Saturday, September 26, 2015

Sat Sep 26th Todays News

When Costello agreed to deal with John Howard on the leadership of the Liberal Party he had a vision of how the modern party should operate. The party would require different leaders at different times so as to exploit their strengths. Few people in any generation are good at everything. Some are good at maintaining discipline so as to present a united front in opposition. Others are good at collegial activity so as to exploit the strength of ministers in government. The central criticism of Mr Abbott, putting aside that it is a lie, is that Mr Abbott did not exploit his front bench well enough. He is a better opposition leader than PM, goes the accusation. The fact that there was strong disloyalty by some ministers allows some to substantiate the lie. It is apparent now that Costello has backed this coup. But if he has, then it is likely that Costello has also put in place generational change, probably to Scott Morrison for some time in the future. Turnbull is not young. Also, the vehemence with which this coup was executed, suggests a slap in the face of Mr Howard, if in fact Costello is behind it. And Costello would be a friend of Mr Abbott, but Turnbull's disloyalty had killed election chances in the states for the Libs, and in '07 and '10. The only way to prevent further destabilisation was to satisfy the need of Turnbull. But Turnbull is a weaker PM than Mr Abbott in terms of ability. 

 Meanwhile in the US, Hillary Clinton has forgotten the lies she has told regarding her email account. It isn't the only set of lies she has forgotten. Some have proven murderous in her administration of the US as Secretary of State. Maybe, if she were President, she could change. The promise to change should be exacted from her before the position is given to her, or she won't change.  

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2014 ===
A complaint is lodged by an ADF officer regarding some Middle Eastern peoples who attempted to beat him up while he was in uniform. Now the complaint is withdrawn and an apology is issued. The issue was always a weak one, although sensitive. Lee Rigby was killed by terrorists who may very well have done similar. But it has always been the case that Australians tear down tall poppies. Soldiers in uniform deserve respect, but Australian culture is not geared to it. Only the issue is sensitive because of the inability of the press to be reliable in reporting serious things. A year ago the ABC campaigned for two brothers to be spared Saudi justice and it turns out they were ISIS. One of them now enjoys living in free Australia and was connected with the terrorist killed attempting to stab police recently, while wearing the ISIS flag. SMH and ABC omit damning evidence on reports of terrorists and it is no wonder that radicalised youth are ignorant of the truth about which they are so passionate. Who will contradict their false beliefs? Socialist Alternative take a stand for the terrorist who stabbed police. A reasonable person might feel the truth was somewhere close to what was reported, and be very wrong. Someone went through an Islamic primary school with a knife. It matches rhetoric that has come from the ADL. Haters hating Islam miss the danger of terrorism. Three hundred Iraqi soldiers near Baghdad have been over run by ISIS and executed. Who can stand on the ground when Obama won't? 

Cate Blanchet mistakes professional degrees for generic ones. Scientists do scientific research, not art students. Engineers build towns and cities and bridges that arts students can only sing about. Gillard parades her excuses for why she failed in office in her book. The doormat says that Gillard needs to smile more. Says success is all about perseverance. Keep trying, Hilary. Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt said four years ago that gay marriage was a slippery slope to incest. A german incest ruling seems to show that was true. Yet it was ridiculed at the time it was written. 
From 2013
The change in Australian politics has not yet been settled. The change of government has happened. The public service are addressing better policy. But exactly what everything means hasn't been discussed or thought through. Naturally the ABC are defending their core values .. environmental extremism and far left politics. But not everything is about that narrow view. So some bizarre things have been said which simply jar. An ABC columnist gives a sermon on the evils of work. Other ABC journalists defend the practice of fleecing refugees with pirates and drowning many of them, calling it compassionate. One of those advocates they summon is former Liberal Leader Malcolm Fraser. Current conservatives don't hold that view. Bolt raises the issue of a schism in the conservative ranks evidenced by Abbott insisting on discipline. Alternatively, I think Abbott is merely insisting on good praxis. But then Bolt likes to be balanced whereas I insist I'm a conservative. We agree that the more seats Palmer's party has the worse it is for Australia. Latham talks about ALP leadership, but I struggle to find any such animal or example. Suzuki looks uninformed when answering basic scientific questions. It becomes apparent one of the faceless grey men backing the previous ALP government and making back door decisions was an anti semitic bigot. Green party is imploding, while Julia is writing a book.

A siege in Kenya is over, now is time to mourn the victims of terror. A senior Kenyan Islamic cleric has denounced the terrorists as not being Islamic .. but they had dressed in women's clothes and killed innocent, helpless people, so it is understandable that it is hard for innocent bystanders to know. All that and more can be found with the following links.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
===
Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August https://www.createspace.com/4124406, September https://www.createspace.com/5106914, October https://www.createspace.com/5106951, or at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1482020262/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_dVHPub0MQKDZ4  The kindle version is cheaper, but the soft back version allows the purchase of a kindle version for just $3.99 more. 
===
For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

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

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

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.
Happy birthday and many happy returns Catherine Nguyen, Caitlin Chao and Andrew Davis. Born on the same day, across the years, along with 
1774 – Johnny Appleseed, American environmentalist (d. 1845)
1843 – Joseph Furphy, Australian novelist (d. 1912)
1849 – Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
1887 – Barnes Wallis, English scientist and engineer, invented the Bouncing bomb (d. 1979)
1888 – T. S. Eliot, American-English publisher, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)
1898 – George Gershwin, American composer (d. 1937)
1922 – Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia
1943 – Ian Chappell, Australian cricketer
1945 – Bryan Ferry, English singer-songwriter (Roxy Music)
1948 – Olivia Newton-John, English-Australian singer-songwriter and actress
1968 – James Caviezel, American actor
1981 – Serena Williams, American tennis player
The Parthenon
You have issued your last bull. Although the structure was damaged, it stands. Vera has gone. Beatles found happiness. You are in Australia too. So let's party. 
Deaths
===

WHITE FLAGS RAISED

Tim Blair – Saturday, September 26, 2015 (7:04pm)

This week’s Spectator column mentioned a museum of university relics, “such as jokes, freedom of speech and students who aren’t total whiny bitches.” England’s Warwick University is the latest institute of higher eradication to ban someone who might scare the poor frightened students: 
Human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie, a member of the Council of Ex-Muslims, is well known for giving talks which challenge aspects of the religion she does not agree with.
The Iranian-born secularist was invited to Warwick University’s Students’ Union by Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists’ Society to give a talk on October 28.
But the university’s students’ union later blocked the invitation … 
The students explained their gutless decision: 
After researching both her and her organisation, a number of flags have been raised. We have a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus.
There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus. 
Even Barack Obama is done with these shrieking crybabies and their pathetic poncho posturing.
===

UNFRIENDED BY THE ERNIES

Tim Blair – Saturday, September 26, 2015 (6:54pm)

Having failed to win even a minor Ernie award, I will of course be seeking appropriate legal redress.
===

YOU CAN’T BE SYRIA’S

Tim Blair – Saturday, September 26, 2015 (6:32pm)

Remember Australia’s bald asylum-seeking teenagers? These tragic, prematurely-aged children were abundant back in the Labor days. And now Germany is being overrun by non-Syrian Syrians: 
German officials said Friday that nearly a third of all asylum seekers arriving in the country appear to be falsely claiming to be Syrian, even as Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière called on European nations to take radical new steps to curb the region’s refugee crisis.
So far this year, Germany has received 527,000 asylum seekers. 
For some, the move isn’t working out so well.
===

JENNER FROM THE BLOKE

Tim Blair – Saturday, September 26, 2015 (6:18pm)

It’s official: 
A judge has approved Caitlyn Jenner’s request to make her name and gender change official.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gerald Rosenberg approved Jenner’s petition to legally change her name and gender during a hearing on Friday in Santa Monica, California. 
Meanwhile, Jenner is tipped not to face manslaughter charges over a fatal car crash. Adding to gender confusion, the slaughtered man was actually a woman.
===

HOOKAH PRIZE

Tim Blair – Saturday, September 26, 2015 (6:06pm)

An Islamist gang in Bangladesh is busily ticking off the names from its list of “writers, bloggers, and activists who have criticised Islamic extremism”: 
The so-called hit list, which goes back to 2013, has 84 names on it, according to the Indian Express.
Ten have been killed so far.
The latest list includes the names of writers based in the UK, US, Germany, Canada, and Sweden. 
(Via Adam I.) 
===

On my complete lack of relevance and influence

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (10:24am)

A curious thing. There has been lots of commentary in The Australian, Crikey, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, the ABC and SBS over the last week agreeing that I have no power or no influence or no relevance or even no audience to speak of, and, really, am best ignored - if not ignored already.
Yet there seems to be a curious mismatch between this message and this scale of coverage. Between this argument and this frantic interest.
Odd. But back to typing totally irrelevant blog posts of no interest to anyone except, it seems, to those who insist they are of no interest to anyone.
UPDATE
Yes. it seems that Cikey’s prediction, made before the fall of Julia Gillard and the rise of Tony Abbott, must be true at last. Or is as true as its predictions today:

image
Doomed to irrelevance!
I tremble. I weep.
UPDATE
I’m warned.
Reader Wayne shaft:

Well, now that that don’t have Tony Abbott to kick around anymore, the bully’s need a fresh victim, prepare to be Abbott-ed .
Reader Wanda:
Tony Abbott down, Bolt and friends to go! A ban on free thinking and free speech, and anyone who does not agree is an idiot. Rights to only pet projects and those of the new world, and those of moral superiority. 
===

Scenes from the invasion and occupation of Europe

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (10:11am)

