Monday, July 11, 2016

Mon Jul 11th Todays News

The NSW Government is being criticized for banning greyhound racing. Some argue that animals will die as a result of the decision. Some argue that many will lose money as a result of the decision. But it is hard to tell if the complaints are motivated by concern for the animals or hatred for a decision made by a conservative government. Some have argued that 'only' 20% of the industry have been called corrupt. Were organised crime to have 20% of any industry, I'd want it cleaned up. But Greyhound racing cannot be cleaned up in NSW as not even the regulators know how. Animal lives don't matter. No one would say a thing if the industry produced meat for human consumption. It is terrible for honest people who miss out on their income. No conservative government would lightly close industry. Margaret Thatcher closed coal mining in UK, but only after it became more expensive to mine than the UK received in returns. The problem for those in the industry is that they turned a blind eye to corruption. There is a cost to that. Malcolm Turnbull owns greyhounds. 

 For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.  
=== from 2015 ===
Italian consulate in Egypt is bombed with at least one killed. The consulate had not been open when it was bombed by what is thought to have been a car bomb at the end of Ramadan. 

FBI admits it failed to prevent gun killer from legally obtaining gun. The killer who went to a church with his weapon and killed several members of the congregation including a senator, had received his gun license in error after a check failed to show his arrest for drug charges. Without the gun, his attack would not have been as successful. He was also motivated by the flag of the Confederates from the Civil War, as have been a large number of bigots and haters through the ages.

Former Greek treasurer exemplifies debt issues. He calls for Greece to take on more debt she'll never repay. He is taking a day off parliament to go to the airport to send his daughter to Australia to live a good life she cannot have in debt laden Greece. 

ABC said to be independent of the government. Imagine how much it would cost if it were dependent on the government

Laurie Oakes who had called for Mr Abbott to resign is now calling for Mr Shorten to resign. 

Australia has a law against free speech which prevents discussion of a proposed constitutional amendment. Section 18c of the racial vilification act prevents full discussion of the important issue. But one thing should be obvious; Australia does not need an apartheid constitution which recognises race. 

Omar Sharif dies at age 83. From Lawrence of Arabia through the Last Valley, Sharif was a versatile actor who spoke English perfectly, as well as a half dozen other languages. He loved playing Bridge and achieved greatness in much he touched. He never remarried after he lost his wife, saying he never loved another woman. Earlier this year he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. 

In 472, after being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius was captured in the St. Peter's Basilica and put to death. 911, signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple and Rollo of Normandy. 1174, Baldwin IV, 13, became King of Jerusalem, with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli as regent and William of Tyre as chancellor. 1302, Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) – a coalition around the Flemish cities defeated the king of France's royal army. 1346, Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, was elected King of the Romans.

In 1405, Ming admiral Zheng He set sail to explore the world for the first time. 1476, Giuliano della Rovere was appointed bishop of Coutances. 1576, Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland. 1616, Samuel de Champlain returned to Quebec. 1735, Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979. 1740, Pogrom: Jews were expelled from Little Russia. 1750, Halifax, Nova Scotia was almost completely destroyed by fire. 1789, Jacques Necker was dismissed as France's Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille. 1796, the United States took possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty. 1798, the United States Marine Corps was re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.

In 1801, French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovered another 36 comets, more than any other person in history. 1804, a duel occurred in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. 1833, Noongar Australian aboriginal warrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, was killed. 1848, Waterloo railway station in London opened. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempted to invade Washington, D.C. 1882, the British Mediterranean Fleet began the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the Anglo-Egyptian War. 1889, Tijuana, Mexico, was founded. 1893, the first cultured pearl was obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto. Also 1893, a revolution led by the liberal general and politician, José Santos Zelaya, took over state power in Nicaragua. 1895, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière demonstrated movie film technology to scientists. 1897, Salomon August Andrée left Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashed and died.

In 1906, Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. 1914, Babe Ruth made his debut in Major League Baseball. Also 1914, USS Nevada (BB-36) was launched. 1919, the eight-hour day and free Sunday became law for workers in the Netherlands. 1920, in the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decided to remain with Weimar Germany. 1921, a truce in the Irish War of Independence came into effect. Also 1921, the Red Army captured Mongolia from the White Army and established the Mongolian People's Republic. Also 1921, former President of the United States William Howard Taft was sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices. 1922, the Hollywood Bowl opened. 1924, Eric Liddell won the gold medal in 400m at the 1924 Paris Olympics, after refusing to run in the heats for 100m, his favoured distance, on the Sunday 1930, Australian cricketer Donald Bradman scored a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England. 1934, Engelbert Zaschka of Germany flew his large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft, about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take-off. 1936, the Triborough Bridge in New York City was opened to traffic.

In 1940, World War II: Vichy France regime was formally established. Philippe Pétain became Prime Minister of France. 1943, Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Volhynia) peak. Also 1943, World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily – German and Italian troops launched a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily. 1947, the Exodus 1947 headed to Palestine from France. 1950, Pakistan joined the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank. 1957, Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherited the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismai'li worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III. 1960, France legislated for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina) and Niger. Also 1960, Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga broke away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published, in the United States. 1962, first transatlantic satellite television transmission. Also 1962, Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announced lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.

In 1971, Copper mines in Chile were nationalised. 1972, the first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky started. 1973, Varig Flight 820 crashed near Paris, France on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA banned smoking on flights. 1977, Martin Luther King, Jr. was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 1978, Los Alfaques disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashed and exploded at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists. 1979, America's first space station, Skylab, was destroyed as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. 1990, Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada began. 1995, the Srebrenica massacre was carried out. 2006, Mumbai train bombings: Two hundred nine people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India. 2012, astronomers announced the discovery of Styx, the fifth moon of Pluto.
From 2014
Those following Vikings and the story of Ragnar Lodbrok would be interested to know that on this day in 911, his brother, Rollo, signed the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. It meant the creation of the duchy of Normandy and directly led to Rollo being the ancestor of today's Queen. Another signatory was the king of France, called Charles the Simple. The treaty meant Rollo would oppose other Viking assaults on French land. 

China sent a fleet of ships on a journey of discovery on this day in 1405. They would discover America and achieve many great things. But China was very big then too, and viewed herself, correctly, as the centre of world power, and so exploration was not a long term agenda. Europe became great explorers as they tried to find new ways to get to China. 

In 1796, The US took Detroit from Britain under treaty. In 1804, under a Democrat style President, Vice President Aaron Burr duelled with his political opponent Alexander Hamilton, killing him. But no one wanted to chase a Democrat over an illegal killing. In 1833, Aboriginal man Yagan, accused of killing settlers, was killed. His head was displayed in England as a curiosity. Finally it was returned to Australia and buried in ceremony in 2010. 1848, Waterloo Station opened. 1895, two brothers, August and Louis Lumiere demonstrate movie film to scientists. 1914, Babe Ruth debuts in Major League Baseball. 1921, former US President Taft was appointed as Chief justice to the US High Court, the only person ever to serve in both positions. 1930, Donald Bradman scored 309 runs in a day in a test match. The Exodus 1947 left from France to Palestine. 1960, Harper Lee, descended from General Lee, published To Kill a Mockingbird. 1962, Nasa announced project Apollo. 1972, Bobby Fisher squared off against Spassky for the world chess championship. 1995, Srebrenica massacre. Born on this day in 1274 is Robert the Bruce, 1653, Sarah Goode, 1767 John Quincy Adams, 1899 EB White, 1916 Gough Whitlam and in 1950, Bonnie Pointer. 
Historical perspective on this day
In 472, after being besieged in Rome by his own generals, Western Roman Emperor Anthemius was captured in the St. Peter's Basilica and put to death. 911, signing of the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between Charles the Simple and Rollo of Normandy. 1174, Baldwin IV, 13, became King of Jerusalem, with Raymond III, Count of Tripoli as regent and William of Tyreas chancellor. 1302, Battle of the Golden Spurs (Guldensporenslag in Dutch) – a coalition around the Flemish cities defeated the king of France's royal army. 1346, Charles IV, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, was elected King of the Romans.

In 1405, Ming admiral Zheng He set sail to explore the world for the first time. 1476, Giuliano della Rovere was appointed bishop of Coutances. 1576, Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland. 1616, Samuel de Champlain returned to Quebec. 1735, Mathematical calculations suggest that it is on this day that dwarf planet Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979. 1740, Pogrom: Jews were expelled from Little Russia. 1750, Halifax, Nova Scotia was almost completely destroyed by fire. 1789, Jacques Necker was dismissed as France's Finance Minister sparking the Storming of the Bastille. 1796, the United States took possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty. 1798, the United States Marine Corps was re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.

In 1801, French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons made his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovered another 36 comets, more than any other person in history. 1804, a duel occurred in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. 1833, Noongar Australian aboriginalwarrior Yagan, wanted for the murder of white colonists in Western Australia, was killed. 1848, Waterloo railway station in London opened. 1864, American Civil War: Battle of Fort Stevens; Confederate forces attempted to invade Washington, D.C. 1882, the British Mediterranean Fleet began the Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt as part of the Anglo-Egyptian War. 1889, Tijuana, Mexico, was founded. 1893, the first cultured pearl was obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto. Also 1893, a revolution led by the liberal general and politician, José Santos Zelaya, took over state power in Nicaragua. 1895, brothers Auguste and Louis Lumièredemonstrated movie film technology to scientists. 1897, Salomon August Andréeleft Spitsbergen to attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon. He later crashed and died.

In 1906, Murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in the United States, inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. 1914, Babe Ruth made his debut in Major League Baseball. Also 1914, USS Nevada (BB-36) was launched. 1919, the eight-hour day and free Sunday became law for workers in the Netherlands. 1920, in the East Prussian plebiscite the local populace decided to remain with Weimar Germany. 1921, a truce in the Irish War of Independence came into effect. Also 1921, the Red Army captured Mongolia from the White Army and established the Mongolian People's Republic. Also 1921, former President of the United States William Howard Taft was sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices. 1922, the Hollywood Bowl opened. 1924, Eric Liddell won the gold medal in 400m at the 1924 Paris Olympics, after refusing to run in the heats for 100m, his favoured distance, on the Sunday 1930, Australian cricketerDonald Bradman scored a world record 309 runs in one day, on his way to the highest individual Test innings of 334, during a Test match against England. 1934, Engelbert Zaschkaof Germany flew his large human-powered aircraft, the Zaschka Human-Power Aircraft, about 20 meters at Berlin Tempelhof Airport without assisted take-off. 1936, the Triborough Bridge in New York City was opened to traffic.

In 1940, World War II: Vichy France regime was formally established. Philippe Pétainbecame Prime Minister of France. 1943, Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galiciaby the Ukrainian Insurgent Army within the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Volhynia) peak. Also 1943, World War II: Allied invasion of Sicily – German and Italian troops launched a counter-attack on Allied forces in Sicily. 1947, the Exodus 1947 headed to Palestine from France. 1950, Pakistan joined the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank. 1957, Prince Karim Husseini Aga Khan IV inherited the office of Imamat as the 49th Imam of Shia Imami Ismai'li worldwide, after the death of Sir Sultan Mahommed Shah Aga Khan III. 1960, France legislated for the independence of Dahomey (later Benin), Upper Volta (later Burkina) and Niger. Also 1960, Congo Crisis: The State of Katanga broke away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published, in the United States. 1962, first transatlantic satellite television transmission. Also 1962, Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announced lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.

