For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
Captain Hastie smears have been answered, but press keep presenting them, as if there is a balanced view to be found.
Hack of marriage cheat site embarrasses many.
ALP Leader Bill Shorten fails to check falsehoods being spread regarding Royal Commission investigation into trade unions corruption. ABC repeats false claims after they were disproved. CFMEU demands corrupt QLD government retain corrupt minister.
Hack of marriage cheat site embarrasses many.
ALP Leader Bill Shorten fails to check falsehoods being spread regarding Royal Commission investigation into trade unions corruption. ABC repeats false claims after they were disproved. CFMEU demands corrupt QLD government retain corrupt minister.
From 2014
A confident Chinese Military had one plane doing stunts close to a US submarine hunter on August 18th. Obama is too timid, and, like a bully with a coward, China taunts the US. It is an extension of the great game played between Russia and Great Britain in the nineteenth century. And the US don't play the game well under Obama. The world is a dangerous place and Obama is making it worse as he nears the end point of his Presidency. About 800 days to go, and for most of those he will be a lame duck. But even with a friendly Senate he has been impotent in world and domestic affairs. The explosion of division over race and mishandling of justice makes it dangerous in the US for everybody. An inability to 'point up' makes it very dangerous in world affairs. Obama carpeted Israel and made them release hardened killers from jail for a nebulous peace which has resulted in war. He could not have handled it worse had he tried. He tried when he begged to bomb Syria to help ISIS. At the time, Russia said 'no.' The personal danger for Obama and his family follows when he is no longer in office. He lacks wisdom, and having been Muslim, and renouncing it for Christianity as a practising Atheist he will have many dangerous enemies but little good will. When Malcolm Turnbull was leader I assured him that he could do anything with conviction and he would be respected. He embraced a carbon tax which was not based around conviction but a banker's trust of taxation and so he lost his support base, giving the leadership to Mr Abbott. As Obama passes the leadership baton to one with conviction, the US will be divided and besieged. He is apostate, an issue which has been held under wraps while he has the presidency and can bomb wilfully. He identifies with garbage, not the best of people. Many fine African Americans have not prospered under the Obama administration, meanwhile mobs of drug addled youth behave under the aegis of the name 'Sons of Obama.'
The federal government of Australia is nearing a year old. The LNP had a strong election victory, but as with 2010, some independent conservatives are not behaving as they promised voters, and so important legislation is not being passed. In opposition, LNP passed 80% of legislation. In opposition, the ALP oppose all legislation. Media analysis is weak. An inappropriate application of balance produces a substantial distortion, and obscures the public from the transparency they want. The old senate has passed and the new senate has proven seamlessly hostile. But the LNP are not without ways and means. They cannot walk a straight line, but they can finesse results. So that there is no chance if the LNP introduce legislation opposing 18c, but there is every chance an independent can. Last year, as the election neared and it looked certain they would lose, the media raised the issue of gay marriage. Let Shorten show his leadership credentials with that.
The federal government of Australia is nearing a year old. The LNP had a strong election victory, but as with 2010, some independent conservatives are not behaving as they promised voters, and so important legislation is not being passed. In opposition, LNP passed 80% of legislation. In opposition, the ALP oppose all legislation. Media analysis is weak. An inappropriate application of balance produces a substantial distortion, and obscures the public from the transparency they want. The old senate has passed and the new senate has proven seamlessly hostile. But the LNP are not without ways and means. They cannot walk a straight line, but they can finesse results. So that there is no chance if the LNP introduce legislation opposing 18c, but there is every chance an independent can. Last year, as the election neared and it looked certain they would lose, the media raised the issue of gay marriage. Let Shorten show his leadership credentials with that.
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 Alvin Mak and Marcus Lee. Born on the same day as Sigismund von Herberstein (1486), Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1741), Harry Frank Guggenheim (1890), Gene Kelly (1912), Tex Williams (1917), Barbara Eden (1934), Keith Moon (1946), River Phoenix (1970), Kobe Bryant (1978) and Jeremy Lin (1988). On your day, Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism/Black Ribbon Day in Canada and the European Union 1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened. 1929 – Palestine riots: Arabs began attacking Jews in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over sixty people in two days. 1943 – World War II: The decisive Soviet victory in the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war. 1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million people joined hands to form an over 600 km (370 mi) long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics to demonstrate their respective desires for independence. 2010 – A former Philippine National Police officer hijacked a tourist bus in Manila and held its occupants hostage for nearly 11 hours before being killed by police. Your day is worth rejoicing in. Cross the bridge. Use the mandate for peace. Victory at Kursk does not make a submarine seaworthy. My singing is revolting, but heart felt. Stay off the buses ;)
Deaths
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NOBODY SAW THIS COMING
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (6:35pm)
Two years ago, a new eatery opened in Newtown:
How much would you pay for a hearty meal at a restaurant in Sydney?At Lentil as Anything, that amount is completely up to you.No, really.Serving vegan cuisine and staffed primarily by volunteers, Lentil as Anything is a not-for-profit initiative that runs on a pay-what-you-want philosophy.
Surprisingly, that plan isn’t working:
Lentil As Anything’s future is under threat from cheapskates taking advantage of the Newtown restaurant’s charity by paying less than $3 a meal.Since opening two years ago, the vegetarian restaurant has invited customers to pay what they can to enjoy a delicious meal, have a chat and listen to some music in a warm, safe space …Altogether, it costs Lentil As Anything up to $23,000 a week to keep their doors open – and customer contributions do not come close to covering costs.
The restaurant should put in more effort. At $3 per dish, serving a mere 1095 customers every day should be sufficient.
NO MORE PARKS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (4:19pm)
Big claim from the Guardian:
I currently know them as boring, so this is great news. Maybe all the parks will turn into go-kart tracks or something else worthwhile.
I currently know them as boring, so this is great news. Maybe all the parks will turn into go-kart tracks or something else worthwhile.
SHE’S TRAINING TO BECOME A LAWYER (SERIOUSLY)
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (2:27pm)
Brendan O’Neill puts a simple question to Corinne Grant regarding a $250,000 racial hatred lawsuit:
Grant’s eventual answer, once she stopped giggling: “I mean, no it’s not.”
Grant’s eventual answer, once she stopped giggling: “I mean, no it’s not.”
SURVIVALIST NATION
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (3:38am)
Step One: Allow your country to be overrun by vibrant multicultural types.
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack or catastrophe, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported on Sunday.Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager last month. Berlin announced measures earlier this month to spend considerably more on its police and security forces and to create a special unit to counter cyber crime and terrorism …The precautionary measures demand that people “prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future.”
Step Four:
The Alternative for Germany party’s leader, Frauke Petry, has stressed that Islamist attacks and the July 22nd Munich shooting rampage stand as proof that German citizens need to be allowed to arm themselves for self-defence.
Readers are invited to speculate over step five.
HE SWEARS TO ALLAH – AND AYSHA
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (3:07am)
Sweary ex-deputy mayory Salim Mehajer lashes out:
Attention-seeking former deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been shown on national TV allegedly yelling horrific obscenities and threats at his wife …“Aysha, you’ve got five minutes to call me,” the former Auburn Council deputy mayor was shown screaming, followed by “Aysha, I hope you die, you **** ... I swear on the Koran, I swear to Allah.”
Click for video. At one point Mehajer threatens to rape both his wife’s mother and father, which at least demonstrates a gender-inclusive attitude to sexual violence.
In accordance with the sacred hadiths, Mehajer subsequently claimed his comments were taken “out of context”.
DANCE LIKE YOU GOT A GRANT IN YOUR PANTS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (1:33am)
Research project: “The effectiveness of social dancing as a strategy to prevent falls in older people.”
Taxpayer funding: $594,024.95
Further here.
WHEN WAS HE IN IT?
Tim Blair – Tuesday, August 23, 2016 (1:20am)
News of the slime Web site’s bankruptcy filing is schadenfreude-licious for those of us who, like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel, were victimized by these Internet thugs but didn’t have the resources to fight back in court.Gawker founder Nick Denton basked in the glow of the blogerati for years while cashing in on Internet trash. Now he’s rattling a tin cup. Karma’s a beautiful bitch.
Indeed she is.
On The Bolt Report and radio tonight - Brendan O’Neill, my favorite Marxist
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (6:46pm)
On The Bolt Report on Sky News Live at 7pm tonight:
On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
===Editorial: A Seinfeld editorial. Angry about nothing.Podcasts of the show here but also now on our Facebook page here.
Guests:
The brilliant Brendan O’Neill, my favorite Marxist, on our new class of oppressors. And he’s right, you know.
Warren Mundine, the Prime Minister’s adviser on Aboriginal issues, on a new report showing so much money spent doing so little good:
Gerard Henderson: on some astonishing groupthink on Insiders. The journalist collective calling for a muzzle.
On the panel, former Liberal Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and former Labor Minister Craig Emerson. Clinton woes, a new feminist witchhunt, and political paralysis while the debt soars by $100 million a day.
On 2GB, 3AW and 4BC with Steve Price from 8pm.
Listen live here. Talkback: 131 873. Listen to all past shows here.
Powell contradicts Clinton: refuses to take blame for emails
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (3:45pm)
Who can trust a word Hillary Clinton says?
===Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, has disputed testimony that Hillary Clinton gave to the FBI and said he did not advise her to set up the private email system that has dogged her presidential campaign.Powell is angry:
“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Mr Powell said of the email controversy. “The truth is she was using [her private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did,” he told the New York Post.
Mrs Clinton was called in by the FBI last month to address allegations that her decision to route government correspondence through an email server kept in the basement of her family home jeopardised national security…
It emerged last week that Mrs Clinton told the FBI during a three-and-a-half hour interview that Mr Powell had suggested she use a personal email account. The FBI director, James Comey, decided not to press charges but was scathing in his criticism of Mrs Clinton, calling her email use “extremely careless”.
Mrs Clinton was not under oath when she was questioned by half a dozen FBI agents but Mr Comey told Congress: “It’s still a crime to lie to us.”
The Post says that Powell appeared angry about being made the fall guy. Asked why Team Clinton is trying to blame him, he shot back: “Why do you think?”And now more of Clinton’s emails have been found and could be released:
A judge ordered the U.S. State Department on Monday to review for possible release 14,900 of Hillary Clinton’s emails and attachments that the FBI found when investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
The judge also scheduled a Sept. 23 hearing on when to release the emails, a deadline that raises the possibility some will become public before the Nov. 8 presidential election between Democrat Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald Trump…
State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters it was still reviewing the 14,900 documents and it was unclear how many were personal or work-related…
The department has already culled through some 30,068 of Clinton emails from her 2009-2013 tenure as secretary of state and released most of them, amounting to some 55,000 pages. More than 2,000 emails were found to contain classified information.
Worshippers of a genocidal dictator throw a party in Australia
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (9:53am)
This Mao Zedong:
===[A]fter taking power in 1949, Mao and his party perpetrated a political terror in which millions of “bad elements” were arrested and executed; millions more were sent to a system of forced labour and “re-education” camps; then forced collectivisation and irrational economic policies killed 45 million in a few short years. Yet the party’s response was to double down on repression and “socialist re-education”, in which millions were abused, tortured and coerced… Mao unleashed his Cultural Revolution to hunt down “monsters and demons"…And this is a disturbing new face of multicultural Australia:
[T]he Communist Party in China has varied only between the systematically repressive and the truly monstrous. During the Cultural Revolution it was truly monstrous. Mao was inescapably responsible for the catastrophe… [T]ens of millions of people had their lives turned upside down and several million were killed or driven to suicide.
Concerts are to be held in Sydney and Melbourne town halls to honour Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, described in promotional material as “a hero in the eyes of people all over the world"… The events have been widely promoted in Chinese-language print media and radio to take place in Sydney on September 6 and Melbourne on September 9…More on this worship of a genocidal dictator:
The concerts are sponsored by developer Peter Zhu, who came to Australia from China in 1989, and who last year also sponsored the Sydney Ode to Peace event to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war of Chinese resistance to Japanese invasion.
The promotional material says that “Chairman Mao, the great leader of Chinese, led China’s democratic revolution which ended the 109 years of chaos in China from 1840 to 1949, and brought 76 years of peace and development to China, until it recovered its international status as a great country. The concert will commemorate the great leader, as well as (inspire us) to further glorify the Chinese spirit, and expand our dreams. It will illustrate Mao Zedong’s humanitarian personality.”
With mainland Chinese migration sharply increasing in recent years, state-backed political astroturfing has become more pronounced, from pro-Beijing South China Sea demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney, to mobilising cheering, flag-waving crowds to drown out Free Tibet and Falun Gong demonstrators during President Xi Jinping’s visit in 2014.
The organisers are typically business, community and patriotic associations with close ties to the Chinese embassy and consulates which harness the local community in an attempt to advance the mainland’s strategic interests and have a greater influence on public discussion in Australia.
The key organisers and sponsors of the Maoist remembrance concerts, including the International Cultural Exchange Association Australia and LB Homes Group, were also behind a high-profile commemorative event last year marking the 70th anniversary of China’s war against the Japanese, coinciding with a massive military parade in central Beijing…
Chongyi Feng, an associate professor in China Studies at the University of Technology Sydney who tracks the activities of local Chinese community groups, said business and cultural groups increasingly staged “patriotic” events to “show their loyalty to the consulate, to the Chinese government back home in order to curry favour”, in the hope of receiving preferential treatment for their commercial interests.
But putting on an event to glorify Mao has touched a raw nerve among Chinese-Australians, many of whose families suffered under the leader’s brutal legacy… “Mao for them is just like Stalin to Russians or Hitler to Germans – he’s a mass murderer in their judgment so they’re very angry,” Dr Feng said.
Can police really handle a terrorist attack?
