Monday, May 04, 2015

Mon May 4th 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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After watching a private dancer, Floyd Mayweather, win a world championship boxing match on points, the question of unfair advantage has arisen. A technicality had denied the favoured opponent from using an anti inflammatory before the match. Floyd hadn't hurt anyone, but then Manny is not a woman. But the issue of unfair advantage plaguing left wing thinkers extends beyond such. How do unfair advantages get addressed? The ABC asks "Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?" and "Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring? "As a role model, Floyd would end the inequity. 

 Two jihadis died today attempting to kill artists. The jihadis had guns and explosives. But unlike Charlie Hebdo, the artists had significant armed support. Paris, Texas sounds a better place to draw. 

 Australian Federal Police explained its' role in relation to the executions of two of the Bali Nine. The AFP had not known specifics regarding the drug run and had notified the Indonesian police regarding details of it. Indonesian police rounded up the gang. If Indonesia had not been notified, the AFP might not have arrested anyone. 

 On this day in 1256, Pope Alexander IV issued a Papal Bull which allowed the Augustinian monastic order to constitute at Lecceto Monastery. Augustine of Hippo had, several hundred years before, championed the interpretation of the trinity and contributed to the development of Just war theory. On this day in 1415, the Council of Constance, whose main task was to unify the papacy, condemned Jan Huss and John Wycliffe. Huss was executed soon after, Wycliffe wasn't. Huss' crime was to be critical of the Catholic Church and to have a view on the eucharist that the church condemned. Huss had been influenced by the writings of Wycliffe. Wycliffe, living in England which was undergoing civil war, created an early English version of the Bible. In 1471, the Battle of Tewkesbury was favorable for Edward IV, but not Lancastrian Edward, Prince of Wales, who was killed, aged 17. According to some accounts, shortly after the rout of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, a small contingent of men under the Duke of Clarence found the grieving prince near a grove, and immediately beheaded him on a makeshift block, despite his pleas. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided the new world between Spain and Portugal. 

 In 1675, Charles II of England ordered the Greenwich Observatory be built, because he liked to watch. In 1814, Napoleon saw and landed on Elba as part of an exile which would not last. In 1869, the Naval Battle of Hakodate was fought between the new Japan and the shogunate of the Republic of Ezo. The Republic lost two steam ships sunk, and three surrendered. Japan lost one steamship of eight. The battle was fought over several days, starting on the 4th and finishing on the 10th of May. In 1871, The National Association opened its' first season of Baseball in Fort Wayne Indiana. In 1886, at a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, called the Haymarket Affair, a bomb was thrown at police, who fired back into the crowd. Eight died and sixty were wounded. 

 In 1904, on the same day the US began building the Panama Canal, Charles Stewart Rolls met Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. In 1919, May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan. In 1932, Al Capone began serving eleven years for tax evasion. He would be paroled in '39 and never spent another day in prison. In 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea began with USS Yorktown launching aircraft against Japanese navy at Tulagi Island in the Solomans. In 1945, on the same day a concentration camp was freed in Hamburg, the North German Army surrendered to Montgomery. In 1949, the entire Torino football team died in a plane crash at the edge of Turin Italy. In 1953, Hemingway won the Pulitzer for "The Old Man and the Sea." It was the last big work to be published in Hemingway's lifetime, about an old sea man and his hunt for a marlin. In 1961, the Freedom Riders began their travels through the South of the US. In 1979, a red headed daughter of a Welsh Coal Miner became PM of the UK. Her name was Margaret Thatcher. In 1982, 20 UK sailors were killed when Argentina fired a French made Exocet missile. In 1998, the Unabomber took a plea deal to save his worthless life. 
2014
The stunning beauty Audrey Hepburn was born on this day in 1929. Jane McGrath in 1966. But my imagination is of a woman, who as a young child was photographed nude with her parent's blessing. I care nothing for the photograph, but the person. Such photography in its' day was considered beautiful, whereas today it is known as kiddy porn, it might not have been for that purpose it was made. She had inspired the photographer who was a mathematical genius and brilliant writer. Alice Liddell was born in 1852. The photographer made up stories placing her in fantasy settings on a boat trip. We know the stories as Alice in Wonderland. The author, known as Lewis Carroll maintained a healthy adult relationship with her and her family when she had grown up. Something that kiddy porn peoples are not noted for. She had a long, healthy life, lost two of her three sons to WW1, but was survived by the third. 

There is much discussion as to how to tackle the debt left by six years of ALP government. ALP leaders claim the debt is not a bad problem. People living in the real world note $12 billion of interest a year and a further decade of structural debt during boom times is unsustainable and our children will suffer if we fail to address the issue now. We have an example of what we can do. Margaret Thatcher was elected PM on this day in 1979.
Historical perspectives on this day 
In 1256, the Augustinian monastic order was constituted at the Lecceto Monastery when Pope Alexander IV issued a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae. 1415, religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance. 1436, assassination of the Swedish rebel (later national hero) Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson 1471, Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury: Edward IV defeated a Lancastrian Army and killed Edward, Prince of Wales. 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation.

 In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw. 1675, King Charles II of England ordered the construction of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. 1686, the Municipality of Ilagan was founded in the Philippines. 1776, Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III. 1799, Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam: The siege of Seringapatam ended when the city was invaded and Tipu Sultan killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris.

 In 1814, Emperor Napoleon I of France arrived at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile. Also 1814, King Ferdinand VII of Spain signed the Decrete of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism. 1836, Formation of Ancient Order of Hibernians 1859, the Cornwall Railway opened across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England. 1869, the Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay was fought in Japan. 1871, the National Association, the first professional baseball league, opened its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 1886, Haymarket affair: A bomb was thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, United States, killing eight and wounding 60. The police fired into the crowd.

 In 1902, eight fishermen lost their lives in Galway Bay, Ireland in a drowning tragedy. 1904, the United States begins construction of the Panama Canal. Also 1904, Charles Stewart Rolls met Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. 1910, the Royal Canadian Navy was created. 1912, Italy occupied the Greek island of Rhodes. 1919, May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan. 1932, in Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone began serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

 In 1942, World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea began with an attack by aircraft from the United States aircraft carrier USS Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese forces had invaded Tulagi the day before. 1945, World War II: Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg was liberated by the British Army. Also 1945, World War II: German surrendered at Lüneburg Heath, the North German Army surrendered to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. Also 1945, World War II: Denmark was granted liberation, when Germany was forced to step out of Denmark thus ending five years of occupation. 1946, in San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines from the nearby Treasure Island Naval Base stopped a two-day riot at Alcatraz federal prison. Five people were killed in the riot. 1949, the entire Torino football team (except for two players who did not take the trip: Sauro Tomà, due to an injury and Renato Gandolfi, because of coach request) was killed in a plane crash at the Superga hill at the edge of Turin, Italy.

