=== from 2015 ===
Tony Burke's use of $225k in travel expenses to wine and dine his new partner has offended some, who aren't natural ALP supporters, and maybe a few of them too, although they'd never vote against him. But another monster from the ALP domain that is gerrymandered South Australia has been sentenced for long term. The child molester worked for Families SA and side lighted as a photographer specialising in sex pictures for people younger than 12. He has had sex with infants. Some were children in his care. He will serve a minimum of 28 years and not life without parole because clearly someone, somewhere, is worse. Seen in that light, Burke's use of travel expenses as a Tinder App seems to meet community standards. Clearly the outrage over Bishop, which Burke led, was to do with the party she represented, and not the activity within the rules.
Hysterics are attacking Naplan because it works and doesn't only report good news. But, as a diagnostic tool, that is what we need from it.
Hysterics are attacking Naplan because it works and doesn't only report good news. But, as a diagnostic tool, that is what we need from it.
From 2014
Mike Carlton is not the sole dispenser of bigotry against Jews. Al Jazeera is not the worst. ABC and Fairfax Press have been promoting bigotry as normal behaviour. Who is to blame when six school kids invade a bus for a Jewish school and threaten the kids as young as five years old with having their throats cut while calling out slogans like 'Heil Hitler' and 'Free Palestine.' When apprehended, the perpetrators claimed they were too drunk to be questioned. Their parents must be proud. Thing is, I have seen people with parenting skills where this would not happen. How will 18c be applied? Will the school kid victims be chastised for being children of Jewish parents? It worked with Bolt.
A comet is seen and it has a face on it. Nature is grand. God is great. Final arguments are being given in the Pistorius trial. Pistorius was offered the baton of truth in the event, and dropped it. He is without a defence or a leg to stand on. He shot his girlfriend for no reason and should serve a long term. $28k is how much Malaysian airlines was set to save in fuel costs for flying MH17 over Ukraine. I sympathise with them if it turns out Ukraine failed in her duty of care to warn of hostile activity.
On this day in 322 BC the Athenian Democracy died when they failed to overthrow the Macedonians after Alexander died. In 461 the last great Roman emperor was beheaded by a rival who was supported by a jealous Senate. Which is why it was so hard to do anything worthwhile at the end of the Roman empire. In 626 the siege of Constantinople was abandoned after the besieging armies of Slavs and Avars began to believe the city had had divine help. In 1427 the Milanese attacked the Venetians and lost. In 1461 the Chinese Emperor's chair changed by coup. In 1714 the Russians had their first naval victory. In 1782 George Washington ordered the award of Purple Heart be made for wounded soldiers. In 1794 Washington ordered a crackdown on the Whiskey Rebellion. Fourteen years later in Sydney was to be the Rum Rebellion. Both rebellions involved the trade in liquor as currency. In 1858 the first AFL match was played between Melbourne and Scotch Grammar. In 1890 the last woman to be executed in Sweden was executed. In 1909 four women completed a road trip from NYC to San Francisco in 59 days. In 1930 the last confirmed lynching of blacks occurred .. in Indiana. In 1933, Iraqis slaughter some 3000 Assyrians. In 1944 IBM donated the first programmable calculator, called the Harvard Mark I. In 1955, Sony's parent company began selling transistor radios. In 1965 Hells Angels were permanently made part of organised crime at a Reyes Party. In 1970, in an effort to free a Black Panther, a California judge was taken hostage and killed. In 1998, Al Qaeda blew up two US embassies, one in Kenya and the other Nairobi. In 2008 Georgia fought Russia over territory.
A comet is seen and it has a face on it. Nature is grand. God is great. Final arguments are being given in the Pistorius trial. Pistorius was offered the baton of truth in the event, and dropped it. He is without a defence or a leg to stand on. He shot his girlfriend for no reason and should serve a long term. $28k is how much Malaysian airlines was set to save in fuel costs for flying MH17 over Ukraine. I sympathise with them if it turns out Ukraine failed in her duty of care to warn of hostile activity.
On this day in 322 BC the Athenian Democracy died when they failed to overthrow the Macedonians after Alexander died. In 461 the last great Roman emperor was beheaded by a rival who was supported by a jealous Senate. Which is why it was so hard to do anything worthwhile at the end of the Roman empire. In 626 the siege of Constantinople was abandoned after the besieging armies of Slavs and Avars began to believe the city had had divine help. In 1427 the Milanese attacked the Venetians and lost. In 1461 the Chinese Emperor's chair changed by coup. In 1714 the Russians had their first naval victory. In 1782 George Washington ordered the award of Purple Heart be made for wounded soldiers. In 1794 Washington ordered a crackdown on the Whiskey Rebellion. Fourteen years later in Sydney was to be the Rum Rebellion. Both rebellions involved the trade in liquor as currency. In 1858 the first AFL match was played between Melbourne and Scotch Grammar. In 1890 the last woman to be executed in Sweden was executed. In 1909 four women completed a road trip from NYC to San Francisco in 59 days. In 1930 the last confirmed lynching of blacks occurred .. in Indiana. In 1933, Iraqis slaughter some 3000 Assyrians. In 1944 IBM donated the first programmable calculator, called the Harvard Mark I. In 1955, Sony's parent company began selling transistor radios. In 1965 Hells Angels were permanently made part of organised crime at a Reyes Party. In 1970, in an effort to free a Black Panther, a California judge was taken hostage and killed. In 1998, Al Qaeda blew up two US embassies, one in Kenya and the other Nairobi. In 2008 Georgia fought Russia over territory.
Historical perspective on this day
Not done
=== 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
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
The Amazon Author Page for David Ball
UK .. http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B01683ZOWGFrench .. http://www.amazon.fr/-/e/B01683ZOWG
Japan .. http://www.amazon.co.jp/-/e/B01683ZOWG
German .. http://www.amazon.de/-/e/B01683ZOWG
| Happy birthday and many happy returns Scott Carmichael, Eric Ma and Jovicic Nada. Born on the same day, across the years as Robert Dudley (1574), Mata Hari (1876), Stan Freberg (1926), James Randi (1928), Greg Chappell (1948), David Duchovny (1960), Jimmy Wales (1966) and Abbie Cornish (1982). On your day, Independence Day in Ivory Coast (1960) 1782 – The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great that serves as one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was unveiled. 1909 – Fifty-nine days after leaving New York City, Alice Huyler Ramsey, with three friends, arrived in San Francisco to become the first woman to drive an automobile across the U.S. 1933 – An estimated 3,000 Assyrians were slaughtered by Iraqi troops during the Simele massacre in the Dahuk and Mosul districts. 1938 – Prisoners from Dachau concentration camp were sent to begin construction of Mauthausen, which would later be part of one of the largest labour camp complexes in German-occupied Europe. 1998 – Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,500 others. That Bronze Horseman is a clue to your day .. freedom, mastery, planning. It isn't by accident you are here, your day is matched with love. Those horrors you face, you face with intelligence, and courage. You aren't fools, and today is your day
|
Kev a perfect captain for this ship of fools
Piers Akerman – Saturday, August 06, 2016 (11:11pm)
IN hindsight, Kevin Rudd would have made the perfect gift to the UN, the global monument to slothful bureaucracy, political correctness and special interests.
Continue reading 'Kev a perfect captain for this ship of fools'Hyperbolic abuse from ACMA and the Age when they can’t fault my warming facts
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (9:58pm)
Once again, someone allergic to the facts and to free speech calls in the free-speech police - this time the Australian Communications and Media Authority - to shut me down.
ACMA describes how this farce began (and, note, this was before the recent spike in temperatures caused by the El Nino):
But ACMA could not leave it there. It could not resist going further to add a bit of partisan snark - not surprising, given its membership - that goes way beyond its remit.
So what does ACMA identify as my “hyperbolic” statements?
It is hyperbolic to claim “Australians aren’t stupid”? Could ACMA explain this ruling?
It is hyperbolic to say “there’s been no Armageddon”? Could ACMA explain why this is not a statement of plain fact?
It is hyperbolic to say some warming alarmists are “scaremongers”? Could ACMA seriously doubt that, when this is the very passage of my show it critiques and quotes?:
An unbiased ACMA would have agreed that “scaremongers” - when applied to Flannery, Lynas, American ABC, and Archer - is not hyperbole but in fact the plain, unvarnished truth.
Indeed, that quoted passage suggests this question: why am I dragged before ACMA but Flannery not, when it is crystal clear here that I am right and Flannery profoundly wrong?
And why isn’t the ABC in the dock with Flannery?
See, ACMA goes on to quote a part of the transcript of my show in which I also I nail a gross misrepresentation by the ABC of a CSIRO survey:
ACMA’s statements are bizarre, and little more than partisan abuse. ACMA also demonstrates here how such free-speech police operate, in effect, to harass and police only one side of the debate, and the rational one at that.
Why do such bodies even attempt to meddle in such important public debates? Why do they attempt to arbitrate on highly contested matters of science?
UPDATE
Note, by the way, that my accuser remains anonymous, and is not ordered to pay my costs for defending truth. He denounces, abuses, causes trouble and expense and then walks away without paying a cent or even revealing their name.
UPDATE
An Age reporter, Lucy Battersby, rang me on Friday to ask me to comment on the above finding, of which I knew nothing. I said to her I would not comment on something I had not yet read, and to a reporter who would - being of The Age - be sure to write something critical of me, regardless of the facts. Battersby claimed she was not so predictable.
She is wrong. She was utterly, utterly predictable, writing to a mendacious and abusive script I could have dictated to her on the phone. Not a reporter but a propagandist:
Battersby then concludes her article by quoting what seems to be her guru of global warming - a man famed around the world (well, the Twitter bits of it) for his profundity, moral rectitude and deep knowledge of climate science:
My piece was actually factually accurate, and exposing the factual inaccuracies of Aly’s fellow travelers. Yet Battersby still manages to suggest I “keep denying climate change” (which I actually don’t) “because of emotional or incorrect reasons”.
Go figure. And this junk is published?
===ACMA describes how this farce began (and, note, this was before the recent spike in temperatures caused by the El Nino):
In April 2016, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) commenced an investigation under section 170 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (the BSA) into a segment on The Bolt Report broadcast on Southern Cross Ten by Southern Cross Communications Pty Limited (the licensee) on 8 November 2015.Small problem, as ACMA reluctantly concedes:
The ACMA received a complaint alleging that a statement about the interpretation of a graph broadcast during a segment on global warming was inaccurate and misleading…
The complaint to the licensee was:
I would call into question the graph used by Mr Andrew Bolt on his program “The Bolt Report” aired on 8 Nov 2015.
It is a small section of a much larger graph that clearly shows climate change is increasing as predicted by science, taking small sections of larger graphs is neither accurate nor scientific.
It is a way to manipulate data to give a false impression of the overall problem…
I feel that both Ch 10 and Mr Bolt should be ordered to issue a retraction and apology for not checking facts and for repeatedly publishing false and misleading information.
Despite some contestability about this issue , Mr Bolt’s specific comment about there being no real warming of the atmosphere over the last 18 years is consistent with the surface air temperature records for this period referred to in the 2013 IPCC report and by Remote Sensing Systems.... [O]f itself, the factual material was accurate.That should have been the end of the matter. I drew attention to a pause in the previous warming trend - a trend I have never denied or hidden. Indeed, in the show I quoted a sceptical scientist specifically referring to “the warming we’ve seen since the 1950s”. So end of complaint. What i said was both true and in context. Go away, Mr Anonymous Denouncer.
But ACMA could not leave it there. It could not resist going further to add a bit of partisan snark - not surprising, given its membership - that goes way beyond its remit.
Much of Mr Bolt’s language was hyperbolic…That’s rich, given that I’m arguing against extremists who claim the world is superheating so badly that our cities will drown and humanity itself is threatened with wipeout.
So what does ACMA identify as my “hyperbolic” statements?
Much of Mr Bolt’s language was hyperbolic, such as, ‘great global warming scare campaign’, ‘Australians aren’t stupid’, ‘can’t be fooled for long’, ‘all that propaganda’, ‘scaremongers’, ‘there’s been no Armageddon’ and ‘no wonder’.Pardon?
It is hyperbolic to claim “Australians aren’t stupid”? Could ACMA explain this ruling?
It is hyperbolic to say “there’s been no Armageddon”? Could ACMA explain why this is not a statement of plain fact?
It is hyperbolic to say some warming alarmists are “scaremongers”? Could ACMA seriously doubt that, when this is the very passage of my show it critiques and quotes?:
Andrew Bolt: The scaremongering that followed was a scandal, pushed by a media that swallowed the most preposterous claims.Is ACMA seriously suggesting that those I quoted are not scaremongers?
Footage of an interview with Professor Tim Flannery, Environmentalist.
Tim Flannery: Even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems.
Footage of an interview with Mark Lynas, Environmentalist.
Mark Lynas: If temperatures soar by six degrees in less than a century, we’re going to face nothing less than a global wipe-out.
Footage of a report from American ABC news.
Voice over: But this city itself could be dying from the effects of global warming. Imagine a city that could look like this just one generation from now. A near permanent state of drought, a dramatic rise in bush fires, tsunami-like tidal surges, heat related deaths soaring. It’s a doomsday scenario.