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (9:39am)
Catherine McGregor on a lesson learned from the way NSW police handled the Lindt cafe siege:
===It is too late to draw comfort from the fact that our military maintains two highly capable Tactical Assault Groups, at a high state of readiness, in Sydney and Perth. These teams are highly trained, superbly equipped and conduct routine live-firing rehearsals for vastly more complex operations than this. Such is the pitch at which they operate that they are retained only on standby for strictly limited periods. During that time they fire large quantities of live ammunition to achieve the highest levels of proficiency in close quarter, instinctive shooting. I have observed live fire rehearsals at the “killing house’’ at Holsworthy conducted by TAG East.
It was both impressively precise and lethal. Based on the police evidence it seems valid to ask when was the last time the Lindt siege team had used live ammunition in rehearsals or conducted an operation of this nature in real life? Did the team routinely operate together or was it just cobbled together on the day? ...
If the largest, most wealthy state in the Commonwealth cannot train and equip a force capable of such operations the Commonwealth needs to allocate responsibility to the ADF… The likelihood of encountering well-armed offenders has risen alarmingly, as has the prospect of first responders encountering someone like Monis. But sustaining a standing capability, primed to the pitch that the special forces maintain, is clearly beyond even the most competent police service. And we clearly do not have that.
Ha, ha, ha, Grant explained when asked about the QUT Three
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (9:01am)
Have you noticed that
not one of the media defenders of the Racial Discrimination Act has
defended the suing of three Queensland University students?
Reason: they cannot.
Brendan O’Neill last night tried to drag an answer from the pro-censorship Corinne Grant:
Brendan O’Neill is my guest on The Bolt Report tonight, on Sky News at 7pm.
===Reason: they cannot.
Brendan O’Neill last night tried to drag an answer from the pro-censorship Corinne Grant:
UPDATE
Brendan O’Neill is my guest on The Bolt Report tonight, on Sky News at 7pm.
Cash not the full dollar on the case against the CFA deal
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (8:57am)
Michaelia Cash should get her lines right or risk stuffing up an easy brief.
Gareth Hutchens:
===Gareth Hutchens:
The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, has struggled to explain exactly how Victoria’s Country Fire Authority is being subjected to a “hostile union takeover” in a new pay deal struck by the Victorian Labor government…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
(A)ppearing on Sky News on Monday afternoon, Cash had trouble explaining exactly how the Victorian government’s enterprise agreement would adversely affect a CFA volunteer.
Asked by host David Speers what clause she found most worrying in the enterprise agreement, Cash said: “There is no one clause, David. There is no one clause.”
When Speers asked what the impact of the agreement would be on “a long-serving, very honourable, hard-working” volunteer, Cash replied: “Well you’d need to ask that person.”
So Speers pressed the minister: “I’m just asking, you’re the one wanting to intervene here."…
Earlier on Monday, Cash had been forced to apologise for an opinion piece she wrote for the Herald Sun in which she claimed the controversial enterprise agreement required “seven paid firefighters (ie union members) to be present before CFA personnel are able to be deployed to a fire”.
In fact the proposed agreement only requires that seven paid firefighters be dispatched, meaning it does not prevent volunteers fighting fires if they arrive first.
And now Germany will pay for that invasion
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (8:47am)
Activists claiming refugees are an economic boom could not be more wrong, as Germany has not discovered all over again:
(Thanks to reader Grendel.)
===Young refugees accepted by Germany since the beginning of last year will cost the country an extra 67 billion euros ($100 billion) to educate and train, according to a new assessment of the bill for the migrant influx.Add the unemployment benefits and other welfare payouts.
The new school year is getting under way with calls for 25,000 more teachers and reports that thousands of migrant children will be denied a classroom place because schools are full.
About 40 per cent of the 1.1 million people who arrived in Germany last year and the 220,000 who came during the first half of this year are believed to be aged 20 or under....
“We have done some new calculations which put the full cost of refugees coming to Germany at euros 67 billion through their whole education pathway,” said Dieter Dohmen, president of the Research Institute for the Economics of Education and Social Affairs in Berlin… The bill for 2016 is put at euros 15 billion.
(Thanks to reader Grendel.)
“Racism” at the football has a young and female face
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (8:37am)
Reader Nev:
===Ironic is it not that the two major incidents involving racism at AFL matches have involved women and children?
If you can’t say Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers you Probably hate Poms
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (8:11am)
Nick Cater is right to be amazed.
The rest of us are right to fear, since the 33-year-old Soutphommasane
now has huge state power to harass and punish those he deems guilty:
===It may seem unfair to the 24 million Australians who have yet to master the pronunciation of the six tones of Lao, but as Thinethavone Soutphommasane often tells us, we should always call out racism when we see it.
“If someone says to me they’re not even going to try to pronounce my name, that doesn’t necessarily send a good signal,” the race relations commissioner told The Australian Financial Review in a revealing interview this month.
“It says that they’re not even bothered to treat me with respect...”
Just when you think the threshold for taking offence could not get lower, the salaried hand-wringers of the grievance industry prove you wrong. Every slight, real or imagined, is tendered as evidence of the bigotry eating away at our society.
A massive teat makes everyone an infant
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (7:55am)
The problem is the culture, not any lack of money. In fact, too much government spending actually makes the problem worse:
===Indigenous affairs spending worth $5.9 billion a year is not delivering results because few of the schemes being funded are properly evaluated, the assessment of what is needed is inadequate and some programs are poorly designed…
The CIS study, by researcher Sara Hudson, ... documents massive duplication of services, with Roebourne in Western Australia having 67 local service providers and more than 400 state and federal funded programs for a population of 1150; Toomelah in NSW has more than 70 service providers for a population of only 300.
Poor program design had meant that the federal government’s Indigenous Home Ownership program’s success rate of approving only 75 loans in a year equated to one loan for each person employed to run the program. Further, most of these loans were delivered to people who could have qualified for a mainstream loan.
The priests of Twitter
Andrew Bolt August 23 2016 (7:32am)
Reader ”wint”:
===Everybody wants to be the guy to write the tweet that solves racism once and for all because it would look good as hell on a resume.
ALP leader Bill Shorten has ‘failed to check the falsehoods’ promoted by CFMEU
Piers Akerman – Saturday, August 22, 2015 (11:43pm)
POUR a little acid on Labor’s lies about free trade, the environment and same-sex marriage and the Abbott government’s policies shine as beacons of hope in a landscape dominated by malevolent propaganda.
Continue reading 'ALP leader Bill Shorten has ‘failed to check the falsehoods’ promoted by CFMEU'
No honour in Hastie smear
Miranda Devine – Sunday, August 23, 2015 (6:06am)
THE upcoming Canning by-election in WA is being framed as a referendum on Tony Abbott’s leadership, so it was always going to get dirty.
But the political smear launched yesterday against Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie sets a new low,
Captain Hastie, 32, is a former SAS soldier who served three tours in Afghanistan and was recently deployed in missions against Islamic State.
In other words he is a hero, who has laid his life on the line to protect our way of life. We are lucky he has decided to continue his service by standing for parliament.
But, according to damning headlines in the Fairfax press, there is a “Question of Conduct” hanging over Hastie because he was “officer in command of a troop being investigated for chopping the hands off dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.”
Turns out Hastie was elsewhere on the battlefield at the time the alleged incident took place in 2013. But, anyway, hands are removed from enemy corpses in the middle of a battle so that fingerprint checks can identify them later.
This is the grisly reality of war.
As Neil James, executive director of the Australia Defence Association, said: “At least [Hastie] has done something important with his life before he runs for Parliament.”
Abbott-haters understandably are gnashing their teeth that the Liberals have such an admirable candidate in Hastie. But using his war service against him is contemptible.
Grubby affair ends in a cheap hack job
Miranda Devine – Sunday, August 23, 2015 (6:02am)
THERE was a delicious schadenfreude in the news last month that the Ashley Madison adultery website had been hacked.
Continue reading 'Grubby affair ends in a cheap hack job'Labor shoots the police
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (4:58pm)
I feel very strongly about this threat to the rule of law. My editorial this morning on Labor’s rule of mates - some corrupt - can be seen here.
Resist.
Fight.
===Resist.
Fight.
Andrew Hastie fought for the freedom of even snickering Labor MPs to slime him
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (1:29pm)
Captain Andrew Hastie of the SAS risked his life to serve his country on three tours of duty in Afghanistan.
Now that he is standing as a Liberal candidate he is accused by The Age newspaper as a possible war criminal for actions taken by another soldier in another place in accordance with military advice in order to identify terrorists slain in battle - the removal of the hands of three Talibani.
Two Labor politicians think this is funny, and publicly mock a man who fought for their freedom:
These Labor MPs say you should vote for their candidate instead. Send them a message.
UPDATE
What is it with the Left and making mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep? Or in the case of former Greens candidate Greg Barnes, vilifying those who risk their lives to protect the rights you merely prate about?
And to think: he’s actually a lawyer.
UPDATE
Leftist lawyers and academics join in the smearing:
(Thanks to reader John.)
===Now that he is standing as a Liberal candidate he is accused by The Age newspaper as a possible war criminal for actions taken by another soldier in another place in accordance with military advice in order to identify terrorists slain in battle - the removal of the hands of three Talibani.
Two Labor politicians think this is funny, and publicly mock a man who fought for their freedom:
West Australian Labor frontbenchers Darren West and Chris Tallentire have used Twitter to spread jokes disparaging the candidate’s war record.Not so much disgusting as depraved.
Mr Tallentire, the state opposition environment spokesman, re-tweeted: “So #Hastie thinks campaigning for solar is aggressive? Can I have a show of hands on that?”
Mr West, the state opposition agriculture spokesman, re-tweeted: “A chopper with Bronny in comes in to land & here’s Hastie’s chopper, to chop off your hand! #Canning u believe this?
These Labor MPs say you should vote for their candidate instead. Send them a message.
UPDATE
What is it with the Left and making mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep? Or in the case of former Greens candidate Greg Barnes, vilifying those who risk their lives to protect the rights you merely prate about?
Barnes has since deleted that barbaric, untrue and defamatory tweet, and apologised for it. But how could he every have come to publish something so disgusting in the first place?
And to think: he’s actually a lawyer.
UPDATE
Leftist lawyers and academics join in the smearing:
Rudyard Kipling:
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleepGeorge Orwell, in his flawed essay on Kipling still said much that was right - and is aposite in Australia today:
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap…
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot…
But because [Kipling] identifies himself with the official class, he does possess one thing which ‘enlightened’ people seldom or never possess, and that is a sense of responsibility. The middle-class Left hate him for this quite as much as for his cruelty and vulgarity. All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible…One thing is not right in that passage. Andrew Hastie is more civilised than his critics above, for whose security he was nevertheless prepared to kill.
It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’… He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them… He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality. The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.
(Thanks to reader John.)
The Bolt Report today, August 23
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (11:27am)
On Channel 10 at 10am and 3pm
Editorial: Labor’s protection racket explained. Links made.
My guests: Finance Minister Mathias Cormann; Georgina Downer, former diplomat and member of the Victorian Liberal administrative committee; Nicholas Reece, former advisor to Julia Gillard; and Sharri Markson, media editor of The Australian.
We’ll talk about the sliming of Justice Dyson Heydon and Captain Andrew Hastie, and the loss of Mark Latham, who went so feral yesterday. The war on green wreckers and a question: why is Clementine Ford still a Fairfax columnist?
The videos of the shows appear here.
UPDATE
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann on my show today said what he thought of The Age’s vilification of Captain Andrew Hastie:
Continue reading 'The Bolt Report today, August 23'
===Editorial: Labor’s protection racket explained. Links made.
My guests: Finance Minister Mathias Cormann; Georgina Downer, former diplomat and member of the Victorian Liberal administrative committee; Nicholas Reece, former advisor to Julia Gillard; and Sharri Markson, media editor of The Australian.
We’ll talk about the sliming of Justice Dyson Heydon and Captain Andrew Hastie, and the loss of Mark Latham, who went so feral yesterday. The war on green wreckers and a question: why is Clementine Ford still a Fairfax columnist?
The videos of the shows appear here.
UPDATE
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann on my show today said what he thought of The Age’s vilification of Captain Andrew Hastie:
MATHIAS CORMANN: Well, it was a shameful front page. I mean, if you go right to the bottom of the story, it says that Captain Hastie was not involved in the incident and wasn’t even there.Cormann on the campaign by unions and Labor to attack the free trade deal with China:
ANDREW BOLT: In fact, he was later cleared.
MATHIAS CORMANN: Indeed. And they give him this sort of front-page treatment. It is disgraceful. And quite frankly, the editors of The Age, who are responsible for this, should hang their heads in shame. They should hang their heads in shame. I mean, Andrew Hastie provided distinguished service for Australia overseas. He put his life on the line on behalf of Australia. He put himself in harm’s way. He doesn’t deserve that sort of treatment from a newspaper in Australia.
MATHIAS CORMANN: There’s absolutely no watering-down whatsoever of the usual rules ... if any such proponent wants to bring in workers from China, to first make sure that these jobs can’t be performed by an Australian, that these jobs have first been offered to Australian workers. So I mean, all of the usual safeguards are maintained in the exact same form.The full transcript of the interview:
ANDREW BOLT: But what I don’t understand is, if this is an agreement good for workers, why are unions against it?
MATHIAS CORMANN: Well, that’s a very good question. And I guess that is a question that I can’t answer on behalf of the union movement. I suspect that the union movement is essentially just trying to take a generally protectionist approach, trying to hold back our economy in some sort of misguided view that this is better for their members. But it ain’t better. It is not better for their members.
ANDREW BOLT: But I mean they’re not stupid - why would they be against it if it was good for their members?
MATHIAS CORMANN: Well, maybe they are stupid. Certainly… I can’t talk for the unions. What I can say, though, is the alternative prime minister of Australia, in Bill Shorten, should have the strength of character and should have the integrity to stand up for the national interest, and if he doesn’t then those good people inside the Labor Party that understand what is going on here should pull him into line. Bill Shorten clearly doesn’t have the strength of character to do what needs to be done in our national interests in relation to this. He is supporting a racist dog whistle by the union movement, which is self-serving and which is based on a lie.