Outside the fence around the entrance to the tunnel to Britain stands the Third World, demanding to be let in:
The women stand covering their faces in a small group and holding up signs while under a motorway bridge on the outskirts of Calais.
Behind them is the Jungle camp – a wasteland where around 4,000 asylum seekers live and the place just 333 women and 123 children now call home… These women are from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan and are seeking safe refuge from their home countries…
Many of the women admit to sleep six to a tent for security as they live in constant fear of being raped after dark when men drink and fight… Refugees wander around the camp which is littered with papers, old food boxes and overflowing waste. The smell of human waste is overpowering.  The small row of chemical toilets doesn’t look like it has ever been cleaned. It is obvious that no one wants to use them.
These toilets have been erected along with street lighting and a couple of water points by the French authorities who have now pledged to turn the camp into a humanitarian refugee centre with £3.6m from the European Union. These small official gestures, along with the surrounding razor wire, add an air of permanence to the camp, which already has a small number of shops selling tinned food, cooking oil and other basic essentials…
I count at least ten separate agencies giving out hot meals and food. There are also bags of discarded clothing lying abandoned all around us; I watch a young man inspect a bin bag but when he sees it is full of baby clothes he throws it onto the mud and walks away..
...one of the church leaders tells me later that tents are regularly slashed and burned to the ground. Three nights before a neighbour was stabbed eight times in the chest.
(Thanks to reader Barry.) 
===

Turnbull sells optimism when pain is on the agenda

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (8:57am)

Terry McCrann says the Prime Minister has changed but the problems are the same:
But what neither [Malcolm Turnbull] nor his new Treasurer, Scott Morrison, possess is some magic wand — as many in the media and the broader commentariat seem to believe or wish for — to wave over the mix of policy and political problems facing both government and country.
Problems and policy challenges, which proved so intractable to and ultimately terminal for Tony Abbott and his treasurer Joe Hockey. And which will be just as intractable to and potentially terminal for Turnbull and Morrison....
[Turnbull] wants to project a very different, much more upbeat, dynamic to that which the Abbott-Hockey team — to a very large extent, unfairly — came to embody.
This is for obvious political purposes: the rapidly accelerating countdown to the next election. But it also has clear policy objectives — to achieve some degree of consensus and perhaps more importantly, win sufficient votes in the Senate to get things implemented.
The two are clearly aimed at unifying in the run down to the election — so that a more popular Turnbull-Morrison government can actually risk taking some otherwise unpopular measures to the vote. Like, purely for illustrative purposes, an increase in the GST.
There are though, two huge potential negatives in this approach. First, that it suggests the problems and challenges — and resolving very real differences of policy approach — aren’t that difficult; that they can be overcome with very little pain. Not so. Very decidedly, not so. The one huge shift in our national economic and political environment is that for the first time in a generation we are getting poorer…
Let’s just, briefly, take the example of tax. Does anyone seriously believe that the intractable problem of proposing a sensible tax-reform package, selling it politically through an election, and then actually getting it implemented, has been miraculously solved by the leadership change? Anyone for a 15 per cent GST? Or the extension to all food and health? And what do you do with the money anyway? Cut the deficit? Pay back bracket creep? Actually, cut income tax? Hand it to the states to spend on health? 
===

Turnbull - the man Paul Keating wanted to keep in the Liberal Party

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (8:38am)

Alan Ramsay, an Abbott hater, tells how Malcolm Turnbull sought Paul Keating for comfort and advice after he lost the Liberal leadership in 2009:
What Turnbull had done was walk across the road from the office of his wife, Lucy, and come to his, Keating’s, heritage building, first-floor suite on the King’s Cross corner opposite, walked up the stairs, had asked to see him, then stayed talking for “two hours or so” in Keating’s very spacious, airy office,…
Of course they’d talked about politics and Turnbull’s future, Keating agreed. How could they not? But he’d not been sooling? Turnbull on for any narrow political reason.
He’d simply felt that for the Parliament to lose somebody like Turnbull so foolishly would be an absurd waste of talent in a party that didn’t have a lot of it. Turnbull was not a dill. He was an advocate of good policy and decent governance, much more so than the bloke who’d snatched his party’s leadership from him. Australia’s national Parliament needed such people. Everyone benefited, including the Labor Party.
Or, rather, the Left generally? 
===

Abbott - a good prime minister destroyed

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (8:12am)

image
A true mark of the man.  Malcolm Turnbull had just told Tony Abbott he was about to take his job, yet Abbott honoured a promise to meet girl guides rather than hit the phones to save himself:
“Our friend was in the office giving me his assessment of the government and telling me what he was about to do,” the now former PM told The Saturday Telegraph in his first formal interview since the coup.
“It was a conversation with Malcolm that had to be a little more than 30 seconds. Nevertheless (the girl guides) had to wait five or 10 minutes.
“No doubt he went off to get on the phones and prepare his statement … and I went out into the courtyard and met with girl guides and school groups.
“Whatever might have been going through my mind, the fact is you still have a job to do. Every moment you are in that job you have a job to do and it’s important to do it with dignity and grace.”
And for all the sniping and sneering, Abbott knows that Turnbull is sticking with the winning policies Abbott left his government:
“In a policy sense there is very little departure,” Abbott says. “Border protection policy the same, national security policy the same, economic policy the same … even same-sex marriage policy the same, and climate change policy the same. In fact the rhetoric is the same.
“You can always say ‘what about the bloody Prince Philip knighthood’ and obviously that was a blunder and you can say ‘well things could have been better marketed’ but of course there is always a sense of things could be better marketed.
“But if you look at the substance of policies and the circumstances, I think it has all been done very well.
“The policy hasn’t changed and indeed the rhetoric hasn’t changed. Again, it is not about me but obviously these are questions that people may ponder.”
And I, for one, firmly believe that Turnbull challenged Abbott early because he knew Abbott was about to be vindicated in the Canning by-election:
There is little doubt among Abbott’s supporters that Turnbull acted when he did for one reason only. The internal polling on Canning was showing a swing of between 5 and 6 per cent — the normal swing against a government in a by-election. Indeed, the postal votes now record that the swing, while Abbott was still leader, was 5.9 per cent.
The ordinary vote, registered under the new leader Turnbull, was 6.8 per cent.
So much for the Abbott factor.
It is now clear that Turnbull’s camp knew that a good result in Canning would have sucked the momentum out of his campaign to become leader.
UPDATE
He’s right:
Mr Abbott told The Weekend Australian he was not going to set himself up as a rival to the new Prime Minister by talking about his election plans.
But he added: “What we have given the new Prime Minister and the new Treasurer is a very strong foundation.”

Mr Abbott said he believed he had laid a solid foundation for the Coalition’s re-election. “Whatever else the changes of last week were about, they plainly weren’t about policy,” he said in his new backbencher’s office in Parliament House....
“I’m not complaining — this is the world in which we live — but many people had a tendency to say ‘they did the right thing the wrong way’ rather than say ‘they did the right thing’,” he said....
“You can always dispute the marketing ... but the 2014 budget was a very serious structural attemp­t to tackle our long-term spending problems,” he said.
(Thanks to reader Nathan.) 
===

Hillary Clinton can’t remember her lies about leaving national secrets exposed

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (7:42am)

Hillary Clinton’s team can’t keep up with their lies about her private email server.
First they said it was wiped clean:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal lawyer has told a Senate committee that emails and all other data stored on her computer server were erased before the device was turned over to federal authorities.
In a letter sent last week to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, attorney David Kendall said the server was transferred to the FBI on Aug. 12 by Platte River Networks, a Denver firm hired by Clinton to oversee the device. The Senate committee made Kendall’s letter public on Wednesday. In exchanges with reporters earlier this week, Clinton said she was not aware if the data on her server was erased.
And even that news, last months, was called old news by Clinton’s press secretary:
image
But now the Clinton campaign’s talking points claim there was no wiping, after all:


Guidance on Bloomberg Report that FBI Has Restored Clinton’s Personal Emails: Assuming the Bloomberg report is true, the reason the FBI may be able to recreate these emails is exactly because ... the rumors that steps were taken to ‘wipe’ the server’s contents were never true.
Two issues: Clinton exposed the US to a massive security breach. Then she lied about it.
UPDATE
John Hinderaker:
Today Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on cybersecurity. Senator Tom Cotton asked him two questions, the second of which was brilliant: 1) Are the communications of the president’s most senior advisors, including those that may be unclassified, a “top priority for foreign intelligence services?” and 2) What would he think if he learned that Russia’s Foreign Minister, or Iran’s, was conducting official business on a homebrew server? Here it is:
[Rogers:  “From a foreign intelligence perspective, that represents opportunity."]
The latter question is a shocking one, because it makes you realize that it is inconceivable that a Russian or Iranian or Chinese foreign minister would be as stupid or as careless as Hillary Clinton. Can you imagine if Russia’s Foreign Minister ran official business from an unsecured server in his home, and, confronted by Putin, explained that it was OK because his house had a security guard? Honestly, I doubt that guy would live to see the dawn. 
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, September 27

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (7:26am)

Astonishingly, the ABC collective is so in love with Malcolm “Not Abbott” Turnbull that it even praises his waffle:
Well, there will be no waffles on The Bolt Report tomorrow on Channel 10 at 10am and 3pm.
In NewsWatch, Rowan Dean, editor of the Spectator Australia and columnist for the Courier Mail, will join me in an attack on waffling.  And on Turnbull stealing Abbott’s credit:
Plus:
Editorial - My Malcolm Turnbull.
My guest - new Energy and Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, an Abbott loyalist kept on by Turnbull and even promoted.
The panel - former Labor campaign strategist Bruce Hawker, who knows better than most about post-coup fury, and John Roskam, head of the Institute of Public Affairs.