In 1971, Copper mines in Chile were nationalised. 1972, the first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky started. 1973, Varig Flight 820 crashed near Paris, France on approach to Orly Airport, killing 123 of the 134 on board. In response, the FAA banned smoking on flights. 1977, Martin Luther King, Jr. was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 1978, Los Alfaques disaster: A truck carrying liquid gas crashed and exploded at a coastal campsite in Tarragona, Spain killing 216 tourists. 1979, America's first space station, Skylab, was destroyed as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. 1990, Oka Crisis: First Nations land dispute in Quebec, Canada began. 1995, the Srebrenica massacre was carried out. 2006, Mumbai train bombings: Two hundred nine people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India. 2012, astronomers announced the discovery of Styx, the fifth moon of Pluto.
=== 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.
===
Thanks to Warren for this advice on watching Bolt
Warren Catton Get this for your PC or MAC https://www.foxtel.com.au/foxtelplay/how-it-works/pc-mac.html Once you have installed it start it up and press Live TV you don't need a login to watch Sky News!
===
I am publishing a book called Bread of Life: January. 

Bread of Life is a daily bible quote with a layman's understanding of the meaning. I give one quote for each day, and also a series of personal stories illustrating key concepts eg Who is God? What is a miracle? Why is there tragedy?

January is the first of the anticipated year-long work of thirteen books. One for each month and the whole year. It costs to publish. It (Kindle version) should retail at about $2US online, but the paperback version would cost more, according to production cost.If you have a heart for giving, I fundraise at gofund.me/27tkwuc
===
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
Happy birthday and many happy returns George Ale, LindaBoo Hoo, Brenda Devine, Berni Love, Brenda Saffara and SLW (nee B). Born on the same day, across the years. In 1833, Noongar warrior Yagan, wanted for leading attacks on white colonists in Western Australia, was killed, becoming a symbol of the unjust and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia by colonial settlers. 1921, Former President of the United States William Howard Taft was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, making him the only person to ever hold both positions. 1943, In a massive ethnic cleansing operation, units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army attacked various Polish villages in the Volhynia region of present-day Ukraine, killing the Polish civilians and burning those settlements to the ground. 1991, Shortly after takeoff from King Abdulaziz International Airport, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 caught fire in mid-flight and crashed, killing all 261 occupants on board. 2011, An explosion at the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base killed 12 people, including the head of the Cyprus Navy, making it the worst peacetime military accident in Cypriot history. People will die, but it is how we live that counts. Taft was unique. Nowadays, a President's statements would prevent them from being considered impartial. But then, the crucible of your lives have fashioned unique people equipped to rise and reign.
Deaths
Woodblock print of Zheng He's ships
I look forward to our treasure voyage. That VP was a burr on democracy. Alexandria should put this in her library. Vichy sounds fishy. We could have saved some, had the UN not interfered. Let's party. 
===

LET’S RACE JUNKIES

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (9:09pm)

From next July, there will be no imaginable circumstance in Sydney that could be described in the following way:
“Three guys went out for a late-night drink after an evening at the  greyhound track.”
The word “guys” is already under attack following a ruling from Australian of the Year David Morrison, who believes it indicates sexism. Late-night drinks? Forget that, thanks to the NSW government’s lockout laws and the enforced closure of bottle shops at 10pm. And now greyhound racing is to be banned as part of the government’s continuing war on the working class.
For now, at least, evenings remain legal. But here’s a circumstance that presently applies in NSW, and will for the foreseeable future:
“Three members of the LGBTI community went to the heroin injection room in Kings Cross.”
That’s Sydney for you, where shooting up in our heroin injection room is perfectly acceptable but racing some dishlickers is soon to be against the law. No to dog tracks, yes to track marks.
The sheer perversion of this is made even clearer by the fact that Sydney’s inner-city junkie facility actually bans smoking. Bad for your health, apparently. Here, have a fresh needle so you can inject whatever combination of opiates and battery acid you just bought.
Given the government’s priorities, there is one obvious way to utilise the more than 30 greyhound tracks around NSW. Let’s race junkies! They’re not very fast, but this would be guaranteed to cut down on live baiting.
===

POPULATION NEUTRALISED

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (7:25pm)

A press release from the Climate Media Centre: 
Renewable energy entrepreneurs have welcomed the South Australian Government’s promise to spend $3.6million to help Adelaide become the world’s first carbon neutral city, saying the commitment will boost the local economy.
The funding enables governments, businesses, property owners and residents to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make Adelaide a world leader. 
They’re not barrels. They’re long-term carbon dioxide containment units.
===

ROAD TO NOWHERE

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (3:42pm)

They’re a common sight at race tracks all over the world. Rich old guys in Ferraris who want to discover what their expensive Italian toys are capable of on a closed circuit.
They quickly discover that howling into corners at speeds beyond 200km/h is a little more challenging than second-gear posing around Double Bay.
For one thing, the hot younger wife isn’t in the passenger seat wearing $400 Prada sunglasses and surrounded by bags of designer shopping. Instead she’s trackside in a designer parka watching her husband get overtaken by kids in cheap but rapidly driven hatchbacks.
Even with their silver hair concealed by brand-new crash helmets, these wealthy older types are easy to detect. In slow corners they’re always too fast. In fast corners, way too slow. They miss apexes and braking points. They cannot judge the moment at which grip turns to slide.
That’s why there is another common sight at racetracks all over the world. Rich old guys standing next to their wrecked Ferraris, wondering how much it will cost to repair all that panel damage.
Our Prime Minister is a lot like some of those cashed-up weekend track warriors. Malcolm Turnbull looked great when he was tooling around Sydney’s eastern suburbs late last year behind the Liberal Party’s wheel, waving to all of his fans at Fairfax and the ABC.
Even many senior Labor figures privately conceded that there was no way the great Mal could be beaten.
They forgot the last time Turnbull was at the Liberal Party’s controls, as opposition leader from September 2008 until December 2009. Initially, Turnbull enjoyed substantial goodwill from voters.
Less than one year later, however, Turnbull had slammed the Liberal machine into a fence. It took Tony Abbott four long years and two election campaigns to straighten the frame and get things tracking square.
At which point Turnbull again took over.
(Continue reading Road to Nowhere.)
UPDATE. Malcolm Turnbull can’t even drive a pram:

===

LIFE IN AN EU COUNTRY

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (2:50pm)

That was then: 
More than a year after France legislated a 35-hour week, the economy is flourishing, unemployment is falling, consumer confidence has hit a historic high and most French say their lifestyle has improved. 
This is now: 
France’s employment minister Michel Sapin has admitted the country is “totally bankrupt” …
The comments came as President Hollande attempts to improve the image of the French economy after pledging to reduce the country’s deficit by cutting spending by $88 billion over the next five years and increasing taxes by $29 billion. 
Still, at least they’re having fun.
(Via Andy M. Currency adjusted to Australian figures.)
UPDATE. A more recent piece on France’s economic and political grief.
===

CAN’T KEEP TEXAS DOWN

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (1:48pm)

About 25 years ago I wandered into a McDonald’s in downtown Dallas. Before ordering I made a trip to the bathroom, as our American friends call it.
This turned out to be a mistake. Two large gentlemen — large black gentlemen, as it happens — were waiting inside. One blocked the door. The other demanded money. I have no idea if they were armed, but I wasn’t in much of a position to argue.
As I looked down to retrieve my wallet, I noticed that one of my captors wore impressive alligator skin footwear. “Nice shoes,” I said, which seemed a reasonable comment.
“Thank you!” he answered brightly. Noticing my accent, we chatted briefly about Australia. He’d once visited when he was in the US Navy. Then he got down to business. “The money,” he reminded me.
They didn’t steal my credit cards and obligingly let me keep enough to buy lunch. So I did. The entire experience was so non-traumatic that I ate my burger just a few tables away from where I’d been robbed. In Dallas, a famously welcoming place, even thieves are polite.
I’ve been back to Dallas many times since, always staying in the downtown area. Last week, those wide streets became a shooting gallery for vicious anti-white racist Micah Johnson, who murdered five police officers and severely injured several others.
Those officers were in attendance at a large Black Lives Matter protest rally. This was not a violent or ill-tempered event. It did not occur in a ghetto. Dallas is almost completely integrated, as was shown in photographs posted by the Dallas police website. Black and white officers happily posed alongside friendly protesters.
That’s the Dallas I know, and it is why I’ll be back. 
(Continue reading Can’t Keep Texas Down.)
UPDATE. A US reader emails: 
Your description of Dallas and its people is 100% correct. My wife and I moved here from California three years ago and the first thing we noticed was the incredible friendliness of the people.
Let me know next time you’re coming to Big D and I’ll gladly buy you a cuppa.
Regards, 
Jim 
It’s a deal, friend.
===

MONDAY NOTICEBOARD

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (12:23pm)

We’d all be wide-eyed and happy if life was like Cheers. As well, we could all do with a Cornelius looking over our shoulders.
UPDATE. It begins: 
An animal welfare group has called for an inquiry into the horseracing industry, saying like greyhound racing, thousands of animals are killed because they are deemed uncompetitive. 
UPDATE II. Speaking of uncompetitive, here’s the SMH’s Tim Dick: 
As a victory for animal rights, the demise of dog racing also provides a lesson for agriculture, one which it should heed given how many times the live export industry has been warned.
Crowding cattle onto ships for long trips only to be killed on arrival is cruel in itself, and too often those which make it to foreign slaughterhouses are killed in a way most Australians find repugnant.
While the live export industry is worth over $800 million a year, it represents just 3 per cent of Australia’s farm exports, according to a 2014 report by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences. 
Remember how Fairfax staffers screamed about redundancies? They represent a great deal less than 3 per cent of the Australian economy, but the rules are different when their jobs are on the line.
===

TURNBULL ABOVE POLITICS, BELOW SATIRE

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (3:27am)

The Australian‘s Caroline Overington: 
With Turnbull you get the impression that, for a politician, he thinks he’s a bit above politicking …
A week on from the poll, he has made plain that he knows who is to blame for the Coalition’s terrible showing. It’s Shorten, obviously. 
If only people would do the right thing and let Malcolm run unopposed. The PM is basically Australia’s version of dumb rich kid Bobby Newport:

Certain patterns are now clear. Mark Kenny recalls Turnbull’s lame performance when campaigning for an Australian republic 
Despite the committee’s inclusion of people with extensive direct political experience, Turnbull gave the impression it was his way or the highway.
“He wanted to stay above the fray,” said an insider from the time.
“We were fighting with one arm behind our backs, because Malcolm insisted on a level of intellectual argument … we couldn’t mention the royal family, we were getting slammed,” revealed another.
The similarities with his election campaign just run – albeit nearly 18 years later – are plain. Not least the unhappy process of starting out and going steadily backwards. 
Turnbull subsequently blamed John Howard. It’s always someone else’s fault.
===

ABE’S VEGEMITE CRUNCHLETTES

Tim Blair – Monday, July 11, 2016 (3:18am)

These are surprisingly great:

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On The Bolt Report and radio tonight - Milo Yiannopoulos!