Continue reading 'The Bolt Report today, August 23'
ABC repeats Heydon smear hours after it is disproved
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (6:13am)
This is absolutely astonishing. The CFMEU’s barrister makes a false and damaging claim about Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon “doctoring” documents which he retracts in embarrassment around 12.30pm on Friday. Yet nearly six hours later the ABC’s PM program is still reporting it as fact:
ABC PM:
forwarded replied to.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===ABC PM:
PETER LLOYD: ... (W)hat followed was a ... full frontal character hit. It came from John Agius the barrister for the CFMEU ... Mr Aguis says an email about the invitation to speak was doctored by the time lawyers received it.What Agius claimed was “doctoring” - the deleting of a line listing attachments, including a reference to a fundraising document - was in fact the automatic deleting of an attachment line when an email is
JOHN AGIUS: The fair minded observer would, in our respectful submission, have serious concern as to why it was that this email, which was produced [on Thursday] and the form in which it was produced, didn’t find its way into MFI, ACTU, MFI too and that the copy of it which did find its way into that bundle deleted the reference to attachments.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Unions mates’ rates in the Queensland Labor Government
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (6:09am)
What won’t Labor help the CFMEU cover up, and vice versa?
===THE scandal engulfing Police Minister Jo-Ann Miller has driven a wedge through the Palaszczuk Government with Left-wing unions demanding she remain in the ministry.(Thanks to reader Jon.)
The Courier-Mail can reveal the CFMEU and ETU have flexed their muscle on the Labor caucus, demanding MPs they backed at January’s election fight any push to kick Ms Miller out of Cabinet.
A Labor-dominated Parliamentary committee this week referred Ms Miller for investigation for signing a “deliberately misleading” statement over her handling of top-secret corruption watchdog documents.
Almost 90 documents were left in a safe given to Ms Miller in her previous role as deputy chair of the Parliament Crime and Corruption Committee even though she signed a statement declaring she had destroyed or returned them.
Nine Left-faction MPs including ministers Mark Bailey and Leanne Enoch were supported by the CFMEU and ETU in the lead-up to the poll. Ms Miller is considered the chief spear-carrier for the powerful unions in the caucus ...
The Age vs Captain Andrew Hastie. You decide
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (5:50am)
The Age slimes:
Andrew Hastie, until last week a captain in the SAS, is the Liberal candidate for the seat of Canning in next month’s by-election.
More about him in today’s The Bolt Report and in my column on Monday.
UPDATE
The Sydney Morning Herald should shrivel with shame:
This reporting is utterly shameful. WA Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds, who became a brigadier in the Army Reserve, gets it said:
===The soldier responds (from 14:40).
You judge who gets your respect.
Andrew Hastie, until last week a captain in the SAS, is the Liberal candidate for the seat of Canning in next month’s by-election.
More about him in today’s The Bolt Report and in my column on Monday.
UPDATE
The Sydney Morning Herald should shrivel with shame:
To be clear: Hastie was in a helicopter when the incident occurred. He reported it. He was cleared. The corporal responsible was following guidelines issues by investigators to establish identity of slain Talibani back at headquarters.
This reporting is utterly shameful. WA Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds, who became a brigadier in the Army Reserve, gets it said:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
With more flops like this, Trump will be president
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (5:42am)
An astonishing 30,000 people turn out for a Donald Trump political rally. Now read how some media outlets somehow spun this as a flop.
===Keeper of the antiquities beheaded
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (5:30am)
What we are fighting:
===KHALED ASAAD saw the continuity between Syrian Arab culture and that of the many peoples who had previously inhabited Palmyra, the 2,000-year-old archaeological site he had tended for almost half a century. A month before Islamic State (IS) rolled into the oasis town in May, the archaeologist described on a Facebook page the spring rituals that would have taken place in the colonnaded city during Greco-Roman times. Those rituals “fit perfectly” with pre-Islamic Arab ones, he wrote.
Others were less open-minded than the bespectacled 81-year-old. After the jihadists entered Palmyra they arrested Mr Asaad. On August 18th IS hung his decapitated body, his head and glasses at his feet, in front of the small museum where he had spent much of his life writing papers or working with teams from Germany and France. The reasons his killers gave, scrawled on a notice beside his body, were tending the site’s “idols”, attending “blasphemous” conferences, visiting Iran and communicating with generals in the Syrian regime.
Mr Asaad had worked for years for the government’s antiquities department. Some say he was a staunch supporter of Syria’s President Bashar Assad. But it seems as likely that he was killed because he refused to give up the locations of precious artefacts still buried underground in unexcavated tombs, despite being tortured.
Salim’s success scrutinised
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (5:14am)
After his look-at-me wedding, people are looking more closely indeed at Salim Mehajer:
===AUBURN has become a property gold mine for developers — especially those able to take advantage of changes to planning laws.
Two of the council’s most high-profile developers — Deputy Mayor Salim Mehajer and Mayor Ronney Oueik — have been legally allowed to vote on the very plan that governs height and floor space ratios.
In a trend that has angered their political opponents, both Cr Mehajer and Cr Oueik modified their development applications for two major developments after taking part in changing the Auburn Local Environment Plan (LEP), although they have not voted on the DAs themselves…
Under changes to local planning laws undertaken in 2012, councillors with property interests were granted permission to vote on LEPs so long as they declared their developments.
Both submitted new DAs on already approved developments to take full advantage of the revised LEP they helped change, which became law this year.
The LEP changes allowed a development at 40-44 John St, Lidcombe, which was connected to Mr Mehajer, to increase from nine storeys to 12 storeys and 58 units to 153 units.
James Packer, Israel’s new resident
Andrew Bolt August 23 2015 (5:09am)
A fascinating new direction for James Packer, part business and part spiritual. And a lot geographical:
===About a year ago, Packer bought a 30-year-old mansion — small, relative to new developments going on about him — in the ancient township of Caesarea about 45 minutes north of Tel Aviv.Beautiful city. Resonates with history and the sense of empires rising and falling - but a faith enduring.
The town dates back to the 25-13BC and Herod the Great’s establishment of a major deep harbour maritime and trade port city named in honour of Julius Cesear. It would go on to be sacked, destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries by various including the Arabs, Egyptians, Greeks and Crusaders and later abandoned to become a tiny fishing village, albeit with spectacular ruins…
Packer’s home, bought for under $2 million, is in leafy Cluster 6, also known as Hayam (sea) Cluster, and sits right next door to the private home, as opposed to official residence, of Netanyahu who he considers a good friend and whom he comfortably calls Bibi. The pair, with their partners, Sara Netanyahu and Packer’s girlfriend Carey, dined recently at the Netanyahu home ...
SCIENTISTS HAVE FEELINGS
Tim Blair – Saturday, August 23, 2014 (4:21pm)
“Science communicator” Joe Duggan:
Climate change is a complex and intimidating threat. You can’t see it when you look out your bedroom window.
That’s not what Barbara Boxer says. Or Graeme Pearman. Anyway, Joe has recently been in touch with a bunch of Australian panic academics to ask them how they’re feeling. Their answers are beyond fantastic. Here’s University of Queensland climate change ecologist Anthony J. Richardson:
I feel a maelstrom of emotions. I am exasperated … I am frustrated … I am anxious … I am perplexed … I am dumbfounded … I am distressed … I am upset … I am annoyed … I am angry … I am infuriated … But most of all I am apprehensive.
So am I, my friend. So am I. Monash University’s Dr Ailie Gallant is similarly tormented:
I feel nervous. I get worried and anxious, but also a little curious. The curiosity is a strange, paradoxical feeling that I sometimes feel guilty about. After all, this is the future of the people I love.I get frustrated a lot; by the knowns, the unknowns, and the lack of action. I get angry at the invalid opinions that are all-pervasive in this age of indiscriminant information, where evidence seems to play second fiddle to whomever can shout the loudest. I often feel like shouting.
Someone needs to be electro-calmed. Melbourne University’s Kevin Walsh:
If climate change were not real, we would not have to be concerned about it. We wouldn’t have to worry about the future of our water resources, already strained by over population.
Water storage levels in Australia’s largest city currently stand at 82.8 per cent. The University of NSW’s Dr Sarah Perkins:
For some time now I’ve been terribly worried. I wish I didn’t have to acknowledge it, but everything I have feared is happening. I used to think I was paranoid, but it’s true.She’s slipping away from us. She’s been showing signs of acute illness for quite a while, but no one has really done anything. Her increased erratic behaviour is something I’ve especially noticed. Certain behaviours that were only rare occurrences are starting to occur more often, and with heightened anger.
Is Perkins talking about climate or frightbats? Also from the University of NSW, Dr Alex Sen Gupta:
That scientists who have spent years or decades dedicated to understanding how it all works are given the same credibility as poleticians, media commentators and industry spokespeople with obvious vested interests and whose only credential is their ability to read discredited blogs.
Very well expressed, Mr PhD. ANU’s Emeritus Professor Tony McMichael:
It seems so silly to go on behaving like this …
You said it, pal. Associate Professor Katrin Meissner, yet another terrified climate academic from the University of NSW:
Knowing how much is at stake, knowing that I am one of the few people who understand the magnitude of the consequences and then realizing that most of the people around me are oblivious. Some of the people are not only oblivious, they also do not want to understand. They have made up their mind, maybe based on the opinion of someone they trust, someone in their family, or a friend, maybe based on a political conviction, but certainly not based on facts.It makes me feel sick.
Don’t trust your family or friends! Trust Katrin the wonderteen, who continues:
It makes me feel sad. And it scares me. It scares me more than anything else. I see a group of people sitting in a boat, happily waving, taking pictures on the way, not knowing that this boat is floating right into a powerful and deadly waterfall. It is still time to pull out of the stream. We might lose some boat equipment but we might be able to save the people in the boat. But no one acts.Time is running out.
This might be the first time anyone at the University of NSW has demanded we stop the boats. Good for her.
(Via HillsHoist)
HISSY FIST
Tim Blair – Saturday, August 23, 2014 (4:18pm)
Angry Sydney youngster Jeremy Elphick:
tim blair takes a look at my fist
This appears to be my twig-limbed nemesis. Scary.
SQUIRMINGHAM
Tim Blair – Saturday, August 23, 2014 (1:20pm)
Timid John Birmingham reviews Monday’s column, but declines to mention the books. Even at a remove of nearly 1000km, the Brisbane-based Sydney columnist clearly doesn’t wish to offend. And he used to be so fearless …
UPDATE. A few days prior to James Foley’s murder, Seven’s Bryan Seymour uncovered Islamic State fundraising in western Sydney. John might know more about these things if he actually lived here.
RELIGION DISCUSSED
Tim Blair – Saturday, August 23, 2014 (12:47pm)
Islamic State terror goon Khaled Sharrouf isn’t so tough when the guns are pointed at him:
An underworld clash between Khaled Sharrouf and other crime figures over attempts to collect a disputed $9 million debt precipitated Sharrouf’s departure to the Middle East to join murderous extremist group, the Islamic State.Sharrouf, who recently gained global infamy after pictures were posted on social media of his young son holding a severed head, was attempting to recover the debt in the months before his departure for Iraq.Sharrouf was muscle for hire in the Sydney underbelly, working closely with bikies, drug dealers and underworld identities before leaving Australia on his brother’s passport.Senior law enforcement officials suspect that his concern for his safety influenced his decision to leave, as did the federal government’s crackdown on local jihadists heading overseas to fight in Iraq and Syria.
According to the Age‘s investigation, Sharrouf was in close contact with fellow head-holder Mohamad Elomar prior to their arrival in the Middle East:
It is believed Sharrouf and Elomar would engage in lengthy discussions about religion, while simultaneously mixing with some of Sydney’s most dangerous criminals.
Any religion in particular?
MISSING GLADYS
Tim Blair – Saturday, August 23, 2014 (12:03pm)
The saddest six seconds ever recorded.
(Yes, I know this might be all fake or whatever. I don’t care. Besides, if bees can comprehend human grievance rituals, why not dogs?)
On the Bolt Report tomorrow, August 24
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (11:42am)
On Channel 10 tomorrow at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial: Tony Abbott, kick that clown Palmer off the stage.
My guest: the literally indestructible Education Minister Chris Pyne.
The panel: Michael Kroger and former Labor Minister Gary Johns.
NewsWatch: Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman. Did the media protect Bill Shorten too much? Why the media ban on showing the beheading video? And a dial-a-quote discussed.
Among the topics: should Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs sack herself after her astonishing heckling? And some the craziest look-away evasions of the Left.
The videos of the shows appear here.
===Editorial: Tony Abbott, kick that clown Palmer off the stage.
My guest: the literally indestructible Education Minister Chris Pyne.
The panel: Michael Kroger and former Labor Minister Gary Johns.
NewsWatch: Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman. Did the media protect Bill Shorten too much? Why the media ban on showing the beheading video? And a dial-a-quote discussed.
Among the topics: should Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs sack herself after her astonishing heckling? And some the craziest look-away evasions of the Left.
The videos of the shows appear here.
How much of this warming is real? How much was created back in the office?
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (11:32am)
How much can we rely on data adjustments by people convinced the evidence should show a warming?
===THE Bureau of Meteorology has been accused of manipulating historic temperature records to fit a predetermined view of global warming.Same accusation in the US:
Researcher Jennifer Marohasy ... has analysed the raw data from dozens of locations across Australia and matched it against the new data used by BOM showing that temperatures were progressively warming.
In many cases, Dr Marohasy said, temperature trends had changed from slight cooling to dramatic warming over 100 years.
BOM has rejected Dr Marohasy’s claims and said the agency had used world’s best practice and a peer reviewed process to modify the physical temperature records that had been recorded at weather stations across the country. It said data from a selection of weather stations underwent a process known as “homogenisation” to correct for anomalies.
US measured temperature data (blue below) shows that we have been cooling for nearly a century. But the temperatures reported by NCDC (red below) show the opposite, that the US is warming…(Thanks to readers mem and Konrad.)
They accomplish this transition by an impressive 1.6 degrees of data tampering, which cools the past and warms the present.
