Saturday, January 23, 2016

Sat Jan 23rd Todays News

This time last year Campbell Newman was going for reelection in Queensland. Campbell's bitterest opposition was not the ALP whose leader claimed after election that she was unready to lead. The opposition was the trio of Palmer, Alan Jones and Malcolm Turnbull. It was a strange trio. Turnbull wanted to undermine Abbott and so whispered the possibility to Palmer that opposing Abbott could be beneficial with the promise of future agreements should Abbott be rolled. Meanwhile Alan Jones was running a highly political, false campaign against coal seam gas. A very good government was ruined and Queensland pays a high price. Something worth thinking about as some consider why they supported Palmer and who they will support next. One well circulated meme relates to former PM Barton in 1907. Only the words are not his but Theodore Roosevelt and they don't translate to Australia well. But they are very appealing to people who don't understand politics and don't like to be lied to but are willing to embrace a lie. The kind of lie Palmer spoke in order to be elected. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility 
=== from 2015 ===
David Hicks 'innocent' 
There are elements of the US government that do not treasure freedom and undermine the government. Such is the case today where on the date that John Walker Lind was returned to the US and separately, Daniel Pearl was murdered in 2002, David Hicks, a former inmate of GITMO who had been found training with the Taliban has been declared 'innocent' by the US government. He had previously accepted his guilt of training with terrorists so as to be released. He has celebrity status among the left who prize his having faced US armed services and survived. He is invited to speaking engagements for things like 'festival of dangerous ideas' or writer's festivals where he proudly forgets activities he wrote to his home about, like being able to shoot people legally in former Yugoslavia. David was bankrolled by Amnesty International, who are not supposed to protect people who want to kill, but to defend prisoners of conscience. When David has spoken, he has displayed anti semitism in his stated beliefs, and understanding of world organisation and foreign affairs. So what precisely is it the US government finds Hicks innocent of? Apparently training with the Taliban is not, now, considered an act of terror by some in the US government. 

Dan Andrews quietly removes industry protection from unions

We know that the building unions in Victoria have acted corruptly. We know they have used stand over tactics to extort money from business. We know they have used slush funds to make elections undemocratic. We know that they have diverted funds meant for their members to personal things. What we have not heard is the mainstream press questioning the government about what they will do to prevent it from getting worse. But now we have new Premier Dan Andrews actually making it worse by removing the protections business have of a body supervising Union activity. Special thanks to Dan Andrews for the next worker to die from compromised safety standards. 

Qld election

The QLD ALP have not reformed from the same party which failed to insure from floods they created when they over filled a dam. They had over filled the dam after they assured the public that dams would never be filled again because of global warming. They have opposed sensible measure which have benefited Queensland. The LNP government have been opposed by the press and the ALP on every measure, and yet the have created sensible financial positions which will ensure prosperity for the future. ALP had claimed they would, but never did it. There is no good reason why the QLD Premier would lose his seat, based on performance. One week to go. Good luck Campbell Newman.  
From 2014
On the same day John Walker Lind was returned to the US on FBI custody, Journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered by terrorists. On this day, in 2002. One cannot surrender to terrorism and expect justice. Appeasement does not work. Give a little, and terrorists will view their efforts as succeeding. There are no historical examples of success through appeasing terror. But terror is not addressed through terror. Terrorist peoples largely don't want to succeed or die. They want to be made to stop. The concept of restraint and proportionality might be politically expedient, but it isn't what stakeholders want (note, I deny terrorist leadership as stake holders). I invite readers to post where they feel I am wrong. Examples please. 
Historical perspective on this day
In 393, Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaimed his eight-year old son Honorius co-emperor. 971, in China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han were soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops. 1368, in a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhangascended the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over Chinathat would last for three centuries. 1546, having published nothing for eleven years, François Rabelais published the Tiers Livre, his sequel to Gargantua and Pantagruel. 1556, the deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hit Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000. 1570, James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regentfor the infant King James VI of Scotland, was assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such. 1571, the Royal Exchange opened in London. 1579, the Union of Utrechtformed a Protestant republic in the Netherlands. 1656, Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provincials.

In 1719, the Principality of Liechtenstein was created within the Holy Roman Empire. 1789, Georgetown College, the first Catholic University in the United States, was founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.) 1793,  Second Partition of Poland. 1849,  Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States' first female doctor. 1855, the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake and tsunami left 9 dead in New Zealand. Also 1855, the first bridge over the Mississippi River opened in what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota, a crossing made today by the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. 1870, in Montana, U.S. cavalrymen killed 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what became known as the Marias Massacre. 1879, Anglo-Zulu War: the Battle of Rorke's Drift ended. 1897, Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction. 1899, the Malolos Constitution was inaugurated, establishing the First Philippine Republic. Also 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo was sworn in as President of the First Philippine Republic.