Some analysis of this, too:
image
The videos of the shows appear here.
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Now the weak-borders lobby starts work on friend Turnbull

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (7:14am)

The Age is already joining the usual suspects to demand changes to the border laws that stopped the boats, saved lives, protected taxpayers and reserved our help for genuine refugees:
Malcolm Turnbull is under pressure from key figures within the Coalition and crossbench senators to heal the “weeping sore” of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.
Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, is also seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister to press the case for policy change...Professor Triggs ... was frozen out by former prime minister Tony Abbott…
Liberal MP Russell Broadbent has implored Mr Turnbull to act…
[Former Liberal MP] Judi Moylan, who retired form politics at the previous election, has joined 5000 women including businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court in petitioning Mr Turnbull to end abuse of those in detention on Manus and Nauru…
Fairfax is aware of other Coalition MPs who have raised the issue with Mr Turnbull. 
Several Senate crossbenchers say their attitude to the new government will be influenced by the response from Mr Turnbull… Tasmanian independent senator Jackie Lambie said Mr Turnbull had to deal with the issue… Other crossbenchers planning to raise the issue with Mr Turnbull include Victorians Ricky Muir and John Madigan.
Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer said he would raise [Manus and Nauru] with Mr Turnbull…
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said that with a new prime minister came a chance for change.
The whole ugly circus starts again. Is Malcolm Turnbull the man to resist it? Will he become another Kevin Rudd, who in 2008 caved in to these same demands to show his “compassion”, weakening our border laws with disastrous results?
UPDATE
Uh oh. More potential for backsliding by the compassion crowd, involving spending lots more money on only pretending to stop a warming that is only a pretend disaster:
Peter Hartcher, yet another Fairfax member of the bien pensant:
Australia has scope to make more ambitious cuts to its carbon emissions after the initial targets are agreed at the Paris climate conference in December, Environment Minister Greg Hunt says.
While the initial targets set by the Abbott government for a 26-28 per cent cut to 2005 emissions levels by 2030 remain, the government will consider enlarging the target in follow-up talks, he said…
He pointed out that Mr Turnbull had reorganised the Environment portfolio last week and it now includes the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, bodies the Abbott government had tried to abolish. The government failed when the Senate refused to co-operate. 
UPDATE
Conservative MPs in the government, both the angry and the crushed, have been wondering how to respond to the Turnbull takeover.
Here’s one option: fight for your ideas. No more hiding. No more toeing the collective line or biting your tongue.  Fight openly. Not with anger but argument. Use your power as politicians to hold the warming scaremongers and carpetbaggers to account. Explain the green rorts. Discuss openly the challenges in our immigration and refugee programs. Highlight the danger to democracy and debate of having such a bloated and biased ABC. Expose the bias and mediocrity of so many of our universities. Fight for free speech. Defy the media class.
Form a ginger group. Promote debate. Set an example. Inspire many young conservatives still outside politics. 
Don’t do it to defeat Turnbull, but to win the battle of ideas.
UPDATE
Turnbull is warned already:
West Australian Liberal Dennis Jensen welcomed the assurances of Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who said Australia would not be altering its climate change abatement measures in response to the Chinese development.
But asked if the party’s right still had concerns about what Mr Turnbull might do, Dr Jensen said, “absolutely”.
“It’s one of the conditions of the leadership change that we are sticking with the policy we had,” he told Fairfax Media…
Another conservative, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Turnbull gave two assurances to people who jumped into his camp: no change to marriage plebiscite and no change to Direct Action.
“But I fear we will now be softened up in the next couple of months leading into Paris talks with the argument that we didn’t want to get ahead but now that the world has acted, we need to do more, and if that happens, things could become very interesting for Turnbull.”
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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The sell-out Pope of the Left

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (7:10am)

Father Glenn Tattersall of Melbourne’s Parish of Blessed John Henry Newman gets it said about this political Pope of the Left:
Let us pray for our fellow Catholics in Cuba, who continue to suffer significant persecution for their courageous profession of Faith, and many of whom remain incarcerated as political prisoners of the Castro regime. A number of prominent Catholics who are not favourably disposed to the regime, and who sought to meet with Pope Francis during his visit to the Communist State, were arrested. None of the prisoners released during the Papal visit was a prisoner of Faith or Conscience. It is greatly to be lamented that Pope Francis did not use his lengthy and friendly meetings with Raul and Fidel Castro, or his various public addresses, to raise the issue of the continued persecution of Catholics in Cuba.
At the time of writing this Bulletin, Pope Francis had not long arrived in the US, where he has received a very warm welcome from President Barack Obama and a carefully selected audience. His Holiness’ claims regarding climate change and the supposed moral imperatives attending it, were well received by the assembled crowd. Notably absent was any reference to the dignity of human life from conception, the meaning of marriage and human sexuality, or the foundations and meaning of true freedom. Certainly, we could have recourse to the magisterium of Benedict XVI and St John Paul II for guidance in all these matters, which are threatened more than ever. The Obama regime openly promotes those measures and movements that oppose the dignity of human life, marriage and the family, and the freedom of the human person. For those of us who remember the courageous stance of St John Paul II on all these matters, the scene on the lawns of the White House presented a very different image: that of a supine Church, echoing the platitudes of the world, so as to beg its approval.
John Hinderaker on the Pope’s speech to Congress:
Many thousands of Christians are being murdered, raped, abused and driven from their homes in Muslim countries around the world. Does the Pope care? Does he intend to do anything about the number one human rights abuse in the world today?
Apparently not. In any event, there was not a word about oppressed Christians in the Pope’s speech today. Francis’s appearance before Congress was enthusiastically hailed by the liberal media, but it was a disappointing effort, for those of us who are actually Christians.
An apologist for the Pope offers this pathetic defence on Fox News - why fight for your beliefs if you’re talking to someone who disagrees? Just go along with their beliefs instead.
Yes, really:
STUART VARNEY: While the pope remains silent on the plight of many Christians in North Africa, yes he did, not a word about it really, he continues to criticize the U.S. and other wealthy nations about climate change. Come on in Father Jonathan Morris. Now Father, ... what on earth is Pope Francis doing coming to this country, criticizing us, urging us towards a policy on climate change, and saying nothing about the slaughter of our fellow Christians in North Africa...?…
MORRIS: Ok. He has no problem being political when he sees that there are major moral issues that need speaking to. But .. what’d he talk about? He talked about religious freedom, he talked about people around the world that don’t have religious freedom. He also talked about going back to the foundational principles of our country, he spoke about a lot of things, right? And yes, he did talk about global warming and let me tell you why. Because I don’t think he agrees with a whole lot with President Obama on some of the other issues of abortion, of marriage et cetera. So he chose to go to those things that he agrees with with the president and says ‘let’s work together, let’s work together.’ And you know, I think he thinks talking about some of the other things, say abortion, is not going to do a whole lot of good in that particular context… And yes, he does believe that global warming or climate change is a major moral issue, why, because he’s believed the consensus of scientists, of public scientists.
Result? The religion that gets most promoted is the President’s neo-pagan own:
image
(Thanks to reader Stephen.)  
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A bit late now to admit Assad is our best hope in Syria

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (6:37am)

It is terrible that it has taken so long to accept something so obvious:
Australia is set to abandon the Abbott government’s long-held position that disgraced President Bashar al-Assad step aside as part of any durable peace settlement in Syria, in what amounts to a major policy shift designed to hasten the end of the bloody civil war.
Instead, the Turnbull government has reluctantly accepted that Assad, whose brutal regime has been blamed for the majority of civilian deaths in the 4½-year conflict, may form a part of any future government of national unity designed to preserve the crumbling Syrian state.

But it’s a bit late now. Assad has meanwhile lost huge parts of his country to the Islamic State, and has had Russia and Iran move in to support him. The West proved itself fickle and spineless, and anything it does now is too little and too late.
I’m not being wise after the event. From May 2013:
The big problem with Syria is that however loathsome the regime, with its Iranian ally, the rebels could be far worse.
UPDATE
How pathetic is the US-led war on the Islamic State in Syria?
Judge by two figures. First, the US has at most five trained insurgents left in Syria. And on Thursday it dropped precisely one bomb.
(Thanks to reader Low Profile.) 
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Fair Work Australia demands we lie when we name our true friends

Andrew Bolt September 26 2015 (5:53am)

This is mad, of course:
The Fair Work Commission has found that a Tasmanian woman was bullied by a work colleague who unfriended her on Facebook after a confrontation in the workplace …
Rachael Roberts, a Launceston real estate agent, complained to the commission that she was bullied by her colleague Lisa Bird, leaving her with depression and anxiety.
The Facebook incident took place in January this year, after Ms Bird allegedly called Ms Roberts a “naughty little schoolgirl running to the teacher” during an aggressive meeting in the tea room.
Ms Roberts told the commission she left the office crying and when she later checked Facebook to see if Ms Bird has commented on Facebook about the incident, she found that Ms Bird had deleted her as a Facebook friend.
Fair Work Commission deputy president Nicole Wells said in her decision that the unfriending was unreasonable behaviour and that Ms Roberts had been bullied at work.
Surely we still have a right to say who our friends are. Surely Fair Work Australia has no right to demand we be hypocrites or liars.
I said this decision was mad. It is also sinister.
(Via Tim Blair. Thanks to reader WaG311.) 
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ARTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE DRIVER

Tim Blair – Friday, September 26, 2014 (4:56am)