NewsCentralVictoria2 July 11 2016 (11:54am)

On The Bolt Report on Sky News Live at 7pm tonight:
Editorial: the race war.
My guests:
Milo Yiannopoulos, gay activist and freedom fighter.  The reader anticipation builds!

Peta Credlin on how Turnbull can survive or not.

Former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa.
Podcasts of the show here. Facebook page here. 
On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
The race war in the US. Greyhounds.
Listen live here. Talkback:  131 873.  Listen to all past shows here.
===

I’m not sure this deters the Apex gang

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (11:18am)

A few chances too many already?
AN Apex Gang teen on a string of serious charges has been given a stern warning by a magistrate that he wouldn’t “get an endless number of chances”.
The 15-year-old was already on bail facing charges of threatening to kill, armed robbery and unlawful assault after a seven month crime spree, including affray over the Moomba riots.
But he was in a Children’s Court for a completely separate matter — accused of a midnight carjacking in Preston on July 5, where a woman was approached as she sat in her car outside her home.
A magistrate found there wasn’t enough evidence to remand the teen over the carjacking because he was only seen by police in the stolen Mitsubishi Magna two days later…
The court heard the 15-year-old had just come from a meeting with his Youth Justice officer before he was arrested at McDonalds, and claimed to have caught the train there despite being seen by police getting out of the stolen car…

On December 12, the same boy had been charged with making threats to kill when he was asked to leave a Queen St store after arriving with four mates.
Staff recognised him for stealing previously and he was asked to leave, the court was told…

Six days later, on December 18, the 15-year-old was accused over an armed robbery. It was alleged he was among 15 males of African descent who surrounded a victim, assaulted him with a garden stake then stole items at South Morang train station.
On January 3, he was accused of being among a group of six or seven African youths who assaulted a victim “with a large rock” on a tram…

But without strong enough evidence to the carjacking charges, the teen was granted bail to attend a basketball camp over the weekend.
Who let them in? Who protects the citizens from the consequences?
UPDATE
Same questions here:

Two men who were part of the ‘mass frenzy’ of sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve grinned and cheered outside court yesterday after only being handed suspended sentences.
The Iraqi man and an Algerian were found guilty for their behaviour on New Year’s Eve in the city. They were the first of dozens of men to answer for sex crimes although several men have been found guilty of robbery on the night…

The judge said the duo acted like ‘animals’ towards their victims…
The 21-year-old Iraqi, known as Hussain A, was given a one year suspended jail term. Hussein A. had kissed a young woman against her will and then licked her face… He was found guilty of being an accomplice to a sexual assault carried out by a group of around 20 men..
An Algerian, Hassan T was also found guilty of being an accomplice to a sexual assault carried out by a group of around 20 men.
The 26-year-old told a man who was walking with two female victims ‘Give me the girls, give me the girls - or you’re dead.’.. Hassan T was also handed a one-year suspended jail term.
Hassan T has been in Germany since autumn 2014, Hussein A. since September 2015…
Both the accused took pictures with their two victims before the sexual assaults. The two women broke down and wept while testifying against them.
UPDATE
Once again, the police refused to give a description of the offenders, although this time - in their defence - they were not actually after public help to find them:

Police have arrested four teens in relation to an alleged aggravated burglary and theft of motor vehicle at Williams Landing yesterday… It’s alleged the car was stolen during an aggravated burglary at an address in Davenport Drive, Williams Landing about 4.30am yesterday morning.
But a photograph of one of the arrested youths again tell the story. This seems part of an incredible crime wave involving the usual refugee community.
(Thanks to reader Terry.) 
===

Can we mention the children or not?

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (11:15am)

British Conservative Andrea Leadsom, running for the leadership is told to apologise for claiming that having children would make her a better PM:
Genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.
But no one asked Labor leader Bill Shorten to apologise:
I’m a father now – I share a connection when parents ask about their kids that I realistically didn’t fully understand or appreciate before.
No fuss from the Left at this vicious attack from one of their own against a conservative woman who has spoken movingly of her own struggle to have children:
So who do people think they’re impressing by using the term “bedwetter” as an insult? Then again such a petty vindictive term belongs perfectly in this hyperbolic, mean-spirited political age. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two people to use the term this week – Peta Credlin and Alan Jones – don’t have children.
Not the principle but the side.
(Thanks to reader Peter H.) 
===

Labor must help the Liberals to save us

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (11:07am)

Chris Mitchell warns that the country’s finances are in deep trouble and it’s time Labor was held to account for its opportunistic vandalism:
[N]ow about half of all Australian voters receive more in government payments than they shell out in tax. Young journalists push the cause of higher welfare as though they were social workers…
Time for some home truths for reporters, editors and news ­directors: every time a left wing jour­nalist or Labor MP claims the budget has deteriorated more ­rapidly since the Coalition took power, remember this.
Wayne Swan, who in his 2012 budget speech claimed to be announcing four surpluses, never faced falling revenue after the GFC. He was simply unable to contain spending growth, which was rising even faster than his booming China receipts…
The Coalition faced real declining revenue because of the collapse of iron ore and coal prices in 2014-15…
Shorten and his Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen ... went to the election with higher deficits, higher spending and higher borrowing. How can reporters all last week have allowed Labor MPs to warn of imminent budget blocking tactics when only a week earlier Labor accepted $30 billion of so-called zombie cuts? Will reporters now let Labor get away with blocking savings it counted in its own election costings?
Do reporters know the Medicare rebate freeze Shorten claims is the basis for his Medicare scare was introduced by Labor in its 2013 budget? Are reporters going to let Labor continue to claim the government, which has presided over the highest bulk-billing rates in the history of Medicare, has cut $57bn from health when Labor ­itself only committed $2bn more to health than the Coalition?

(Thanks to reader Tony Thomas.) 
===

End this racist war on whites

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (10:52am)

The politics of race, three

THE Dallas race murders are a warning to us: the Left’s hate campaign against whites is deadly dangerous.
In Dallas, a black racist, Micah Johnson, shot 12 people and killed five of them, all white and Latino police officers.
Before he was killed, Johnson told police negotiators he wanted to kill white people, especially white police.
His hatred is excused in many media reports as a reaction — almost understandable — to the shootings last week of two black men, including an armed robbery suspect, by white and Latino police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Take this reader’s comment published by Fairfax on Saturday: “If it leads to fewer shootings by police of African-Americans, then in a perverse way it was a statement worth making.”
But such grotesque excuse-making ignores three things.
First, Johnson hated whites before the two shootings that are said to have inspired his rampage.
Second, police in the US actually kill more whites than blacks.
And third: if there really is a race war, it is not of racist whites attacking blacks. It is blacks attacking whites.
(Read full column here.) 
===

Is Turnbull’s heart in this fight to come?

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (10:22am)

Malcolm Turnbull has officially won the election. Tom Switzer:
So what must Turnbull do?…
It’s time ... Turnbull reached out to conservatives. The common mantra is that if only the star of Q&A had embraced a “progressive” agenda he would have won a convincing majority. This is hogwash.
About a million conservatives rejected the Coalition last weekend. If Turnbull had priced carbon emissions, softened border protection, rammed gay marriage through Parliament and followed Peter FitzSimons’ republican advice, he would have bled many more votes on his right. 
Turnbull could help protect that flank by swallowing his pride and inviting Abbott to a high-level cabinet post, just as Abbott himself accommodated a toppled Turnbull six years ago.
Unlike some others who have found themselves the victim of a political assassination, the former prime minister has not got bitter or harboured enmities. He has simply got on with life, and continues to enjoy rock-star status among the party grassroots in a way that Turnbull can only envy. Abbott still has a lot to offer public life…
Why not call on the states to ditch the politically correct Safe Schools syllabus program? Or encourage Muslim leaders to assimilate to Western cultural norms? The culture-war list is endless, and it would resonate with what Howard once called “the decent conservative mainstream of Australia"…
But this is a potentially deadly moment. If Turnbull plays his cards wrong, his public image will continue to deteriorate in a matter of months. And his colleagues will eventually take matters into their own hands.

I can’t see Turnbull offering Abbott a Cabinet post. Look what happened to Abbott when Abbott offered Turnbull one.
Nor can I see Turnbull prosecuting a culture war in a way to please conservatives. His heart would not be in it.
I suspect he will muddle on for more than a few months, given the weakness of resistance to him within the party room and the time needed still for the rehabilitation of Abbott.
In fact, I think many voters will give him a second chance to prove himself, and will support stability. The crunch will come with the steady erosion in the deficit and with the reckoning to come in next Budget
UPDATE
The retreat starts:

Malcolm Turnbull faces party pressure to review controversial superannuation changes amid fresh Treasury warnings about the need for budget savings after yesterday claiming election victory with an expected wafer-thin ­majority.
UPDATE Great line from Caroline Overington:
With Turnbull you get the impression that, for a politician, he thinks he’s a bit above politicking …
A week on from the poll, he has made plain that he knows who is to blame for the Coalition’s terrible showing. It’s Shorten, obviously.
Tim Blair:

If only people would do the right thing and let Malcolm run unopposed.
UPDATE
Turnbull is not steering straight already:
===

Treat women as talented, not as victims

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (8:58am)

One side has quotas for women, treating them as victims. The other side does not, insisting only on talent.
And guess which side is about to produce its second female leader, to the protests of the Left?