In 1900, Second Boer War: The Battle of Spion Kop between the forces of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State and British forces ended in a British defeat. 1904, Ålesund Fire: the Norwegian coastal town Ålesund was devastated by fire, leaving 10,000 people homeless and one person dead. Kaiser Wilhelm II funded the rebuilding of the town in Jugendstil style. 1909, RMS Republic, a passenger ship of the White Star Line, became the first ship to use the CQD distress signal after colliding with another ship, the SS Florida, off the Massachusetts coastline, an event that killed six people. The Republic sank the next day. 1912, the International Opium Convention was signed at The Hague. 1920, the Netherlands refused to surrender the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies. 1937, in Moscow, 17 leading Communists went on trial accused of participating in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow Joseph Stalin's regime and assassinate its leaders. 1941, Charles Lindbergh testified before the U.S. Congress and recommended that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. 1942, World War II: The Battle of Rabaul began, the first fighting of the New Guinea campaign. 1943, World War II: Troops of Montgomery's 8th Army captured Tripoli in Libya from the German-Italian Panzer Army. Also 1943, World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeated the Japanese army in Papua. Also 1943, Duke Ellington played at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time. Also 1943, World War II: The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign ended. 1945, World War II: German admiral Karl Dönitz launched Operation Hannibal.

In 1950, the Knesset passed a resolution that stated Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. 1957, American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sold the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-Otoy company, which later renamed it the "Frisbee". 1958, after a general uprising and rioting in the streets, President Marcos Pérez Jiménez left Venezuela. 1960, the bathyscaphe USS Trieste broke a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Pacific Ocean. 1961, the Portuguese luxury cruise ship Santa Maria was hijacked by opponents of the Estado Novo regime with the intention of waging war until dictator António de Oliveira Salazar was overthrown. 1963, the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence officially began when PAIGCguerrilla fighters attacked the Portuguese army stationed in Tite. 1964, the 24th Amendmentto the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, was ratified. 1967, Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Côte d'Ivoire were established. Also 1967, Milton Keynes (England) was founded as a new town by Order in Council, with a planning brief to become a city of 250,000 people. Its initial designated area enclosed three existing towns and twenty one villages. 1968, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship had violated its territorial waters while spying.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced that a peace accord had been reached in Vietnam. Also 1973, a volcanic eruption devastated Heimaey in the Vestmannaeyjar chain of islands off the south coast of Iceland. 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. 1997, Madeleine Albright became the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. Also 1997, Greek Serial Killer Antonis Daglis was sentenced to thirteen consecutive life sentences, plus 25 years for the serial slayings of three women and the attempted murder of six others. 2001, five people attempted to set themselves on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, an act that many people later claim was staged by the Communist Party of China to frame Falun Gong and thus escalate their persecution. 2002, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh returned to the United States in FBI custody. Also 2002, reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistanand subsequently murdered. 2003, final communication between Earth and Pioneer 10. 2012, a group of Gaddafi loyalists took control of part of the town of Bani Walid and flew the green flag after a battle with NTC forces left 5 dead and 20 injured.
=== Publishing News ===
This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.
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Editorials will appear in the "History in a Year by the Conservative Voice" series, starting with August, September, October, 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 a free kindle version.

List of available items at Create Space
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

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

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

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.

Happy birthday and many happy returns Joey Duong and Trangsta Meow. Born on the same day, across the years, along with
Emilio Aguinaldo
Happy birthday Liechtenstein. We won't hurt our friends. We have a constitution. Our minister guides us. Let the operation begin. Let's party. 
Deaths
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NOOSA HEAD

Tim Blair – Saturday, January 23, 2016 (2:50pm)

“Check the head tilt on this bloke, Tim!” emails Geoff H. Indeed, Noosa Greens council candidate Aaron White does possess some quality tiltage, combined with at least 3.7 Gillians of smug:

image

Queensland Greens are an especially colourful bunch.
UPDATE. They’re tilting all over the place!
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MALCOLM’S MATES

Tim Blair – Saturday, January 23, 2016 (2:27pm)

Besides Barack Obama, who else did Malcolm Turnbull contact during his US visit? 
Turnbull spoke on the phone to Marco Rubio, regarded as the leading “mainstream” candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, but he attempted no contact with the two frontrunners in that contest – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
And no one close to either of them was invited to an Australian embassy dinner for Republican officials to meet the Australian leader.
That is despite the fact that experts Turnbull spoke to in Washington advised him that, on current evidence, one of those men, rather than Rubio or any of the other “establishment” Republican candidates, would be Hillary Clinton’s opponent at the end of the year. Turnbull did get in touch with Clinton.
The truth is that he dreads the thought of either Trump, nuttily Right-wing and populist, or Cruz, darling of Tea Party extremists, becoming president of the US.
If he can’t have a Rubio-style Republican he would prefer, although he can hardly say so publicly, to see Clinton and the Democrats win. 
Add this to this lists of things Thucydides can’t say in public. He can’t even bring himself to mention the Liberal party at his own website.
UPDATE. Seriously: 
The Federal Government says it will consider backing Kevin Rudd for a top United Nations job if the former prime minister puts his hat in the ring …
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop today said the former Labor leader has yet to apply for the position.
“Should Kevin Rudd nominate, then of course the Australian government would consider what sort of support he would require,” she told reporters in New York. 
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OFFER REJECTED

Tim Blair – Saturday, January 23, 2016 (2:06am)

Yesterday afternoon I received the following email from Chris Graham, the editor and publisher of leftist site New Matilda: 
Hi Tim,
I was wondering if I you had time for a brief chat? I don’t have a problem with your latest piece, I’m just interested in offering our perspective.
Also, we haven’t released the transcript of the tape yet – we’re planning that for Sunday. I’d be prepared to ‘leak’ you a copy exclusively, with no caveats attached. All I ask is that if you read it and decide that there is a clear public interest contained within it, you either write a column about it yourself, or you pass it on to the appropriate colleague at News who then files on it. And obviously, if you decide it’s rubbish you’re welcome to bin it.
Keen for your thoughts? 
My emailed reply: 
Chris,
You are attempting to trade in illegally-obtained material.
I’ll retain your email for any future legal requirements. Please do not contact me again.
Tim 
Chris Graham is, by the way, a relatively senior member of the Australian Press Council, the body that polices media behaviour in this country.
UPDATE:

image

This man is a fool. 
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Forgoing substance for style up north

