composer, and educator (b. 1909)
- 2003 – Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov, Soviet astronaut (b. 1933)
- 2003 – Ilya Prigogine, Russian-Belgian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- 2003 – Martha Scott, American actress (b. 1912)
- 2004 – Umberto Agnelli, Italian businessman and politician (b. 1934)
- 2004 – Francis Brunn, German juggler (b. 1922)
- 2004 – Michael Buonauro, American artist and writer
- 2006 – Thorleif Schjelderup, Norwegian author and ski jumper (b. 1920)
- 2007 – Marquise Hill, American football player (b. 1982)
- 2007 – David Lane, American white nationalist, founding member of The Order (b. 1938)
- 2007 – Toshikatsu Matsuoka, Japanese politician (b. 1945)
- 2008 – Beryl Cook, English painter (b. 1926)
- 2008 – Robert H. Justman, American director and producer (b. 1926)
- 2010 – Gary Coleman, American actor (b. 1968)
- 2011 – Alys Robi, French-Canadian singer (b. 1923)
- 2012 – Hugh Dawnay, English soldier and polo player (b. 1932)
- 2012 – Bob Edwards, English journalist (b. 1925)
- 2012 – Ludovic Quistin, Guadeloupean footballer (b. 1984)
- 2012 – Yuri Susloparov, Ukrainian-Russian footballer and coach (b. 1958)
- 2012 – Matthew Yuricich, American special effects artist (b. 1923)
Holidays and observances [edit]
- Armed Forces Day (Croatia)
- Christian Feast Day:
- Downfall of the Derg Day, a National Day. (Ethiopia)
- Flag Day (Philippines)
- Republic Day (Nepal)
- Republic Day, celebrates the declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic from theTranscaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918. (Azerbaijan and Armenia)
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