Friday, February 13, 2015

Fri Feb 13th Todays News

On Bolt Report an ongoing policy is that any Islam post can only be on the pinned leader. Normal rules apply in that if it is merely foul and abusive it will be deleted. Otherwise comments are welcome.  
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The holocaust never ended, although the Nazis were defeated and their concentration camps emptied. Some Nazis went to the Middle East, and some to South America. While Nazi networks are no longer, individuals they supported and inspired continue. Rich Palestinian leaders are inheritors of Nazi ideology, not Islam. Propaganda and terror are historically preserved in jihadist ideology. Iran, Pakistan and Turkey have Nazi leanings in their ideology. And the US, under Obama has been a friend of those with Holocaust ambitions, as exemplified by giving cash inappropriately or turning a blind eye inappropriately. 

 Standing for a brighter future is Israel. A modern democracy under siege by those who would complete the Nazi work of a final solution. Soon, her PM, Netanyahu, should speak to US Congress. One hopes he bells the cat of evil Israel faces. Because if Israel should fall, it is the rest of the world which will have to face the evil. Or succumb. 

 Consider the words of Iran (“The only solution to the Palestine problem is the destruction of the Zionist regime….We view the wondrous resistance as the only way towards a victorious and inspiring battle against the false, illegitimate Zionist regime.”) or Turkey (Erdogan called Israel a terrorist state) regarding Israel and then consider the mis statement of Mr Abbott in parliament. Mr Abbott immediately apologised and doubled back. He had referred to a holocaust on jobs. It was a simile. But the press have been strident in denouncing it. Yet the Greens have a history of employing the word, as did Keating, and nothing was heard from the press on them. And on top of the outrage, press carry on other campaigns meant to undermine the Australian PM which are similarly without weight. 

 Meanwhile activist students protest improvements to federal education policy. The activists make a great show of clashes with police they instigate. They use overblown rhetoric to a partisan press. The truth is the federal government want to impose small cuts now to education so as to not impose larger cuts later. So the students are marching for poor educational outcomes. 

 Gillian Triggs' partisan paper on people smuggling is an example of a product of a poor education. Clearly partisan, about all that can be said for the paper is the tacit acknowledgement that it was wrong to drown poor desperate people wanting to come to Australia. 
2014
SPC 'saved' without Abbott giving it $25 million. I call that a win .. for Abbott. Unless the ruinous corrupt union activity is curbed more jobs will be lost. Shorten moves to ensure more jobs are lost. Hoffman died from drugs, best not to celebrate drug use. Bush critic convicted for many things. Clarence Thomas notes the abuse dominating left argument. More AWU evidence seized. Why save worker jobs when workers refuse to help themselves? 
Historical perspectives on this day 
In 1322, the central tower of Ely Cathedral fell on the night of 12th-13th. 1462, the Treaty of Westminster was finalised between Edward IV of England and the Scottish Lord of the Isles. 1503, Disfida di Barletta – tournament between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta. 1542, Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed for adultery. 1572, Elizabeth I of England issued a proclamation which revoked all commissions on account of the frauds which they had fostered. 1575, Henry III of France was crowned at Rheims and married Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont on the same day.

 In 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition. 1660, with the death of Swedish King Charles X Gustav, the Swedish government began to seek peace with Sweden's enemies in the Second Northern War – something that Charles had refused. As his son and successor on the throne, Charles XI, is only four years old, a regency ruled Sweden until 1672. 1668, Spain recognised Portugal as an independent nation. 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed co-rulers of England. 1692, Massacre of Glencoe: About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland were killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange. 1739, Battle of Karnal: The army of Iranian ruler Nadir Shah defeated the forces of the Mughal emperor of India, Muhammad Shah. 1849, the delegation headed by Metropolitan bishop Andrei Şaguna handed out to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria the General Petition of Romanian leaders in Transylvania, Banat and Bukovina, which demanded that the Romanian nation be recognised. 1861, in Gaeta the capitulation of the fortress decreeing the end of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was signed. 1867, work began on the covering of the Zenne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards. 1880, Thomas Edison observed the Edison effect. 1881, the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne was first published in Paris by the activist Hubertine Auclert.

 In 1914, Copyright: In New York City the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers was established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members. 1920, the Negro National League was formed. 1931, New Delhi became the capital of India. 1934, the Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sank in the Arctic Ocean. 1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey found Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. 1945, World War II: The siege of Budapest concluded with the unconditional surrender of German and Hungarian forces to the Red Army. Also 1945, World War II: Royal Air Force bombers were dispatched to Dresden, Germany to attack the city with a massive aerial bombardment. 1951, Korean War: Battle of Chipyong-ni, which represented the "high-water mark" of the Chinese incursion into South Korea, commenced. 1954, Frank Selvy became the only NCAA Division I basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game. 1955, Israel obtained four of the seven Dead Sea scrolls.

 In 1960, with the success of a nuclear test codenamed "Gerboise Bleue", France became the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons. Also 1960, black college students stage the first of the Nashville sit-ins at three lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee. 1961, an allegedly 500,000-year-old rock was discovered near Olancha, California, US, that appears to anachronistically encase a spark plug. 1967, American researchers discovered the Madrid Codices by Leonardo da Vinci in the National Library of Spain. 1971, Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos. 1978, Hilton bombing: a bomb exploded in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman. 1979, an intense windstorm struck western Washington and sank a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge. 1981, a series of sewer explosions destroyed more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky. 1982, the Río Negro massacre takes place in Guatemala. 1983, a cinema fire in Turin, Italy, killed 64 people. 1984, Konstantin Chernenko succeeded the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1990, German reunification: An agreement was reached on a two-stage plan to reunite Germany. 1991, Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroyed the Amiriyah shelter in Baghdad. Allied forces said the bunker was being used as a military communications outpost, but over 400 Iraqi civilians inside were killed.