Here’s why we really do need to show what the Islamic State does
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (11:12am)
Luke Darcy on Triple M on the Catholic Church not wanting to hand over all Vatican documents relating to pedophile priests:
However some priests of the Catholic Church have betrayed their trust, to liken their church to the Islamic State shows a staggering lack of proportion.
UPDATE
Chris Kenny notes more of the same:
===This is as evil as anything ISIS has got. I promise you.Hyperbole alert:
In some circles it is a sign of virtue to vilify the wrong faith.
However some priests of the Catholic Church have betrayed their trust, to liken their church to the Islamic State shows a staggering lack of proportion.
UPDATE
Chris Kenny notes more of the same:
The liberal Left in the Western world are the “useful idiots” of the Islamist extremists, encouraging us to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil…(Thanks to reader Koze.)
When US journalist James Foley was decapitated in a subhuman act of depravity, the usefuls railed against pictures showing the last moments of his life because they conveyed a sense of the horror to come. “So today The Daily Telegraph becomes an ISIS propagandist, nice work,” tweeted ABC opinion leader Jonathan Green, after the paper published a photo on its front page…
On Radio National the issue du jour was how to deal with the "images" rather than how to prevent more of these acts, let alone how we tackle the global and home-grown Islamist extremism driving these atrocities. On ABC TV’s Insiders David Marr downplayed the threat embodied by “depraved clown” Khaled Sharrouf and surmised Australians were “not at risk because of this”. Never mind his 150 fellow citizens fighting with the Islamic State, or the hundreds from Indonesia, Britain and Europe. According to Marr, “there is a tide of fear and hatred pulsing out” not from Syria or Iraq but from our media.
Gillard: Rudd too mentally damaged to fight election
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (10:58am)
Yet Labor still brought back as leader a man they thought had been not quite right in the head:
===JULIA Gillard has revealed her belief that Kevin Rudd in office was so deeply damaged in a mental sense that the Labor Party could not risk backing him to the 2010 election as prime minister.
Ms Gillard had decided by early 2010 at a critical Rudd-Gillard meeting on the veranda at Kirribilli House that Mr Rudd “was not in the zone to fight an election campaign”, concluding he was “miserable” and “depressed"…
In an extraordinary description of Mr Rudd before her challenge, Ms Gillard said: “He was miserable. His demeanour in those last few weeks was that everything about the job annoyed him, from the women who put a cup of tea in front of him. He was depressed… I think he had been in pretty bad shape for a long time. Copenhagen really knocked him around… I actually think it was emotionally scarring for him.” It was an astonishing situation, surely without precedent in our political history. The deputy prime minister had decided the prime minister was not mentally or psychologically equipped to fight Tony Abbott at an election.
The Palmer Family’s Party. No one else gets a say
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (10:53am)
Hedley Thomas describes not a political party but a family business:
===(T)he Palmer United Party ... constitution makes it plain that this is a political party with a unique base. Its rules — and the identities of the family appointees who run its committees — highlight the PUP as an entity owned and ruled by the patriarch with the support of relatives…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The foundation members are ... Clive Frederick Palmer, Clive Theodore Mensink (nephew), Blair Brewster (nephew), Martin Brewster (nephew), Michael Palmer (son) and Anna Palmer (wife). It takes a majority of the foundation members to expel a member; four could do it over a family dinner.
Power within PUP can be traced to the party’s “Interim Executive Committee’’, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly in a family business, made up of the same six relatives who are the foundation members.
The chairman is Palmer, the national treasurer is his wife Anna; his son Michael makes do with the title of president.
But as rule W3 says, “the chairman is fully authorised to exercise all powers of the Interim Executive Committee and a declaration signed by the Chairman shall be conclusive proof of the subject matter of anything to which it relates”.
It means that if Palmer wants the PUP to do something, he can go ahead and execute without a nod from the family members who comprise the interim executive committee.
He can also “at any time wind up the Party"… In addition to their other roles, Anna Palmer is also “President of the Palmer United Party Women”, and Michael Palmer is “President of the Young Palmer United Party”.
Gillian Triggs must resign from this witch-hunt
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (10:47am)
Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, purports to conduct a kind of judicial inquiry into children in detention.
Her conduct, however, is disgraceful, more akin to holding a kangaroo court. Witnesses are badgered and verballed, false and emotive statements are made from the bench, and Triggs then discusses the evidence and criticises the witnesses in TV interviews outside the on-going hearing.
Triggs should step down. There is no way that her conduct could be deemed fair or impartial. It appears to me beyond serious question that Triggs is holding this inquiry merely to help justify or advertise a conclusion she’s already reached. Her conduct seems to me totally unbefitting someone in charge of an inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to appear and to produce documents under threat of imprisonment.
Roger Franklin:
===Her conduct, however, is disgraceful, more akin to holding a kangaroo court. Witnesses are badgered and verballed, false and emotive statements are made from the bench, and Triggs then discusses the evidence and criticises the witnesses in TV interviews outside the on-going hearing.
Triggs should step down. There is no way that her conduct could be deemed fair or impartial. It appears to me beyond serious question that Triggs is holding this inquiry merely to help justify or advertise a conclusion she’s already reached. Her conduct seems to me totally unbefitting someone in charge of an inquiry with the power to compel witnesses to appear and to produce documents under threat of imprisonment.
Roger Franklin:
The venue for Ms Triggs’ comeuppance was a hearing room where she was attempting to equate the Christmas Island internment centre, where illegal aliens are held while awaiting processing, with prisons where convicted criminals pay their debts to society. Had she been performing for her normal audience, no problem. But this time it was Immigration Scott Morrison, a man of blunt words, and his Departmental Secretary who ruffled the Offence-Taker in Chief…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The video of their encounter ... [shows] what happens when emotive assertion runs headlong into fact…
Christmas Island and Long Bay Jail are interchangeable, except they aren’t…
(A)nd what about Ms Triggs’ insistence that the landing strip at Christmas island is somehow, you know, an offence against humanity because the tarmac is short-ish and, therefore, using it to ferry internees to mainland medical care jeopardises their human rights! Perhaps, in addition to “casual racism”, we can expect Ms Triggs’ next crusade to oppose “aeronautic racism"… Just don’t ask her about the 1000-plus men, women and children who perished en route to Christmas Island while the Labor government that appointed her was in office. She never seems to mention that appalling loss of human life. No doubt she finds it deeply and personally offensive.
Hamas praises ‘heroic’ murder of three Jewish hitchhikers. And there’s the difference
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (10:14am)
Here is an illustration of a critical difference between Israel and Hamas - between the rule of law and the rule of terrorists.
When Israeli Jews allegedy killed a Palestinian youth they were publicly damned by Israeli leaders, quickly arrested and charged. If found guilty they face long prison sentences.
When Hamas terrorists and sympathisers earlier killed three Jewish hitchhikers they were publicly praised by Hamas spokesmen and hidden. See, this was an organised Hamas operation, as has now been admitted::
NOTE ALSO:
The video report also talks of Hamas executing so-called collaborators. No wonder journalists embedded in Gaza tend to file stories so helpful to the Hamas war effort.
And the difference between Hamas and the Islamic State?
UPDATE
How can we trust reports from territory controlled by terrorists?
===When Israeli Jews allegedy killed a Palestinian youth they were publicly damned by Israeli leaders, quickly arrested and charged. If found guilty they face long prison sentences.
When Hamas terrorists and sympathisers earlier killed three Jewish hitchhikers they were publicly praised by Hamas spokesmen and hidden. See, this was an organised Hamas operation, as has now been admitted::
A senior Hamas leader has said the group carried out the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June — the first time anyone from the Islamic militant group has said it was behind an attack that helped spark the current war in the Gaza Strip.Let Hamas apologists here explain this difference.
Saleh Arouri told a conference in Turkey on Wednesday that Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, carried out what he described as a “heroic operation” with the broader goal of sparking a new Palestinian uprising. “It was an operation by your brothers from the al-Qassam Brigades,” he said, saying Hamas hoped to exchange the youths for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Hamas has repeatedly praised the kidnappings, but Arouri, the group’s exiled West Bank leader, is the first member to claim responsibility. Israel has accused Hamas of orchestrating the kidnappings and identified two operatives as the chief suspects. The two men remain on the loose.
NOTE ALSO:
The video report also talks of Hamas executing so-called collaborators. No wonder journalists embedded in Gaza tend to file stories so helpful to the Hamas war effort.
And the difference between Hamas and the Islamic State?
UPDATE
How can we trust reports from territory controlled by terrorists?
Journalism ethics professors and historians take note: You are bearing witness, with few exceptions, to some of the most abysmal overseas reporting since Hearst’s New York Journal in 1898 got us into the Spanish-American War and Walter Duranty of the New York Times was ignoring Stalin’s crimes in the 1930s. “We’re not just talking bad journalism,” says Weiss. “We’re talking about journalism that functions as a tool of a terrorist organization, Hamas: breathlessly pushing its narrative, whether cowed by its threats, sympathetic to its cause, or simply ignorant.”(Thanks to readers Allan, Correllio and Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The Age praises ignorance as bliss if Abbott is dissed
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (9:23am)
Children can be cute, but The Age is plain stupid to treat this 18-year-old as a heroine for badgering Tony Abbott:
So why didn’t The Age in its long piece valorising Veares and mocking Abbott point this out?
Instead, writer Michael Gordon suggests Abbott needs exactly this kind of guru to guide him:
===And the third question? “I wanted to know why most of the budget was being funded by the poorest 20 per cent of the country,” said Veares, who has been living independently from her separated parents for more than two years, and knows more than most Australians about adversity.The poorest 20 per cent don’t fund the Budget at all. They are the biggest takers, not givers. They pay no net tax, but get 42 per cent of the cash benefits.
So why didn’t The Age in its long piece valorising Veares and mocking Abbott point this out?
Instead, writer Michael Gordon suggests Abbott needs exactly this kind of guru to guide him:
If he needs assistance, I can pass on Maddie Veares’s mobile number.Sigh.
What more will it take for Muslim “leaders” to stop pretending there’s no threat?
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (8:33am)
Denialism:
Gerard Henderson discusses one of the fast emerging apologists for extremists - a joint signatory with the radical Sheik Omran and Hizb ut Tahrir of a letter damning the Abbott Government’s attempts to stop terrorism:
===Muslim leaders across Australia have denounced as unjust, unjustified and hypocritical proposed new counter-terrorism laws and they have refused to “rubber-stamp” them for the government…Does this count?:
”There is no solid evidence to substantiate this threat...” the statement reads.
Does this count?
the U.S. government on Friday issued a security bulletin to all U.S. law enforcement in light of the overall threat posed by Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.
The ominous post on Twitter, purportedly from somebody connected with Islamic State, shows a photo of the Old Republic Building, 307 N. Michigan Ave., in Chicago and the White House.
Police and security services are trying to identify a suspected British jihadist who appeared in footage of the killing of a US journalist [James Foley]…Does this, from May, count?
Unconfirmed reports suggest the man in the video - who had an English accent - is from London or south-east England and may have guarded IS captives… The Guardian said the man was thought to be the leader of a group of British fighters based in Syria. The paper said he called himself “John” and was believed to be from London… BBC world affairs correspondent Rob Watson said sources had confirmed IS had been using three British jihadists to guard foreign prisoners.
A French former jihadist volunteer in Syria has been arrested over last week’s deadly shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.Does this count?
MOHAMED Elomar, one of several Australian jihadists wanted by police for terrorism offences in Syria, appears to have rebooted his online presence, exhorting followers to “get an AK47’’ and mow down supporters of Israel, and promising would-be jihadists access to explosives…Does this count?
Elomar offers to source weapons-grade explosives for Sydney-based extremists. “Anyone in Sydney who is after explosives (dynamite sticks, C4 sticks, orica mine sticks, grenades) lots more. If interested DM (direct message) me.’’
A London woman who travelled to Syria to marry an Islamist militant has said she wants to be the first female jihadist to kill a British or American captive.Does this count?
Glorying in the beheading of James Foley on Twitter, Khadijah Dare asked for links to footage of the brutal murder.
Writing under the name of Muhajirah fi Sham, which means “immigrant in Syria”, she said: “Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!(sic)”. Dare, who is believed to be around 22 and from Lewisham in south-east London, has a photo of her young son holding an AK47 as her Twitter profile picture.
Does this count?
Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Calgarian in his early 20s, is fighting overseas with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria…
Before burning his Canadian passport, Shirdon, in full view of the camera lens, issues a threat to Canada, the U.S. and “all oppressors.”
“We are coming and we will destroy you by the will of God,” Shirdon says on the video…
In February, Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Michel Coulombe testified before the Senate national security and defence committee hearing that an estimated 130 Canadians had gone abroad to join terror groups in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and north Africa. Coulombe estimated that some 30 alone had left for the Syria-Iraq area. Coulombe also announced in late March that CSIS was tracking up to 80 Canadians suspected of having participated in terror activities abroad before returning to Canada.
In a video-clip posted on the Internet on May 17, 2014, a Jihadist from Kosovo, fighting with ISIS in Iraq, brandishes his sword and proclaims: “We shall cleanse the Arabian Peninsula of you, you filth. We shall conquer Jerusalem from you, oh Jews. We shall conquer Rome and Andalusia [Spain], Allah willing.”Does this count?
About 30 Australians went to fight in Afghanistan, of whom 19 were suspected of involvement in terrorism when they returned home and eight were convicted.Does this count?
