Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Wed Aug 5th Todays News

Tony Burke referred legitimate expenses of Bronwyn Bishop to the police a number of times. He was wasting police resources, but raising noise which ultimately forced the former Speaker to resign the Speakership. Tony has been questioned regarding travel expenses in which he claimed business class travel for his wife and kids. Ignoring his travel, it is inappropriate that Australian taxpayers fund his wife and kids on business travel for their holidays. If he wanted to take them he should have to pay for them, as all other Australian workers do for their families. Tony should resign and go to the opposition back bench. But now the media are getting behind a radical campaign to ignore travel expenses. They have their 'blood.'
=== from 2014 ===
World war 1 had begun in 1914. The SS Pfalz was attempting to leave Port Melbourne, unaware of the declaration. So the guns of Point Nepean Fort at Port Phillip Heads fired across the bow and SS Pfalz was detained. Australia had fired the first shots of the war. Later that day, a German minelayer was intercepted and sunk off Thames Estuary. In Cleveland Ohio, the first electric traffic light began work. Days have a beginning, middle and an end. Sometimes they are majestic, sometimes mundane. In the year 25, the Han dynasty was restored when Wang Mang seized the throne. It might sound dirty, but he was a good, capable emperor who was a genius tactician. He didn't feel he had to kill the generals who served him. World War 1 was different. The generals were so bad, that men died needlessly. Lives spent on whims and fancies. 

It is painted as a religious war, but when Penda faced Oswald in 642, Mercia triumphed over Northumbria and Christians probably fought on both sides at the Battle of Maserfield. Wales was Welsh for a bit longer, and Oswald was taught a lesson no one faces the Welsh unless they know to sing the right tune and dance. In 910, Mercia and Wessex faced a Danish invasion. The Danes lost, and it became the last Danish invasion of England or Scotland. In 1305, William Wallace was captured by the English, soon to be executed. In 1583, the first English settlement was founded in America, now called Newfoundland and Labrador. In 1600, the bizarre case of the Gowrie Conspiracy occurred against Scottish King James VI, who would become James I of England in 1603. John Ruthven was protestant and a possible heir to Elizabeth I. He appears to have lured James to Gowrie House with the intent of kidnapping James. Instead, James killed him and his brother Alexander, and persecuted two younger brothers and abolished forever the name Ruthven. Another explanation is that James owed John lots of money. 

The Gowrie conspiracy failed, and so by 1620, the Mayflower sailed with Pilgrims dreaming of religious tolerance. In 1735 a great moment for freedom of the press occurred when a New York Weekly journalist was acquitted of sedition against the royal governor of New York on the grounds what he had printed was true. The same might not occur in Australia today with section 18c not being removed by the government. In 1858, the first transatlantic cable was laid at great cost, but it only worked for less than a month. In 1861, on the same day the US army stopped flogging, the US government instituted a 3% income tax for the Civil War. In 1926, Harry Houdini performed his greatest feat, escaping from a secured water tank in 91 minutes. In 1941, following the Battle of Smolensk, Germany captured 300,000 Soviet soldiers, some of whom would be used to run concentration camps. In 1944, the biggest breakout of all time occurred when 545 Japanese charged a machine gun nest at Cowra. They would wander around the outback for a time before surrendering. Also in 1944, Polish insurgents liberate a labour camp, freeing 345 Jews, but Nazis began a week long massacre of possibly 100,000 POWs at Wola. In 1962, Nelson Mandela was jailed when JFK was President, and would not be released until George Bush was President in 1990. In 1974, a Democrat led US Congress would put a limit of one billion dollars on US aid to South Vietnam. In 1981, Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his orders to return to work. 
=== 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.
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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. 
===
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 Kristy Morgan and David Doig. Born on the same day, across the years, as Thomas Lynch, Jr. (1749), Niels Henrik Abel (1802), Edward John Eyre (1815), Harry Trott (1866), Harold Holt (1908), Neil Armstrong (1930), Angry Anderson (1947), Maureen McCormick (1956) and Rachel Scott (1981). On your day, Independence Day in Burkina Faso (1960); Civic Holiday in most areas of Canada (2013); International Beer Day
25 – Guangwu claimed the throne as emperor of the Han Dynasty after Wang Mang, who had seized the throne himself and proclaimed the Xin Dynasty, died when peasant rebels besieged Chang'an.
1583 – Explorer Humphrey Gilbert established the first English colony in North America at what is now St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
1861 – With the passage of the Revenue Act, the U.S. government issued its first income tax: 3% of all incomes over $800 (later rescinded in 1872).
1925 – The Welsh political party Plaid Cymru was founded with the goals of promoting the Welsh language and the political independence of the Welsh nation.
2003 – A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the lobby of the JW Marriott Hotel in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, Indonesia, killing twelve people and injuring 150. Life trumps death, fight to improve life. Maybe you know Welsh, in which case Plaid is a success. Income tax is higher than 3%, so I guess that worked. Thanks to Humphrey there are labradors? Nothing has been the same since Wang Mang seized the throne. Nothing.
Despatches
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Poor Tony! A Q&A guest goes off (the elitist) script

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 05, 2015 (12:22am)

There is no better example of the intellectual snobbery and misplaced elitism of the ABC’s most pampered presenter, Tony Jones, than his attitude towards a certain newspaper.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Poor Tony! A Q&A guest goes off (the elitist) script'
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Kids need testing times

Miranda Devine – Wednesday, August 05, 2015 (12:20am)

MARK Latham has gone to war over the dumbing down of his alma mater — one of the state’s top selective public schools. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Kids need testing times'
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DOMINANT INVADER LASHES OUT

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 05, 2015 (10:42am)

Adam Goodes has called on Australians to move forward following our national racism crisis, but Fairfax’s John Birmingham is disinclined to let matters rest: 
After a year or more of racist – yes, racist abuse – of Adam Goodes, a stadium full of AFL fans turned out to support him, and by extension every other indigenous player who’d felt the hostility directed at Goodes.
And beyond even that of course, there was and remains the flickering heat of the resentment, guilt and malice that much of white Australia feels towards the continent’s original inhabitants.
That the dominant, invasive culture should feel so about the first Australians it displaced, subjugated and attempted to wipe out, speaks to the tangled ganglion of national neuroses surrounding that project. 
If John is so distressed by Australia’s invasion, perhaps he should go back to England. Where he was born.
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ANYONE FOR TENNIS?

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 05, 2015 (10:29am)

On the occasion of Bugs Bunny’s 75th birthday, Mark Steyn celebrates the greatness of post-war Warner Bros cartoons – particularly the work of Charles M. Jones and Michael Maltese: 
The six-minute Looney Tunes should be taught in comedy class as textbook examples of the first two rules of funny business: make sure you know what the joke is, and then make sure you stick to it. In ”Dripalong Daffy” (1951), it’s the wild west: it opens with Porky singing a loping western ballad, ends with a one-horse town joke, and in between is the scene where Daffy draws his six-shooters and accidentally pulls his chaps off leaving himself in his underwear, plus the moment when, having strode into a saloon full of bad hombres chewing stogies and playing poker, he attempts to get their attention:
“Dripalong Daffy’s muh name. Anybody care to shoot it out?”
Nobody responds. They’re still boozin’n’smokin’n’dealin’.
“Man to man? Under Western skies? West of the Pecos?”
He still can’t get their attention.
“Tumbleweeds at ten paces?”
Still no response.
“Anyone for tennis?” 
Do read on.
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LEARNING ON THE JOB

Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 05, 2015 (9:40am)

Sam de Brito asks: 
Why does “lectures in media” so often mean “never worked a day in the media?” 
Good question. Over to you, Tim Dunlop. On a similar note, reader JJ writes: “Expert media analyst Martin Hirst was totally sucked in by one of those sham academic publishers. Anyone vaguely connected with academia knows about them – how could he not? (Listen from 2:35.)”
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AS DOG IS MY WITNESS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 04, 2015 (6:25pm)

The dog in the lower left corner enjoys the show, as you would if you’re a dog. Then, when all hell breaks loose, there is initial shock followed by a look that plainly says: “Did you see that?”
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Bishop quit. Why not Burke?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (5:07pm)

HYPOCRISY alert. Was that really Tony Burke who said Speaker Bronwyn Bishop should resign for bringing “massive disrepute on the entire Parliament” with her expenses? 

Well, Bishop has now resigned in shame, but what of Burke, the Labor frontbencher?
(Read full column here.) 
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Drop the racial adjective

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (4:36pm)

image
Miranda Devine:
[Q&A host Tony] Jones must have thought he was on a winner when he addressed the first question on the Adam Goodes racism row to [cosmologist Neil DeGrasse] Tyson, who, as well being a renowned astrophysicist, also happens to be black.
“Drag me into your racist thing,” quipped Tyson.
After saying he was “disappointed” Goodes had been called an ape, Tyson proceeded to disappoint Jones by deviating from the ABC’s paternalistic, racially divisive line.
Goodes is “paid millions of dollars,” said Tyson. “He’s a professional athlete. Then I thought about him and I said, ‘Someone is commenting from the audience. Get over it, okay’. If Jackie Robinson - because we’ve been through this in the United States - Jackie Robinson breaks through into Major League baseball [when] people are booing him and he rose above it, then what you can do is, rather than argue with the person booing at you, the next press conference you can say, ‘This happens all the time and I’m disappointed and I expected more but I’m professional and I’ll (rise above it)”.
“… Why does anyone think or reference him as a black footballer? He is a footballer, okay? When, why and where does skin colour matter in that sport? So when I think of people talking about race, it’s being invoked here in Australia, as far as I can tell, as a means to figure out who belongs and who does not. Yet, I, as an astrophysicist, when I think about race, I think about it as something that unifies us all. I think about it as the human race.”
It is astonishing that those views - if uttered by a white Australian in Australia - now tend to be regard as evidence of racism, and possibly grounds for legal action if applied to any particular person. 
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Labor must explain: is it accepting protection money?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (10:17am)

Labor and the Greens protect the CFMEU from the workplace police and the CFMEU in return pays Labor and the Greens a share of what it shakes out of bosses:
The construction union garnered more than $1 million into its “general revenue” across two years through enterprise-bargaining agreement clauses that were purportedly for training, charity and income protection, the royal commission into trade union corruption heard yesterday…
Last month, the commission heard the CFMEU “applied coer­cive pressure” to employers to sign EBAs, leading to three arrests.
Yesterday, [counsel assisting the commission, Sarah McNaughton SC] hypothesised that “significant commercial benefits flow to the CFMEU under the terms of each EBA” signed in the ACT.
The commission heard the CFMEU in turn donated funds it had raised through EBAs to the ALP and the Greens.
Would it be unfair to call the CFMEU’s payments to Labor and the Greens as protection money? Should Labor and the Greens return that cash? 
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Warmist media gives Obama five times more credit than he deserves

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (8:43am)

All false, but doesn’t it sound grand?
In fact, this misreporting simply reveals how little most warmist journalists know what it takes to slash emissions by the amounts they toss around without turning off the lights.
The Sydney Morning Herald:
President Barack Obama has declared climate change to be the greatest threat to the future of the planet in a passionate White House speech on the details of his plan to cut US carbon emissions by 32 per cent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
The Guardian:
In his initial proposal, Obama had mandated a 30% nationwide cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The final version will require a 32% cut instead...
The Guardian again:
The president will announce a 32% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in what he calls America’s biggest ever step against climate change
Sky News:
The revised Clean Power Plan will demand carbon emissions be cut by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030.
In fact, Obama plans not a 32 per cent cut to all carbon dioxide emissions, but to only emissions from power stations. In the US, coal-fired power makes up just 39 per cent of electricity generation, which in turn makes up just 31 per cent of total emissions. The true cut to emissions under this plan (not commitment) has been estimated at just 6 per cent.
Note: that plan has been made easier to achieve because the US is switching to cheap coal-seam gas, a source that the Greens in Australia are fighting. 
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Is this the worst paper ever?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (8:04am)

