Friday, July 17, 2015

Fri Jul 17th Todays News

It is now confirmed that Ukraine was complicit with downing of MH17. What is not known is Washington's contribution to the tragedy. It looks like a black ops sting gone bad, a cynical sacrifice of civilian life to make a political point. It was known that rebels fired the missile, but what is not known, or even asked, is what the rebels thought they were doing. Clearly they were being monitored by Ukraine, who provided circumstantial evidence regarding Russian telecommunications immediately. But the plane was targeted after two other military planes had been downed the previous two days. Ukraine was at war in the air and instead of giving a warning to domestic carriers she chose to sacrifice a civilian carrier for personal gain. Ukraine's government was illegitimate, put in with smoke and mirrors against popular will which favoured Russia. The result was the loss of dockyards and then civil war. And Washington are part of the mix. It is hard to believe that Ukraine conceived this disaster on their own. We now know from the footage that Ukraine separatists expected to find a Ukraine military craft when they found the passenger transport. Clearly it was a black ops sting. And Ukraine should not profit from it. Neither should Washington. It is part and parcel with Obama's regional foreign policy. A new cold war started by Obama. Which will allow regional bullies like China and Russia to slap down smaller sovereign nations used as pawns in a Great Game. 

 Identity politics, where race, religion and gender are chosen. If one focuses on what is meant by that thought bubble, one should be enraged. There is racial diversity, that does not mean race is a choice. Race should never be a state consideration. Race need not be defined. Those insisting on it are apartheid supporters. Remember when the left opposed apartheid? As for gender being chosen, that is best left to the idle rich. 

Planned Parenting exploits dead foetus'. Selling parts for profit. Suggesting late term abortions so that parts are developed for sale? Have ethicists been so divorced from morals? 

 Q and A hide behind a child they exploited. A ten year old coached by parents with ABC encouragement to ask a highly politicised question on national tv. How will they explain it to their friends? Sadly, their teachers may applaud it. But, it is unprofessional, damaging and detrimental to wider society that it happened. What about a child holding a severed head? 

 ALP face allegations regarding expenses. Senator Polley from Tasmania has apparently taken luxury rides worth over $20k. Will the ALP pay back those legitimate expenses too? 

 Right wing extremists said to be as deadly as jihadis. However, not by objective measures. Right wingers have been responsible for arguing and race baiting. They have not been party to rape, murder, torture, beheading and terrorism. Or stoning, dismemberment, female genital mutilation or pedophilia. The garden variety right winger might use the same words as neo Nazis and have no understanding of history or culture or basic reasoning, and they probably like to drink too much and think very little, but really, they are disgusting, but not like jihadis. Consider reports from Chattanooga where an apparent jihadist assaulted two defence bases before being killed by police. 

 ALP being led by Plibersek to the left. ALP foreign policy waters down the Australian US alliance in favour of China. It kind of fits with Obama's cold war regional policy vision, but is in fact a bad move for the entire region. Next week ALP heavyweights are going to shift policy to legitimise a terrorist state for Palestine. 

 In 180, Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa were executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world. 1203, the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos fled from his capital into exile. The Byzantine Empire was crumbling as siblings quarrelled over the throne. One enlisted the aid of the crusaders to overthrow another. They were kind of successful against their Christian brothers when they would fail against Islam. One thing worth noting was that in deposing one emperor, the previous wasn't killed, but blinded. Considered a penalty that was more merciful than killing. 1402, Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumed the throne over the Ming dynasty of China. 1429, Hundred Years' War: Charles VII of France was crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc 1453, Battle of Castillon: The last battle of Hundred Years' War, the French under Jean Bureau defeated the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was killed in the battle in Gascony.

 In 1717, King George I of Great Britain sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music was premiered. 1762, Catherine II became tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia. 1771, Bloody Falls massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacred a group of unsuspecting Inuit. 1791, members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette opened fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people. 1794, the 16 Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne were executed ten days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. 1856, the Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, killed over 60 people. 1867, Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the first dental school in the U.S. to be affiliated with a university. 1896, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Indian sage, at age 16, spontaneously initiated a process of self-enquiry that culminated within a few minutes in his own permanent awakening. 1899, NEC Corporation was organised as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.

 In 1917, King George V issued a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family would bear the surname Windsor. 1918, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers were murdered by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Also 1918, the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, was sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five lives were lost. 1932, Altona Bloody Sunday: A riot between the Nazi Party paramilitary forces, the SS and SA, and the German Communist Party ensued. 1933, after successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashed in Europe under mysterious circumstances. 1936, Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain started the civil war. 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and became known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

 In 1944, Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 320. Also 1944, World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs were dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France. 1945, World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, met in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany. 1948, the South Korean constitution was proclaimed. 1953, the largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event resulted from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44. 1955, Disneyland was dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California. 1962, Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I became the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site. 1968, a revolution occurred in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown and the Ba'ath Party was installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.

 In 1973, King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan was deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery. 1975, Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations. 1976, East Timor was annexed, and became the 27th province of Indonesia. Also 1976, the opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal was marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team. 1979, Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled to Miami, Florida. 1981, the opening of the Humber Bridge by Queen Elizabeth II in England. Also 1981, a structural failure led to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200. 1985, founding of the EUREKA Network by former head of states François Mitterrand (France) and Helmut Kohl (Germany). 1989, first flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. Also 1989, Holy See–Poland relations were restored.

 In 1996, TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 exploded, killing all 230 on board. Also 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries was founded. 1998, Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed ten villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless. Also 1998, a diplomatic conference adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. 2001, Concorde was brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash. 2007, TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashed into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the São Paulo–Congonhas Airport runway, killing 199 people. 2009, two suicide bombers detonate themselves at two separate hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashed near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board were killed.
2014
With the world first repeal of ridiculously bad Carbon Dioxide tax legislation, Australia can breathe freely. The tax had been implemented despite no government running on a platform to install it. Now that it is repealed, opposition leader Bill Shorten is promising to campaign for one next election. Some say we have lost the chance to lower world temperatures by an estimates 0.0038 degrees celcius over the next hundred years, and so we are all going to die. Others say it was a wasteful redistribution of money which penalised industry unfairly. 