All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as the operatives in the Cole attacks and the African Embassy bombing attended Afghan training camps… The atmosphere of the camps encourged recruits to develop creative ways to create mass murder. The curriculum was based on the ideology that Israel and the United States were evil. Martyrdom was the most highly achieved state which encourged many recruits to volunteer to go on suicide missions.UPDATE
Gerard Henderson discusses one of the fast emerging apologists for extremists - a joint signatory with the radical Sheik Omran and Hizb ut Tahrir of a letter damning the Abbott Government’s attempts to stop terrorism:
This is what Silma Ihram (nee Anne Beaumont) tweeted at 7.02pm on Wednesday – about 24 hours before her appearance on Paul Murray Live...:
Silma Ihram @Silma_Ihram: JamesFoley – Another terrible tragedy in countries destroyed by US/West intervention. My sad condolences to his family.Now here are some facts. James Foley was murdered by Islamic State Islamists in Syria. The West, including the United States, has not intervened in – or destroyed – Syria. Currently about 170,000 individuals have been killed in the appalling Syrian Civil War – which is essentially a war between Shi’a Muslims supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus and Sunni Muslims attempting to overthrow the al-Assad regime. The so-called Islamic State is a Sunni Islamist organisation.
The Sunni Islamists attempting to establish an Islamic State have been busy murdering Shi’a Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities. They have also murdered some Sunni Muslims who declined to accept their version of the Koran.
As a convert to Islam who has studied the religion, Silma Ihram should know that disputes between Sunni Islam and the minority Shi’a Muslims have gone on for centuries. So have disputes between Islam and Christianity.
Ms Ihram’s tweet is just tosh. James Foley was captured while reporting the civil war between Shi’a and the Sunni. Yet Silma Ihram made no reference to the fact in her tweet or her ... interview on Paul Murray Live.
Abbott sets a standard that Labor now praises
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (8:24am)
Tony Abbott is indeed a gentleman. I wish I could be confident that the Labor party under previous leaders would have acted as well had Abbott been the man accused of rape:
===Senator Conroy said the Coalition had been “very, very reasonable in not outing Bill’s name”.I understand that Labor under this leadership team is very alive to its own obligation to live up to these standards. So maybe some good will come out of this nasty business.
This can’t go on. But Labor, the Greens and Palmer say it must
Andrew Bolt August 23 2014 (6:49am)
Cut the Budget spending now. Demand Labor and Clive Palmer stop being wreckers:
===AUSTRALIANS need to lower their demands for generous government payments if the nation is to bring its finances under control, the Parliamentary Budget Office has warned…
Ringing the alarm on the budget challenge, the independent agency predicts that the cost of major programs — such as childcare, schools and aged care — will keep growing faster than the economy unless parliament votes to curb the outlays.
The report sheds new light on the cost of the Senate impasse on budget reform by predicting that the commonwealth would save $116.6 billion over the coming decade if the government could legislate all its changes… Federal spending rose by 3.8 per cent a year over the past decade to outpace the 3 per cent growth in the overall economy. This could be brought under control over the next 10 years — with spending growth of 2.4 per cent compared with economic growth of 3 per cent — but only if the budget reforms are passed.
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The God imagined by Atheists is absurd .. and a reminder for the faithful to be humble .. not weak, but humble. Making absurd claims about God is not serving Him well. The Theory of Evolution does not disprove the God of the Bible, but thoroughly illustrates the absurdity of that God Atheists despise. But it illustrates how to approach Islamofascism too .. Evolution does not disprove Islam, unless Islam is what the terrorists claim .. Evolution theory skewers that. - ed
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A LAWYER who lectures at Sydney's College of Law is pretending to be a health worker in a negative Labor TV ad, claiming Tony Abbott will sack her work colleagues.
Eileen Camilleri, who has been involved in legal education for 20 years, appears in medical scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck in a Queensland TV ad designed to scare viewers about cuts to the health system under an Abbott government.
Ms Camilleri tells viewers that Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has cut 14,000 jobs "including people I work with''.
"The local clinic now has reduced hours and the local nursing home has closed down. But to pay for his promises Tony Abbott will make even more cuts,'' she says.
Ms Camilleri lives in Sydney with her husband Marco Piazza, who also is employed at the College of Law.
She has also worked as an actor, appearing in the TV medical drama All Saints in 2004.
A Tony Abbott campaign spokesperson Jamie Briggs said Kevin Rudd was "so fake he's even using fake Queenslanders to repeat his lies".
Queensland Nurses Union assistant secretary Des Elder admitted it would be more effective if the people appearing in Labor's attack ads were real people rather than actors.
"But many people in the medical system would not be comfortable appearing in an ad like this for fear of being intimidated or losing their job,'' he said.
College of Law chief executive Neville Carter said it was important the college was "unequivocally apolitical". "But as long as our organisation is not compromised, we would regard this as a staff member's private arrangement,'' he said.
Ms Camilleri could not be contacted yesterday, but Mr Piazza said his wife "fully supports everything in the ad".
A Labor spokesman said it was "entirely appropriate to use actors in advertising, as has been done by both parties for a very long time".
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The latest flashpoint is a Facebook page set up in Canberra to support an embattled officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The department says the site has threatened and defamed its staff, as well as Labor politicians Bob Carr, Craig Emerson and Richard Marles.
The public servant at the centre of the row, Darrell Morris, was suspended in February and accused of being involved in the Facebook page called ‘‘The Anti-Bullying and Discrimination League of Australia’’.
He is now likely to to lose his job.
But Mr Morris’s father says Darrell was not involved with the page, and denies its comments were threatening or defamatory.
===uh? Al Gore compares global warming skeptics to an ‘alcoholic father’
After a brief hiatus, Al Gore is back on his global warming warpath. After giving a laudatory keynote address at the 2013 Tahoe Summit, the victory lap continued with a lovey-dovey interview the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein.
The former vice president told Klein climate change deniers are like “an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned” and believes his climate ‘science’ has taken a little while to catch on because it is on par with movements such as abolition, civil rights and gay rights, which all gained acceptance over time.
“This is very important. We have to apologize in no uncertain terms to Mister – and do I even dare call him Mister? It’s so beneath him. Sir, even though he’s not been knighted, I think he should be,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “Sir Albert Gore. Boy, was he right. He is now taking credit for how right he is.”
“And you know what,” Pat asked. “We may have been among those mocking him when he said it and yet, I’m ashamed.”
“We are ashamed. We should be ashamed,” Glenn agreed. “Anyway, I don’t know exactly how that works, but it’s really bad, and he has made some predictions. And should we go with the predictions or should we go with him taking the victory lap?”
You can watch Gore’s full remarks from the Tahoe Summit below:
For those of you who don’t have 34 minutes to spend watching Gore recycle his old global warming speeches, one of the themes he attempted to convey was that the models presented in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth have come true years ahead of schedule.
===Pastor Rick Warren
Frustration hurts. Forgiveness heals. Let it go. Now
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Both the University of Virginia and UPS told their employees recently they are no longer offering spousal coverage to those able to obtain insurance elsewhere.
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David Bowles
Rereading To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout's teacher, heh:
Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. "Besides," she said. "We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to write until you're in the third grade."
David Daniel Ball One of the best testaments to Western individualism is the existence of that great book. In the East, if a warlord overthrew an emperor, they would destroy everything that suggested the warlord was ever not chief. But the west keeps records .. if a general took over from a king, they would take and keep the wealth .. providing continuity. In the civil war, General Lee's principled stance in fighting for the south didn't mean he was executed with his family, although his garden was turned into a graveyard. It meant his grand daughter could write that book.
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An open letter to the parents of Chris Lane and citizens of Australia.
Read this heartfelt piece that really tells how Americans feel about Chris Lane's murder...
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Please help support Egyptian Christians. Add an #IamCoptic Twibbon to your profile picture on Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about the horrible attacks on Christians in Egypt the media isn't reporting.http://twb.ly/1d5f1cY
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לפני זמן קצר נורו רקטות משטחה של לבנון לגליל המערבי. אנחנו פועלים בכל החזיתות – בצפון ובדרום, כדי להגן על אזרחי ישראל מפני ההתקפות הללו. אנחנו מפעילים אמצעים מגוונים, גם של הגנה וגם של סיכול, ואנחנו פועלים באחריות. המדיניות שלנו ברורה: גם להגן וגם לסכל.
יידע כל מי שפוגע בנו - שאנחנו נפגע בו.
A short time ago rockets were fired from Lebanese territory to the Western Galilee. We are working on all fronts – in the North and the South in order to defend Israeli citizens against these attacks.
We are putting diverse measures both defensive as well as preventive into operation and we are acting responsibly. Our policy is clear: To defend and interdict. Let anyone who harms us and anyone who attempts to harm us know full well that we are going to strike him.
הדיווחים על שימוש אפשרי בנשק כימי בסוריה, מעוררים אפשרות של ביצוע פשע חמור ביותר של המשטר הסורי באזרחיו. המעשה הזה התווסף לפשעים החמורים שהמשטר הסורי מבצע בסיוע איראן וחיזבאללה באזרחי סוריה.
זה אבסורד שחוקרי האו"ם, שנמצאים עכשיו בדמשק, כדי לחקור אפשרות של שימוש בנשק כימי, מנועים על ידי המשטר הסורי מלהגיע לאזורים המוכים. צריך להבין שסוריה היא מגרש הניסויים של איראן.
איראן עוקבת היטב כיצד העולם מגיב לפעולות הנפשעות של סוריה ושל חיזבאללה, הזרוע הקדמית שלה. האירועים האחרונים רק מוכיחים פעם נוספת שאסור שלמשטרים המסוכנים ביותר בעולם, יהיה הנשק המסוכן ביותר בעולם.
The reported use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians is terribly disturbing. If verified, it will be a horrible addition to the roster of tragic crimes committed by the Syrian regime against the people of Syria.
It is absurd that the UN investigators, who are right now in Damascus to verify use of chemical weapons, are prevented from reaching the afflicted areas by the Syrian regime.
Syria has become Iran's testing ground, and Iran is closely watching whether and how the world responds to the atrocities committed by Iran's client state Syria and by Iran's proxy Hezbollah against innocent civilians in Syria. These events prove yet again that we simply cannot allow the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's most dangerous weapons
Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO
יידע כל מי שפוגע בנו - שאנחנו נפגע בו.
A short time ago rockets were fired from Lebanese territory to the Western Galilee. We are working on all fronts – in the North and the South in order to defend Israeli citizens against these attacks.
We are putting diverse measures both defensive as well as preventive into operation and we are acting responsibly. Our policy is clear: To defend and interdict. Let anyone who harms us and anyone who attempts to harm us know full well that we are going to strike him.
הדיווחים על שימוש אפשרי בנשק כימי בסוריה, מעוררים אפשרות של ביצוע פשע חמור ביותר של המשטר הסורי באזרחיו. המעשה הזה התווסף לפשעים החמורים שהמשטר הסורי מבצע בסיוע איראן וחיזבאללה באזרחי סוריה.
זה אבסורד שחוקרי האו"ם, שנמצאים עכשיו בדמשק, כדי לחקור אפשרות של שימוש בנשק כימי, מנועים על ידי המשטר הסורי מלהגיע לאזורים המוכים. צריך להבין שסוריה היא מגרש הניסויים של איראן.
איראן עוקבת היטב כיצד העולם מגיב לפעולות הנפשעות של סוריה ושל חיזבאללה, הזרוע הקדמית שלה. האירועים האחרונים רק מוכיחים פעם נוספת שאסור שלמשטרים המסוכנים ביותר בעולם, יהיה הנשק המסוכן ביותר בעולם.
The reported use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians is terribly disturbing. If verified, it will be a horrible addition to the roster of tragic crimes committed by the Syrian regime against the people of Syria.
It is absurd that the UN investigators, who are right now in Damascus to verify use of chemical weapons, are prevented from reaching the afflicted areas by the Syrian regime.
Syria has become Iran's testing ground, and Iran is closely watching whether and how the world responds to the atrocities committed by Iran's client state Syria and by Iran's proxy Hezbollah against innocent civilians in Syria. These events prove yet again that we simply cannot allow the world's most dangerous regimes to acquire the world's most dangerous weapons
Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO
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PEDOPHILIA, INCEST, AND GRAPHIC SEX: EXCERPTS FROM A COMMON CORE READING LIST BOOK FOR 11TH-GRADERS THAT WILL MAKE YOU BLUSH
Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic language. Discretion is advised.
Common Core, the controversial set of education standards being pushed by many state governors and education leaders, is coming under fire for its selection of a book that’s on the suggested reading list for 11th graders (i.e. 16- and 17-year-olds). The book — a past selection of Oprah’s Book Club — has graphic sex scenes and descriptions that are likely to make you blush.
The work in question comes from Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Listed on a Common Core reading list linked on the website, “The Bluest Eye” carries this description from the curriculum’s preferred bookseller: An Eleven-Year-Old African-American Girl In Ohio, In The Early 1940s, Prays For Her Eyes To Turn Blue So That She Will Be Beautiful.
That description sounds tame and appears to be a solid lesson about the problems of desiring beauty over anything else. And if you read the Common Core website, here’s an excerpt from the 11th grade exemplar text:
One winter Pauline discovered she was pregnant. When she told Cholly, he surprised her by being pleased. He began to drink less and come home more often. They eased back into a relationship more like the early days of their marriage, when he asked if she were tired or wanted him to bring her something from the store. In this state of ease, Pauline stopped doing day work and returned to her own housekeeping. But the loneliness in those two rooms had not gone away. When the winter sun hit the peeling green paint of the kitchen chairs, when the smoked hocks were boiling in the pot, when all she could hear was the truck delivering furniture downstairs, she thought about back home, about how she had been all alone most of the time then too, but that this lonesomeness was different. Then she stopped staring at the green chairs, at the delivery truck; she went to the movies instead. There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.
Keep in mind, that is an excerpt, selected by Common Core. And when they publish these online, they are accompanied by this statement: (emphasis added)
When excerpts appear, they serve only as stand-ins for the full text. The Standards require that students engage with appropriately complex literary and informational works; such complexity is best found in whole texts rather than passages from such texts.
Again, when you read the selected passage, a couple of things stand out — Morrison’s powerful command of the written word cannot be denied and the story appears to teach that over-the-top devotion to physical beauty is “one of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.” But the snippet posted above is just the excerpt presented online for teachers and interested parents to peruse and doesn’t mention what else is between the pages.
What else is in there? Simply: The the entire book has numerous questionable sexual sections that may not be appropriate for minors.