 In 1953, Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea. 1959, the first Grammy Awards were held. 1961, American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" began a bus trip through the South. Also 1961, Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather attained a new altitude record for manned balloon flight ascending in the Strato-Lab V open gondola to 113,740 feet (34.67 km). 1970, Vietnam War: Kent State shootings: The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, opened fire killing four unarmed students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia. 1972, the Don't Make A Wave Committee, a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changed its name to "Greenpeace Foundation". 1974, an all-female Japanese team reached the summit of Manaslu, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000-meter peak. 1979, Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

 In 1982, twenty sailors were killed when the British Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War. 1988, the PEPCON disaster rocked Henderson, Nevada, as tons of space shuttle fuel detonated during a fire. 1989, Iran-Contra Affair: Former White House aide Oliver North was convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions, however, were later overturned on appeal. 1990, Latvia proclaimed the renewal of its independence after the Soviet occupation. 1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a peace accord regarding Palestinian autonomy granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. 1998, a federal judge in Sacramento, California, gave "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepted a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty. 2000, Ken Livingstone became the first Mayor of London. 2002, an EAS Airlines BAC 1-11-500 crashes in a suburb of Kano, Nigeria shortly after takeoff, killing 149 people. 2007, Greensburg, Kansas was almost completely destroyed by a 1.7 mi wide EF5 tornado. It was the first-ever tornado to be rated as such with the new Enhanced Fujita Scale. 2014, three people were killed and 62 injured in a pair of bombings on buses in Nairobi, Kenya.
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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, September https://www.createspace.com/5106914, 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 Zaya Toma. Born the same date Latvia declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 .. and Star Wars Day. I join with Latvians in honouring your day. May the fourth be with you.
Deaths
Pope Alexander VI
Don't give me that bull. Try not to bomb. Enjoy the coral. Peace protestors always support war? They have been liberated. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (3:25pm)

They’re asking some big questions at the ABC: 
Is having a loving family an unfair advantage?
Should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring? 
These people are insane.
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CROWD OF THORNS

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (1:52pm)

It’s the lefty tiltfest to end all lefty tiltfests, starring (among many, many others) Gaia gal and interpretive dancerAnna Rose:

image

What does she do for the other 8759 hours every year?
(Via Eightace, who emails: “Rosie Batty notably excepted from any scorn, of course.") 
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DRAWING FIRE

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (12:46pm)

An art exhibit turns bloody: 
Two men who opened fire Sunday outside of an event in Garland, Texas attended by Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker and outspoken critic of radical Islam, have been killed by police.
“As today’s Muhammad Art Exhibit event at the Curtis Culwell Center was coming to an end, two males drove up to the front of the building in a car. Both males were armed and began shooting at a Garland ISD security officer,” reads a statement on the city of Garland’s Facebook page. The shooting occurred at around 7 p.m. local time.
“Garland Police officers engaged the gunmen, who were both shot and killed,” the statement reads, adding that the security guard’s injuries are not life threatening.
“Police suspect the vehicle may contain an incendiary device and the bomb squad is on the scene,” according to the city. Nearby businesses have been evacuated. 
Further news and updates here.
UPDATE. Today’s scorecard:

image

UPDATE II. Lenny alert: 
Shortly after the shooting, a prominent Muslim leader in Dallas said tweeted that the incident was “just what we didn’t want.”
“The community stayed away from event,” wrote Imam Zia Sheikh. “Seems like a  lone wolf type of attack. Just what we didn’t want.” 
As the wounded security guard can attest, not all of the community stayed away.
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CHAN-SUKAMARAN STADIUM

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (4:17am)

The Australian Catholic University last week announced it would introduce scholarships in the names of executed heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
We’re in for some awkward conversations 30 years down the track if this deification process continues. Just imagine: 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'CHAN-SUKAMARAN STADIUM'
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RECORD FLANNERYFALL

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (3:55am)

Nobody likes being reminded of their inaccurate predictions. Unfortunately for climate warrior Tim Flannery, those are just about the only predictions he’s ever made.
Back in 2007, the ABC’s Sally Sara began a Flannery interview with this ominous intro: “Professor Tim Flannery has warned climate change will impact on Australia to the point where Sydney can expect to receive 60 per cent less rainfall than it does at present.”


Icon Arrow Continue reading 'RECORD FLANNERYFALL'
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THE JONATHAN GREEN STRATEGY

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (3:19am)

Step 1: Start fights with conservatives.
Step 2: Lose all of them.
Step 3: Feign neutrality and beg for “constructive discussion”.
Step 4: Continue collecting taxpayer funding from people who earn less than you.
(Via Chris Kenny.)
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INTELLECTUALS KNOW KILLERS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE KILLED

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (3:02am)

Matt Welch’s take on leftist grievance poker: “145 Intellectuals Agree: Dead Cartoonists Aren’t Worthy of Free-Speech Award if Their Murderers Come From a Disadvantaged Minority.”
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A VIVID, ROUNDED INSIGHT

Tim Blair – Monday, May 04, 2015 (2:22am)

Islamic criminal lawyer Adam Houda: 
“Islam doesn’t oppress women, it empowers them, liberates them.” 
Sure it does, Adam. Sure it does. Fairfax’s profile continues: 
To get a vivid, rounded insight into the man, you need to step back in time, to a suburban video store more than 30 years ago, to a young kid in bare feet spellbound by a brassy, celebrity lawyer he’d never even met, who was always in the news. A lawyer called Chris Murphy, who would go on to hire this kid as an ambitious young law student, and during his first week on the job would hand his underling a book to read.
A book entitled How to Win Through Intimidation. 
As it happens, I’ve experienced the phone version of Murphy’s intimidation technique. It isn’t intimidating. It’s sad. He basically throws around random statements – about his childhood, his friendship with Kerry Packer, his family’s military history, the suburb where he grew up, his unique theory about culture as race and so on – until he hopes you become exhausted. It was like listening to three episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? at once. Perhaps it works in court.
At one point he threatened to post a Twitter link to a Media Watch hatchet piece from 2007, and seemed puzzled when I expressed no alarm. I had to point out that the episode had already been broadcast and was still online, to rather greater exposure than Murphy’s Twitter site. But back to his protege: 
At that stage, Houda recalls, his family wasn’t religious. “If you look back at my family photos from the ‘70s and ‘80s, KB bottles feature prominently at family barbecues and dinners. We weren’t very good practising Muslims back then. My relatives would party a lot, never fasted, and hardly ever prayed. It took me a while to convince them to stop drinking.” 
So a process of happy assimilation and modernisation was ended. Something similar happened in Iran. Houda has lately represented some colourful types: 
The conversation moves on to Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, now in the Middle East fighting with IS. I ask him how he found them as clients. “I know them to be good guys,” he says. 
Perhaps because they empower women. They liberate them.
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IN CASE ANYBODY FORGOT

Tim Blair – Saturday, May 02, 2015 (4:14pm)

An important reminder from Labor’s Jenny Macklin:

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Islamist attack on Texas art exhibition. UPDATE: Muslim spokesman blames organisers

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (7:05pm)

Islamism

There is a real problem with Islam in the West:
Two men were shot and killed in a parking lot outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland Sunday afternoon…
The two suspects drove up and opened fire near the center, which was hosting a Muhammad Art exhibit, and hit a Garland ISD officer.
Garland Police shot and killed the two men…

Multiple SWAT teams and an FBI bomb squad were searching the area around the center for explosives in a vehicle.
Some SWAT members were already at the scene for the art event.
The exhibition was organised with the danger clearly in mind:
The New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative was hosting a contest that would award $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad at the venue. Caricatures of the Islamic prophet are considered offensive by many Muslims.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative paid an additional $10,000 upfront for 40 officers to work security at the event. The group’s president, Pamela Gellar, called it “the high cost of freedom."…
The decision to book the event came a little more than a week after Islamic militants in France killed 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The organizers said they were exercising their freedom of expression.
Let’s now see how many people really meant it when they declared “Je suis Charlie”. My tip: the organisers, not the terrorists, will be blamed by much of the media.
UPDATE
Prediction checks out.
Kuranda Seyit, spokesman of the Islamic Council of Victoria, gives a disgraceful comment to the ABC, suggesting that people exercising their free speech brought on this attack through their “stupidity”:
This is really about baiting Muslims. It’s about you know venting hatred towards one religious community.  It is not about free speech. And it’s a ridiculous notion to have a competition offering $10,000 so someone can denigrate the prophet And they did this knowingly that this would upset lots and lot of Muslims in the community and tragically what we’ve got is a result of someone’s incompetence and stupidity to even run such an event. It is a shame and I very sad that this is happened, but if you do this, if you poke a dog with a stick it’s going to bite you.