 In 2000, the last original "Peanuts" comic strip appeared in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies. 2001, an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit El Salvador, killing at least 400. 2004, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093. Astronomers named this star "Lucy" after The Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". 2007, Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigned as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a historic apology to the Indigenous Australians and the mythic Stolen Generations. 2010, a bomb exploded in the city of Pune, Maharashtra, India, killing 17 and injuring 60 more. 2011, for the first time in more than 100 years the Umatilla, an American Indian tribe, were able to hunt and harvest a bison just outside Yellowstone National Park, restoring a centuries-old tradition guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1855. 2012, the European Space Agency (ESA) conducted the first launch of the European Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. 2013, a plane crash killed five people and injured nine others in Donetsk, Ukraine.
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This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August https://www.createspace.com/4124406, October https://www.createspace.com/5106951, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows the purchase of a kindle version for just $3.99 more. 
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Or the US President at
https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-change-this-injustice#
or
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/change-injustice-faced-david-daniel-ball-after-he-reported-bungled-pedophile-investigation-and/b8mxPWtJ or http://wh.gov/ilXYR
Douglas Sutherland-Bruce via David Daniel Ball
Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - ed

Lorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Tuan Troi Oi and to those others born on this day, including
Catherine Howard
Love the one your with. We cover our pollution. Strategy does not mean civilians are targeted. Who ages Hilton? Ignore the Hexane vapours. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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The rights and wrongs of a Labor luvvie

Piers Akerman – Friday, February 13, 2015 (1:18am)

HUMAN Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs is the last person to lecture anyone on the human rights of children. But that’s exactly what her commission’s politically inspired report into children in immigration detention attempts to do.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'The rights and wrongs of a Labor luvvie'
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KU KLUX KINGSTON

Tim Blair – Friday, February 13, 2015 (2:22pm)

Former Fairfax senior political correspondent Margo Kingston in 2004: 
The fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia. 
Former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke in 2005: 
The Zionists occupy most of the American media and now control much of American government. 
These conspiracy theorists have taken divergent paths since revealing their shared beliefs about Jewish domination. Former one-term state Republican representative and white supremacist Duke is a rightly despised and marginalised figure whose only recent prominence came via a revived 2002 mini-scandal. By contrast, fright supremacistKingston – an admirer of dead ex-Klansman Robert Byrd, by the way – still enjoys the affection of her fellow leftists and even receives government funding to study herself. It’s a funny old world.
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NOW WE’RE COOKING

Tim Blair – Friday, February 13, 2015 (1:39pm)

Capsicum adds fun and flavour to even the dullest dish.
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LOST FOR WORDS

Tim Blair – Friday, February 13, 2015 (12:39pm)

Tony Abbott got in trouble yesterday for using a word. It turns out that Paul Keating, Bob Brown, John Howard and Scott Ludlam have all previously used the same word, but got in no trouble at all. Here’s Adam Bandt’s immediate response, followed by a gentle reminder:

image
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Once more, with feeling

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (5:08pm)

Gerard Henderson:
What a wonderful interview on ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra last weekend. Geraldine Doogue was in the presenter’s chair and the interviewee was the Australian travel writer and blogger Louise Southerden.
Ms Southerden rocked up to the ABC studio last Saturday intent on telling listeners about her recent times in the quiet woods of Norway. Nancy’s (male) co-owner was listening intently. Not so the RN presenter. Let’s go to the transcript: 
Louise Southerden: I spent two weeks alone in a cabin in the forest south of Oslo. And it was really one of the best experiences of my whole travelling life, I think. It was just a time, I didn’t set out to write a travel story about it, I just wanted to do it for me, I guess. And it was such a simple thing and yet it had a real power to it. I think just being able to be with yourself but also just in nature.
Geraldine Doogue: How long were you with yourself?
Louise Southerden: Two weeks. And it was a real chop wood, carry water experience because I literally had to do both those things. There was no electricity, no running water – [and] of course no wi-fi or mobile reception. Occasionally a person would wander past on the walking trail that went nearby, but I didn’t see anyone on any of the walking trails. I got lost in the forest a few times. I had this cabin all to myself. It didn’t get dark until about 11.30 at night, it was mid-summer.
Geraldine Doogue: Did you have electricity and running water?
Louise Southerden: No no, none of that. So you really had to light a fire to even boil water for tea. I had to carry water from the lake which was about a kilometre away so I had to put the plastic containers in my backpack and walk through the forest. It was just an adventure, I think.
If you can’t be bothered listening to your guest, why should your listeners? 
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How dare the Age lash Abbott for ending the drownings?

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (4:20pm)

How blinded by ideology and Abbott-hatred is The Age? How lethally blinded to the facts?
You would never guess from its editorial and front page today that it was Labor, with the encouragement of The Age itself, which destroyed our border laws, lured over the boats, filled the detention centres, encouraged 1200 drownings and had 10 times more children locked up than the Liberals do today. And which gave us 50,000 gatecrashers and a bill of $10 billion.
You would never guess from its editorial and front page today that it was Tony Abbott’s Government which stopped the boats, stopped the drownings and rapidly emptied the detention centres of children.
Instead, The Age omits all of these critical details in an editorial of utter garbage today which damns Abbott and defends a hopelessly biased Human Rights Commission that has operated as a kangaroo court of the Left:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday attacked the Australian Human Rights Commission over its report into children in immigration detention, saying “the Human Rights Commission should be ashamed of itself”. No, Mr Abbott – it is you and your government that should be ashamed. By seeking to politicise the report and its findings, by seeking to demonise commission president Gillian Triggs, the government compounds its own failures and those of preceding governments. It has tried to shift attention to anyone and everyone, while accepting no responsibility, which only magnifies its own shameful behaviour....
Mr Abbott’s response to this report indicates that, despite his claims to the contrary following Monday’s leadership vote in the Liberal party room, nothing has changed in his approach to governing. His instinct is to attack, instead of taking a position based on decency and dignity. ..
In May 2013, with Julia Gillard as prime minister, The Age wrote: “For as long as children remain locked up, Australian values remain sullied. This heinous practice is contrary to who we are.” There is a continuing humanitarian crisis taking place under the authority of the Australian government – according to its own monthly immigration detention report from January 31, 2015, there were 211 children under some form of mainland detention, plus 119 in offshore detention behind fences in Nauru, with no pathway to protection or settlement.
The Age even repeats as the gospel truth the HRC’s astonishing verballing of Scott Morrison:
The Human Rights Commission inquiry that led to its report questioned both the former Labor immigration minister Chris Bowen, and Mr Morrison as the then minister. Both agreed on oath that holding children in detention did not deter asylum seekers or people smugglers.
False. But what does The Age care about facts - or dead boat people?
UPDATE
Seriously, The Age now reads like the Green Left Weekly. Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog reviews today’s edition:

- Page 1 is largely occupied with an editorial rant against Tony Abbott over children in detention. The Age never took such a line about children held in detention during the time of the Keating or Rudd or Gillard Labor governments.
- Page 3 carries an article by Latika Bourke which falsely asserts that in Parliament yesterday Tony Abbott referred to the Holocaust and made inappropriate use of analogies to the Nazi genocide. This is hopelessly wrong.
- Page 3 also carries a report by Nick O’Malley that the Council on Foreign Relations website contains an article by a certain senior fellow named Joshua Kurlantzick. Kurlantzick reckons that Tony Abbott is “shockingly incompetent”. Gee whiz. Talk about a colonial crawl. It’s impossible to imagine that the New York Times would run a piece by, say, Alan Jones declaring that President Obama is shockingly incompetent.
- Page 16. The Age editorial is titled “Abbott fails another test of leadership.” Surprise, eh?
- Turn to the Comment Page. It’s Mark Kenny on Tony Abbott. Yawn. And Professor Gillian Triggs (for a professor she is) on herself. More yawns.
(Thanks to reader John.) 
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Don’t think Australia can stop Indonesia shooting Australians, too