Anti semitic bigots are saying Israel is not allowed to defend herself. They are wrong. Israel is entitled to protect her people from killers, or stone throwers, or vandals and thieves. However, the bigots need to be confronted, to justify why they have used a position of authority to harm civilians. What has happened is a war crime and is something that significant figures in the UN, European parliament and US Government have condoned, along with significant international media. It is unbelievable that such an inquiry into those figures will occur any time soon. But until it happens, the significant governments of the world have unclean hands. Significant points that many do not know are 
  1. There is no Palestine. Palestine is a Roman word to describe a secular administration of Jewish peoples in the Middle East, which is what Israel is now. 
  2. So called Palestinians are ethnically Jordanian. They lost a civil war in 1967 and called themselves Palestinian with the encouragement of arab governments keen to not have to host refugee civil warriors. 
  3. The land that Palestinians inhabit was designated as Israeli but was seized by Jordan before it was handed over in 1948. 
  4. Israel has been over cautious in her dealings with terrorists. She doesn't kill them, but imprisons them. And often has been made to free them for peace. 
  5. Terrorist activity against Israel is disproportionate. Killing people indiscriminately is not justified. 
  6. The largest killer of Islamic peoples in the Middle East is Islamic peoples. 
  7. Israel pays for aid to Palestine, and generously runs and funds hospitals and provides energy, business and supplies. 
  8. Palestinian authorities syphon aid dollars and buys weapons for terrorists. 
  9. Palestinian leaders have become rich as their peoples crumble in the indignity of poverty. 
  10. Palestinian authorities allow the lynching of their peoples on any pretext, often on untested assertions of spying. Further, they have kidnapped and killed Israelis. 
  11. Israel, as a secular administration, meets all the requirements of the Balfour Proclamation and so there is no need for a second state. 
On this day 180, we know Christians had been in North Africa because twelve were executed there. In 1203, a crusade got sidetracked and sacked Constantinople with the aim of uniting the Eastern and Western churches. In 1429, Joan of Arc successfully got a French King crowned. Sadly for her, her life was a trade off. In 1453, England lost the last battle of the hundred year war, and all of her European lands, exempt Calais, which would be lost when Mary I entrusted her husband to defend it a hundred years later. In 1717, gloriously, King George I of England sailed down the Thames with 50 musicians premiering George Frideric Handel's Water Music. In 1794, we had the reminder that secular authority is not the same as atheist administration, with the slaughter of sixteen Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne, 10 days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. In 1918, Communists killed the Tsar and his family. 1945, Churchill was alone against Stalin at Potsdam while the idiot Truman condemned over a hundred million European peoples, unlucky enough to live in the East, to tyranny. In 1955, Disneyland opened. In 1976, Some African nations boycotted the Olympics because of New Zealand. 
Historical perspectives on this day
In 180, Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa were executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world. 1203, the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople by assault. The Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos fled from his capital into exile. 1402, Zhu Di, better known by his era name as the Yongle Emperor, assumed the throne over the Ming dynasty of China. 1429, Hundred Years' War: Charles VII of France was crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc 1453, Battle of Castillon: The last battle of Hundred Years' War, the French under Jean Bureau defeated the English under the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was killed in the battle in Gascony.

 In 1717, King George I of Great Britain sailed down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel's Water Music was premiered. 1762, Catherine II became tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia. 1771, Bloody Falls massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacred a group of unsuspecting Inuit. 1791, members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette opened fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people. 1794, the 16 Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne were executed ten days prior to the end of the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. 1856, the Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, killed over 60 people. 1867, Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the first dental school in the U.S. to be affiliated with a university. 1896, Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Indian sage, at age 16, spontaneously initiated a process of self-enquiry that culminated within a few minutes in his own permanent awakening. 1899, NEC Corporation was organised as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.

 In 1917, King George V issued a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family would bear the surname Windsor. 1918, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers were murdered by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Also 1918, the RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, was sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five lives were lost. 1932, Altona Bloody Sunday: A riot between the Nazi Party paramilitary forces, the SS and SA, and the German Communist Party ensued. 1933, after successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica crashed in Europe under mysterious circumstances. 1936, Spanish Civil War: An Armed Forces rebellion against the recently elected leftist Popular Front government of Spain started the civil war. 1938, Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn to fly the "wrong way" to Ireland and became known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

 In 1944, Port Chicago disaster: Near the San Francisco Bay, two ships laden with ammunition for the war exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 320. Also 1944, World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs were dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France. 1945, World War II: The main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, met in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany. 1948, the South Korean constitution was proclaimed. 1953, the largest number of United States midshipman casualties in a single event resulted from an aircraft crash in Florida killing 44. 1955, Disneyland was dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California. 1962, Nuclear weapons testing: The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I became the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site. 1968, a revolution occurred in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown and the Ba'ath Party was installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.

 In 1973, King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan was deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery. 1975, Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations. 1976, East Timor was annexed, and became the 27th province of Indonesia. Also 1976, the opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal was marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team. 1979, Nicaraguan dictator General Anastasio Somoza Debayle resigned and fled to Miami, Florida. 1981, the opening of the Humber Bridge by Queen Elizabeth II in England. Also 1981, a structural failure led to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200. 1985, founding of the EUREKA Network by former head of states François Mitterrand (France) and Helmut Kohl (Germany). 1989, first flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. Also 1989, Holy See–Poland relations were restored.

 In 1996, TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 exploded, killing all 230 on board. Also 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries was founded. 1998, Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroyed ten villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless. Also 1998, a diplomatic conference adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. 2001, Concorde was brought back in to service nearly a year after the July 2000 crash. 2007, TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashed into a warehouse after landing too fast and missing the end of the São Paulo–Congonhas Airport runway, killing 199 people. 2009, two suicide bombers detonate themselves at two separate hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashed near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board were killed.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
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. 
===
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.
===
Happy birthday and many happy returns Isaac Watts (1674), John Wilbur (1774), James Cagney (1899), Fred Ball (1915) and Donald Sutherland (1935). Born on the same day, across the years. On your day, in 1453, The Battle of Castillon, the last conflict of the Hundred Years' War, ended with the English losing all landholdings in France, except Calais. 1771, Dene men, acting as a guide to Samuel Hearne on his exploration of the Coppermine River in present-day Nunavut, Canada, massacred a group of about 20 Copper Inuit. 1936, Nationalist rebels attempted a coup d'état against the Second Spanish Republic, sparking the Spanish Civil War. 1973, Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, was ousted in a coup by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery. 1981, A structural failure caused a walkway at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, US, to collapse killing 114 people and injuring 216 others. Your hymn raises hope, which when all else is lost, retains Calais. And if the structure about you fails, if you lose your crown, if your plan fails, you can resort to the defiant snarl "You dirty rat."
Deaths
July 17: Feast day of the Scillitan Martyrs (Roman Catholic Church); Eid al-Fitr (Islam, 2015); Constitution Day in South Korea (1948)
Churchill, Truman, and Stalin at the Potsdam Conference
To be part of a journey of discovery is glorious. We have a treaty, or we don't. two against one is not fair. Eye surgery is hazardous. It is best not to blow ones self up with self importance. Let's party. 
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
===
2015
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From Tehran with love

Piers Akerman – Friday, July 17, 2015 (9:15am)

FORMER prime minister John Howard warned eight years ago an Obama victory would be a boost for terrorists but he didn’t reckon an elected Barack Obama would also ramp up a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'From Tehran with love'
===

WE’RE NUMBER ONE! WE’RE NUMBER ONE!