Submit or die. Your fault it you choose wrong. 
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Reading bedtime stories to your children? How unfair

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (3:35pm)

The ABC, now crusading for gay marriage, struggles to think of something positive to say about traditional families:
Plato famously wanted to abolish the family and put children into care of the state. Some still think the traditional family has a lot to answer for, but some plausible arguments remain in favour of it.
“Some”? Merely “plausible”?
In fact, the ABC’s The Philosopher’s Zone broods on the nasty ways that loving families promote unfairness:
Functional family interactions—from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories—form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.
The answer:

One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.
Of course, even a philosopher on the ABC realises that may be a step too far in this manic obsession for equal outcomes:

‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’
So should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring?
‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift.
The fundamental madness here? To “problematise” (to use the modern academic jargon) the functional family rather than the dysfunctional. To want good parents to do less for their children rather than other parents do more. And, of course, to ban the choices and sacrifices that other people make in what they consider are the best interests of their own children.
(Thanks to reader Johnny.) 
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Stopping people of no identity becoming radical whatevers. UPDATE: nice people, says Adam Houda

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (10:34am)

Islamism

A press release from the Andrews Government:
The Andrews Labor Government has allocated $25 million over four years to develop a whole of community approach to enhance social cohesion and community resilience to counter all forms of violent extremism.
“All forms of violent extremism”? How many exactly do we face?
Only one comes to mind, but this press release dare not speak its name:

....to address social cohesion, community resilience, marginalisation and extremism ...  a particular focus on youth involvement ...  in partnership with community groups ...  support communities ...  may lead to individual and community disengagement, anti-social behaviour and extremism ... those at risk of marginalisation ...  addressing marginalisation and extremism ... tackling violent extremism is essential, particularly when it comes to engaging younger Victorians.
How can a deradicalisation program work when it is aimed at no one in particular?
Just to underline the intellectual dishonesty, the only mention of Islam in the entire press release suggests Muslims are not offenders but victims:
The Taskforce will also look at ways to combat racism and bigotry, with a focus on addressing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
(Thanks to reader drillerpaul.)
UPDATE
Reader sillyoldbugger:
There is a second form of extremism called CFMEUism. Perhaps Mr Andrews had this in mind.
UPDATE
What evil? Where?
Islamic criminal lawyer Adam Houda is profiled by the Sydney Morning Herald:
His anti-Israel and anti-US rants are regular and vociferous: “Special place in hell for Nazi-Israel” (August 5, 2014). “USA and Israel, the world’s two leading terrorist states” (December 12, 2014). “EVIL PIGS: Israeli forces shoot 5 year old boy in the face” (December 26, 2014). “On the issue of terrorism & barbarity, the IS are absolute amateurs compared to Israel” (January 4, 2015)…
The conversation moves on to Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, now in the Middle East fighting with IS. I ask him how he found them as clients. “I know them to be good guys,” he says. “If you speak to [Elomar’s] family, he succumbed to [schizophrenic Sharrouf’s] madness."…
Houda insists that Sharrouf was “driven by what he saw as great injustices occurring in the Middle East, by evil dictators who were supported by America and its allies. Granted, he’s gone about things the wrong way, but if you had the opportunity to discuss these issues with Sharrouf, I think you’d be impressed by his sincerity.”
I find this kind of venting extremely worrying, not least because it is mainstreaming.
Or are we supposed to believe that Houda is just part of a tiny, unrepresentative minority?
UPDATE
No particular faith? Certainly no will to resist:
A COUNCIL says it cannot and should not stop a controversial Islamic group linked to counter-terrorism operations from meeting inside a council-owned leisure centre in Melbourne’s southeast.
The Al-Furqan Islamic Information Centre closed its Springvale South doors just days after its associates were arrested in an alleged plot to murder police on Anzac Day.
From the very same council:
Greater Dandenong Council ...  called on women to wear the Islamic headdress for three hours today as part of a “social experiment” for National Youth Week.
If the council cracked down on Islamist groups there might be less fear of Islam. 
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Bill Shorten now the leader in strife

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:56am)

IN January, Tony Abbott seemed finished as Prime Minister. But how things have changed.
Now the leader under pressure is Labor’s Bill Shorten. Just ask his smiling deputy, Tanya Plibersek.
The mischief began last week, with Shorten away and Plibersek acting leader.
First, Plibersek declared Labor should now force its politicians to vote for gay marriage, rather than allow a conscience vote.
Many Labor MPs were outraged. MPs — including devout Christians — who would feel morally obliged to vote against party policy could be expelled under Labor’s rules. Labor could split. Shorten, on his return, quickly rejected Plibersek’s bullying approach, but then had to hose down more strife.
(Read full article here.)
UPDATE
Rowan Dean:
So how does Tanya stab Bill in the back?...The national Labor conference in July will be the bloody arena for what will be two humiliating defeats for Shorten at the hands of his traitorous deputy…
On gay marriage, Plibersek is demanding that Labor MPs no longer get to vote according to their conscience, but be forced to vote in favour… Not content with wounding Shorten on one tortuous issue, Plibersek simultaneously plunged in the knife on Palestine.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Tearing our country apart

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:52am)

Culture wars, The politics of race

SO how is our multiculturalism going? And how is our “reconciliation” movement working out?
How united are we after years of obsessing over our various “racial” and religious identities, and preparing long lists of grievances and claims?
How peaceful are we after all these anti-racism lectures, harmony days, national apologies and laws against saying upsetting things? Well, check the news of just the past month.
We had SES and Rural Fire Services volunteers being warned not to wear their uniforms on the way home for fear of being beheaded.
We had Muslim men charged with plotting Anzac Day terrorist attacks.

We had angry Armenians demanding our politicians call the Turkish massacres of Armenians a century ago a “genocide”, and vandals in retaliation writing “F--- Armenians, Assyrians and Jews” on a Bonnyrigg, NSW, monument to the dead.
We had African gangs in Dandenong so out of control that police warned locals to flee on sight: “Get back in your car and go, or walk off — don’t hang around to see what they might do.”
We had the head of the “Aboriginal Provisional Government” trying to go through Brisbane airport on his “Aboriginal passport”.
We had a former SBS reporter declare a sovereign Yidindji Government on land around Cairns, to follow the Murrawarri Republic on the NSW border.
We had the chairman of Western Australia’s Aboriginal Health Council applaud Senator Jacqui Lambie’s call for reserved seats for Aborigines, of whom Lambie last year reckoned she was one, threatening to sue an Aboriginal leader who disagreed.
Surely, enough. Take pity on this torn country!
I doubt I’m alone in feeling less reconciled and more threatened than ever, and wonder how much worse this divisiveness will get.
A lot, I discovered last Friday and Saturday.
(Read full article here.) 
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If a male newsreader asked if Neighbours starlets would “put out”…

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:44am)

A similar tweet from a male newsreader could well be career ending:
image
Even from a female SBS newsreader it strikes me as tacky.
UPDATE
Different rules for different genders, it seems:
JULIA Morris ... began explaining why she wasn’t given a co-presenter [at the Logies].
”A lot of the boys on my “To Do” list simply weren’t available tonight,” she says.
(Thanks to reader Tom.) 
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The Australian’s readers are angrier than that

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:36am)

I don’t think the letters page of today’s Australian quite captures the anger and vehement opposition that almost every one of the readers responding to Paul Kelly’s sinister article have so overwhelmingly expressed in reply.
The reaction suggests the referendum proposal is not just racist but doomed.  
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The invasion of Europe

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:29am)

The number of illegal immigrants now pouring in Italy from Muslim nations is incredible - and poses a great threat to European security:

Nearly 5,800 migrants were plucked from boats off the coast of Libya and 10 bodies were recovered in less than 48 hours, Italy’s coast guard said, in one of the biggest rescue operations this year… Mild spring weather and calm summer seas are expected to push total arrivals in Italy for 2015 to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 on last year, according to an Interior Ministry projection.
And the deaths continue:
Separately, authorities in Egypt said that three people died when a migrant boat attempting to reach Greece sank off its coast. Thirty-one people were rescued… About 1,800 are estimated to have perished during the crossing already this year...
UPDATE
Even Israelis, of all people, have underestimated how much culture counts when administering their immigration programs:
Hundreds of Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin blocked a main Tel Aviv road on Sunday, stepping up anti-racism protests triggered by a video clip that showed policemen shoving and punching a black soldier…
Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel in dramatic, top-secret operations in the 1980s and 1990s after a rabbinical ruling that they were direct descendants of the biblical Jewish Dan tribe.

