Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Wed May 20th 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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Dear Members (YOU MUST READ THIS THREAD)
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Todays report stands on its own because this time in 2014, the Conservative Voice was looking for rental accommodation after being forced to sell their unit/home.
It is easy to hate a conservative regardless of policy. A bad policy pushed onto NSW Government by Clover Moore as Sydney Mayor is the solution to traffic problems, tramways. Only the two billion dollar project will implement a tramway, removing 220 buses from the roads, and provide a worse service than those buses. But although it was high on the independent/Green wish list, being an expensive and bureaucratic solution rejected over fifty years ago for the reason it is bad now, the conservative government of NSW is denounced by journalist Miranda Devine for their part in building it. Miranda is correct to denounce the policy. And NSW Government bears some responsibility, but the machinations of the Lord Mayor has been to make a good outcome impossible.

 On another issue, Mr Abbott, PM, has announced another effective policy involving unemployed people working. Work is essential for all people, providing an income and purpose as well as dignity. Without work, people lose essential skills. Anxiety related to poverty is crippling even if the person worrying is not poor. But Mr Abbott referred to unemployed and the work provided as "Try before you buy" and naturally his haters and others inflate the words to mask the policy. 

 ALP are suffering and indecisive. In his economic reply to the budget last week, ALP shadow treasurer Bowen announced he would approve some cuts to spending, but proceed with unfunded spending in health and education that could well prevent Australia having either in the future, because it would be unaffordable. ALP want to block any cuts, but don't know if the budget is an election budget. They know if they don't pass some cuts before an election they will look bad. They also know if they block all cuts then the press will blame the government. What they will never do is act in the public interest. But they are indecisive because they can't even work out their own self interest. 

 In a slow news day, a mixed martial arts fighter was scolded by a sheriff (in the US) for stopping a robbery and hog tying the thief. The fighter hadn't known the robber wasn't armed, and the robber wasn't armed, and lost his free bout with an MMA fighter. Also a survey showed people, somewhere, average 8.5 hours a week in front of FB, which seems pathetic as I average more each day, sitting down. A victim of pedophilia has denounced Cardinal George Pell and it appears as if the reason for doing so is because the relative who abused him has died. What happened to the victim is appalling. It doesn't give license to make headlines. Released files from the US military shows they were concerned about an organisation like ISIL death cult arising in 2012. But Obama, who was privy to it, played it down later, and, in failing to address it, fanned it. 

 On this day in 325, the First Council of Nicea: The first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was held. The council was convened by Constantine I. It was the council which defined Arianism and showed it was not Biblical or Canon. It answered, without specifying, the question of the Trinity.  491, Empress Ariadne married Anastasius I. The widowed Augusta was able to choose her successor for the Byzantine throne, after Zeno (late emperor) died of dysentery. 526, an earthquake killed about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia. 685, the Battle of Dun Nechtain was fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who were decisively defeated. 794, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia visited the royal Mercian court at Sutton Walls, with a view to marrying princess Ælfthryth. He was taken captive and beheaded. 1217, the Second Battle of Lincoln was fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke. The defeat was so decisive that the sacking of the town loyal to France was later called "Lincoln Fair." 1293, King Sancho IV of Castile created the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

In 1449, the Battle of Alfarrobeira was fought, establishing the House of Braganza as a principal royal family of Portugal. 1497, John Cabot set sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date). 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India when he arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India. 1520, the massacre at the festival of Tóxcatl took place during the Fall of Tenochtitlan, resulting in turning the Aztecs against the Spanish. The action was a war atrocity and probably instigated by the unarmed celebrants wearing gold. 1521, Ignatius Loyola was seriously wounded in the Battle of Pampeluna. He had had his leg hit by a canon ball, and took up the work of a priest in place of that of a soldier. He founded the Jesuits. 1570, Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas. 1609, Shakespeare's sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. 1631, the city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War. The book and movie The Last Valley included this detail as a plot point with a killer line from Michael Caie "We all have things we wish to forget. Magdeburg was mine. What is yours?" to Omar Sharif. 1645, the Manchurian Qing army occupied the city Yangzhou and the residents were massacred for ten days. After the fall of Beijing and northern China to the Manchus in 1644, Yangzhou remained under the control of the short-lived Ming loyalist government of the so-called Hongguang Emperor, based in Nanjing. The Qing forces, led by Prince Dodo, reached Yangzhou in the spring of 1645, and despite the heroic efforts of its chief defender, Shi Kefa, the city fell on May 20, 1645, after a brief siege. A ten-day massacre followed, in which, as it was traditionally alleged, 800,000 people died. Shi Kefa himself was killed by the Manchus as well, after he refused to switch his allegiance to the Qing regime. 1775, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was signed in Charlotte, North Carolina

In 1802, by the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution. 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte led his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ended the next day with a French victory. 1840, York Minster was badly damaged by fire. 1861, American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality, which would last until September 3 when Confederate forces entered the state. Meanwhile, the State of North Carolina seceded from the Union. 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church: In the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fought in this Confederate victory.

In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. 1875, signing of the Metre Convention by 17 nations leading to the establishment of the International System of Units. 1882, the Triple Alliance between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy was formed. 1883, Krakatoa began to erupt; the volcano exploded three months later, killing more than 36,000 people. 1884, Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo became the king of the Zulu Nation. 1891, History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope. 1896, the six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier fell on the crowd below resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others. 1899, the first traffic ticket in the US: New York City taxi driver Jacob German was arrested for speeding while driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington Street.