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (12:48pm)

Indonesia’s new president didn’t stop the execution of five foreigners last month. Don’t put much hope in our government being able to stop him from executing two Australians, too:
Indonesia has executed six people convicted on drug offences in the first executions carried out under new president Joko Widodo.
The two women and four men killed by firing squad included five foreigners from Brazil, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Malawi and Nigeria.
The Left seems to have misread Joko. Here is The Age last year, welcoming his election win:
Voters instead have embraced Mr Joko’s vision of a more vibrant and prosperous nation driven by an engaged, empowered and productive citizenry. Rather than being didactic, he speaks to modern Indonesians’ personal ambitions.
By contrast, Mr Prabowo, who was previously married to the daughter of former president Suharto, had flagged plans to wind back democracy and concentrate more power in the presidency… He has accumulated a dubious human rights record.... A presidential win for Mr Prabowo would be a retrograde step for Indonesia.
It is a truism in democratic politics that the Left in power must prove it is tough and the Right that it is compassionate. The same kind of calculus meant Tony Blair could invade Iraq and Arial Sharon could withdraw from Gaza. Bill Clinton could crack down on welfarism and John Howard could vastly expand middle-class welfare.
Joko is proving he’s as tough as any general.
He might also not like drug smugglers at all. 
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Tests for Abbott

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (12:30pm)

A sober warning from Graham Richardson:
I wrote in this column months ago that to get the free trade agreement with Japan over the line, Abbott gave his counterpart Shinzo Abe a shake-of-the-hands undertaking to buy Japanese submarines.
On Monday, Abbott said there had been no secret deals. I am reliably — very reliably — informed there are documents in existence that will disprove this. Whether they are revealed by leak or Freedom of Information ferreting, this would be the end of Abbott’s prime ministership — it would be a broken promise too far and one denial too many.
Another great test:
FORMER Liberal premier Nick Greiner doesn’t expect an under-siege Tony Abbott to be “front and centre” on the NSW election campaign trail.
THE prime minister’s sagging popularity and ongoing speculation about his leadership have some state Liberal MPs concerned there might be an anti-Abbott voter backlash against them at next month’s election.
I believe Piers Akerman will have more on this tomorrow.
And then there are the continual demands by some MPs and commentators that Abbott show his earnest in promising change by changing his chief of staff.
You’d have to be a very tough man to stand up to all this, and the heckling of the press gallery, too. 
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Defamation laws threaten Aboriginal voice. UPDATE: Liberals fight for free speech

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (9:47am)

I don’t like the National Indigenous Times.  I don’t like its promotion of the new racism, dividing us on the grounds of the “race” of some of our ancestors.  I don’t like its Big Government “solutions”.
But here is something I like even less. I hate our punitive defamation laws, which favor the rich and members of the legal club. And I absolutely loathe those laws being used to sue alternative publications to death:
The ... National Indigenous Times ... was placed into voluntary administration nearly a fortnight ago in order to avoid a wind-up order filed by high-end law firm Gilbert + Tobin over unpaid an unpaid legal bill. Administrators are hopeful of paying this bill “in due course”.
Two other legal actions led to the company being placed into administration. The first was an unfair dismissal case against the company by former editor Stephen Hagan, with Gilbert + Tobin hired by Destiny Publications to defend the case. The second was a defamation case heard in the Western Australian Supreme Court.
UPDATE
Free speech is worth fighting for. In fact, it demands defence, and good on these Liberals for putting principle above political advantage:

In a sign of Mr Abbott’s diminishing authority, West Australian senator Chris Back and Queensland Liberal National Party senator Ian Macdonald have told Fairfax Media they will vote in favour of a bill designed to water down the Racial Discrimination Act. South Australian senator Sean Edwards has given a strong indication he could join them, arguing the act in its current form suppresses free speech.
Mr Abbott pledged to repeal section 18C of the act prior to the 2013 election… But he abandoned the pledge last year after a fierce backlash from religious leaders and many Liberal MPs.
Family First senator Bob Day has now proposed removing the words “insult” and “offend” from the act, meaning it would no longer be possible to prosecute someone for insulting or offending someone based on their race. Liberal senators Cory Bernardi and Dean Smith have previously pledged their support and have co-sponsored Senator Day’s bill. It is also being co-sponsored by Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm.
Supporters for change renewed their push in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in defiance of Mr Abbott’s decision.
Senator Linda Reynolds has called for a review of the government’s approach to section 18C because current laws have overreached.
Senator Reynolds said the Paris attack and the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney had confirmed the threat the West faces from extremists trying to undermine democratic values, including free speech.
“I do not believe in Australia we are Charlie,” Senator Reynolds said, a reference to the #JeSuisCharlie campaign that went viral in support of free speech. “Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act is a key contributor to this.
Contrary to what this Fairfax article insists, this defence of free speech need not be a challenge to Abbott’s authority at all. Abbott need only state that MPs are free to vote according to their conscience, which is actually Liberal policy.
And this finding should encourage MPs to defend the one right that guarantees we can defend all our others:
Parliament’s bipartisan human rights committee says changes to the Racial Discrimination Act would not contravene Australia’s international obligations, which supporters of change say is an endorsement of their push.
The Institute of Public Affairs:
Today the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights released a report stating that the Racial Discrimination Amendment Bill 2014 does “not raise human rights concerns"…
The Racial Discrimination Amendment Bill 2014 was introduced by Family First Senator Bob Day on 25 September last year. The bill seeks to remove the words “offend” and “insult” from section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, which currently makes it an offence to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person on the basis of their race, colour, or national or ethnic origin.”
“It is significant that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has made this decision in light of the fact that it is required to balance freedom of speech against discrimination law,” says Mr Breheny.
“This clears the path for the Abbott government to support reform of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.”
(Thanks to reader the evil right.) 
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On the Bolt Report on Sunday, February 15

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (8:51am)

The Bolt Report is back at last! Back on Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 4pm.
Editorial: He’s not finished yet, however hard the media is trying.
My guest: Tony Abbott.
The panel: former Treasurer Peter Costello and former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa.
Plus: who is minding our gates? 
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UN climate official: real plan is “change the economic development model”

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (8:49am)

In 1917, Bolsheviks in Russia launched their campaign to change international capitalism - the economic development model that has abolished more poverty, created more wealth and allowed more freedom than any model before it.
They failed.
Now the the United Nations’ top climate change official wants to try again.
Here is Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:
warns that the fight against climate change is a process and that the necessary transformation of the world economy will not be decided at one conference or in one agreement.