Macey France, a writer for the online site Politichicks, actually combed the entire text of “The Bluest Eye” and catalogued some of the more offensive and questionable parts. And they are graphic:
Pages 84-85: “He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel. He must rest his weight on his elbows when they make love, to avoid hurting her breasts…When she senses some spasm about to grip him, she will make rapid movements with her hips, press her fingernails into his back, suck in her breath, and pretend she is having an orgasm. She might wonder again, for the six hundredth time, what it would be like to have that feeling while her husband’s penis is inside her.”Pages 130-131: “Then he will lean his head down and bite my t** . . . I want him to put his hand between my legs, I want him to open them for me. . . I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me…He would die rather than take his thing out of me. Of me. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind…”Pages 148-149: “With a violence born of total helplessness, he pulled her dress up, lowered his trousers and underwear. ‘I said get on wid it. An’make it good, n*****, Come on c***. Faster. You ain’t doing nothing for her.’ He almost wished he could do it—hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much.”
Pages 162-163: “A bolt of desire ran down his genitals…and softening the lips of his anus. . . . He wanted to f*** her—tenderly. But the tenderness would not hold. The tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear. His soul seemed to slip down his guts and fly out into her, and the gigantic thrust he made into her then provoked the only sound she made. Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted.”Page 174: “He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable . . . His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness.” And later, this same pedophile notes, “I work only through the Lord. He sometimes uses me to help people.”Page 181: “The little girls are the only things I’ll miss. Do you know that when I touched their sturdy little t*** and bit them—just a little—I felt I was being friendly?—If I’d been hurting them, would they have come back? . . . they’d eat ice cream with their legs open while I played with them. It was like a party.”
Those six graphic excerpts cover incest, rape and pedophilia. In her research on the book in question, Macey France also exposes some pretty shocking support for those topics, from the author herself:
In fact, the author of the book, Morrison, says that she wanted the reader to feel as though they are a “co-conspirator” with the rapist. She took pains to make sure she never portrayed the actions as wrong in order to show how everyone has their own problems. She even goes as far as to describe the pedophilia, rape and incest “friendly,” “innocent,” and “tender.” It’s no wonder that this book is in the top 10 list of most contested books in the country.
The presence of the book on Common Core’s list, combined with Morrison’s descriptions of incest, rape, and pedophilia as “friendly,” “innocent,” and “tender” have sparked outrage in some communities. Parents in one Colorado school district are petitioning for the removal of “developmentally inappropriate and graphical content from the instructional reading list.” They are not asking for the book to be banned or even removed from the library, just taken off the suggested reading list.
Ms. France also cites a 2011 Harris poll on the banning of books and limiting of certain types of books in school libraries. In that poll, Harris showed:
- 83% say children should be able to get The Holy Bible
- 76% support access to books that discuss evolution from school libraries
- 62% say books with explicit language should not be available to children in school libraries.
With an overwhelming majority of parents supporting restricting – but not banning – young student’s access to books with explicit or questionable content, should Common Core pull this book from it’s list of exemplars? We invite you to participate in our Blaze Poll and comment below.
Follow Mike Opelka on Twitter – @stuntbrain
A young white male was walking to his car on a city street late at night on August 12 when he was confronted by a trio of black individuals. They shot him dead. Police have arrested three people and charged them with first degree murder. But some in the victim’s family can’t understand why the shooting is being called a failed robbery when they say the evidence suggests something possibly more sinister: a hate crime.
David Santucci, 27, had just started his new job as a nurse. According to his family, “he was an awesome guy…he wanted to be a missionary…he wanted to help people.”
The murder happened in Memphis, TN less than two weeks ago. Santucci was killed by a single 9mm shot through his heart. To its credit, the Memphis police department apprehended the suspects in less than fifteen minutes. Various reports say that all three suspects made statements that implicated them in Santucci’s murder. And they’re calling it a robbery gone wrong.
Miguel De Diago is one family member who doubts this killing was a failed robbery. He’s the the brother-in-law of David Santucci and told TheBlaze some stuff just doesn’t add up.
The first and foremost question in De Diago’s mind: If this was a robbery, why did his brother-in-law still have his wallet, car keys, and cell phone? Nothing was taken from him. And witnesses confirm that.
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Wait - What? Chris Matthews Says Republicans Call Obama 'Obama' To 'Delegitimize' Him
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US Campaign for Burma.
Check out this profile on currently jailed Kachin activist Bawk Jar from The Freedom Collection.
"As an ethnic minority woman working for human rights in a community dominated by traditional Kachin leaders and a country dominated by the military, Bawk Jar’s activism has always stood apart."
"How Bawk Jar’s case is resolved will be an important test of whether Burma’s government is really changing its ways. Likewise, how the international community responds to her arrest will say a lot about the standards by which it is judging Burma’s unfinished transition."
"How Bawk Jar’s case is resolved will be an important test of whether Burma’s government is really changing its ways. Likewise, how the international community responds to her arrest will say a lot about the standards by which it is judging Burma’s unfinished transition."
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Thanks to Obamacare, a number of businesses across the country have drastically reduced their employees’ hours to avoid the steep costs of the employer mandate. Last night I spoke to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren about the dangerous shift to a part-time economy.
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The strange death of the British middle class - The Spectator
"The great stabilising force in our society is disappearing fast" - Ed West and Fraser Nelson
http://paper.li/allysonchristy/1375928094
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The average American household is making less now than at the end of the Great Recession four years ago.
That's the President's idea of improving the economy?
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Don Kramer 2008: Caitlin Hill, Natalie Tran of course (communitychannel) and I think Molly who later became known for her work on the vlog Rocketboom.
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Eighteen vulvas. All belong to women of Sydney Uni. Why are they on the cover of Honi Soit?
We are tired of society giving us a myriad of things to feel about our own bodies. We are tired of having to attach anxiety to our vaginas. We are tired of vaginas being either artificially sexualised (see: porn) or stigmatised (see: censorship and airbrushing). We are tired of being pressured to be sexual, and then being shamed for being sexual.
The vaginas on the cover are not sexual. We are not always sexual. The vagina should and can be depicted in a non-sexual way – it’s just another body part. “Look at your hand, then look at your vagina,” said one participant in the project. “Can we really be so naïve to believe our vaginas the dirtiest, sexiest parts of our body?”
We refuse to manipulate our bodies to conform to your expectations of beauty. How often do you see an ungroomed vulva in an advertisement, a sex scene, or in a porno? Depictions of female genitalia in culture provide unrealistic images that most women are unable to live up to. “Beautiful vaginas are depicted as soft, hairless, and white. The reality is that my vagina is dark and hairy, and when it isn’t it is pinkish and prickly,” said one of the participants in the project. We believe that the fact that more than 1200 Australian women a year get labioplasty is a symptom of a serious problem. How can society both refuse to look at our body part, call it offensive, and then demand it look a certain way?
We want to feel normal; we don’t want to feel fearful when we have a first sexual counter with a partner who may judge us because of our vaginas. That fear was replicated during our photo shoot. “Just before getting the picture taken the little voice in my head was doing the whole ‘why didn’t you landscape?’ thing,” said one woman. This sentiment was shared by most people in the project – we felt a pressure to present our vaginas to the world in a way that the audience would be ‘comfortable’ with. But this cover is intended to reassure other women. Take comfort form the fact that everyone’s vagina is different, and that everyone’s is normal.
There was a selfish element to this cover. The participants have benefited from a sense of liberation. “It was a big ‘fuck you’ to all of the ideals, all of the shame, all of the hurtful lies that we are told about ourselves day in and day out,” summarised one woman.
All the women on the cover have been unified through their experience, but so is every other person that is able to defeat any negative feelings they have towards their own or another vagina. As one participant put it: “When it comes down to it, my vagina is just another part of my body, which can be viewed in a number of different ways, but the majority of the time is completely neutral, just like my mouth or my hands. It is not something to be ashamed of; it is not my dirty secret.”
It’s telling that the women who participated in the creation of this cover found the experience to be liberating. It’s because we need liberation. Just before we went to print, we were told that our cover was illegal, possibly criminal. But why? According to the SRC’s legal advice, this publication might be “obscene” or “indecent”, likely to cause offence to a “reasonable adult”. But what is offensive or obscene about a body part that over half of the Australian population have? Why can’t we talk about it – why can’t we see it? Why is that penises are scrawled in graffiti all around the world, but we can’t bear to look at vaginas?
Art exhibitions over the last few decades have attempted to break down the stigma attached to the vagina by bringing its realistic depiction into the public sphere, most recently in Redfern. But the audience must first choose to go to the exhibition. By distributing this cover about the University, we have given our audience no choice. Either accept vaginas as normal, non-threatening, and not disgusting, or explain why you can’t.
Here they are, flaps and all. Don’t you dare tell me my body offends you.
We acknowledge that the notion of vaginas pertaining exclusively to women is a very cisgendered conception of anatomy and identity. While vaginas often belong to cisgender women, this is not always the case. What we are discussing here is the experience of having a vagina, in an ungendered way. This experience is different for everyone. The term “cisgender” refers to the gender identity of individuals whose birth-assigned gender is in alignment with their current gender identity.
Lily was one of 18 young women who agreed to have their vaginas photographed and published on the cover of a student newspaper at the University of Sydney.
Four thousand copies of the Honi Soit paper were confiscated by the university's Student Representative Council after an edition was distributed featuring uncensored vaginas on the front cover.
The cover was supposed to make women feel better about their own bodies by showing them what normal vaginas look like.
"We are tired of society giving us a myriad of things to feel about our own bodies," the editors of Honi Soit said on Facebook. "We are tired of having to attach anxiety to our vaginas."
Social media was soon set alight under the hashtag #vaginasoit, drawing both praise and condemnation.
Lily, an 18-year-old student at the university, has no regrets. In fact, she's proud of her contribution to the controversial campaign.
"I'm proud to be a part of the project because I've already had women come up to me and thank me for helping them in the process of coming to terms with their own bodies, and how in some ways they don't fit the porn-standardised lie, but are still normal and still beautiful," Lily told news.com.au .
"To me the cover was honest. Every woman involved in the project and quoted in the article was speaking from their heart," she said.
===
August 23: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism/Black Ribbon Day in Canada, the European Union and the United States
- 1514 – Ottoman forces defeated the Safavidsat the Battle of Chaldiran, gaining control of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq.
- 1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened.
- 1914 – In their first major action of the First World War, theBritish Expeditionary Force defeated German troops in Mons, Belgium.
- 1944 – King Michael dismissed the pro-Axis government of General Ion Antonescu, putting Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of World War II.
- 1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million peoplejoined hands (pictured) to form an over 600 km (370 mi) longhuman chain across the Estonian, Latvian and LithuanianSoviet republics to demonstrate their respective desires for independence.
- 30 BC – After the successful invasion of Egypt, Octavian executes Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, and Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and only child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra.
- 20 BC – Ludi Volcanalici are held within the temple precinct of Vulcan, and used by Augustus to mark the treaty with Parthia and the return of the legionary standards that had been lost at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.
- 79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
- 406 – Gothic king Radagaisus is executed after he is defeated by Roman general Stilichoand 12,000 "barbarians" are incorporated into the Roman army or sold as slaves.
- 476 – Odoacer, chieftain of the Germanic tribes (Herulic - Scirian foederati), is proclaimed rex Italiae ("King of Italy") by his troops.
- 634 – Abu Bakr dies at Medina and is succeeded by Umar I who becomes the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate.
- 1244 – Siege of Jerusalem: The city's citadel, the Tower of David, surrenders to Khwarezmian Empire.
- 1268 – Battle of Tagliacozzo: The army of Charles of Anjou defeats the Ghibellines supporters of Conradin of Hohenstaufen marking the fall of the Hohenstaufen family from the Imperial and Sicilian thrones, and leading to the new chapter of Angevin domination in Southern Italy.
- 1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield in London.
- 1328 – Battle of Cassel: French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers.
- 1382 – Siege of Moscow: The Golden Horde led by khan Tokhtamysh lays siege to the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
- 1514 – The Battle of Chaldiran ends with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty.
- 1521 – Christian II of Denmark is deposed as king of Sweden and Gustav Vasa is elected regent.
- 1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.
- 1572 – French Wars of Religion Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris results in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
- 1592 – Japanese invasions of Korea: The Yeongwon Castle is besieged by the Japanese Fourth Division led by Itō Suketaka.
- 1595 – Long Turkish War: Wallachian prince Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Călugăreniand achieves a tactical victory.
- 1600 – Battle of Gifu Castle: The eastern forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu defeat the western Japanese clans loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori, leading to the destruction of Gifu Castle and serving as a prelude to the Battle of Sekigahara.
- 1614 – Fettmilch Uprising: Jews are expelled from Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, following the plundering of the Judengasse.
- 1614 – The University of Groningen is established in the Dutch Republic.
- 1628 – George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, is assassinated by John Felton.
- 1650 – Colonel George Monck of the English Army forms Monck's Regiment of Foot, which will later become the Coldstream Guards.
- 1655 – Battle of Sobota: The Swedish Empire led by Charles X Gustav defeats the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
- 1703 – Edirne event: Sultan Mustafa II of the Ottoman Empire is dethroned.
- 1765 – Beginning of Burmese–Siamese War.
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James'sstating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.
- 1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for four years.
- 1799 – Napoleon I of France leaves Egypt for France en route to seizing power.
- 1813 – At the Battle of Großbeeren, the Prussians under Von Bülow repulse the French army.
- 1831 – Nat Turner's slave rebellion is suppressed.
- 1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
- 1858 – The Round Oak rail accident occurs in Brierley Hill in the Black Country, England. It is 'Arguably the worst disaster ever to occur on British railways'.
- 1864 – The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico except Galveston, Texas.
- 1866 – Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.
- 1873 – Albert Bridge in Chelsea, London opens.
- 1896 – Officially recognised date of the Cry of Pugad Lawin, the start of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila (actual date and location is disputed).
- 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departs from London.