Piers Akerman – Friday, January 23, 2015 (12:38am)

QUEENSLANDERS are just over a week away from what is really a no-brainer of an election. The choice they are being ­offered is, or should be, extremely clear. It is between an active reforming premier in Campbell Newman and an opposition leader, Annastacia Palaszczuk, who offers nothing but retrovision of the worst possible kind. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Forgoing substance for style up north'
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IT’S GERMAN FOR GREENS

Tim Blair – Friday, January 23, 2015 (3:07pm)

Word of the day: Sitzpinkler.
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FEEL LIKE BACON LOVE

Tim Blair – Friday, January 23, 2015 (2:28pm)

Newtown’s slide into vegetarian degeneracy is briefly halted: 
Australia’s first Bacon Festival is being staged on February 9 at Cuckoo Callay, Newtown, with an eight-dish menu packed with piggy products designed to challenge your tastebuds.
Expect to be dazzled by dishes including the Don’t Go Bacon My Heart beer-candied bacon and popcorn chicken burger and the What a Croque of Bacon (bacon, basil and vintage cheddar croquettes). 
In other Sydney culinary news, the excellent Maloneys grocery on Crown Street is now stocked with all three varieties of Frank’s RedHot Sauce – Original, Buffalo and Xtra Hot. You need this miracle substance if you aim to cookthe world’s finest chicken wings. If you can’t find your Frank’s sauce at Maloneys, just ask always-helpful staffers Hamid or Asim.
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THREE SPEECH

Tim Blair – Friday, January 23, 2015 (12:42pm)

Feminists and leftists in the UK and Australia rejoiced this week in the belief that the London Sun had ceased publishing topless page 3 girls. But there’s just one small problem ...

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'THREE SPEECH'
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RIDERS ATTACKED

Tim Blair – Friday, January 23, 2015 (10:58am)

Recently trending on Twitter: the deceptively sweet-sounding phrase Je Suis Couteau. Although it refers to events on a bus, there has been no subsequent outbreak of “I’ll ride with you” heroics.
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WORST OF THE WORST

Tim Blair – Friday, January 23, 2015 (10:41am)

The ABC’s Matt Brown and Mat Marsic locate and interview four Yazidi women who were held captive in northern Iraq by Australian jihadists Khaled Sharrouf and Mohammed Elomar: 
It’s a miracle the women escaped, and for security reasons, we won’t describe how they did it. But, now that they’re free, they hope some day, somehow, the Australian Government will avenge them.
‘LAYLA’ (voiceover translation): “If those terrorists are ever caught, they must make sure that they will never escape. I want them to punish those terrorists and torture them.” 
After reading the whole transcript, you’ll be inclined to agree. The ABC, reporter Brown and cameraman Marsic deserve massive congratulations for this stunning piece. 
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READY, AIM, TOASTIE

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (1:37pm)

As Wade Laube notes, the ABC considers video of asylum seeker burns to be proof of how the burns occurred. But Prime Minister Tony Abbott requires a higher evidentiary standard: 
Asked if the aired footage constituted as evidence, Mr Abbott said: “Who do you believe?
“Do you believe Australian naval personnel or do you believe people who were attempting to break Australian law? I believe Australian naval personnel.” 
So do most sane people. However, given that so many completely credible and utterly trustworthy individuals are convinced that Australian naval personnel have variously shot at, burned and assaulted asylum seekers, it’s worth asking the question …
Thank you for voting!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Total Votes: 1,632
Return To PollCreate Your Own Poll 
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TURNEY RETURNS

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (4:52am)

The Sydney Morning Herald‘s Nicky Phillips and Colin Cosier have thrown Antarctic tourism leader Chris Turney under the boat. They’re joined by the BBC’s Andrew Luck-Baker, a member of the expedition who also finds fault with the tour’s ice management: 
Expedition leaders could have some tough questions to face about logistical shortcomings which may have put the vessel at increased risk of becoming trapped. These were operational errors and mishaps during a visit by scientists and tourists to a location close to the Antarctic shore on 23 December.
Ship insurance companies along with the Australian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre will be keen to establish what happened and whether human error contributed to the Akademik Shokalskiy becoming trapped …
Some of the paying passengers on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013 spoke unfavourably about the manner in which the situation at the islands was handled. Everyone I spoke to asked to be quoted anonymously, mindful of the considerable media interest that may await in Tasmania.
“The teacher in me cringes at the logistics,” said one of the paying members of the expedition.
Another said the expedition was run like a “boys own adventure” and expressed concern over what she believed was a lack of thorough briefing on safety procedures throughout the Antarctic leg of the expedition.
Others I spoke to agreed that the expedition had its shortcomings in the logistics department.
However, Terry Gostlow, a resident of Adelaide, said he wanted to praise expedition leader Chris Turney for mounting a privately funded Antarctic scientific expedition of which members of the public could be part and in which they could actively contribute as scientific assistants, if they chose. 
Turney, now returned to Australia, appeared last night on the ABC. He isn’t a great television performer.
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ORDER GIVEN

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (4:13am)