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (4:55pm)

On top of Australia’s brilliant batting comes this fantastic news: 
Nearly one in five Australians do not believe in climate change, making the country the worst in the world for climate sceptics, a study of almost 20,000 people has found.
The research by the University of Tasmania found 17 per cent of Australians thought climate change was not real, compared with 15 per cent of people in Norway, 13 per cent of New Zealanders and 12 per cent of Americans …
“Despite the findings of climate scientists, the proportions of climate sceptics appear to be increasing in many countries,” the study said. 
Incorrect. It is not despite the findings of climate scientists that climate sceptics are increasing. It is because of them.
(Via Puzzled)
===

THE ISSUE ITSELF IS REALLY COMPLEX

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (2:58pm)

Excuse me, but this woman is an idiot:



If Professor Aly is against using the term “hate” in connection to terrorism, presumably she is also opposed to the framing in law of “hate crimes”. 
===

CAST OF PODS

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (3:48am)

Please join Joe Hildebrand and me as we discuss all the major issues of the week in appropriately serious and sober terms. Includes rampant milk consumption and obvious Ventolin inhalation.
===

WINTER IS COLD

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (3:33am)

Peter Hannam – formerly the Sydney Morning Herald‘s grandly-titled carbon economy editor, but now busted down to mere environment editor – reports: 
Sydney is set for another cold and wet day on Friday with an east coast low expected to form offshore and bring damaging winds and rain during the morning.
Friday’s maximum in the city is forecast to reach just 13 degrees, roughly in line with Thursday’s top of 13.4 degrees, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. If realised, that would make it Sydney’s coldest two days in a row since June 1995, said David Barlow, an information officer with the bureau. 
Chillier weather seems to have calmed Hannam’s global warming zeal. It’ll return by January.
UPDATE. Hey, Perfesser Flannery! Look at where the rain is falling:

image

UPDATE II. Via reader Plum, this was Peter Hannam’s May 29 winter preview: 
Most of Australia can expect a drier and warmer than usual winter as the influence of an El Nino takes hold ...  the odds favour drier-than-average conditions for most of south-eastern Australia for June and for winter as a whole. 
Er, yeah. Here’s an excellent snowman:

image
===

HEAD START

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (3:16am)

Australian captain Michael Clarke may have scored the better deal in this noggin-swapping CricInfo photoshop:

image

Yikes. Likewise, the Australians have the better deal after the first day of the Second Test at Lord’s: Australia 1/337 at stumps, with centuries to both Chris Rogers and Steven Smith, whose 259-run second-wicket partnership broke an 85-year-old Lord’s record held by  Donald Bradman and Bill Woodfull.
This is Australia’s best start to a Test in England since Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh’s 301-run opening stand on the first day at Trent Bridge in 1989. The Taylor-Marsh partnership was achieved once that series was already decided. This partnership comes at a more crucial time.
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CALLING ALL MUSLIM WHEELIES

Tim Blair – Friday, July 17, 2015 (12:21am)

Attention, disabled Islamic extremists! ISIS needs you: 
An Australian terrorist is on the hunt for potential wives, as well as disabled Muslims, to join him in war torn Syria.
Neil Prakash, 24, has put a call out on social media for more wives as he targets fresh recruits – including the disabled – to boost the dwindling ranks of the Islamic State …
A disabled extremist – who suffers from scoliosis – and others ask if those in wheelchairs and with injuries would be welcome in the Islamic State.
“Allah has opened the way for our disabled brothers and sisters in the past! I ask Allah to guide you all here safely,” he said. 
Access ramps for suicide bombers! It’s the new, all-inclusive, handicap-friendly Islamic State.
===

On The Bolt Report on Sunday, July 19

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (3:26pm)

On Channel 10 on Sunday:
Editorial:  Don’t believe this latest carbon lie
My guest: Treasurer Joe Hockey
The panel: former Treasurer Peter Costello and former NSW Labor Treasurer Michael Costa

NewsWatch: Nick Cater, The Australian columnist and head of the Menzies Research Centre.

So much to talk about: Bronwyn Bishop’s dodgy expenses, Greens Senator helps ferry in illegal immigrants, what price real tax reform and more.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

The Age of identity politics

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (11:49am)

Modern morality is really is about how you seem, not what you do.
The Age confirms it with this announcement:
The Age has some recent additions to our social reporting… Beau Donelly is our new ‘identity’ reporter - race, religion and gender.
Religion is now simply a matter of identity?  “Race”, too? 
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How dare Q&A hide behind a child

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (10:09am)

Jennifer Oriel on Q&A’s latest con:
Even amid the cultural detritus of neo-Marxism, the use of a child on the ABC to denounce a conservative Prime Minister was strikingly grotesque. The parents who placed their 10-year-old child on Q&A;to declare: “Tony Abbott scares me” (much to the audience’s delight), protested that the boy had a developed interest in politics. That may be so, but he also has a 15-year wait until his prefrontal cortex is fully developed, until which time his capacity to exercise sound judgment and process information rationally is physiologically impaired.
Tony Jones and Peter McEvoy have no such excuse. Their decision to broadcast a 10-year-old who appeared as a scared victim of Prime Minister Tony Abbott impoverishes public debate and civil society. When strong emotions such as a child’s fear are taken as evidence of harm in the place of empirical facts, the absence of a falsifiable hypothesis means the accused cannot defend themselves… When children are presented as accusers, it doubly disarms civilised adults whose moral decency prevents them from mounting a vigorous rebuttal against a child…
Despite the Kafkaesque scene, or perhaps because of it, sections of the Left-wing media celebrated the use of a scripted child on Q&A;. The reception is markedly cooler when children are used for less fashionable causes such as religious fundamentalism…
The culture of the contemporary Left is so riven with political avarice and ideological ambition that even the use of children as political shields does not register a tremor on its rank moral barometer…
Politics played artfully is a decidedly adult affair. Let the children be children.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

Now Labor bitten on high-flying expenses

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (9:50am)

As soon as one side in politics attacks rorting by the other it’s a sure bet the boomerang comes back:

Federal Government whip Andrew Nikolic is using Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s promise to repay taxpayers for a short but costly helicopter flight to ... reapply pressure on Tasmanian Labor senator Helen Polley to repay more than $20,000 worth of charter flights…
Between July 2011 and mid-2013, Senator Polley racked up a bill of $23,000 on eight return flights from Launceston to Hobart.
Mr Nikolic claimed the cost had not been adequately explained....
“At the time of Senator Polley’s flights she had no portfolio responsibilities.
“I challenge you to find any other politician in Tasmania that’s used that extent of charter travel.”
Senator Polley insisted the charter flight expenses were incurred on legitimate electoral business… Last year, she said diary pressures meant she did not always have time to make the two-and-a-half hour journey between Launceston and Hobart by car…
Mr Nikolic was not convinced.
“The distance from Launceston to the airport is 20 minutes,” he said.
“By the time you wait to get onto a charter aircraft and fly to Hobart it’s probably an hour, and then it’s another half-an-hour from Hobart Airport to the centre of Hobart.
“There’s a couple of hours gone. What are you actually saving in terms of time one way?”
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Dangerous rubbish from defenders of the true extremists