This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history… This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.
Just in case you thought this was just about cutting emissions, with a simple (albeit costly) switch to, say, nuclear or hydro power - or even solar panels and batteries.
(Thanks to reader fulchrum.)
UPDATE
Does Figueres also want a religious transformation?
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you—because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.”
Note: Figueres is an anthropologist, not a climate scientist. 
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Human Rights Commissions verbals Scott Morrison to attack border policies

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (8:11am)

The Human Rights Commission’s report into children in detention is fatally flawed by the perceived bias of HRC president Gillian Triggs.
The latest astonishing evidence of that bias?  Triggs and her staff have verballed former Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to have him say virtually the opposite of what he did in defence of the government’s boat people policy.
Triggs’ HRC report claims:

Both the Hon Chris Bowen MP, as a former Minister for Immigration, and the Hon Scott Morrison MP, the current [sic] Minister for Immigration, agreed on oath before the Inquiry that holding children in detention does not deter either asylum seekers or people smugglers.
That is not true. In fact, during the hearings, Triggs herself concluded Morrison had said the very opposite:

President [Triggs]: Is the detention of children a deterrent for the purposes of stopping the boats?
Minister Morrison: Children being detained in facilities has been a consequence of the policies that more broadly have been effective in securing Australia’s borders, restoring the integrity of our immigration program and stopping children dying at sea.
President: And I’ll take that as a yes, for the record.
Yes, Triggs in her inquiry said Morrison agreed detaining children was deterring people smugglers, but in her report she claims he said the opposite.
Triggs has verballed the Minister, presenting him as having said what she’d like to be true.
In fact, go through his evidence and Morrison says only that the specific purpose of detaining children offshore is not to deter boats, yet that detention is part of a process that has indeed stopped the boats and the drownings:
President:  I take it from that that it is a purpose of detention offshore to deter people from coming?
Minister Morrison: ... our purpose there as it is here to try and process people as quickly as possible so they’re taken out of detention if they are found to be refugees. It is the intention to have people in that facility offshore only for so long as it is necessary to process their claims..
I understand why people want to come and get on a boat and come to Australia… I understand that they would like to come to the mainland and not be part of the offshore processing policy. I think that’s fairly self evident. They pay people smugglers to get to Australia. That’s what they paid for. That’s what they would like to be given. It is not the government’s policy to fulfil the promise of a people smuggler. That is not what we do…
One of the reasons we have so many children in detention and why over 8,000 children got on boats is because they thought they would get what they were paid for. Now that has changed and they’re not getting on the boats anymore…
[T]hat policy of offshore processing combined with all the others I have mentioned has produced the results collectively, combined that this government has been able to achieve… Now there are still 10,000 people sitting up in Indonesia, they are all waiting for a change in policy, they are all waiting for a change in resolve from this government. If that happens the children get back on the boats, they die again and they go back and more will go into detention. I am not going to let that happen if I can help it… 
It is shocking that the Human Rights Commission can sum this evidence up as Morrison simply admitting “that holding children in detention does not deter either asylum seekers or people smugglers”.
How can a word of this expensive report be trusted? How can Triggs keep her job?
PS

Triggs will give evidence to a Senate committee within a fortnight to explain the incredibly self-contradictory evidence she gave it last time on discussing with Labor ministers her plan to wait until after an election (and likely change of government) before holding this inquiry. Committee members must surely ask her to explain this verballing as well.
UPDATE
Finally Coalition MPs refuse to take the bias any more. They are fighting back:
GILLIAN Triggs’ position as Human Rights Commission president has become untenable, Coalition MPs said last night, echoing Tony Abbott’s broadside at her children in detention report as a “stitch up’’ and a “blatantly partisan politicised exercise’’…
Coalition MP George Christensen, who chairs a committee which is weighing up whether to investigate “systemic bias’’ at the HRC, called for her to step down.
“I have more confidence in getting impartial advice from Green Left Weekly than from ­Gillian Triggs ... she needs to tender her resignation.’’…
Liberal backbencher Andrew Nikolic expressed concern that trust between the government and the HRC was being chipped away under Professor Triggs and she had tarnished its reputation.
“Her position is absolutely ­untenable,’’ Mr Nikolic told The Australian…
“I don’t understand how she could justify calling for an extraordinary expenditure of public money for a royal commission when the very problem she identifies was at its height under the previous Labor government,’’ he said…
Liberal backbencher Michael Sukkar has been leading the charge for a lower house committee to conduct a review into the HRC. “The blatant partisan approach that has been adopted in this report raises even more questions of her fitness in my view to hold the role,’’ Mr Sukkar said.
Triggs should reflect that she has through her actions and words allowed her report to be dismissed, on good grounds, as tainted by bias. Any good in it has been destroyed - by her. All the money and time spent on it has been wasted. For the sake of the HRC, she should resign.
UPDATE
Piers Akerman is very tough.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Why is Labor against border policies that even the Human Rights Commission admits saves lives?

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (8:06am)

The Human Rights Commission report into children in detention admits turning back the boats has worked, and stopped people smugglers after “the tragic deaths of over a thousand asylum seekers”:

The Government’s policy, ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, under which Australian authorities use force to intercept and turn back boats, has prevented asylum seekers from reaching our shores.
Yet Labor leader Bill Shorten has insisted he himself would never turn back boats as Prime Minister, falsely claiming they don’t work:
I want to make it crystal clear there has been no change to Labor’s policy on Tony Abbott’s secret turn-backs… Labor is in favour of what works, what saves lives at sea, and Labor’s regional arrangements have been working.
Shorten claims turnbacks don’t work, when even the HRC admits they do. Shorten says he won’t do what even the HRC admits saves lives, including those of children.
The ABC and Fairfax have been treating the HRC report as holy writ. So why aren’t reporters attacking Shorten for peddling deadly policies and untruths?
This is the most deadly and reckless hypocrisy.
Mind you, the HRC itself is so blind to consequences that it, too, opposes the policies it admits stopped the boats, thus saving lives:
Australia should return to its historical generosity of spirit by welcoming to our shores those who seek our protection from conflict and persecution.
Let’s all feel good. Let’s have policies that drown boat people. 
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Abbott hanged for what the gallery forgave Keating and Bob Brown

Andrew Bolt February 13 2015 (7:11am)