Left wing papers and feminist commentators are raging against yesterday’s news that the UK’s second female Prime Minister will again be a Tory.
“Don’t confuse the Conservatives’ embrace of female leaders with feminism”, declared a column in the Guardian. “A Tory leadership race between two women is not a feminist revolution”, read the heading in the New Statesman, describing the Tory leadership contest as a “panicked pound-shop Thatcher tribute band contest”.
The hard left, Corbyn supportive VICE magazine gave both candidates a “0/10” “feminist rating”, and concluded: “So who wins? Well not women, that’s for sure. Or anyone, from the looks of it.”
With Michael Gove being eliminated from the race to be the next leader of the Conservatives yesterday, we learnt that both the UK’s first and second female leader would come from the right wing of the Tory party. It’s been more than 25 years since Lady Thatcher became the most senior politician in the country.
The Labour party and Liberal Democrats, however, which both preach endlessly about women’s liberation and the ‘glass ceiling’, have not even come close to elevating a woman to the top job…
The Conservative women, however, have all made it to the top on merit alone, with neither Mrs. May, Mrs. Leadsom nor Mrs. Thatcher ever claiming to be a victim.
To discredit and dismiss their success, therefore, the feminist establishment rallied today to argue that they are the “wrong type” of women.
(Thanks to reader fulchrum.) 
===

The great conservative cause of our time: equal rights and no racism

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (8:33am)

Jennifer Oriel on the Left’s demonisation of Pauline Hanson:
The Lebanese Muslim Association called her a hate preacher. Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane compared her with Brexit and Donald Trump — all proof of xenophobia and racism.
The leftist party line is settled; Hanson is racist and divisive. Three words come to mind. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Western civilisation has been transformed ... into a malformed neo-Marxist culture where minority groups manufactured for political purposes are bestowed with ...  often superior rights to their fellow citizens under discrimination and affirmative action measures…
We have arrived at a point in Western history where thought crimes justify a regime of codified prejudice that privileges manufactured minorities while censoring dissenters who dare cry the emperor has no clothes..
In the race case before the Federal Circuit Court, students were barred from a computer lab at the Queensland University of Technology because of their race. One would presume the prima facie case of race discrimination would be against the person who barred their access. But the staff member who turned the students away, indigenous woman Cindy Prior, filed a complaint against them under the Racial Discrimination Act…

[Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim] Soutphommasane ...  declined to comment on the QUT case as it is before the court, but cited “special measures” in a brief statement.
The commission promotes special measures as “positive actions” that “protect disadvantaged racial groups”. It justifies the measures “as an exception to the general rule that all racial groups must be treated the same"…
Equality or backlash. It’s our choice.
===

Race war: protesters against police violence attack more police

Andrew Bolt July 11 2016 (7:53am)

This is starting to look like a race war, with the perpetrators posing as victims, which gives them a licence to be as violent as they imagine their enemies:
Hundreds of protesters were arrested across the country and 21 cops injured in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Saturday night as demonstrations continued nationwide over police violence.
Around 102 protesters were taken into custody in Saint Paul, while more than 100 people were arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police in both cities said…
In Saint Paul, protesters blocked Interstate 94 and chanted the name of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old man who was fatally shot by a St. Anthony police officer in Falcon Heights on Wednesday…

Police said on Twitter that people on an overpass were “throwing objects at officers, dumping liquid on officers” and others were throwing rocks and a construction material called rebar. Police also said a molotov cocktail was thrown at officers.
There are reports that Castille was in fact an armed robbery suspect when pulled over.
More shootings at police:

… police came under fire in at least three states on Thursday and Friday, as protests over police use of force against black people escalated around the country.
A police officer in Ballwin, Missouri, remained in critical condition on Saturday, a day after he was shot during a traffic stop, St. Louis County Police said on Twitter.
In Georgia, an officer was ambushed and shot on Friday, and in Tennessee a man grazed a police officer with a bullet on Thursday when he opened fire on a hotel and a highway, killing a woman and wounded several others. 
===

FUNDING FORGOTTEN

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (6:17pm)

The Guardian‘s Katherine Murphy defines the ABC: 
… a broadcaster independent of government. 
Just as well. Imagine how much the ABC would cost us if it was government-dependent.
===

DOOM SENSED

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (6:00pm)

In February, Laurie Oakes – along with many, many others – forecast Tony Abbott’s demise: 
It is hard now to see him surviving for long.
His leadership has imploded dramatically. As a minister put it yesterday afternoon: “The reason is a sense of doom.”
That is, a deep feeling of hopelessness among Liberals about the hole the government finds itself in under Abbott. 
The Opposition Leader should think about making way for someone else because it is glaringly obvious that a change would greatly increase Labor’s prospects of winning the next election. 
Fairfax’s Jack Waterford is even more damning. Still, things could be worse for Shorten. If he’d conducted his AWU fundraising in the US, the Labor leader may have ended up in prison.
===

TWO DAYS AT 2.3 RUNS PER OVER

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (5:53pm)

If successful – and it’s an almighty if – Australia’s 412-run First Test victory chase will be the highest fourth innings winning total by an Australian team and the third-highest winning total in Test history.
===

HEAT-SEEKING LIFESTYLE

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (5:48pm)

When Sydney’s weather is too cold, global warming panic merchant Jonathan Holmes heads for sunny Cairns – where he encounters a near-episode of sudden-onset local warming.
===

YEARS OF SMEARS AND FEARS

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (5:40pm)

Last year: 
Muslim leaders accuse Tony Abbott of invoking politics of fear. 
This year: 
Bill Shorten has accused the government of “playing the politics of smear”. 
Shorten previously invoked the politics of beer. Of course, his Labor predecessor mastered the politics of ear.
===

POINTLESS FACT OF THE DAY

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (5:33pm)

Australia’s population now is around the same as the US population in 1850.
===

SCARED OF NOTHING

Tim Blair – Saturday, July 11, 2015 (3:24pm)

Climate scientists are scared and sad: 
Existential dread is fairly common among those who work on climate change on a daily basis … being a climate scientist is probably one of the most psychologically challenging jobs of the 21st century. 
Again with the exaggerations. According to British comedian Stewart Lee, humanity will be destroyed by an additional runway at Heathrow Airport: 
The destruction of all life on Earth is inevitable if fossil fuel use continues unabated. 
Imagine how much more frightened all of these people would be if climate change had ever actually hurt anybody.
(Via Roger B.)
===

Italian consulate in Cairo bombed

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (3:09pm)


Worrying development in Egypt, which was last week hit by a huge Islamic State attack in the Sinai Peninsula:
A loud blast was heard by residents of Cairo, Egypt, early on Saturday morning.  According to Twitter posts, a car bomb went off at the Italian consulate in Cairo.
The blast comes days after a bomb blast killed the country’s top public prosecutor… Some Twitter posts said that at least one person has been killed in Saturday’s blast. 
UPDATE
Heath Ministry official Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar told The Associated Press that at least one person was killed in the blast. 
An Egyptian security official said one civilian and one policeman were also injured. An Italian embassy official said the consulate was closed at the time of the explosion and no staff members were injured… The security official said the exact cause was still unclear. The state-owned Middle East News Agency quoted a security official as saying investigators are looking into whether an explosive device was placed under a car parked near the building.
===

Omar Sharif dies

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (1:56pm)

Alexandria-born actor Omar Sharif has died.
Was there a greater entry into our movie-watching than this?:
Another favourite:
With a message:
Fascinating interview with Sharif about the “very hard” David Lean, a man who regarded his actors as “obects” and how it was thus rather easy to “hate him for it”:
From the poet of Alexandria, CP Cavafy:
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. 
===

Is it healthy to have a law which muzzles debate on our Constitution?

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (8:29am)

From the newsletter of Liberal Senator Sean Edwards, this warning:
If we consider what most fundamentally distinguishes Western Civilisation from the cultural cavemen of the global islamist movement, it’s the free and forceful exchange of ideas and the way those ideas influence the evolution of our society. The recent [Liberals’] Federal Council raised once again the issue of Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act and its impact on reasonable debate in Australia… 
Historical examples are plenty but Section 18c also threatens the most important of debates here and now.
The Government plans to specifically recognise Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in the Constitution but discussion of who is and is not an Aboriginal person for the purpose of this amendment may well fall foul of the law. So Section 18c may literally prevent Australians from commenting freely on changes to their own Constitution…
Australia did not become the civilised, culturally advanced society that it is by chance or by having our thoughts vetted by the judiciary. We got here through an evolution of ideas, values and beliefs and having them validated or otherwise by the best test there is: public debate. That Federal Council passed a motion calling for removal of the words “offend” and “insult” from the Racial Discrimination Act will, I hope, inspire further attention to the matter from in the Parliamentary Liberal Party. 
The Senator’s full comments:

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Is it healthy to have a law which muzzles debate on our Constitution?'
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Bludging, borrowing Leftist bails - Greece’s problems explained

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (7:58am)

A perfect metaphor for what has brought Greece to its knees:
Greece’s former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, says family obligations will keep him away from Friday night’s parliament session to debate the government’s proposed reforms in return for a third bailout… 
Varoufakis tweeted that he would be spending the weekend with his daughter before she returns to Australia, where she lives. He sent parliament a letter saying he was voting in favor of the motion.
A Leftist paid a state salary skips work. He farewells his daughter to safety abroad as he votes to load Greece with more debt.
(Thanks to reader Low Profile.) 
===

On The Bolt Report tomorrow, July 12

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (7:47am)


On Channel 10 on Sunday:
Editorial:  The case against Bill Shorten after his royal commission disaster
My guests: Employment Minister Eric Abetz, former Labor Minister Gary Johns, political scientist Jennifer Oriel and Sharri Markson, media editor of The Australian.

So much to talk about, including Malcolm Turnbull - what’s he up to? And Tony Abbott - why has his recovery stalled? Plus the latest in the Government’s war on the ABC.
The videos of the shows appear here.

NOTE: The V8s on Sunday have forced changes to the schedule:
The 10am show will be on as usual everywhere except in Perth, where it will be shown on ONE.
The 3pm repeat will be shown everywhere on ONE, except in Perth, where it will be on Channel 10 at 4pm.. 
===

Will the same-sex marriage push destroy the right of churches to dissent?

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (7:25am)

Paul Kelly is rightly suspicious of the hidden agenda of many same-sex marriage activists:
The real issue is conceptually simple — it is whether same-sex marriage will deny conscience rights to much of the population…
This week ... Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, a strong supporter of same-sex marriage, began to confront the choice our society faces.
Wilson advanced two propositions… First, that none of the bills on same-sex ­marriage offers anything like the essential protection of religious freedom and individual conscience. And second, that individual belief and religious freedom must be seen as “equally important” as the right to same-sex ­marriage…
The legalisation of same-sex marriage means the laws of the state and the laws of the church will be in conflict over the meaning of the most important institution in society. This conflict between the civil and religious meaning of marriage will probably be untenable and marked by litigation, attempts to use anti-discrimination law and entrenched bitterness....
There should be no doubt, however, about the bottom line: the Australian parliament should not legislate the right to same-sex marriage on the altar of denying institutions and individuals the right to their conscience…
This raises the question about the real ideology of the same-sex marriage campaign. Is it merely to allow gays to marry? Or is its ultimate purpose to impose “marriage equality” across the entire society, civil and religious. Ideologies do not normally stop at the halfway mark.
... limiting religious exemptions to just pastors performing wedding ceremonies is completely inadequate. There is a wide range of other issues to be considered. Must religious colleges provide married housing to same-sex couples? Must churches and synagogues employ spouses in same-sex marriages even though this flouts their religious teaching? Must religious social-service agencies place children for adoption with same-sex couples?
Will religious institutions be penalised by losing government contracts, tax exemptions and access to public facilities? Will religious institutions and schools be penalised if they teach their own beliefs about marriage, thereby contradicting the state’s view of marriage? Or will the state laws via anti-discrimination legislation be mobilised to force the state’s view on to religious institutions? What of the provision of ser­vices? In much of the US a gay publicist can refuse to provide services for an anti-gay event. That is acceptable under the law. Can a person decline to provide services for a gay marriage, not because the person discriminates against gays but because they see the marriage as a religious event and therefore it defies their religious beliefs? 
===

On defending the indefensible Shorten

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (7:04am)