Paul Murray chokes on the Age’s claim of “independence”:
image
I’m more astonished by the defective memory of the Age and writer Sally Young, associate professor of political science at The University of Melbourne.
True, Young limits her claim to the government’s effectiveness in legislating its agenda, ignoring that a better conclusion from her data might actually be “has there been a worse and more damaging Opposition ever”.
But surely if we’re pondering which government was “worst”, we must look for more obvious measures.
Only three years ago we had a government under which hundreds of boat people were drowning and thousands were landing. We had Budget blowouts of historic proportions. We had a government imposing a carbon tax that killed jobs and hiked prices without lowering the temperature, and a mining tax which raised no money yet frightened off investment. We had Labor MPs knifing each other, shielding Craig Thompson, protecting a construction union with criminal links, offending our neighbors, bungling spending programs and trying to intimidate critical media outlets and impose a media supercop to potentially censor and even jail even bloggers.
By what possible standard could the Abbott Government be worse than the Gillard Government? Than the Rudd Government?
It takes a very special kind of forgetting to come up with what the Age has served up.
(Thanks to reader Eagle Dan.) 
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Why are we paying Tony Burke to fly his children in business class?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (7:53am)

Bronwyn Bishop resigned over her extravagant expenses. Will Labor meet the same standard it demanded of a Liberal?
Tony Burke had the option to ask bureaucrats to fly his family economy class on a taxpayer-funded holiday to Uluru, but chose instead to have them booked business class, costing $6500, about four times as much.
While the Labor frontbencher gave the impression government-funded travel choices for MPs’ family members were determined by official guidelines and automatically business class, the Finance Department yesterday confirmed that MPs had the right to ask that their spouse or children fly economy by the cheapest available fare.
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This must stop

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (6:45am)

Twice this year already The Australian attacked me with a barrage of abuse - first for pointing out that its “unilateral invasion” story was false, and then for pointing out the logical flaws and false assumptions behind its urgent advocacy of indigenous recognition in the Constitution.
Now, for four days straight it has attacked me again for standing against its “reconciliation” agenda in the Adam Goodes case, and (yesterday) questioning its leadership.
Its Cut & Paste even doctored quotes from both me and fellow conservative Miranda Devine to falsely suggest we’d contradicted ourselves.
I suggested it publish a correction, but did not get it. (Miranda was luckier.) Instead, today, The Australian insists it got just 29 letters protesting at its behaviour, ignoring the 50 or so more dissenting comments posted under yesterday’s Cut & Paste, the nearly 200 more posted on my blog yesterday, and many hundreds of other protests sent to the paper and me over earlier articles. True, today’s Cut & Paste was innocuous, and normally I’d not respond, but a correction and apology would have suited it better than accusing me of “bluster” and pretending few readers care.
I understand the Australian will now cease this stupid war on a colleague.  Good. It is better than this.  
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Dallas Scott on the “stolen generations”

Andrew Bolt August 05 2015 (12:02am)

I do Dallas Scott a disservice by trying to present just these excerpts. His full article on the “stolen generations” is even more nuanced than these paragraphs alone may suggest. Please read it all:
I want to clarify my understanding of the term ‘stolen generation’ for you.  The “Stolen Generation”, in simplified terms, refers to a policy of removals of Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal children from their families and cultures, to be raised in white society as a means of eventually ‘breeding out the Aboriginal’…
As those who have read my blog before would know, I was raised in foster care, by parents who were not Aboriginal and had white skin.  I was not stolen, but instead I was given with open arms by some of my relatives to the Mum and Dad who raised me.  They raised lots of foster kids, some who even had a non-Aboriginal parent and were much lighter-skinned, but they stole none of them.  Instead, the phone would normally ring, often in the middle of the night, with a desperate parent on one end begging for Mums help and the next day we would have a new family member.  Sometimes for a week, other times a few months, sometimes years.
Where the ‘stolen generations’ story becomes a dangerous narrative, is when you have those who use its inability to be debated, due to the highly sensitive matter of the subject, as a means to gain sympathy for those people who should otherwise be encouraged to get help and face the demons of their past… While the label might earn you quiet respect, and immediately paralyse most people into asking no questions and instead letting you share as much or as little as you like about your background, the longer you avoid your real story – whether that be in order not to have to face some hard truths, or ask some harder questions of yourself – things aren’t going to get better for you.  Having a name for your pain means nothing if it’s a misdiagnosis.
I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to have been completely abandoned, but I do know what it is like to be denied parts of your history.  My biological mother chose to share little of herself and her history, leaving me with gaps that I have spent years trying to fill - but am yet to feel like I’ve succeeded at accomplishing. I’ve walked arm in arm with my biological sister as she made her first tentative returns to Lake Tyers.  I know how frightened she was of being accepted, and we sat for many nights where I repeatedly reassured her not to be afraid, that so many people could not wait to see her and just wanted her in their presence again, but until she had seen it for herself, her apprehension could not be eased by my words alone.  I know this because I feel this way about going to Wallaga Lake - where my mothers family are from – and where I have been only as a very small child.
This is the downside to Adoption and Foster Care for some kids, regardless of skin colour.  Reconnecting can be difficult, heartbreaking, or wonderful – there is just no guarantee of which outcome you’re going to get, and the fear of rejection can be so overwhelming for some that it takes them years to even try.  When the biological parent passes away before the answers can be had, it is a horrible emptiness and regret that cannot be undone, and makes the journey to find resolve seem that much more difficult and insurmountable…
Blaming the white man, or the government for taking your kids away is easier for some of my relatives because they can be supported by others for being a victim, yet I am starting to realise that this is having a terrible cost to the younger generations, as they fall prey to the same answer of covering the pain and suffering we won’t or don’t talk about and resolve with honesty, by easing their confusion or emptiness with alcohol or drugs.  We’ve done ourselves no favours by trading our need for sympathy for that sense of loss or displacement by letting people class us with a label that will explain away our sadness or dysfunction or failures, to avoid talking about the things that are painful and causing us to repeat that pattern again and again.  The problem is, that sympathy is based on a lie…
I apologise for all the times I have stood silent and let the narrative go unchallenged in my own circles.  I’ve helped nobody by standing by and letting people focus on finding someone to blame, rather than healing and moving forward.  
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Tony Abbott’s voice is no strine on the ears

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (8:45pm)

IT’S funny that voice coach Dean Frenkel has decided now is the time to declare Australia has a national speech impediment — and single out the Prime Minister for some special criticism.
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We must realise that babies aren’t products

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (8:42pm)

NOW do you see why turning children into commodities for sale to the highest bidder is so dangerous? The latest sinister twist in the story of baby Gammy demonstrates why.
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Refugee activists make an industry out of bending truth

Miranda Devine – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (8:41pm)

AUSTRALIA is the most generous country in the world when it comes to resettling refugees. Yet refugee advocates keep denying it.
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TEN ON THE VERTICAL AXIS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (5:52pm)

A funny little video makes Clementine Ford angry.
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CHANGE OF TONE

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (3:14pm)

Fairfax’s favourite speech expert Dean Frenkel previously analysed the speaking style of a former Prime Minister: 
Ms Gillard has removed the edges off her voice and added a mixture of strength and softness. Her voice has more body. She speaks with a grounded deep resonance that sounds more relaxed. There is more strength in her voice and she no longer sounds stilted.
She is relaxed enough to reveal more of herself. The floor of her voice is more solid and it now dominates her overall sound. Her degree of projection control with microphone technique takes considerable respiratory and vocal strength. 
Oh, please. She sounded like cats being dragged claws-out across a blackboard. Frenkel now considers the speaking style of the current Prime Minister: 
Tony Abbott – a leader with laboured speech skills. 
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MASK SLIPS

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (12:44pm)

Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan is a frequent presence on CNN. He’s also appeared on Al Jazeera, the BBC, and in the Guardian‘s opinion pages. Last month he turned up on the ABC, providing his usual western-friendly spin on Hamas’s deadly idiocy.
But Hamdam is less constrained when speaking to an Arabic audience: 
“The Israelis concentrate on killing children,” Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas representative in Lebanon, said on Al-Quds TV. “I believe that this is engraved in the historical Zionist and Jewish mentality, which has become addicted to the killing of women and children.”
“We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos,” he continued, referring to the traditional unleavened bread that Jews eat during Passover. 
This maniac is a primary source for claims about death and injury tolls in Gaza. Take them with a grain of salt. Or blood, if you prefer.
UPDATE. In other Gaza-related developments: 
Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir called offended readers yesterday. North shore reader Renee Glass received an apologetic phone call from Goodsir …
“At one stage, Goodsir said to me, ‘I’m not an anti-Semite’. I said to him, ‘I’m not saying that, but you’re responsible for the content of your newspaper’,” Mrs Glass said.
It took her more than 10 minutes to cancel her subscription earlier in the day.
“The guy didn’t want to take our cancellation and put us through to a woman in another department who kept my ­husband on the phone for 10 minutes. She was begging him not to cancel,” Mrs Glass said. 
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WARMING STOPS WARMING

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (10:57am)

Tim Flannery’s epic wrongness eventually led to him being cut from the federal payroll. Global warming also turns out to be a self-solving problem:

image

In other climate news, Canberra is freezing: 
Canberra has endured the two coldest consecutive mornings since July 2011 with a low of -6.1 degrees recorded on Monday morning and further frosts and sub-zero temperatures forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday. 
July 2011 … those were the days. Back then, the government’s official winter survival advice was to hug a dog.
UPDATE: 
Canberrans have struggled through the coldest August night in 20 years … 
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BIAS LOCATED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (2:28am)

Labor election strategist Dee Madigan identifies a wicked case of media bias from the 2013 election campaign, a topic which otherwise attracted little voter interest: 
“I remember one focus group at which the facilitator tried over and over to see if there was any interest in media bias,” Ms Madigan writes. “One fellow finally piped up and said, ‘Well I do think the media in this country is biased … Collingwood always gets a bad rap‘.” 
That man was entirely correct.
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SPANKIN’ IT FOR GAIA

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (2:20am)

American environmental bureaucrats put in the hard yards: 
At the Environmental Protection Agency, a senior official spent so much time watching pornography while on the federal clock that the Office of the Inspector General dispatched a special agent to look into it – and the official continued watching porn while the OIG agent was in his office. 
(Via Iowahawk)
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NEW MATARDED

Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 05, 2014 (1:18am)