The community, which now numbers around 135,500 out of Israel’s population of over 8 million, has long complained of discrimination, racism and poverty… Ethiopian households earn 35 per cent less than the national average and only half of the community’s youth receive high school diplomas, compared with 63 per cent for the rest of the population.
At a protest by Ethiopian Jews on Thursday in Jerusalem, police used water cannon to keep angry crowds away from Mr Netanyahu’s residence, and at least 13 people were injured.
Racism, that sanctifying brand of resentment, does not explain why so few Ethiopians finish school and so few earn good money. It misdiagnoses the real problem, and creates an unbridgeable fault line for future conflict:
“Being black, I have to protest today,” 34-year-old Eddie Maconen said before the clashes outside the municipality.
“I never experienced police violence against me personally, but it is aimed at my community which I have to support.”
Mr Maconen, who came to the country aged three, said ... “First the police need to be dealt with, then we’ll get to all the other [official] bodies that screw over Ethiopians,” he said.

And, of course, Israel has created another condition that the Left will use to delegitimise it as racist to the very core. 
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Yes, this really is a Budget crisis. And we really are on the road to Greece

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (8:01am)

The political class is leading us on the road to Greece - a prospect the media claimed was laughable only a few short months ago:

Commonwealth deficits will total $150 billion over the next four years — almost $50bn worse than official forecasts — with next week’s budget to reveal further massive shortfalls in tax revenues as spending blows out to its highest level in 30 years.
Consulting firm Deloitte Access Economics expects personal income tax revenue to fall short of the rapid growth expected by Treasury as wage rises are pegged, while company and superannuation tax revenue will also fail to meet the forecasts on which the budget update in December was based…
However, the Treasurer said he was not expecting a large downgrade from the mid-year update in the budget, which would not include any “dramatic fiscal action” to repair the nation’s finances.
There is indeed a budget crisis, because there is no political will or ability to halt this dramatic slide by the most effective means - cutting spending. As one minister admitted to me, the public simply isn’t demanding spending cuts, and the government can’t get them through a Senate dominated by Labor, Greens and independent Senators. Add to that a media that’s largely hostile to the Abbott Government and there is simply no pressure to cut spending before it’s too late.

And so we get bizarre debates like this - the Government offering more handouts, and Labor and the Greens pretending they still are too stingy:
NAOMI WOODLEY: ... Another two years’ funding for universal preschool is the latest announcement....
TONY ABBOTT: It is important that childcare is seen not as welfare but as a way of strengthening our economy…
NAOMI WOODLEY: Tony Abbott says the Government’s closely looking the Productivity Commission’s recommendations for one means-tested payment to replace the current childcare rebate and childcare benefit…
NAOMI WOODLEY: Parents will have to work a minimum number of hours to receive the revamped child care subsidy and that has both Labor and the Greens worried.
Labor and the Greens want taxpayers to subsidise child care even for parents who barely work. When the country is broke.
Australia risks being destroyed by populism. 
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Tim Flannery should explain these full dams

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (7:49am)

Climate Council head Tim Flannery in 2007:

So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems...
Climate Council head Tim Flannery in 2007:
In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.
The dams of Brisbane, Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast today:

image
It is the complete failure of the world to warm and storm as the warmists predicted that has led the evidence-minded to doubt:

Norway’s finance minister says she doubts that global warming is man-made, seemingly contradicting the country’s official position in U.N. climate talks....
Siv Jensen answered “no” to a question about whether she was convinced that climate change was caused by humans.
Asked to clarify whether she was in doubt about man-made warming, she said “yes.”
An open expression of skepticism by a minister at the heart of the Norwegian government is certain to send shockwaves through the European political establishment.
UPDATE
Tim Blair:
In 2005, the ABC (of course) reported Flannery’s prediction that “the ongoing drought could leave Sydney’s dams dry in just two years.” This might be one of history’s more extreme miscalculations. As of Saturday, Flannery missed the mark by 2,360,104,000,000 litres.
(Thanks to reader Graham.) 
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Liberals cannot lose this rare chance to reform an ABC at war with them

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (7:16am)

The ABC has never been so brazenly biased, so in breach of its legal obligation to be balanced. So how is this remotely possible that those responsible be rewarded with more time in the job?
… managing director Mark Scott ...  is understood to have discussed a possible extension to his term of up to a year.
Who could possibly have entertained a “discussion” of such an inappropriate possibility?
No one who has contributed to this disgraceful imbalance, such that every host of a major news and current affairs program is of the Left, should replace the man who oversaw it:
Two clear internal candidates have emerged as lobbying has begun over the role: the director of news, Kate Torney, and the director of television, Richard Finlayson have engaged in “soft diplomacy” leading up to the search.
Only someone with a demonstrable record of offering balance and, incidentally, financial prudence should be in the running:
Sky News Australia chief Angelos Frangopoulos’ name has been mentioned as a possibility by Canberra politicians who admire Sky’s cheaper, more flexible news-gathering service.
The ABC is the country’s biggest media organisation by far, of a massive size that is unhealthy in a pluralist democracy. It is also expressly hostile to conservatives generally, and abusing its vast power. Getting it to observe its duty to be balanced is for conservative parties a question of political life or death.
This rare opportunity for reform must not be missed.
UPDATE
In Britain:
UKIP leader Nigel Farage today calls for a radical overhaul of the BBC to cut costs, reduce the licence fee, tackle political bias and focus the corporation on “quality rather than quantity” in its entertainment output.
Farage takes on the audience stack that the ABC’s Q&A prepares for conservatives every Monday:
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Putting the stink in distinction at the school for warmism

Andrew Bolt May 04 2015 (5:48am)

Global warming - propaganda

Tony Thomas checks in for some taxpayer-funded washing of his sceptical brain:
A keen student, I have just completed Week One of John Cook’s MOOC at Queensland University: “Denial 101x – Making Sense of Climate Science Denial."… I was not intending to write about my studies so early, in case that got me prematurely expelled. But one week of it is enough.
Here’s why.
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Just a quick shot.  A good omen as my workshop started off it's tour tonight.  For the next ten days we will be in...
Posted by Matt Granz on Monday, 4 May 2015

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Marre d'arriver en retard à la crèche le matin ? On a trouvé LA poussette qu'il vous faut  :p
Posted by Moto journal on Saturday, 26 July 2014

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Lay vs. lieLay is transitive. ("Hens lay eggs.")Lie is intransitive. ("I will lie down.")
Posted by Grammarly on Saturday, 2 May 2015

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#Pacquiao & his mom sharing a pre-fight prayer. #MayPac
Posted by Showtime Boxing on Saturday, 2 May 2015

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Spring cleaning tips to freshen up your writing: http://bit.ly/1IzfpOG
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Sunday, 3 May 2015

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Democratic leaders have been responsible for a half century of neglect... Who've proved themselves to be hurtful, and...
Posted by Lou Dobbs on Wednesday, 29 April 2015

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Posted by T-Pain on Saturday, 2 May 2015

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اموزش به کودکان در مدارس  ....Teaching children to Islamic state schools
Posted by Ramin Abdali on Wednesday, 22 October 2014