Footage of an interview with Professor Mike Archer, UNSW Science Dean.
Mike Archer: Life as usual is not going to be here for much longer.
An unbiased ACMA would have agreed that “scaremongers” - when applied to Flannery, Lynas, American ABC, and Archer - is not hyperbole but in fact the plain, unvarnished truth.
Indeed, that quoted passage suggests this question: why am I dragged before ACMA but Flannery not, when it is crystal clear here that I am right and Flannery profoundly wrong?
And why isn’t the ABC in the dock with Flannery?
See, ACMA goes on to quote a part of the transcript of my show in which I also I nail a gross misrepresentation by the ABC of a CSIRO survey:
Andrew Bolt: This week on Melbourne Cup Day the CSIRO quietly snuck out this report on a massive survey last year of 5000 Australians asking what they thought of global warming. The findings are incredible. For the first time in years the Australians who believe humans are heating the world dangerously are outnumbered by Australians who don’t. We have more sceptics now than believers. Here are the figures. Nearly 46% of Australians say they believe humans are mostly to blame for the warming we’ve seen, but they’re outnumbered by the nearly 39% who say the warming is natural plus the 8% who think there’s actually been no warming, at least lately. The sceptics are in the majority particularly when you add those who don’t have an opinion.... These are huge results. They show the media has failed. Its non-stop message of a manmade global warming doom is no longer believed by most of us. In fact, the media could not be trusted even in reporting this survey. The ABC implied most Australians were still buying the scare.Why was the ABC and Michael Brissenden not investigated instead?
Graphic of Michael Brissenden, host of AM.
Michael Brissenden: A five year study of Australians’ views on climate change has found 78% believe it is happening.
ACMA’s statements are bizarre, and little more than partisan abuse. ACMA also demonstrates here how such free-speech police operate, in effect, to harass and police only one side of the debate, and the rational one at that.
Why do such bodies even attempt to meddle in such important public debates? Why do they attempt to arbitrate on highly contested matters of science?
UPDATE
Note, by the way, that my accuser remains anonymous, and is not ordered to pay my costs for defending truth. He denounces, abuses, causes trouble and expense and then walks away without paying a cent or even revealing their name.
UPDATE
An Age reporter, Lucy Battersby, rang me on Friday to ask me to comment on the above finding, of which I knew nothing. I said to her I would not comment on something I had not yet read, and to a reporter who would - being of The Age - be sure to write something critical of me, regardless of the facts. Battersby claimed she was not so predictable.
She is wrong. She was utterly, utterly predictable, writing to a mendacious and abusive script I could have dictated to her on the phone. Not a reporter but a propagandist:
Andrew Bolt’s comments about climate change on his television show were so hyperbolic and subjective that no reasonable person would think he was providing a “concluded scientific position”, the television regulator has found.How pathetic. Not one of my facts was challenged by ACMA, but Battersby - clearly disappointed - decides to falsely imply that I’ve argued that there was not warming before 1997, and then seeks to give this straw man of hers a kicking:
However, the full chart goes back to 1979 and shows an increase in temperatures from 1979 to 1997.Yes, Lucy, that would be the full chart that I’ve published myself. In the very show ACMA investigated, a quoted a sceptical scientist referring to “the warming we’ve seen since the 1950s”.
Battersby then concludes her article by quoting what seems to be her guru of global warming - a man famed around the world (well, the Twitter bits of it) for his profundity, moral rectitude and deep knowledge of climate science:
Co-host of Ten another show, Waleed Aly, criticised Mr Bolt’s show a month after it aired, saying Mr Bolt could not keep denying climate change because of emotional or incorrect reasons.Seriously?
My piece was actually factually accurate, and exposing the factual inaccuracies of Aly’s fellow travelers. Yet Battersby still manages to suggest I “keep denying climate change” (which I actually don’t) “because of emotional or incorrect reasons”.
Go figure. And this junk is published?
Who let them in? Now a spruiker for Hamas, the terrorist group?
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (9:47pm)
Who lets these people in? Who invites them?
Mark Durie:
===Are we really talking about a tiny, unrepresentative minority?
Mark Durie:
A fundamentalist Islamic preacher who says Hamas “are not terrorists, they are freedom fighters” is planning to come to Australia after being refused a visa earlier this year.
Sheikh Zahir Mahmood is headlined as a speaker at the upcoming United Muslims Association (UMA) conference to be held in Sydney on Sunday 14th August.
Zahir Mahmood made the claim about Hamas in Birmingham in 2009 at a meeting where he likened modern Israel to Nazi Germany.
Mahmood had attempted to come to Australia in May but was his visa was refused by the Department of Immigration. The UMA organised a conference where gender segregation was enforced, despite the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir losing a court case over the same issue.
Other speakers at the conference include Sheikh Shady al-Suleiman and Bilal Dannoun. Sheikh Shady came to national attention recently for his comment that “homosexuality is spreading all the diseases “ describing them as “evil actions”. He is President of the National Imams Council, and was a guest at the Prime Minister’s recent Iftar dinner.
Bilal Dannoun was identified in 2007 by national security as one of the fundamentalist clerics supporting Wahhabism. Dannoun responded by claiming that terrorist attacks were not being carried out by followers of Wahhabism, such as al-Qaeda. He said: “if following the teachings of Islam, following the way of the Prophet is called radical, then ... call us radicals.”
“Mentally disturbed” may just be the latest code words. UPDATE: Belgian attack
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (12:09pm)
London police at first
dismissed the killer as merely mentally disturbed. But the 19 year old
who went on a stabbing rampage in London, killing an American, has been linked to jihadism.
And now two female police officers in Belgium are slashed by a man shouting “Allah is great” and wielding a machete.
Probably just mad.
UPDATE
Premier Daniel Andrews hyping of this arrest makes me a little sceptical:
Not the slightest problem this time with naming and photographing the suspect.
(Thanks to readers PJ and Doc.)
===And now two female police officers in Belgium are slashed by a man shouting “Allah is great” and wielding a machete.
Probably just mad.
UPDATE
Premier Daniel Andrews hyping of this arrest makes me a little sceptical:
A man aged 31 believed to be linked to the rightist group Reclaim Australia has been arrested after police carried out counter-terror raids in Victoria today.The Herald-Sun in Melbourne and Fairfax Media have identified the man as Phillip Galea, who allegedly has links with the anti-immigration group.[
Victoria Police did not confirm he was a member of Reclaim Australia, but said “the individual in custody has a number of affiliations to different organisations”.The man was caught in raids executed by the joint counter-terror squad on Saturday across Victoria about 1pm on Saturday, and was being taken for questioning by Australian Federal Police.
Counter Terrorism Command Assistant Commissioner Ross Guenther said there were growing concerns the man’s or a group’s actions were escalating.
“The threat was specific enough to cause alarm in terms of the risk it would cause the community,” he told reporters.
Not the slightest problem this time with naming and photographing the suspect.
(Thanks to readers PJ and Doc.)
Morrison must shine because Turnbull won’t
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (12:01pm)
Terry McCrann says Scott Morrison must be the Paul Keating of legend:
===Keating claimed that he became the PM-in-effect for the last four years of the Hawke government, providing both the policy grunt and political leadership in the PM’s “absence”. It is an interpretation that is a matter of some considerable contention.
Whatever the truth of that, Morrison has to become that Keating, of fact or fiction: because someone has to, given both the aimlessness and ineptitude of Malcolm Turnbull and the fact that there is quite simply no one else.
Unrestrained Spectator Australia
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (11:25am)
So much great writing in the latest edition of Spectator Australia, out at news agencies now. (Or subscribe here.)
Rowan Dean also wonders what Malcolm Turnbull has done in 11 months:
===Rowan Dean also wonders what Malcolm Turnbull has done in 11 months:
It is now 11 months since Mr Turnbull promised an enraptured media class his famed economic leadership. Again, absent any serious philosophy, we have skidded all over the shop, with the one and only constant being robbing the elderly to pay for the outrageous profligacy of the modern political class…John Stone celebrates the success of his voting guide to punish the Liberal traitors:
Free speech, meanwhile, is nose down in the ditch, its wheels spinning in the air. Political correctness and the ‘appropriate’ way of saying things and thinking things dominates the political scene, with one of the keenest proponents of political correctness being the Prime Minister himself....
The government continues to drift further to the left on climate change and ‘renewables’, with a new ETS (aka ‘safeguard’) surreptitiously snuck into play on July 1.
Consider first the 56 Liberal party room denizens who last September voted (or in two cases would have voted if present) to sack the Prime Minister who led them to a crushing victory only two years earlier…And Stone correctly concludes that Turnbull is finished - or, rather, that he was never a goer:
Pre-election, seven of those members (including one of the key plotters group, Mal Brough) and two senators announced their retirements, and two (Bronwyn Bishop and Dennis Jensen) suffered the ultimate indignity of being defeated for pre-selection. Another six of those members have now been defeated (including two more key plotters, Peter Hendy and Wyatt Roy), and two senators (David Johnston, WA and Richard Colbeck, Tasmania) have also failed to be returned. Of the 56 original culprits, 37 therefore still remain in the Parliament....
While there was an overall swing against the Liberal Party of 3.35 per cent, the National Party recorded a small (0.32 per cent) swing towards it. So Rule 1 of the ‘Rules of Engagement’ (Speccie, 14/05/16) – that is, vote National wherever possible because they had no hand in Turnbull’s coup – seems to have delivered… Well done, all you Del-Cons who had ‘nowhere else to go’.
To recapitulate, consider the pass to which, in just nine months, Turnbull has brought his party:
- A House situation where, after appointing a Speaker, he will have to govern with a single seat majority. - A Senate situation even worse than before.
- A new Ministry, no less than 43 in number and already becoming a joke, while senior, highly experienced people (Abetz, Andrews, Abbott, Bernardi) adorn the back benches.
- A crippled government led by a supreme narcissist ... incapable of seeing, let alone admitting, his own central role in this disaster.
- And a continuing, even growing, band of ‘Dis-Cons’ (disaffected conservatives) who will never return to voting Liberal until Turnbull is sent packing.
Gold medal for bigotry goes to the Lebanese team
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (11:15am)
Muslim hatred of Jews trumps the fabled Olympic spirit even in Rio:
What, no #ridewithme hashtag from the Twitter Left?
===Lebanese athletes refused to share a bus with the Israel team to get to Friday’s Rio Olympic Games opening ceremony, members of both teams said…UPDATE
The incident happened as the Lebanon team sat on the bus waiting to head to the Maracana stadium, before demanding the Israeli athletes must not board.
Israel’s athletes insisted on doing so, but the two teams were eventually taken to the ceremony in different buses.
What, no #ridewithme hashtag from the Twitter Left?
A stab in the heart of this country
Andrew Bolt August 07 2016 (11:13am)
Something has changed in Australia:
Another change, with the latest evidence documented by reader Ed:
===A 16-YEAR-OLD boy is in a critical condition in hospital and another teen and a man have serious injuries after seven people were stabbed at a party in Sydney’s north west overnight.UPDATE
Police were called to a home in Ryde just after midnight following a fight among young partygoers that left six males and a female with stab wounds.
Another change, with the latest evidence documented by reader Ed:
Earlier this week Africans allegedly went on another crime wave involving home invasions, robberies and even kidnapping a man and forcing him to withdraw cash from an ATM. The ABC article names them.
Julie’s bold experiment: could we teach a donkey of the Left a thing or two?
Andrew Bolt August 06 2016 (10:11pm)
My book is living large and wide, visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Santorini, London, Lake Como, Ithaca, Scotland, the Bay of Naples, Dubrovnik, Fiji, Aileron and the Andes. In between, it’s done some work in Kalgoorlie and the coal seam gas fields of Condabri, Queensland, before attending a christening in Newcastlle and then invading Australia’s most Left-wing Parliament.
Since the book is now crossing into Left-wing parts of the country, and even the Parliament of Socialist-Left-run Victoria, reader Julie of the Katharine River Mango Farm decided to embark on a bold experiment: could we teach even a donkey to understand what’s in it:
To set right the donkey next door, go here. A second print run has now been ordered.
The third edition of the Bolt Bulletin, available to on-line buyers, went out last week. The fourth will go out to on-line buyers some time in August.
===Since the book is now crossing into Left-wing parts of the country, and even the Parliament of Socialist-Left-run Victoria, reader Julie of the Katharine River Mango Farm decided to embark on a bold experiment: could we teach even a donkey to understand what’s in it:
Next: are there any volunteers prepared to take this experiment to the streets of Brunswick?
To set right the donkey next door, go here. A second print run has now been ordered.
The third edition of the Bolt Bulletin, available to on-line buyers, went out last week. The fourth will go out to on-line buyers some time in August.
Nothing equal about this debate
Piers Akerman – Friday, August 07, 2015 (12:36am)
THE homosexual marriage lobby likes to claim it plants its rainbow-coloured flags firmly on the summit of the high moral ground.
Continue reading 'Nothing equal about this debate'Halal good buy? I don’t know why
Piers Akerman – Friday, August 07, 2015 (12:34am)
AUSTRALIANS are asking what in halal is going on with religious food certification and demanding an end to being forced to pay for Islamic blessings on ordinary supermarket food items.