Age commentator Michael Gordon maintains the faith, and writes an amusingly Panglossian piece claiming Shorten may have actually emerged stronger from his royal commission filleting:
Bill Shorten’s already record-low poll ratings are set to take another hit, but the Labor leader’s immediate future is secure after his bruising encounter with Tony Abbott’s royal commission into union corruption. Shorten’s credibility has been tarnished, but he appears to have emerged from the two most harrowing days of his leadership mentally stronger, even if his standing in the electorate is weaker. 
If the overwhelming emotion was one of relief that his ordeal was over, at least for now, there was also the barely disguised satisfaction that, despite all the resources assembled against him, no case of illegality or corruption had been established. Yes, serious questions of conflict of interest over “side payments” to his former union have been pressed, but Shorten is satisfied that he has answered them, despite the commentators’ consensus that he failed the “pub test”.
Grace Collier excoriates Bill Shorten’s apologists:
In Australia, during workplace bargaining the boss can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the union without the workers knowing. None of this is a problem. In fact, it is common practice, widely accepted and perfectly normal, because some bosses like unions and are keen to support them financially. 
When a union receives secret money from the boss during wage negotiations, this is not a conflict of interest and will not affect their advocacy efforts because modern union officials can walk and chew gum at the same time.
The workers, even if they found out about the payments, wouldn’t care at all, even if the bargaining outcome was a terrible wages deal, a pay cut or job losses. If they found out, the workers would be proud because as union members they naturally all would be Labor voters and happy that, despite their personal losses, the secret money ended up with Labor.
Finally, none of this is illegal, the Liberals are much worse towards workers than Labor, this Heydon royal commission is all just Tony Abbott’s witch-hunt, Dyson Heydon is simply doing his job, which is the Prime Minister’s bidding to damage Bill Shorten politically, and anyway, all of the Opposition Leader’s alleged behaviour was in the past, before he entered parliament. Welcome to the bizarre logic of those defending Shorten. 
The ABC’s Barrie Cassidy, a former Labor advisor, mistakes the evidence in trying to excuse Shorten:
Shorten accepted a donation - a paid staffer - from a company that at the time was engaged with his union in pay negotiations… 
Shorten’s problem is compounded because the donation wasn’t declared until just before his appearance at the Royal Commission. But unless you believe the whole thing was deliberately covered up from the start - and some will - then it is not unreasonable that the declaration came when it did…
Shorten’s argument is that he only had cause to check on this particular donation because the Royal Commission had alerted him to it. That being the case, then the timing, as late as it was, is explained.
No, that isn’t Shorten’s argument at all, and that’s the problem. Dennis Shanahan explains the true timing:
Nor did Shorten disclose a similar payment direct from the AWU. But this was more than just a slip of the memory: the evidence before the commission showed that Shorten had known about the lack of disclosure for some time yet he did not inform the ALP (to tell the AEC) until Monday morning, 44 hours before he was to give evidence and eight years late. 
Jeremy Stoljar SC, counsel assisting the commission, made the point that the disclosure was made only after Shorten’s lawyers became aware the royal commission was aware of the donation and that steps were taken to disguise the nature of the payments.
As the ABC reported this week:
Mr Shorten said the incomplete disclosure was discovered when he was “going back and checking matters” in preparation for his royal commission appearance.

Those discoveries were made “weeks, maybe months” before the declaration was amended last week, he said, adding that he wanted to make sure the disclosure was done right the second time around. 
“Were you waiting to see whether this would emerge at the royal commission,” Mr Stoljar asked. “Not at all,” Mr Shorten replied. 
UPDATE
When the likes of Kim “Il” Carr and Brendan O’Connor are his noisiest defenders, Bill Shorten is close to friendless in the Labor movement.
Tony Walker cuts through Labor’s public spin:
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has endured a dreadful week on the witness stand of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, on top of a shocker of a month politically, during which colleagues cannot have regarded him as anything other than a liability. 
“Very damaging”, was the conclusion of one of Labor’s most senior and respected figures after monitoring the commission hearings…
“I would never have done any of these things,” says a respected former trade union leader of a deal in which the principal of Unibuilt, a labour hire company, paid “off the books” wages of Shorten’s campaign manager for the 2007 federal election, even as his company was negotiating an enterprise bargaining agreement with Shorten’s Australian Workers Union.
If this was not a conflict of interest it is hard to imagine what might constitute such a conflict…
AFR Weekend has canvassed opinion widely inside and outside the parliamentary Labor party over the past several weeks… Unhappiness with Shorten is pervasive and is far from related simply to this week’s royal commission hearings. His admission ... that he had lied to a radio talk show host about his role in Gillard’s undermining reinforced negative perceptions… The mood is one of resignation, even despair.
Simon Benson:
If Shorten was to fall, Labor is at serious risk of shifting even further to the Left, if anyone thought that were possible.  There are enough in the caucus to realise that this is an outcome that could not be ­contemplated. 
While some on the Left may be fantasising about Shorten’s personal destruction paving the way for Tanya Plibersek or Anthony Albanese, the NSW and Victorian Right won’t allow it to happen.  Shorten still has the loyalty of his party, even if for this ­reason alone, and even if it means carrying him through to an election no matter what the consequences will be.
But define “the party”. Is it the machine or the members? As in, the members who backed Albanese over Shorten by 60 per cent to 40?
UPDATE
Joe Hildbrand looks on the bright side:
Strangely, there are two things that will save Bill Shorten’s leadership and he has himself to thank for them both. The first is that he is already so unpopular his stocks can’t fall much lower. The second is that he doesn’t have another Bill Shorten plotting against him.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

60 Minutes’ gotcha on Cameron Smith

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (6:55am)

Rebecca Wilson on 60 Minutes’ astonishing vilification of Cameron Smith:
Australian, Queensland and Melbourne Storm captain Cameron Smith has had the very fabric of his character thrown into question because of the now well-documented segment. He was accused of blatantly disregarding the welfare of McKinnon and then, worst of all, for refusing to reach out to the player or the family in the weeks ensuing that terrible, unfortunate tackle. 
Smith was given no right of reply until a day after the program… 60 Minutes got it very, very badly wrong. In trying to play the blame game, the program’s producers chose to ignore facts that could have been cleared up with a phone call…
In an email trail that I have seen that stretches over three months between the Storm, the Knights and the McKinnon family, it is very clear that Smith attempted to visit McKinnon in hospital within 24 hours of the accident. For weeks and weeks after McKinnon returned to Sydney and then to Newcastle for his rehabilitation, Smith and the Storm offered help, raised money, and above all, the Storm captain continued to try to visit McKinnon. He was met with a no each time, and understood the sensitivities so did not chose to push too hard.
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Oakes’ Labor sources call Shorten a “gutless waffler”

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (5:47am)

I don’t agree with some of Laurie Oakes’ reasoning, but there’s not much to disagree with his bald conclusion:
Take, for example, the furore over Malcolm Turnbull’s speech to The Sydney Institute last Tuesday. 
It caused some Right-wing Liberals to comment with suppressed fury that Turnbull is a far more effective Opposition leader than Shorten. Plenty of people on the Labor side agree, comparing Turnbull’s impact with Shorten’s image as a gutless waffler incapable of delivering a cut-through message.
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France imports a deadly threat to the Jews. But they are just the first

Andrew Bolt July 11 2015 (12:58am)

 France now has 5 million Muslims - and rising. Soon policing will turn to placating through sheer force of numbers and fear. And already this Western European country is becoming unsafe for Jews.
Marie Brenner reports: 
How can anyone be allowed to paint a swastika on the statue of Marianne, the goddess of French liberty, in the very center of the Place de la République?” 
That was what the chairman of one of France’s most celebrated luxury brands was thinking last July, when a tall man in a black shirt and a kaffiyeh leapt to the ledge of Marianne’s pedestal and scrawled a black swastika. All around him, thousands of angry demonstrators were swarming the square with fake rockets, Palestinian and Hamas flags, even the black-and-white banners of ISIS. Here, barely a mile and a half from the Galeries Lafayette, the heart of bourgeois Paris, the chants: “MORT AUX JUIFS! MORT AUX JUIFS!” Death to the Jews. It was Saturday, July 26, 2014, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration turned into a day of terror in one of the most fashionable neighborhoods of the city....
In 2014, about 7,000 Jews left France for Israel, and this year the anticipated exodus is between 10,000 and 15,000. The Jewish Agency for Israel recently reported that, in 2014, 50,000 French Jews made inquiries about moving to Israel, an astonishing number. In many of France’s public lycées, Jewish students are insulted, classrooms are vandalized, books are defaced, and fights break out in the classroom with any attempt to teach the Holocaust. After the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, there were reports that classes were disrupted when some Muslim students refused to participate in any memorial for the victims…
Prime Minister Manuel Valls—taking the risk that he might antagonize his Socialist Party base, which leans pro-Palestinian—was issuing a series of muscular statements seeking to stop the flood of Jews leaving France… An increase in prejudice is “growing in an insufferable manner in our country,” he said, and pledged 100 million euros toward combating “racism and anti-Semitism.” Ten thousand soldiers were deployed throughout the country. Parts of the banlieues have resembled war zones, including, at times, Créteil, east of Paris, where Valls made his pledge. Last December, Créteil endured the brutal case of a 19-year-old woman whose apartment, which she shared with her boyfriend, was broken into. One of her assailants allegedly said, “You must have cash here because you are Jews.” They then gang-raped her. In April, Valls announced that French police had foiled five terrorist attacks in recent months amid stepped-up security. One involved an Algerian who allegedly shot himself by accident and then called an ambulance. “The threat has never been so high,” Valls said. “We have never had to face this kind of terrorism in our history."…
Roger Cukierman, the head of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France, or CRIF, the umbrella group for secular Jewish organizations in France ... reeled off some of the horrors that have plagued the Jews of Europe during the last decade: the case of Ilan Halimi, a cell-phone salesman kidnapped, brutally tortured, and killed in the Paris suburbs by a gang in 2006 for being Jewish; the 2012 murders of three small children and one adult at point-blank range at the Ozar Hatorah school, in Toulouse, by Mohamed Merah; the 2014 slaughter at the Brussels Jewish Museum; the deadly attack at the synagogue in Copenhagen in February of this year. This March, Merah’s stepbrother was pictured in the New York Post in his camouflage ISIS togs pronouncing a death sentence, as a pre-pubescent boy beside him pulled the trigger in the videotaped execution of the 19-year-old Israeli Arab Muhamed Musalam. Then there are the riots. As Cukierman told The Telegraph last summer, “They are not screaming ‘Death to the Israelis’ on the streets of Paris. They are screaming ‘Death to the Jews.’ “…
In Garges last July, a week after the violence on the Rue de la Roquette, a highly visible billboard advertising lollipops was modified with a large scrawl: PALESTINE WILL LIVE, PALESTINE WILL OVERCOME. COME WITH: MORTAR, FIRE EXTINGUISHER, BATON. DEMONSTRATION AT THE GARGES-SARCELLES TRAIN STATION. COME OUT IN NUMBERS! FOLLOW TO THE JEWISH QUARTER....
On Saturday, July 19, thousands appeared in and around Paris, burning cars, attacking buses. By two P.M. the next day, a mob of hundreds crowded the narrow street by the Garges synagogue, and the first rocks had shattered the Star of David window.... Within the hour, a pharmacy was in flames. Then hundreds raced through the central plaza toward a Jewish market and that too went up in flames. Then on to the synagogue.... News footage showed French police standing inert for almost two hours until reinforcements arrived with tear gas. 
UPDATE
At a French restaurant, a passer-by with a hockey stick starts to shout and overturn tables: People can’t eat because it’s Ramadan.”:
(Thanks to readers Terry and Gab.) 
===
The one and only Neil Gaiman shares his 8 rules of writing. Hint: laugh at your own jokes! http://bit.ly/1CuHhmu
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Friday, 10 July 2015
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Artist humor.
Posted by Julia London on Friday, 20 March 2015
===
Pastor Rick Warren
People become beautiful when you love them, and you become more beautiful when you love others.
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World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don’t want to eat. Muslim rapper Yasiin “Mos Def” Bey is so worked up about their appetite plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for closing Gitmo. Cry me a river.
This latest round of hunger strikes isn’t an international human rights tragedy. It’s another manipulative act of Jihad Theater.
===
brain teasing optical illusion
Fix your eyes on the black dot in the middle of the infrared image until the animated gif switches to black and white. The castle will immediately show its true colors.