In 1902, Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the country's first President. 1908, Budi Utomo organisation was founded in Dutch East Indies, beginning the Indonesian National Awakening. 1916, the Saturday Evening Post published its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage). 1920, Montreal, Quebec radio station XWA broadcast the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America. 1927, Treaty of Jeddah: The United Kingdom recognised the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Also 1927, at 07:52 Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

In 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day. 1940, The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrived at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz. 1941, World War II: Battle of Crete: German paratroops invaded Crete. 1948, Chiang Kai-shek was elected as the first President of the Republic of China. 1949, in the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, was established. 1956, in Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

In 1964, discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias. The discovery was initially very scary for the US scientists who hypothesised that the Soviet Union had a base on the far side of the moon which was nuclear powered. But then they realised it was more profound, and evidence of a Big Bang hypothesised by Einstein. 1965, PIA Flight 705, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 720-040B, crashed while descending to land at Cairo International Airport, killing 121 of the 127 passengers and crew. 1967, the Popular Movement of the Revolution political party was established in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1969, the Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ended. 1980, in a referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada. 1983, first publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that caused AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier. Also 1983, Church Street bombing: A car bomb planted by Umkhonto we Sizwe exploded on Church Street in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, killing 19 people and injuring 217 others. 1985, Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, began broadcasting to Cuba. 1989, the Chinese authorities declared martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

 In 1990, the first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania. 1996, Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. 2002, the independence of East Timor was recognised by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself was the former coloniser of East Timor until 1976). 2006, Dhaka wildcat strikes: A series of massive strikes began, involving nearly 1.8 million garment workers in Bangladesh. 2012, at least 27 people were killed and 50 others injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck northern Italy. 2013, an EF5 tornado struck the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others. 2014, more than 118 people were killed in two bombings in Jos, Nigeria.
2014
None in 2014 because of Government and public service corruption related to the petitions
Historical perspectives on this day
In 325, the First Council of Nicea: The first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church was held. 491, Empress Ariadne married Anastasius I. The widowed Augusta was able to choose her successor for the Byzantine throne, after Zeno (late emperor) died of dysentery. 526, an earthquake killed about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia. 685, the Battle of Dun Nechtain was fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who were decisively defeated. 794, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia visited the royal Mercian court at Sutton Walls, with a view to marrying princess Ælfthryth. He was taken captive and beheaded. 1217, the Second Battle of Lincoln was fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke. 1293, King Sancho IV of Castile created the Study of General Schools of Alcalá.

 In 1449, the Battle of Alfarrobeira was fought, establishing the House of Braganza as a principal royal family of Portugal. 1497, John Cabot set sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date). 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India when he arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India. 1520, the massacre at the festival of Tóxcatl took place during the Fall of Tenochtitlan, resulting in turning the Aztecs against the Spanish. 1521, Ignatius Loyola was seriously wounded in the Battle of Pampeluna. 1570, Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas. 1609, Shakespeare's sonnets were first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe. 1631, the city of Magdeburg in Germany was seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War. 1645, the Manchurian Qing army occupied the city Yangzhou and the residents were massacred for ten days, killing 800,000. 1775, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was signed in Charlotte, North Carolina

 In 1802, by the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstated slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution. 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte led his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ended the next day with a French victory. 1840, York Minster was badly damaged by fire. 1861, American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality, which would last until September 3 when Confederate forces entered the state. Meanwhile, the State of North Carolina seceded from the Union. 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church: In the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fought in this Confederate victory.

 In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. 1875, signing of the Metre Convention by 17 nations leading to the establishment of the International System of Units. 1882, the Triple Alliance between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy was formed. 1883, Krakatoa began to erupt; the volcano exploded three months later, killing more than 36,000 people. 1884, Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo became the king of the Zulu Nation. 1891, History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope. 1896, the six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier fell on the crowd below resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others. 1899, the first traffic ticket in the US: New York City taxi driver Jacob German was arrested for speeding while driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington Street.

 In 1902, Cuba gained independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma became the country's first President. 1908, Budi Utomo organisation was founded in Dutch East Indies, beginning the Indonesian National Awakening. 1916, the Saturday Evening Post published its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage). 1920, Montreal, Quebec radio station XWA broadcast the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America. 1927, Treaty of Jeddah: The United Kingdom recognised the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Also 1927, at 07:52 Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

 In 1932, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day. 1940, The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrived at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz. 1941, World War II: Battle of Crete: German paratroops invaded Crete. 1948, Chiang Kai-shek was elected as the first President of the Republic of China. 1949, in the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, was established. 1956, in Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb was dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

 In 1964, discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias. 1965, PIA Flight 705, a Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 720-040B, crashed while descending to land at Cairo International Airport, killing 121 of the 127 passengers and crew. 1967, the Popular Movement of the Revolution political party was established in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1969, the Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ended. 1980, in a referendum in Quebec, the population rejected by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada. 1983, first publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that caused AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier. Also 1983, Church Street bombing: A car bomb planted by Umkhonto we Sizwe exploded on Church Street in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, killing 19 people and injuring 217 others. 1985, Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, began broadcasting to Cuba. 1989, the Chinese authorities declared martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