Continue reading 'Halal good buy? I don’t know why'IT USED TO BE JUST A FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Tim Blair – Friday, August 07, 2015 (1:38pm)
Susie O’Brien identifies the problem:
The AFL is one of the most powerful causes for progressive change in our society.
BIG ISSUES AND LOW SCORES
Tim Blair – Friday, August 07, 2015 (9:17am)
This week’s podcast thoughtfully considers the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima’s bombing, Donald Trump’s presidential run, Tony Burke’s expenses and Australia’s first innings annihilation at Trent Bridge.
UPDATE. Check the impeccable leftoid credentials of Tony Burke’s current partner and first-class travel pal:
UPDATE. Check the impeccable leftoid credentials of Tony Burke’s current partner and first-class travel pal:
Italy and Spain were the favoured destinations of Tony Burke when he embarked on a ministerial travel extravaganza that included first-class flights with senior staffer Skye Laris, who is now his partner …Ms Laris joined Mr Burke’s staff in early 2008 after having worked in a communications role for the Climate Institute.Before the Climate Institute, she worked as a radio journalist for the ABC and as a media adviser to a state minister ...Ms Laris left Mr Burke’s office in March 2011 to join the activist group GetUp!, and in 2012 she moved into the role of director of digital for the ALP, based in Sydney.
When she isn’t flying around the world with Tony Burke, Skye Laris enjoys tweeting about climate change and Bronwyn Bishop’s expenses.
Trump flops
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (1:51pm)
Donald Trump got shown up badly in the Republican debate. All bluster and no detail, most cruelly exposed when he was asked what he’d do in response to Iranian General Qassem Suleimani travelling to Russia in defiance of UN sactions.
Trump had not a clue about the guy, the issue or the response, in contrast to the impressive Ted Cruz, who seemed the most authoritative, albeit at times perhaps too hardline on moral issues for uncommitted voters.
Jeb Bush looked safe, if foggy, and Marco Rubio looked like tomorrow in so many ways.
Trump got carved up neatly not just by the jovial Mike Huckabee but by one of the debate hosts, Megyn Kelly, who detailed his past positions - so at odds with the ones he professes today - and asked sweetly when precisely he’d become a Republican. She also challenged him on his vile tweets about women.
But overshadowing everything was Trump’s refusal to promise not to run as an Independent if he didn’t get the Republican nomination. This is a threat to split the Republican vote and get Hillary elected if he’s not given the Repubican prize. Me or nobody.
UPDATE
===Trump had not a clue about the guy, the issue or the response, in contrast to the impressive Ted Cruz, who seemed the most authoritative, albeit at times perhaps too hardline on moral issues for uncommitted voters.
Jeb Bush looked safe, if foggy, and Marco Rubio looked like tomorrow in so many ways.
Trump got carved up neatly not just by the jovial Mike Huckabee but by one of the debate hosts, Megyn Kelly, who detailed his past positions - so at odds with the ones he professes today - and asked sweetly when precisely he’d become a Republican. She also challenged him on his vile tweets about women.
But overshadowing everything was Trump’s refusal to promise not to run as an Independent if he didn’t get the Republican nomination. This is a threat to split the Republican vote and get Hillary elected if he’s not given the Repubican prize. Me or nobody.
UPDATE
Krauthammer on Trump:
I think he had a bad night.
On The Bolt Report on Sunday, August 9
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (12:01pm)
On Channel 10 on Sunday at 10am and 3pm (NOTE: this week on ONE everywhere except Perth):
Editorial: On Bronwyn Burke. Or is that Tony Perk?
My guest: Labor’s Anthony Albanese.
The panel: Bruce Hawker, former Labor campaign guru (and fellow admirer of John Peter Russell) and political scientist Jennifer Oriel.
NewsWatch: Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs editor of The Australian and author of the engaging new memoir, When We Were Young and Foolish, which includes fascinating material on his old friend, Tony Abbott. We’ll discuss the old Abbott, even watch some fascinating old vision, and show how his past explains his latest media woes.
Plenty to get stuck into: Building dud subs, Labor hypocrites, Trump vs Bush, the expenses uproar, greens killing a mine, the price of the “stolen generations” exposed and more.
The videos of the shows appear here.
I thought I was finished. So how can I be such a threat?
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (11:12am)
I’m confused. According to ABC presenter Virginia Trioli, who still claims she’s not of the Left, I am a great monster who has directly inspired tens of thousands of my millions of minions to boo Adam Goodes (despite repeatedly saying they shouldn’t):
Age-old catcalling the enemy is one thing, but this vilification is the result of a dedicated, long-running campaign to focus angry criticism upon this man, a campaign run in some of the best-selling newspapers and most-read blogs in the country. And guess what? It’s worked.But what is most surprising is that commentators of the Left persist in portraying me as this colossus - this Sauron commanding countless legions of Australian orcs - when many have simultaneously assured their audience for years that my power is broken, in decline, fading fast.
I don’t know what AFL management has been reading – or not reading over the past couple of years – but millions of Australians have read heavy, and sometimes really terrible, criticism of Goodes by Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun...
What’s happening? Is this like the Left’s continual predictions of a global warming hell that never arrives? Or is it deliberately promoting a falsehood - portraying me, this broken wreck of a journalist, sobbing for his long-lost audience, into some fantasy villian who threatens the nation’s unity? A kind of Emmanuel Goldstein?
Excuse my curiosity on this point. It’s not just vanity that has made me wonder whether the repeated assurances that I’m finished are to be believed, since I do have a family to feed, after all.
ABC host Jon Faine in 2008, grilling my then editor:
Have things moved on and have some of the staples of the media in the Howard era worn out their usefulness as we enter a Rudd era? ... I’m going to talk in particular about columnists… and Bruce you have some notorious ones of your own? ... so you’re not going through a cleansing process?Crikey in 2011:
After a phenomenal peak, is Andrew Bolt in decline?The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tim Dick in 2011:
The most interesting aspect of the first instalment [of The Bolt Report] is whether there will be a second.Sociologist Mark Bahnisch on the ABC in 2011:
... Bolt’s influence might be on the waneCrikey in 2011:
...the news is worse for Bolt, the nation’s pre-eminent conservative crusader, with more than half of respondents to an Essential Research survey not knowing who he isCrikey in 2012:
Bolt’s influence has declinedCrikey in 2015:
Why the Oz has abandoned Bolt and the populist right… Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine and Rita Panahi talk in a language no one understands anymore.
Closing down Australia to please the Greens and a skink
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (10:59am)
We don’t have much of a future if such a project can be stalled over a technicality involving a skink and a snake:
===Tony Abbott has declared that the overturning of the proposed Queensland Carmichael mega coalmine means courts can be used to “sabotage” worthy projects, in his strongest defence yet of coal production in Australia.Should governments perhaps scrap a hospital or school for every project that greens block, denying us the money to pay for them? We need some reminders of the connection between effort and income.
“As a country we must, in principle, favour projects like this,” the Prime Minister told The Australian last night.
“This is a vitally important project for the economic development of Queensland and it’s absolutely critical for the human welfare literally of tens of millions of people in India.”
An exasperated Mr Abbott said the federal government approval for Indian company Adani to develop the $16 billion coalmine in central Queensland, which was overturned by the Federal Court on Wednesday, was a vital project.
He said if Australia did not allow such developments, “we have a problem as a nation”. “Lets face it: this is a $21bn investment of which some billion dollars has already been spent,” Mr Abbott said.
Even more Labor pain for no climate gain
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (10:04am)
Labor’s global warming scheme shows an even bigger contempt for taxpayers’ money than does Tony Burke:
This is just politicians pretending to fix something politicians are pretending is a problem.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===Bill Shorten faces a renewed Coalition attack over higher electricity prices from his 50 per cent renewable energy goal, after Environment Department analysis found achieving it by 2030 would cost a “ballpark’’ $85 billion…And the ultimate obscenity? All this spending will actually make no difference to the temperature of our atmosphere, which, by the way, has essentially not risen for 18 years anyway.
The Environment Department finds that if Labor legislated a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, consumers would pay $70bn in subsidies in addition to the subsidies they pay under the current RET…
Separate analysis commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia and conducted by economic consultancy Principal Economics found the renewable energy sector received subsidies (including the RET, feed-in tariffs and other green policy costs) worth $2.8bn in 2013-14.
The renewable subsidies translated into almost $412 per megawatt hour (MWh) for solar technologies, $42 per MWh for wind and $18 per MWh for all other renewable sources (including hydro). By comparison, coal-fired power received less than $1 per MWh and natural gas less than 1c per MWh delivered. Principal Economics found that in 2013-14 these renewable energy subsidies added between 3 per cent and 9 per cent to the average household bill and up to 20 per cent for some industrial users..
This is just politicians pretending to fix something politicians are pretending is a problem.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Say no to save yourselves from such holy terrors
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (9:51am)
The day is fast approaching when there will be only one safe place left to say no to the red guards of the new racism:
That one safe place will be the ballot box, come the referendum to change the constitution to divide us by race.
That could be your one last chance to say no without fear of losing your job and being hounded out of public life.
The Age continues the witch-hunting and vilification:
Say no in the referendum and save yourselves from even worse.
(Thanks to readers Martin and Polly.)
===That one safe place will be the ballot box, come the referendum to change the constitution to divide us by race.
That could be your one last chance to say no without fear of losing your job and being hounded out of public life.
The Age continues the witch-hunting and vilification:
A push to remove Alan Jones from the SCG Trust has followed the Sydney shock jock’s heated public commentary over Adam Goodes in which Jones accused Goodes of always playing the victim.Susie O’Brien in the Herald Sun:
Fellow trustee and former Swans chairman Richard Colless is behind the push, telling Jones his stand on Goodes places him at conflict with his role as a trustee of Sydney’s home ground. Goodes is an SCG Trust ambassador, the only AFL player to hold that role.
The divisions between the powerful and political management group of the SCG emerged after Jones last week delivered a heated rant on Channel Seven about Goodes.
“They (the booing crowds) just don’t like the fellow. And Adam Goodes can fix all this by changing his behaviour. But what’s he say today? ‘Oh I’m going to leave. I may have to resign. I can’t hack it.’ Ask the little 13-year-old girl how she handled that? “… someone’s got to ask the question: why are they booing Adam Goodes and not the other 70 indigenous AFL players. Adam Goodes can fix this by changing his behaviour. He again today plays the victim.” Jones also said of Goodes that “every time he speaks Australia is a racist nation.”
SAM Newman is a pathetic, ridiculous dinosaur who belongs in the prehistoric age.Patrick Smith in The Australian:
His time is up, and he demonstrated this clearly on The Footy Show last night.
The AFL is one of the most powerful causes for progressive change in our society. And yet Newman took aim at the league for leading the way in combating sexism, racism and homophobia. First, he took aim at viewers who objected to his comments about Swans player Adam Goodes last week.
This was the final humiliation for a commission that could not detect racism or articulate a response to it. Commissioners, don’t ever again boast about your work with indigenous footballers and their communities. The Adam Goodes affair makes it look like your interest in Aboriginal matters is not much more than tokenism. You should all resign.Incredible. To deny we are racist now proves you are racist. No dissent can be tolerated. No good deeds can be held to your credit. Not even a 13 year old girl is safe from a public monstering by journalists, none saints themselves but now inflamed with their holy sense of self-righteousness.
Say no in the referendum and save yourselves from even worse.
(Thanks to readers Martin and Polly.)
Yes, but back to Bishop… The shameless Age
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (9:31am)
(Thanks to reader Josh.)
Bye bye, Tony Perk
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (8:40am)
Labor frontbencher Tony Burke on flying his children to Uluru in business class at taxpayers’ expense:
UPDATE
Talking about “completely beyond community expectations”, what of this example of Tony Burke’s monstrous sense of entitlement?:
To be fair, there is another side:
But different rules for members of the Labor-green-ABC Left?:
Reader PSFR would like Tony Burke to expand on this defence he gave for flying his family business class to Uluru during the school holidays:
The art of boozing on the taxpayers’ shout:
===While I am completely confident that the questions in particular relating to Uluru and Cairns have been 100 per cent within the rules, they have also been completely beyond community expectations. No-one can satisfy an argument that says that kids should have been flying business class and [I] accept that argument absolutely.And then he said he’d still keep the cash. Wouldn’t pay it back.
UPDATE
Talking about “completely beyond community expectations”, what of this example of Tony Burke’s monstrous sense of entitlement?:
Italy and Spain were the favoured destinations of Tony Burke when he embarked on a ministerial travel extravaganza that included first-class flights with senior staffer Skye Laris, who is now his partner.Is this first-class romancing? Paid for by taxpayers?
Mr Burke’s expense claims show that in 2008-09 he racked up $225,000 in overseas travel costs. The Australian understands he was accompanied on most of these trips by Ms Laris.In first class? Even business not good enough for Romeo?
In January 2009, Mr Burke travelled with Ms Laris in his role as agriculture minister to attend a forum in Barcelona known as “Food Security for All”. The two travelled in the first-class cabin while senior departmental advisers flew business class.