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (8:54am)

Fairfax treats this evasive nonsense seriously:
Right-wing extremism is emerging as an equal, if not greater, threat than Muslim radicalisation in Australia and multiculturalism is “close to death” at a federal level, academics and police have told a conference on social cohesion.
Violent extremism in Australia is beginning to mirror that of the US, counter-terrorism expert Anne Aly from Curtin University said.
She highlighted a New America Foundation study released last month that found right-wing extremists had killed twice as many people since September 11 as jihadists.
Let’s stop right there.
Right-wing extremism in Australia is as deadly as Muslim extremism in Australia? Seriously?
Australian Islamist extremists have so far beheaded, murdered and raped people Iraq and Syria, stabbed two police in Melbourne, staged a siege in Sydney that killed two hostages and plotted to bomb or attack the MCG and Sydney Holsworthy army base.  Islamist extremists have so far killed 11 Australians in the September 11 attacks, 92 Australians in the bombing attacks in Bali, and yet more Australians in Syria, Sydney, Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan and Tunisia. At least 30 Australian Islamists have been killed while fighting in Iraq and Syria.
Could Aly the academic produce a matching list of victims of Australian “Right wing extemists” in that period?
As for that New America Foundation survey, note that it omits the 3000 people murdered in the September 11 attacks - a figure that if included would dramatically tip the balance of its 26 to 48 scorecard.
Aly also overlooks other critical facts. For instance, Australia does not have the racist and anti-government micro-movements that have incited paranoid kooks in the US. And the threat from Muslim extremists in the US, per head of population, is actually far, far greater than than the threat of extremist violence from non-Muslim Americans - and growing, as today’s attack in Chattanooga shows.
Then there is the confusion of cause with effect:
Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane told the conference there had undoubtedly been a rise in far-right extremist organisations.
As I have warned for years, Islamist extremism, if not checked, will inevitably provoke an ugly reaction from the extreme Right.
This is even more likely when institutions such as universities promote figures of hatred and division instead of holding them to account:
Keysar Trad, chairman of the Islamic Friendship Association, took direct aim at right-wing columnists and shock jocks, saying they “take no responsibility for the hostile environment they have created” and had moved on from demanding assimilation from Muslims, to saying Muslims “had become unassimilable”.
“Blaming minorities is the laziest and nastiest form of deflection,” he said.
Actually, blaming the majority is the lazy and nasty deflection here. And the hostile environment is much more the work of those like Trad rather than those who denounce him.
To remind you who Trad is, read this and wonder why a university and the Sydney Morning Herald promotes this man and his inflammatory preaching. 
===

Kuwaiti Muslim murders four Marines in Chattanooga

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (8:41am)

Another terrorist attack in the US, and another Muslim involved:
A gunman killed four Marines and injured three other people on Thursday morning. The suspect shot at the facilities from a vehicle, according to reports.
The gunman was also dead…
UPDATE: The shooting suspect was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, of Hixson, Tennessee. Authorities believe he is originally from Kuwait, according to The Associated Press.
UPDATE
More details:
The first shooting began at about 10:50 a.m. when a gunman drove up and fired 25-to-30 rounds at a Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center in a strip mall east of downtown Chattanooga, where one Marine was wounded, Pentagon officials said.

The shooter then apparently drove 7 miles to a second military facility where he again opened fire around 11:30 a.m., killing four Marines at a Navy Operational Support Center, authorities said…
Cherie Adkins, a neighbor of the alleged shooter and his family, said Mr. Abdulazeez “wasn’t very friendly” and that the family, including parents and at least three siblings, largely kept to itself. “They never mingled with the people in the neighborhood,” said Ms. Adkins, who lives in Hixson, Tenn., a community in Chattanooga.
“They made it very clear they were of another religion,” she said. Women in the family wore Muslim head coverings, but the men in the family dressed like Westerners, Ms. Adkins said. 
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‘Selling’ baby parts

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (8:21am)

Revolting, but isn’t this exactly the slippery slope predicted once babies in the womb were treated as non-human?:
New undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted fetuses, and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.
In the video, Nucatola is at a business lunch with actors posing as buyers from a human biologics company. As head of PPFA’s Medical Services department, Nucatola has overseen medical practice at all Planned Parenthood locations since 2009. She also trains new Planned Parenthood abortion doctors and performs abortions herself at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles up to 24 weeks.
The buyers ask Nucatola, “How much of a difference can that actually make, if you know kind of what’s expected, or what we need?”
“It makes a huge difference,” Nucatola replies. “I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps. The kind of rate-limiting step of the procedure is calvarium. Calvarium—the head—is basically the biggest part.”
Nucatola explains, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

She is talking about girls and boys.

Not selling, just recovering costs, says Planned Parenthood:
Planned Parenthood has countered that it donates the tissue for scientific research and receives only reimbursement for its expenses, which is legal. The group also says it helps people donate tissue “with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards,” according to a statement from spokesman Eric Ferrero.
Later, Ferrero issued another statement saying, “These outrageous claims are flat-out untrue, but that doesn’t matter to politicians with a longstanding political agenda to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood. Women and families who make the decision to donate fetal tissue for lifesaving scientific research should be honored, not attacked and demeaned.”
So crush away. Extract, dissect, dismember and stick the bits of baby in the post.
(Thanks to reader aPilgrim and others.) 
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Video confirms Russian-backed rebels shot down MH17

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (8:02am)

This video and transcript of Russian backed rebels searching the scene of the downed MH17 should end all debate about who exactly shot the plane out of the sky. It also confirms the Putin regime has lied through its teeth, since there is no way it could not know of this video or the facts of this case.
From the tape:
The commander can be heard off camera saying: “They say the Sukhoi (Fighter) brought down the civilian plane and ours brought down the fighter.
“But where is the Sukhoi?
“There it is … it’s the passenger plane.”
Caution: some may find the video distressing. 
===

A journalism lecturer meets God

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (7:36am)

Gordon Farrer lectures in journalism at RMIT University, and shares all the Left wing views common to that breed of academic.
He meets Waleed Aly and starts to babble with awe and reverence:
He’s a deep-thinking academic… He’s self-deprecating, quick-witted… He plays in a rock band… Admirers want him to go into politics ... praised him for bringing a “fresh perspective” to familiar issues… launching into an answer full of finely shaded precision… It’s not in his DNA to simplify, to not give deeply considered answers ... the intellectual rigour of his approach ... never comes across as condescending or arrogant ... gentle and accommodating, never strident ... always ready with a humorous quip ... his thirst for variety ...
Certain things are not mentioned - things that might disturb the tone of this hagiography. 
===

Why do warmists want to destroy the landscape?