New Matilda owner and editor Chris Graham is unhappy about this paragraph from the Australian, about his publication’s pursuit of the Prime Minister’s student daughter: 
Wendy Bacon, the prominent journalism teacher and contributing editor of New Matilda, has claimed the leaked information – which also involved a hacker allegedly gaining illegal access to the files of more than 500 other students – was justified in the public interest. 
Graham’s complaint: 
Wendy Bacon has not justified the hacking of 500 students’ private records on the basis of public interest … the ‘public interest’ justifications The Australian reports actually come from tweets Wendy sent in May – two months earlier. They were tweets about the story generally. They were not tweets about the alleged hacking of 500 students’ records. 
Stop! Grammar time. Those dashes in the Australian‘s paragraph separate the recent hacking news from Bacon’s prior justification. The two elements may be proximate but are distinct. He continues: 
News Limited crazie Tim Blair … 
The company is News Corp and the correct spelling is “crazy”. 
Blair took the issue up on his blog on Saturday morning with his trademark ‘caution to the wind gusto’ … 
Not really. For genuine “caution to the wind gusto”, New Matilda editor Graham should take a look at New Matilda.
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Free speech stays muzzled

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (3:12pm)

The Abbott Government has given up on reforming 18c. Too many lobby groups hate free speech. And the reforms were badly sold. I suspect the country will be poorer for this.  
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Wake up to this rising tide of anti-Semitism

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (10:01am)

Around the world, Hamas has succeeded in producing the Jew-hatred I believe it in part intended with this war.
Same story now in Perth:
A visiting Hasidic Jewish leader has been the target of anti-Semitic abuse and threatened with physical violence outside the Morley Galleria. 
The Rebbe, who is in Perth on a lecture tour, and his 21-year-old assistant were taunted by a group of six teenagers outside the shopping centre in broad daylight on Monday, a friend of the two men said…
When Mr Mayer ushered the visitors into his car the youths began banging on it.
“They were telling us to ‘F*** off’, that we were killers and they wanted to ‘fix us up’,” Mr Mayer said… A spokesman for Federation Centres, formerly Centro, said security was aware of the incident but unable to locate the culprits.
UPDATE
Driller Paul:
My wife loves genealogy and often spends time at the Lamm Jewish research library in Caulfield. Yesterday, for the first time, she was met by security at the car park entrance. A substantial, removable steel post is now locked in position in the middle of the road into the car park. When my wife stopped at the post, security approached and she was questioned as to her intent. The security guard was very polite and professional. He then used an extension mirror to check underneath her car, presumably checking for any explosive device. 
And I thought, welcome to the new Australia! Previously such security for a Jewish asset was not deemed necessary! Now, apparently, it is! I love this country and our culture dearly. I find it unbelievable that we now have amongst us some that hate our culture and seek to destroy us. I will never forgive the politicians that have allowed this to happen. I fear for our future. I weep for the Australia that I once knew.
(Thanks to reader George.) 
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Baby farming scandal. Yet I’m not surprised…

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (10:00am)

The new moral order should make us reconsider whether the old one was worth smashing:
An allegation of a child-indecency conviction against the Australian father in the baby surrogacy furore has prompted Gammy’s mother to demand his sister be returned to her in Thailand. 
Channel Nine has reported that the West Australian man was in 1998 convicted of an indecent act involving a child under 13 and has served a prison term. The report claims his wife knows of the conviction.
As Fairfax Media revealed last week, the couple are accused of taking home an infant girl born to surrogate mother Pattharamon Janbua, but abandoning her twin brother Gammy, who was born with Down syndrome and a hole in the heart… The ABC’s 7:30 on Monday night reported the Australian parents had denied any knowledge of a son as they a negotiated a “confusing” Thai surrogacy process and language barriers.
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Any other Latham claims we should check?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (9:40am)

How can criticism be “stinging” when it comes from someone as hopelessly compromised as Mark Latham? Praise from the man would wound more:
FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham has launched a stinging attack on the The Australian but has confirmed that, contrary to his denials, he worked with then prime minister Julia Gillard’s office to compile newspaper columns from 2012… 
The Weekend Australian revealed on Saturday that despite denying in an Australian Financial Review column last month that he had any contact with Ms Gillard’s office when she was prime minister, emails and accounts from former prime ministerial advisers revealed he was deliberately recruited back into the Labor fold to support Ms Gillard, and that he used the then prime minister’s office to assist with research for his columns.
“There were two things that I asked for from the communications director,” Mr Latham explained, confirming that John McTernan contacted him “towards the end” of 2012.
Mr Latham then detailed how he sought, through Mr McTernan, to “access some documents relating to the AWU scandal” and check a newspaper article from The Australian (believed to be for a column attacking The Australian’s Chris Kenny). Mr Latham said The Australian was attacking him now because he had exposed its reporting of the AWU scandal as a deliberate smear campaign against Ms Gillard. (The AWU scandal has been subject to police investigations and has now been taken up by the royal commission into union corruption.)… However, in his July 12 AFR column defending his independence, Mr Latham recounted how in July 2012 he gave permission for his email address to be passed on to the prime minister’s office. “But then nothing happened,” he wrote. “To this day ... I have no idea what it was about.”
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Recognition brawl: does Neumann not read, or does he insist we not speak?

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (9:25am)

Labor’s indigenous affairs spokesman, Shayne Neumann, is disturbingly ill-informed or dangerously intolerant of debate.
First, he’s simply wrong:
Mr Neumann accused The Australian and other papers in the Murdoch stable of running against the movement for constitutional recognition. 
“You can see it already coming through with comments made by certain ­conservative federalist jurists as well as lawyers as well as those people who are running — and you can see it now in the media, and News Limited, for example, is giving voice to that already,” he said. “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs should not be what the opinion pieces are written in The Australian newspaper. I mean, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs should have a, eh, have a multitude of voices.”
In fact, The Australian has been stridently for the movement for constitutional recognition, and Noel Pearson gave the keynote speech at the paper’s 50th birthday party in which he noted just that.
Or is Neumann’s real argument that The Australian sins by allowing any expression at all of dissent on this issue? That no newspaper should give even an inch of space to any columnist who objects to this proposal to retribalise Australian and divide each other on the grounds of the “race” of some of our ancestors?
We’re in a dangerous place.
UPDATE
Despite The Australian’s unfortunate backing of this divisive and ultimately useless concession to the New Racism, it has the integrity to publish articles warning it is wrong.
Here is anthropologist Barry Maley today:
Unfortunately, that goodwill and the notion of full and equal citizenship for all Australians would be betrayed if the constitutional proposals now presented were to be endorsed because they establish the Aboriginal people as a favoured class of Australians ­entitled to pursue advantageous claims not available to others. 
The interim report recommends five alterations to the Constitution. All raise contestable issues but two recommendations (3 and 4) are highly contentious.
Recommendation 3 proposes that Section 51A should say: “Rec­ognising that the continent and its islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their traditional lands and waters; Respecting the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander peoples; Acknowledging the need to secure the advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.’’
The reference to “the need to secure the advancement” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples opens the constitutional door to a host of preferments ­denied other Australians. More generally, the obligation placed on the law to forms of “recognition”, “respect” and “acknowledgment” of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would establish exclusive expectations of unlimited possibility for those peoples. For example, “respecting the continuing heritage” could enhance and extend the prospect of exclusive land claims for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Unacknowledged in all of this are those people who created what is “now known as the Australian nation” and Constitution, and their descendants and their culture that turned a harsh continent into a prosperous homeland for 24 million inhabitants. 
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Muzzle the Press Council instead

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (8:53am)

Under Julian Disney the Australian Press Council has become a menace to free speech and a sinister enforcer of ideological orthodoxies. (Don’t sue me or drag me in front of this tribunal. I am merely expressing my opinion.)
Nick Cater explains: 
... one wonders how Galileo would have fared under the council’s new rules if he had been summoned to defend his views on heliocentrism. 
Galileo would be allowed to express his opinion that the sun was centre of the world and completely devoid of local motion ­providing he did so “with reasonable fairness and balance”.
However, Disney would be entitled to come down on him like a tonne of bricks if his opinion was “based on significantly inaccurate factual material or omission of key facts”.
...what are we to make of its assertion that there are two kinds of facts — key and non-key — and its presumption that the council has the sagacity to distinguish ­between them?
After all, the omission of key facts — the ones written in the Bible — was the basis of Tommaso Caccini’s complaint that led to Galileo’s denunciation by the Inquisition…
Disney has little choice but to draw upon conventional wisdom when called upon to distinguish between fabrications, facts and key facts…
When Andrew Bolt, for instance, wrote that “the planet hasn’t warmed for a decade”, and that the “Arctic ice has not retreated since 2007”, were the facts upon which he drew material or immaterial to the argument?
Disney was prepared to accept that Bolt’s assertions about sea and ice conditions “were statistically compatible with the key data sources”. Naturally, however, in view of what Disney described as “the great public importance of these issues”, he could not simply leave it at that.
“Mr Bolt,” ruled Disney, “should have acknowledged explicitly that all of the three changes in question were comparatively short-term.”
The policing of opinion articles in this way is a relatively new incursion by the council into sections in newspapers once considered to be havens of free speech. Until Disney became chairman the council largely abided by the liberal convention that news reports and commentary should be judged differently, and that opinion required no justification other that it was honestly stated.
Note: in the two years since the Press Council’s absurd attack on my column (after its retraction of an error-riddled and even wilder draft) the Arctic sea ice has grown and the temperature pause has continued.
Am I allowed to say that? 
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Budget isn’t cruel, but the argument is lost. Start again

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (7:35am)

The argument seems lost to the populists, the envious and the dishonest. I’d rather it was not so, but I’d now ditch the undo-able and strip the agenda to the achievable. Just get something done and focus on no-dramas governing. Tomorrow is another day - and best you be in government what it comes.
David Crowe & Andrew White:
JOE Hockey will face new calls to scale back unpopular budget savings when he holds his next talks with crossbench senators amid a widening fight over the fairness of the spending cuts. 
Key senators including Ricky Muir and John Madigan will ... insist the government keeps paying the Schoolkids Bonus and other benefits to families despite annual costs mounting to billions of dollars. 

The Treasurer warned of the “unsustainable” burden of welfare payments yesterday as he fought back at renewed Labor criticism in the wake of the release of Treasury data showing that low-­income households will lose $844 on average from the budget. The new figures ... also show low-income families will continue to get benefits worth $10,766 a year — after including their tax bills — but the political fight focused on what they would lose.
Chris Kenny:
TO win the budget debate, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey need to change it. They are stuck in a fairness argument they invited upon themselves but can never win… 
Somehow the budget is being judged by whether the reduction in tax dollars going to individual welfare recipients is equivalent to extra tax imposts on those funding welfare. This is an inane way to assess policy that aims to reduce reliance on welfare and increase opportunities for people to become self-reliant and net tax contributors.
Jennifer Hewitt: 
The audience of voters has largely lost interest in most of the details. But the combined efforts of Labor, Clive Palmer and the government’s policy choices have succeeded in creating an image of Joe Hockey’s first budget as unfair, unreasonable – and ultimately un-doable. 
This has completely overwhelmed the government’s initial attempts to talk about why a country can’t live beyond its means and why it’s better to take action now rather than wait for a budget crisis…
Witness the latest media furore over Treasury figures showing lower income and middle income families were more affected by budget cuts than higher income families.
“This is a budget completely out of touch with the needs of ordinary Australians, and with the impact of their own policies, and what makes it worse is they knew all along,” lectured Chris Bowen on Monday. “They’ve been playing a game since budget day of pretending that their budget didn’t impact on low and middle income earners unfairly."… Might the figures have anything to do with the fact that lower and middle income families receive almost all of most government payments? ... Yet the government’s idea to promote budget fairness via a “deficit reduction levy” on those earning over $180,000 a year only undermined its own credibility with business, while doing little to counter complaints from all those facing cuts in government assistance.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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Islamic State has ‘resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations’