Carbon Cate Blanchett delivers another gravity-defying speech about the supremacy of the arts: 
“I work in the arts, and you who have been exposed to these broad but vitally important series of disciplines, the arts are what we stay alive for, what we work all week for, what we dream about, what connects us and indeed, what some would say makes us human,” the keen environmentalist and former Sydney Theatre Company artistic director said. 
Keen environmentalist Cate has lately spent millions on waterfront properties in Elizabeth Bay and Vanuatu, where climate change apparently won’t increase sea levels. Cate’s speech continues: 
“I’d like to posit today, that it is the arts that have always been the driver for innovation and exploration. I chose these words precisely because they are always credited to science.” 
That’s why every lunar expedition has always been coordinated and staffed entirely by arts graduates. 
“When someone asks ‘What the hell can you do with an arts degree?’ – what can the world do without them?” 
Well, there’s medicine, I suppose. Readers are invited to identify whatever other slight benefits may have come from non-arts graduates.
(Via Pat H.)
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WINS OF OMISSION

Tim Blair – Friday, September 26, 2014 (4:03am)

It’s the delicate evasions that make our leftist media so very special. Here’s the SMH recently describing a local couple: 
Another home raided on Thursday was that of Hamdi al Qudsi, the 39-year-old disability pensioner who police allege is running sophisticated, expensive and illegal schemes to send young Australian men to Syria to fight with terrorists.
Al Qudsi’s wife Carnita Matthews stirred controversy in 2010 when she refused to remove her burqa for police conducting a random breath test and pursued the matter in court. 
She did rather more than stir controversy. And now the ABC describes an “incident” in Melbourne: 
On Wednesday afternoon, Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart called for calm and tolerance in response to growing concerns over the threat posed by the terrorist group Islamic State.
He was speaking after an incident in Melbourne on Tuesday night in which a man who was under investigation was shot dead by police, and after a number of counter-terrorism raids occurred in Sydney and south of Brisbane in recent weeks. 
As Andrew Bolt notes: “Pardon? The man was mere ‘under investigation’ when ‘shot dead by police’? What about the bit where he first stabbed the police, nearly killing one?”
(Via A.R.M. Jones)
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ADF officer drops claim of assault by Muslims

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (2:04pm)

The ADF officer who said he’d been assaulted by two men of Middle Eastern appearance in Sydney has withdrawn his complaint and the head of the ADF has apologised.
This was a serious allegation, and it astonishing that it was not true. How reckless and damaging.
I am sorry I believed it.
UPDATE
More:
A claim that an Australian Defence Force officer was attacked on his way to work has been withdrawn. 
New South Wales Police say they will continue to examine the circumstances that led to the allegation being brought to their attention…
Defence Chief Mark Binskin has apologised to the Australian people and Muslim community for any angst caused. The news comes after the alleged attack prompted the Defence Department to caution members of the Australian Defence Force to think twice before wearing their uniform in public.
And this:
Meanwhile, in Sydney’s south-west on Thursday afternoon, a man, reportedly armed, entered a Muslim school. 
Police were told a man armed with a knife entered the premises on Benham Road around 2:10pm.
The man spoke with a female staff member at the location, left a short time later and was last seen in Kitson Road. No one was injured during the incident… The man has been described to police as being of Pacific Islander appearance, 20-25 years old and with an obese build.
UPDATE
Reader JB5 cautions:
Whoa, hold on Andrew. Where does it say it was not true? It says the complaint was withdrawn. You can’t imagine the pressure that is placed on ADF members in this day and age to maintain the “correct” line. A 41 year old OFFICER has made the entire thing up? Seriously?
Stranger things have happened. But point taken. Still, as of now the incident cannot be said to have occured.  
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The Islamic State must be fought on the ground. But which Arab army can be trusted?

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (10:12am)

Thomas Friedman is right (!) but not right enough:
... the Islamic State is a killing machine, and it will take another killing machine to search it out and destroy it on the ground. There is no way the “moderate” Syrians we’re training can alone fight the militant group and the Syrian regime at the same time. Iraq, Turkey and the nearby Arab states will have to also field troops. After all, this is a civil war for the future of both Sunni Islam and the Arab world. 
We can degrade the Islamic State from the air - I’m glad we have hit these psychopaths in Syria - but only Arabs and Turks can destroy the Islamic State on the ground. Right now, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stands for authoritarianism, press intimidation, crony capitalism and quiet support for Islamists, including the Islamic State. He won’t even let US forces use our base in Turkey to degrade the Islamic State from the air. What’s in his soul? What’s in the soul of the Arab regimes who are ready to join us in bombing the extremists in Syria, but rule out ground troops? This is a civilisation in distress, and unless it faces the pathologies that have given birth to an Islamic State monster in its belly, any victory we achieve from the air or ground will be temporary. 
Why not right enough? Because he should go on to note the reason Islamic states don’t dare commit ground troops is that they fear they will not be fight or be loyal - to the state, that is. And that’s in part because of the other issue Friedman seems disinclined to consider - that the “pathologies” that gave birth to the Islamic State include Islam itself. 
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German incest ruling confirms the slippery-slope argument against gay marriage is real

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (9:33am)

In 2008 I warned: 
Once we scrap the law insisting ``marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others’’, how can we object to the marriage of any consenting adults at all? If we say yes to gays, how can we say no to someone who wants to marry, say, two women, or their half-sister, or a few people they met in some commune? 
Don’t polygamists and the incestuous also deserve their happiness, our respect and a marriage licence?
My goodness, but the sniggering on the ABC. The mockery from Malcolm Turnbull at this “slippery slope” argument.
But in 2010:
The upper house of the Swiss parliament has drafted a law decriminalising sex between consenting family members which must now be considered by the government… 
Daniel Vischer, a Green party MP, said he saw nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, even if they were related. 
In July:
A Sydney judge has compared incest and paedophilia to homosexuality, saying the community may no longer see sexual contact between siblings and between adults and children as “unnatural” or “taboo”. 
District Court Judge Garry Neilson said just as gay sex was socially unacceptable and criminal in the 1950s and 1960s but is now widely accepted, “a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available’, not having [a] sexual partner"… He went on to say incest only remains a crime “to prevent chromosomal abnormalities” but the availability of contraception and abortion now diminishes that reason.
And now:
GERMANY’S national ethics council wants to allow incest between siblings, saying the risk of disability in children isn’t enough to warrant the law. 
The Independent reports that the council made the recommendation after reviewing the case of Patrick Stuebing, a man who was adopted as a child and met his half-sister when he was 24 and she was 16.
The pair have four children together, however he was jailed for three years in 2008 and his sister, Susan Karolewski, was only allowed to keep one out of their four children.
Two of the children are disabled although it is unclear if that is a result of their parents being related. Overnight, the German Ethics Council recommended that Section 173 of the German criminal code, which makes incest an offence under which offenders can be jailed for years, be repealed.
Once incest is no longer illegal, how can marriage be denied to a consenting couple? Don’t exactly the same arguments for same-sex marriages apply to brother-sister marriages? 
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The ABC should not have wanted Junaid Thorne helped home

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (8:38am)

The ABC last year helped to pressure the Labor Government to get Junaid Thorne back to Australia. Its interest in his case was almost entirely on the peril he and his brother were in, and not the peril they might pose:
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The mother of two young men held against their will in Saudi Arabia is making a heartfelt plea to the Australian Government to secure their release. One of the men is being detained in a notorious prison after Saudi police allegedly found links to a terrorist organisation on a laptop in his room. His younger brother is in hiding… 
BRONWYN HERBERT, REPORTER: It’s more than a year since this mum last saw her sons and she holds tight any precious memories she can find. Shayden Jamil and Junaid Muhammed Thorne were born in Perth to a Malaysian Muslim mother and an Aboriginal father…
MOTHER: He’s normal everyday kid…
BRONWYN HERBERT: But this 43-year-old mother and her daughters are scared they’ll never see the boys again. 25-year-old Shayden was arrested in November, 2011 after police raided a room he had been living in at a Riyadh mosque. Since then he’s been held in a notorious Al-Ha’ir Prison, accused of terror offences.
MOTHER: They’re saying that he had, like, Islamic videos on [a laptop], and, yes, things that are not allowed. But that wasn’t his laptop ...
BRONWYN HERBERT: Last night she received this letter from her son’s lawyer. It details Shayden’s claims he’s been tortured and abused while in detention for the past 18 months… Saudi authorities have seized the passport of younger brother Junaid Thorne, who was in his last semester of a Finance degree.
JUNAID THORNE: I am very, very afraid for my safety…
BRONWYN HERBERT: ... He feels the embassy has let the Thorne family down…
MOTHER: I feel that the Australian Government is not doing enough, and I’m not saying they’re not doing anything, but I just feel that they’re not doing enough…
BRONWYN HERBERT: The Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Australia has made more than 50 representations on behalf of Shayden Thorne…
BRONWYN HERBERT:  A former Australian diplomat to the Middle East says the Saudi judges will rely on interpretations from the Koran to make this judgment.ANTHONY BILLINGLSEY, FORMER AUSTRALIAN DIPLOMAT:  ... So of course there’s a danger that we’ll have inconsistencies and injustices. 
Yes, the ABC really did seem more keen to get Junaid Thorne back than to explain why Saudi were right to suspect him:
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Returning to the story about Australian Shayden Jamil Thorne, who’s on trial in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We’ve been able to contact his brother, Junaid Muhammed Thorne, who’s in hiding… Junaid, thanks for taking our call… Why do you think, Junaid, that you will be arrested if the authorities find out where you are? 
JUNAID MUHAMMED THORNE: Well, I’ve already been arrested for almost three months before for just organising a - or not organising, but just participating in a peaceful demonstration…
TONY JONES: ... Now the story we’re hearing here is that your brother has been tortured in prison....
JUNAID MUHAMMED THORNE: Yeah… I’ve noticed bruising on his body, ...
TONY JONES: OK. Do you know anything at all about this computer the authorities say was in his possession but contained illegal material?
JUNAID MUHAMMED THORNE: What I know about my brother is that he didn’t have any - he didn’t possess any computer…
TONY JONES: Junaid, I understand both of you - both of you are, as I understand it, are still Australian citizens. Have you been in contact with the Australian embassy? Do any diplomats or any Australian Government officials know before tonight what was going on?
JUNAID MUHAMMED THORNE: Actually, I - just five minutes ago I walked out of the consul here in the Australian embassy in Riyadh, Mr James Smith, and I talked to him about my situation…
TONY JONES: Would you - do you want some form of intervention from the Foreign Minister Bob Carr and Australia? ...
JUNAID MUHAMMED THORNE: It’s obvious that I need intervention… TONY JONES: OK, Junaid. Well, thank you very much for taking the call. Good luck to you. I’m sure many people will be listening to what you’re saying. Thanks for taking our call. 
Thorne was returned to Australia and the ABC then lost interest in him, even when he bobbed up claiming to be sheik and delivering public lectures with the jihad flag used by the Islamic State behind him:

Thorne now says he met terror suspect Abdul Numan Haider, who stabbed to police in Melbourne, and may have given lectures Haider attended:
A RADICAL West Australian Islamic preacher who is has been linked to pro-Islamic State groups ?says he knew Melbourne terror suspect Abdul Numan Haider. 
Self-declared Sheikh Junaid Thorne said he had met 18-year-old Haider “a few times”?.
Mr Thorne said Haider “may have” attended lectures he gave at the Al-Furqan centre in Melbourne.
Haider was shot dead by a police outside the Endeavour Hills police station in Melbourne on Tuesday night after stabbing two police officers. 
Now Thorne accuses the police of murdering Haider, an accusation sure to whip up jihadist fury and further inflame the already outsized notion of Muslim victimhood:
What we are sure of though, is that he was murdered in cold blood, right in front of a Police station, in front of a place that is supposed to be providing security and comfort to our youth…
I address the Australian community, the Muslims and non Muslims when I say that the government will do its best to frame this young kid as a terrorist. They will use all their efforts and resources to brand his a threat to the community, but we must not forget that he was nothing but an average teenager who once again, fell victim to Police brutality and murder…
The ASIO and local police are constantly harassing and disturbing the Muslim youth, by repeatedly visiting them for no valid purpose, and attempting to intimidate and compel them into revealing their won private information, or information about other Muslims in their community… These intimidating and provoking tactics, and others, are what cause our youth to feel unbalanced, vulnerable, and always under threat and constant question, whether by the authorities or their families. It is these tactics practiced by “our” authorities that provoke and push our youth over the edge, and may result in them resolving to leash their anger and frustration through uncalculated means. Once this happens, the government then jumps in to kill them, and then frame them as “terrorists” in order to deceive the community in believing that this country is under some kind of dangerous threat, when the only source of danger to our community is the authorities themselves. 
This sense of victimhood, where even a man who nearly kills two police is a victim, is becoming a defining feature of parts of Muslim Australia. It is so monstrous that it cannot be appeased, and we would make ourselves slaves to madness if we even tried.
UPDATE
And outside the Doveton mosque, a worshipper discusses Muslim grievances with the media:
image
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Police stabbed. Socialist Alternative protests … but not at the crime

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (8:11am)

Two police are attacked and one nearly killed by an apparent jihadist who is shot dead in self defence.
Guess who the Socialist Alternative sides with:
image
(Thanks to reader Nathan.) 
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Gillard’s story: it’s all Rudd’s fault. And the media’s. And the misogynists’.

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (7:45am)

Julia Gillard’s My Story reads more like My Excuse for David Crowe:

Nobody should need this new account to convince them of Rudd’s character flaws… For Gillard, the search for blame always leads to the same destination. 
On the decision by a few ­ministers to postpone the carbon pollution-reduction scheme in early 2010, she is maddeningly vague. “At some point in this ­period Kevin must have decided to delay the CPRS,” she writes.
Other accounts have made it clear that Gillard and Wayne Swan ... argued for the delay…
The same faults are found in the development of the resources super profits tax: “.... Kevin procrastinated his way into the RSPT.”
This is bad value for readers. It is obvious ... that the tax was developed by Swan and Treasury without full consultation with colleagues.
Gillard’s loyalty to Swan is ­admirable, but it leads her back to the lazy scapegoating of Rudd…
Some of the real tests of her time as PM are glossed over, however, including the decision in June 2011 to ban live-cattle ­exports. Few decisions are as dramatic: a caucus revolt, a dispute with Indonesia, and a controversial call by a minister, Joe Ludwig, who was also one of the leader’s key allies. It gets one paragraph…
The recurring themes of the book are the failings of the media and gender inequality. Gillard is presented as a victim of both ­forces…
A full assessment, however, has to include the serial blunders with the carbon tax, the mining tax, asylum-seeker policy, live-cattle exports, media reform, promising a budget surplus and the breaches with colleagues she could not ­afford to lose to a vengeful rival. Only some of those are frankly addressed in My Story. For Gillard, as with anyone, owning up to the full story can be too painful.
There is, of course, one more possible factor at play. Gillard’s judgement is hopeless. She simply does not see the big picture or have any feel for what counts. She’s just not that smart. 
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ABC version: don’t mention the dead man’s knives

Andrew Bolt September 26 2014 (12:05am)

Here is how the ABC sums up the matter:
On Wednesday afternoon, Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart called for calm and tolerance in response to growing concerns over the threat posed by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS). 
He was speaking after an incident in Melbourne on Tuesday night in which a man who was under investigation was shot dead by police, and after a number of counter-terrorism raids occurred in Sydney and south of Brisbane in recent weeks.
Pardon? The man was mere “under investigation” when “shot dead by police”?
What about the bit where he first stabbed the police, nearly killing one?
Bloody astonishing.
(Thanks to reader obesenation.) 
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The Iranian delegation may be pariahs inside the UN building, but they've found at least one friend during their visit to New York - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan and his entourage attended a dinner party hosted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday night. Rouhani’s dinner party was held on the second floor of the One UN Hotel, where the Iranian delegation is staying, and at the same time as President Obama’s party at the Waldorf Astoria just blocks away.
The private dinner party was held just hours after Rouhani’s speech to the general assembly.
Farrakhan and his massive entourage and private security detail were seen departing the hotel around 10 p.m. Tuesday. Pedestrian traffic was stopped while the minister and his group piled into various cars with lights and sirens and New Jersey license plates.
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Islamist Lobbies’ Washington War on Arab and Muslim Liberals


" The most dramatic oppression of the region’s civil societies and the Arab Spring is not by means of weapons, or in the Middle East. It is not led by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali, Saleh, or Assad. It is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington DC. "

The most dramatic oppression of the region’s civil societies and the Arab Spring is not by means of weapons, or in the Middle East. It is not led by Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Ali, Saleh, or Assad. It is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington DC. People may find my words curious if not provocative. But my arguments are sharp and well understood by many Arab and middle eastern liberals and freedom fighters. Indeed, we in the region, who are struggling for real democracy, not for the one time election type of democracy have been asking ourselves since January 2011 as the winds of Arab spring started blowing, why isn’t the West in general and the United States Administration in particular clearly and forcefully supporting our civil societies and particularly the secular democrats of the region? Why were the bureaucracies in Washington and in Brussels partnering with Islamists in the region and not with their natural allies the democracy promoting political forces?

Months into the Arab Spring, we realized that the Western powers, and the Obama Administration have put their support behind the new authoritarians, those who are claiming they will be brought to power via the votes of the people. Well, it is not quite so.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Nahda of Tunisia, the Justice Party of Morocco and the Islamist militias in Libya’s Transitional National Council have been systematically supported by Washington at the expense of real liberal and secular forces. We saw day by day how the White House guided carefully the statements and the actions of the US and the State Department followed through to give all the chances to the Islamists and almost no chances to the secular and revolutionary youth. We will come back to detail these diplomatic and financial maneuvers which are giving victory to the fundamentalists while the seculars and progressives are going to be smashed by the forthcoming regimes.

In the US, there are interests that determine foreign policy. And there are lobbies that put pressure to get their objectives met in foreign policy. One of the most powerful lobbies in America under the Obama Administration is the Muslim Brotherhood greater lobby, which has been in action for many years. This lobby has secured many operatives inside the Administration and has been successful in directing US policy towards the Arab world. Among leading advisors sympathetic to the Ikhwan is Daliah Mogahed (Mujahid) and her associate, Georgetown Professor John Esposito. Just as shocking, there is also a pro-Iranian lobby that has been influencing US policy towards Iran and Hezbollah in the region.

One of the most important activities of the Islamist lobby in the US is the waging of political and media wars on the liberal Arabs and Middle Eastern figures and groups in America. This battlefield is among the most important in influencing Washington’s policies in the Arab world. If you strike at the liberal and democratic Middle Eastern groups in Washington who are trying to gain support for civil societies in the region, you actually win a major battle. You will be able to influence the resources of the US Government to support the Islamists in the Middle East and not the weak democrats. This huge war waged by the Islamist lobbies in America started at the end of the Cold war and continued all the way till the Arab spring. The two main forces of this lobby are the Muslim Brotherhood fronts and the Iranian fronts. According to research available in the US, the Ikhwan fronts such as CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), led by Hamas supporter Nihad Awad, as well as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Society of North America, and others waged their political war to block the representatives of Arab liberals and Muslim moderates from making their case to the American public. The Iranian lobby, exemplified by the National Iranian American Committee (NIAC), led by Trita Parsi, has been hitting at Iranian exiles.