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (7:32am)

Christopher Booker on the environmental and economic vandalism of the global warming Left:

When Professor David MacKay stepped down as chief scientific adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change last year, he produced a report comparing the environmental impact of … fracking … to … wind farms. Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shale gas pad” covering five acres, with a drilling rig 85 feet high (only needed for less than a year), would produce as much energy as 87 giant wind turbines, covering 5.6 square miles and visible up to 20 miles away. Yet, to the greenies, the first of these, capable of producing energy whenever needed, without a penny of subsidy, is anathema; while the second, producing electricity very unreliably in return for millions of pounds in subsidies, fills them with rapture.
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Labor lurches left as Plibersek gains power

Andrew Bolt July 17 2015 (7:18am)

Labor’s Left, led by Tanya Plibersek, flexes its muscles:
Labor has watered down its ­language on the US-Australia ­alliance, abandoning references to the ANZUS Treaty as “one of Australia’s great national assets’’ and “the bedrock of regional stability’’ as part of its policy blueprint for government. 

The significant foreign policy shift, which could hand a future Labor government more room to balance the relationship between the US and China in the Asia-­Pacific, was drafted by foreign affairs spokeswoman and deputy leader Tanya Plibersek, in consultation with members of the party’s shadow cabinet national security committee.
It could get worse, as some in Labor prepare to use next week’s national conference to sell our values for votes:
Labor’s positioning on the Middle East is expected to flare on the final day of the conference, with NSW right heavyweight Tony Burke spearheading a proposed shift in the party’s position on the recognition of a Palestinian state… It comes amid a greater recognition of the demographic shift in western Sydney and the make-up of many of Labor’s local branches with Islamic community members.
America’s non-democratic rivals will be pleased. 
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Silo Under the Whales Mouth
Posted by Matt Granz on Thursday, 16 July 2015

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The assailant at the Recruiting and Navy Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee has been identified as Mohammad...
Posted by Allen West on Thursday, 16 July 2015

Allen West
The assailant at the Recruiting and Navy Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee has been identified as Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, believed to have been born in Kuwait. The liberal left has announced they're planning rallies against the Confederate flag and President Obama has declared the attack as "workplace violence." 
I'll be on 'Fox & Friends' tomorrow morning to discuss this domestic terror attack and the unconscionable lack of security at our U.S. military sites. 
- Allen West
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Ai có ý định du học đâu? Ai du học sinh đâu? Ai đã từng đâuuuu......?? * Hết hóng full HD nữa nha :-* có rồi nà mấy chế...
Posted by Aley Nguyen on Monday, 13 July 2015

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Christ was definitely not out to win a popularity contest!
Posted by GodFruits on Thursday, 16 July 2015

To be fair, he took responsibility for their diet, habitation and mental heath whereas mine only get a once a year well wishing.
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NPR leaves Pandora's lobbying group. Read more in today's Daily Brief: bit.ly/daily-brief-7-16
Posted by American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) on Thursday, 16 July 2015

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Posted by The Kelly File on Tuesday, 14 July 2015

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Demand justice.
Posted by AlterNet on Friday, 26 June 2015

Mailer often got it wrong, but is good with polemics. How about we don't blame people but work to eradicate poverty by promoting prosperity?
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Amazing...
Posted by helloU on Tuesday, 14 July 2015

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=== Posts from last year ===

Proud to have an Australian attitude to life

Piers Akerman – Thursday, July 17, 2014 (7:13pm)

HOW fitting that Rupert Murdoch should launch the world’s biggest-ever media takeover bid in the same week that his flagship national daily, The Australian, celebrates its 50th anniversary. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Proud to have an Australian attitude to life'
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IT IS DONE

Tim Blair – Thursday, July 17, 2014 (12:57pm)

The stupidest and most dishonest tax in Australian legislative history is finally gone: 
The carbon tax is dead.
After almost 60 hours of debate, the Senate finally passed Tony Abbott’s repeal bills this morning. 

With the support of the three Palmer United Party Senators and three key Independents the Government succeeded in wiping the $7 billion a year tax from the statute books and fulfilling its key election promise.
A small applause rang through the Senate when the final vote was read out at 11.15am. The bill was passed with 39 in the affirmative and 32 against. 
It’s like stepping into the Enlightenment.
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THE NOSTRADAMUS PENSIONER

Tim Blair – Thursday, July 17, 2014 (4:50am)

Another prediction from former Fairfax and ABC columnist, Labor speechwriter and future seer Bob Ellis: 
When the Carbon Tax ends this morning or this afternoon … 
That was posted by Bob on July 15. The carbon tax, regrettably, is still in place. As it happens, Ellis once made a film about his early life under the title The Nostradamus Kid.
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CHILD HAS STYLE

Tim Blair – Thursday, July 17, 2014 (4:49am)

His post-park walk might be even cooler than the park itself:



(Via Jalopnik)
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WEIRD AL KNOWS GRAMMAR

Tim Blair – Thursday, July 17, 2014 (4:47am)

Helpful advice for all of us occasional word criminals:

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Carbon tax goes, snow falls. Sceptics celebrate

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (4:37pm)

Carbon tax, Culture wars, Politics - federal

On the day the carbon tax is repealed, the bible of global warming cries in the unusual snow:
image

UPDATE
 Once - as the IPA points out - every political leader wanted a carbon tax of some sort, such was the warming hysteria:
image
Which politician dared stand against the united press gallery?:
Laurie Oakes, the Daily Telegraph: ‘Unless [Malcolm] Turnbull can bring the climate change dissidents to heel, the Liberals will face humiliation at the polls.’ 
Paul Kelly, the ABC1’s Insiders: ‘I mean frankly if [the Liberals] oppose [Turnbull’s amendments to the ETS], that would be signing their own political death warrant.’
Michelle Grattan, the Age: ‘It is in the Liberal party’s interests to vote for the ETS and get the climate change issue as much off the election agenda as possible.’
Peter Hartcher, the Sydney Morning Herald: Opposition to the ETS ‘will give the Rudd government a potential trigger for a double dissolution election. This would be devastating for the Coalition… The party faces electoral oblivion.’ The Weekend Australian’s front page: (28 November): ‘The Coalition faces an electoral wipeout [of at least 20 of its metropolitan seats] at next year’s federal election if the rebels led by Tony Abbott and Nick Minchin succeed in blocking the government’s climate change legislation.’ 
In the end it was Tony Abbott who decided to risk everything on fighting any form of carbon tax. On that platform he won the Liberal leadership by a single vote and fought two election campaigns.
Today he can announce the end of this “useless, destructive tax”:
And now everyone but the Greens and Labor is against the tax:
Government and Palmer United Party senators were joined by the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir, Liberal Democratic Party’s David Leyonhjelm, Family First Party’s Bob Day and Democratic Labour Party’s John Madigan to vote in favour of the repeal.
Bizarrely, Labor is today promising to bring back a form of carbon tax:
Before the vote was taken, Labor leader Bill Shorten confirmed the issue of pricing carbon would not go away by stating categorically that Labor would go to the next election with an emissions trading scheme as policy.
The Government couldn’t be happier:
Christopher Pyne magnified the intention in his own inimitable way bellowing to Shorten across the dispatch box in Parliament ‘’we will hang this around your neck like a rotten stinking carcass ... you have given us a whole new lease of life’’.
UPDATE
Guess which Senator is having a tanty:
image
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Bill Shorten’s pet green project sinks