 In 1990, the first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania. 1996, Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. 2002, the independence of East Timor was recognised by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself was the former coloniser of East Timor until 1976). 2006, Dhaka wildcat strikes: A series of massive strikes began, involving nearly 1.8 million garment workers in Bangladesh. 2012, at least 27 people were killed and 50 others injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck northern Italy. 2013, an EF5 tornado struck the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others. 2014, more than 118 people were killed in two bombings in Jos, Nigeria.
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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 Aiden Ly and Diane Ta. Today is really remarkable. It is Remembrance day in Cambodia. The first Council of Nicaea met in 325 and made a canon law before the invention of canons. They knew how to make laws back then. We've forgotten now, as can be seen by online gambling. A lot for you to live up to, but you were born to do it.
Deaths
Title page of first edition of Shakespeare's sonnets
We didn't lose our heads. We got permission to publish. We hold correct metre. We struck down that .. oops. The earth moved. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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2015
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Why don’t we bring back the horse and cart, as well

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (7:29am)

Sydney got rid of trams to ease traffic congestion.
Now, more than half a century later, the geniuses who run this city are going to spend $2.2 billion to bring trams back to streets that are already clogged to maximum gridlock.
This debacle is the brainchild of Lord Mayor Clover Moore, a one woman traffic generator, whose empty, over-engineered bike paths have already clogged our best streets, and stolen precious parking spaces.
Having super-charged traffic congestion, she somehow persuaded the Baird government to build the world’s most expensive light rail project.
At $200,000 per metre for a 12km trip down George Street and off to Randwick and Kingsford, you might as well pave it in gold.
News Corp reported this week the colossal traffic jam that construction will take for the next four years as George Street is ripped up and Surry Hills becomes a war zone. But that’s not the worst of it.
The truth about the light rail is that traffic congestion will get worse, bus journeys will take longer, and you’ll have to get out of a tram and onto a bus or a train to complete your journey, anyway.
So instead of getting on a bus that takes you door to door, you will be forced to change at Central to light rail.
The Baird government is trumpeting the fact its light rail will take 220 buses off the streets, out of about 1600 buses there each day, but so what? Those buses would carry more passengers, have more flexible routes and don’t cause as much traffic mayhem.
Leaked traffic modelling by the Roads and Traffic Authority has shown that trams in the Sydney CBD would add considerably to traffic congestion.
“It’s going to be a catastrophe”, says former NSW Treasurer Michael Egan, “not only whilst it is being built, but also after it is built, because people are going to have to change their mode of transport twice.”
Egan who lives in Surry Hills, points out that bus services in the parts of the city that will be serviced by the tram are already “unbelievably good.”
He can’t understand why the government “chose to waste two billion on a useless piece of infrastructure”.
The definition of insanity is to repeat history and expect a different result.
So let’s remember the wisdom of our city forebears.
In 1908-1909, the grandly named Royal Commission for the Improvement of the City of Sydney and its Suburbs blamed trams for congestion on our narrow CBD streets.
“Tramways cause congestion,” declared the final report.
“All witnesses examined on the traffic question agree in attributing the congestion of many of our streets to the tramways.”
The commission, headed by Lord Mayor Thomas Hughes, found the tramway system had ‘outgrown itself’.
“When it is remembered that many of our streets, at present too narrow to adequately accommodate the horse traffic for which they were originally designed, have been further encroached upon by tramways, it will be readily understood that the traffic conditions of Sydney are unsatisfactory and dangerous.”
In those days it was horse and carts toodling through the city, “laden with wool, hides, skins, and other merchandise”.
The commissioners were concerned about the “cruelty” to the horses of traffic congestion. What about the cruelty to humans today?
Their final report recommended “the construction of a City and Suburban railway system [to] enable suburban residents to travel directly and rapidly between their homes and the city.” Trams would be relegated to feeding commuters on to rail lines.
What a sensible idea.
Thus was born the City Circle underground rail.
The city grew, the motor car became popular, and trams became increasingly anachronistic.
Fast forward to 1949, when Labor premier James McGirr commissioned a report by three British transport experts into Sydney’s traffic woes.
To ease congestion, GF Sinclair, AF Andrews and ER Ellen recommended that trams be replaced with the latest technology: buses.
“To improve the general amenities of the city of Sydney, the tramcars should be replaced by buses,” said the report.
Buses were deemed to be cheaper and more flexible. They still are.
It’s curious the Baird government is going ahead with such an expensive project when there has been no clamour for it from the travelling public.
The only people pushing for the return of trams, with a quasi-religious fervour, are the Lord Mayor and her greenie acolytes and light rail lobbyists looking to line their pockets.
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CONSERVATIVES ATTACK

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (5:26pm)

The BBC reports an attempted murder in Turkey: 
A Turkish woman who has been taking part in a talent show on national TV has been shot in the head while rehearsing at home, Turkish media say.

image

Mutlu Kaya, 19, was in a critical condition after being shot in Diyarbakir province early on Monday. 
What monsters are responsible for this? The BBC has an interesting theory: 
Diyarbakir is a conservative region in south-east Turkey and Ms Kaya had reportedly received death threats for singing on the show …
The attack on Mutlu Kaya took place in Diyarbakir, a city where the Kurdish women’s movement is very strong … But, despite playing a prominent role in society and politics, women are still under pressure from the traditional structures of conservative society.
That is why news stories about prominent female fighters in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Syria go hand in hand with news stories of “honour killings” …
For a poor girl living with her family in a run-down one bedroom flat, attracting national media attention could have triggered a fatal conservative social backlash. 
(Via David T., who emails: “Obviously this has nothing to do with Islam.")
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EUROPE, EUROPE, EUROPE! OI, OI, OI!