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (7:15am)

Barack Obama pulled US forces out of Iraq too early, leaving huge parts of it to fall to what is now the world’s richest terrorist organisation:

After the Islamic State captured Sinjar on Sunday, came the executions… The armed movement, which has surged in wealth, manpower and resources in recent weeks, also just took the town of Wana on Sunday… The Islamic State routed a once-proud Kurdish army and forced an exodus of residents the United Nations said numbered in the hundreds of thousands.... 
Equally worrisome is what the Islamic State, led by the enigmatic and mysterious Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, will do with the Mosul Dam, which it may soon seize — if it hasn’t already…
What was recently a ragtag cadre of former al-Qaeda operatives has now morphed into a transnational, fully militarized and very rich operation said to control more than one-third of Syria’s territory… It ”now controls a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations,” wrote defense expert Janine Davidson of the Council of Foreign Relations…
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Experts estimate the group is pocketing as much as $3 million per day in oil revenue by selling off resources on black markets in the greater Levant.,,

It’s unclear how the potential seizure of the Mosul Dam will factor into those plans… Observers have long feared what a burst in the dam may mean. It “could lead to tremendous loss of lives and assets,” according to a 2009 report by Mosul University experts… Worse, the militants have a record of using water as a means of terrorism. It could open the flood gates and deluge major Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms. Earlier this year, after it captured the Fallujah Dam, it closed eight of the dam’s 10 gates, wreaking havoc on local communities.   
(Thanks to reader bobbytimbo.) 
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How to explode yet another Fairfax warming scare with just five minutes of checking

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (6:06am)

Yet another warming scare from Fairfax’s chief alarmist, environment editor Peter Hannam:
Vanuatu’s weather patterns are changing as the planet warms up, undermining the island nation’s ability to feed itself, according to Shirley Laban, Oxfam’s climate change manager for the country. 
Prolonged warm and dry spells are reducing water availability for many of Vanuatu’s 250,000-plus population. Rainfall when it arrives is becoming more intense, cutting output of the island cabbage, a staple for many residents, Ms Laban said… Over the past 10-20 years, residents are finding themselves having to travel further to find water.  
I see not the slightest evidence in this report of Hannam trying to check the truth of the claims made - claims that too comfortably suit his own warmist ideology.
So let me do it for him.
In fact, rainfall right now is pretty good.   Here is the Vanuatu Meteorological Services’ outlook for July to September:
Northern Region:  Above normal rainfall is favored for Lamap, normal rainfall is favored for Pekoa and Sola. (Confidence:  Low to Good) 
Southern Region:  Above normal rainfall is favored for Bauerfield and Whitegrass. Normal rainfall is favored for Port Vila and below normal rainfall favored for Aneityum. (Confidence: very low to low) 
In fact, dry spells have become not more prolonged but less. The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics announced last year:
image 
A new reconstruction of climate in the South Pacific during the past 446 years shows rainfall varied much more dramatically before the start of the 20th century than after…
Vanuatu lies within the largest rain band in the southern hemisphere, the South Pacific Convergence Zone and its rainy season is from November to April. In the 20th century, rainfall during wet periods was about 7 feet per rainy season and during dry periods about 4 ½ feet per rainy season. However, before the 20th century, the dry periods tended to be much drier, with rainfall as low as 1 foot per rainy season and wet periods that were still getting about 7 feet per rainy season. 
In fact, there has not been any global warming for around 15 years, as Hannam’s own paper grudgingly conceded only yesterday:
...a pause in global surface temperature rises in the past 15 years, despite the large amounts of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere through human activity.
In fact, other warming alarmists from Vanuatu warn of not “prolonged warm and dry spells” but an increase in the rainfall that feeds aquifers. From a presentation at Griffith University from Vanuatu Government senior youth worker, Paul Nalau:
Annual mean rainfall is projected to increase… Little change is projected in the incidence of drought ...
So what might be causing the fall in the aquifers that is allegedly forcing residents to “travel further to find water”?
In fact, had Hannam checked, it is the usual story of rising population and more intensive agriculture, not global warming. From an AusAID-funded Water Safety Plan for Vanuatu:
Water quality in both urban in Port Vila and Luganville is generally very good with only calcium hardness to note. The only treatment is chlorination. However in both cases, aquifer levels are dropping while pumping demand is increasing. Both aquifers are under increasing pressure from agriculture, housing and other developments within the catchment protection zone that have been established… 
No mention at all of global warming.
Does being a Fairfax alarmist mean never having to check the facts behind a scare? 
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How even Lancet and Obama are shielding Hamas

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (12:59am)

This is the kind of person former Red Party candidate Mads Gilbert  really is:
… the centrality of his ideology was highlighted in comments following Al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks on USA on September 11, 2001, in which Dr Gilbert expressed sympathy with the terrorists. Days after the atrocity, in an interview for the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet Gilbert said “The attack on New York did not come as a surprise after the policy that the West has led during the last decades...The oppressed also have a moral right to attack the USA with any weapon they can come up with.” When asked directly in the same interview, “Do you support a terror attack against the USA?,” Gilbert replied, “Terror is a bad weapon but the answer is yes within the context which I have mentioned.”
This is the kind of person Paolo Manduca is:
Paolo Manduca ... received funding from several anti-Israel NGOs including Interpal, which has been designated as a terrorist entity by the governments of the United States, Canada and Australia. US Federal authorities describe the organization as a global clearinghouse channeling money to Hamas and a BBC investigation came to the same conclusion. Interpal is a founding member of the so-called “Union of Good,” an umbrella organization, which funds Islamic terrorists in Gaza. Its leader, Yussef al- Qaradawi, is a notorious jihadist who has publically lauded Hitler for “putting Jews in their place” and has said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “We must plant the love of death and the love of martyrdom in the Islamic nation.” The organization actively encourages Palestinian children to become martyrs and suicide bombers Manduca not only receives funding from Interpal but also raises money for it .
Gilbert and Manduca are now the co-authors of a letter run by Lancet, once a highly reputable medical journal, but for some years now a mouthpiece for the Left, publishing anti-Israel smears and propaganda so offensively false that it’s had to retract it.
From Gilbert and Manduca’s co-authored anti-Israel rant in Lancet, accusing Israel of deliberately slaughtering Palestinian civilians while only pretending to go after terrorists:
We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression.” In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity… We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists… People in Gaza are resisting this aggression because they want a better and normal life and, even while crying in sorrow, pain, and terror, they reject a temporary truce that does not provide a real chance for a better future. A voice under the attacks in Gaza is that of Um Al Ramlawi who speaks for all in Gaza: “They are killing us all anyway—either a slow death by the siege, or a fast one by military attacks. We have nothing left to lose—we must fight for our rights, or die trying.
Gilbert, Manduca and their fellow authors do not mention Hamas breaking ceasefires, hiding weapons in schools, using hospitals for meetings, forcing civilians to act as human shields, firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians, digging a network of “terror tunnels”, pledging Israel’s destruction, broadcasting children programs urging the murder of Jews, and wasting millions on importing weapons and munitions.

But when Israeli doctors write to Lancet to correct the record and rebut the blood libel, guess what?  They are banned:
Dr. Boris Yoffee, Head of the Division of Surgery at the “Barzilai” University Medical Centre in Ashkelon, southern Israel, had written a letter to The Lancet about this latest outrage—and was told that The Lancet is not accepting any work from “Israeli academics.”
How utterly disgusting.
Here is some of Yoffee’s joint letter in response to Gilbert and Manduca’s:
First the facts. Israel left Gaza entirely in 2005, removing almost 10,000 Israelis and all of its armed forces, with no intention of returning. The response from Gaza was escalating and unprovoked violence, mainly in the form of rocket attacks indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilians in the south of the country…
In the wake of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June of this year, Operation Protective Edge was launched. Hamas unleashed an unprecedented and sustained barrage of missiles – 2000 since the start of the current hostilities - at Israeli towns and cities as far north as Hadera and Haifa creating fear and havoc across the country. Every one of those missiles constitutes a war crime. The purpose of this reign of terror was clear: to disrupt normal life in Israel, bring the economy to its knees and, above all, to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible. The last of these was only thwarted by the huge investment by Israel in civil defence measures – early warning systems, bombproof shelters and the Iron Dome missile defence system – that have proven largely effective....

Israel’s defensive precautions contrast strikingly with the activities of Hamas, who have spent vast sums of money not on civil defence but the opposite – on an elaborate infrastructure of tunnels, weapon stores, missiles and rocket launchers. This was created with the sole aim of harming Israelis but that has, as a result of Israel’s obligatory defensive measures, inevitably brought death, injury and suffering to their own people. None of this human misery would have occurred had Hamas chosen to develop Gaza as a healthy and peaceful community following Israel’s departure in 2005 rather than as a renewed launching pad for violence directed at Israel…
We are disappointed, though not surprised, that Manduca et al, while claiming to be scientists, are oblivious to this verifiable reality even if it conflicts with their preconceptions. We are even more dismayed at their completely unsupportable allegations about “massacres”, “targeted weaponry used indiscriminately and on children”, the “use of gas” and “denial of entry for international humanitarian convoys.” Even by the standards of anti-Israeli rhetoric with which we have become all too familiar in recent years, the viciousness of this kind of demonization has surely sunk to new depths.
Manduca et al, while harshly criticising Israel, appear to offer understanding and even endorsement of Hamas’ extreme policies and behaviour. This is an extraordinary position for healthcare professionals to adopt. Most readers will be well aware of the true nature of that organisation. It is far from being a “political party” seeking to promote “resistance to occupation and siege.” It is a repressive and anti-Semitic group of religious fanatics, backed by Iran and Syria, which is committed, with chilling openness, to Israel’s destruction and the murder of most of her inhabitants… There is no place for either political extremism or selective compassion on the pages of a prestigious medical journal. 
Shame on Lancet.
For a powerful and frightening analysis on the conflict - and of Barack Obama’s de facto support of Hamas - read also this essay by Isi Leibler. Just some extracts:

The US-Israel relationship is under great strain… [Barack Obama] is alleged to have harshly demanded that Netanyahu accept an immediate unilateral ceasefire, and to have informed him that the US was committed to ending the blockade of Gaza. Netanyahu pointed out that the US administration was undermining the cease-fire by substituting Egyptian mediation with Qatar and Turkey, reminding Obama that the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Qatar finances and provides arms to Hamas and other terrorist groups, including ISIS. He could have also pointed out that Turkey’s demagogic prime minister has been stoking hysterical anti-Israeli sentiment and vile anti-Semitism, even demanding that his own Jewish community condemn Israel. 
President Obama allegedly responded by telling Netanyahu that he was not in a position to advise America who should act as mediators. Lending credence to this exchange was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who, a few days later, told CNN that the US must cooperate with the Qataris “who have told me over and over again that Hamas is a humanitarian organization.” It is mind-boggling that a Democratic congressional leader can describe as “humanitarian” a genocidal organization with similar objectives to those of al-Qaida, whose charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews… 
But there is no disputing that President Obama has consciously or otherwise shielded Hamas. This is not a conflict in which the US should act as a mediator or even hint at moral equivalence. This conflict was thrust upon us by a terrorist group promoting a culture of death and martyrdom, reflected in the oft-quoted Hamas slogan: “Jews wish for life and we wish for a martyr’s death.” We are not confronting an entity seeking independence. It is a conflict between good and evil… 
The Egyptians and other moderate Arab states maintain that since his initial Cairo speech in 2009, President Obama has emerged as a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood – the creator of Hamas – and which they regard, justifiably, as an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization. 
They consider the undermining of the Egyptian ceasefire proposals [for Gaza, broken by Hamas] and the turning toward Qatar and Turkey – supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas – as another example of the US betraying its allies and engaging its enemies. This was reflected in Kerry’s initial Qatar/Turkey-sponsored cease-fire proposal, unanimously rejected by the Israeli cabinet, which could have been written by Hamas. 