The Canberra press gallery is collectively gripped by a lust for Tony Abbott’s blood.  The frenzy to crucify him is as astonishing as the double standards.
This claim, for instance, is flat out false - a disgrace - and note the picture chosen by the Sydney Morning Herald:
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Abbott did no such thing.
News.com.au is only a little less vicious:
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This, in fact, is all Abbott said:
“Under members opposite, defence jobs in this country declined by 10 per cent,” Mr Abbott told parliament.
“There was a holocaust of jobs in defence industries under members opposite.”
Mr Abbott then apologised and withdrew the comment. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry and I withdraw.” ...
At the end of question time the Prime Minister again apologised for his remark.
“I should not have used it, I did withdraw it and I apologise for it,” he said.
Now compare the total lack of outrage when a gallery favorite uses the very same expression in the very same context:
[Former Labor Prime Minister Paul] Keating said the Rudd government deserved to be re-elected on its reaction to the global recession alone, saving Australia from an ”economic holocaust” that had massively crunched the US and UK.
Here’s another gallery favorite using the same expression, and, again, to a total lack of outrage from journalists:

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, describing Mr O’Connor as a logging extremist, called on Labor to end the policy of clearfell logging and burning in Tasmania.
“It is an environmental holocaust, no different to the Sumatran clearfelling and burning which so appalled (climate change economist) Sir Nicholas Stern a fortnight ago,” Senator Brown said in a statement.
The gallery even let John Howard get away with using the expression:
Because the strength of the Australian economy has shown in the face of the Asian economic holocaust has been absolutely remarkable.
Tony Abbott is being hanged by journalists for doing what the journalists forgave in everyone else. This is shameful and perverse.
Note well any journalists and presenters playing this game. Let them know you are on to them.
UPDATE
The gallery had no problem hearing the word from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, either:

Solar Reserve builds solar thermal power stations—utility-scale power stations that can run 24/7, after dark… These clean technology companies have the ability to offset the kind of holocaust that we are driving our economy, our society and our environment towards.
UPDATE
Incredibly, ABC AM this morning is still going on about the “Holocaust” non-issue, learning its 7am bulletin with it. UPDATE: Jonathan Green on Radio National Breakfast also kicks it along.
The ABC is openly campaigning for Abbott’s fall. It is critical for conservatives and important for our democracy that this vast misuse of state power not succeed.
Get involved.
Fight back.
(Thanks to readers Alan RM Jones and Warwick A.) 
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I am the worst person Helen Razer can invent

Andrew Bolt February 12 2015 (11:10pm)

Two things have happened with me and the Left.
One, I’ve become clickbait.
Add my name to a headline and bingo! But, of course, that requires the writer to say something damning, because it would be awful to get clicks on a Leftist site by saying something nice. Which leads to ...
Two, I’ve become The Worst Person You Can Imagine.
That means my function is to represent evil in all its forms, regardless of what I’ve actually done or said. In fact, it’s remarkable how often I’m attacked not for what did say, but what the writer imagines I would say, may have said or probably secretly meant. For instance, legal figures have famously “read between the lines” to find my transgressions.
It doesn’t aid some of these writers to actually read what I actually write, since it so often doesn’t fit their purpose. Indeed, it is more convenient NOT to read me.
You may think this all far-fetched, and even slightly paranoid. So let me introduce you to Helen Razer.
Razer was an occasional ABC host and has now written something very odd for Crikey that precisely illustrates my point. It starts:
There is no usual excuse for reading or discussing the works of Andrew Bolt.
This line should not just be the first of the article but the last, if Razer truly believed what she so floridly writes.
But Razer wants the clicks, and so compromises. She indeed does not read what I write, yet does discuss what she imagines she’d have seen.
Hence this line:
As Glenn Dyer pointed out in Crikey last week, Bolt had been unusually silent, most particularly on the matter of Abbott’s recent leadership woes. Perhaps he was “regrouping” or having his blood renewed with infant albumin at a clinic in Switzerland because this week, he delivered an animated doozy.
Really? How extraordinary.
In fact, I have discussed those leadership woes since the very day I returned from holidays, two weeks ago. I’ve discussed them every week night on 2GB, and on Channels 9 and 10, and the ABC. I’ve written about them in nearly half a dozen newspapers. My views on Abbott’s woes were broadcast around the country on ABC radio and TV.
In fact, here is a list of the articles on my blog in the past two weeks in which I have been “unusually silent, most particularly on the matter of Abbott’s recent leadership woes”:
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It is patently obvious that Razer has not troubled to do the slightest research to check her bogus claim. She simply imagines I must be so evil that I would hide from criticising a Liberal. 
Here are some other things Razer simply makes up to frighten the Left with The Worst Person You can Imagine:
... what he believes—aside from blaming Blacks, Muslims and Lesbians—is that government should manage not just our finances but also our morality. Bolt is in favour of big intrusive government and has all the makings of the “Cultural Marxists” he imagines live inside the ABC.
Wow.
UPDATE
Readers in comments below ask who Razer is. Reader Morph says she’s the occasional ABC host whose career there ended two weeks after this:
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Wrong crusade, wrong audience. But Josie Cashman is right on the Left’s new racism

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (6:17pm)