So what is happening here to create the false color? You may have noticed that if you stare at a bright light and then look away, it will create a dark spot in your vision for a few seconds. Similarly, if you stare at a dark object on a bright white wall for several seconds and then close your eyes, you will see the reverse – the dark object will show up white. The image above is doing this same kind of thing with the color cells on your retina, oversaturating them with one color so you see the reverse once the color is gone. See How your eyes work for details
===
Frank Severino
Even if you could buy common sense, the people who lack it would consider it a waste of money.
===
Holly Sarah Nguyen
Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable… ~Phil. 4:8 NLT
===
VIENNA — It was 1943 when Vienna's Nazi overlords gave the order to destroy the city's oldest Jewish cemetery, demanding it be leveled and the tombstones attesting to centuries of Jewish existence there be destroyed.
Desperate to save their heritage, the city's shrinking Jewish community decided to act. Defying the possibility of prison, deportation or execution, they buried the gravestones and kept them from Nazi hands.
Some 70 years later, Jewish leaders in the Austrian capital say the long-lost stones have been rediscovered. It is a find they say could transform a small obscure graveyard into one that rivals the significance of Prague's Jewish cemetery, the oldest known burial ground of its kind.
=== Todays News and memes ===

At the mercy of fools and lightweights

Piers Akerman – Thursday, July 10, 2014 (10:57pm)

BLAME for the extension of the carbon tax must be laid at the feet of the arrogant and irresponsible Clive Palmer, the ringmaster of his eponymous circus.
Icon Arrow Continue reading 'At the mercy of fools and lightweights'
===

Wasn’t 1200 dead enough?

Miranda Devine – Friday, July 11, 2014 (1:38am)

NOW refugee advocates reportedly are “coaching” mothers to self-harm.
Someone in authority has to stop these so-called “well-meaning” advocates. They are hurting the very people they feign to protect.
As for the media that uncritically reported the story of ten women on Nauru supposedly attempting suicide ... You have to ask, what vested interests are so desperate for the Abbott government to fail on border protection?
A FORMER director of offshore processing in Australia’s immigration detention camps claims asylum-seekers are coached and encouraged to attempt self-harm by refugee advocates who then use the incidents as political capital.
Greg Lake made his strident ­attack on “certain refugee advocates” whose behaviour “is at odds with their mandate as advocates” as the Refugee Action Coalition backed down from claims in a press release on Monday that up to “10 mothers in the family camp have attempted suicide in the last two days on Christmas Island”.
Refugee coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul told The Australian yesterday that women in the family camp wanted to get off Christmas Island for the mainland, though some said they would be happy to go to Nauru.
“I probably shouldn’t have said attempted suicide,” he said.

“People drinking concoctions of shampoo or detergent generally don’t die — was it a drastic cry for help? Yes, it was, and it remains that way.”

Extra guards continued to be stationed in the island’s family camp yesterday to keep watch on women who had either threatened, attempted or carried out self-harm during the past week.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has rubbished claims published in Fairfax Media that up to 12 mothers had attempted suicide so their orphaned babies would be raised in Australia.

The government has described the self-harm as minor. While ­asylum-seekers are flown to mainland hospitals in the event of medical emergency, the only person to leave the Australian territory this week for medical reasons was a Christmas Island resident.

The asylum-seeker women on watch at the camp this week include a young Iranian who does not have children; she spent time in the camp’s medical centre after leaping from what guards have ­described as the flat roof of one-­storey transportable accommo-dation on Sunday. She had recently returned from medical treatment on the mainland.
Mr Rintoul said he had communicated with the women before they harmed themselves but ­denied encouraging them to do so or having prior knowledge that they would.
“Of course not,” he said.
“There may have been some indication of people heading this way — they were extremely worried about the presence of the Serco guards and the police (over the weekend).
“It’s clear to me now that Serco was expecting a situation.”
The tense atmosphere continued in Christmas Island’s family camp as authorities prepared to send more asylum-seekers to Nauru. Tonight a group of detainees is scheduled to leave the island for Nauru, and more frequent flights are expected as more accommodation comes online.
Mr Lake said in his time at what is now called the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, he grew disgusted by the actions of some refugee advocates who were clearly urging asylum-seekers to self-harm as a form of protest so they could put out a press release about it.
He said the advocates communicated with the asylum-seekers by Facebook message, phone and email. While the department did not read asylum-seekers’ communications, he said what was going on was obvious and often emerged later in interviews with detainees who had hurt themselves on purpose.
He said he believed some advocates communicated with a ringleader, who then “stood over” other detainees to compel them to make a statement through self-harm.
“There are certain prominent advocates who will coach and encourage asylum-seekers to self-harm as a political protest and it makes me very upset and I believe it is at odds with their mandate as advocates,” Mr Lake said.
“The problem is, outside of the government or public service, people aren’t aware of their tactics.”
Mr Lake, who resigned as an immigration official in April last year, claimed that one of his last tasks on Nauru was to interview eight asylum-seekers who had joined a lip-sewing protest, but who had been bullied into it by a detainee who was in communication with a refugee advocate.
“These guys didn’t want anything to do with it,” he said.
“They only did it because they were pushed by the ringleader.”

The Australian has learned that refugee advocates and others working inside the Christmas Island compounds are linking this week’s self-harm incidents to a recent decision by Mr Morrison to allow three vulnerable ­Somali girls to leave the camp and live in Sydney’s west. 
===

FLY, MY PRETTIES

Tim Blair – Friday, July 11, 2014 (5:00am)

Frightbats are now appearing in birthday cards:


Beats a frightbat appearing on your face, I guess. Or even taking over your face, in the first recorded case of frightbat possession.
===

THERE IS SO MUCH SNOW

Tim Blair – Friday, July 11, 2014 (4:26am)

July, 2007: 
The man, dressed only in a pair of Speedos, approached the prime minister as he mingled with guests in the local RSL.
He shouted: “What are you doing about global warming? There is no snow, there is no snow”, before he was quickly bundled away by security staff into a nearby toilet. 
July, 2014: 
Fresh snowfall on the Snowy Mountains overnight has led meteorologists and excited resort managers at Thredbo and Perisher to declare this weekend the best for skiing in many years.
Weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said there was 20 to 30cm of snowfall in the Perisher and Thredbo villages on Wednesday night although there was as much as 40 to 50cm of snowfall. 
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LEFT PREFERS DEATH

Tim Blair – Friday, July 11, 2014 (4:07am)

Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison might be the first politicians in Australian history to be vilified for keeping an election promise and saving lives.
The Prime Minister and immigration minister face renewed hostility from left-wing activist groups after successfully ending the mass traffic in asylum seeker vessels reaching Australia – or sinking during their voyage.
Recent attempted arrivals by Tamil asylum seekers, who were turned back by Australian authorities, have sparked outrage from leftists who were noticeably quieter during Labor’s reign, which saw around 1200 asylum seeker deaths at sea.
Some of these leftists have been politically active since the Vietnam War, a conflict that resulted in the deaths of 500 Australian servicemen. Yet now they protest against a government that has stopped the people smuggling trade to Australia, which killed more than twice as many people within just six years.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'LEFT PREFERS DEATH'
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HANNAH QUEENSLANDER

Tim Blair – Friday, July 11, 2014 (4:02am)

Clive Palmer is the Miley Cyrus of the current parliament:


UPDATE. Palmer walks:

UPDATE II. Tony Wright observes Palmer’s bizarre power circle: 
He drew around him his little band of senators, instructing them on their duty. Glenn Lazarus, Jacqui Lambie, Dio Wang. And his outrider, Ricky Muir.
He cocked an ear towards Ben Oquist, once a power within the Australian Greens and now a strategy director at the Australia Institute think tank and, seated at Clive’s left hand, an unlikely but well-informed well of advice on how to drive the Senate mad. 
When your intention is to destroy, link with the left.
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Christine Milne, dangerous hypocrite of free speech

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (10:57am)

Free speech

How dare the Greens leader pose as a defender of free speech, when she’s actually a defender of speech that suits?
Freedom of speech everywhere! Christine Milne tweets, Wednesday: 
I’M about to speak in the Senate for Peter Greste & for press freedom around the world.
Freedom of speech in Oz! Milne, Senate, Wednesday: 
WE have to stand up for journalists wherever they work around the world ... Australia is a country that values and appreciates the importance of the free press and the need to protect the freedoms of journalists.
Except when you don’t like the media or the message? Milne, July 25, 2011:
THE Murdoch press has been running a very strong campaign against action on climate change. The bias is extreme, in The Australian in particular. You’ll see column inch after column inch of every climate sceptic in the country ... You’ll find day after day a real attempt at regime change … And one of the useful things about the hacking scandal in the UK is that it will lead to an inquiry into the media in Australia. We are at least going to see some real discussion ... around issues such as the level of ownership and dominance of the Murdoch press in several capital cities in Australia. We’ll also have a look at a range of other issues, including who are fit and proper people, into whether we need that test into people to be running media outlets. It’s time we had a good inquiry and certainly bias is certainly going to be one of the things that’s certainly to be looked at.
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If a refugee’s background makes him more dangerous, why is he here?