(Thanks to readers Leon and crazy.) 
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Shame on Labor for this $43 billion shambles

Andrew Bolt August 05 2014 (12:02am)

It is a disgrace - a complete scandal - that the former Labor Government spent so many billions so lightly on such a dud scheme with such little thought:
[A] landmark audit has found the policy process for developing Labor’s National Broadband Network was “rushed, chaotic and inadequate”. 
... former Productivity Commission head Bill Scales has found the NBN Co set up to develop the high-speed internet network was given a job that only a “well-functioning, large and established” telecommunications company could do under the tight time­tables for the rollout…
Mr Scales said he was told that some of those involved in the first 12 months of the NBN Co were “making it up as they went”, while others related a “salutary anecdote” that, in the early days of NBN Co, ‘‘all we had (to guide us) was the press release and a bunch of business cards"…
The audit examined the original “Mark I” NBN policy — based on 2007 election promises by then opposition leader Kevin Rudd of $4.7bn public funding towards building a fibre-to-the-node network — and the vastly more ambitious $43bn Mark II policy that replaced it....
The [NBN Mark II ] plan got just 11 weeks’ consideration and “there is no evidence that a full range of options was seriously considered”.
“There was no business case or any cost-benefit analysis, or independent studies of the policy undertaken, with no clear operating instructions provided to this completely new government business enterprise, within a legislative and regulatory framework still undefined, and without any consultation with the wider community,” the report says. In other findings, the audit says full cabinet did not consider the policy until very early on the April 2009 morning it was announced, and its role was to “rubber-stamp” a decision by the strategic priorities and budget committee of cabinet. 
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How Mike Carlton writes to a reader accusing him of writing anti-Jewish material

Andrew Bolt August 04 2014 (8:08pm)

I have avoided calling Mike Carlton an anti-Semite, even after his foul column a week ago, decorated with the disgusting cartoon discussed below. He seems to hate far too many people to accuse him of such particularism.
But then I read this exchange - and note very well Carlton’s final email:
On 27 Jul 2014, at 11:40 pm, Yury Glikin wrote:
It is most likely that you will not reply to this email, which is fine. I suppose engaging in lengthy discourse with you will be pointless as you seem to favour incendiary and grandiose statements, after which you retreat in order to hide behind a generic email address, a twitter handle and, I surmise, some sense of achievement (although I am not too sure of what exactly). 
As a man who has been a journalist for decades, to publish an article like the one you did on Saturday about Israel means one of 2 things. You either genuinely believe what you say, which means your understanding of history of the region is sadly lacking. To say things like Israel has never offered the Palestinians a state of their own for example, is such a gross misrepresentation of facts that it really doesn’t deserve further comment. There are so many factually incorrect statements, that it becomes more or less irrelevant, like something one would read on TMZ or a similarly banal and pointless publication. 
It may be argued that your commentary is deeply steeped in anti Semitism or general racism, but of course you know this and revel in the attention these statements get .. perhaps a slightly sad attempt of a journalist who was once relevant, to remain so by using inflammatory rhetoric. 
Alternatively, you don’t believe what you say, and you write what you write because Fairfax knows that it generates eyeballs and feeds the needs if its (mostly) liberal reader base. Fair enough, we all need to make a buck. But if this is the case, then you have already sold out. I am sure you convince yourself that having 85% of the people respond to your column with positive feedback, gives you some sort of victory. I assure you, it’s a pyrrhic one at best, because your credibility as a journalist, someone that people should listen to, is already dead. 
I have no desire to call you names or threaten you, as this feeds your ego and helps you to validate what you do. I also am not misguided enough to say stupid stuff like “we’re the chosen people, deal with it”, as this no doubt gives you some macabre pleasure and allows you to reinforce your belief into you own perceived self-importance. 
Sadly, SMH will no doubt continue to give you voice in order to help sell page banner impressions. But I am comfortable knowing that Israel will endure many people like you and will continue, whereas you are already immaterial .... but what’s best of all is that deep inside, just before you fall asleep at night ... I know that you already know this. 
Yury
On 28 Jul 2014, at 5:45, Mike Carlton wrote: 
How arrogant and foolish you are. 
Mike Carlton 
Sent from my iPad
On 28 Jul 2014, at 6:56 am, Yury Glikin wrote: 
Perhaps 
But I’ll take that any day over being a sad and irrelevant old man, full of hate and bile.
From: Mike Carlton
Date: 28 July 2014 7:17:21 AEST
To: Yury Glikin
Subject: Re: Irrelevant 
You’re the one full of hate and bile, sunshine. The classic example of the Jewish bigot.  Now f..k off. 
Mike Carlton 
Sent from my iPad 
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And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land called America, having lost their morals , their initiative , and their Will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that Person known as "The One."

He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but He Hypnotized the people telling them , "I am sent to save you."

My lack of experience , my questionable ethics , my monstrous ego , and my Association with evil doers are of no consequence. I shall save you with Hope and Change. Go , therefore , and proclaim throughout the Land that he who preceded me is evil , that he has defiled the nation , and that all he has built must be destroyed.

And the people rejoiced , For even though they knew not what "The One" would do , he had promised that it was good; and they believed.

And "The One" said " We live in The greatest country in the world. Help me change everything about it!"

And the people said , "Hallelujah! Change is good!"

Then He said , "We are going to tax the rich fat-cats."

And the People said "Sock it to them!"

"And redistribute their wealth."

And the people said , "Show us the money!"

And the he said , "Redistribution of wealth is good for everybody.."

And Joe the plumber asked , "Are you kidding me? You're going to Steal my money and give it to the deadbeats??"

And "The One" ridiculed and taunted him , and Joe's personal records were hacked and publicized.

One lone reporter asked , "Isn't that Marxist policy?" And she was banished from the kingdom.

Then a citizen asked , "With no foreign relations experience and having zero military experience or knowledge , how will you deal with Radical terrorists?"

And "The One" said , "Simple. I shall sit with them and talk with them and show them how nice we really are; and they will forget that they ever wanted to kill us all!"

And the people said , "Hallelujah!! We are safe at last , and we can beat our weapons Into free cars for the people!"

Then "The One" said "I shall give 95% of you lower taxes."

And one , Lone voice said , "But 40% of us don't pay ANY taxes.

"So "The One" Said , "Then I shall give you some of the taxes the fat-cats
pay!"

And the people said , "Hallelujah! Show us the money!"

Then "The One" said , "I shall tax your Capital Gains when you sell your homes!"

And the people yawned and the slumping housing market collapsed.

And He said. "I shall mandate employer-funded health care for every worker and raise the minimum wage. And I shall give every Person unlimited healthcare and medicine and transportation to the Clinics."

...Oh, except for Muslims for Muslims shall not pay their share of healthcare.

And the people said , "Give me some of that!"

Then he said , "I shall penalize employers who ship jobs overseas."

And the people said , "Where's my rebate check?"

Then "The One" said , "I shall bankrupt the coal industry and electricity rates will skyrocket!"

And the people said , "Coal is dirty , coal is evil , no more coal! But we don't care for that part about higher electric rates.

So "The One" said , Not to worry. If Your rebate isn't enough to cover your expenses , we shall bail you out.

Just sign up with the ACORN and you troubles are over!"

Then He said , "Illegal immigrants feel scorned and slighted. Let's grant them amnesty , Social Security , free education , free lunches , Free medical care , bilingual signs and guaranteed housing...

" And the people said , "Hallelujah!" and they made him king!

And so it came to pass that employers , facing spiraling costs and ever-higher taxes , raised their prices and laid off workers. Others simply gave up and went out of business and the economy sank like unto a rock dropped from a cliff.

The banking industry was destroyed. Manufacturing slowed to a crawl and more of the people were without a means of support.

Then "The One" said , "I am the "the One"- The Messiah and I'm here To save you!

We shall just print more money so everyone will have enough!"

But our foreign trading partners said unto Him. "Wait a Minute. Your dollar is not worth a pile of camel dung! You will have to pay more...

And "The One" said , "Wait a minute. That is unfair!!"

And the world said , "Neither are these other idiotic programs you have embraced.

Lo , you have become a Socialist state and a second-rate power. Now you shall play by our rules!"

And the people cried out , "Alas , alas!! What have we done?"

And the change agent's name was changed to dung. And the once mighty nation was no more; and the once proud people were without sustenance or shelter or hope.

And the Change "The One" had given them was as like unto a poison that had destroyed them and like a whirlwind that consumed all that they had built.