Since the 1990s CAIR and its allies have attacked Copts, Southern Sudanese, Lebanese, Syrian reformers, Assyrians and Chaldeans, and Muslim dissidents in the United States. The Ikhwan of America demonized any publication, book, article, or interview in the national media or local press raising the issue of secular freedoms in the Middle East. The Islamists wanted to eliminate the liberal cause in the Arab world and replace it with the cause of the Islamists. What is also shocking is that CAIR and its allies stood by the oppressive regimes and visited them, claiming they speak on behalf of the peoples. CAIR and the Brotherhood fronts in America destroyed systematically every project that would have defended the seculars and liberals originating from the Middle East. The notorious and well-funded Islamists of the US allowed no book, documentary, or show on the liberals in Arab civil societies to see the light.

Thanks to this powerful lobbying campaign, the American public was not given a chance to learn about the deep feelings on the youth in the region. Americans were led to believe that all Muslims, all Arabs and all Middle Easterners were a strange species of humans who cannot appreciate freedom. Instead, the American Islamists, helped by apologists on the petrodollars payrolls, convinced the mainstream media that the Arab world has authoritarians and Islamists only.

Dr Shawki Karas, president of the American Coptic Association, told me in the late 1990s how he was harassed by Islamist activists for speaking up against the Mubarak regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in America. He was threatened with losing his job at the college where he taught. Reverend Keith Roderick, who has assembled a coalition of more than 50 group rights from the Muslim world, was severely attacked by the Islamists and was threatened to be removed from his church position. Muslim American leaders who are conservative and secular, such as Dr Zuhdi Jasser, were crucified by CAIR and the Brotherhood for daring to challenge the Party line of the Isl.amists in America and claiming that the Jihadists are the problem in the region. Muslim liberal dissidents such as Somali Ayan Hirsi Ali, Saudi Ali al Yammi, Syrian Farid Ghadri, Iranian Manda Ervin, and many others were trashed by the Islamist lobbies to block them from defending the causes of secular liberty in the US. Egyptian liberals as well as seculars and democracy activists from Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and other countries have been attacked by CAIR and allies. The pro-Iranian lobby targeted most Iranian-American groups and tried to discredit them, particularly with the rise of the Green Revolution in Iran. By smearing the Muslim liberal exiles, the Islamists were trying to destroy their causes in the mother countries. In the 1990s and the years that followed 9/11 the region’s dictators supported the efforts by Islamist lobbies to crush the liberal exiles. The Mubarak, Bashir, Gaddafi, Assad, and Khomeinist regimes fully supported the so-called Islamophobia campaign waged by CAIR and its Iranian counterpart NIAC against dissidents for calling for secular democracy in the region. The dissidents were accused of being pro-Western by both the Islamists and the dictators.

The Islamist lobbies also severely attacked members of the US Congress such as Democrats Tom Lantos, who has since passed away, Eliot Engel, Howard Berman, Gary Ackerman, and Joe Lieberman as well as Republicans Frank Wolfe, Chris Smith, Trent Franks, John McCain, Rick Santorum, and Sam Brownback for their efforts in passing legislative acts in support for democracy and liberty in the Middle East. CAIR and NIAC heavily savaged President Bush’s speeches on Freedom Forward in the Middle East, deploying all the resources they had to block US support to liberal democrats in the region. Islamist lobbies in Washington are directly responsible for killing any initiative in the US Government to support Darfur, southern Sudan, Lebanon, the Kurds, liberal women in the Muslim world, and true democrats in the Arab world and Muslim Africa.

In the think tank world, CAIR and its allies aggressively attacked scholars who raised the issue of persecution against seculars or minorities in the Arab world and Iran. Among those attacked were Nina Shea and Paul Marshal from the Hudson Institute and the founder of an anti-slavery group, Dr Charles Jacobs, who was exposing the Sudan regime for its atrocities. Last but not least is the Islamists’ relentless campaign to stirke at top scholars who advise Government and appear in the media to push for democratic liberation in the region. The vast and vicious attacks leveled against Professor Walid Phares—initially by CAIR’s Nihad Awad and then widened by pro-Hezbollah and Muslim Brotherhood operatives online—has revealed to Arab and Middle Eastern liberal and seculars how ferocious is the battle for the Middle East in the US. Phares’s books, particularly the latest one, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (2010), hit the Islamist agenda hard by predicting the civil society revolts in the Middle East and then predicting how the Islamists would try to control them. Phares was attacked by an army of Jihadist militia online like no author since Samuel Huntington in the 1990s. As a freedom activist from the Middle East, Mustafa Geha, wrote, Phares is a hero to Muslim liberals. Along with dissidents, lawmakers, experts, and human rights activists, Phares is a force driving for a strategic change in US foreign policy towards supporting secular democracies in the region. This explains why the Islamists of America are fighting the battle for the forthcoming regimes with all the means they have.

Dr. Essam Abdallah is an Egyptian liberal intellectual who teaches at Ain Shams University and writes for the leading Arab liberal publication Elaph.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=53331&pageid=44&pagename=Slices
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Chocopologie by Knipschildt

Cost: $2,600 per 450g

Where: Norwalk, Conn.
Web site: www.knipschildt.com

Knipschildt Chocolatier was founded in 1999 by Fritz Knipschildt, who got his culinary education as a chef in Denmark. The most-expensive chocolate he sells–a $250 dark chocolate truffle with a French black truffle inside–is available on a preorder-only basis. It’s made of 70% Valrhona cacao, which is blended into a creamy ganache with truffle oil. The truffle is then hand-rolled with a dark truffle on the inside and dusted with cocoa powder.
.. a dog came by, shortly before the photo was taken, ate the treat, and left behind this .. ed
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"Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class."
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Rick Warren
Sharing other's pain is the first step in helping them.
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People always need empathy before advice.
#Leadership
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<I got to go to work today. I got to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I got to go to the gym and have a great workout and talk to my cousin. I got to spend time with my grandmother while she cut up fruit for me. I get to go fishing all day on a Thursday. The only thing stopping me from being happy is myself. Not notions of being happy when I finally get my unit or new car etc. I am happy now! I am rich now!>
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What a golden age these past few decades have been for learning about how human cognitionworks. And what a humbling age, as we discover the truth that satirist Ambrose Bierce perceived more than 100 years ago in The Devil’s Dictionary…that the brain is only the organ with which we think we think. With yet another shrewd experiment, Dan Kahan and colleagues have added more evidence to the now overwhelming case that humans are indeed quite smart and rational, but that ‘smart’ and ‘rational’ have less to do with making objective judgments and decisions that accurately align with the facts, and more to do with our ability to shape the facts into judgments and decisions that feel right and help us feel safe, even if those judgments and decisions fly in the face of the facts and they are bad for us…even if they are dangerous.
For this new study, Kahan, Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson, and pioneer-in-the-study-of-risk- perception Paul Slovic, asked a group of people about the efficacy of a skin cream for dealing with a rash, based on this numerical display. Which is better, using the cream, or not using it?

That is exemplified by Suzuki, Flannery .. - ed
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Crony Tay Za receives praise from Americans for funding a mountain expedition in #Kachin state while hundreds of ethnic Kachin people are being attacked and displaced nearby. Not coincidently, the fighting that recently erupted in the resource-rich Putao district is an area that Tay Za is currently in the process of acquiring for a gold mining project. Putao district is not far south of where the mountain expedition took place.

“The American climbers involved in the expedition do not appear to be concerned by the fact their trip was financed by Tay Za, described by the U.S. Treasury department as ‘a notorious regime henchman and arms dealer’”

Earlier this month, the entire population of Nhka Ga village in Putao district fled attacks by the #Burma army, leaving two individuals killed and several tortured by the Burmese #military. At a time when ethnic Kachin victims need our help the most, we pull the wool over our eyes to #abuses, #conflictand #aid while praising a hiking expedition funded by a notorious #crony. [http://bit.ly/16C5lOI]
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Ged MacMahon'

Have you ever considered the irony of the term "department of defence" for the Military. I wonder if the term "department of offence" might be more appropriate sometimes? Reminds me of Geoge Orwell's 1984.
Orwell wrote '84 in '48 .. the UN came into being in '49 as a functioning concern, although it had been around since '45. The UN outlawed armies .. it was no longer allowed for a nation to be belligerent. They could only defend themselves against belligerence. Overnight, every army in the world became a 'defence force' .. Orwell was writing about that .. ed
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Dr. Phil

Do you know someone who claims to suffer from depression but you believe it’s an excuse? http://bit.ly/DepressionOrFaker
Are you the victim of domestic violence and don’t know where to turn?http://bit.ly/VictimofAbuse
Are you the parent of a teenage girl who proudly boasts about her girl fights? http://bit.ly/DisrespectfulTeen
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Pastor Rick Warren
Kay having a good time with Josh.
Three of my favorite people. Great to be home.
“Never retaliate when people say unkind things about you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God wants you to do.” 1 Peter 3:9
=
“Those who refuse to admit mistakes will never be successful. But those who confess and forsake them get another chance.” Proverbs 28:13 Success comes, not to those who are perfect, but to those who admit their imperfection.
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an old circuit .. but Eric Kalemen is the personal trainer for you ..
ScarE-ric circuit Session