Shortly afterwards, Mr Burke promoted Ms Laris from adviser to chief of staff and stipulated that she accompany him on all of his domestic and overseas trips.Yes, I am sure they travelled for business and not for personal reasons. But why first class? Was Laris’s travel always necessary or just desirable?
To be fair, there is another side:
A spokesman for Mr Burke ... denied that any travel directive about Ms Laris had been made, the travel requirement went with the chief-of-staff role.And the Barcelona trip occurred years before Burke separated from his wife, so we must assume the relationship with Laris then was strictly professional:
“No such stipulation was made. It was standard for Mr Burke’s chief of staff to travel with Mr Burke unless the chief of staff delegated the responsibility to another adviser,” the spokesman said.
Mr Burke separated from his wife, Cathy Bresnan-Burke, in 2012. His relationship with Ms Laris became public two years later.But, gee, doesn’t Burke choke on his hypocrisy?
Ms Laris also accompanied Mr Burke in April 2009 on a 14-day trip to China and Italy to attend the Boao Forum for Asia and the “G8+G5 Outreach session” of the G8 agriculture ministers’ meeting....In the same year, Mr Burke travelled to the US and the Middle East at a cost of $81,000, and again to Italy at a cost of $47,286.When will he resign, as he demanded Bishop do?
In his capacity as finance spokesman, Mr Burke has led the attack on former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop, but a close examination of his expense claims reveals a host of excessive and questionable items.
But different rules for members of the Labor-green-ABC Left?:
Ms Laris joined Mr Burke’s staff in early 2008 after having worked in a communications role for the Climate Institute. Before the Climate Institute, she worked as a radio journalist for the ABC and as a media adviser to a state minister. Mr Burke then promoted her to chief of staff in 2009 when she was 33 years old.UPDATE
Ms Laris’s marriage broke down in late 2009… Ms Laris left Mr Burke’s office in March 2011 to join the activist group GetUp!, and in 2012 she moved into the role of director of digital for the ALP, based in Sydney.
Reader PSFR would like Tony Burke to expand on this defence he gave for flying his family business class to Uluru during the school holidays:
In each of these, I had senior members of my staff and departmental officials with me. You don’t go on a holiday with the public servants from your department.UPDATE
The art of boozing on the taxpayers’ shout:
TONY Burke’s department spent more than $50,000 throwing lavish functions across the nation in his first six and a half weeks as arts minister during the final year of the Labor government.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Mr Burke attended eight “stakeholder functions” in six different cities at a cost to the taxpayer of $54,312.69, not long after then prime minister Julia Gillard had announced the election date. The beverage bill alone was almost $20,000 for the events in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart...The functions, for as few as 20 arts industry stakeholders to more than 200, were held between March 26 and May 8, 2013.
Waleed Aly vs Waleed Aly: recognition is meant to divide us and make us “types”
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (7:54am)
The “recognition” campaign is based from the very start on a wish to divide us permanently on the grounds of race. To turn “we” into “them and us”, based on racial qualifications.
It is a campaign to treat us all not as individuals but as racial types, each type to get a different citizenship status on the basis of the “race” of some of their ancestors, and then have them war over the spoils. It is a campaign which ultimately leads to apartheid.
That is no longer a hidden objective, or some wild and hostile interpretation from some “far Right extremist”, as Labor now claims.
It is in fact the no-but-yes analysis of Waleed Aly, the pet of the Left and the ultimate symbol of identity politics in the media:
Tony Abbott [this week] rebuffed Noel Pearson’s suggestion that the path to Indigenous constitutional recognition goes through Indigenous Australians.Of course, Pearson himself does not suffer “entrenched disadvantage” - not compared to, say, many unemployed or disabled people, or refugees, or victims of violent parents or partners. Nor do many of our numerous Aboriginal academics suffer “entrenched disadvantage” compared to an unskilled child of a welfare family unable for months to find even the meanest job. The only way such prominent or well-paid people can be said to suffer “entrenched disadvantage” is to ignore their individuality and see them only as some racial type.
It’s a simple idea, really: you can’t come up with a form of recognition that will mean anything to Indigenous people until they have figured out exactly what that is themselves. The government needs to afford them the chance to thrash this out without the rest of us being in the room. So, Indigenous-only conferences – this is the kind of consultation Indigenous Australia is crying out for, and which is routinely denied…
And yet. “It jars with the notion of finally substituting ‘we’ for ‘us and them’,” declared Abbott. “It might produce something akin to a log of claims”. If [Aboriginal leader] Pearson is offended – and he said as much this week – it’s because the theme is about as old as it gets. It’s the vision of an Indigenous Australia relentlessly making demands, seeking rights the rest of us don’t want to bear; an Indigenous Australia that can’t be trusted to be consulted properly because it “will go completely feral”, in Pearson’s exasperated phrase. It’s the logic that insists we are all simply citizens: individuals, the same and undifferentiated.
This is a kind of pious liberalism that rigorously ignores entrenched disadvantage; the same one that is implicitly why John Howard refused what became Kevin Rudd’s famous apology, and is explicitly why he rejected any suggestion of a treaty. The trouble is, it sits entirely at odds with the whole project of Indigenous recognition:
But note the critical passage in that extract - and of Aly’s entire article.
Aly seems to implicitly accept “recognition” opponents make a powerful and honorable point when we insist on treating people not a members of a “race” but as “all simply citizens: individuals”. I say that because Aly then sneakily adds to our argument a clause that no sensible conservative in truth advances - that we also believe individuals are “the same and undifferentiated”. That we are blind to poverty and “disadvantage”.
That is exactly the opposite of the truth. Conservatives who reject the racial politics of the recognition campaign in fact believe in the infinitive variety of individuals and of the social forces that shape them. We reject crude categories of race, class and tribe. We reject the identity politics that reduce us to types.
But Aly’s claim is more than simply false. It is in fact the critical objection to his own tribalism - the race-based divisions pushed by the recognition campaign.
It is actually the recognition campaigners - not their opponents - who treat individuals as the “same and undifferentiated” - faceless members of racial stereotypes.
It is only by seeing, say, Adam Goodes as above all Aboriginal, not an individual, that this successful, admired, intelligent, honored and wealthy Australian of the Year becomes an undifferentiated type that’s suffering “entrenched disadvantage”. It is only by insisting that some girl is above all Aboriginal that she becomes not saved from a violent father or chronically drunk mother but an undifferentiated member of the “stolen generations”, another stereotypical victim of racist Australia.
Aly has in fact exposed the failing of his racial theorising while confirming my critique.
This recognition campaign will ultimately rob us all - Aborigines and non-Aborigines - of our sense of our common humanity. It will erect foul barriers of race. It will set us at each other’s throat.
We are playing with fire.
UPDATE
Reader DionysusOz:
And a correction for Waleed.Tony Abbott didn’t deny or prevent a convention for indigenous people to determine a unified position. He simply didn’t agree that the community should fund it.
And made the point for doing so quite reasonably.
This team does not seem happy
Andrew Bolt August 07 2015 (7:14am)
Awful:
This does not look a happy team, and I don’t mean just because it is losing.
Is this Clarke’s last Test or will he be given the next - and only the next - for a farewell lap?
===Cross:
England bowled only 114 balls (including 3 no balls). Ten balls took wickets, only 104 didn’t. Just eight balls were on the stumps.
This does not look a happy team, and I don’t mean just because it is losing.
Is this Clarke’s last Test or will he be given the next - and only the next - for a farewell lap?
The Camp of the Saints, now for real
Andrew Bolt August 06 2015 (11:47pm)
I’ve written before about Camp of the Saints, a brilliantly prophetic novel on the invasion of Europe.
Now check the news.
===Now check the news.
School bus outrage shows dark force we must defeat
Piers Akerman – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (7:26pm)
THERE is an ageless Arabian proverb which says: “Once the camel gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” The truly revolting racist attack on a busload of Jewish schoolchildren in Randwick on Wednesday afternoon demonstrates that the anti-Semitic camel is well and truly ensconced in the Australian tent.
Continue reading 'School bus outrage shows dark force we must defeat'VOICES HEARD
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:48pm)
Tony Abbott and his government have gravely underestimated the commitment of Australians to free speech:
Free Market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs raised $10,000 an hour for three hours after emailing supporters asking for cash to fund an attack ad on Prime Minister Tony Abbott.IPA Director John Roskam on Wednesday warned the government not to “underestimate the white-hot anger” of Liberals dismayed by the Prime Minister’s decision to back down from repealing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.Now it appears that anger has been converted into cash with the appeal topping $45,000 as of this morning, according to Mr Roskam.
This is similar to the conservative uprising that followed Malcolm Turnbull’s embrace of an emissions trading scheme. He shortly became an ex-leader. There’s a lesson in that.
STILL CRAWLING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (2:32pm)
America’s weakest President grovels once more:
Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, has called on Western powers to recognise Hamas as a legitimate “political actor” …“Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons.”
This from someone who is frightened by bunnies.
UNITERS ARE DIVIDERS
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (5:23am)
A sure sign that Tony Abbott has made a dreadful error:
STUPID AWARDS
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (4:08am)
American college degrees cost a whole bunch of money. And this is what you get.
DISLIKED MIKE
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:58am)
Former SMH columnist Mike Carlton thanks his supportive colleagues:
“I’d like to thank my colleagues at the Herald for the massive support they’re giving me right now.”
Don’t be too sure of that, Mike:
It was Mike Carlton’s own colleagues who sealed his fate, complaining about his abusive behaviour towards readers to Fairfax Media’s news and business publisher, Sean Aylmer.Despite Carlton claiming he had vast support at The Sydney Morning Herald, and his downfall was a result of the “Israel lobby”, The Australian can reveal a number of Fairfax employees went to Aylmer with evidence of Carlton’s abusive comments, including one where he told a reader to “f. k off”.Carlton’s abusive correspondence with readers was well-known, and for all to see on Twitter, but Aylmer became aware of the extent of the problem only on Tuesday afternoon …The Australian can reveal that discussions about replacing Carlton began in June … writer John Birmingham is understood to be a trial option for Carlton’s regular Saturday column.
Shouldn’t solidarity-minded leftists refuse to cash in on Carlton’s departure? And shouldn’t the SMH look for a replacement who isn’t equally toxic as Carlton?
UPDATE. Today’s column:
According to Mike Carlton, his downfall was brought about by a sinister conspiracy led by Australia’s Jewish lobby.
“That was twinned by a campaign by News Corp - because they hate my guts, but also because it destroyed a rival columnist,” Carlton claimed yesterday. “And now, Fairfax has handed News Corp that present, gift-wrapped.”
As usual, Carlton is wrong. His misfortunes are entirely self-inflicted.
Continue reading 'DISLIKED MIKE'LUVVIE MONEY
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (3:10am)
First, grab a government-funded gig at the ABC. Second, score government-funded speaking deals:
ABC presenters are scooping up many of the tens of thousands of dollars in celebrity speaking contracts being dished out by the federal public service …IP Australia paid $10,800 to bring in ABC science commentator Dr Karl Kruszelnicki to give a talk in June …Austrade spent $14,300 to get [Lateline presenter Emma] Alberici to host its 51st Australian export awards a year ago.The Australian Bureau of Statistics spent $18,132 to have Dan Gregory, a panelist on The Gruen Transfer, as the keynote and dinner speaker at the NatStats conference in early 2013.
Your taxes at work, friends.
FINNBILLY ROCKERS
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 07, 2014 (2:19am)
An excellent AC/DC cover from some kind of Finnish tractor band:
Liberal blame game: colleagues blame Brandis; Hockey blames everyone else
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:37am)
Lots of blaming of George Brandis:
Brandis, to his credit, was on the side of the angels in pressing for freer speech and was undermined by Liberals kowtowing to special interests and ethnic voters in their seats.
Brandis, unlike most of his colleagues, argued publicly for these changes against a hostile Leftist media.
Brandis, unlike almost all his Cabinet colleagues, wanted to stick with these planned reforms to the very end.
And, of course, Brandis argued for free speech when every single Labor politician wouldn’t.
In looking for politicians to blame for this retreat I would look last at Brandis, who at least fought.
UPDATE
Odd that so many Liberals go on the record to attack Brandis.
Meanwhile, Joe Hockey blames everyone else for the failure to sell his Budget:
===George Brandis’ infamous defence of the rights of bigots has been cited by his own colleagues as the cause of the government’s capitulation on changing race-hate laws. Liberals said the Attorney-General’s comments in April had torpedoed what was a move to uphold free speech.This is altogether too easy.
Brandis, to his credit, was on the side of the angels in pressing for freer speech and was undermined by Liberals kowtowing to special interests and ethnic voters in their seats.
Brandis, unlike most of his colleagues, argued publicly for these changes against a hostile Leftist media.
Brandis, unlike almost all his Cabinet colleagues, wanted to stick with these planned reforms to the very end.
And, of course, Brandis argued for free speech when every single Labor politician wouldn’t.
In looking for politicians to blame for this retreat I would look last at Brandis, who at least fought.
UPDATE
Odd that so many Liberals go on the record to attack Brandis.