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Our intrepid Night Troubadours!
Posted by Matt Granz on Sunday, 3 May 2015

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Resumen de la Pelea Floyd Mayweather, Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao... ustedes que opinan? visita www.radioturquesa.fm
Posted by Radio Turquesa 105.1 FM on Saturday, 2 May 2015

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=== Posts from last year ===

Labor shows it’s learnt nothing

Piers Akerman – Sunday, May 04, 2014 (8:45am)

Senator Sam Dastyari is the embodiment of one of the biggest reasons why the Labor Party attracted the votes of barely a third of Australians at the last election.
A student wheeler-dealer, he worked with Labor lobbyists Hawker Britton (haven’t heard much from political mastermind Bruce Hawker lately) before being elected secretary of NSW Labor with the help of right-wing unions, and subsequently being slipped into a vacant Senate slot.
The 30-year-old has never faced an election and his senate term has three years to run.
Proving you can take a boy out of Sussex Street but you can’t take Sussex Street out of a boy, the wet-behind-the-ears senator attempted to smear Audit Commission chairman Tony Shepherd in a senate committee hearing on Friday.
The hearings, the second since the Audit Commission was set to work last year, were designed to assist the public probe the commission’s members about their work.
Dastyari chose to ignore the five-volume report (three volumes are exhaustive appendices) and try to play the man.
Tony Shepherd has been engaged in the construction business longer than Dastyari has been on Earth. He has spent 40 years nation building, putting together huge infrastructure projects including the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, the Moomba to Sydney ethane pipeline, the Anzac warships, Victoria’s CityLink and Eastlink tollways, Sydney’s Walsh Bay redevelopment, power stations, railways, highways and freeways, the stuff that makes the nation work.
Never has there been a suggestion of corruption raised or his integrity questioned.
Until he met Labor’s neophyte senator carrying his bucket of slime, that is. Dastyari prides himself as a Labor warrior and is held up as such by Labor’s media cheer squad.
Anne Summers, former prime minister Julia Gillard’s feminist spear carrier, approvingly noted in a profile in the Sydney Morning Herald last August that it ‘was no doubt reassuring that … “Dastyari had married Helen Barron, an economist he’d met while she was on the staff of former NSW ALP premier Morris Iemma, and the daughter of renowned ALP svengali Peter Barron. Barron could be expected to give sound advice to his young son-in-law, as would other party elders such as Unions NSW boss Mark Lennon and Barron’s close friend Graham Richardson, who had been NSW ALP general secretary from 1976 to 1983.”
The Labor senator began his attack on the commission, made up primarily of respected former senior public servants, asking whether it had a “disproportionately conservative make-up?” Putting aside the obvious fact that the politics of public servants should never be an issue, one might ask whether Dastyari could possibly suggest a single MP from his own side of politics who had served in any senior financial capacity with any credibility or who could match any of the committee members in the integrity stakes. Forget it.
He then delved into the Sussex Street mire to ask Shepherd about a donation that he allegedly made to a foundation association connected to the NSW Liberal Party in 2010.
Shepherd would have none of it and, unflustered, pointed out that when he was associated with the construction giant, Transfield, he had banned the company from making any political donations.
He did so because, in NSW, under Dastyari’s Labor Party, the stench of corruption was spreading like noxious bilge oil.
It is to the credit of Greens Senator Richard Di Natale that he quickly moved to dissuade the junior senator from his unprincipled and totally irrelevant attack. It would also appear that Di Natale took the first opportunity at the end of the hearing to apologise for Dastyari’s behaviour before shaking Shepherd’s hand.
Dastyari’s gutter behaviour reflects the worst of Labor’s response to the Audit Commission’s considerable efforts.
Most Australians understand that the commission’s recommendations are broad guidelines for fixing Labor’s economic mess. As Shepherd told Dastyari and the other senators on Friday: “There is no such thing as government money, only taxpayers’ money, and we shouldn’t ask the taxpayer to continue to pay for duplication and inefficiencies.”
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The false equivalence of ICAC

Miranda Devine – Sunday, May 04, 2014 (6:42am)

THE demise of Mike Gallagher makes you wonder where ICAC is going next.
Of course there is no excuse for slush fund trickery, if that has been happening. But can we please stop equating the venal corruption for personal enrichment at taxpayer’s expense, which has been exposed in Labor’s ranks, with clumsy Liberal attempts to circumvent Nathan Rees’ vengeful restrictions on campaign donations.
And why is only one side paying the price.
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Cyclists’ lethal entitlement mentality

Miranda Devine – Sunday, May 04, 2014 (6:39am)

VIDEO taken moments before the fatal bicycle accident in Sydney’s Neutral Bay last week shows the 35-year-old male cyclist, whizzing down the footpath, onto a pedestrian crossing, and straight into the path of a turning bus. The bus driver would never have seen him.
The bicycle lobby can get as indignant as it likes, but nothing will change the laws of physics. When a large vehicle hits flimsy aluminium tubes and human flesh, there is no contest. It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong in the end.
The “a meter matters” campaign, to force drivers to keep their distance, is worthwhile but it’s not a blanket protection. If you’re riding a bike on Sydney’s congested roads, the slightest mistake can have fatal consequences.
Roads minister Duncan Gay’s kneejerk proposal to licence cyclists won’t help either. There is already a law against riding on the footpath and that didn’t prevent this tragedy.
The biggest danger for cyclists is an aggressive new entitlement mentality, fostered by the bicycle lobby, that makes them feel invincible. 
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A man who can save the Senate

Miranda Devine – Sunday, May 04, 2014 (5:59am)

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THE trick of running a business - or a government - is to keep a lot of balls in the air at the same time.
And some of the biggest balls in Australia at the moment are in the Senate – six new crossbenchers arriving in July.
They represent the will of the people, who voted in record numbers against the major parties. One in four people. Record numbers, record disillusionment. It’s a message neither party has heard.
So far the newbies have had little attention from the government, despite the fact that they will have the power to block or pass legislation.
That’s because the Coalition will have just 33 seats in the 76 member senate. So if Labor and the Greens gang up against them, in order for the government to get its legislation through, it will need the support of six of eight crossbenchers, of whom at least four will be newbies.
There are the three Palmer United Party members, Glenn Lazarus, 49, a former footballer, Jacqui Lambie, 43, a Tasmanian ex-soldier, and Dio Wang, 32, a Chinese-born engineer; the Motoring Enthusiasts Party’s Ricky Muir, 34, an unemployed sawmiller, and the Liberal Democrats’ David Leyonhjelm, 61, a libertarian former vet.
Last, but not least, is one of the most impressive thinkers ever to hit Parliament House, Family First’s Bob Day, 61, a former plumber from Adelaide who became one of Australia’s most successful home builders.
Dismissed by the media as “a mishmash, grab bag, barnyard, liquorice allsorts, flotsam and jetsam, motley crew of Star Wars aliens” who don’t belong in the hushed corridors of parliament house, it is the newbies’ very apartness from political insiders that voters wanted. Mr Smith goes to Washington times six.
The newbies are there to hold to account an increasingly out of touch political class.
That’s a big responsibility. But in the vacuum before they take their seats on July 1, these very important new crossbenchers have been quietly organising themselves into a formidable force.
They have been meeting and getting to know one another, united in a modest desire to do some good, forming an alliance that will likely determine the fate of the Abbott government. Since it is human nature to forget demanding benefactors once you have gained power, it’s unlikely Clive Palmer will exert much influence over his senators for long.
The senator-elect most likely to be their natural leader is Bob Day.
A one-time Liberal, Day quit the party in 2008 after losing a biased pre-selection which favoured Jamie Briggs, a 31-year-old political apparatchik.
Day says the rejection did him a favour. As a crossbencher he will have far more influence.
“My job to try to plead with the powers that be. I think I can be a great help to the government.”
He still lives in the same house in the Adelaide Hills he built when he married Bronte 33 years ago, and where they raised three children. Friends say he is honest, smart, lives modestly, and as dynamic as “a little Energiser bunny”.
Unlike most current politicians, Day has a profound philosophical framework and an understanding of Edmund Burke’s motto that “politics is morality writ large.”
His mentor was Bert Kelly, the farmer turned politician of the 1960s and ‘70s who virtually singlehandedly brought about the great transformation of Australia from high tariff protectionist to prosperous free trader.
Day wants to emulate Kelly’s success in bettering the nation. His aim, and the platform of his Christian party, is to ensure “every family has a job and a house”.
“If you’ve got a job and a home and kids you don’t need the government. High taxes, urban planning, industrial relations all [present] barriers that prevent people from working…. There are laws that are not just economically stupid but morally wrong.”
He decided to enter politics when he was president of the Housing Industry Association, trying to fix housing affordability and apprentice shortages.
“I went to see some politicians and realized the problem was they didn’t have a clue. They’d never had a proper job, never worked on a building site or a hospital ward. I thought this was crazy…Unless you know what it’s like to open your shop in the morning and have no customers come in the door you shouldn’t be in politics.”
Of his crossbench allies, he says: “We have two things in common: we’re all brand new and we all want to do a good job.”
Far from being a rabble, the newbies may surprise us. Along with established crossbenchers, Independent Nick Zenophon, a 55-year-old lawyer, and former boilermaker John Madigan, 47, of the DLP, they are allergic to cynical political expediency. If Day can help them hang together, they will represent the concerns of ordinary Australians and steer the government in the right direction.
In an era in which voters have switched off, and few leaders make it past a single term, Bob Day, Liberal party reject, is the “humble member” who might just set Canberra alight.
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Poll confirms: wrong promise broken