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (9:01am)

There was the usual fanfare about another green power scheme that needed millions of our dollars in subsidies:
Ocean Power Technologies (Australasia) Pty Ltd is seeking to develop a wave power station off the coast of Victoria near the city of Portland. The plant is expected to be built in three phases, with a total capacity of 19 megawatts. The Federal Government of Australia has awarded the project an AU $66.46 million grant under its REDP program to encourage new renewable energy technologies.
Labor leader Bill Shorten on Monday said this was the very kind of project the Australian Renewable Energy Agency had to fund with our dollars:
And [the Abbott Government] wants to get rid of ARENA too. 
Right now, ARENA leads the way in supporting Australian environmental innovation and investing in Australian genius… ARENA grants are also supporting Australian researchers investigating new and more efficient energy sources: Tidal Energy in Portland.
Three days later, this news:
PLANS to build the world’s largest wave power project in Portland have been scrapped. 
The $230 million bid to harness the ocean’s currents was dumped this week by Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) and it’s subsidiary Victorian Wave Partners… Victorian Wave Partners and OPT Australasia director Gilbert George told The Standard yesterday the size of the project was simply too large and the parent company OPT Incorporated (OPTT), based in the United States, had decided to pull the plug following a review. 
Four months ago another ARENA disaster:
A renewable energy company which received almost $5 million in federal grants has been put into administration… The target of most of the funding – the Oceanlinx 1MW Commercial Wave Energy Demonstrator, based in South Australia - sank last month and remains visible offshore at Carrickalinga… 
In July 2012 Oceanlinx received just under $4 million dollars in funding from the Emerging Renewables Program (ERP). The program was administered by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to support the development of renewable energy technologies.
Shorten is insisting we need more of this kind of taxpayer-subsidised thing to pretend to stop a warming that actually stopped 16 years ago. 
===

Bill Shorten’s four big fibs about his new carbon tax

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (8:12am)

Global warming - propaganda

image
THE hated carbon tax is finally being scrapped by Parliament, but what does the Opposition Leader now stupidly promise?
Incredible but true: there will be another carbon tax under a government Bill Shorten leads.
“The Parliament can vote for Labor’s emissions trading scheme today,” Shorten declared on Tuesday, piously adding this would ensure “there be no tears for humanity”.
No tears, that is, unless the sight of a grown politician telling porkies about the climate makes you cry.

Sure, Shorten is calling his tax an “emissions trading scheme”, with the price set by the market. But he could call it a ferret and it would still be tax — an extra charge on your power bills to “save” the planet.
Talk about a death wish. Global warming madness has already cost Labor two of its leaders (Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard) and the Liberals one (Malcolm Turnbull), yet Shorten seems determined to be the next.
How dumb is he? Or rather: how dumb is the public? Will voters really believe the untruths, half-truths and exaggerations Shorten trotted out on Tuesday to persuade them the planet is frying and that cutting emissions would save us from disaster?
Shorten’s claim: “We (Labor) were right to listen to the scientific world ... There is no doubt our Earth is warming.”
(Read full column here.)  
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Missiles from Israel bad, missiles to Israel good

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:54am)

Brendan O’Neill suspects anti-Semitism:
WHY are Western liberals more offended by Israeli militarism than by any other kind of militarism? It’s extraordinary. France can invade Mali and there won’t be loud, rowdy protests by peaceniks in Paris. David Cameron can order air strikes on Libya and British leftists won’t give over their Twitterfeeds to publishing gruesome pics of the Libyan civilians killed. Barack Obama can resume his drone attacks in Pakistan, killing 13 people in one strike last month, and Washington won’t be besieged by angry anti-war folk demanding “Hands off Pakistan”. 
But the minute Israel fires a rocket into Gaza, radicals in all these Western nations will take to the streets, wave hyperbolic placards, fulminate on Twitter, publish the names and ages of everyone “MURDERED BY ­ISRAEL”, and generally scream about Israeli “bloodletting”. (When we bomb another country, it’s “war”; when Israel does it, it’s “bloodletting”.) Anyone possessed of a critical faculty must at some point have wondered why missiles fired by the Jewish state are apparently more worthy of condemnation than missiles fired by Washington, London, Paris, the Turks, Bashar al-Assad, or anyone else.
But Israel’s “sin” is also that it is a rich country opposed by poor ones, a “white” people opposed by “brown”, a capitalist standard bearer opposed by the “oppressed”. It ticks almost very box in the Left’s demonology.
UPDATE

How Israel’s “Iron Dome” works:
As soon as enemy rockets are launched, Iron Dome’s radar tracks their trajectory, calculates their impact point and launches a missile which within seconds locks onto the rocket and shoots it down. Each interception costs about $60,000, but its architects claim to have saved Israel billions in physical damage and economic impact, as well as loss of life. 
Some wonder if Iron Dome’s main problem is in fact a political one. The system’s success means that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has been able to use Iron Dome to maintain his policy of conflict management, with less fear of retaliation. “Iron Dome has altered the calculus of Israel’s political echelons in ways they have yet to understand,” says a former senior official. “It allows Israel to resist internal public and military pressure for a quick end to the conflict, and keep bombing Gaza.”
But what protection does Israel have from the anti-Semitism spread by mass-migration into the lands of its former allies:
A demonstration in Frankfurt against Operation Protective Edge erupted into violence, with protesters tossing stones at the police. 
According to the Frankfurter Rundschau paper, about 2,500 protesters appeared in downtown Frankfurt, screaming “God is great,” and slogans such as “freedom for Palestine” and “children-murderer Israel."… One sign at the rally was titled, “You Jews are Beasts."…
According to the Rundschau, student organization Left-SDS, Islamists and some members of the Neo-Nazi group National Socialists Rhein-Main attended the anti-Israel protest. Flags from Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Hamas were on display at the protest. Banners compared Prime Minister Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler… In a bizarre act of cooperation, German journalist and publicist Thomas von der Osten-Sacken reported on the website of the weekly Jungle World that Frankfurt’s police allowed the demonstrators to use a police vehicle and loudspeaker to blast anti-Israeli slogans. According to a police statement, the authorities allowed the use of their equipment in order to deescalate the situation.  
(Thanks to reader doc molloy.) 
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Why is Labor destroying Australia even in Opposition?