And the people beat their chests in despair and cried out in anguish , "Give us back our nation and our pride and our hope!!" But it was too late , and their homeland was no more.
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It is rarely the crime, but the cover up which sinks an administration. This highlights the fact that the Obama administration, which usually motivates through fear, fell into panic. - ed
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In 1938 Ze'ev Jabotisnky visited Vilna and the leftist in Vilna particularly the Socialist Bundt, put out a leaflet, which they handed out to the Jews of Vilna. 
I want to read it to you. Ze'ev Jabotisnky of course was the greatest of the Zionist leaders of his time and in 1938 he was appealing to the Jews of Poland and Europe to escape, to run, to leave before tragedy struck them. And the Bundt issued the following leaflet, which has been translated from Yiddish into English,
"To the Jewish workers and the Jewish masses of Vilna, the spiritual father of Jewish fascism, the paper general Jabotisnky is coming to Vilna. Of late this adventurer and charlatan has become very popular with the Jewish workers and Jewish masses of Vilna; show your contempt for the Purim general and give him this command: Get out! Evacuate yourself along with your friends from Poland. Down with Fascism, down with Jabotisnky."
When I read this particular leaflet, it reminded me of the truth that nothing ever changes. Nothing ever changes! The Jewish people learns nothing from History, repeats the same tragedies. I cannot begin to tell you, the hate, the sheer psychopathic hate, which is raging today in the state of Israel. Not against Arafat and not against the PLO, and not against Syria but against Jews!
They have created a new label in Israel called "Kahanism", and I want you to know what Kahanism is, Kahanism is a label and an outlet for vicious hatred against Judaism. And those who march against Kahanism tomorrow will march to trample on Judaism.
In Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv 10,000 leftists came from all over the country. Bused in from the Kibbutzim, they cam e with iron bars, they came with stones, they attacked Jews, they beat Jews. The Mayor of Givatayim, a member of the Marach, stood and shouted "laarog otam kaasher hem ktanim!" - kill them while they are still small! This is the face of the left in Israel. And as I watched that crowd, the twisted faces, the obscenities, the curses, I said to myself, now I understand what happened in Israel 40 years ago, at the time of the "HaSidon" - The Season. And everyone must know what happened in those days. It is those that don't know what happened in the past that will live to see it happen again in the present and in the future. In the 1940's these same Kibbutznikim, HaShomer HaTzair, Mapai, Mapam, the same ones that today speak about democracy, and love of all the people, they speak about ethics, and morality... they kidnapped soldiers of the Irgun and the Sternists, and they turned them over to the British, knowing that to be a member of the Irgun was a capital punishment, a death sentence.
They were the ones who in 1948 fired upon the Irgun ship, the Altalena and murdered in cold blood 17 Jews because Menahem Begin was on the ship and they wanted to liquidate Begin. And know who the commander of the operation was, his name was Yitzhak Rabin. He gave the order to fire and to murder 17 Jews;
And know that the next day in the Knesset, the Prime Minister at that time, Ben Gurion rose and in the minutes, he said, "blessed be the holy canon", blessed be the holy canon that murdered 17 Jews!
They speak to us about Democracy and about love? They were the ones who murdered in cold blood in the 1920's one of the leaders of Agudat Israel, Dahan, because he was an anti-Zionist. So you can oppose and anti-Zionist, but to murder a Jew in cold blood? And know who gave the orders: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the second President of the State of Israel. They speak about Fascism? About hooligans? They turn now to the Sephardic Jews and tell them to watch out for Kahane! They turn to Sephardic Jews? the leftists? I remember what they did, how they destroyed whole communities of Jews from Morocco, and Algeria and Libya, and Tunisia and Egypt, and Syria and Iraq and Yemen! In the 1940's as the State came into being, hundreds of thousands of Jews poured in from Arab countries. Every one of those Jews was a Zionist, a real Zionist, not the Herzl type of Zionist! They were Zionists for 2000 years, "ve techezena enenu leTzion" - may our eyes behold the return to Zion. That was real Zionism.
They were warm Jews, religious Jews, and what happened to them! The leftists from Mapai and Mapam stood and watched as 800,000 Jews poured into the country, and they asked themselves the only question that had any meaning to them, the only thing that bothered them, the thing that meant more to them than the State, than the Jewish people, the question was: "For whom will they vote?" They saw they were all religious Jews, "they will not vote for us" they thought, so they went about purposely in cold blood, to spiritually destroy an entire people.
Jews were put into "mabarot," transit camps, and if there was a job, they asked you "in what school have you registered your child?" and if it was a religious school, there was no job! And they would say, take this paper and take it to the Histadrut school, register your child in a Histadrut school; the Principal will then stamp the paper and you will bring it to the Labor Exchange office and you will get a job. If you wanted a job they would ask, "where is your red book of the Histadrut? You are not a member? No job!" Fascism? I know who the Fascists were and who the Fascists are!
The pitty is, that we waited 37 years to put someone in the Knesset to give to them, just as they gave to us! I have arrived!!
They speak of "kfiat dati" - religious coercion; let me speak to you about religious coercion. In 1948 10,000 Yemenite boys, children, came to Israel without their parents under the auspices of Youth Aliyah. Every Yemenite boy that came to Israel, came with his Shabbat, with his Kashrut, and with his "Simanim", that's what they called the "peyott" - the ear-locks that every Yemenite boy had.
The Simanim, the sign of the Jew. For 2000 years they had the Simanim, for 2000 years they had the Shabbat, for 2000 years they suffered but remained Jewish, they came to the Holy Land to places as 'holy' as the Kibbutzim of the Shomer HaTzair. They ripped from them their Simanim, their Judaism, their Jewishness, children ages 7, 8 and 9.
Shimon Peres speaks today about the tragedy that there is crime in Israel. Crime in Israel? "Boker Tov" - good morning! If there is crime in Israel, who created it? If there are gangs in Israel, who created them? And if there is a breakdown in every thing that is Jewish in Israel, who created that? If not Shimon Peres and his gangsters!
They ripped from Jews the only values they had, their Judaism, and left them naked to pick up the values of Dizenghoff Street, and now they complain about hoodlums and gangsters. I sat in prison in Israel; I saw the Yemenites, the Iraqis, and the Moroccans, who never knew what crime was when they lived in Morocco and Yemen and Iraq. They never tasted it, they came to Israel and were destroyed spirituality by people who cynically cared only about "for whom will they vote?"
So when I say these things in the 'Kikar' - in the town square, of course the people listen and of course people clap, and of course people cheer because finally someone is coming and saying the truth, he is saying what they have always thought all these years. You think it's an accident that so many people are shouting 'Kahane'? It's not an accident. I touched upon the things that bother them, that trouble them, the things that no one else is saying to them. I want a Jewish State; I don't want a Hebrew speaking copy of Time Square!
I want to give those people, the Sephardic Jews that came to Israel with 'Kavod' - honor, self respect, the respect for the family, respect for their father, their mother, they came with respect and honor; and it was taken from them, and they were told, your father is a 'primitivi' - a primitive; and your mother is a 'primitivit' - she is primitive, she is backwards. Backwards? They who raised their children with honor and pride, to work and not to steal, they were primitive? It is the European,
the Hellenism, this Western Hellenized culture, which first destroyed the Jews of the West and now they use it to wipe out the Jews from Arab countries. That will not be. I don't want a Hellenist State, I want a Jewish State and that is why they hate me so.
I want to save the Jewish soul and the Jewish body, and I want to tell you that the Jewish body is in danger every day in Israel. If I mention the name Motty Swuissa I don't know if 10 people here know the name. But Motty Swissa just two weeks ago was murdered. He was murdered in Israel, not in Lebanon and not in the 'Occupied Territories' of Yossi Sarid. He was murdered near Beit Shemesh, 20 kilometers from Yerushalayim he and his fiancé were murdered in cold blood by Arabs. The same day another Jew was murdered in the north, in Migdal HaEmek. This is a pattern now; they are killing Jews in Israel every single week. Who cares? What is the answer? We came to Israel to die? We came to Israel to live. Today for the first time Jews in Israel are frightened, Jews are afraid in Israel. It's becoming Brooklyn.
A Jewish woman comes to me in Kiriyat Atta, a suburb of Haifa, and tells me "I'm afraid to let my child play in the streets." This is the dream of Zion? For this we waited 2000 years? Soldiers are afraid. Shaltiel Akiva, there aren't five people here who remember that name. A 21 year-old soldier from the Yemenite town of Rosh Ayin, who spent eight months in Lebanon without a scratch, he came back safely. The night he returned he was murdered. And the father told me the story after the funeral the next day; he said the previous evening his son Shaltiel, phoned and said, I'm at the 'trempiada' - the hitch-hikers' stop; five kilometers away from Rosh Ayin. For those that don't know, Rosh Ayin is near Petach Tikvah in the heart of Israel. "I am five kilometers away from home please prepare supper for me" so they prepared supper for him and they waited 15 minutes and half-an-hour, and an hour, they waited all night and he never arrived. The next day they brought his body. Shaltiel had been murdered by Arabs inside the State of Israel hitching a ride!
Moshe Tamam, that name virtually nobody remembers; was a 19 year-old soldier hitching a ride near Natanya. Arabs picked him up and gave him a ride. They found his body four days later. And know what they did to him so you know whom we are dealing with. They gouged out his eyes, and they cut off his sexual organs; and that is what we are dealing with. And of such people our Rabbis told us already and the Humash, told us already, "Ishmael will be a wild man, his hand will be against everybody and everybody's hand will be against him." That's with whom we're dealing! This is the enemy. This is Ishmael.
My son came home from the army, he came from Miluim - reserve duty;
and he showed me a letter, which was given to every soldier; a letter from the Israeli Defense Forces. "Let me see the letter, let me see pride I told him." Do you know what the letter said? It said, "Hayal - soldier, be careful when hitching rides". Soldier of Israel be careful on the roads of Israel, you might be killed by Arabs in Israel! What a tragedy, what a disgrace, what a Hilul HaShem! (desecration of God's name). But the enemy is Kahanism? (sic).
All of this doesn't bother the enemies of Kahanism, but it bothers me. That Jews who came after 2000 years in the exile, are assimilating inside Israel. When you visit Israel you are tourists, you don't see anything. You see the Wall, you see Masada, and the Plaza Hotel; you don't see the tragedy that occurs not far from the Plaza and on every town and every city. The Arabs that come into the towns, to meet Jewish girls. In the morning the Arab wakes up in his village and he is Ibrahim, he comes to Jerusalem or Natanya and suddenly his name is Avi, "hello, my name is Avi." There are over 3500 Jewish women married to Arabs and over 10,000 Jewish women living with Arabs in Israel. In Beit Shemesh I'll never forget the Jew that came over to me, a man in his 50's and said to me, "Rav Kahane," he said, "I have two daughters and they are both married to Arabs. One lives in the Arab village of Taiba." and then he said, "When I lived in Morocco did I ever dream in my blackest nightmare, that my daughter would ever go out with an Arab? In Morocco? Never heard of such a thing! We came to the Holy Land and my daughters married Arabs!" That doesn't bother anybody?
The President of Israel "hometz ben yain" - vinegar the son of wine, the son of the chief Rabbi, this Helenist goes to visit Nevey Shalom, a settlement founded by a Jew who converted to Christianity and is now a monk; a settlement where Jews and Arabs live together, and he says "ze keren or" - this is a ray of light. This is our President? this is our president!
On the beaches of Israel in the summer time, you see cars parked most with license plates from Shechem, Jenin, Tulkarm, Hevron, Aza, what are they looking for? sun and water? There is sun and water in Aza too. They are looking for Jewish women! The prostitutes in Israel are all Jewish, the pimps are mostly Arabs and we, we bare the shame, because this is not new, this has been going on for 30 years. When did you last hear, the religious parties in Israel, let alone the other parties, speak up about this? The irony, it would laughable, it would be a joke out of Chelm if it weren't so tragic. The religious head of the Druze, Sheik Taari, appealed to the chief Rabbi of Haifa to come out and oppose intermarriage of Druze men with Jewish women. So when you saw in the paper that the chief Rabbi of Haifa came out... no! After 20 years he came out because the Druze asked him too.
In Haifa they have, a center called Beit HaGefen. It is funded by the city of Haifa with public funds. It is a center for assimilation, intermarriage and the destruction of Jewish values. Jewish women and Arab men, and it is always Jewish women because an Arab woman is not allowed to go out of her village, let alone to go out with a Jew. The Arab goes into Haifa and there's no problem, he isn't afraid; but let an Israeli Jew go into an Arab village any evening to look for an Arab woman, they'll slice him into little pieces. Who speaks of these things? Who talks of this? This tragedy taking place today in Israel?
And above all, the tragedy of the gradual and not so gradual birth rate of the Arabs in Israel. Because we are such foolish people and unwise, we pay them for each baby, each month a check from 'bituach leumi' - National Insurance. For one baby, one check, two babies, two checks; ten babies? Here, take a book of checks! Every month! You want a tourist site? I'll give you a tourist site no tour guide would ever take you to: On the twentieth of every month go to the main post office, in every major city and watch the hundreds of Arabs in line waiting to cash their checks. And count how many checks each one of them has. 10 checks, 15 checks, 18 checks, why not? The Galilee today has a majority of Arabs. Today! Not in twenty years, but today!
Jews are afraid at night to drive through Arab villages in the Galilee, so they are building access roads to go around so God forbid we shouldn't have to drive through them. Entire cities in Israel are becoming Arab. Jaffa is becoming Arab, Ramle is becoming Arab, Lod, Nazareth Ilit built by the Israeli government to meet the Arab Nazareth is today 25% Arab.
Why? Arabs come with dollars, in cash and they offer twice the price for the apartment. And where does this money come from? It is PLO money and comes across Jordan. And it comes across freely and the government knows about it. They are quiet about it and they say, "It doesn't hurt anyone, the important thing is they are quiet, and after all it's a Democracy" (sic). They are buying Jewish land and we are committing suicide. But I am not ready to commit suicide in the name of Democracy. For 40 years we have been 'frayerim' - fools, but I am not a fool, I will not sit quietly.
I don't hate Arabs, I love Jews! And I hate the enemies of the Jews, not because they are Arabs but because they are enemies! You think there is a single Arab living in Israel in a place that is called the Jewish State? Liberals have immense contempt for the Arabs; they believe that they can buy them. "We'll raise their living standards and then they'll be good Arabs" Good Arabs? What contempt! They think that a good Arab is one that will agree to the Jews living in what he considers to be his Palestine. You think there is one Arab who enjoys living in a State where there is a law of return that applies to Jews and not to non-Jews? You think there is one Arab who enjoys living in a State, which has a National Anthem: Hatikvah with words that say, 'nefesh yehudi omia' - the soul of the Jew yearns? You can imagine how that sits with them. You think there is one Arab who enjoys living in a State, whose Independence Day celebrates his defeat? You can't buy a person by giving him an indoor toilet. "You see, you had no toilet, now you have one." You can't come and say as the UJA says: "What do you want? We came and we turned the dessert into a garden" Let me tell you what the Arab says: "Yes it's true, but it was my dessert and now it's your garden." I respect the Arab, and that is why he has to go!
Because I know you can't buy him, you can't buy his national pride, know that he hates the Jews and that if we allowed them they would do to us what Arabs do to other Arabs today in Lebanon. They would do to us what they did to us yesterday. Do you know what Arabs did to us in the 1920's and 1930's? Do you know what they did to us? When there was no Kahane, no Begin and no other 'fascists'?
Do you know what they did to us when there was no State of Israel? What they did in Hevron and in Jaffa, and Yerushalaym? How they murdered over 500 Jews! They would do that to us if we let them, but I am not going to let them!
I want an exchange of populations. Beginning in 1948 we took in 800,000 Jews from Arab countries. That was phase one, now I want phase two: we took Jews from Arab countries? Well now we'll give them Arabs from the Jewish country!
I am ready to offer the Arabs that want to leave voluntarily compensation for his properties, which is more that what they did for the Jews they expelled from Morocco, from Egypt, from Iraq. Do you know how much money was left behind by Jews in those countries? Billions of dollars, and we were never compensated for it. And when we signed the treaty with Egypt we didn't even have the decency, the self-respect to demand compensation for the properties seized by Gamal Abdel Nasser from the Jews in Egypt. I am better than they; I will give compensation to the Arabs that are willing to leave. And those that are not willing to leave, I will throw out without monetary compensation!
This is racism? My God, this is saving ourselves, this is self-preservation, I don't hate the Arabs, I wish them well, elsewhere! I wish them the very best in any of their 22 countries. I have only one, it is mine and I am not going to lose it to either Bush or Begin.
We can't continue in this way. We can not continue as the country rapidly becomes more Arab, not in 40 years, not in 30, in 10 the Arabs will help the leftists be a majority in the Knesset, a coalition of Yossi Sarid, Shimon Peres, Mr. Shemtov and the Arabs, that will be the coalition if we don't do anything about this.
I am appalled by Jews who say, "This is what the Germans did to the Jews." Did the Jews of Germany ever say, "Germany is our country and the Germans stole it from us? And when we become the majority we will take it back and call it Israel" (sic). That is not what they said. The Jews of Germany wanted nothing more than to be the best Germans that ever lived. The Arabs don't want to be Israelis.
Let everyone know that when we came out to oppose the Camp David Accords and peace treaty with Egypt, they said "Kahane doesn't want peace", I want peace, but I knew what kind of peace we would have with Egypt. Peace? Any country with a modicum of self-respect would have recalled their ambassador from Egypt, if Egypt would have done to them what they did to us: murdered in cold blood seven Jews. I don't know if any of you know what the real story is, I am sure that it came here to you as one crazy Arab shoots... and every time an Arab shoots he's crazy.
So the story came as 'one crazy Arab soldier shot Jews and also wounded his own soldiers', well that's a lie! another Egyptian lie; a typical Arab lie. He wasn't crazy, he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and other soldiers stood by and watched him shoot, and three of our seven soldiers did not die right away, they laid there bleeding, and the Egyptians refused to allow medical aid. And those three soldiers bled to death. And Mubarak said, "Why should a little incident upset our relationship?" A little incident? If I would have been Prime Minister I would have given him a little incident!
I am tired. I'm tired of going to funerals, I didn't come to Israel to go to funerals; I came to Israel for 'smachot' - happy occasions, joy, and happiness. There is a growing fear in Israel and you can tell by the hysteria, the hysterical obsession with Kahanism. President Herzog is obsessed with Kahane, he goes to bed every night with 'Kahane'. Shimon Peres says Kahane is the greatest danger to Israel, I would have imagined that Syria would be, but no. The army radio station Galey Tzahal, devoted last week 18 hours, an entire day to Kahane, to attacks on Kahane; the army radio station! An army that is supposed to be above politics, being crudely used by politicians and do you know why? Because they are terrified, because they know that as much as they are against Kahane, in the streets, the people of Israel are for Kahane!
It's not an accident that the Sephardic Jews in Israel are for Kahane, why? Because they did not learn about Arabs in a seminar at Hebrew University, they learned about Arabs because they lived under Arabs. So naturally when Kahane says what he says, they say "kol hakavod" - with all the honor, (meaning -you're absolutely right), because I say what they think. And the young people they are with us and that's what terrifies the Labor and the Likud. Yes the Likud. Pains me more than anything to have to tell you that the Likud has joined actively with the leftists in physically breaking up rallies of the Kach movement. It's not to be believed, people who once had this thing done to them, and I remember how Menahem Begin in 1952 was prevented from speaking to the people in Afula. His rallies were broken up by leftist hoodlums, and now they do the same? Do you know why? They are afraid of losing votes. They know that the people say that the Likud of today is not the Likud of yesterday. The Likud of Begin is not what it once was.
And we have to stop being idol worshipers. We do not worship idols. The Likud should be backed if it does for the people, if it doesn't we don't back it. With God's help in the next elections the latest poll in Israel shows 12 seats for us in the Knesset.
And I tell you that is not true, not true! For everyone who is openly and willing to admit that he will vote Kach, there is another one who will do so quietly. I am not interested in Seats, I'm going for the whole ballgame!
I want a government of Kahane, Ariel Sharon and Raful and then you will see what we will do. Finally for those who ask: "how can you do it? How can you throw a million and a half Arabs?" I'll tell you how. Three years ago I served in the army, I was stationed near Ramallah, in Samaria, the West Bank. And the Arabs rioted in Ramallah so they sent me to put down the riots. I want to tell you, not more than five minutes passed, and the whole town heard "Kahane is here!" there was absolute silence in that town, the riots stopped. It is imperative you understand what the name Kahane means to the Arabs. For them it is a monster, it is terror, they hear Kahane and they are terrified! And that is good because that is the only language they understand.
So how will we move out the Arabs? Think for a moment. Three years from now the Arab wakes up in the morning, turns on the radio and hears in the news that Kahane is the new Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Can you imagine what he will feel? How will I move them out? There will be no need. Half will leave by themselves, the other half, will beg me, "let us go" and because I'm big about it, I'll let them go.
My friends, Israel is at a crossroads right now. The All-Mighty gave us with His kindness, His Hessed - mercy, He gave us a Jewish State after 2000 years, but He is not going to give us a Jewish State without us working and suffering; if we're not going to make the kind of State that He wants. I want Democracy for Jews but I don't want Democracy for Arabs because otherwise there won't be a Jewish State! And for those people that say "that is not nice" you answer this question: If you are such Democrats,
are you willing to allow the Arabs, peacefully, quietly, democratically to sit every night and make love not war and allow them to be the majority, quietly and peacefully? You would be shocked and amazed to know how many Jews in Israel would answer 'yes' in Israel. We have to create in Israel a Jewish State not a State for Jews, I am sick and tired to hear the 'sabras' - (Jews born in Israel) come and say to me "I am not a Jew, I am an Israeli", I don't want to hear that again ever! I want a Jewish State and I want the public schools of Israel to teach Judaism, I want Jewish youngsters to know what is tefillin and what is a holyday, maybe they won't want to keep it but at the very least, give them the choice of knowing what it is being and not being Jewish.
On Wednesday I presented a motion of 'no confidence' in the Knesset because of the policy of the Ministry of Education. And enforced curriculum of meetings between Arab students and Jewish students. Mixed summer camps, Jewish children staying in Arab villages for the weekend and Arab children in Jewish towns for the weekend. I presented a vote of 'no confidence' to the other Ministers and asked them, will you vote for a Jewish education and a Jewish State or will you vote for the coalition and for your seats and the money? You know how they voted... they voted for the coalition. That is the tragedy. I can understand a secular and leftist party but I cannot understand a religious party sitting by and watching our youngsters being destroyed, for whatever narrow reasons they may have.
There will be an election and when Peres returns from his Washington trip he will be on a coalition course with the Likud. Peres is ready to make far reaching concessions to Jordan. When he praised King Hussein as a man who wants peace, one can only recall when we liberated the Old City and found out what they had done to every synagogue. They destroyed every synagogue. And what they had done in Har HaZeitim - Mount of Olives, to the tombstones; they used them to pave roads and as latrine seats. He wants peace... he wants many, many pieces of Israel.
The government is going to fall. Shimon Peres has worked hard this past year, he's got the strength and the Likud has fallen badly, there is going to be an election and they will try to stop us from running, with God's help that won't be because we have many answers to their intentions, we will be running.
And I want to finish here by saying I am overjoyed to see this crowd and the crowd outside. I don't want you to come here, because you want to hear me speak, or to cheer me, I don't need your applause.
We need your money, we are running for an election, it costs a fortune, they get money from the treasury, for each member of the Knesset they get three thousand dollars a month, do you know what that means? That's one of the laws we are going to change, robbing the treasury! They get over $120,000 dollars a month, we get three thousands dollars a month. We need the money, and for what will you be saving your money if tragedy strikes God forbid? I'm not trying to make an appeal here, but when this is over, write out a check, give me a check, and I can only tell you that if you give to a Yeshiva in Israel, or schools, or institutions in Israel, know that what I'm trying to do is to save Israel, with all the schools and all the institutions. And if I fail there might not be any institutions for you to support.
Just as I told the people in Israel the choice in the next elections is between Kahane and Arafat; that is what the next elections will be all about. Kach or the PLO that's the choice there is no other choice! I appeal to you, save Israel, save your brothers and sisters and save yourselves, because God forbid, I would not want to be in your shoes if there is no more Israel. I said I would end here but there is one more thing I want to tell you because it is vital. I believe that the State of Israel has to be the State for all the Jewish people and has to be the trustee of all the Jewish people. And I don't believe that there are boundaries that Israel cannot cross, when Jews are in trouble. And I want to tell you, that as anti-Semitism in this country (USA) grows, there will be a need for an Israel that will do things that you are not ready to do. And I want to tell you, that with God's help when I am Prime Minister, the State of Israel will never say that there are Israelis that are in trouble, we will always say that if there are Jews in trouble anywhere, our hand will reach out everywhere against those who hate Jews.
I will take your questions now.
With Love of Israel Rabbi Meir Kahane