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (10:22am)

Yet again I have to ask that if a judge or magistrate rules that the background of asylum seekers make them understandably more dangerous, is it fair to our citizens to import more of them?
A TRAUMATISED former asylum-seeker was last week placed on a good behaviour bond after threatening Department of Human Services staff in Dandenong with a bottle of petrol and a cigarette lighter. 
The defendant, 28, had threatened to “burn down the place” if he didn’t secure a public housing property “by the end of the day” ...
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said “the circumstances in which you came to Australia are highly relevant to the circumstances you’re in now”.
Before his arrival, the man had been under “constant threat” from an Iraqi militia and the “subject of severe abuse” in his homeland. The man fled Iraq after the same militia killed his brother.
While coming to Australia, he survived a “very tragic incident” at Christmas Island. Many of those who died were relatives and close friends of his. Mr Vandersteen found those events led to the accused’s “multitude of mental health issues” and to his “unacceptable” threats to DHS staff.
Another example:
AN Afghan refugee who raped two women within a week in 2008 has won a reduced sentence because of his traumatic upbringing… 
“Although (the sentencing judge) accepted that the appellant suffer[ed] from a post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of [his] experiences in Afghanistan and consequent depression and anxiety, his Honour does not appear to have related this finding to the burden of imprisonment upon the appellant,’’ the Court of Appeal ruled. 
Or note this warning from a Department of Immigration report in 2007:
Australia has assisted in resettling some of the Sudanese who cannot be repatriated. While they are a diverse people with a wide range of experiences, many have spent a long period of time in refugee camps immediately before coming to Australia. The following section describes Kakuma camp in Kenya. Settlers who have spent time in other camps are likely to have experienced similar conditions…
Kakuma refugee camp was established in 1992 to receive a large group of Sudanese children known as the ‘lost boys’… There is frequent violence in the camp. Regular clashes occur among residents, many of them armed, and between camp residents and the local population with whom residents compete for scarce resources. Sexual assault is common.
Like other refugees, many Kakuma residents have spent years living in camps. They have had limited opportunity to grow crops, work, or otherwise provide for themselves. They have lived in fear of violence from other camp residents and from raiders preying upon them both inside and outside the camps. Children may have been born in the camps and be unfamiliar with any other lifestyle…
Settlement considerations
Sudanese entrants may face considerable challenges in adapting to life in Australia. They need time to adapt to a new location, language and cultural framework. Their everyday life skills may have been extensively eroded by their experiences in refugee camps… Some children may be unfamiliar with formal schooling as a result of living in camps where there is little or no structure to day-to-day living. Moving into a highly structured environment such as a classroom may require assistance… Those who are literate may not be familiar with the Roman alphabet as Arabic has been increasingly used in schools. Most Sudanese entrants have limited English language skills and will require interpreting services and English instruction.
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An early election may be better than dealing with Palmer. UPDATE: Hmm, says Abbott

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (9:07am)


I wouldn’t trust anything Clive Palmer said on anything - including the reason he gave for instructing his Senators yesterday to vote against scrapping the carbon tax:
The three PUP Senators voted against repealing the carbon tax because of what Clive Palmer called a double cross by the government over an amendment ... to ensure power companies pass on any savings from the repeal… 
Palmer says the government didn’t include the amendment today despite saying it would do so.
“It was to be circulated by the time Parliament had come in and it hadn’t been circulated and our senators hadn’t been told and they were left in the dark,” he said.
“I think you’d call it double-crossing people.” 
Complete bull. Some might even think it a lie. Phil Coorey explains: 
The government and Mr Palmer had agreed to his amendments on Sunday night and the [carbon tax] repeal was supposed to pass Parliament this week. But on Wednesday night Mr Palmer said he wanted some changes and presented them to the government at 9.15am.
The government agreed but Mr Palmer was cranky that the revised amendment had not been distributed to all senators, even though that was his job, and he threatened to pull his support.
Then it was noted the new 250 per cent penalty constituted a tax and the Senate is not allowed to pass such a law without it first being passed by the House of Representatives. Mr Palmer rejected an offer by the Senate Clerk to reword the amendment and have the package put through the Senate. Instead, he insisted on the whole lot starting again in the lower house on Monday.
Thee was no double-cross by anyone except Palmer himself.
Dennis Shanahan:
He killed the repeal yesterday by his own volition. There was no government “double-cross’’ nor any “conspiracy’’. 
Tony Abbott and his Senate leader Eric Abetz have been embarrassed and pilloried as a result of Palmer’s directive, which ­appears to be little more than a tactic to allow Palmer himself to take centre stage in the House of Representatives next week.
Graham Richardson says dealing with Clive Palmer is impossible, and the Government may die trying:
Never in politics has there been a more unpredictable individual. His capacity to forcefully argue against something he proclaimed so solemnly a week ago is already in evidence. Last week the government’s direct action on climate change was a bunch of old cobblers. Yet this week that same policy gets a tick from Palmer. 
There can be no trust or goodwill with a man like Palmer. He will remain enigmatic and erratic....
In the interim, the government can’t function without Palmer’s personal approval… It is not too big a stretch to suggest that the fate of the paid parental leave scheme, the Medicare and pharmaceutical co-payments, the Newstart cuts for the young, the change in indexation arrangements for pensions and the changes to Family Tax Benefit A and B all rest in Palmer’s hands…
The price the Abbott government will have to pay to keep Palmer on board for every budget measure may well prove to be way too high…
Niether [Leader of the Government in the Senate Eric] Abetz nor [Environment Minister Greg] Hunt ... could explain what was contained in the Palmer amendments to which they had agreed. Apparently our Clive was annoyed at the announcements by Qantas and Virgin that they would not pass on the full amount of savings produced by the repeal. Both direct and indirect effects are now covered by these amendments but these government ministers had no idea how far they ranged… The ministers didn’t know and you can bet your bottom dollar Palmer doesn’t know either. He is interested only in the publicity. He has little or no interest in the policy. 
The Abbott Government now risks being seen as repeating the worst mistakes of the Gillard Government. First, breaking promises. Second, being beholden to a mad fringe - with Labor, the Greens; with the Liberals, Palmer.
A double dissolution election may turn out to be the lesser of two terrible options.
UPDATE
Palmer is wrecking whatever he can: 
CLIVE Palmer has become the wrecking ball of Australian politics, carving a further $10 billion hole out of the federal Budget this week with a series of stunts that senior Coalition­ members now claim are based on one motive only — to destroy the Abbott government ...  which now faces the possible blockage of an estimated $55 billion in Budget measures… While the government was careful not to antagonise Mr Palmer, ministers concede privately they’re at a loss as to how to deal with him.
UPDATE
Want an example of Palmer’s word not being worth a cracker?
Here’s one reason he gave yesterday for presenting his last-minute amendment:
Announcing his bombshell amendments [to force companies to pass on savings from the carbon tax repeal] on Thursday morning, Palmer said: ”We read this morning that Virgin and Qantas have said they are not going to pass those savings on to consumers, they are just going to absorb them as extra profits. We don’t think that is a reasonable thing.”
But last night Palmer claimed his amendment wouldn’t affect Qantas and Virgin, after all:
CLIVE PALMER: Well I think it’s pretty clear what it covers. There’s a definition of an electricity producer and a natural gas producer and it covers anyone that generates or deals with that commodity. It doesn’t cover anyone else. 
SARAH FERGUSON: So it doesn’t cover the airlines, it doesn’t cover the supermarkets or anybody else who has carbon tax-associated costs?
CLIVE PALMER: Well, in a reality when - if the cost structure comes down, market forces will bring their costs down by competition… I mean, if Qantas doesn’t want to bring down its savings and pass that on to its consumers, well, one of its competitors will and they’ll have to bring their prices down to compete.
SARAH FERGUSON: You’re not saying that your amendment actually includes those other companies within it? CLIVE PALMER: No. I don’t think it does, actually. 
But read his hastily written amendment could seem to cover airlines:
Clause 10 of the PUP amendment ... lists “entities” that are covered by the carbon repeal bill’s laws against “price exploitation”. 
The list proposed by PUP includes “an individual, a body corporate, a body politics, a partnership, any other incorporated association or body of entities, a trust or any party or entity which can or does buy or sell electricity or gas”.
Palmer says things that are untrue. He causes chaos and then blames others for the mess. He seems to change his mind on a whim and without understanding the consequences of what he proposes.
He is a danger and a disgrace to our Parliament. I do not believe this Government can survive two years of dealing with this man.
UPDATE
Today:
Asked if his government would consider calling a double dissolution election, Mr Abbott said: ‘’If we had six to 12 months of difficulty maybe yes it would be time to start thinking along those lines.’’
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hills and others.) 
===

Push back against the alarmists

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (8:50am)

Sure looking forward to this:
Donations are sought for the project:
Scorching temperatures.  Melting ice caps.  Killer hurricanes and tornadoes.  Disappearing polar bears.  The end of civilization as we know it! 
Are emissions from our cars, factories, and farms causing catastrophic climate change?  Is there a genuine scientific consensus? Or is man-made “global warming” an overheated environmental con job being used to push for drastic government control and a radical “Green” energy agenda?
Climate Hustle will answer these questions, and many more.  
Reader mem, from material provided by Christopher Monckton:
Twelve Urban Myths of Climate Change 
1."Global warming is happening.” 
No: According to the RSS satellite record, there has been none for 17 years 10 months.
2."Warming is faster than we thought.” 
No: In 1990 the climate models predicted that global warming would happen twice as fast as it has.
3."There’s a 97 percent consensus.” 
No: Only 0.5 percent of the authors of 11,944 scientific papers on climate and related topics over the past 21 years said they agreed that most of the warming since 1950 was man-made.
4."Droughts are getting worse.” 
No: A recent paper in the learned journals shows the fraction of the world’s land under drought has fallen for 30 years.
5."Floods are getting worse.”
No: The U.N.’s panel has said in two recent reports that there has been no particular change in the frequency or severity of floods worldwide.
6."Sea ice is melting.” 
No: It has grown to a new record high in the Antarctic, though the Arctic icecap has been shrinking a little in summer.
7."Sea level is rising dangerously.” 
No: Some satellites show it as rising a little, while others show it as falling.
8."Hurricanes are getting worse.” 
No: Their combined frequency, severity and duration has been at or near the lowest in the 35-year satellite record.
9."Global warming caused recent extreme weather.” 
No: There has been no warming recently, so it cannot have caused any extreme weather in recent years.
10."Global warming will reduce the number of redheads.” 
No: This is one of many scare stories about imaginary effects of warmer weather. 
11."The ocean is acidifying.” 
No: The ocean remains decidedly alkaline, and there cannot be much change in its acid-base balance because it is buffered by the basalt rocks in which it lies.
12."It’s cheaper to act now, just in case.” 
No: It is 10-100 times costlier to try to prevent global warming today than to let it happen and pay the cost of adapting to it the day after tomorrow.
Just about everything the mainstream news media say about global warming and its supposed dangers is the opposite of the truth.  From the Heartland Conference, presentation by Lord Monckton. Note this is an excerpt I have edited into 12 points for presentation on this blog and also so that I can print it off for a presentation and poster I am making for a local community organization. Why not do the same?  Read the original here.  Read more here.  
(Thanks to reader streetcred.) 
===

Trashing Sri Lanka to push the “asylum seeker” fraud

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (8:25am)