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:54am)

What the hell does Labor think it’s up to?:
CHRIS RICHARDSON, DELOITTE ACCESS ECONOMICS: It looks as if we won’t get budget repair in Australia. Essentially, the Senate is not just blocking the budget for the next handful of years, but blocking the budget for the next decade. ... Across the next 10 years and once you add in the interest bill as well, you’re talking about $300 billion that the Senate is implying it will impose.
Yet some Liberals decide the Treasurer is a bigger target than Labor:
Joe Hockey’s threat to bypass the Senate by ordering spending cuts outside of parliamentary approval has touched off a new Labor scare campaign and sparked concerns within the government over the Treasurer’s judgment… 
They revealed Mr Hockey’s move had not been part of the agreed government strategy for the day, which had been to press the opposition exclusively on the carbon tax repeal.
One senior figure asked why Mr Hockey had seen fit to open up another front. ‘’It was a gift to Labor … they did what you would do in that case and started picking us off, demanding that we say where the cuts will be. We would’ve done the same; it was an own goal,’’ the frontbencher said…
The complaints came after Mr Hockey used a series of interviews on Wednesday to toughen the budget rhetoric. ‘’If the Senate chooses to block savings initiatives, then we need to look at other savings initiatives that may not require legislation,’’ he said.
UPDATE

The wrecking continues: 

THE $200 billion offshore oil and gas industry has been thrown into limbo after the Greens and Labor won support in the Senate to strike down ­several categories of ­foreign-worker visas.
The Australian Mines and Metals Association blasted the move as a “bloody-minded and irresponsible political stunt’’ that “directly endangered the jobs of thousands of Australians working in our critical offshore oil and gas sector by rendering essential work done by non-Australian nationals unlawful’’. The government was last night taking advice on how to work around the disallowance motion, which will affect workers in the offshore gas projects of northwestern Australia and Queensland…
Labor backed a Greens disallowance motion and it was carried with the support of the three Palmer United Party senators, the Democratic Labour Party’s John Madigan and the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir… AMMA executive director Scott Barklamb said ... “The disallowance impacts every offshore resources project in Australia — projects worth $200bn to our economy (that) employ upwards of 70,000 Australia people ... It doesn’t only invalidate those workers on short-term maritime crew visas — the intended target of the maritime unions’ misleading scare campaign — but all non-Australian residents on offshore resources activities including those working here for years on long-standing visa arrangements.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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We’ve seen before how our jihadists turn their attention to Australia

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:41am)

Now why would ASIO want more surveillance powers?
The nation’s top spy has expressed concern about ‘‘tens’’ of former Australian jihadists who have already returned from fighting in the Middle East and who may now pose a terrorism threat at home. 
ASIO director-general David Irvine also stepped up his call for controversial new laws forcing phone and internet companies to keep records of customers’ communications for up to two years, describing it as ‘‘absolutely crucial’’ to the spy agency’s future work…
The spy boss ... [said] that on top of the roughly 60 people fighting in the Middle East, there were ‘‘some tens of people who’ve already returned’’… He also revealed there were ‘‘another 150 that we’re looking at here in Australia who have inclinations to support those ... extremist groups’’ – referring to the al-Qaeda offshoots the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and Jabhat al-Nusra.
Read the warning from the 30 Australians who went off to fight in Afghanistan:
About 30 Australians went to fight in Afghanistan, of whom 19 were suspected of involvement in terrorism when they returned home and eight were convicted.
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Christine Milne denies the warming science

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:31am)

Global warming - propaganda

Why does Greens leader Christine Milne deny the science of global warming?
Christine Milne, Senate, Tuesday: 
I THINK at some point we will have a website of climate criminals and I would have a few people to put on that list. It would include Dick Warburton, Brian Fisher, David Murray, Maurice Newman, Mitch Hooke and so you could go on, with Chris Mitchell, Gina Rinehart, Innes Willox, Ian Plimer, Rupert Murdoch, George Pell, Andrew Bolt, John Roskam, Martin Ferguson and so on and so forth. In years to come, those people will try to pretend that they did not tear down the climate bills, when they have and the record will clearly show it. ... To all those people partying around the corridors, enjoy it because it is your last stand. The fact is you have misjudged the temperature ... When we look at the temperature of the planet rising, let us look at the climate science. The fact of the matter is we are on track for four to six degrees of warming. That means people will not survive. Part of the world will be uninhabitable. There will be one million deaths per week for the next 90 years if it gets to 4 degrees.
What the 5th IPCC Assessment report actually says:
THE global mean surface temperature change for the period 2016-2035 relative to 1986-2005 will likely be in the range of 0.3C to 0.7C ... Global surface temperature change for the end of the 21st century is likely to exceed 1.5C relative to 1850 to 1900 for all ... scenarios except (one) ... and more likely than not to exceed 2C for (one other scenario) ...
IPCC AR5 notes the lack of warming since 1998: 
THE rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998-2012) (is) 0.05 (-0.05 to +0.15)C per decade) which is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951-2012) (of) 0.12 (0.08 to 0.14)C per decade.
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Clive Palmer is destroying Abbott and Shorten

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:21am)

Niki Savva is in despair:
WHEN Clive Palmer crashes and burns, as he inevitably will, he will walk away from the wreckage blaming the giant conspiracy orch­estrated by the government and News Corp Australia, laughing out the side of his mouth at the two small figures scratching through the rubble: Tony Abbott looking for bits of vertebrae and Bill Shorten for an inner compass. 
Palmer will take no responsibility for his own demise, or for his soiling of parliament and the inexcusable trashing of the reputations of people bound to impartially serve it and protect it from threats to its integrity from people like him. The Prime Minister, perversely Zen-like, genuinely believes despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that all is well, or soon will be. The Opposition Leader at least appreciates the uniqueness of the situation but bristles at suggestions he should lift a finger to fix it, or that he bears any responsibility for the damage to the body politic, preferring to pose as an innocent bystander with little power to intervene.
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ABC barracks against Israel

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:15am)

WHY is the ABC barracking for Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza and is firing rockets at Israel?
Of course, the ABC would deny it explicitly supports Hamas but it has sided with it against its enemy.
For instance, it portrays Israel as the aggressor as it bombs sites in Gaza used for launching rockets at civilian targets as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
(Read full article here.) 
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Murdoch’s biggest deal yet