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (5:40am)

Leftist Mungo MacCallum, just two months after Tony Abbott was elected in 2013: 
It is still not clear why Tony Abbott seems determined to trash Australia’s hard-won reputation as a good citizen of the world, but there can be no doubt that he no longer cares what our erstwhile friends and neighbours think of us … it is likely to reduce his country to pariah status on the rather larger and more sophisticated world stage. 
Things haven’t quite worked out that way. In 2015, global sophisticates are now desperately following Australia’s example. In fact, they’re going in even harder: 
European leaders agreed on Monday to use naval forces to intercept and destroy ships used by smugglers of migrants from North Africa, a far more assertive attempt to combat the swelling migration crisis that has led to thousands of deaths at sea.
The aim of the program is to stop smugglers with human cargo before or shortly after they leave the shores of North African nations like Libya. European navies would then return migrants to African ports and destroy the ships used to transport them …
Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy chief, told reporters after the meeting Monday that action was needed for the ”destruction of the business model of the smugglers, the system that they have, the organizations, the networks themselves, to make it physically impossible for these criminal organizations” to continue operating. 
That’s EU-talk for ”stop the boats”. 
(Via A.R.M Jones)
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THE IVES OF MOOCH

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (4:53am)

Theatre maker, teacher and facilitator Bryce Ives finds fault with Monday’s column:

image

Vulgar, you say? How very middle class. Meanwhile, an anxious world sweats on Ben Eltham’s promised takedown: “I’ll be responding to the many factual inaccuracies in your column when I get a chance.”
Sadly, that chance has not yet presented itself. Perhaps Ben is waiting for a grant.
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SHE ISN’T TAKING THIS WELL

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (4:16am)

An alleged note from the mother of condemned Boston terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: 
“They think that they are killing us and they celebrate this, but we are the ones who will rejoice when Allah grants us the chance to behold them in the flames of an eternal and terrifying fire, an otherworldly flame,” Zubeidat Tsarnaeva reportedly wrote Sunday to Zarina Kasenova, a supporter, according to the news website Vocativ.com.
The mother of the two terrorists responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings has an outstanding criminal warrant for larceny over $250 from the Natick Collection, a felony, and has not returned to the United States since her son’s arrest in April 2013. 
All of this trouble could have been avoided, you know, if her idiot children hadn’t murdered four people.
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CAN’T READ WITHOUT EYES

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (2:52am)

The war on reading continues in Canada: 
An eight-year-old girl in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. was told she’s no longer allowed to read books on the school bus because it poses a risk to the safety of other students.
Sarah Auger loves reading and used to enjoy using her 20-minute ride to and from school to read for pleasure.
But recently, her bus driver told her she had to stop.
She says she was told reading posed a risk to other students on the bus.
He suggested they might stand up to see what she was reading, or she might poke herself in the eye with the corners of the book. 
(Via J.F. Beck, who is tragically eyeless following a childhood Roald Dahl incident.)
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NO NAZIS WERE AVAILABLE

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (2:47am)

So Labor’s Anthony Albanese hangs out with a Marxist instead.
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SLIGHTLY LONGER CAT AND THE DEAL IS OFF

Tim Blair – Wednesday, May 20, 2015 (2:36am)

An informative graphic accompanies this piece on the sale of an extremely narrow Sydney house:

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BILL SEEKS A BRIEFING

Tim Blair – Tuesday, May 19, 2015 (5:57pm)

Labor’s Bill Shorten spoke at a press conference earlier today: 
JOURNALIST: There were three Aussie jihadis trying to come home at the moment, should the Government be helping them to do that?
SHORTEN: Well first of all let me just state the principle that Australians shouldn’t be going overseas to fight in these causes or these battles. We’ll get an update about the national security and about what’s happened with these people reported in the media in the last couple of hours.
JOURNALIST: I guess our justice system is based on belief in rehabilitation and shouldn’t that apply to everybody?
SHORTEN: Well fundamentally we believe in rehabilitation, there’s the law of the land and we’ll seek a briefing from the Government.
JOURNALIST: What sort of punishment do you think though they should receive if they were to come home? A jail term?
SHORTEN: There are laws in place, I’m not going to play judge and jury and again we’ll ask the Government to update us with what’s happening with these matters that have just been coming through in the last couple of hours. 
Contrast Shorten’s pathetic timidity with the Prime Minister’s more direct approach: 
“We have seen with our own eyes on TV the mass executions, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the sexual slavery. This is a gruesome, ghastly, medieval barbarism which has erupted in the modern world. The last thing any Australian should do is join it.
“The Australian people expect their country to be safe and someone who has been a terrorist abroad could very easily become a terrorist here in Australia.
“If you go abroad to join a terrorist group and you seek to come back to Australia, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed.” 
And Shorten wonders why Labor’s poll advantage is eroding.
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A campaign you should back: for free thought in our universities

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (3:54pm)

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The ABC is proving it cannot be reformed, so must be sold

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (8:35am)