Meanwhile, Joe Hockey blames everyone else for the failure to sell his Budget:
Treasurer Joe Hockey has hit out at a lack of bipartisan support for tough economic reform, weak business advocacy for change, and the media for attacks against him personally.Hockey may well be right, but it just doesn’t do to complain:
...he has rounded on business saying that, “I think interest groups are quite weak, and the business community is weaker than it has been over many years, as a voice."…This is starting to look shambolic.
“There is a weakening of public commentary. Therefore in the personality battles that the media engages in – and in my case everyone is against me at any rate .?.?. they’re abandoning the argument for good reform”, Hockey said.
Let Tony Abbott go free
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:31am)
Good advice from Greg Craven:
===Abbott has been so careful and so measured in most of his public utterances that he seems to be channelling a funeral director at a chancy burial.
But it does not work. The genuine spontaneity becomes strain. The quirkiness becomes awkwardness. The deeply held convictions become potential traps to be avoided.
Rudd and Gillard cause security shambles. Abbott blamed
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (9:09am)
The first two paragraphs of the Fairfax report would make you think this stupid Abbott Government was to blame:
===Rampant visa fraud and migration crime involving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to secret government files detailing entrenched Immigration Department failings.In fact, read on and you find it was actually the Rudd and Gillard Governments that were asleep at the wheel between 2007 and 2013:
Hundreds of pages of leaked confidential departmental documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that Australia’s national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa rorting and migration rackets operating with impunity, including some with links to terrorism or organised crime.
In 2013, [Immigration] department chiefs were warned in a confidential report that the agency’s investigations arm had collapsed, risking ‘’the integrity of its programs and ultimately national security’’…Why was this story sold as evidence of failure by the Abbott Government rather than of gross and repeated failure by the previous Labor governments?
The leaked documents cover a period between 2008 and 2013 and consistently show far greater rates of migration fraud than has been publicly revealed, along with warnings that the department was failing to combat it.
A 2010 report states that ‘’evidence uncovered to date indicates that fraud within the General Skilled Migration program is extensive with estimates at around 90 per cent [or] more than 40,000 suspect visa applications lodged per year for the last three years’’.
The report warns that ‘’resourcing constraints presently restrict’’ the department’s ‘’ability to adequately address these issues’’.
In 2012, immigration officials assessing Afghan applications noted that ‘’fraud is now ‘business as usual’ ‘’. They also noted the ‘’considerable concern’’ about the department’s inability to counter it.
A 2010 report into a Somali people-smuggling network stated that despite evidence pointing to multiple breaches of the Criminal Code Act and the Migration Act, the department had secured ‘’only one minor prosecution’’. ‘’Media attention and three PMQ’s [prime minister briefings] on this issue have not been enough for the government to address this situation,’’ the immigration file states. A 2009 report reveals that the ‘’student visa program is failing’’, ‘’the general skilled migration program is failing’’ and the falsifying of qualifications was ‘’prolific’’.
Giving up free speech so extremists don’t feel picked on
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:56am)
TONY Abbott has exploded one of the dangerous myths of our out-of-control immigration program. We once expected immigrants like my parents to assimilate to Australian values.
But now Australia assimilates to the values of the immigrants — including the most oppressive values.
The Prime Minister confirmed it on Tuesday in explaining why he’d dropped his plan to scrap restrictions in the Racial Discrimination Act that make it unlawful simply to “offend” someone with a statement related to their “race” or ethnicity.
“We are also determined to engage in ever closer consultation with communities including the Australian Muslim community,” he said.
“When it comes to counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of ‘Team Australia’ and I have to say that the Government’s proposals to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act have become a complication in that respect.”
Pardon? We must placate Muslim Australians by restricting our freedom to say something critical of their culture, for instance, extremists being so prone to jihad?
(Read full article here.)
===But now Australia assimilates to the values of the immigrants — including the most oppressive values.
The Prime Minister confirmed it on Tuesday in explaining why he’d dropped his plan to scrap restrictions in the Racial Discrimination Act that make it unlawful simply to “offend” someone with a statement related to their “race” or ethnicity.
“We are also determined to engage in ever closer consultation with communities including the Australian Muslim community,” he said.
“When it comes to counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of ‘Team Australia’ and I have to say that the Government’s proposals to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act have become a complication in that respect.”
Pardon? We must placate Muslim Australians by restricting our freedom to say something critical of their culture, for instance, extremists being so prone to jihad?
(Read full article here.)
Exactly how Liberal is this government?
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:53am)
This Liberal Government:
UPDATE
Is Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm the more authentic Liberal voice?
===- has dropped its plans to restore free speech.Yes, it still:
- maintains the fiction that man-made global warming threatens the world and we can stop it.
- proposes to change the constitution to divide Australians on the basis of their “race”.
- maintains absurdly high levels of immigration despite evidence of overcrowding and social dysfunction.
- has actually increased government spending.
- has left the ABC largely untouched, and dangerously huge.
- has left the Human Rights Commission intact and now functioning as a de facto opposition.
- proposes intrusive new surveillance powers it struggles to explain.
- has left oppressive workplace restrictions in place.
- has raised the top tax rate by 2 per cent, and broke an election promise in doing so.
- opposes same-sex marriage, but is toying now with allowing a conscience vote that is more likely to allow it.But at least it has:
- called a royal commission into union corruption.Are Liberal supporters happy? Should they be?
- stopped the boats.
- scrapped the carbon tax.
UPDATE
Is Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm the more authentic Liberal voice?
I am very disappointed that the government has dropped its plan to repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act under the guise of national unity. If we want to live in a free society, we should take the advice of Chopper Read and harden up. There are many pressing issues for our governments and courts, but the question of who has had their feelings hurt is not one of them…
The government is now saying it will also force internet service providers to store the internet communications of their customers. We are all to be treated as potential criminals-in-waiting, with the evidence to be held in case it is needed. This is not acceptable. In a liberal democracy in which the government serves the people, free speech must be the default option, with every encroachment subject to strict justification. Agencies such as ASIO must never be given the benefit of the doubt.
If you can’t explain what you’re spying on, I don’t want you to even look
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:39am)
The Attorney General should not propose tough new surveillance laws when he cannot even explain exactly how they work and how intrusive they will be in checking even your browsing history.
This is terrible explanation of what the IPA’s Chris Berg says is a terrible intrusion - a requirement that internet service providers retain metadata on their customers’ online activities:
Malcolm Turnbull is right to be angry:
===This is terrible explanation of what the IPA’s Chris Berg says is a terrible intrusion - a requirement that internet service providers retain metadata on their customers’ online activities:
Mandatory data retention treats all Australians as suspected criminals, storing away records of their internet activities just in case, in the future, they are accused of criminal activity.UPDATE
Far from a targeted anti-terrorism measure, data retained under the government’s policy will be available for any law enforcement agency pry into.
Metadata is nothing less than a complete record of a person’s internet activities - and through that their personal and business life. Claims that ‘only’ metadata will be collected completely misunderstands the nature of digital communications…
The last few decades have shown us that after these sorts of policies are introduced they are incredibly hard to repeal.
Malcolm Turnbull is right to be angry:
An angry and frustrated Communications Minister forcefully warned the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues yesterday that they risked being embarrassed over the new terror provisions because they had taken a decision without full knowledge of the repercussions for internet service providers and the public.
Last night, Senator Brandis, ahead of a meeting today with Mr Turnbull to begin work on a strategy for metadata retention, deepened confusion over whether web histories of private computers would be targeted in the new laws…
On Tuesday, Mr Turnbull bluntly complained to cabinet he found it “strange” that as the Minister for Communications he had not been invited to the National Security Committee of cabinet discussions, which agreed in principle to data-retention plans. He further complained that the first he knew of the decision was a report on the front page of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, which said the cabinet committee had signed off on mandatory data-retention laws.
The Left and mass immigration make Jews here unsafe
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (8:08am)
The Left and mass immigration have together whipped up a savage new racism. In Sydney yesterday:
===Jewish children as young as five were subjected to a terrifying racial attack when thugs stormed their school bus and threatened to slit their throats.Last Monday in Perth:
Screaming “Kill the Jews” and “Heil Hitler” the louts jumped on the bus packed with about 30 students, from kindergarten to year 12, who were on their way home from school yesterday…
The threatened students, from Mount Sinai College, Moriah College and Emanuel School, were hysterical after the attack by eight young men as the school bus travelled through the eastern suburbs towards Bondi Junction.
The attackers, described as Australian and smelling of alcohol, boarded on Alison Rd, Randwick at 4pm…
Mother Jacqui Blackburn said her three daughters on the bus, aged eight, 10 and 12, were traumatised. “The bus driver opened the doors for these strange men and allowed them on to torment the kids,” she said.
“They were screaming ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘Kill the Jews’, ‘Palestine must kill you Jews’, ‘We are going to cut your throats and slice your throats open’ — just all very bad, anti-Semitic stuff… Another mother, Isabelle Stanton, whose daughters Noa, 8, and Anais, 12, boarded at Mount Sinai College in Maroubra, said: “They were screaming racial stuff, ‘We are going to murder you’, ‘We are going to kill you’, and ‘Free Palestine’.
A visiting Hasidic Jewish leader has been the target of anti-Semitic abuse and threatened with physical violence outside the Morley Galleria.Last Friday a Jewish business in Sydney invaded by Leftists:
The Rebbe, who is in Perth on a lecture tour, and his 21-year-old assistant were taunted by a group of six teenagers outside the shopping centre in broad daylight on Monday, a friend of the two men said…
When Mr Mayer ushered the visitors into his car the youths began banging on it. “They were telling us to ‘F*** off’, that we were killers and they wanted to ‘fix us up’,” Mr Mayer said.
Last month in Sydney this savage Jew-hatred openly preached:
At an anti-Israel protest in Melbourne last month, this poster of Abbott as a Jew:
In the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago, this vicious cartoon:
Also in the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago, this poisonous Mile Carlton column assigning a collective guilt for an invested “genocide”:
The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs… It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.
Race Commissioner protects Mike Carlton, fellow member of the Left
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (7:16am)
Mike Carlton in the Sydney Morning Herald falsely accuses Jews collectively of a genocide:
On the same show, Jonathan Green, a fellow Leftist on the ABC, denounces the real crime - that wicked Murdoch journalists noticed Carlton acting like a barbarian:
Mike Carlton claims he’s victim of a Jewish conspiracy - and a Murdoch one. That neatly pairs the two fashionable hate figures of the deranged Left:
Gerard Henderson:
===The onslaught is indiscriminate and unrelenting, with but one possible conclusion: Israel is not fighting the terrorists of Hamas. In defiance of the laws of war and the norms of civilised behaviour, it is waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population of about 1.7 million people. Call it genocide, call it ethnic cleansing: the aim is to kill Arabs… It is a breathtaking irony that these atrocities can be committed by a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.Mike Carlton abuses one of many Jews writing to protest by peddling an offensive stereotype:
You’re the one full of hate and bile, sunshine. The classic example of the Jewish bigot. Now f. k off.Tim Soutphommasane is our Race Discrimination Commissioner. He’s supposed to be red-hot in denouncing racism. But, then again, he’s a former Labor staffer and Carlton is a darling of the far Left. And anti-Semitism is the fashionable racism of the Left. Maybe I’m too hard on Tim, but give me a better explanation for his refusal to criticise Carlton on the ABC (from 14:10):
Commentators you would hope would be cantankerous or controversial… Obviously Fairfax decided to take some action against him. Look, I’m agnostic on this.With so many in the Left it is not the principle that counts but the side.
On the same show, Jonathan Green, a fellow Leftist on the ABC, denounces the real crime - that wicked Murdoch journalists noticed Carlton acting like a barbarian:
We have to salute the really hard work here of News Ltd too in rounding up those emails and drawing them to Fairfax’s attention. They’ve really prosecuted this with a great zeal… They’ve had a very active role in it.UPDATE
Mike Carlton claims he’s victim of a Jewish conspiracy - and a Murdoch one. That neatly pairs the two fashionable hate figures of the deranged Left:
Carlton says there’s no doubt there was a co-ordinated campaign to oust him by the Jewish lobby in Australia. “That was twinned by a campaign by News Corp?—?because they hate my guts, but also because it destroyed a rival columnist. And now, Fairfax has handed News Corp that present, gift-wrapped.”Tim Blair punctures another Carlton fancy:
Former SMH columnist Mike Carlton thanks his supportive colleagues:UPDATE
“I’d like to thank my colleagues at the Herald for the massive support they’re giving me right now.”Don’t be too sure of that, Mike:
It was Mike Carlton’s own colleagues who sealed his fate, complaining about his abusive behaviour towards readers to Fairfax Media’s news and business publisher, Sean Aylmer.As usual, Carlton is wrong. His misfortunes are entirely self-inflicted.
Despite Carlton claiming he had vast support at The Sydney Morning Herald, and his downfall was a result of the “Israel lobby”, The Australian can reveal a number of Fairfax employees went to Aylmer with evidence of Carlton’s abusive comments, including one where he told a reader to “f. k off"…
Gerard Henderson:
IT’S not surprising that The Sydney Morning Herald finally moved to discipline its Saturday columnist Mike Carlton. What’s surprising is that it took so long to do so.
Leyonhjelm marries two warring arguments
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (7:00am)
DAVID Leyonhjelm is the new poster boy for same-sex marriage. Problem is, he’s also the argument against.