Rav Kahane was murdered November 1st, 1999 by an Arab informant who infiltrated a group not too well know at that time: Al-Quaida. Nossair Sayed received orders to kill the Rabbi while he was in New York.  Speech given in front of an American audience at the National Press Conference a short while after receiving one seat in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) in 1984.
Rabbi Kahane's prediction that the following elections would be between Kahane or Arafat became true, thus Oslo was born and the subsequent deaths of thousands of innocent Jews.
Do you have any doubt whatsoever that Kahane was right?
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New evidence indicates that some of the pro-Morsi protesters reportedly killed by the Egyptian military, after the Muslim Brotherhood president's ouster, were actually killed by fellow pro-Morsi protesters. They did this, according to the report, to frame the military, incite more Islamist violence and unrest, and garner sympathy from America, which has been extremely critical of the military, especially in the context of the post-Morsi violence.
The Arabic satellite program, Al Dalil, ("The Evidence") recently showed the evidence, which consisted mostly of video recordings.
One video records events on July 8, during pro-Morsi protests in front of the Republican Guard building in Cairo, where Morsi was being held, and where the bloodshed between the military and Brotherhood began. The video shows a young man with a shaven head and a Salafi-style beard approaching the Republican Guard barrier; he gets shot, collapses to the ground, and dies—as other protesters fly into a rage against the military. As the video plays, it seems clear that the military shot him.