The ABC is meant by law to be balanced, in exchange for the privilege of getting more than $1 billion a year from taxpayers. But again and again it betrays that legal and moral responsibility.
Janet Albrechtsen:

It’s bad enough that last week Leigh Sales on 7.30 and Emma Alberici on Lateline used their taxpayer-funded platforms to launch aggressive, bad-mannered and partisan attacks when interviewing the Treasurer and Finance Minister respectively…
It’s even worse when the national broadcaster invites a panel of three journalists to discuss these and other measures — and all three are in wild agreement with each other’s contempt for budget reforms.
The conversation on 702’s journos’ forum about new tax breaks for small business went like this: The Sydney Morning Herald economics columnist Ross Gittins, the ABC’s Alberici and BuzzFeed News’ Mark Di Stefano all agreed with each other that people are too dim to understand the new measure. Gittins said: “I met people who think ‘oh the government’s going to give you $20,000’ ... there’s no free gifts”. Alberici chimed in with: “Well, look, I have to say I agree with Ross entirely … it’s been beaten up in a way because people don’t understand how the tax system, how a deduction works.” And Di Stefano ...  said: “...I totally agree with Ross and Emma.”
Was it beyond the wit of those at the ABC to find a journalist who might suggest that most of the men and women running the two million small businesses in Australia probably do understand a tax deduction?…
There was more chorus-line chatter when it came to the government’s policy to halt the double-dipping of paid parental leave. Gittins agreed with Alberici and Di Stefano agreed with both of them… During the forum, Alberici uttered “outrageous” no less than five times…
Was it impossible to find a journalist who might have pointed to the fundamental inequity in a system that sets up two classes of recipients: the first class can access two tranches of PPL, the generous PPL package of at least 12 weeks full paid leave if, for example, they are public servants plus $11,500 under the government’s 18-week minimum wage paid leave system? The other class, with no access to workplace PPL, can access only the government scheme.
As The Australian’sJudith Sloan pointed out last weekend, it’s estimated that of the 80,000 recipients who access both PPL schemes, 60,000 are in the public service. In the ABC’s echo chamber of outrage, there was no mention of the fact, as a nation, we are spending more than we are earning. Not one of the journalists uttered the word deficit…
A different-minded journalist also might have pointed out, in the context of a discussion about women and work, that the government is pumping an additional $3.5bn into childcare over the next five years so that low-income families will receive 85 per cent subsidies for childcare costs…
The ABC board should do its duty and demand the ABC charter be followed. The ABC instead seems to have operated in the belief it can outlast the Abbott Government and need not reform.
What it overlooks is that those of us who believe an ABC, if reformed, is worth funding are increasingly being forced to accept that reform is in fact impossible. The Left simply will not share control of this huge and powerful public asset.  Which means the only alternative to surrender is to sell it.
UPDATE
As for the arguments, Paul Kelly:

The inflamed row over paid parental leave in the budget is a classic case study in how difficult it is to withdraw entitlements, the defective political debate in this country and the resistance to the cause of budget repair.
Anger against the Abbott government decision to withdraw a PPL benefit for a category of working mothers has become white hot, stirred by Labor leader Bill Shorten’s accusation that Tony Abbott is “vilifying tens of thousands of women” and columnists depicting the government as fools, quasi-criminals, stubborn white men and hypocrites. For many, there is no limit to its infamy.
The debate is filled with heat but little light. It is conspicuous for three features — a refusal to address whether the policy change has merit, a refusal in an age dominated by slavish focus on fairness to assess where the “fairness” actually lies and a refusal to consider whether this is a valid saving for budget repair.
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Obama’s Middle East policy in flames

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (8:12am)

John Hinderaker on the fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State, and the failure of Barack Obama’s foreign policy:
The “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq” that Barack Obama and Joe Biden hailed as one of Obama’s “great achievements” in 2014 has regressed into chaos as a result of Obama’s premature withdrawal of American troops. But it isn’t just Iraq. Syria is the closest thing to Hell on Earth. Iran is working away on nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Yemen has fallen to Iran’s proxies. Saudi Arabia is looking for nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s. ISIS occupies an area the size of Great Britain. Libya, its dictator having been gratuitously overthrown by feckless Western governments that had no plan for what would follow, is a failed state and terrorist playground.
UPDATE
Did Obama fiddle while Syria burned?
SECRET documents obtained via freedom of information requests reveal the US military predicted the rise of IS well before the group began making headlines around the world.
Over a 100 pages of classified reports from the Department of Defence and the State Department obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch paint a starkly different picture to what the Obama administration had previously portrayed to the public.
Among the documents is an August 2012 report containing military intel which predicted the rise of the Islamic State in the wake of regime change in Syria…
“This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” the document states.
“ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”
The intelligence is largely at odds with comments made by President Obama in a 60 Minutes interview in September last year…
“I think they (US intelligence operatives) had underestimated what had been going on in Syria,” he said while also suggesting his administration over-estimated the strength of Iraqi government forces.
More leaks suggesting the same disastrous MO with Benghazi - Obama refusing to tell the truth about terrorists, presumably to avoid having to do something about them:
Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance
The White House instead pretended the deadly attack on the consulate was just a demonstration against an anti-Islam YouTube clip that had got out of hand.
(Thanks to readers Notch and Rossco.) 
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Why should a TV host admit he’s tied with cash to the Clintons?