Josie Cashman, a lawyer and businesswoman who identifies as Aboriginal, gave an address to hundreds of federal public servants in Canberra yesterday which cheered me on one point and disappointed me on three.
First, the good part:
Our modern Indigenous leaders are very, very courageous… [Last] year the Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council was subject to a much-publicised raft of racial slurs on social media, including being called “Uncle Tom”, for his willingness to advise a Coalition government on solving the problems that face our people. This behavior ... is fuelled by the far Left for its own agenda.
These groups promote and encourage conspiracy theories that the Government and Australian people are against Aboriginal people and that we continue to be victims of this society. Under this world view, every problem faced by Indigenous people is the result of bad things done by European colonists and assimilation into western cultures. The value of so called “western” influences to Indigenous people – like mainstream education and economic development – is questioned.
Disadvantage and suffering have become the defining characteristics of the far left. Institutionalised welfare is a key policy platform for them. Any suggestion that welfare dependence has had negative impacts on Indigenous people is not tolerated. Underpinning all of this is an idealised concept of traditional Indigenous people not “corrupted” by civilization or development. There is an old expression to describe this – the “noble savage”.
How can we build mutual respect in an environment where fear and distrust of government and the Australian people is encouraged? How can we move on to healing when there are people who want to define us as damaged? This is a cancerous philosophy.
This is the most destructive form of racism and is promoted by the far Left to feed into their ideology that western free market democracy is wrong and we have to keep Indigenous Australians as noble savages. It is this ideology that is stopping Indigenous Australians coming into the economic mainstream. Labelling Aboriginal and Torres Strait People as disadvantaged and victims sets extremely low expectations in terms of employment, business capacity and education. The welfare mentality is the greatest challenge inhibiting our people to rise up. This ideology is the height of discrimination and it is destroying our cultural values which embraced hard work, taking responsibility and contributing to community. This threat from the far Left is what I call intellectual racism… This ideology is also totally disrespectful to the Indigenous leaders who had a dream for their families and communities of coming together with all Australians. 
The only thing I would add is that Aboriginal poverty is to a large extent the natural result of traditional Aboriginal culture. If you want Western standards of health and wealth, Western standards of education and work-habits are essential.
But now to the three aspects of the speech that disturb me greatly and undercut Cashman’s appeal to fight the new racism of the Left.
The first is one my lawyers tell me I cannot discuss, thanks to absurd laws against free speech that make it dangerous to oppose one particular aspect of the New Racism..
The second is this, from Cashman’s speech:
And now our Parliament is preparing to champion a constitutional amendment to recognise Indigenous people in Australia’s constitution. These symbolic steps demonstrate the goodwill of Australia towards its first peoples and their descendants. On the other hand the victimhood label is wrong and harmful for our futures… Let us now rewrite wrongs and recognize the first Australians in the best country in the world. 
Cashman earlier deplored the victim status imposed on Aborigines, attacked division by race and urged a “coming together with all Australians”. But in the next breath she insists on a constitutional recognition - one which divides us by “race” - to “rewrite wrongs”. She is in fact feeding the victim industry and new racism she has denounced.
Third is this, addressed - to repeat - to federal public servants, apparently at the request or with the permission of their political or public service masters:
You have a choice to reinstate hope in your professional capacity as an Australian Public Servant and as a member of the Australian community. You have the opportunity to bring everyone together as never before and recognize the first peoples of this beautiful country. 
Public servants are meant to be apolitical. They are not ideological crusaders, especially not in the service of such a divisive cause. This appeal is as inappropriate as Labor appeals to public servants to get with the global warming faith.
I am very worried by this agenda of the Abbott Government. It will divide us for no good cause, and divert us from the very hard, practical work that needs doing to end the horrific Aboriginal disadvantage.   
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Labor hit the economy and now runs

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (6:04pm)

August 2013. Labor Treasurer Chris Bowen predicts the unemployment rate in 2014 under Labor’s policies:
The mini-budget predicts unemployment will rise from 5.6 per cent to 6.25 per cent which would see the jobless queue climb from 709,000 to around 800,000.
February 2014:
The unemployment rate hit 6 per cent in January...
Labor leader Bill Shorten:
The Abbott government has got serious questions to answer… Over 60,000 full-time jobs have been lost since the Abbott Government was elected.
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Seems SPC didn’t need Abbott’s $25 million, after all

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (5:43pm)

Why is this now enough to satisfy Coca-Cola Amatil:
The $22 million from [Victorian] taxpayers will be part of a $100 million upgrade of the Shepparton plant. SPC will contribute $78 million to complete a $100 million co-investment between the government and the company.
Two weeks ago Coca-Cola Amatal said it needed twice as much from taxpayers to save the cannery:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has [rejected] taxpayer support for fruit processor SPC Ardmona ...   The 93-year-old Victorian company wanted a $25 million federal grant, topped up by $25 million from the Victorian government and its own $150 million investment, for new product development and technology to prop up its operation.
Looks like Abbott saved us $25 million. Let’s hope the Victorian Government didn’t just waste it. 
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Boyer wins alarmist prize: coal to destroy “all of humanity”

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (9:41am)

Global warming - propaganda

Peter Boyer sets the gold standard for climate alarmism in the Hobart Mercury in a paean of praise for protesters trying to shut our coal industry:
Underlying all these campaigns is a real fear that a protracted coal boom will bring down the curtain on civilisation… We forget that every boom ends in a bust, and every get-rich-quick scheme has losers, in this case all of humanity and its life-support system.
Can anyone beat that?
(Thanks to reader Tassierooster.) 
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How Toyota unions killed their members’ jobs

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (9:33am)

This culture of union bastardry must change, or even more jobs will be lost: 
The former head of Toyota Australia and one of its top supplier executives say combative industrial relations helped trigger the company’s decision to stop making cars. 
John Conomos, who worked at Toyota in senior roles for almost 30 years including as executive chairman, said he could understand the company’s frustration at union resistance to changing workplace entitlements and practices…
“The old fashioned ideas of labour unions simply must change,” he said…
Gary Stewart, the former general manager of a Toyota “keiretsu” supplier, Aisin Australia, said the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union gave the company a “two-fingered salute” when it blocked workplace changes in court rather than negotiate.
It was the last straw for the company and gave ammunition to “hawks” at Toyota who supported the pull-out in a finely balanced decision, he said. “If it is not the only cause it is certainly at the top of the file."My opinion is that if Toyota had broken through its IR issues - then most probably Toyota would have tried to continue in Australia.”
Paul Sheehan: 
After an hour of questions on Tuesday, Shorten moved a censure motion: ‘’I move … that the House censures the Prime Minister for failing to stand up and fight for Australian jobs at Toyota, Electrolux, Simplot, Holden, Qantas, Ford, the Gove alumina refinery, SPC Ardmona and countless other small businesses around Australia …’’
As Shorten introduced his censure motion, the press gallery rapidly emptied....
A few minutes later came the most damaging accusation of all, via the Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne: ‘’We have legislation before the Parliament to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and to establish a Registered Organisations Commission, and we have announced a royal commission into union governance and corruption, all of which the Leader of the Opposition … is opposing. He cannot rise above his background. He is a union official supporting union officials. He is running a protection racket for a protection racket.’’ Harsh. But it sums up the collateral damage Shorten is suffering from the rolling sequence of union scandals.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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No ribbons for what killed Hoffman

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (9:04am)

Paul Murray:
Remember when AIDS started to take the lives of famous people and other famous people started wearing red ribbons to spread the word about safe sex and finding a cure? 
There is a new scourge that’s killing famous people and thousands more every day, but they won’t say a word about it. They won’t wear ribbons and no one will take the cause on as their own. It’s drugs.
At this year’s Oscars there will be a very moving tribute to the remarkable Philip Seymour Hoffman but it won’t mention what killed him. Drugs.
Wouldn’t it be great if a huge star stood on that stage and said to a billion people: “Don’t do drugs.” Instead they will ...  celebrate a movie (that I loved), The Wolf of Wall Street, completely ignoring that for most of the three hours the main character snorts, smokes and takes a truckload of drugs.
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With climate scientists like this, no wonder we doubt

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (8:48am)

Global warming - dud predictions

YOU would think scientists of the NSW Climate Change Research Centre had done enough damage to their warmist crusade.
A month ago, its Professor Chris Turney got his ship of researchers stuck in Antarctic sea ice he had claimed was melting away.
“Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up,” Turney’s expedition wailed.
In fact Turney’s team — planning to examine parts of the Antarctic “highly susceptible to melting and collapse from ocean warming” — apparently hadn’t realised sea ice there had grown over three decades to record levels.
How we laughed.