ABC games nerd Daniel Golding demands: 
Australia’s refugee policies should be compared, regularly and specifically, to Nazism and the Holocaust. 
If you say so, Daniel.
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BIGGEST MYSTERY

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (3:42am)

She’s probably never lit a cigarette in her life, so why does fitness queen Michelle Bridges sound like a chain smoker?
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FINAL SOLUTION LOOMS

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (3:37am)

Guardian readers previously applied their collective intelligence to allegations that the Australian Navy fired at asylum seeker vessels. Now these experts consider claims of torture: 
• My gut instinct is that the rhetoric of “illegal arrivals” is now being taken one step further. Logic says that it might be more effective if the navy were to apply a “Final Solution” to these “problem people” and be done with it. That’s where this is heading. Very scary.
• Unacceptable injury caused by the navy. Don’t care what excuses the Navy and govt comes up with. Completely unacceptable.
• the hate campaign to dehumanise asylum seekers has worked.
• Probably just a coincidence that the government recently absolved all navy personnel of any responsibility for harm caused to asylum seekers in these operations.
• What the Australian government is doing is unbelievably wrong in so many ways. Time to stop the madness, not the boats.
• redneck navy plus the recent facebook posts, proof that they are encouraged to act this way
• Australian officials often carry out cruel illegal acts especially when they are stressed.
• War time operations have been invoked against unarmed vulnerable women, children and men.
• As if shooting at women and children in the high seas and incarcerating them in disused phosphate mines without proper facilities are not enough.
• When it comes to Scott Morrison, nothing would surprise me, the gutless wonder is a compulsive liar and bloody evil.
• Mocking a burns patient for political gain is a ruthless and desperate act.
• We grow closer to war with Indonesia every day this government is in power.
• Often asylum seekers - in the stress of their condition and further stress of being forcibly expelled from countries - may not identify clearly, who perpetrators were. My theory is that they were indeed injured - likely by some special riot squad aboard the RAN boats. 
And a brilliant suggestion: 
• Time for the ABC to buy or hire a vessel … The vessel should be placed between Australia and Indonesia so there can be independent reporting of what is taking place. 
Great idea. In fact, the vessel should be large enough to board at least 50 senior ABC presenters, who could float forever in this Guardian reader’s imagined single-lane ocean road between Indonesia and Australia.
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LIQUID LAND

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (3:06am)

This is an actual headline from Time, perceived by the left as a “small-c conservative mag”:

image

Readers, who are apparently now in a fluid state, are invited to describe their lives in our newly-liquefied nation.
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TOTAL FRACKING IDIOTS

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (2:57am)

British anti-fracking protesters glue themselves to petrol pumps. At the wrong petrol station.
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UNSINKABLE URSUS

Tim Blair – Thursday, January 23, 2014 (2:53am)

Ursus Bogus, the world’s favourite photoshopped poley bear, reappears at the Conversation:

image

Good old Bogus. He does get around.
(Via MiltonG)
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SOMEBODY CALL THE ABC

Tim Blair – Wednesday, January 22, 2014 (10:03pm)

The Australian Navy has done it again:

image

(Via ARMJ)
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The ABC’s selective ear

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (4:16pm)

The ABC recently claimed it never reported mere allegations on matters of public importance- which it defined in this case as the involvement of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the creation of a slush fund for her then boyfriend:
For instance, here’s part of one ABC letter to a viewer: 
Reporting that the prime minister of the nation is under police investigation is an enormously significant call to make. It cannot be made on supposition, on rumour, or on hearsay… 
According to The Australian they’ve been collecting files but you would expect any police investigation to gather up this sort of primary documentation. That does not mean Ms Gillard is under investigation. For all we know, the investigation could be into Ralph Blewitt, or Bruce Wilson or Slater & Gordon or any number of other individuals and entities. 
Here’s another:
The ABC is aware of these statements but we do not at this stage believe it warrants the attention of our news coverage. To the extent that it may touch tangentially on a former role of the Prime Minister, we know The Australian newspaper maintains an abiding interest in events 17 years ago at the law firm Slater & Gordon, but the ABC is unaware of any allegation in the public domain which goes to the Prime Minister’s integrity. 
Had the ABC made some calls it would have found out that the police investigation does indeed include in its scope the activities of Gillard, who insists she did nothing wrong.
Now let’s contrast.
This week the ABC has had not the slightest hesitation in reporting - at great length and with great vehemence - improbable allegations that our navy tortured boat people:
Yesterday, [the ABC] reported unproven claims that Australian navy personnel mistreated asylum-seekers by forcing them to grasp a hot engine in a boat turnback operation, causing “severe” burns. An “exclusively” supplied video showed minor hand damage. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison categorically denied the claims and later reports suggest the burns occurred before the vessel was intercepted, possibly as the vessel was sabotaged. Our navy personnel have, after all, saved the lives of hundreds of asylum-seekers. ABC bulletins also ran strongly with strident criticism from New York-based Human Rights Watch, labelling Australia’s measures “abusive” and accusing the government of “demonising” asylum-seekers. The national broadcaster continues to provide uncritical amplification of this predictable venting, setting itself as the moral conscience of a nation with a brutal government and insensitive populace. 
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Reading Kipling

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (2:00pm)

I’m reading with huge enjoyment Rudyard Kipling’s Something of Myself, a memoir he left incomplete when he died. (The final words on the last. unfinished page, describing his office: “Left and right of the table were two big globes, on one of which a great airman had once outlined in white paint those air-routes to the East and Australia which were well in use before my death.")