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (8:00am)

The Left still thinks it’s not actually the Big Money party, so the normal rules of disclosure don’t apply. Besides, aren’t they too noble to be suspected of bias?:
ABC has plenty of reasons to be freaking out over the George Stephanopoulos scandal… The “Good Morning America” and “This Week” anchor renewed his contract last year for $105 million…
But now his credibility, and future, have been called into question since he admitted Friday that he had donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation since 2011, just as the presidential race gears up with Hillary Rodham Clinton the leading Democrat.
In a mea culpa delivered Sunday on “This Week,” Stephanopoulos, who was also a top aide in President Bill Clinton’s White House, said the gifts “were a matter of public record, but I should have made additional disclosures on air when we covered the foundation.”
Stephanopoulos did not even disclose his donations when opining that no one gave the Clinton’s foundation something for nothing:
ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos failed to disclose his $75,000 in contributions and other connections to the Clinton Foundation as he interrogated Peter Schweizer regarding his book Clinton Cash. He didn’t mention his work as a campaign operative and administration official on behalf of Bill Clinton either, but ABC viewers are apparently assumed to bring that knowledge to the table. (Wrong, but who are we to judge?)…
Stephanopoulos wraps his statement in a profession of his great generosity, of which the Clinton Foundation was coincidentally an additional beneficiary. He made the donations over the past three years only to support worthy causes: to heal the sick, protect the weak and feed the starving. Make room for the apostle George.
Nevertheless, Stephanopoulos gave a somewhat more jaded account of contributions to the Clinton Foundations only last month to Jon Stewart. At that time, before the Free Beacon had dug out the record of Stephanopoulos’s contributions to the Clinton Foundation, Stephanopoulos lucidly explained: “But everybody also knows when those donors give that money, President Clinton or someone, they get a picture with him, there is a hope that is going to lead to something.” Everybody knows! 
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Polls explained by the jihadist question

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (7:20am)

Tim Blair compares the reactions of Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten to news that three jihadists want to made a deal with the Government to come home. He believes it explains recent poll movements.
Tony Abbott:

We have seen with our own eyes on TV the mass executions, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the sexual slavery. This is a gruesome, ghastly, medieval barbarism which has erupted in the modern world. The last thing any Australian should do is join it.
The Australian people expect their country to be safe and someone who has been a terrorist abroad could very easily become a terrorist here in Australia.
If you go abroad to join a terrorist group and you seek to come back to Australia, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and jailed.
Bill Shorten:
SHORTEN: Well first of all let me just state the principle that Australians shouldn’t be going overseas to fight in these causes or these battles. We’ll get an update about the national security and about what’s happened with these people reported in the media in the last couple of hours… Well fundamentally we believe in rehabilitation, there’s the law of the land and we’ll seek a briefing from the Government.
JOURNALIST: What sort of punishment do you think though they should receive if they were to come home? A jail term?
SHORTEN: There are laws in place, I’m not going to play judge and jury and again we’ll ask the Government to update us with what’s happening with these matters that have just been coming through in the last couple of hours.
Telling.
Meanwhile, we are asked to believe these jihadists have reformed, could be used to teach children not to join the Islamic State, or didn’t know until they got to Syria that the Islamic State was killing civilians:

One of the three Australians jihadists who want to return home after defecting from Islamic State claims he was forced to join the terror group after travelling to Syria to provide aid last year…
Adam Brookman, a father of five, told The Age he denounced the atrocities that ISIL commits against civilians and longed to reunite with his family in Melbourne’s northern suburbs…

“I don’t agree with their kidnapping, with their dealings with other Muslim groups, and especially after they started executing journalists and other innocent civilians."…
He also said he never committed an act of violence and it was witnessing public executions that motivated him to flee.
This is simply not credible. The Islamic State have long boasted in recruitment videos how it was shooting and decapitating unarmed people, including government officials.
Early last year, before Brookman went to deliver “aid” to the Islamic State, it was already known that the organisation was committing atrocities against civilians. Check this report from January last year:
Anyone who went to Syria wanting to help this group, knowing what it was doing, is not someone I want within a mile of children. 
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House painter

Andrew Bolt May 20 2015 (12:01am)

I have a couple of Greg Irvine’s works. Now I wish I could have his house:

UPDATE
If money were no object at the next Elder Fine Art sale:
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If money were no object at the GFL fine art sale:
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The Greens have not learned from 1200 deaths or our high terrorism alert

Andrew Bolt May 19 2015 (4:15pm)

The Greens have failed to learn from two catastrophic mistakes in public policy - mistakes that have left Australia less safe and cost the lives of 1200 boat people.
One lesson: bringing in Muslims with poor education and few skills from an economically backward country has left us with poorly assimilated immigrant communities, some with a dangerous resentment. Think the intake from Lebanon in the 1970s. From Afghanistan, Somalia and other countries since.
Second lesson: rewarding boat people with settlement in Australia simply lures more people into the boats, many of whom will drown.
Yet here comes Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, threatening more drownings and more insecurity at home:

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young says Australia should take a leading role in rescuing asylum seekers from Myanmar and Bangladesh stranded at sea.
An estimated 8000 asylum seekers are stranded onboard wooden boats in the Andaman sea north of Indonesia with Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia refusing to let them land…
Many are Muslim minority Rohingyas fleeing the majority Buddhist country of Myanmar where they are denied citizenship and subject to routine violence… An estimated 25,000 Rohingyas have fled their home state since the beginning of this year.
Senator Hanson-Young says Australia has a vested interest in regional security and as the best resourced country in the region should take a leading role in a search and rescue operation to end the crisis.
Hanson-Young adds:
Aust can’t just sit by while thousands of refugees die at sea in our region. We must urgently increase our refugee intake & offer sanctuary
Apparently, even boat people beyond Singapore - some from Bangladesh, a country not war-torn - are now our responsibility to find and pick up:
Govt’s response to refugees stranded at sea and dying from starvation - apparently not Australia’s problem
The actions of Malaysia and Thailand have been far too brutal, but ignored by the Greens and fellow travellers in the media is that few of the boat people are actually refugees, and if they are not deterred many tens of thousands will follow:
The sudden crackdown on Bay of Bengal illegal migrants by Thai authorities 20 days ago stopped dead the people-smuggling boats leaving Bangladesh and Myanmar.
In the first three months of this year, people traffickers were moving 25,000 people through the Bay of Bengal towards Thailand and Malaysia, the UN’s refugee agency estimated.
“Since May 1, there’s no more boats leaving,” said a refugees relief agency official in Bangkok. “A $US250 million industry has been interrupted.”
The Thai Navy for a decade has been quietly pushing boatloads of Rohingya asylum-seekers away from the Andaman coast, often with acute brutality, but recently with additional fuel, food and water and a benign wave towards Malaysia.
The Thais call this “helping them on”.
Southern Thailand is also the hub of a cruel trade in illegal migrants, transiting illegal work-seekers and refugees from origin countries to Malaysia…
At the same time, the Malaysians made clear they would accept no more Rohingyas as asylum-seekers — more than 45,000 are registered as refugees and asylum-seekers. There is another 12,300 Myanmarese Muslims of other ethnicities.
What we are seeing here, as with Europe and the southern border of the US, is a vast movement of poor people to richer countries. Those who don’t maintain their borders risk being overrun in time, or, at the least, having a large underclass of under-assimilated immigrants.
UPDATE
The Age editorial claims:
image
The statistics tell:
image
When the facts count for so little with those now running The Age, how can readers trust anything this paper publishes about its pet causes, from global warming to refugee policies?
(Thanks to readers Duncan and TM.) 
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FitzSimons and the ultimate case of blame-the-victim

Andrew Bolt May 19 2015 (4:01pm)

Peter FitzSimons, Sydney Morning Herald columnist and fellow of Sydney University’s Senate, likens Christianity to the Islamic State:
image
FitzSimons seems unable to see the difference between being Christ being crucified and the Islamic State doing the crucifying.
Amazing, but we are talking here about a man who cannot see the difference between Christ’s preaching and an Islamic State snuff-tape.
And to think he helps to run a university.
UPDATE
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi sets straight a common error - one that is used too often by the ABC to stifle healthy debate on a controversial ideology:
EMMA ALBERICI: Do you see it as our government’s role to speak out against racism?
CORY BERNARDI: Of course, I think government has a role to play in the social fabric of society, absolutely.
EMMA ALBERICI: So you would understand that on this halal issue, some people see it as simply anti-Islam?
CORY BERNARDI: But Islam’s not a race, Emma, so I’m not sure how you segue from racism into Islam. You can become a Muslim simply by pledging your allegiance to Allah and Muhammad as his messenger. It doesn’t change your race.
(Thanks to reader Owen.) 
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Politicians remove a perk they get, millions don’t. So where’s the applause?

Andrew Bolt May 19 2015 (3:43pm)

I am amazed the media is still beating up this issue and defending what is clearly a perk for the more fortunate, paid for by denying the less. But at least the Government’s retorts are getting better:
Treasurer Joe Hockey says revelations two ministers “double-dipped” on paid parental leave schemes is evidence why the government had to cut benefits for some new families.
Mr Hockey has been under pressure to explain why 80,000 woman stand to have their parental leave entitlements cuts due to a government crackdown on new parents accessing payments from both their employer and taxpayer-funded schemes when two ministers themselves have admitted they “double-dipped”.
The Treasurer said on Tuesday the fact that the Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg accessed both schemes showed the government was acting in the “national interest” by cutting off the benefits…
”Given that they took it it’s all the more important that we actually remove it to prove that we’re not acting out of self-interest, we’re actually acting in the national interest,” he told the ABC.
Now let ABC staff declare their own vested interest in defending a perk not available to most taxpayers. 
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Pause in warming, pause in explanation

Andrew Bolt May 19 2015 (3:35pm)

Some warmists now have literally no answer when asked about the pause in global warming. Take Environmental Defense Fund climate expert Carol Andress.
(Thanks to reader Allan.) 
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Valley View, Yosemite From the workshop Jean and I taught a week or more ago.  After a morning of shooting the valley...
Posted by Matt Granz on Tuesday, 19 May 2015

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Do you agree?
Posted by Breakthru Radio on Sunday, 5 April 2015