Turney’s climate centre, at the University of NSW, sponsored this disaster, which ended with two icebreakers rescuing the mortified professor and his warming crusaders.
It’s farce like that which helps explain why the CSIRO reported last week only 47 per cent of Australians buy its spin that the climate is changing and we’re to blame.
Australians now rate global warming of “low importance”, the CSIRO sighed, and warmists faced “the challenge of finding the right language” to gee them up. But up bobs another Climate Change Research Centre scientist to show the warmists’ problem isn’t the “right language” but the false hype.
(Read full article here.) 
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Bush critic convicted over corruption

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (8:47am)

 Remember how the media treated New Orleans Democrat mayor Ray Nagin as a serious man with serious criticisms of George Bush - the Republican president who was made the scapegoat for the chaos after Hurricane Katrina?
It was rubbish, of course, as I tried to point out at the time:
By now, hurricane buffs were posting warnings on the internet, telling citizens of New Orleans to flee… But one crucial man seemed not to be listening—the (black) Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, former cable executive Ray Nagin, responsible for law and order in his city, and for its evacuation in a crisis. 
He seemed oddly determined to play it cool.
So it was only on Saturday afternoon, less than 48 hours before Katrina was due to hit, that he finally told the people of New Orleans: “We want you to take this a little more seriously and start moving.” A little?
Those who needed a shelter of “last resort” should go to the city’s Superdome, he added, and “bring small quantities of food for three or four days”. Small?
Only at 5pm did he order a voluntary evacuation, even though the National Hurricane Centre was warning that Katrina was “a worst-case scenario”....
That night, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called Nagin at home—interrupting his dinner, he noted—and urged him to call the Hurricane Centre for bad news about Katrina.
Bush called, too, and appealed for a mandatory evacuation. He seemed to take the threat more seriously than did the mayor.
But only the next morning, with Katrina less than 24 hours away, did Nagin finally order his city to be emptied. Yet he did nothing to make sure it did.
He sent no police through the streets to sound the alarm. He did not empty the hospitals. He sent no buses to take poorer citizens from this poorest of cities—people with no car or money to flee. In fact, more than 200 of his school buses were later found neatly parked, still in their depot, up to their useless engines in flood water.
So when Katrina struck on Monday, 100,000 people—largely the sickest and poorest—were still in their doomed city, half in the Superdome and convention centre. There they found no chemical toilets, few medics, no water purification equipment, not enough police and little food or water. The 26,000 at the Superdome, for instance, had been left food just enough for 15,000 for three days. All this was Nagin’s responsibility. Not Bush’s. And it explains those pitiful scenes of stranded people begging for food. 
And now:
Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ...  was found guilty of 20 out of 21 counts of bribery, money laundering, fraud and filing false tax returns… 
The charges detailed more than $200,000 in bribes to the mayor, and his family members allegedly received a vacation in Hawaii; first-class airfare to Jamaica; private jet travel and a limousine for New York City; and cellular phone service. In exchange, businesses that coughed up cash for Nagin and his family won more than $5 million in city contracts, according to the January 2013 indictment.
The earliest of the charges date from before Katrina, which struck when Nagin had been in office for about three years....
Supporters credited Nagin’s sometimes-profane demands for aid from Washington with helping reveal the botched federal response to the storm—a fiasco that embarrassed the George W. Bush administration and led to billions of federal dollars being poured into Gulf Coast reconstruction efforts. But ... a congressional committee criticized him for delaying evacuation orders, and his frantic description of post-storm New Orleans as a violent wasteland with up to 10,000 dead turned out to be greatly exaggerated. 
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Clarence Thomas: the worst abuse came from the Left

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (8:19am)

The politics of race

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US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says the worse racism he suffered was from Left-wing elites:
The worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, [were] by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia… To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up. 
It strikes me that blacks who are conservative cop it worst, vilified by the Left for not conforming to their black stereotype.
And Thomas says too much fuss is made about race, anyway:
My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious that I was in the 1960s when I went to school… Now, name a day it doesn’t come up… 
Differences in race, differences in sex. Somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them — left them out. That’s a part of the deal.
UPDATE
On the very same day Thomas speaks, a (black) Democrat politician from Alabama demonstrates the racism of the Left:
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UPDATE
Bess Price, a conservative Aboriginal politician from the Northern Territory, has been vilified by the Left, often in racist terms:
Because I have spoken out on this issue and others close to my heart, I have been routinely attacked by the left. Professor Larissa Behrendt claimed that what I say is more offensive than watching a man having sex with a horse. Her white professional protester colleague, Paddy Gibson, told the world that I was only doing it for the money and frequent flyer points. The Queensland educationist, Chris Sarra, said that I was ‘pet Aborigine’ who only said what the government wanted me to say. Chris Graham, the white editor of Tracker magazine called me a ‘grub’. A white woman in Victoria, Leonie Chester, calls herself Nampijinpa Snowy River, on the internet. She tells the world that my people, the Warlpiri, are ‘her mob’. She and her friends have obscenely insulted me on the internet, over and over. Marlene Hodder, a white woman from Alice Springs and her protesting friend, Barbara Shaw, have called me a liar several times. 
The Crikey blogger, Bob Gosford, who calls himself ‘the Northern Myth’, calls me Bess ‘Gaol is Good for Aboriginal People’ Price and accuses me of ‘vaguely malevolent and populist buffoonery that is designed to capture the attention of the tutt-tutterers and spouted by politicians that inevitably have a short tenure in power’. In Brisbane, Tiga Bayles, using an Indigenous community owned radio station, told the whole world that I am ‘a head nodding Jacky-Jacky for the government’ and that I am ‘totally offensive and arrogant’ because I do not want people like Tiga who know nothing about us, speaking about my people. He and his friends laughed as they told the world that I am only interested in money. 
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Shorten: insulting to tell Aborigines “obey the law”

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (8:12am)

What dangerous message is Shorten sending?
BILL SHORTEN, OPPOSITION LEADER: Aboriginal people deserve more respect than being told it’s as simple as “obey the law”. One size does not fit all.
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Not so much interest in these bruvvers, though

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (8:03am)