- 1901 – Six hundred American school teachers, Thomasites, arrived in Manila on the USAT Thomas.
- 1904 – The automobile tire chain is patented.
- 1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
- 1914 – World War I: Battle of Mons: The British Army begins withdrawal.
- 1921 – British airship R-38 experiences structural failure over Hull in England and crashes in the Humber estuary. Of her 49 British and American training crew, only four survive.
- 1923 – Captain Lowell Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.
- 1927 – Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti are executed after a lengthy, controversial trial.
- 1929 – Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65–68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
- 1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
- 1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
- 1943 – World War II: Kharkiv is liberated as a result of the Battle of Kursk.
- 1944 – World War II: Marseille is liberated by the Allies.
- 1944 – World War II: King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of Marshal Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.
- 1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster: A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.
- 1945 – Soviet–Japanese War: The USSR State Defense Committee issues Decree no. 9898cc "About Receiving, Accommodation, and Labor Utilization of the Japanese Army Prisoners of War".
- 1946 – Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Länder (states) of Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein.
- 1948 – World Council of Churches is formed.
- 1954 – First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
- 1958 – Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.
- 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
- 1970 – Organized by Mexican American labor union leader César Chávez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.
- 1973 – A bank robbery gone wrong in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis; over the next five days the hostages begin to sympathise with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".
- 1977 – The Gossamer Condor wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight.
- 1982 – Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.
- 1985 – Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
- 1987 – The American male basketball team lost the gold medal to Brazilian team at the Pan American Games in Indianapolis. The final score was 120–115 and triggered changes in this sport basis in USA, resulting in the "Dream Team".
- 1989 – Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius–Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).
- 1989 – One thousand six hundred forty-five Australian domestic airline pilots resign after the airlines threaten to fire them and sue them over a dispute.
- 1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
- 1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
- 1990 – West Germany and East Germany announce that they will reunite on October 3.
- 1991 – Tim Berners-Lee opens the World Wide Web (WWW) to new users.
- 1994 – Eugene Bullard, the only black pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
- 1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'
- 2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.
- 2006 – Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of ten, escapes from her captor Wolfgang Přiklopil, after eight years of captivity.
- 2007 – The skeletal remains of Russia's last royal family members Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Grand Duchess Anastasia are discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia.
- 2010 – Manila hostage crisis, in which eight hostages were killed.
- 2011 – A magnitude 5.8 (class: moderate) earthquake occurs in Virginia. Damage occurs to monuments and structures in Washington D.C. and the resulted damage is estimated at $200 million–$300 million USD.
- 2011 – Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the Libyan Civil War.
- 2012 – A hot-air balloon crashes near the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, killing six people and injuring 28 others.
- 2013 – A riot at the Palmasola prison complex in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, kills 31 people.
- 1486 – Sigismund von Herberstein, Slovenian historian and diplomat (d. 1566)
- 1524 – François Hotman, French lawyer and jurist (d. 1590)
- 1623 – Stanisław Lubieniecki, Polish astronomer, theologian, and historian (d. 1675)
- 1724 – Abraham Yates, Jr., American lawyer and civil servant (d. 1796)
- 1741 – Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, French admiral and explorer (d. 1788)
- 1754 – Louis XVI of France (d. 1793)
- 1757 – Marie Magdalene Charlotte Ackermann, German actress (d. 1775)
- 1769 – Georges Cuvier, French biologist and academic (d. 1832)
- 1783 – William Tierney Clark, English engineer, designed the Hammersmith Bridge (d. 1852)
- 1785 – Oliver Hazard Perry, American commander (d. 1819)
- 1805 – Anton von Schmerling, Austrian judge and politician (d. 1893)
- 1814 – James Roosevelt Bayley, American archbishop (d. 1877)
- 1829 – Moritz Cantor, German mathematician and historian (d. 1920)
- 1836 – Marie Henriette of Austria (d. 1902)
- 1843 – William Southam, Canadian publisher (d. 1932)
- 1846 – Alexander Milne Calder, Scottish-American sculptor (d. 1923)
- 1847 – Sarah Frances Whiting, American physicist and astronomer (d. 1927)
- 1849 – William Ernest Henley, English poet and critic (d. 1903)
- 1852 – Radha Gobinda Kar, Indian physician and philanthropist (d. 1918)
- 1852 – Clímaco Calderón, Colombian lawyer and politician, 15th President of Colombia (d. 1913)
- 1852 – Arnold Toynbee, English economist and historian (d. 1883)
- 1854 – Moritz Moszkowski, Polish-German pianist and composer (d. 1925)
- 1864 – Eleftherios Venizelos, Greek lawyer, jurist, and politician, 93rd Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1936)
- 1867 – Edgar de Wahl, Ukrainian-Estonian linguist and academic (d. 1948)
- 1868 – Edgar Lee Masters, American lawyer, author, poet, and playwright (d. 1950)
- 1872 – Tanguturi Prakasam, Indian lawyer and politician, 1st Chief Minister of Andhra (d. 1957)
- 1875 – William Eccles, English physicist and engineer (d. 1966)
- 1875 – Eugene Lanceray, Russian painter and sculptor (d. 1946)
- 1877 – István Medgyaszay, Hungarian architect and academic (d. 1959)
- 1880 – Alexander Grin, Russian sailor and author (d. 1932)
- 1883 – Jonathan M. Wainwright, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1953)
- 1884 – Will Cuppy, American author and critic (d. 1949)
- 1884 – Ogden L. Mills, American captain, lawyer, and politician, 50th United States Secretary of the Treasury (d. 1937)
- 1890 – Harry Frank Guggenheim, American businessman and publisher, co-founded Newsday (d. 1971)
- 1891 – Roy Agnew, Australian pianist and composer (d. 1944)
- 1894 – John Auden, English solicitor, deputy coroner and a territorial soldier (d. 1959)
- 1897 – Henry F. Pringle, American historian and journalist (d. 1958)
- 1900 – Ernst Krenek, Austrian-American composer and educator (d. 1991)
- 1900 – Malvina Reynolds, American singer-songwriter and activist (d. 1978)
- 1901 – Guy Bush, American baseball player and manager (d. 1985)
- 1901 – John Sherman Cooper, American captain, lawyer, and politician, 2nd United States Ambassador to East Germany (d. 1991)
- 1903 – William Primrose, Scottish viola player and educator (d. 1982)
- 1905 – Ernie Bushmiller, American cartoonist (d. 1982)
- 1905 – Constant Lambert, English composer and conductor (d. 1951)
- 1908 – Hannah Frank, Scottish sculptor and illustrator (d. 2008)
- 1909 – Syd Buller, English cricketer and umpire (d. 1970)
- 1909 – Leila Danette, American actress (d. 2012)
- 1910 – Lonny Frey, American baseball player and soldier (d. 2009)
- 1910 – Giuseppe Meazza, Italian footballer and manager (d. 1979)
- 1911 – Birger Ruud, Norwegian ski-jumper (d. 1998)
- 1912 – Gene Kelly, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1996)
- 1912 – Igor Troubetzkoy, Russian aristocrat and racing driver (d. 2008)
- 1917 – Tex Williams, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1985)
- 1919 – Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin, Azerbaijani mathematician and theorist (d. 1984)
- 1921 – Kenneth Arrow, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1921 – Sam Cook, English cricketer and umpire (d. 1996)
- 1922 – Nazik Al-Malaika, Iraqi poet and academic (d. 2007)
- 1922 – Jean Darling, American actress and singer (d. 2015)
- 1922 – George Kell, American baseball player and sportscaster (d. 2009)
- 1923 – Edgar F. Codd, English-American computer scientist and programmer (d. 2003)
- 1924 – Ephraim Kishon, Israeli author, screenwriter, and director (d. 2005)
- 1924 – Robert Solow, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1925 – Robert Mulligan, American director and producer (d. 2008)
- 1926 – Clifford Geertz, American anthropologist and academic (d. 2006)
- 1926 – Gyula Hernádi, Hungarian author and screenwriter (d. 2005)
- 1927 – Dick Bruna, Dutch author and illustrator
- 1927 – Allan Kaprow, American painter and author (d. 2006)
- 1927 – Martial Solal, Algerian-French pianist and composer
- 1928 – Marian Seldes, American actress (d. 2014)
- 1929 – Vladimir Beekman, Estonian poet and translator (d. 2009)
- 1929 – Zoltán Czibor, Hungarian footballer (d. 1997)
- 1929 – Vera Miles, American model and actress, Miss Kansas 1948
- 1929 – Peter Thomson, Australian golfer
- 1930 – Michel Rocard, French civil servant and politician, 160th Prime Minister of France
- 1931 – Barbara Eden, American actress
- 1931 – Hamilton O. Smith, American microbiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1932 – Houari Boumediene, Algerian colonel and politician, 2nd President of Algeria (d. 1978)
- 1932 – Enos Nkala, Zimbabwean soldier and politician, Zimbabwean Minister of Defence (d. 2013)
- 1932 – Mark Russell, American comedian, singer, and pianist
- 1933 – Robert Curl, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1933 – Don Talbot, Australian swim coach and administrator
- 1933 – Pete Wilson, American commander and politician, 36th Governor of California
- 1934 – Sonny Jurgensen, American football player and sportscaster
- 1935 – Roy Strong, English historian, curator, and author
- 1936 – Rudy Lewis, American R&B singer (The Drifters) (d. 1964)
- 1938 – Giacomo Bini, Italian priest and missionary (d. 2014)
- 1938 – Roger Greenaway, English singer-songwriter and producer (The Kestrels, Brotherhood of Man, and The Pipkins)
- 1940 – Galen Rowell, American mountaineer and photographer (d. 2002)
- 1940 – Richard Sanders, American actor and screenwriter
- 1941 – Jim Ford, American singer-songwriter (d. 2007)
- 1941 – Onora O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, Northern Irish philosopher, academic, and politician
- 1942 – Letta Mbulu, South African-American singer and actress
- 1942 – Nancy Richey, American tennis player
- 1943 – Dale Campbell-Savours, Baron Campbell-Savours, English businessman and politician
- 1943 – Nelson DeMille, American lieutenant and author
- 1943 – Peter Lilley, English politician, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
- 1943 – Pino Presti, Italian bass player, composer, conductor, and producer
- 1944 – Antonia Novello, Puerto Rican-American physician and admiral, 14th Surgeon General of the United States
- 1945 – Rayfield Wright, American football player and coach
- 1946 – Keith Moon, English drummer, songwriter, and producer (The Who and Plastic Ono Band) (d. 1978)
- 1947 – Rex Allen, Jr., American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1947 – Willy Russell, English playwright and composer
- 1947 – Terje Rypdal, Norwegian guitarist and songwriter (The Vanguards)
- 1947 – Rowena Wallace, English-Australian actress
- 1948 – Atef Bseiso, Palestinian intelligence officer (d. 1992)
- 1948 – Andrei Pleșu, Romanian journalist and politician, 95th Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs
- 1948 – Rudy Ruettiger, American football player
- 1948 – Lev Zeleny, Russian physicist and academic
- 1949 – Geoff Capes, British shot putter and strongman
- 1949 – William Lane Craig, American apologist and theologian
- 1949 – Vicky Leandros, Greek singer and politician
- 1949 – Shelley Long, American actress
- 1949 – Rick Springfield, Australian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor
- 1950 – Alan Tam, Hong Kong singer and actor (The Wynners)
- 1951 – Allan Bristow, American basketball player and coach
- 1951 – Mark Hudson, American musician, songwriter, and producer (The Hudson Brothers)
- 1951 – Jimi Jamison, American singer-songwriter (Survivor) (d. 2014)
- 1951 – Akhmad Kadyrov, Chechen cleric and politician, 1st President of the Chechen Republic (d. 2004)
- 1951 – Queen Noor of Jordan
- 1952 – Santillana, Spanish footballer
- 1952 – Georgios Paraschos, Greek footballer and manager
- 1953 – Bobby G, English singer-songwriter (Bucks Fizz)
- 1953 – Kheira Bouziane, French politician
- 1954 – Charles Busch, American actor and screenwriter
- 1956 – Andreas Floer, German mathematician and academic (d. 1991)
- 1956 – Valgerd Svarstad Haugland, Norwegian educator and politician, Norwegian Minister of Culture
- 1957 – Tasos Mitropoulos, Greek footballer and politician
- 1958 – Julio Franco, Dominican baseball player and manager
- 1959 – Edwyn Collins, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist (Orange Juice)
- 1959 – George Kalovelonis, Greek tennis player and coach
- 1960 – Rodney Greenblat, American painter and graphic designer
- 1960 – Gary Hoey, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (Heavy Bones)
- 1960 – Chris Potter, Canadian actor, singer, and director
- 1961 – Dean DeLeo, American guitarist (Stone Temple Pilots, Talk Show, and Army of Anyone)
- 1961 – Alexandre Desplat, French composer and conductor
- 1961 – Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iranian commander and politician, 54th Mayor of Tehran
- 1961 – Gary Mabbutt, English footballer
- 1961 – Hitomi Takahashi, Japanese actress