An astonishing smear from a former Liberal Prime Minister now a darling of the far Left:
Former Labor candidate and “refugee” lawyer George Newhouse, who helped persuade the High Court to issue a temporary injunction against the return of 153 Sri Lankans, made the same disgraceful analogy on ABC radio.
But Dinoo Kelleghan, a former member of the Refugee Review Tribunal and a Sri Lankan-born Australian with part-Tamil ancestry, says Sri Lanka is being defamed:
IT is a crying shame that a country that has dragged itself up by the bootstraps from twin ruthless Marxist and ethnic insurgencies that devastated its economy and killed almost 200,000 people during the past 45 years should become a pawn in the game to bash the Australian government over its anti people-smuggling strategy…
The country is by no means perfect… But it’s not Nazi Germany. And the Tamil minority has the same rights as anyone else…
There are Tamil television stations, and government documents mostly come in Sinhalese and Tamil. Tamil children study in Tamil...Mr Fraser won’t see death camps or a fascist state. He’ll see Tamils and Sinhalese rejoicing in being able to work together without being bombed or blown up.
Genocide? The population of the capital, Colombo, was 30 per cent Tamil in 2001 at the height of the civil war, and now Tamils and Muslims outnumber Sinhalese. Many of those Tamils fled the fighting in the north but choose to stay in the Sinhala-dominated south even though the war is over.
Of course, the jobs are in the south, but would that keep them there if they feared persecution?… Presidential, parliamentary and provincial and local council elections have been held all over the country since the end of the civil war in 2009. Tamils have exercised their right to vote freely. 
UPDATE
Nicely put by Sri Lanka’s Daily News:
There are the bad eggs and the incorrigible in any society, and a few hundred people getting on boats because they think the pavements Down Under are made of pure 24 carat, is no reflection on this progressive society any more than a few Australian journalists aiming for upward mobility in their professions by sensationalising hard luck stories is a reflection on the general integrity of the good and industrious Australian people. 
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WA Liberals punished as the easy money ends

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (8:09am)

Colin Barnett has been caught out by the early end of the mining investment boom, holding a fistful of IOUs:
On a two-party-preferred basis, the Barnett government is at an all-time low of 50 per cent, down more than seven percentage points since the state election in March last year ... 
It has been a horror run for Premier Colin Barnett… Key promises, described during the election campaign as fully funded and fully costed, have now been canned or delayed. The state has lost its AAA credit rating and — faced with a debt crisis — new Treasurer Mike Nahan has taken difficult decisions including slashing pensioners’ concessions and cruelling the multi-billion-dollar regional spending scheme that underpinned the Liberals’ alliance with the Nationals and allowed them to form government six years ago.
Mistakes aside, Barnett, like Campbell Newman and Tony Abbott, is another leader finding that telling the public there’s no free money is ungrateful work. 
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Clive Palmer shows he’s worried by those allegations

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (7:56am)

 A rare tactical mistake from the master media manipulator. I suspect he’s just put burley in the water for journalists eager for a little sensation - and he’s shown there’s something in his business dealings that make him very agitated and shy of explaining:
Clive Palmer has stormed out of an interview on flagship ABC television current affairs program 7.30, bringing the segment to an abrupt end…
Asked to repeat comments from earlier in the week suggesting money from a port account paid in by his Chinese business partners had been used to pay for a political campaign run by the management firm Media Circus, he got angry.
“I never said that, what I said was that we paid Media Circus from money that was paid to us,” he said.
He said the money used to fund the political campaign which helped the Palmer United Party secure an amazing three senators and one lower house MP from the 2013 election, was owned by his company for services provided to the joint venture.
He said a deed cited by Ms Ferguson which stipulated that funds from the port account could only be used to invest in the port project was “just not true"…
“This is just a beat up by the Chinese that don’t want to pay for our iron ore… “Don’t talk to me about allegations and bullshit, talk about judgments from the court ... I’m not discussing it with you any further madam, it’s subject to court proceedings where we’re suing them for $600 million ... I’m not answering any more for you so goodbye, we’ll see you later.”
UPDATE
Hedley Thomas:
[Palmer] has been inconsistent in his explanations this week, telling the National Press Club and journalists $2.167m of the missing money went to Media Circus Network, which booked advertising for his election, because it was his money to spend as he saw fit. He has said there were “no strings attached” to how he could spend the cash. 
This doesn’t stack up. It contradicts the legal responses given by his company to a retired Supreme Court judge who is investigating the matters in confidential Brisbane arbitration proceedings, that the money went to pay for “port management services”; and it contradicts deeds signed personally by Mr Palmer, who pledged to spend China’s cash only on the iron ore port at Cape Preston in Western Australia.
Last night on 7.30, Ferguson went down the money trail and incurred Mr Palmer’s wrath. “What I said was that we paid Media Circus from money that was paid to us for services that was provided by us, which is quite normal in a joint-venture situation,” he said.
UPDATE
Going green is the last refuge of the scoundrel, eager for kind treatment from the largely Leftist media:
[Ben] Oquist, the former chief of staff to Greens leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne, helped engineer events yesterday that led Clive Palmer to keep the carbon tax ­despite a public vow to repeal it… 
Government sources insist they agreed to all of Palmer’s requests to toughen the repeal bill to cut energy prices, only to be stunned by the millionaire politician’s backflip later…
The government suspects Oquist of trying to kill off the carbon tax repeal one step at a time. He has been advising Palmer in meetings, copied on emails and was in the background at yesterday’s press conference.... Oquist also helped encourage former US vice-­president Al Gore to meet Palmer in Canberra last month, another moment when the PUP leader made a dramatic shift in position. The surprises have salvaged some green schemes...
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How the refugee lobby is inciting “suicide attempts”

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (7:35am)

Boat people policy

The refugee lobby - and the Human Rights Commission - are inciting and rewarding boat people who self-harm, and then wildly exaggerating the results:
A FORMER director of offshore processing in Australia’s immigration detention camps claims asylum-seekers are coached and encouraged to attempt self-harm by refugee advocates who then use the incidents as political capital.

Greg Lake made his strident ­attack on “certain refugee advocates” whose behaviour “is at odds with their mandate as advocates” as the Refugee Action Coalition backed down from claims in a press release on Monday that up to “10 mothers in the family camp have attempted suicide in the last two days on Christmas Island"… 
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has rubbished claims published in Fairfax Media that up to 12 mothers had attempted suicide so their orphaned babies would be raised in Australia.
The government has described the self-harm as minor…
Mr Lake said ... he grew disgusted by the actions of some refugee advocates who were clearly urging asylum-seekers to self-harm as a form of protest so they could put out a press release about it…
“There are certain prominent advocates who will coach and encourage asylum-seekers to self-harm as a political protest ....” Mr Lake, who resigned as an immigration official in April last year, claimed that one of his last tasks on Nauru was to interview eight asylum-seekers who had joined a lip-sewing protest, but who had been bullied into it by a detainee who was in communication with a refugee advocate. 
The closest thing to a genuine suicide attempt among those alleged 12 mothers actually came from a woman without a child:
The asylum-seeker women on watch at the camp this week include a young Iranian who does not have children; she spent time in the camp’s medical centre after leaping from what guards have ­described as the flat roof of one-­storey transportable accommodation on Sunday. 
When will the Human Rights Commission apologise for this false claim?:
We’ve had reports that have been confirmed during the day that 10 women have attempted suicide.
UPDATE
From my comment piece today:
ON Wednesday The Age ...  declared: “A wave of attempted suicides has swept Christmas Island as 12 mothers tried to kill themselves in the belief their then-orphaned children would have to be settled in Australia.” 
The story stank from the start. Twelve women? And every attempt a failure?
And all 12 had no husbands? All thought their child was better an orphan in Australia than mothered in detention? Seriously?..,
On Thursday The Age changed its story without actually saying it had been wrong – and without apologising.
Now it claimed it had “obtained” Immigration Department “advice” that of “seven individuals who made threats of self-harm, four have actually self-harmed and one woman attempted suicide’’. Twelve suicide attempts became one. And no mention now of doing it for the children.
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The Bolt Report on Sunday, July 13

Andrew Bolt July 11 2014 (5:49am)

On Sunday on Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial: Lying about boats
My guest:  Labor’s Anthony Albanese.
The panel:  campaign guru Mark Textor and former NSW Labor treasurer Michael Costa
NewsWatch:  The Australian’s media editor Sharri Markson. The secrets to Clive Palmer’s success.
Plus spin of the week, where a couple of global warming alarmists get held to account.

The videos of the shows appear here.
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Woodblock print of Zheng He's ships
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“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning


"Fellow citizens with the saints."
Ephesians 2:19
What is meant by our being citizens in heaven? It means that we are under heaven's government. Christ the king of heaven reigns in our hearts; our daily prayer is, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The proclamations issued from the throne of glory are freely received by us: the decrees of the Great King we cheerfully obey. Then as citizens of the New Jerusalem, we share heaven's honours. The glory which belongs to beatified saints belongs to us, for we are already sons of God, already princes of the blood imperial; already we wear the spotless robe of Jesus' righteousness; already we have angels for our servitors, saints for our companions, Christ for our Brother, God for our Father, and a crown of immortality for our reward. We share the honours of citizenship, for we have come to the general assembly and Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven. As citizens, we have common rights to all the property of heaven. Ours are its gates of pearl and walls of chrysolite; ours the azure light of the city that needs no candle nor light of the sun; ours the river of the water of life, and the twelve manner of fruits which grow on the trees planted on the banks thereof; there is nought in heaven that belongeth not to us. "Things present, or things to come," all are ours. Also as citizens of heaven we enjoy its delights. Do they there rejoice over sinners that repent--prodigals that have returned? So do we. Do they chant the glories of triumphant grace? We do the same. Do they cast their crowns at Jesus' feet? Such honours as we have we cast there too. Are they charmed with his smile? It is not less sweet to us who dwell below. Do they look forward, waiting for his second advent? We also look and long for his appearing. If, then, we are thus citizens of heaven, let our walk and actions be consistent with our high dignity.

Evening


"And the evening and the morning were the first day."
Genesis 1:5

The evening was "darkness" and the morning was "light," and yet the two together are called by the name that is given to the light alone! This is somewhat remarkable, but it has an exact analogy in spiritual experience. In every believer there is darkness and light, and yet he is not to be named a sinner because there is sin in him, but he is to be named a saint because he possesses some degree of holiness. This will be a most comforting thought to those who are mourning their infirmities, and who ask, "Can I be a child of God while there is so much darkness in me?" Yes; for you, like the day, take not your name from the evening, but from the morning; and you are spoken of in the word of God as if you were even now perfectly holy as you will be soon. You are called the child of light, though there is darkness in you still. You are named after what is the predominating quality in the sight of God, which will one day be the only principle remaining. Observe that the evening comes first. Naturally we are darkness first in order of time, and the gloom is often first in our mournful apprehension, driving us to cry out in deep humiliation, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." The place of the morning is second, it dawns when grace overcomes nature. It is a blessed aphorism of John Bunyan, "That which is last, lasts forever." That which is first, yields in due season to the last; but nothing comes after the last. So that though you are naturally darkness, when once you become light in the Lord, there is no evening to follow; "thy sun shall no more go down." The first day in this life is an evening and a morning; but the second day, when we shall be with God, forever, shall be a day with no evening, but one, sacred, high, eternal noon.
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Today's reading: Job 41-42, Acts 16:22-40 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Job 41-42

1 "Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook
or tie down its tongue with a rope?
2 Can you put a cord through its nose
or pierce its jaw with a hook?
3 Will it keep begging you for mercy?
Will it speak to you with gentle words?
4 Will it make an agreement with you
for you to take it as your slave for life?
5 Can you make a pet of it like a bird
or put it on a leash for the young women in your house?
6 Will traders barter for it?
Will they divide it up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill its hide with harpoons
or its head with fishing spears?

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 16:22-40


22 The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. 23 After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24 When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.26 Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone's chains came loose....



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