Date: Sunday 25th August 2013
Time: 8am
Where: Cabramatta 2166

inbox for more information
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The system does not work. It doesn't work in Australia either .. at the age of 40, never having been unemployed, I was unable to insure myself against income loss because of my weight .. now, not because of my weight, I am jobless and on public health care .. Affordable Care has gaping holes, although it fills a few cracks it won't be around for long, not because of political opposition which should kill it, but because it isn't sustainable in its present form. - ed
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Dr. Phil
You can’t break a bad habit until you replace it with a positive one. #DrPhil http://bit.ly/BreakingYourAddiction 
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Sarah Palin
Piper's getting ready for school & Ted's still going! Encourage kids to learn US history through this & endure to do what's right. #MakeDCListen
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Turns out Forest Boy loved civilized society only when it was handing him his welfare cheque.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/fake-forest-boy-sentenced-in-germany-20130926-2uh08.html
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In the words of Yehuda Bauer, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander.”
As a people who suffered at the hands of the Nazis as the world looked on, the Jewish community cannot look on as the world suffers. Having risen from the depths of a dark past, Jews have a unique obligation to respond to the suffering of the world. This obligation is a guiding principle at the core of Israeli society. The Jewish State cannot be a bystander.
In their undertakings as “upstanders,” Israelis have provided humanitarian aid to people all over the globe, from Boston to Oklahoma, to Haiti, to Japan, to Gaza, to Syria, and many more, dealing with a wide array of dire situations, from natural disasters to medical emergencies, to refugee crises, to wars, to genocide.
However, despite this consistent global aid in times of crisis, a recent LA Times articlecited Israel as “[giving] the least as a percentage of gross national income among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development” along with Mexico and Chile. According to an interview with Hillel Schmid, head of Hebrew University’s Center for the Study of Philanthropy in Israel, Israelis are lacking in generosity when it comes to making donations, both internationally and domestically.
While some may attribute this lack of financial charity to greed and self-absorption, in actuality, it simply points to a difference in methods and values. The definition of charity isn’t limited to giving money; it is defined as showing generosity toward those in need. Israel partakes in forms of giving that operate on a much deeper level than financial donations, affecting people’s lives in significantly more personal and impactful ways.
As a 65-year-old country that is still developing its economy and facing unpredictable threats of violence and terror, giving financially is not Israel’s strong suit. But that doesn’t mean Israelis are not generous to people in need. Israelis work to create organizations such as Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), IsraAID, and the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED) that operate to save the lives of those in crisis, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Additionally, Israelis utilize various innovations in the areas of medicine, agriculture, and military technology that have been developed in Israel to benefit individuals on a global scale.
In the wake of natural disasters, Israel has come to the aid of victims in desperate need of food, shelter, and medical attention. In 2010, an earthquake shattered Haiti, leaving thousands homeless, starving, and injured. Within a day, more than 200 Israelis, including doctors, rescue, and relief workers led by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, departed for the devastated area. Upon their arrival, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) set up the first field hospital at the chaotic scene.
Then, in 2011, when a tsunami devastated Japan, Israel was one of the first to send a full-scale medical delegation in response to the disaster. Working with the Japanese authorities and Japanese National Disaster Center to determine what manner of aid would be the most valuable, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense provided 18 tons of aid, including thousands of blankets, coats, gloves, and portable toilets.
Additionally, Israel has come to the aid of its closest ally, the United States, on many an occasion. During the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the bombing at the Boston Marathon, and the recent Oklahoma City tornado, Israelis aided victims through the recovery process. Recently, a team from IsraAID, a humanitarian organization that primarily works with the victims of natural disasters, was stationed in Moore, Oklahoma, aiding victims in salvaging items from the wreckage of their homes, providing trauma counseling, and bulldozing and rebuilding damaged structures.
And it isn’t just countries that have peace agreements with Israel to which Israelis extend a helping hand. In March of 2012, Israel offered humanitarian aid to Syria in light of a rising death toll attributable to the ongoing civil war. “Even though Israel cannot intervene in events occurring in a country with which it does not have diplomatic relations, it is nevertheless our moral duty to extend humanitarian aid and inspire the world to put an end to the slaughter,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.
Save a Child’s Heart, a non-profit Israeli based humanitarian organization dedicated to providing pediatric care to children in developing countries who suffer from heart conditions, has saved more than 3,000 children since its creation in 1995. The IDF medical delegation in Haiti treated more than 1,110 patients, successfully performed 319 surgeries and delivered 16 babies. Since the beginning of the year, the transport of 662,239 tons of supplies has been facilitated by the IDF into Gaza. So shouldn’t figures of lives saved by Israel speak louder than figures of financial donations? Maybe the problem is that figures don’t speak at all.
Many people are aware of Israeli’s global aid; they have been exposed to information regarding the number of tons of supplies that Israel has provided and the approximate number of people they have saved. However, those facts are too wide in scope and too abstract to invoke an emotional response or effectively stimulate positive feelings towards Israel. People are unable to relate on a personal level to facts and figures. This explains why many dismiss the statistics and overlook the meaning behind them, some even going so far as to write off Israel’s social action endeavors as publicity stunts, solely intended to improve Israel’s reputation. So how do we make the connection?
On a trip to Poland in my senior year of high school, I stood in Auschwitz facing a glass enclosure containing thousands upon thousands of shoes. The number of victims who had perished in the camp was too big to grasp, the mass scale of the murder of the Jewish people too overwhelming to process. I was then advised to focus on a single shoe, think of the person who it had belonged to and reflect on what his or her life might have been like. This exercise was powerful and helped me put things in perspective.
Similarly, to truly understand the purpose and meaning behind Israel’s humanitarian aid, we need to dial back and narrow the focus. The personal experiences of those who have been touched by Israel’s helping hands are much more revealing as to the depth and impact of Israel’s giving than statistics. Just as each shoe in Auschwitz represents a real person who it once belonged to, each number in reference to the recipients of Israel’s humanitarian aid represents a real life, a real person.
Israeli entrepreneur Dr. Amit Goffer created a system called the ReWalk, a “quasi-robotic, wearable upright mobility system” that aids paraplegics previously confined to wheelchairs in completing everyday tasks such as standing, walking, climbing, and driving. I had heard about the ReWalk before, but the true implications of such an invention hadn’t hit me until I watched Dan Webb rise from his wheelchair and walk across the stage at the 2013 AIPAC Policy Conference.  I watched him stand with feet pressed firmly to the ground and address thousands of people, watched as his family witnessed this miraculous moment with beaming smiles and teary eyes. Webb, a resident of Warminster, Pennsylvania, had been injured in a hunting accident, becoming paralyzed from the waist down. He was told that he may never walk again. With ReWalk, he was able to defeat the odds.
Twenty-four-year-old Gubilande Jean Michel and her family are residents of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When the 2010 earthquake struck, Michel was pregnant with her fourth child. With her husband missing since the earthquake and her three children at home with her parents, Michel went into labor and was brought to the IDF field hospital. With the aid of the Israeli doctors working there, Michel gave birth to a healthy baby boy, in a smooth delivery with no complications. Her newborn son was the first baby delivered in the hospital. In an expression of immense gratitude for the country that came to her aid in her time of need, Michel chose to name her son Israel.  Midwife Major Efrat Shrir said, “We departed on this mission with a sense of dedication and purpose, with a true will to help people. So for me, the fact that we were able to help this woman is a real contribution.”
When 3-year-old Noam Naor was killed in a tragic accident, Israeli parents Sarit and Avi Naor faced not only the heart-breaking loss of their son, but also a difficult decision that would change the life of a young Palestinian boy and his family. Yakoub Ibhisad’s condition was rapidly deteriorating, and he was in desperate need of a kidney transplant. The Health Ministry’s Transplant Center called upon the Naor family for help. The Naors answered that call and donated their son’s kidney to Yakoub. It didn’t matter that he was Palestinian and they Israeli; what mattered was that a young boy’s life was in danger and he needed their help. Their kind actions broke down barriers of prejudice and mistrust, rooted in a deep emotional connection between the two families based on mutual understanding of the depth of the love of one’s child.
A 4-year-old Syrian girl was recently brought to Israel for medical treatment, accompanied by her mother, who was nearly nine months pregnant at the time. They had been living in Jordan as refugees escaping the ongoing Syrian civil war. Though her real identity has been kept anonymous for protection, the Times of Israelhas dubbed the little girl “Nadrah.” When Nadrah was just 6-months-old, Syrian doctors discovered that she had a heart condition, but were unable to treat her due to lack of available medical care. Congenital heart disease plagued Nadrah all her life, preventing her blood from being properly oxygenated and restricting her from running and playing with other children. Upon her arrival in Israel, Nadrah was examined by the Save a Child’s Heart medical team. They then performed open-heart surgery on Nadrah at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. After ten days of recuperation in the center’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Nadrah has made a full recovery. Now, she has the chance to live, to grow, to be a big sister, to have a future.  The Israeli doctors that treated Nadrah were the first Jews that the mother daughter pair had ever seen. The kindness they received in the land of the “enemy” was eye-opening and uplifting.
Though those who make misguided statements about Israel’s lack of charity and selfish ways may have a louder voice, it is those who have benefited from Israel’s assistance that matter most – the American man injured in a hunting accident, rising from his wheelchair to walk across a stage to meet the Israeli inventor of the system that changed his life; the Palestinian family who thanks two grieving Israeli parents for saving the life of their son in the face of their own tragic loss; the Haitian mother who names her child after the country whose doctors delivered him into the world; the Syrian mother who holds her 4-year-old daughter in her arms after she is saved by open-heart surgery in a medical center in Israel. They are Dan Webb, Yakoub Ibhisad, Gubilande Jean Michel, and Nadrah. They are the ones who know Israel’s true nature, and it is their stories of survival and immeasurable gratitude that display the profound impact of Israel’s giving. In the words of the Talmud: “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he saves the entire world.”
Danielle Haberer is a CAMERA Fellow, and a junior at the University of South Florida majoring in mass communications with a concentration in magazine journalism. She spent the past summer in Washington, D.C., completing a fellowship in writing and media advocacy at The Israel Project. On campus, she serves as Vice President of USF Hillel.