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (7:10am)

Rupert Murdoch is astonishing:
RUPERT Murdoch’s film and entertainment group 21st Century Fox is negotiating one of the world’s biggest media mergers, making an offer for Time Warner, owner of CNN, that would create a $US160 billion ($170 billion) media entertainment and sports juggernaut 
Time Warner — which also owns movie and TV production giant HBO which creates globally successful series like Game of Thrones — is said to have rebuffed a $US80 billion ($85 billion) takeover bid, but that is likely to be just the opening stanza in what could create the largest media company in the world. This deal would represent the biggest the 83-year-old Australian-born media titan has concluded after five decades of deals — from inheriting the Adelaide News to operations that span the globe.
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Cameron Government dumps warming zealot

Andrew Bolt July 17 2014 (12:28am)

Cheery news from Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron has shuffled a warmist extremist out of his government: 

The reshuffle has also seen energy and climate change minister, Greg Barker, resign. Barker was one of a few true Tory greens, who saw the danger of global warming and the opportunity of the fast-growing green economy. The replacements for Paterson, Barker, Fallon and Hague may yet surprise us, but as it stands the Conservative Party are set to go into the next election with a very different position on the environment than the “vote blue, go green” of 2010. They have got rid of the “green crap”.
The Financial Review’s Jim Pickard gets the message:
Greg Barker, the Tory climate minister – who posed with David Cameron in the Arctic eight years ago – is stepping down from the government in a vivid symbol of the Conservative party’s changing priorities. His position had become increasingly precarious as the Tory leadership is shifting away from its one-time pro-green rhetoric. 

The new environment minister seems more rational:
The new set of Conservative environment and energy ministers announced on Tuesday bring a track record of opposing renewable energy, having fought against wind and solar farms, enthusiastically backed fracking and argued that green subsidies damage the economy. New energy minister, Matthew Hancock, signed a letter to David Cameron in 2012 demanding that subsidies for onshore wind farms were slashed. New environment secretary and former Shell employee, Liz Truss, dismissed clean renewable energy as “extremely expensive” and said it was damaging the economy.  
(Thanks to reader George. Via the Global Warming Policy Foundation.) 
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Dear God as I come before you tonight I thank you for another day of life. Thank you for your strength, love, favor and protection all throughout this day. Lord now I lift up every broken vessel, hurting heart, tired body or stressed soul right now. Turn around their day and grant them nothing but sweet peace. Renew, restore, refresh and uplift. Let your glory full their space. I ask these things in your precious name. Amen.
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Warwick Poulsen
"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great man must, I think, have great sadness on earth..."
- Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment"...
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Pastor Rick Warren
I trust God completely, 
not because he always does what I want 
but because he always does what's right.
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Pastor Rick Warren
The more you fight a feeling, the more it controls you. Don't resist it, replace it.
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Pastor Rick Warren
Every time you make a bad choice, it becomes harder to make a good one.
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July 17: Feast day of the Scillitan Martyrs (Roman Catholic Church);Constitution Day in South Korea (1948)
Nicholas II of Russia
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“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.”Colossians 2:9-10 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"They gathered manna every morning."
Exodus 16:21
Labour to maintain a sense of thine entire dependence upon the Lord's good will and pleasure for the continuance of thy richest enjoyments. Never try to live on the old manna, nor seek to find help in Egypt. All must come from Jesus, or thou art undone forever. Old anointings will not suffice to impart unction to thy spirit; thine head must have fresh oil poured upon it from the golden horn of the sanctuary, or it will cease from its glory. To-day thou mayest be upon the summit of the mount of God, but he who has put thee there must keep thee there, or thou wilt sink far more speedily than thou dreamest. Thy mountain only stands firm when he settles it in its place; if he hide his face, thou wilt soon be troubled. If the Saviour should see fit, there is not a window through which thou seest the light of heaven which he could not darken in an instant. Joshua bade the sun stand still, but Jesus can shroud it in total darkness. He can withdraw the joy of thine heart, the light of thine eyes, and the strength of thy life; in his hand thy comforts lie, and at his will they can depart from thee. This hourly dependence our Lord is determined that we shall feel and recognize, for he only permits us to pray for "daily bread," and only promises that "as our days our strength shall be." Is it not best for us that it should be so, that we may often repair to his throne, and constantly be reminded of his love? Oh! how rich the grace which supplies us so continually, and doth not refrain itself because of our ingratitude! The golden shower never ceases, the cloud of blessing tarries evermore above our habitation. O Lord Jesus, we would bow at thy feet, conscious of our utter inability to do anything without thee, and in every favour which we are privileged to receive, we would adore thy blessed name and acknowledge thine unexhausted love.

Evening

"Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof."
Psalm 102:13-14
A selfish man in trouble is exceedingly hard to comfort, because the springs of his comfort lie entirely within himself, and when he is sad all his springs are dry. But a large-hearted man full of Christian philanthropy, has other springs from which to supply himself with comfort beside those which lie within. He can go to his God first of all, and there find abundant help; and he can discover arguments for consolation in things relating to the world at large, to his country, and, above all, to the church. David in this Psalm was exceedingly sorrowful; he wrote, "I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top." The only way in which he could comfort himself, was in the reflection that God would arise, and have mercy upon Zion: though he was sad, yet Zion should prosper; however low his own estate, yet Zion should arise. Christian man! learn to comfort thyself in God's gracious dealing towards the church. That which is so dear to thy Master, should it not be dear above all else to thee? What though thy way be dark, canst thou not gladden thine heart with the triumphs of his cross and the spread of his truth? Our own personal troubles are forgotten while we look, not only upon what God has done, and is doing for Zion, but on the glorious things he will yet do for his church. Try this receipt, O believer, whenever thou art sad of heart and in heaviness of spirit: forget thyself and thy little concerns, and seek the welfare and prosperity of Zion. When thou bendest thy knee in prayer to God, limit not thy petition to the narrow circle of thine own life, tried though it be, but send out thy longing prayers for the church's prosperity, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," and thine own soul shall be refreshed.
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Today's reading: Psalm 16-17, Acts 20:1-16 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 16-17

A miktam of David.
1 Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing."
3 I say of the holy people who are in the land,
"They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight."
4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.
5 LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
8 I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 20:1-16

Through Macedonia and Greece
1 When the uproar had ended, Paul sent for the disciples and, after encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia. 2 He traveled through that area, speaking many words of encouragement to the people, and finally arrived in Greece, 3 where he stayed three months. Because some Jews had plotted against him just as he was about to sail for Syria, he decided to go back through Macedonia. 4He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy also, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. 5 These men went on ahead and waited for us at Troas. 6 But we sailed from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and five days later joined the others at Troas, where we stayed seven days....

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