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (5:17pm)

Blame-shifting is not a good look if you’re trying to sell a controversial - or plain bad - idea: 
An exclusive Galaxy poll commissioned by The Sunday Telegraph has found Mr Abbott would lose an election if it was held now, with two party-preferred support for the Coalition tumbling to 48 per cent since the September election....
Nearly three-quarters of voters — 72 per cent — believe Mr Abbott’s debt tax is a “broken promise"…
One senior government source insisted that Mr Abbott “hates the idea’’ of the deficit levy but can’t see another way to spread the pain on to high income earners…
Some ministers insisted it was Treasurer Joe Hockey’s idea but was strongly supported by the PM.... Despite the PM’s moves to quell a backbench revolt over paid maternity leave by capping payouts at $50,000, the Galaxy poll also found 65 per cent of voters disagreed with the scheme in the current budgetary environment.
If you must break a promise, break the one to introduce to do something people hate. Don’t break the one people prefer you kept.
UPDATE
Simon Benson:
Economically, it is questionable whether the debt levy even stacks up ... 
The Commission of Audit’s chairman Tony Shepherd, who privately believes Hockey and Abbott have taken leave of their senses, went as far as he could ... to say as much. He said the debt and deficit tax was a matter for government but said they would want to make damn sure it doesn’t have an adverse effect on economic growth.
Yet for all our protests, this is the bottom line:  Abbott may is considering breaking a promise in order to save the country. That’s not a crime.
Far worse are the politicians – Greens and Labor - who betray their duty to help save it, too.
UPDATE
Peter Reith warns as Malcolm Turnbull broods:
Mr Reith said he had received angry phone calls from Liberal supporters last week as plans for the levy were revealed. 
“People were not happy, I mean they were angry and I’m talking about solid Liberal party people who have supported the party for years,” he said…

It’s understood there are rumblings in the cabinet room, with senior Liberals, including deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, holding reservations about the planned tax. 
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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The Bolt Report today

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (2:38pm)

On Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm.
Abbott’s deficit tax. Sacrifice or suicide?
My guest: Amanda Vanstone, former Howard Government minister and member of the Commission of Audit.
The panel: Michael Kroger and Cassandra Wilkinson.
NewsWatch: Rowan Dean.
Plus:  the menace of Clive Palmer’s money and a warning the arrest of a man who quoted Churchill in public.
And this: is Labor’s what-budget-crisis? strategy clever politics or a reckless betrayal of the national interest?
Your Say and more.
The videos appear here.
UPDATE
THE BOLT REPORT 
04 MAY 2014
INTERVIEW WITH AMANDA VANSTONE
ANDREW BOLT, PRESENTER: The Commission of Audit this week said the Government had to slash spending. Some cuts it suggested were just about efficiency, like scrapping 35 Government bodies, leaving education to the states. But a lot was about ending our handout mentality. We should cut Family Tax Benefits, pay a bit for doctor’s visits, force richer Australians to have to have private health insurance, include the family home in the pension assets test, and make the young pay more for their degrees. Joining me is a member of the Audit Commission, Amanda Vanstone, a former minister in the Howard Government. Thanks for joining me, Amanda.
AMANDA VANSTONE: I hope it’s a pleasure, Andrew. It usually is.
ANDREW BOLT: Are your cuts just about saving money, or is it also about changing our culture?
AMANDA VANSTONE: Look, it is not just about saving money - although we do need to do that. We know that the Rudd and Gillard Government went on this crazy spending spree, and you don’t have to listen to a former Liberal – as in, I am still a Liberal but a former Liberal member - to say that. Hawke and Keating have both said the spending has to stop. So it is about that. But it’s also about changing a culture. I mean, just think about it. We’re a country that says, “I grow up and I expect to have free health care, I expect to have welfare when I need it. I expect to have school laid on. I expect everything to be paid for.” And, by the way, “If I stay home and look after my kids, I expect you to pay for that too.” As if there’s someone else paying. But in fact it’s all of us paying. And, we just have to say to ourselves, “Look, you know, over time, why don’t we bring this back and get a bit more sensible about what we expect each other to pay for?”
ANDREW BOLT: It sounds like you would think that these - a lot of these cuts, particularly to that welfare mentality or that handout mentality, would be worth doing even if we didn’t have a Budget emergency, or crisis, or whatever you want to call it?
AMANDA VANSTONE: Well, I - that’s right. And there’s some debate about that. Some people say there’s not a crisis. Well look, we’re doing OK at the moment. But the old message is, and it is a good one, “Fix your roof while the sun is shining.” And while we are OK at the moment, I think this also true - that if we don’t change course, we won’t be. It’s a bit like saying, “Don’t worry. There’s plenty of years until we hit the rocks.” Well, why don’t we start now and go on a gradual glide of savings, not affecting people so dramatically. And one good example of that is the age pension. You know, we could keep the age pension at today’s dollar value, maintain it at its real value, so it would go up with CPI, but instead of indexing it to male average weekly earnings, index it to average weekly earnings. Now, what would that mean? A very slow glide of a change, but massive savings to - to the Australian Government. I think it’s a sensible thing to do.
ANDREW BOLT: Now, Amanda, you’ve referred to some people saying, “Don’t worry, there’s no problem there.” That’s obviously a reference to Bill Shorten, the Opposition Leader. Have a listen to him having a go at your commission.
BILL SHORTEN: This is a report written by big business, for big business, that will hurt hard-working families.
ANDREW BOLT: Amanda, what do you make of that?
AMANDA VANSTONE: Well, I don’t think too many people are listening to Bill Shorten for much longer. But, look, we had one business person on the commission. We had three former very senior public servants. And myself, who’s had the experience of being in Cabinet, especially at a time when savings need to be made. I mean, if Bill Shorten thinks big business thinks it’s a great idea to keep the impost on - tax impost on higher companies, change the Paid Parental Leave Scheme that Mr Abbott wanted to have and return those savings into child care, well, you know, good on him. I think that, for example, is a very sensible recommendation. More child care and more flexible child care. Because, Andrew, anyone who is at work now is really battling to get child care. It’s been an industry that’s built up, designed by Canberra for people who work 9 to 5, and it needs to change. It needs to be available to nurses who work odd hours and anyone else working shift work. We need to be much more flexible with our child care and we can do that if we put some money from savings and so on from the Paid Parental Leave Scheme into child care change.
ANDREW BOLT: But, Amanda, here’s what worries me. You’ve got Labor saying there is no crisis. You’ve presented $70 billion worth of savings, and they’ve said - they haven’t endorsed a single one of them apart from what you’ve just mentioned, the cut that you said to Tony Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme, because that will embarrass Tony Abbott. You’ve got every interest group in the country screaming blue murder and the Government soggy in the polls. You - we’re not going to get the change that you say we need, are we? 