Niki Savva on the curiously incurious journalists who were once very curious indeed about a politician’s siblings:
WHENEVER he is asked, and it has only happened occasionally, and only recently at that, Brendan O’Connor reckons that only people who live in caves don’t know Michael is his brother. 
Brendan is Bill Shorten’s spokesman for employment and workplace relations, and Michael is the national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union. Yet I know people very well informed about politics, residing in genteel suburbs, who did not know this until the past few days. If they knew anything, it was that Michael was Julia Gillard’s ex-boyfriend.
There are other high-profile siblings with political connections whose relationships have been remorselessly dissected and analysed. Tony Abbott and his gay sister Christine Forster, for instance, with endless questioning of whether she can change her brother’s mind on same-sex marriage so she can wed her partner. Or the former federal treasurer Peter Costello and his brother, Tim. Entire forests were felled so journalists could brood about why Tim’s “compassion” had not rubbed off on his brother. Brendan says that in government he recused himself from any decisions where conflict existed and this is not to suggest either of the O’Connors has misbehaved, merely to note that in among all the other connections, webs, liaisons, and positionings which make up labour and Labor, this one has received surprisingly scant attention.
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Police seize more AWU scandal evidence

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (7:47am)

Police seem to be taking very seriously a case that much of the Canberra press gallery dismissed:
VICTORIAN police have seized hundreds of union documents locked in a Perth storage unit that could provide important evidence for their investigation into the involvement of Julia Gillard’s former boyfriend in an alleged fraud. 
The Australian Workers Union confirmed yesterday that Victorian police had executed search warrants for archives kept in the storage unit, and removed 12 boxes that could assist an investigation into former union official Bruce Wilson and the AWU Workplace Reform Association “slush fund”.
Once again I am reminded of this passage in Jacqueline Kent’s biography of Julia Gillard, and once again I wonder who those senior gallery journalists were:
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(Gillard denies she did anything wrong or knew what her boyfriend was up to with the slush fund she helped him set up. She says she paid for her renovations herself) 
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Why help workers who won’t help themselves

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (7:08am)

WHY should taxpayers spend a dollar more to save the jobs of Toyota workers who refuse to save themselves?
And why does Labor leader Bill Shorten falsely claim our handouts are stingy, when they’re the world’s biggest?
Consider this timeline for Toyota Australia, which announced this week it would stop making cars here in 2017.
(Read full article here.) 
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Charlie McAdam and the “stolen generations”

Andrew Bolt February 13 2014 (5:59am)

The "stolen generations"

Last night on 2GB I said the ”stolen generations” was a myth that had killed Aboriginal children.
A listener then raised the case of Charlie McAdam, father of the AFL footballer Gilbert, and said to be a member of the “stolen generations”, too.
I could not remember McAdam’s details on the spot, and at first wrongly suggested he was from the Northern Territory, where the Federal Court had ruled on a famous “stolen generations” test case, finding there was no policy to remove Aboriginal children in the Territory just for racist reasons, rather than out of welfare concerns for the children. One of the two claimants (Peter Gunner) had been sent voluntarily by his mother to a school in Alice Springs, and the other (Lorna Cubillo) had been found at a bush camp with her father long gone, her mother dead and her grandmother no longer with her.  Witnesses in the case who claimed they were stolen, too, were shown under cross-examination to have equally weak cases.
Every court case since on the “stolen generations”, including ones in Western Australia and South Australia, has come up with similar findings: that there was no policy to steal the claimant because they were Aboriginal. Lists provided by “stolen generations” propagandist Robert Manne of children allegedly stolen turned out to be profoundly misleading, failing to identify even 10 children stolen by officials because they were Aboriginal.
But back to Charlie McAdam. As I said at the end of the show, I’d remembered wrongly. He was from Western Australia, not the Northern Territory.
So was he, perhaps, stolen?
Here are the bare facts of his early life:

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“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” - 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
February 12: Morning
"For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ." - 2 Corinthians 1:5
There is a blessed proportion. The Ruler of Providence bears a pair of scales--in this side he puts his people's trials, and in that he puts their consolations. When the scale of trial is nearly empty, you will always find the scale of consolation in nearly the same condition; and when the scale of trials is full, you will find the scale of consolation just as heavy. When the black clouds gather most, the light is the more brightly revealed to us. When the night lowers and the tempest is coming on, the Heavenly Captain is always closest to his crew. It is a blessed thing, that when we are most cast down, then it is that we are most lifted up by the consolations of the Spirit. One reason is, because trials make more room for consolation. Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper, and makes more room for consolation. God comes into our heart--he finds it full--he begins to break our comforts and to make it empty; then there is more room for grace. The humbler a man lies, the more comfort he will always have, because he will be more fitted to receive it. Another reason why we are often most happy in our troubles, is this--then we have the closest dealings with God. When the barn is full, man can live without God: when the purse is bursting with gold, we try to do without so much prayer. But once take our gourds away, and we want our God; once cleanse the idols out of the house, then we are compelled to honour Jehovah. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." There is no cry so good as that which comes from the bottom of the mountains; no prayer half so hearty as that which comes up from the depths of the soul, through deep trials and afflictions. Hence they bring us to God, and we are happier; for nearness to God is happiness. Come, troubled believer, fret not over your heavy troubles, for they are the heralds of weighty mercies.
Evening
"He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." - John 14:16
The Great Father revealed himself to believers of old before the coming of his Son, and was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the God Almighty. Then Jesus came, and the ever-blessed Son in his own proper person, was the delight of his people's eyes. At the time of the Redeemer's ascension, the Holy Spirit became the head of the present dispensation, and his power was gloriously manifested in and after Pentecost. He remains at this hour the present Immanuel--God with us, dwelling in and with his people, quickening, guiding, and ruling in their midst. Is his presence recognized as it ought to be? We cannot control his working; he is most sovereign in all his operations, but are we sufficiently anxious to obtain his help, or sufficiently watchful lest we provoke him to withdraw his aid? Without him we can do nothing, but by his almighty energy the most extraordinary results can be produced: everything depends upon his manifesting or concealing his power. Do we always look up to him both for our inner life and our outward service with the respectful dependence which is fitting? Do we not too often run before his call and act independently of his aid? Let us humble ourselves this evening for past neglects, and now entreat the heavenly dew to rest upon us, the sacred oil to anoint us, the celestial flame to burn within us. The Holy Ghost is no temporary gift, he abides with the saints. We have but to seek him aright, and he will be found of us. He is jealous, but he is pitiful; if he leaves in anger, he returns in mercy. Condescending and tender, he does not weary of us, but awaits to be gracious still.

Sin has been hammering my heart
Unto a hardness, void of love,
Let supplying grace to cross his art
Drop from above.
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Today's reading: Leviticus 13, Matthew 26:26-50 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Leviticus 13

Regulations About Defiling Skin Diseases
1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 2 "When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest....

Today's New Testament reading: Matthew 26:26-50

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you...."


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