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When you consider that many Islamic peoples are killed by terrorism committed by those claiming to be Islamic, this gesture is not one of good will for any decent person. - ed

Want to score points with the Obama regime? Bomb schools, kill teachers, poison girls' schools, strap bombs on to children, oppress and torture women, harbor jihad leaders like Osama Bin Laden -- the more the better. Then you, too, will get on Obama's favored status list. This is monstrous.
Obama's Ramadan gift to savages.
"Obama Admin Quietly Releases Taliban Inmates From Gitmo To Open Peace Talks In Afghanistan" Ynetnews.com viaBreitbart, July 29, 2013
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Contrary to mainstream media reports, momentum for peaceful relations with the State of Israel is building among the Iranian people.
“I think there are many Iranians who live for the day that Iran has diplomatic relations with Israel,” says Mhyar Shams Ahmadi, who was born in Tehran 28 years ago but now lives in Toronto. “In my view, if you just look at relations between Iran and Israel, it is clear that it is in fact the ruling regime in Iran that is preventing diplomatic relations.”
Ahmadi is inspired by the high-tech advances and Western-style democracy that Israeli society has achieved.  “Israel is already serving as a model for Iran, and other countries, on how to treat women and minorities,” he says. “Much like Canada, Israel does not oppress its citizens and allows them to think freely without fear of being persecuted no matter what your religion or beliefs are.”

ONCE UPON A TIME...

Once upon a time there was a very vain Prime Minister who made many mistakes. So many silly mistakes that the country was in terrible trouble so, in desperation, he was finally knifed in the back by a former friend.

The vain Prime Minister cried on the steps of Parliament House. People were very unhappy that the leader they voted for was disposed of in such a horrible way.

They wanted him back, so they took to the highways and byways and shopping malls. They mobbed him and wanted photos taken with him. He appeared to be more popular than when they first voted for him.

Eventually a new election was arranged to allow the people to right this awful wrong.

But a strange thing happened.

On the way to the polling booths everyone paused. They remembered just how silly their vain Prime Minister had been.

When the election results were known, it was clear the people had put their country first. Their vain Prime Minister had been wiped out in a landslide.

The people were incredulous at what they had just done, but in a funny way they knew it was the right thing to do. Charisma alone was insufficient for their vote.

But the vain Prime Minister was okay... he accepted a very important position overseas, where he preferred to be anyway.

That was in 1975 and history never repeats itself... or does it?

The end

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More than 1,000 international lawyers, ambassadors and professors from 30 different countries signed a petition protesting the European Union’s recent funding ban on Israel’s settlements.
Israel’s former ambassador to Canada and legal advisor, Alan Baker, who heads the Legal Forum for Israel’s International Action Division, initiated the petition and an accompanying letter, which drew widespread support across the world.
The Legal Forum, a legal advocacy group established in 2004, sent out the petition and protest letter to EU officials earlier this week.
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Israel has been much criticised for the detainment and treatment of Palestinian children. Since 2000, more than 8,000 Palestinian youths have been arrested, some of them as young as 12. As of June 2013, over 230 Palestinian children remain in Israeli custody. 44 of them are under the age of 16.

The initial and natural reaction is to reject (or at best, question) such procedures, as they contradict our romantic idea of the innocence and purity of children. However, the sharp and often simplistic criticism directed at Israel ignores the underlying problem.

The question we must ask is: why is Israel confronted with a generation of Palestinian children which exhibits the behaviour of politically radicalised adults and, as a result, poses a potential threat to the security of Israel and the safety of its citizens?

This phenomenon originates in Palestinian society and has become deeply entrenched over time. Children, from the earliest age, are being taught by their families, communities and political establishment to hate Jews and Israel.

An illuminating example is the annual summer camps run by Islamic terrorist organisation Hamas, in which hundreds of thousands of children take part each year. These are not summer camps in any traditional sense but semi-military recruitment centres, where children learn to shoot with Kalashnikov rifles, handle hand grenades, and simulate kidnapping of IDF soldiers. They are being groomed for martyrdom, the accomplishment of which is celebrated in the name of the infinite plight of the Palestinian people.
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Warren Mundine, the ex national president of the Australian Labor Party who resigned in 2012 in total disgust, on The Bolt Report yesterday Sunday 4th August 2013 : 

" If you like Kevin Rudd, you’ve never met him; If you dislike Tony Abbott, you’ve never met him "
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It reminds me of the Australian sports issue announced by Jason Clare .. no evidence of anything, but allegations of some things and players threatened and begged to plead guilty .. - ed
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Tragic accident. If I have a child, they won't be allowed near a dangerous breed of dog. I would disown any relative that owns one. - ed
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August 5: Tisha B'Av (Judaism, 2014)
Alfonso X of Castile
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Events[edit]

Births[edit]

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Holidays and observances[edit]

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““This is what the LORD says, he who made the earth, the LORD who formed it and established it—the LORD is his name: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’”Jeremiah 33:2-3 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"The people that do know their God shall be strong."
Daniel 11:32
Every believer understands that to know God is the highest and best form of knowledge; and this spiritual knowledge is a source of strength to the Christian. It strengthens his faith. Believers are constantly spoken of in the Scriptures as being persons who are enlightened and taught of the Lord; they are said to "have an unction from the Holy One," and it is the Spirit's peculiar office to lead them into all truth, and all this for the increase and the fostering of their faith. Knowledge strengthens love, as well as faith. Knowledge opens the door, and then through that door we see our Saviour. Or, to use another similitude, knowledge paints the portrait of Jesus, and when we see that portrait then we love him, we cannot love a Christ whom we do not know, at least, in some degree. If we know but little of the excellences of Jesus, what he has done for us, and what he is doing now, we cannot love him much; but the more we know him, the more we shall love him. Knowledge also strengthens hope. How can we hope for a thing if we do not know of its existence? Hope may be the telescope, but till we receive instruction, our ignorance stands in the front of the glass, and we can see nothing whatever; knowledge removes the interposing object, and when we look through the bright optic glass we discern the glory to be revealed, and anticipate it with joyous confidence. Knowledge supplies us reasons for patience. How shall we have patience unless we know something of the sympathy of Christ, and understand the good which is to come out of the correction which our heavenly Father sends us? Nor is there one single grace of the Christian which, under God, will not be fostered and brought to perfection by holy knowledge. How important, then, is it that we should grow not only in grace, but in the "knowledge" of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Evening

"I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands."
Haggai 2:17
How destructive is the hail to the standing crops, beating out the precious grain upon the ground! How grateful ought we to be when the corn is spared so terrible a ruin! Let us offer unto the Lord thanksgiving. Even more to be dreaded are those mysterious destroyers--smut, bunt, rust, and mildew. These turn the ear into a mass of soot, or render it putrid, or dry up the grain, and all in a manner so beyond all human control that the farmer is compelled to cry, "This is the finger of God." Innumerable minute fungi cause the mischief, and were it not for the goodness of God, the rider on the black horse would soon scatter famine over the land. Infinite mercy spares the food of men, but in view of the active agents which are ready to destroy the harvest, right wisely are we taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." The curse is abroad; we have constant need of the blessing. When blight and mildew come they are chastisements from heaven, and men must learn to bear the rod, and him that hath appointed it.
Spiritually, mildew is no uncommon evil. When our work is most promising this blight appears. We hoped for many conversions, and lo! a general apathy, an abounding worldliness, or a cruel hardness of heart! There may be no open sin in those for whom we are labouring, but there is a deficiency of sincerity and decision sadly disappointing our desires. We learn from this our dependence upon the Lord, and the need of prayer that no blight may fall upon our work. Spiritual pride or sloth will soon bring upon us the dreadful evil, and only the Lord of the harvest can remove it. Mildew may even attack our own hearts, and shrivel our prayers and religious exercises. May it please the great Husbandman to avert so serious a calamity. Shine, blessed Sun of Righteousness, and drive the blights away.
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Today's reading: Psalm 66-67, Romans 7 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Psalm 66-67

For the director of music. A song. A psalm. 

1 Shout for joy to God, all the earth!
2 Sing the glory of his name;
make his praise glorious.
3 Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power
that your enemies cringe before you.
4 All the earth bows down to you;
they sing praise to you,
they sing the praises of your name."

Today's New Testament reading: Romans 7

Released From the Law, Bound to Christ
1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters-for I am speaking to those who know the law-that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. 3 So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.
4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code....
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Uriah, Urijah, Urias

 [Ūrī'ah,U rī'jah, U rī'as] - jehovah is light.
  1. A high priest in Jerusalem, who built an altar according to the pattern provided by King Ahaz (2 Kings 16:10-16).
  2. A priest, father of Meremoth, who helped rebuild the wall of Jerusalem (Ezra 8:33; Neh. 3:4, 21).
  3. A priest who stood with Ezra as he read the law and addressed the people (Neh. 8:4).
  4. A priest whom Isaiah deemed worthy to act as a witness. He is described as "a faithful witness" (Isa. 8:2). See Revelation 1:4; 2:13.
  5. A prophet, the son of Shemaiah of Kirjath-jearim, whom Jehoiakin sent for into Egypt and slew him (Jer. 26:20-23).
  6. Uriah, or Urias (Matt. 1:6) was also the name of the Hittite, husband of Bath-sheba, and one of David's thirty heroes ( 2 Sam. 11; 12:9-15; 23:39; 1 Kings 15:5; 1 Chron. 11:41).
As David's general, Uriah distinguished himself by his loyalty and bravery in the army of the king. Alas, Uriah was barbarously, even murderously treated by the monarch he served! Failing to use Uriah as a shield for his sin against Uriah and Bath-sheba his wife, David had him killed in battle.
Thomas Goodwin points out that it was the "matter of Uriah," even more than the matter of Bath-sheba, that awakened the anger of the Lord against David. That is to say, it was David's sin of deliberation and determination, rather than his sin of sudden and intoxicating passion. But both sins matter and earn the judgment of God. Uriah had every right to disobey David in his deceitful commands. Through Nathan, the adulterer and murderer was brought back to God and wrote his confession in a penitential psalm (Ps. 51).
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