As a teenaged journalist Kipling worked in British India, a land he’d been born in and loved. He knew soldiers and shopkeepers, Christians, Hindus and Muslims, and he knew what it took to rule and the men on whom that duty fell. He knew because he was there and he saw:
Later I described openings of big bridges and such-like, which meant a night or two with the engineers; floods on railways — more nights in the wet with wretched heads of repair gangs; village festivals and consequent outbreaks of cholera or small-pox; communal riots under the shadow of the Mosque of Wazir Khan, where the patient waiting troops lay in timber-yards or side-alleys till the order came to go in and hit the crowds on the feet with the gun-butt (killing in Civil Administration was then reckoned confession of failure), and the growling, flaring, creed-drunk city would be brought to hand without effusion of blood, or the appearance of any agitated Viceroy...
He saw from those early years how power worked, and how it seduced weak men from their even weaker principles:
One evening, while putting the paper to bed, I looked as usual over the [newpaper’s] leader. It was the sort of false-balanced, semi-judicial stuff that some English journals wrote about the Indian White Paper from 1932 to ‘34, and like them it furnished a barely disguised exposition of the Government’s high ideals. In after-life one got to know that touch better, but it astonished me at the time, and I asked my Chief what it all meant. He replied, as I should have done in his place; ‘None of your dam’ business,’ and, being married, went to his home. I repaired to the Club which, remember, was the whole of my outside world. 
As I entered the long, shabby dining-room where we all sat at one table, everyone hissed. I was innocent enough to ask; ‘What’s the joke? Who are they hissing?’ ‘You,’ said the man at my side. ‘Your dam’ rag has ratted over the Bill.’
It is not pleasant to sit still when one is twenty while all your universe hisses you. Then uprose a Captain, our Adjutant of Volunteers, and said: ‘Stop that! The boy’s only doing what he’s paid to do.’ The demonstration tailed off, but I had seen a great light. The Adjutant was entirely correct. I was a hireling, paid to do what I was paid to do, and—I did not relish the idea. Someone said kindly; ‘You damned young ass! Don’t you know that your paper has the Government printing-contract?’ I did know it, but I had never before put two and two together. A few months later one of my two chief proprietors received the decoration that made him a Knight. Then I began to take much interest in certain smooth Civilians, who had seen good in the Government measure and had somehow been shifted out of the heat to billets in Simla. I followed under shrewd guidance, often native, the many pretty ways by which a Government can put veiled pressure on its employees in a land where every circumstance and relation of a man’s life is public property. So, when the great and epoch-making India Bill turned up fifty years later, I felt as one re-treading the tortuous byways of his youth. One recognised the very phrases and assurances of the old days still doing good work, and waited, as in a dream, for the very slightly altered formulas in which those who were parting with their convictions excused themselves. Thus; ‘I may act as a brake, you know. At any rate I’m keeping a more extreme man out of the game.’ ‘There’s no sense running counter to the inevitable,’—and all the other Devil-provided camouflage for the sinner-who-faces-both-ways. 
Kipling was, of course, a conservative, like so many of the greatest writers. He knew the difference - moral and practical - between a man’s intentions and a man’s achievements, between a plan and its consequences, between a seeming and a doing. And in that difference he took the side of responsibility. A man owned his deeds.
I thought of today’s Leftists particularly - those furiously fighting for “compassionate” boat people policies that actually lured more than 1000 people to their deaths - when I read this excerpt:
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Laughing at you, Ben. And the more you abuse, the more we know you know you’re losing

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (12:55pm)

Global warming - propaganda

Abuse is what you resort to when the facts are against you. After all, there is no surer way to embarrass your foe in a debate than by proving him wrong.
So let’s see how, Ben Cubby, deputy editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, responds to my argument that yesterday’s article on Professor’s Chris Turney’s Antarctic disaster, while damning of the expedition leader, curiously omitted several highly relevant facts.
Here is what I wrote in introducing a excerpt from the Herald piece:
Sydney Morning Herald reporter Nicky Phillips is a warmist whose past reports on the Ship of Fools, which got stuck in Antarctic ice, failed to mention those on board had actually claimed to be studying global warming. 
Today she and co-reporter Colin Cosier play the same trick again.
They have written a long report essentially blaming expedition leader Chris Turney for the expensive disaster, but once again fail to note the people trapped in ice were warmists out to prove man was melting it.
Phillips and Cosier fail to even report Turney’s academic title – Professor of Climate Change – or that he is an adjunct at the University of New South Wales’Climate Change Research Centre. What makes this omission even stranger is that the Climate Change Research Centre, home of prominent climate alarmists such as professors Andy Pitman, Matthew England and Steve Sherwood, is listed as an official supporter of the expedition.

Get the impression that warmists are trying to distance themselves from this propaganda disaster, that has had sceptics around the world laughing?