Icon Arrow Continue reading 'The Bolt Report today'
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The Left’s silence on the evil that is Boko Haram

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (6:40am)

The Guardian’s Nick Cohen on the fear of describing Boko Haram as it really is:
Terrorists from a religious cult so reactionary you don’t have to stretch the language too far to describe it as fascistic attack a school. The assault on a civilian target, filled with non-combatant children, has a grotesque logic behind it. They call themselves “Boko Haram”, which translates as “western education is forbidden”. The sect regards learning as oppression. They will stop all teaching that conflicts with a holy book from the 7th century and accounts of doubtful provenance on the life and sayings of their prophet written hundreds of years after he died. 
A desire for sexual supremacy accompanies their loathing of knowledge. They take 220 schoolgirls as slaves and force them to convert to their version of Islam. They either rape them or sell them on for £10 or so to new masters. The girls are the victims of slavery, child abuse and forced marriage…
As you can see, English does not lack plain words to describe the foulness of the crimes in Nigeria, and no doubt they would be used in the highly improbable event of western soldiers seizing and selling women.
Yet read parts of the press and you enter a world of euphemism. They have not been enslaved but “abducted” or “kidnapped”, as if they will be released unharmed when the parties have negotiated a mutually acceptable ransom. Writers are typing with one eye over their shoulder: watching their backs to make sure that no one can accuse them of “demonising the other”.
Turn from today’s papers to the theoretical pages of leftwing journals and you find that the grounds for understanding Boko Haram more and condemning it less were prepared last year.
Without fully endorsing Boko Haram, of course, socialists explained that it finds “resonance in the hearts of many poor and dispossessed” people, who are revolted by “the corruption and flamboyant lifestyle of the elites”. Islamism is recast as a rational reaction to local corruption and the global oppression of “neoliberalism”, one of those conveniently vague labels that can mean just about anything....
“The mechanical denunciation of the west,” wrote the French political theorist Pascal Bruckner in 2010, “forbids the western bloc, which is eternally guilty, to judge or combat other systems, other states, other religions. Our past crimes command us to keep our mouths closed.” He might have been writing today, so persistent is the belief that the west is the root cause of the only oppression worth mentioning…
If occidentalism was absurd in the past, it’s preposterous now. Boko Haram is not reacting to western intervention in Nigeria, for there is none.... Meanwhile, we are moving faster than anyone expected to a new age in which China will be the world’s largest economy. For the first time since the 18th century, the dominant power will not allow internal opposition or the Chinese equivalent of the campaigns on behalf of the victims of its foreign policy that we saw in Britain, France and the US in the last 200 years. We have not begun to understand the turn for the worse the cause of global human rights is taking as empires shift. 
The enslavement of so many girls - girls who were simply seeking an education - has finally stirred some interest in the West. But the muder of schoolboys couldn’t:
In February, Boko Haram militants murdered 59 schoolboys. They separated the boys from the girls, telling the girls to abandon school and get married before sending them home, and then slaughtered the boys. That killing spree was just one in dozens of attacks on schools, houses of worship and random civilians.
Corruption, cowardice, incompetence, betrayal - a disgusting failure of governance has given Nigeria a government unable to defend schoolgirls from evil. 
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It’s GetUp’s ABC. Conservatives must just pay for it

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (5:42am)

When GetUp teams with ABC veterans to rally for the ABC I think we know in whose ideological hands the broadcaster is.
UPDATE
Tim Blair wonders why the Left is hiding in Bananas in Pyjamas costumes.
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A Governor not welcome at Anzac Day should resign

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (5:28am)

After his Dawn Service attack last week on the centenary commemoration of Anzac Day, the  Tasmanian Governor cannot possibly be asked to speak at next year’s Dawn Service, too: 
TASMANIA’S Governor Peter Underwood may not be invited to speak at next year’s centenary Anzac Day service after a barrage of complaints about the address he gave at last week’s service in Hobart. 
RSL state president Robert Dick said the organisation had received many calls and emails in response to Mr Underwood’s address and the matter would be considered by the RSL State Congress.
Mr Dick was visiting the Western Front at the time of the address but still received calls from outraged veterans while in France… Mr Dick said many veterans at the service had walked away shaking their heads and were upset.
“Due to the sacrifices made in war, the Governor has the right to freedom of speech,” Mr Dick said. “But it was inappropriate dialogue for Anzac Day and he has politicised his role. “Protocol says the Governor is invited to speak on Anzac Day but people are suggesting he (should) not be invited to the centenary service due to the backlash.”
But what does it say about Underwood’s breach of conventions that he’s now inappropriate to be the Queen’s representative at the centenary of Anzac Day? He should resign. He is unable to fulfill his duties.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Carr was meant to work in our interests, not his own

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (5:09am)

Bob Carr burns friends, allies and the national interest to make a minor literary sensation. What a vain man:
Australia’s spy agencies are concerned at potential breaches of official secrecy in Bob Carr’s published diary of his time as foreign minister… 
Under special scrutiny is Mr Carr’s disclosure in his book of what appears to be a station of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in the tiny Gulf nation, United Arab Emirates.
The location and operations of Australia’s overseas spies are classified and kept secret under law.
It is also understood officials in the United States government are unhappy Mr Carr has made explicit the contents of intelligence material shared with Australia, including a CIA report on the character of rebels in Libya - confirming the operation of the agency in that country, in breach of all protocols…
The revelations in the book may have also entangled former Labor leader Kim Beazley, now Australia’s ambassador in Washington…
Mr Carr has said he gave permission to reproduce emails in the diary that include forthright criticism of US Secretary of State, John Kerry…
The Sunday Age asked Mr Beazley whether Mr Carr had sought permission to include the emails or whether the disclosure could complicate his dealings in Washington. “When you are an ambassador you don’t enter debate, you just roll with the punches,’’ Mr Beazley said.
How selfish and vain do you have to treat the job of foreign minister as just material for a book?  
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Another conflict of interest problem for an Abbott Government staffer

Andrew Bolt May 04 2014 (4:50am)

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has a staffer with a big conflict of interest:

The minister’s adviser, William “Smiley” Johnstone, is the majority shareholder of Indigenous Development Corporation (IDC), a property development business that is on two of the government’s “standing offer” lists of favoured suppliers. Both lists relate to Senator Scullion’s portfolio responsibilities.
Mr Johnstone is also the founder and leading executive of Indigenous Corporate Partners (ICP), which helps clients lobby and negotiate with government…
“Indigenous Corporate Partners can assist your organisation to identify grants and funding available through both government and private enterprise,” the company’s website says. 
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“GILLARD PLANNED A BARRAGE OF ABBOTT WEDGIES”: ALP staffer

Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, wanted an unprecedented eight-month election campaign to give her the time necessary to cripple Tony Abbott in a barrage of blue-sky social legislation, according to an ALP Media staffer.

Gillard’s insidious Media Department, headed by the 457 wonder boy, John McTernan, is developing cracks and those with a conscience are wincing with embarrassment at Gillard’s blatant use of the disabled.

This NDIS legislation had been on ice for over two years and was passed within days of Gillard’s Press Club announcement of a September 14 election.