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Lebanon calls for 'safe zones' to accommodate Syria refugees - Jpost 

"At the meeting, Obama announced a new $8.7 million aid package to Lebanon that would support its military, suffering from splintering with the growing influence of Hezbollah.

Obama said the US “strongly supports the role of the Lebanese armed forces in maintaining Lebanon’s stability, and today we’re announcing an additional $8.7 million that would provide needed equipment in support of the Lebanese armed forces in internal stability and border security missions.” - Michael Wilner

http://paper.li/allysonchristy/1338794440
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Number of Gaza terror groups possess Strela 2 MANPADS
By DAVID BARNETTSeptember 25, 2013

In March 2005, then Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told senior US officials that some Strela antiaircraft missiles had made their way into the Gaza Strip. Six months later, senior Israeli official Amos Gilad told US officials that "thousands of rifles, rockets, rocket propelled grenades, and maybe even Strela missiles" had been smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
Read more:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/09/number_of_gaza_terro.php#ixzz2fwJVYe00
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(JNS.org) A Jewish couple and its four-year-old son barely escaped being killed by an Arab lynch mob that had attacked the family's vehicle near Jerusalem's A-Tur neighborhood.
A-tur.jpg
The UN supports this terror - ed
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Jere VanLoan
One done with Arend Nijssen a while back. Just for your smile
===
Senator Cruz fought for us for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor. Now you can act. Make sure you call the Senate today and tell them to Defund Obamacare.

http://www.teapartypatriots.org/2013/09/6-days-stop-obamacare/
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yeah, no sense letting people below the poverty line have health insurance. Silly idea. If they can't afford to pay insurance costs they may as well do without. Besides, are we our brothers keepers ? We don't need to exercise our Christian values and show compassion to our fellow citizens. It costs too much to share the burden. And as a patriot I'd rather see more money spent on drones instead of wasting it on people. People who are denied access to health care due to pre-existing conditions or who work for minimum wages just don't deserve to have health care like people who can afford to pay the high costs do they.

David Daniel Ball Making a system that will be voted down, or will crumble under its own weight in a few years, is not giving poor people health care, it is denying poor people health care. You can never own what you can't pay for.===

Allyson Christy

NSA spy scandal may scuttle EU-US anti-terrorist agreement – EU commissioner - RT News 

"The European Union is threatening to suspend a data-sharing deal with the United States. It is supposed to track terrorist bank funding, but there aresuspicions the National Security Agency was stealing financial data from law-abiding Europeans.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU commissioner responsible for investigating the implications of the NSA and GCHQ spy scandal, said the Terror Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) of 2010, which supplies bank and credit card transaction information to the US treasury in an effort to trace funding to terrorist groups, may be in jeopardy if it is determined the Americans were abusing the agreement."
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If you’re using a non-furry alarm clock to get out of bed in the morning, you’re stuck in the dark ages. Sure, cats don’t always pick exactly the right time to wake you up, but you can’t say they’re inconsistent.
11 Reasons Cats Make The Best Alarm Clocks
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Mr. Obama: you like to call ObamaCare the law of the land. But, it's not really a law; it is a set of edicts that one man --you!-- enforce or choose not to enforce at your pleasure.http://bit.ly/14BicDl Under our Constitution --to which We The People happily cling-- you have no authority to waive parts of laws passed by Congress. Yet, you grant waivers when you feel like it. You delay parts of it when doing so strikes your royal fancy. Now, you have waived a perfumed hand and let Congress off the hook of your monstrosity, just as you did for big business. Mr. Obama: you are not special, you are not a ruler and we are not supplicants. While you will never admit that, we know it to be true and are never going to stop fighting to right-size government power.
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Australia does a sensational job drowning a large number of desperate, poor people, after subjecting them to piracy. The Pacific Solution had stopped that .. but compassionate ALP preferred the piracy and murder (applauds) - ed
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Pastor Rick Warren
PLEASE pray for the Middle East!
I was in Amman, Jordan where King Abdullah II, a Muslim had asked me to convene and open a conference on the violence and persecution against Arab CHRISTIANS that's happening daily.
Over 60 churches have been burned in Egypt, and others in Syria, etc. About 80 Arab Christian leaders from 22 Arab nations - many Orthodox Patriarchs - met for 2 days. I was deeply honored to be given that nation's highest award by the King for the humanitarian efforts of the P.E.A.C.E. plan. But I'm glad to be back home!
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<Even more good news from the ACT. Even more joyous because it's a Liberal who deprived a Green of a Senate seat. Thank you animal lovers!>
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Holly Sarah Nguyen
Thank you God, for the good things and the bad. Experiencing the bad helps us to appreciate the good.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2429940/Has-Julia-Gillard-split-hairdresser-boyfriend-Magazine-Australian-PMs-lover-living-caravan-bush.html
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Good. >

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/anthony-albanese-is-an-intellectual-lightweight-mark-latham-20130926-2uf9s.html
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THE militant group behind the takeover of a Nairobi mall claimed Wednesday that Kenyan government assault team carried out “a demolition’’ of the building, burying 137 hostages in rubble.
A government spokesman denied the claim and said Kenyan forces were clearing all rooms, firing as they moved and encountering no one.
Kenyan soldier

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/africa/alshabab-claim-kenya-troops-buried-137-hostages-in-nairobi-mall/story-fnh81gzi-1226727205060#ixzz2fzEmYG00
The female clothing wearing freedom fighters claim they were meticulous and scrupulous. In fact, they killed randomly, like terrorists. - ed
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Jon Stewart challenges famed atheist Richard Dawkins: "Isn't the job of a scientist, in some ways, to have faith that there’s something out there that we don’t understand yet?"
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Escalating conflict in northern Kachin State is forcing more civilians into IDP camps. Camp supplies are running low, with children in camps on the China-Burma border eating their rice with salt due to the dwindling food supply. Health conditions and malnutrition are becoming major concerns, as is human trafficking, as youth attempting to escape the conditions at IDP camps fall prey to traffickers. Meanwhile, the US government through USAID continues to refuse to fund community-based organizations providing aid to IDPs in Kachin areas.

Demand USAID take action here: http://bit.ly/16POFJ0
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At least 68 people were killed when Islamic militants from Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab group stormed into the Westgate Shopping Center in Nairobi, Kenya on Saturday and opened fire. The stand off between the terrorists and the police and army has entered a third day. it is unclear how many gunmen and hostages are still inside the shopping center.
Update: We’ve added 10 photos of the rescue operation.
VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES.
David Daniel Ball
I apologise for the site's name

John Tran I have no words for this..

Stephanie Ann nor do I John

David Daniel Ball I just looked through it. One thing is abundantly clear. The victims were not combatants. The hit was indiscriminate terrorism.

John Tran "militants" fight the military...

David Daniel Ball yep .. I just realised, they weren't completely indiscriminate .. they only hit defenceless people ..

Alexander Meluskey Religion?

David Daniel Ball The bastards claimed they only killed non Muslims .. but they usually score own goals there too ..
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If, God forbid, you are forced into an ObamaCare exchange, you will get ZERO employer contribution and will pay the high rates for an awful insurance plan. BUT, not Congress. His Majesty, Barack Obama, has given congress a gift ... of YOUR money so YOU will pay for their insurance. This isn't Republican vs. Democrat, this is the American people versus the elites.http://bit.ly/19EjE6q
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“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” 1 John 2:1 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Just, and the justifier of him which believeth."
Romans 3:26
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of his people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change his nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer--having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that his people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not God, for he hath justified; not Christ, for he hath died, "yea rather hath risen again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen.

Evening

"Who of God is made unto us wisdom."
1 Corinthians 1:30
Man's intellect seeks after rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are snared in the old net in which the Grecians were taken, and have a hankering to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism, and bewitched them with all sorts of heresies. This is the root of Neology, and the other fine things which in days gone by were so fashionable in Germany, and are now so ensnaring to certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your education may be, if you be the Lord's, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker, or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, that will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided, can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge. All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Broad-church thinkers would approve of, must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the ploughboy's eye flash with joy, and gladens the pious pauper's heart--"Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners." Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when he is believingly received, but apart from him the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." "A good understanding have all they that do his commandments."
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Today's reading: Song of Solomon 6-8, Galatians 4 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Song of Solomon 6-8

Friends
1 Where has your beloved gone,
most beautiful of women?
Which way did your beloved turn,
that we may look for him with you?
She
2 My beloved has gone down to his garden,
to the beds of spices,
to browse in the gardens
and to gather lilies.
3 I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine;
he browses among the lilies.
He
4 You are as beautiful as Tirzah, my darling,
as lovely as Jerusalem,
as majestic as troops with banners.
5 Turn your eyes from me;
they overwhelm me.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Gilead.
6 Your teeth are like a flock of sheep
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin,
not one of them is missing....

Today's New Testament reading: Galatians 4

1 What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate.2 The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. 3 So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. 4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out,“Abba, Father.” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.
Paul’s Concern for the Galatians
8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you....
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