I’ve already noted that sceptic Steve McIntyre has identified December 23 as the day when the expedition’s biggest blunders were made.Phillips and Cosier, who were on the Aurora Australis which picked up Turney’s team nearly three weeks ago, now add more damning detail on that day – detail that tends to make Turney the fall-guy.
I could have gone further, of course, and asked why the Sydney Morning Herald’s piece didn’t note the essential foolishness behind the expedition - how its leaders had falsely claimed global warming had melted sea ice around the world only to get stuck in sea ice on a continent with more of it than usual. But I was very reasonable.
So how does Cubby respond to my points - that the piece failed to note Turney was a professor of climate change backed by a centre of climate change on an expedition to track climate change when he got trapped by an absence of climate change? With facts and argument, or with abuse and misrepresentation?
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Sceptics talk facts, warmists just rage.
We are winning the debate and warmists such as Cubby have nothing left but venom.
UPDATE
A lot of warmists are keen to distance themselves and the global warming movement from Turney’s embarrassing expedition.
Before Turney got stuck in the sea ice he claimed was melting around the globe there were no complaints from the Australian and New Zealand organisations his website listed as supporters:
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Nor were there complaints from the organisations Turney thanked for their support or “official stamp of approval”:
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But now that Turney is the laughing stock of sceptics… Well, first there was this:
Tony Fleming, director of the Australian Antarctic Division tells Louise Maher the AAD wasn’t linked to the Australasian Antarctic Expedition despite an implication by the expedition head that he had an “official stamp of approval”.
Now this:
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Is Turney’s research into global warming conducted with any closer eye to detail?
UPDATE
The Kauri Museum is an official supporter? Why? 
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The return of the sceptic

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (11:51am)

Just six years ago the ABC’s Chaser team featured a map in their stage show indicating the whereabouts of the last sceptic in Australia. The single pink dot was placed right over my office.
That was just at the height of the warming madness, where few dared to express doubt and those who did were simply blanked from news coverage as blasphemers or random crazies.
But note, especially after 16 years of the planet failing to further warm as predicted, how scepticism has slowly gone mainstream. Respectable. A sign of independent thought.
Today two more examples. First this, from Don Aitkin, former vice chancellor of the University of Canberra, responding to a critic of sceptic Maurice Newman, the former ABC chairman:
Australia’s Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb ... is not a Nobel Prize winner, but he was an exceedingly able experimentalist, a vice-chancellor in two universities, a senior bureaucrat and someone who is most travelled in the corridors of power. I have known him for more than twenty-five years… 
The title of his op-ed is ’Surely CO2 is a culprit‘, and while he shouldn’t be blamed for it (it is usually the sub-editor who chooses the title for your essay, and I can’t recall ever being asked if I agreed when I had put in my work) the title does embody the whole spirit of the AGW scare: that there is a crime, and we know who dunnit. Professor Chubb’s essay carries through that theme. It is a rhetorical exercise, built around questions for which he doesn’t supply any answers, but for which the right answer is assumed, and will be obvious to any reader of the right persuasion.
Take this one. “We have pumped two trillion tonnes of a greenhouse gas, CO2, into our atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, at a rate faster than ever before. Why should we presume that it would have no effect?” The right answer is that we shouldn’t presume, and that the effects have been bad ones. Evidence? Well, I’m not aware of any substantial body of evidence that the effects have been bad ones, and the jury is still out on whether or not there have been any discernible effects at all that can be distinguished from natural variability....
There are six of these rhetorical questions, the kind that are put to you in cocktail party discussions. They are all part of the ‘precautionary principle’ approach to ‘climate change’, and their point is to put you on the defensive. In fact, the AGW scare is a hypothesis, and those who support it need to be able to defend it. The rest of us have no need of an alternative theory, nor are we obliged to answer these rhetorical questions.
The level of this contribution is really disappointing, given Professor Chubb’s undoubted intellect. Some of us, he says, aren’t worried that the planet’s temperature has gone up ‘by just a few tenths (0.9C) of a degree. I wonder if they’d be as sanguine if their core body temperature increased by the same few tenths of a degree’. How on earth is that comparison relevant? What if he’d made the same point about an increase in temperature in my house or my car? ...
What is really interesting is a passage towards the end, where he suggests that the ‘climate change’ debate should be ‘a healthy and constructive discussion based on all the empirical evidence, not bits of it…’ I and many others have been asking for that sort of discussion for years, and we might ask the Chief Scientist why he hasn’t initiated such a debate much earlier in his term. And why indeed is he talking that way now? My guess is that he can sense the shift in the winds. No one much is talking about ‘settled science’ any more in this field. The climate models have simply failed to predict the lack of significant warming despite the continual increase in CO2, and there is no obvious reason why the warming should resume its former trajectory. 
Then there’s the Facebook site of federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly:
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What 7.30 forgot to add that makes the Ship of Fools such a joke

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (9:20am)