The new Liberal Democrat senator has excited reporters by suggesting his planned private member’s Bill could be the breakthrough.
He believes the Government may now relent on its election promise to collectively oppose same-sex marriage, and “a conscience vote is highly likely”.
Really? I doubt the Prime Minister, having just dropped his promise to restore free speech, will further enrage his base by dropping his even more fundamental promise on marriage.
But just as curious is Leyonhjelm’s argument: that government must get out of the marriage business.
(Read full article here.)
===The new Liberal Democrat senator has excited reporters by suggesting his planned private member’s Bill could be the breakthrough.
He believes the Government may now relent on its election promise to collectively oppose same-sex marriage, and “a conscience vote is highly likely”.
Really? I doubt the Prime Minister, having just dropped his promise to restore free speech, will further enrage his base by dropping his even more fundamental promise on marriage.
But just as curious is Leyonhjelm’s argument: that government must get out of the marriage business.
(Read full article here.)
These people walk our streets, yet the Left reckons silly Abbott overreacts and I should shut up
Andrew Bolt August 07 2014 (12:03am)
What a strange country.
The ABC and Fairfax journalists snigger at Tony Abbott allegedly being “confused” about what exactly what meta-data he wants our security forces to have access to. Labor refuses to say it will support the changes to save us from being blown up or beheaded, and refuses even to suggest what changes would satisfy it. There’s even celebration that laws used to silence me - and stifle debate on, say, Islam in Australia - will be maintained.
Meanwhile we have this Hizb ut-Tahrir boss feeling perfectly free to openly preach the most vicious and threatening Jew-hatred in the streets of Sydney. Real racism, real incitement to violence, a real threat - and a real refusal by so many on the Left of the political class to acknowledge any of it:
===The ABC and Fairfax journalists snigger at Tony Abbott allegedly being “confused” about what exactly what meta-data he wants our security forces to have access to. Labor refuses to say it will support the changes to save us from being blown up or beheaded, and refuses even to suggest what changes would satisfy it. There’s even celebration that laws used to silence me - and stifle debate on, say, Islam in Australia - will be maintained.
Meanwhile we have this Hizb ut-Tahrir boss feeling perfectly free to openly preach the most vicious and threatening Jew-hatred in the streets of Sydney. Real racism, real incitement to violence, a real threat - and a real refusal by so many on the Left of the political class to acknowledge any of it:
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Except, although the media portray whatever they like, what has been negative about Liberal campaigns? Highlighting the dysfunctional government is kind of important when you think the media wouldn't. The negativity is overstated. Positive messages ignored. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have a balanced approach.But I challenge the assertion that it hasn't been. Instead or repeating a media lie as if it were true, we need to be positive and proactive in presenting our message without bogging down in history. Today, August 6th, is an anniversary of a war crime as large as any in history .. the nuclear bomb dropped on civilians and excused by a liberal media keen to promote a left wing government. If they will accept that today, then we cannot expect favours. - ed===
The NYT is going broke and still it doesn't get the message .. as for getting the message, I'm reminded of the story of a guy who had an affair .. many affairs .. and his long suffering wife hired a hit man. The hit man broke into the marital bedroom, shot the husband in the head and ran away. The husband survived. The husband forgave his wife at the trial for her attempted murder of him. He said "She shot me in the head. When someone shoots you in the head, it makes you think .. " .. but I don't feel anything will make the NYT think .. ed
Last week’s return of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians has had little impact on the simmering Palestinian violence in the West Bank – or the efforts of some in the media to glorify the violence.
New York Times reporter Jodi Rudoren is thelatest apologist to present Palestinian stone throwers as noble defenders of their land and victims of Israeli oppression rather than as violent criminals:
Here in Beit Ommar, a village of 17,000 between Bethlehem and Hebron that is surrounded by Jewish settlements, rock throwing is a rite of passage and an honored act of defiance.The futility of stones bouncing off armored vehicles matters little: confrontation is what counts.
Rudoren focuses much of the story on a 17-year old Palestinian youth who has been arrested four times “for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and settlers” – not civilians but settlers.Apparently do not merit the standard rights of civilians in Rudoren’s worldview simply because of where they choose to live. At the same time, Rudoren goes to great lengths to build sympathy for the Palestinian youth and his family, noting how his mother made sure to give him a long sleeve shirt for his stay in prison because “they both knew it would be cold in the interrogation room.”
===My Country
The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze ...
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
**
Dorothea Mackeller
===
Bad administration costs - ed
Al Hayat al Jadida reports that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs have received permits to enter Israel during Ramadan - and they are finding that identical items of food and clothing are a fraction of the cost that they are charged back home.
===
No reasonable person would disagree. It isn't as if they are behaving worse because of the penalty - ed
Op-d: No reason why Israel shouldn’t execute terrorists who murdered innocent, defenseless civilians
===
Not because she is black, but because she is a drug abuser. Save her children. - ed
"I'm black and I use drugs," she says. "That doesn't make me a bad mother. It doesn't mean any Aboriginal woman who takes drugs is a bad mother whose kids should be taken off her.
"They don't take kids off girls who take legal drugs or who drink and smoke. And they don't take kids off some violent parents until it's too late.
"But when it's a black girl and they suspect drugs, they come in with security guards to restrain the mothers and grandmothers and they take our children away.
"It just kills you, every day you don't have your kids. It's the new stolen generation and we've got to stop it."
Celia is an Aboriginal woman and occasional heroin user from an inner city location in urban Sydney. She has seen the lot: drugs, police, courts, jail, violence and murder.
She once had her children taken from her and now it's happened to her daughter and other young Aboriginal relatives and friends.
She says DOCS (the Department of Community Services, or Family and Community Services as it is now known) is destroying families.
===
Everyone has a story, do not be ashamed of yours... it just may help someone else get through theirs... Share your story, share your love!
===<"G-strings and Desire", a book Ms Frank has written based on her PhD, reveals married men who frequented strip clubs may have more long-lasting relationships with their wives> But probably don't. - ed
===
Pastor Rick Warren
To truly believe in freedom is to allow disagreement and even support each other's right to be wrong.
===Pastor Rick Warren
Not everything in this life has a happy ending. But this life is not the end of the story.
===Pastor Rick Warren
Trying to forget doesn't work. But you CAN let God give new meaning to bad things that have happened to you. Romans 8:28
===Pastor Rick Warren
Lies always spread faster than the truth so the wise wait for the whole story. “Fools believe everything they hear.” Proverbs 14:15
===Pastor Rick Warren
30 of our Saddleback Pastors form our global leadership team. In this picture we're watching live video reports from our pastors of Saddleback Hong Kong, Saddleback Berlin, Saddleback Buenos Aires, and Saddleback Manila. Thank God for technology that makes distance irrelevant! One church, many locations.
===
Hell isn't really hot enough for the people who committed this crime. - ed
A MOTHER whose newborn baby was allegedly sold to human traffickers by a doctor has been reunited with her son.
Dong Wan from China wept as she held the boy at a hospital in Fuping following the arrest of Zhang Lin, a female obstetrician, and two suspected accomplices.
The doctor apparently told Mrs Wan, 31, that her son was born with severe health problems and would soon die. She is accused of persuading the mother to sign the baby over to the hospital before selling him to traffickers for $5000.
"I was told the best thing would be to let the hospital take care of him, so I did," Mrs Dong said.
But after signing the documents at the Fuping County Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital in northern China on July 17, she became suspicious and begged her husband to call the police.
The healthy baby was tracked down hundreds of miles away after the original traffickers sold him on for a profit.
Local deputy director Chen Jainfeng said that "the suspects told us where the baby was and with the help of local police we found the child".
"The baby is undergoing medical tests and is on his way home," he added.
Police fear there may be many more such cases and are investigating at least seven in the region.
===
ALP backer employed hit man to take out rival? - ed
But within three years Mr McGurk had organised an associate to stage a car accident in an attempt to catch Medich drink driving and Medich had allegedly forked out upwards of $300,000 for a contract killing on Mr McGurk.
Medich has been charged with soliciting the murder and murdering Mr McGurk, who was shot at close range outside his Cremorne home in northern Sydney on September 3, 2009.
To help carry out the hit, the crown alleges Medich enlisted the help of one-time featherweight boxing champion Lucky Gattellari.
Gattellari then allegedly recruited Senad Kaminic, Haissam Safetli and Christopher Estephan to help.
It was Safetli and Estephan, the crown says, who then went to his home and fired the fatal shot.
When his murder failed to resolve Medich's financial and legal disputes, he then allegedly funded someone to threaten the businessman's widow, Kimberley McGurk.
On the second day of the committal hearing involving Medich and his co-accused Christopher Estephan, Central Local Court heard that in 2007 and early 2008 the developer and Mr McGurk's business relationship was running smoothly.
The 65-year-old was transferring upwards of $8 million into Mr McGurk's company accounts for various properties and trusted and "thought highly" of the businessman.
But by 2009 suspicions were festering and the pair became embroiled in legal battles over properties amounting to about $7 million.
In July 2009 Mr McGurk paid an associate $5000 to plough into Medich's car in Sydney's CBD in the hope the property tycoon would be arrested for drink driving.
The accumulative effect of these disputes and the damage to his reputation led to Medich having a "strong desire" to have Mr McGurk killed, Crown Prosecutor Gina O'Rourke said.
The court heard that when Gattellari allegedly told Medich the hit would cost between $300,000 to $500,000, the developer said he would organise cash through his friend and associate - racing identity Les Samba.
Mr Samba was gunned down on a Melbourne footpath in February 2011.
Matthew Crockett - a former standover man of Gattellari - told the hearing that he "vaguely remembered" a conversation in which it was said Mr Samba owed Medich money.
"Ron said he was sick of people in need of cash," Mr Crockett told the court.
But Medich's barrister Winston Terracini SC put to Mr Crockett that his client had also said he was sick of Gattellari asking for cash.
The court heard Gattellari employed Mr Crockett to "stand over" people who owed him money and make "veiled threats".
In 2010 Mr Crockett said Gattellari had also paid him to carry out surveillance on Mr Medich's wife Odetta - who after Mr McGurk's death had begun putting enormous pressure on her husband to distance himself from the boxer and cease funding his companies.
Of the five men charged in relation to the killing, only Estephan and Medich are facing committal to determine whether they should stand trial.
Gattellari and Kaminic were sentenced earlier this year for their part in the murder and received heavy discounts for co-operating with police and giving evidence against Medich.
Safetli is due to be sentenced later this week.
The hearing before Magistrate Jan Stevenson continues.
===
- 1461 – Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
- 1782 – The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great that serves as one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg, Russia, was unveiled.
- 1944 – IBM presented the first program-controlled calculator toHarvard University, after which it became known as the Mark I(pictured).
- 1970 – Jonathan Jackson kidnapped California Superior Courtjudge Harold Haley in an attempt to free Jackson's brotherGeorge from prison.
- 2008 – Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive against the separatist region of South Ossetia, opening the six-dayRusso-Georgian War.
- 322 BC – Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedonia.
- 461 – Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer.
- 626 – The Avar and Slav armies leave the siege of Constantinople.
- 936 – Coronation of King Otto I of Germany.
- 1420 – Construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore begins in Florence.
- 1427 – The Visconti of Milan's fleet is destroyed by the Venetians on the Po River.
- 1461 – The Ming dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
- 1679 – The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
- 1714 – The Battle of Gangut: The first important victory of the Russian Navy.
- 1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
- 1789 – The United States Department of War is established.
- 1791 – American troops destroy the Miami town of Kenapacomaqua near the site of present-day Logansport, Indiana in the Northwest Indian War.
- 1794 – U.S. President George Washington invokes the Militia Acts of 1792 to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania.
- 1819 – Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
- 1858 – The first Australian rules football match is played between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
- 1879 – The opening of the Poor Man's Palace in Manchester, England.
- 1890 – Anna Månsdotter becomes the last woman in Sweden to be executed, for the 1889 Yngsjö murder.
- 1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
- 1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
- 1930 – The last confirmed lynching of blacks in the Northern United States occurs in Marion, Indiana. Two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, are killed.
- 1933 – The Simele massacre: The Iraqi government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Simele. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.
- 1938 – The Holocaust: The building of Mauthausen concentration camp begins.
- 1940 – World War II: Alsace-Lorraine is annexed by the Third Reich.
- 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal begins as the United States Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
- 1944 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
- 1946 – The government of the Soviet Union presented a note to its Turkish counterparts which refuted the latter's sovereignty over the Turkish Straits, thus beginning the Turkish Straits crisis.
- 1947 – Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
- 1947 – The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).
- 1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.
- 1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design, and was minted until 2008.
- 1959 – Explorer program: Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- 1960 – Ivory Coast becomes independent from France.
- 1962 – Canadian-born American pharmacologist Frances Oldham Kelsey awarded the U.S. President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for her refusal to authorize thalidomide.
- 1964 – Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnsonbroad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
- 1966 – Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.
- 1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
- 1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.
- 1976 – Viking program: Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.
- 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
- 1979 – Several tornadoes strike the city of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada and the surrounding communities.
- 1981 – The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
- 1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
- 1985 – The White House Farm murders took place near the English village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England.