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“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” -James 3:17-18
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth."
Ecclesiastes 10:7
Upstarts frequently usurp the highest places, while the truly great pine in obscurity. This is a riddle in providence whose solution will one day gladden the hearts of the upright; but it is so common a fact, that none of us should murmur if it should fall to our own lot. When our Lord was upon earth, although he is the Prince of the kings of the earth, yet he walked the footpath of weariness and service as the Servant of servants: what wonder is it if his followers, who are princes of the blood, should also be looked down upon as inferior and contemptible persons? The world is upside down, and therefore, the first are last and the last first. See how the servile sons of Satan lord it in the earth! What a high horse they ride! How they lift up their horn on high! Haman is in the court, while Mordecai sits in the gate; David wanders on the mountains, while Saul reigns in state; Elijah is complaining in the cave while Jezebel is boasting in the palace; yet who would wish to take the places of the proud rebels? and who, on the other hand, might not envy the despised saints? When the wheel turns, those who are lowest rise, and the highest sink. Patience, then, believer, eternity will right the wrongs of time.
Let us not fall into the error of letting our passions and carnal appetites ride in triumph, while our nobler powers walk in the dust. Grace must reign as a prince, and make the members of the body instruments of righteousness. The Holy Spirit loves order, and he therefore sets our powers and faculties in due rank and place, giving the highest room to those spiritual faculties which link us with the great King; let us not disturb the divine arrangement, but ask for grace that we may keep under our body and bring it into subjection. We were not new created to allow our passions to rule over us, but that we, as kings, may reign in Christ Jesus over the triple kingdom of spirit, soul, and body, to the glory of God the Father.

Evening

"And he requested for himself that he might die."
1 Kings 19:4
It was a remarkable thing that the man who was never to die, for whom God had ordained an infinitely better lot, the man who should be carried to heaven in a chariot of fire, and be translated, that he should not see death--should thus pray, "Let me die, I am no better than my fathers." We have here a memorable proof that God does not always answer prayer in kind, though he always does in effect. He gave Elias something better than that which he asked for, and thus really heard and answered him. Strange was it that the lion-hearted Elijah should be so depressed by Jezebel's threat as to ask to die, and blessedly kind was it on the part of our heavenly Father that he did not take his desponding servant at his word. There is a limit to the doctrine of the prayer of faith. We are not to expect that God will give us everything we choose to ask for. We know that we sometimes ask, and do not receive, because we ask amiss. If we ask for that which is not promised--if we run counter to the spirit which the Lord would have us cultivate--if we ask contrary to his will, or to the decrees of his providence--if we ask merely for the gratification of our own ease, and without an eye to his glory, we must not expect that we shall receive. Yet, when we ask in faith, nothing doubting, if we receive not the precise thing asked for, we shall receive an equivalent, and more than an equivalent, for it. As one remarks, "If the Lord does not pay in silver, he will in gold; and if he does not pay in gold, he will in diamonds." If he does not give you precisely what you ask for, he will give you that which is tantamount to it, and that which you will greatly rejoice to receive in lieu thereof. Be then, dear reader, much in prayer, and make this evening a season of earnest intercession, but take heed what you ask.
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Onesiphorus

[ÅŽne sĭph'o rŭs] - bringing advantage. A believer in Ephesuswho befriended Paul (2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19).

The Man Who Was Kind to His Friend

From the description Paul gives us of Onesiphorus, he must have been a lovely character. In his revealing essay of this rare character, Alexander Whyte speaks of him as "an elder in the Church of Ephesus, and a better elder there never was."
Much controversy has raged around Paul's cameo of Onesiphorus. Was he adorning the brow of a living man with a garland? Or was he placing a wreath upon the tomb of a saint? Some see in Paul's reference to "the house of Onesiphorus" a proof for the lawfulness of prayers for the dead. But Paul's language does not constitute a prayer, but only a wish or exclamation. The dead are beyond the influence of our intercessions.
There are several traits of the admirable life of Onesiphorus we can profitably meditate upon:
I. He was repeatedly kind. "He oft refreshed me." In the overwhelming heat of his trials, Paul found himself revived when this dear saint came his way. What a blessed ministry it is to refresh the needy children of God!
II. He associated himself with Paul's suffering. "He was not ashamed of my chain." Some of the apostle's friends did not like to own any connection with a chained man. But not so Onesiphorus. He had a big soul and brought consolation to the manacled prisoner. Many of God's best servants are harassed with chains of sorrow and of affliction. Let us not shrink from helping them.
III. He made it his business to find Paul. "He sought me out." Matthew Henry says, "A good man will seek opportunities of doing good, and will not shun that offer." Is there someone you should hunt up and cheer?
IV. He and his house were blessed for kindness shown. "The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus." Paul was not able to reward his friend for all his gracious solicitation, but the Lord could, and would. In ministering to Paul, Onesiphorous had ministered to the Lord, and of the Lord would be blessed.
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Today's reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9, John 6:22-44 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9

Issachar
1 The sons of Issachar:
Tola, Puah, Jashub and Shimron--four in all.
2 The sons of Tola:
Uzzi, Rephaiah, Jeriel, Jahmai, Ibsam and Samuel--heads of their families. During the reign of David, the descendants of Tola listed as fighting men in their genealogy numbered 22,600.
3 The son of Uzzi:
Izrahiah.
The sons of Izrahiah:
Michael, Obadiah, Joel and Ishiah. All five of them were chiefs. 4 According to their family genealogy, they had 36,000 men ready for battle, for they had many wives and children.
5 The relatives who were fighting men belonging to all the clans of Issachar, as listed in their genealogy, were 87,000 in all....

Today's New Testament reading: John 6:22-44

22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus....
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