Global warming - general

The ABC finally deals with the irony of the Ship of Fools being trapped by sea ice that the warmists on board claimed was actually meting away:
MATT PEACOCK: And, if Antarctic ice is really melting faster because of climate change, why then was there more sea ice in the bay where the ship became stuck?
TONY FLEMING: A huge iceberg has grounded in Commonwealth Bay region and the Mertz Glacier Tongue has been knocked off by that iceberg and that led to a buildup of sea ice over many years, so there were specific conditions in the Commonwealth Bay region that aren’t related to climate change.
This is disingenuous and misleading, to put it mildly. It fits the self-serving narrative put out by expedition leader Chris Turney that global warming is melting sea ice everywhere except - unfortunately - just the bit of sea he was sailing in:
”Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up,” the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said in a statement.
Here is what 7.30 last night failed to note in covering for the warming cause or giving Turney his chance to ramble and dissemble.
Fact: Total sea ice around the globe has expanded recently to above average levels:
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Fact: Antarctic sea ice has increased in far more areas than around Commonwealth Bay (red dot):
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Fact: The ice that trapped the Ship of Fools was not in Commonwealth Bay, trapped by an iceberg, but on the other side of the Mertz glacier:
The leader of the expedition, Chris Turney (also a secondary Climategate correspondent and co-signer of Lewandowsky’s multisignatory letter in the Conversation), claimed that the incident could not have been predicted. He said that they were trapped by a sudden “breakout” of multi-year ice ("fast ice") that had previously been part of the ice shelf and that there was no way that they could have anticipated this. Turney’s claim has been uncritically accepted by the climate community e.g. Turner of the British Antarctica Survey here. 
However, like other recent claims by Turney, this claim is bogus. In fact, Turney was trapped by sea ice that had been mobile throughout December 2013....  As discussed above, it seems beyond dispute that Turney was pinned by pack ice that was unstably perched to the northeast of Mertz Glacier and not by a sudden break of more or less ‘permanent’ shelf ice; that this “peninsula” of pack ice was highly exposed to the easterly gale that had already developed; and that heavy blowing of this (and other mobile ice) onto the southwest shore of the Mertz Glacier polynya was not only a possibility, but a probability, if not, near certainty.
The ABC’s report was again misleading, even peddling global warming scares while reporting on this disastrous expedition of global warming scientists.
The ABC failed in its report to note there has been no warming of the planet’s atmosphere in 16 years and sea ice around the world has expanded, not shrunk. These are the key points that make the Ship of Fools saga such an iconic story of global warming hysteria.
And of the media’s complicity. 
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Green power wilts in the heat

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (8:37am)

Alan Moran on the failure of green power in last week’s heatwave:
AEMO data shows that during heat wave conditions in the five days to 18 January this year, wind actually contributed 3 per cent of electricity supply across the Australian National Electricity Market.  Nobody knows the contribution of roof top solar but it could not conceivably have been more than one per cent. 
Overall, wind facilities amount to 3,300 megawatts of capacity, somewhat less than the Loy Yang brown coal power stations in Victoria or Macquarie Generation’s black coal facilities in the Hunter Valley.  Windmills produced at an average of 23 per cent of their capacity during the January heat wave.  This was below their year-long average of about 30 per cent because the hot spell, as is often the case, was characterised by still air…
The below par performance of windmills in high demand periods means they not only require a subsidy but are also less valuable than other plant because their availability is reduced when they are most needed and when the price is highest… Indeed, during the recent heat wave, wind power earned an average of $123 per megawatt hour in Victoria and $182 in South Australia while the average price was respectively $209 and $285 in the two states.
Investments in wind and other subsidised electricity generation, according to the renewable energy lobby group the Clean Energy Council, has been $18.5 billion.  By contrast, the market value of comparable generating capacity in Macquarie Generation coal plants is said to be only $2 billion and a brand new brown coal plant of 3,300 megawatt capacity would cost less than $10 billion. Wind aficionados claim that such costings do not take into account that wind is free whereas fossil fuel plants have to pay for their energy. But that is also untrue.  Wind plant maintenance is about $12 per megawatt hour which is more than the fuel plus maintenance costs of a Victorian brown coal power station. 
And the difference that all this expensive and unreliable green power has made to global warming?
About zero.
How insanely irrational our political class has become. 
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The depraved imagination of the Left

Andrew Bolt January 23 2014 (7:24am)

Many on the Left just want to believe our armed forces tortures and shoots directly at boat people, on the orders of evil Liberal politicians. So lurid is their fantasy that the ABC’s Daniel Golding can now barely distinguish between a democracy that safely stops boat people from coming - and drowning - and a totalitarian dictatorship which deliberately murders 6 million Jews:
Australia’s refugee policies should be compared, regularly and specifically, to Nazism and the Holocaust.
This vivid imagining by our Don Quixotes of the Left goes right to the top of the institutions they have captured. Here is Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs yesterday after the ABC showed her video of an asylum seeker with a burned hand who blamed our sailors for allegedly forcing him to hold a red-hot exhaust on his boat as punishment:
GILLIAN TRIGGS: Well, I have seen the very graphic pictures that you’ve produced, and they look horrific. We need to know the facts, I’m sure you and all your listeners would agree with that. We don’t know what the facts are, but at the moment things are looking very worrying. But at the same time I think we have to acknowledge that the Navy officials are very well trained, this is not the job they signed up for, they themselves are being traumatized by the ways in which they’re being required to treat people, so I frankly think we need objective, clear evidence.
Triggs tries hard to seem a searcher for “objective, clear evidence”, yet:
- she fails to note the Navy’s denial of the claims or the objective implausibility of our sailors torturing boat people in front of witnesses, including their own colleagues, with their captain and officers in an escorting ship.
- she falsely claims protecting our maritime borders from intrusion “is not the job [our Navy personnel] signed up for”.
- she claims without evidence that under the current policies sailors “themselves are being traumatized by the ways in which they’re being required to treat people”.
- she implies that the way our sailors are “being required to treat people” is indeed brutal.
Triggs’ imagination is running riot here.
Here are some counterfactuals for her - real facts to set against her imaginings of sailors tormented by the cruelties they must inflict on boat people under the orders of this heartless government.
- under Labor, more than a thousand boat people were lured to their deaths, and for a long time the Left simply looked away. Asked if her party took responsibility for these deaths, a consequence of the Left’s scrapping of our tough border laws in 2008. Greens child-Senator Sarah Hanson-Young airly declined: ”Accidents happen.” When I demanded Labor take responsibility for the dying, Greens leader Bob Brown demanded my resignation.
- this catastrophic failure to stop the boats and the drownings is what actually angered and potentially traumatised our sailors. As the Australian last year reported:
NAVY insiders say there is “a growing and burning anger” among sailors on the frontline as they struggle to respond to the spiralling number of deaths and sinkings flowing from the government’s failed asylum-seeker policies…
A senior source inside the navy’s Armidale-class patrol boat fleet told The Australian yesterday Defence would face a steep spike in the number of post-traumatic stress disorders as young sailors bore witness to desperate people drowning in front of them.
“Just try to picture pulling body parts out of the ocean, because that’s what happens to bodies in the water for a few days, they pull apart at the seams,” said the patrol boat insider, who asked not to be named for fear of losing their job..
The Australian spoke yesterday to navy insiders and navy psychologists who painted a grim picture of flagging morale and anger among crew members involved in Operation Resolute, the joint Customs/navy operation tasked with intercepting asylum-seeker boats.
“There is a growing and burning anger among many of them about the position they have been placed in,” said one insider, who has spoken to crew members involved in recent interceptions of asylum-seeker boats.“They have seen bodies out there, they have seen women and children in terrible situations, they can’t come away from this without some emotional distress.” 
- what navy personnel didn’t sign up for was to run a taxi service for boat people, regularly picking them up within 100km from the Indonesian coast and bringing them to Australia.
The quality of thought of the Left has deteriorated grotesquely. Imagining has replaced analysis. Fantasy is preferred over fact. Policies which kill boat people are preferred over ones which stop them. How the Left feels is judged to be of far more significance than what it actually achieves.
It is the morality of the chronic self-pleasurer. Of the child. 
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"The first step to getting something in life is that you not stay in the place you stand this moment"
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“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” - Matthew 7:7-8
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