- 1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union
- 1989 – U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
- 1998 – The United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya kill approximately 212 people.
- 1999 – The Chechnya-based Islamic International Brigade invades neighboring Dagestan.
- 2008 – The start of the Russo-Georgian War over the territory of South Ossetia.
- 2012 – Three gunmen kill 19 people in a church near Okene, Nigeria.
- 2013 – A bombing in a market in Karachi, Pakistan, kills eleven people.
Births[edit]
317 – Constantius II, Roman emperor (d. 361)
- 1282 – Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (d. 1316)
- 1533 – Alonso de Ercilla, Spanish soldier and poet (d. 1595)
- 1560 – Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian serial killer (d. 1614)
- 1571 – Thomas Lupo, English viol player and composer (d. 1627)
- 1574 – Robert Dudley, English explorer and cartographer (d. 1649)
- 1598 – Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish poet and linguist (d. 1672)
- 1726 – James Bowdoin, American banker and politician, 2nd Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1790)
- 1734 – Duchess Maria Anna Josepha of Bavaria (d. 1776)
- 1742 – Nathanael Greene, American general (d. 1786)
- 1751 – Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange (d. 1820)
- 1779 – Louis de Freycinet, French navigator and explorer (d. 1842)
- 1779 – Carl Ritter, German geographer and academic (d. 1859)
- 1783 – Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom (d. 1810)
- 1844 – Auguste Michel-Lévy, French geologist and author (d. 1911)
- 1860 – Alan Leo, English astrologer and author (d. 1917)
- 1862 – Victoria of Baden (d. 1931)
- 1867 – Emil Nolde, Danish-German painter and illustrator (d. 1956)
- 1868 – Ladislaus Bortkiewicz, Russian-German economist and statistician (d. 1931)
- 1876 – Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy (d. 1917)
- 1877 – Ulrich Salchow, Swedish figure skater (d. 1949)
- 1879 – Johannes Kotze, South African cricketer (d. 1931)
- 1884 – Billie Burke, American actress and singer (d. 1970)
- 1884 – Nikolai Triik, Estonian painter and illustrator (d. 1940)
- 1887 – Anna Elisabet Weirauch, German author and playwright (d. 1970)
- 1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, American author and activist (d. 1964)
- 1901 – Ann Harding, American actress and singer (d. 1981)
- 1903 – Louis Leakey, Kenyan-English palaeontologist and archaeologist (d. 1972)
- 1904 – Ralph Bunche, American political scientist, academic, and diplomat, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
- 1907 – Albert Kotin, Belarusian-American soldier and painter (d. 1980)
- 1910 – Freddie Slack, American pianist and bandleader (d. 1965)
- 1911 – István Bibó, Hungarian lawyer and politician (d. 1979)
- 1911 – Nicholas Ray, American director and screenwriter (d. 1979)
- 1913 – George Van Eps, American guitarist (d. 1998)
- 1916 – Kermit Love, American actor, puppeteer, and costume designer (d. 2008)
- 1917 – Budd Lynch, Canadian-American sportscaster (d. 2012)
- 1918 – Poni Adams, American actress (d. 2014)
- 1918 – C. Buddingh', Dutch poet and translator (d. 1985)
- 1918 – Gordon Zahn, American sociologist and author (d. 2007)
- 1921 – Manitas de Plata, French guitarist (d. 2014)
- 1921 – Karel Husa, Czech-American composer and conductor
- 1924 – Kenneth Kendall, Indian-English journalist and actor (d. 2012)
- 1925 – Felice Bryant, American songwriter (d. 2003)
- 1925 – M. S. Swaminathan, Indian geneticist and academic
- 1926 – Stan Freberg, American puppeteer, voice actor, and singer (d. 2015)
- 1927 – Rocky Bridges, American baseball player and coach (d. 2015)
- 1927 – Edwin Edwards, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 50th Governor of Louisiana
- 1927 – Art Houtteman, American baseball player and journalist (d. 2003)
- 1927 – Carl Switzer, American actor and singer (d. 1959)
- 1928 – Betsy Byars, American author and academic
- 1928 – Owen Luder, English architect, designed Tricorn Centre and Trinity Square
- 1928 – Romeo Muller, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1992)
- 1928 – James Randi, Canadian-American magician, actor, and author
- 1928 – Herb Reed, American singer (The Platters) (d. 2012)
- 1929 – Don Larsen, American baseball player
- 1930 – Togrul Narimanbekov, Azerbaijani-French painter and academic (d. 2013)
- 1930 – Veljo Tormis, Estonian composer and educator
- 1931 – Jack Good, British television producer
- 1931 – Charles E. Rice, American scholar and author (d. 2015)
- 1932 – Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian runner (d. 1973)
- 1932 – Edward Hardwicke, English actor (d. 2011)
- 1932 – Rien Poortvliet, Dutch painter and illustrator (d. 1995)
- 1932 – Maurice Rabb, Jr., American ophthalmologist and academic (d. 2005)
- 1933 – Eddie Firmani, South African footballer and manager
- 1933 – Elinor Ostrom, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012)
- 1933 – Jerry Pournelle, American journalist and author
- 1934 – Sándor Simó, Hungarian director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2001)
- 1935 – Rahsaan Roland Kirk, American saxophonist and composer (d. 1977)
- 1937 – Zoltán Berczik, Hungarian table tennis player and coach (d. 2011)
- 1937 – Don Wilson, English cricketer and coach (d. 2012)
- 1939 – Anjanette Comer, American actress
- 1939 – Verna Bloom, American actress
- 1940 – Jean-Luc Dehaene, French-Belgian lawyer and politician, 63rd Prime Minister of Belgium (d. 2014)
- 1941 – Matthew Evans, Baron Evans of Temple Guiting, English publisher and politician
- 1942 – Tobin Bell, American actor and producer
- 1942 – Garrison Keillor, American humorist, novelist, short story writer, and radio host
- 1942 – Carlos Monzón, Argentine boxer and actor (d. 1995)
- 1942 – Richard Sykes, English biochemist and academic
- 1942 – B. J. Thomas, American singer
- 1942 – Caetano Veloso, Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1943 – Mohammed Badie, Egyptian religious leader
- 1943 – Lana Cantrell, Australian-American singer and lawyer
- 1943 – Alain Corneau, French director and screenwriter (d. 2010)
- 1944 – John Glover, American actor and singer
- 1944 – Robert Mueller, American soldier and lawyer, 6th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
- 1945 – Kenny Ireland, Scottish actor and director (d. 2014)
- 1945 – Alan Page, American football player and jurist
- 1946 – Ed Seykota, American businessman and academic
- 1947 – Franciscus Henri, Dutch-Australian singer-songwriter
- 1947 – Sofia Rotaru, Ukrainian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
- 1948 – Marty Appel, American businessman and author
- 1948 – Greg Chappell, Australian cricketer and coach
- 1948 – Antonis Vardis, Greek singer-songwriter (d. 2014)
- 1949 – Walid Jumblatt, Lebanese journalist and politician
- 1949 – Matthew Parris, South African-English journalist and politician
- 1950 – Rodney Crowell, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Notorious Cherry Bombs)
- 1950 – Alan Keyes, American politician and diplomat, 16th Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs
- 1950 – S. Thandayuthapani, Sri Lankan educator and politician
- 1952 – Eamonn Darcy, Irish golfer
- 1952 – Kees Kist, Dutch footballer
- 1952 – Alexei Sayle, English comedian, actor, and author
- 1953 – Anne Fadiman, American journalist and author
- 1954 – Jonathan Pollard, American-Israeli spy
- 1954 – Alan Reid, Scottish politician
- 1955 – Diane Downs, American murderer
- 1955 – Wayne Knight, American actor, comedian and voice actor
- 1955 – Greg Nickels, American lawyer and politician, 51st Mayor of Seattle
- 1955 – Blas Giraldo Reyes Rodríguez, Cuban librarian
- 1955 – Vladimir Sorokin, Russian author and playwright
- 1955 – Gregoris Valtinos, Greek actor and director
- 1956 – Sharon Isbin, American guitarist
- 1957 – Caroline Aaron, American actress and producer
- 1957 – Daire Brehan, Irish journalist, lawyer, and actress (d. 2012)
- 1957 – Alexander Dityatin, Russian gymnast and colonel
- 1958 – Russell Baze, Canadian-American jockey
- 1958 – Bruce Dickinson, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Iron Maiden and Samson)
- 1958 – Alberto Salazar, Cuban-American runner and coach
- 1959 – Koenraad Elst, Belgian orientalist and author
- 1959 – Ali Shah, Zimbabwean cricketer and coach
- 1960 – David Duchovny, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1960 – Jacquie O'Sullivan, English singer-songwriter (Bananarama and Shillelagh Sisters)
- 1961 – Brian Conley, English actor and singer
- 1961 – Yelena Davydova, Russian gymnast
- 1961 – Walter Swinburn, English jockey and trainer
- 1962 – Alison Brown, American banjo player, songwriter, and producer (Northern Lights)
- 1962 – Doon Mackichan, British actress and comedian
- 1962 – Alain Robert, French rock climber
- 1963 – Paul Dunn, Australian rugby league player
- 1963 – Nick Gillespie, American journalist and author
- 1963 – Marcus Roberts, American pianist and educator
- 1964 – John Birmingham, English-Australian journalist and author
- 1964 – Peter Niven, Scottish jockey
- 1965 – Raul Malo, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The Mavericks and Los Super Seven)
- 1965 – Elizabeth Manley, Canadian figure skater
- 1966 – David Cairns, Scottish laicised priest and politician, Minister of State for Scotland (d. 2011)
- 1966 – Kristin Hersh, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Throwing Muses and 50 Foot Wave)
- 1966 – Jimmy Wales, American businessman, co-founded Wikipedia
- 1967 – Jason Grimsley, American baseball player
- 1968 – Big Mello, American rapper (Screwed Up Click) (d. 2002)
- 1968 – Francesca Gregorini, Italian-American director and screenwriter
- 1968 – Trevor Hendy, Australian surfer and coach
- 1968 – Sophie Lee, Australian actress and author
- 1968 – Lynn Strait, American singer-songwriter (Snot) (d. 1998)
- 1969 – Paul Lambert, Scottish footballer and manager
- 1970 – Eric Namesnik, American swimmer (d. 2006)
- 1971 – Dominic Cork, England cricketer and sportscaster
- 1971 – Rachel York, American actress and singer
- 1972 – Gerry Peñalosa, Filipino boxer and promoter
- 1973 – Mikhail Gorsheniov, Russian singer-songwriter (Korol i Shut) (d. 2013)
- 1973 – Danny Graves, Vietnamese-American baseball player
- 1973 – Zane Lowe, New Zealand radio and television host
- 1973 – Kevin Muscat, English-Australian footballer, coach, and manager
- 1974 – Chico Benymon, American actor
- 1974 – Michael Shannon, American actor
- 1975 – Koray Candemir, Turkish singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (Kargo)
- 1975 – Gerard Denton, Australian cricketer
- 1975 – Gaahl, Norwegian singer-songwriter (God Seed, Gaahlskagg, Wardruna, and Trelldom)
- 1975 – Ray Hill, American football player (d. 2015)
- 1975 – Rebecca Kleefisch, American journalist and politician, 44th Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin
- 1975 – Edgar Rentería, Colombian baseball player
- 1975 – Charlize Theron, South African-American actress and producer
- 1976 – Dimitrios Eleftheropoulos, Greek footballer and manager
- 1976 – Shane Lechler, American football player
- 1977 – Charlotte Ronson, English-American fashion designer
- 1977 – Samantha Ronson, English singer-songwriter and DJ
- 1977 – Vanessa Stacey, New Zealand actress
- 1978 – Alexandre Aja, French director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1978 – Jamey Jasta, American singer-songwriter (Hatebreed, Kingdom of Sorrow, and Icepick)
- 1978 – Cirroc Lofton, American actor
- 1978 – Mark McCammon, English-Barbadian footballer
- 1978 – Vanness Wu, American-Taiwanese singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor (F4 and Kangta & Vanness)
- 1978 – Shirley Yeung, Hong Kong actress and singer
- 1979 – Alex James, British musician (Blur)
- 1979 – Eric Johnson, American actor, director, and screenwriter
- 1979 – Miguel Llera, Spanish footballer
- 1979 – Birgit Zotz, Austrian anthropologist and author
- 1980 – Carsten Busch, German footballer
- 1980 – Aurélie Claudel, French model and actress
- 1980 – Tácio Caetano Cruz Queiroz, Brazilian footballer
- 1980 – Seiichiro Maki, Japanese footballer
- 1981 – David Testo, American soccer player
- 1981 – Randy Wayne, American actor and producer
- 1982 – Ángeles Balbiani, Argentine actress and singer
- 1982 – Abbie Cornish, Australian actress
- 1982 – Edwin Dewees, American mixed martial artist
- 1982 – Juan Martín Hernández, Argentine rugby player
- 1982 – Marquise Hill, American football player (d. 2007)
- 1982 – Yana Klochkova, Ukrainian swimmer
- 1982 – Jasmin Mäntylä, Finnish model and singer
- 1982 – Brit Marling, American actress, producer, and screenwriter
- 1982 – Marco Melandri, Italian motorcycle racer
- 1982 – Vassilis Spanoulis, Greek basketball player
- 1982 – Martin Vučić, Macedonian singer and drummer
- 1983 – Christian Chávez, Mexican singer-songwriter and actor (RBD)