But in typical Gillard fashion it had no details, no form of implementation or who would administer it or who would be covered.

“This early announcement of an election will give people certainty”, she said.

Certainty? Certainty of what? There was only one thing people wanted certainty of and that was Gillard’s departure!

“It’s not a good look”, said the staffer. “A few of us are disgusted over this one and there’s been quite few resignations.”

McTernan’s job is to get Gillard re-elected but he has misread we Aussies. What has happened is the Gillard disaster has meant everyone is now taking an interest in politics, and that’s not good for Labor.

Exotics, McTernan and Gillard have underestimated the Aussie punters’ intellect.

Blind Freddie and his dog can see through the endless crap we are served up daily.

Most of us expect all this from a Labor Party in its death throes, but not when it involves the disabled and a Gonski generation of Labor-induced illiterate kids and teachers.

Even ABC and Fairfax lefties are hiding their faces in shame while rehashing their pro-Gillard opinion pieces.

The fact is that Gonski is an unholy mess, the NBN is a white elephant and the NDIS is nothing more than a cheap fraud perpetrated on the desperately needy.

Abbott is smarter than Gillard. He can now sit back and watch her stew in her own excrement.

Her locker is empty with nothing left over for the hustings.

Jenny Macklin, Gillard’s partner in the infamous Communist Socialist Forum (whose aim was to infiltrate and undermine the ALP) yesterday tried to explain what the NDIS would cover.

She said physical and mental injuries.

Mmmm, really Jenny? That covers just about all of us, including the Islamic nutter who smashed the cop car with a milk crate! He was on a disability pension due to a football injury.

He, of course, was excused by the magistrate.

Hang on, a football injury for Christ’s sake? Then surely alcoholism and drug addiction will qualify. Kleptomania maybe? Peanut butter allergies, bad backs, impotence, arachnophobia?

It’s bloody endless and indefinable and the Bill is certain to spend 20 years in Abbott’s too expensive basket.

In Gillard’s short tenure we have gone from the penthouse to the outhouse and she has knowingly dragged the hopes of the disabled down with her in a last gasp attempt to gain credibility.

I (and 75% of Australia) am suffering from severe depression and I feel a debilitating migraine coming on.

Let’s get in the queue.
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God is in your life all the time. I like to tell people about the wonderful things God does. But when I look at these fine images and words, it is as if all God is is a positive attitude. Well, God has already done something that has made your life. And he may transform it for you many times. But if you are training yourself to ignore him, you may miss opportunity. Maybe it isn't a positive attitude that works, but a faithful devotion? - ed
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May 4: Mother's Day in Hungary, Lithuania, Mozambique, Portugal, Romania and Spain (2014); Remembrance of the Dead in the Netherlands; Star Wars Day
Sunrise, Manaslu
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“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” - Romans 12:12
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"In the world ye shall have tribulation."
John 16:33
Art thou asking the reason of this, believer? Look upward to thy heavenly Father, and behold him pure and holy. Dost thou know that thou art one day to be like him? Wilt thou easily be conformed to his image? Wilt thou not require much refining in the furnace of affliction to purify thee? Will it be an easy thing to get rid of thy corruptions, and make thee perfect even as thy Father which is in heaven is perfect? Next, Christian, turn thine eye downward. Dost thou know what foes thou hast beneath thy feet? Thou wast once a servant of Satan, and no king will willingly lose his subjects. Dost thou think that Satan will let thee alone? No, he will be always at thee, for he "goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Expect trouble, therefore, Christian, when thou lookest beneath thee. Then look around thee. Where art thou? Thou art in an enemy's country, a stranger and a sojourner. The world is not thy friend. If it be, then thou art not God's friend, for he who is the friend of the world is the enemy of God. Be assured that thou shalt find foe-men everywhere. When thou sleepest, think that thou art resting on the battlefield; when thou walkest, suspect an ambush in every hedge. As mosquitoes are said to bite strangers more than natives, so will the trials of earth be sharpest to you. Lastly, look within thee, into thine own heart and observe what is there. Sin and self are still within. Ah! if thou hadst no devil to tempt thee, no enemies to fight thee, and no world to ensnare thee, thou wouldst still find in thyself evil enough to be a sore trouble to thee, for "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Expect trouble then, but despond not on account of it, for God is with thee to help and to strengthen thee. He hath said, "I will be with thee in trouble; I will deliver thee and honour thee."

Evening

"A very present help."
Psalm 46:1
Covenant blessings are not meant to be looked at only, but to be appropriated. Even our Lord Jesus is given to us for our present use. Believer, thou dost not make use of Christ as thou oughtest to do. When thou art in trouble, why dost thou not tell him all thy grief? Has he not a sympathizing heart, and can he not comfort and relieve thee? No, thou art going about to all thy friends, save thy best Friend, and telling thy tale everywhere except into the bosom of thy Lord. Art thou burdened with this day's sins? Here is a fountain filled with blood: use it, saint, use it. Has a sense of guilt returned upon thee? The pardoning grace of Jesus may be proved again and again. Come to him at once for cleansing. Dost thou deplore thy weakness? He is thy strength: why not lean upon him? Dost thou feel naked? Come hither, soul; put on the robe of Jesus' righteousness. Stand not looking at it, but wear it. Strip off thine own righteousness, and thine own fears too: put on the fair white linen, for it was meant to wear. Dost thou feel thyself sick? Pull the night-bell of prayer, and call up the Beloved Physician! He will give the cordial that will revive thee. Thou art poor, but then thou hast "a kinsman, a mighty man of wealth." What! wilt thou not go to him, and ask him to give thee of his abundance, when he has given thee this promise, that thou shalt be joint heir with him, and has made over all that he is and all that he has to be thine? There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for his people to make a show-thing of him, and not to use him. He loves to be employed by us. The more burdens we put on his shoulders, the more precious will he be to us.
"Let us be simple with him, then,
Not backward, stiff, or cold,
As though our Bethlehem could be
What Sinai was of old."
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Goliath

[Gōlī'ath] - the exile or soothsayer. The famous giant of Gath, who defied the armies of Israel (1 Sam. 17:4, 23; 21:9; 22:10; 2 Sam. 21:19).

The Man a Pebble Killed

The story of David and Goliath has thrilled our hearts from childhood days. How spectacular it must have been to see a stripling like David slay a massive man some ten feet high with only a pebble from the stream. Saul's proffered armor was of no use against Goliath. David had to meet the giant with the weapon he was used to. A ready-made suit was of no avail for the son of Jesse.
The religious character of the duel between Goliath and David should not be lost sight of. The giant cursed David by his gods. David went out to meet Goliath "in the name of the Lord of Hosts." But why did David take five stones, if his God was able to direct a single one into the forehead? Did he want to make sure that if one pebble failed, he would have four more to swing? Going over the passages we discover that Goliath had four sons, all of whom were giants, and five pebbles were needed to slay the lot of them. Thus the choice of five was an act of faith. Through God, only one pebble was needed. David went forth to meet Goliath with five pebbles and he came back with five - four in his hand and the other in Goliath's massive forehead. How God delights to use the insignificant things of life to accomplish His purpose!
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Today's reading: 1 Kings 14-15, Luke 22:31-46 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Kings 14-15

Ahijah's Prophecy Against Jeroboam
1 At that time Abijah son of Jeroboam became ill, 2 and Jeroboam said to his wife, "Go, disguise yourself, so you won't be recognized as the wife of Jeroboam. Then go to Shiloh. Ahijah the prophet is there--the one who told me I would be king over this people. 3 Take ten loaves of bread with you, some cakes and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what will happen to the boy." 4 So Jeroboam's wife did what he said and went to Ahijah's house in Shiloh....

Today's New Testament reading: Luke 22:31-46

31 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."
33 But he replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death."
34 Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me...."
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