January 22: Morning
"Son of man, What is the vine tree more than any tree, or than a branch which is among the trees of the forest?" - Ezekiel 15:2
These words are for the humbling of God's people; they are called God's vine, but what are they by nature more than others? They, by God's goodness, have become fruitful, having been planted in a good soil; the Lord hath trained them upon the walls of the sanctuary, and they bring forth fruit to his glory; but what are they without their God? What are they without the continual influence of the Spirit, begetting fruitfulness in them? O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that thou hast no ground for it. Whatever thou art, thou hast nothing to make thee proud. The more thou hast, the more thou art in debt to God; and thou shouldst not be proud of that which renders thee a debtor. Consider thine origin; look back to what thou wast. Consider what thou wouldst have been but for divine grace. Look upon thyself as thou art now. Doth not thy conscience reproach thee? Do not thy thousand wanderings stand before thee, and tell thee that thou art unworthy to be called his son? And if he hath made thee anything, art thou not taught thereby that it is grace which hath made thee to differ? Great believer, thou wouldst have been a great sinner if God had not made thee to differ. O thou who art valiant for truth, thou wouldst have been as valiant for error if grace had not laid hold upon thee. Therefore, be not proud, though thou hast a large estate--a wide domain of grace, thou hadst not once a single thing to call thine own except thy sin and misery. Oh! strange infatuation, that thou, who hast borrowed everything, shouldst think of exalting thyself; a poor dependent pensioner upon the bounty of thy Saviour, one who hath a life which dies without fresh streams of life from Jesus, and yet proud! Fie on thee, O silly heart!
Evening
"Doth Job fear God for nought?" - Job 1:9
This was the wicked question of Satan concerning that upright man of old, but there are many in the present day concerning whom it might be asked with justice, for they love God after a fashion because he prospers them; but if things went ill with them, they would give up all their boasted faith in God. If they can clearly see that since the time of their supposed conversion the world has gone prosperously with them, then they will love God in their poor carnal way; but if they endure adversity, they rebel against the Lord. Their love is the love of the table, not of the host; a love to the cupboard, not to the master of the house. As for the true Christian, he expects to have his reward in the next life, and to endure hardness in this. The promise of the old covenant was prosperity, but the promise of the new covenant is adversity. Remember Christ's words--"Every branch in me that beareth not fruit"--What? "He purgeth it, that it may bring forth fruit." If you bring forth fruit, you will have to endure affliction. "Alas!" you say, "that is a terrible prospect." But this affliction works out such precious results, that the Christian who is the subject of it must learn to rejoice in tribulations, because as his tribulations abound, so his consolations abound by Christ Jesus. Rest assured, if you are a child of God, you will be no stranger to the rod. Sooner or later every bar of gold must pass through the fire. Fear not, but rather rejoice that such fruitful times are in store for you, for in them you will be weaned from earth and made meet for heaven; you will be delivered from clinging to the present, and made to long for those eternal things which are so soon to be revealed to you. When you feel that as regards the present you do serve God for nought, you will then rejoice in the infinite reward of the future.
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Today's reading: Exodus 4-6, Matthew 14:22-36 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Exodus 4-6

Signs for Moses
1 Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The LORD did not appear to you'?"
2 Then the LORD said to him, "What is that in your hand?"
"A staff," he replied.
3 The LORD said, "Throw it on the ground."
Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the LORD said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 "This," said the LORD, "is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers--the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob--has appeared to you...."

Today's New Testament reading: Matthew 14:22-36

Jesus Walks on the Water
22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."
28 "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
29 "Come," he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"

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