- 1983 – Murat Dalkılıç, Turkish singer-songwriter
- 1983 – Andriy Hryvko, Ukrainian cyclist
- 1983 – Tina O'Brien, English actress
- 1983 – Mark Pettini, English cricketer and journalist
- 1984 – Stratos Perperoglou, Greek basketball player
- 1984 – Tooba Siddiqui, Pakistani model and actress
- 1984 – Yun Hyon-seok, South Korean poet and author (d. 2003)
- 1986 – Paul Biedermann, German swimmer
- 1986 – Valter Birsa, Slovenian footballer
- 1986 – Altair Jarabo, Mexican model and actress
- 1986 – Juan de la Rosa, Mexican boxer
- 1987 – Sidney Crosby, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1987 – Mustapha Dumbuya, Sierra Leonean footballer
- 1987 – Ryan Lavarnway, American baseball player
- 1987 – Rouven Sattelmaier, German footballer
- 1988 – Mohamed Coulibaly, Senegalese footballer
- 1988 – Melody Oliveria, American blogger
- 1988 – Erik Pieters, Dutch footballer
- 1988 – Beanie Wells, American football player
- 1989 – DeMar DeRozan, American basketball player
- 1990 – Helen Flanagan, English actress
- 1991 – Luis Salom, Spanish motorcycle racer
- 1991 – Mitchell te Vrede, Dutch footballer
- 1991 – Mike Trout, American baseball player
- 1992 – Ariel Camacho, Mexican singer-songwriter (d. 2015)
- 1992 – Adam Yates, English cyclist
- 1992 – Simon Yates, English cyclist
- 1992 – Yusuf Erdoğan, Turkish footballer
- 1993 – Martti Nõmme, Estonian ski jumper
- 1993 – Zaur Sizo, Russian footballer
- 1993 – Karol Zalewski, Polish sprinter
- 1996 – Tessa Allen, American actress
- 1996 – Liam James, Canadian actor
Deaths[edit]
461 – Majorian, Roman emperor (b. 420)
- 1106 – Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1050)
- 1385 – Joan of Kent (b. 1328)
- 1485 – Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany (b. 1454)
- 1613 – Thomas Fleming, English judge and politician, Lord Chief Justice of England (b. 1544)
- 1616 – Vincenzo Scamozzi, Italian architect, designed Teatro Olimpico (b. 1548)
- 1632 – Robert de Vere, 19th Earl of Oxford, English soldier (b. 1575)
- 1635 – Friedrich Spee, German poet and academic (b. 1591)
- 1639 – Martin van den Hove, Dutch astronomer and mathematician (b. 1605)
- 1661 – Jin Shengtan, Chinese journalist and critic (b. 1608)
- 1817 – Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, French economist and politician (b. 1739)
- 1823 – Mátyás Laáb, Croatian priest and translator (b. 1746)
- 1834 – Joseph Marie Jacquard, French weaver and inventor, invented the Jacquard loom (b. 1752)
- 1848 – Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Swedish chemist and academic (b. 1779)
- 1855 – Mariano Arista, Mexican general and politician, 19th President of Mexico (b. 1802)
- 1864 – Li Xiucheng, Chinese field marshal (b. 1823)
- 1893 – Alfredo Catalani, Italian composer and academic (b. 1854)
- 1899 – Jacob Maris, Dutch painter and educator (b. 1837)
- 1900 – Wilhelm Liebknecht, German lawyer and politician (b. 1826)
- 1912 – François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss limnologist and academic (b. 1841)
- 1917 – Edwin Harris Dunning, South African-English commander and pilot (b. 1891)
- 1938 – Konstantin Stanislavsky, Russian actor and director (b. 1863)
- 1941 – Rabindranath Tagore, Indian author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
- 1945 – Yi Wu, Korean colonel (b. 1912)
- 1948 – Charles Bryant, English-American actor and director (b. 1879)
- 1953 – Abner Powell, American baseball player and manager (b. 1860)
- 1957 – Oliver Hardy, American actor, singer, and director (b. 1892)
- 1958 – Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, American author and educator (b. 1892)
- 1960 – Luis Ángel Firpo, Argentine boxer (b. 1894)
- 1968 – Giovanni Bracco, Italian race car driver (b. 1908)
- 1969 – Jean Bastien, French professional footballer (b. 1915)
- 1969 – Joseph Kosma, Hungarian-French composer (b. 1905)
- 1970 – Harold Haley, American lawyer and judge (b. 1904)
- 1970 – Jonathan P. Jackson, American bodyguard (b. 1953)
- 1972 – Joi Lansing, American model, actress, and singer (b. 1928)
- 1972 – Aspasia Manos, Greek wife of Alexander of Greece (b. 1896)
- 1973 – Jack Gregory, Australian cricketer (b. 1895)
- 1974 – Rosario Castellanos, Mexican poet and author (b. 1925)
- 1974 – Sylvio Mantha, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (b. 1902)
- 1981 – Gunnar Uusi, Estonian chess player (b. 1931)
- 1984 – Esther Phillips, American singer (b. 1935)
- 1984 – Baha Gelenbevi, Turkish film artist (d. 1907)
- 1985 – Grayson Hall, American actress (b. 1922)
- 1987 – Camille Chamoun, Lebanese lawyer and politician, 7th President of Lebanon (b. 1900)
- 1989 – Mickey Leland, American lawyer and politician (b. 1944)
- 1992 – John Anderson, American actor and director (b. 1922)
- 1994 – Larry Martyn, English actor (b. 1934)
- 1995 – Brigid Brophy, English author and critic (b. 1929)
- 1999 – Brion James, American actor (b. 1945)
- 2001 – Algirdas Lauritėnas, Lithuanian basketball player (b. 1932)
- 2003 – K. D. Arulpragasam, Sri Lankan zoologist and academic (b. 1931)
- 2003 – Mickey McDermott, American baseball player and coach (b. 1929)
- 2004 – Red Adair, American firefighter (b. 1915)
- 2004 – Colin Bibby, English ornithologist and academic (b. 1948)
- 2005 – Peter Jennings, Canadian-American journalist and author (b. 1938)
- 2006 – Mary Anderson Bain, American lawyer and politician (b. 1911)
- 2007 – Ernesto Alonso, Mexican actor, director, and producer (b. 1917)
- 2007 – Hal Fishman, American journalist and actor (b. 1931)
- 2007 – Angus Tait, New Zealand businessman, founded Tait Communications (b. 1919)
- 2008 – Bernie Brillstein, American talent agent and producer (b. 1931)
- 2008 – Andrea Pininfarina, Italian engineer and businessman (b. 1957)
- 2009 – Louis E. Saavedra, American educator and politician, 48th Mayor of Albuquerque (b. 1933)
- 2009 – Mike Seeger, American singer-songwriter (New Lost City Ramblers) (b. 1933)
- 2010 – Roberto Cantoral, Mexican singer-songwriter (b. 1935)
- 2010 – John Nelder, English mathematician and statistician (b. 1924)
- 2011 – Mark Hatfield, American soldier, academic, and politician, 29th Governor of Oregon (b. 1922)
- 2011 – Nancy Wake, New Zealand-English captain (b. 1912)
- 2011 – Joe Yamanaka, Japanese singer and actor (Flower Travellin' Band and The Wailers Band) (b. 1946)
- 2012 – Murtuz Alasgarov, Azerbaijani academic and politician, Speaker of the National Assembly of Azerbaijan (b. 1928)
- 2012 – Judith Crist, American critic and academic (b. 1922)
- 2012 – Vladimir Kobzev, Russian footballer and coach (b. 1959)
- 2012 – Anna Piaggi, Italian journalist and author (b. 1931)
- 2012 – Mayer Zald, American sociologist and academic (b. 1931)
- 2012 – Dušan Zbavitel, Czech indologist and author (b. 1925)
- 2013 – Samuel G. Armistead, American linguist, historian, and academic (b. 1927)
- 2013 – Almir Kayumov, Russian footballer (b. 1964)
- 2013 – Anthony Pawson, English-Canadian biologist, chemist, and academic (b. 1952)
- 2013 – Margaret Pellegrini, American actress and dancer (b. 1923)
- 2013 – Sean Sasser, American chef, educator, and activist (b. 1968)
- 2013 – Meeli Truu, Estonian architect (d. 1946)
- 2013 – Alexander Yagubkin, Russian boxer (b. 1961)
- 2014 – Víctor Fayad, Argentine lawyer and politician (b. 1955)
- 2014 – Perry Moss, American football player and coach (b. 1926)
- 2014 – Henry Stone, American record producer (b. 1921)
- 2015 – Manuel Contreras, Chilean general (b. 1929)
- 2015 – Frances Oldham Kelsey, Canadian pharmacologist and physician (b. 1914)
- 2015 – Louise Suggs, American golfer, co-founded LPGA (b. 1923)
Holidays and observances[edit]
Christian feast day:
- Albert of Trapani
- Cajetan of Thienna
- Carpophorus
- Dometius of Persia
- Donatus of Arezzo
- John Mason Neale and Catherine Winkworth (Episcopal Church (USA))
- Nantovinus
- Pope Sixtus II
- August 7 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
“All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.” Psalm 119:160 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
What enemies are abroad? Errors are a numerous horde, and new ones appear every hour: against what heresy am I to be on my guard? Sins creep from their lurking places when the darkness reigns; I must myself mount the watch-tower, and watch unto prayer. Our heavenly Protector foresees all the attacks which are about to be made upon us, and when as yet the evil designed us is but in the desire of Satan, he prays for us that our faith fail not, when we are sifted as wheat. Continue O gracious Watchman, to forewarn us of our foes, and for Zion's sake hold not thy peace.
"Watchman, what of the night?" What weather is coming for the Church? Are the clouds lowering, or is it all clear and fair overhead? We must care for the Church of God with anxious love; and now that Popery and infidelity are both threatening, let us observe the signs of the times and prepare for conflict.
"Watchman, what of the night?" What stars are visible? What precious promises suit our present case? You sound the alarm, give us the consolation also. Christ, the polestar, is ever fixed in his place, and all the stars are secure in the right hand of their Lord.
But watchman, when comes the morning? The Bridegroom tarries. Are there no signs of his coming forth as the Sun of Righteousness? Has not the morning star arisen as the pledge of day? When will the day dawn, and the shadows flee away? O Jesus, if thou come not in person to thy waiting Church this day, yet come in Spirit to my sighing heart, and make it sing for joy.
"Now all the earth is bright and glad
With the fresh morn;
But all my heart is cold, and dark and sad:
Sun of the soul, let me behold thy dawn!
Come, Jesus, Lord,
O quickly come, according to thy word."
Evening
"Let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen."
Psalm 72:19
Psalm 72:19
This is a large petition. To intercede for a whole city needs a stretch of faith, and there are times when a prayer for one man is enough to stagger us. But how far-reaching was the psalmist's dying intercession! How comprehensive! How sublime! "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory." It doth not exempt a single country however crushed by the foot of superstition; it doth not exclude a single nation however barbarous. For the cannibal as well as for the civilized, for all climes and races this prayer is uttered: the whole circle of the earth it encompasses, and omits no son of Adam. We must be up and doing for our Master, or we cannot honestly offer such a prayer. The petition is not asked with a sincere heart unless we endeavour, as God shall help us, to extend the kingdom of our Master. Are there not some who neglect both to plead and to labour? Reader, is it your prayer? Turn your eyes to Calvary. Behold the Lord of Life nailed to a cross, with the thorn-crown about his brow, with bleeding head, and hands, and feet. What! can you look upon this miracle of miracles, the death of the Son of God, without feeling within your bosom a marvellous adoration that language never can express? And when you feel the blood applied to your conscience, and know that he has blotted out your sins, you are not a man unless you start from your knees and cry, "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen." Can you bow before the Crucified in loving homage, and not wish to see your Monarch master of the world? Out on you if you can pretend to love your Prince, and desire not to see him the universal ruler. Your piety is worthless unless it leads you to wish that the same mercy which has been extended to you may bless the whole world. Lord, it is harvest-time, put in thy sickle and reap.
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Today's reading: Psalm 70-71, Romans 8:22-39 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Psalm 70-71
1 Hasten, O God, to save me;
come quickly, LORD, to help me.
come quickly, LORD, to help me.
2 May those who want to take my life
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin
be turned back in disgrace.
3 May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!"
turn back because of their shame.
4 But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who long for your saving help always say,
"The LORD is great!"
be put to shame and confusion;
may all who desire my ruin
be turned back in disgrace.
3 May those who say to me, "Aha! Aha!"
turn back because of their shame.
4 But may all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who long for your saving help always say,
"The LORD is great!"
5 But as for me, I am poor and needy;
come quickly to me, O God.
You are my help and my deliverer;
LORD, do not delay.
come quickly to me, O God.
You are my help and my deliverer;
LORD, do not delay.
Today's New Testament reading: Romans 8:22-39
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently....
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