- 1962 – Martin Cauchon, Canadian lawyer and politician, 46th Canadian Minister of Justice
- 1962 – Shaun Ryder, English singer-songwriter and actor (Happy Mondays and Black Grape)
- 1963 – Park Chan-wook, South Korean director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1963 – Richard Illingworth, English cricketer and umpire
- 1963 – Kenny Wallace, American race car driver
- 1964 – Johan Bruyneel, Belgian cyclist and manager
- 1964 – Wendy Pepper, American fashion designer
- 1965 – Roger Avary, Canadian director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1966 – Rik Smits, Dutch-American basketball player
- 1967 – Jim Murphy, Scottish lawyer and politician, Minister of State for Europe
- 1967 – Richard Petrie, New Zealand cricketer
- 1967 – Kazumi Totaka, Japanese voice actor and composer
- 1968 – Laura Claycomb, American soprano
- 1968 – Chris DiMarco, American golfer
- 1969 – Tinus Linee, South African rugby player and coach (d. 2014)
- 1969 – Jack Lopresti, English soldier and politician
- 1969 – Jeremy Schaap, American journalist and author
- 1969 – Keith Tyson, English painter and illustrator
- 1970 – KK, Indian singer-songwriter
- 1970 – Lawrence Frank, American basketball player and coach
- 1970 – Jason Hetherington, Australian rugby league player
- 1970 – Brad Mehldau, American pianist and composer
- 1970 – Jay Mohr, American actor, producer, and screenwriter
- 1970 – River Phoenix, American actor (d. 1993)
- 1971 – Demetrio Albertini, Italian footballer and manager
- 1971 – Bone Crusher, American rapper, producer, and actor
- 1971 – Tim Gutberlet, German footballer
- 1972 – Mark Butcher, English cricketer and singer
- 1972 – Raul Casanova, Puerto Rican-American baseball player
- 1972 – Martin Grainger, English footballer and manager
- 1972 – Manuel Vidrio, Mexican footballer, coach, and manager
- 1973 – Casey Blake, American baseball player
- 1973 – Kerry Walmsley, New Zealand cricketer
- 1974 – Mark Bellhorn, American baseball player
- 1974 – Christian Beranek, American actor, producer, and author
- 1974 – Benjamin Limo, Kenyan runner
- 1974 – Konstantin Novoselov, Russian-English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1974 – Ray Park, Scottish actor and martial artist
- 1974 – Shifty Shellshock, American singer-songwriter and actor (Crazy Town)
- 1975 – Eliza Carthy, English singer-songwriter and fiddler (Blue Murder)
- 1975 – Sean Marks, New Zealand-American basketball player and manager
- 1975 – Bünyamin Sudaş, Turkish weightlifter
- 1976 – Scott Caan, American actor, director, and screenwriter
- 1976 – Pat Garrity, American basketball player
- 1977 – Jelena Rozga, Croatian singer (Magazin)
- 1977 – Douglas Sequeira, Costa Rican footballer and manager
- 1977 – Igor Petrenko, Russian actor
- 1978 – Kobe Bryant, American basketball player
- 1978 – Julian Casablancas, American singer-songwriter (The Strokes and Julian Casablancas + The Voidz)
- 1978 – Andrew Rannells, American actor and singer
- 1978 – Randal Tye Thomas, American journalist and politician (d. 2014)
- 1979 – Jessica Bibby, Australian basketball player
- 1979 – Saskia Clark, English sailor
- 1979 – Ritchie Neville, English singer and actor (Five)
- 1979 – Edgar Sosa, Mexican boxer
- 1979 – Zuzana Váleková, Slovak tennis player
- 1980 – Diamondog, Angolan rapper and journalist
- 1980 – Denny Bautista, Dominican baseball player
- 1980 – Rex Grossman, American football player
- 1980 – Nenad Vučković, Serbian handball player
- 1981 – Carlos Cuéllar, Spanish footballer
- 1981 – Stephan Loboué, Ivorian footballer
- 1981 – Ozzy Lusth, Mexican-American reality show contestant on Survivor: Cook Islands
- 1982 – Natalie Coughlin, American swimmer
- 1982 – Scott Palguta, American soccer player
- 1982 – Cristian Tudor, Romanian footballer (d. 2012)
- 1982 – YTCracker, American rapper and DJ
- 1983 – J. C. Bailey, American wrestler (d. 2010)
- 1983 – James Collins, Welsh footballer
- 1983 – Athena Farrokhzad, Iranian-Swedish poet, playwright, and critic
- 1983 – Sun Mingming, Chinese basketball player
- 1983 – Tony Moll, American football player
- 1983 – Bruno Spengler, Canadian race car driver
- 1983 – Marianne Steinbrecher, German-Brazilian volleyball player
- 1984 – Glen Johnson, English footballer
- 1984 – Eric Tai, New Zealand rugby player and actor
- 1985 – Valeria Lukyanova, Moldovan-Ukrainian model and singer
- 1986 – Sky Blu, American rapper and producer (LMFAO)
- 1986 – Khosi Mokhesi, Lesotho swimmer
- 1986 – Brett Morris, Australian rugby league player
- 1986 – Josh Morris, Australian rugby league player
- 1986 – Vic Wild, American-Russian snowboarder
- 1987 – Nikki Gil, Filipino actress and singer
- 1988 – Olga Govortsova, Belarusian tennis player
- 1988 – Carl Hagelin, Swedish ice hockey player
- 1988 – Jeremy Lin, American basketball player
- 1989 – Breanna Conrad, American fashion designer
- 1989 – Lianne La Havas, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1989 – Heiko Schwarz, German footballer
- 1990 – Seth Curry, American basketball player
- 1991 – Isabella Tobias, American-Lithuanian ice dancer
- 1995 – Vlada Kubassova, Estonian footballer
Births[edit]
- 30 BC– Caesarion, Egyptian king (b. 47 BC)
- 30 BC – Marcus Antonius Antyllus, Roman soldier (b. 47 BC)
- 93 – Gnaeus Julius Agricola, Roman general and politician (b. 40)
- 406 – Radagaisus, Gothic king
- 634 – Abu Bakr, Arabian caliph (b. 573)
- 818 – Ali al-Ridha, Iranian 8th of the Twelve Imams (b. 765)
- 1106 – Magnus, Duke of Saxony (b. 1045)
- 1176 – Emperor Rokujō of Japan (b. 1164)
- 1305 – William Wallace, Scottish commander (b. 1272)
- 1329 – Frederick IV, Duke of Lorraine (b. 1282)
- 1387 – Olaf II of Denmark (b. 1370)
- 1478 – Johannes Pullois, Franco-Flemish composer (b. c. 1420?)
- 1507 – Jean Molinet, French poet and composer (b. 1435)
- 1519 – Philibert Berthelier, Swiss soldier (b. 1465)
- 1540 – Guillaume Budé, French philosopher and scholar (b. 1467)
- 1574 – Ebussuud Efendi, Turkish lawyer and jurist (b. 1490)
- 1591 – Luis de León, Spanish poet and academic (b. 1527)
- 1618 – Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero, Dutch poet and playwright (b. 1585)
- 1628 – George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire (b. 1592)
- 1652 – John Byron, 1st Baron Byron, English soldier and politician (b. 1600)
- 1706 – Edward Nott, English-American politician, Colonial Governor of Virginia (b. 1654)
- 1723 – Increase Mather, American minister and author (b. 1639)
- 1806 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist and engineer (b. 1736)
- 1813 – Alexander Wilson (ornithologist), Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, and illustrator (b. 1766)
- 1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry, American commander (b. 1785)
- 1831 – Ferenc Kazinczy, Hungarian author and poet (b. 1759)
- 1831 – August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, Prussian field marshal (b. 1760)
- 1853 – Alexander Calder, American lawyer and politician (b. 1806)
- 1858 – Antal Reguly, Hungarian linguist and ethnographer (b. 1819)
- 1867 – Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy, French poet and author (b. 1796)
- 1892 – Deodoro da Fonseca, Brazilian field marshal and politician, 1st President of Brazil (b. 1827)
- 1900 – Kuroda Kiyotaka, Japanese general and politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1840)
- 1924 – Heinrich Berté, Slovak-Austrian composer (b. 1856)
- 1926 – Rudolph Valentino, Italian-American actor (b. 1895)
- 1927 – Nicola Sacco, Italian murderer (b. 1891)
- 1927 – Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian murderer (b. 1888)
- 1933 – Adolf Loos, Austrian architect and theoretician, designed Villa Müller (b. 1870)
- 1937 – Albert Roussel, French composer and educator (b. 1869)
- 1944 – Abdülmecid II, Ottoman sultan (b. 1868)
- 1944 – Stefan Filipkiewicz, Polish painter and illustrator (b. 1879)
- 1949 – Helen Churchill Candee, American geographer, journalist, and author (b. 1858)
- 1954 – Jaan Sarv, Estonian mathematician and scholar (b. 1877)
- 1960 – Oscar Hammerstein II, American director, producer, and composer (b. 1895)
- 1962 – Walter Anderson, Russian-German ethnologist and academic (b. 1885)
- 1962 – Hoot Gibson, American actor, director, and producer (b. 1892)
- 1963 – Glen Gray, American saxophonist and bandleader (Casa Loma Orchestra) (b. 1900)
- 1966 – Francis X. Bushman, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1883)
- 1967 – Georges Berger, Belgian race car driver (b. 1918)
- 1967 – Nathaniel Cartmell, American runner and coach (b. 1883)
- 1974 – Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and author (b. 1888)
- 1975 – Faruk Gürler, Turkish general (b. 1913)
- 1977 – Naum Gabo, Russian sculptor and academic (b. 1890)
- 1982 – Stanford Moore, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1913)
- 1987 – Didier Pironi, French race car driver (b. 1952)
- 1989 – Mohammed Abed Elhai, Sudanese poet and academic (b. 1944)
- 1989 – R. D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist and author (b. 1927)
- 1990 – David Rose, American pianist and composer (b. 1910)
- 1994 – Zoltán Fábri, Hungarian director and screenwriter (b. 1917)
- 1995 – Alfred Eisenstaedt, German-American photographer and journalist (b. 1898)
- 1995 – Dwayne Goettel, Canadian keyboard player (Skinny Puppy, Psyche, and Hilt) (b. 1964)
- 1996 – Margaret Tucker, Australian author and activist (b. 1904)
- 1997 – Eric Gairy, Grenadian educator and politician, 1st Prime Minister of Grenada (b. 1922)
- 1997 – John Kendrew, English biochemist and crystallographer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- 1999 – Norman Wexler, American screenwriter (b. 1926)
- 1999 – James White, Irish author (b. 1928)
- 2000 – John Anthony Kaiser, American priest and missionary (b. 1932)
- 2001 – Kathleen Freeman, American actress (b. 1919)
- 2001 – Peter Maas, American journalist and author (b. 1929)
- 2002 – Hoyt Wilhelm, American baseball player and coach (b. 1922)
- 2003 – Bobby Bonds, American baseball player and manager (b. 1946)
- 2003 – Jack Dyer, Australian footballer and coach (b. 1913)
- 2003 – John Geoghan, American priest (b. 1935)
- 2003 – Jan Sedivka, Czech-Australian violinist and educator (b. 1917)
- 2003 – Michael Kijana Wamalwa, Kenyan lawyer and politician, 8th Vice President of Kenya (b. 1944)
- 2005 – Brock Peters, American actor (b. 1927)
- 2006 – Maynard Ferguson, Canadian trumpet player and bandleader (Big Bop Nouveau) (b. 1928)
- 2007 – Robert Symonds, American actor (b. 1926)
- 2008 – John Russell, English-American author and critic (b. 1919)
- 2012 – Col Campbell, New Zealand radio and television host (b. 1933)
- 2012 – Jean-Luc Delarue, French television host and producer (b. 1964)
- 2012 – Byard Lancaster, American saxophonist and flute player (b. 1942)
- 2012 – Merv Neagle, Australian footballer and coach (b. 1958)
- 2012 – Jerry Nelson, American puppeteer and voice actor (b. 1934)
- 2012 – Josepha Sherman, American anthologist and author (b. 1946)
- 2012 – Steve Van Buren, Honduran-American football player (b. 1920)
- 2013 – Richard J. Corman, American businessman, founded the R.J. Corman Railroad Group (b. 1955)
- 2013 – William Glasser, American psychiatrist and author (b. 1925)
- 2013 – Charles Lisanby, American production designer and set director (b. 1924)
- 2013 – Konstanty Miodowicz, Polish ethnographer and politician (b. 1951)
- 2013 – Vesna Rožič, Slovenian chess player (b. 1987)
- 2013 – Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Russian sociologist and economist (b. 1927)
- 2014 – Albert Ebossé Bodjongo, Cameroonian footballer (b. 1989)
- 2014 – Annefleur Kalvenhaar, Dutch cyclist (b. 1994)
- 2014 – Dan Magill, American swimmer, tennis player, and coach (b. 1921)
- 2014 – Birgitta Stenberg, Swedish author and illustrator (b. 1932)
- 2014 – Jaume Vallcorba Plana, Spanish philologist and publisher (b. 1949)
- 2015 – Augusta Chiwy, Congolese-Belgian nurse (b. 1921)
- 2015 – Guy Ligier, French rugby player and race car driver (b. 1930)
- 2015 – Yosi Piamenta, Israeli-American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1951)
- 2015 – Enrique Reneau, Honduran footballer (b. 1971)
- 2015 – Paul Royle, Australian lieutenant and pilot (b. 1914)
Deaths[edit]
- Christian feast day:
- Battle of Kursk Day (Russia)
- Day of the National Flag (Ukraine)
- European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism or Black Ribbon Day (European Union and other countries), and related observances:
- International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (International)
- Internaut Day
- National Day for Physicians (Iran)
- Umhlanga Day (Swaziland)
Holidays and observances[edit]
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Romans 8:32 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love."
Song of Solomon 5:8
Song of Solomon 5:8
Such is the language of the believer panting after present fellowship with Jesus, he is sick for his Lord. Gracious souls are never perfectly at ease except they are in a state of nearness to Christ; for when they are away from him they lose their peace. The nearer to him, the nearer to the perfect calm of heaven; the nearer to him, the fuller the heart is, not only of peace, but of life, and vigour, and joy, for these all depend on constant intercourse with Jesus. What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us. What bread is to the hungry, clothing to the naked, the shadow of a great rock to the traveller in a weary land, such is Jesus Christ to us; and, therefore, if we are not consciously one with him, little marvel if our spirit cries in the words of the Song, "I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." This earnest longing after Jesus has a blessing attending it: "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness"; and therefore, supremely blessed are they who thirst after the Righteous One. Blessed is that hunger, since it comes from God: if I may not have the full-blown blessedness of being filled, I would seek the same blessedness in its sweet bud-pining in emptiness and eagerness till I am filled with Christ. If I may not feed on Jesus, it shall be next door to heaven to hunger and thirst after him. There is a hallowedness about that hunger, since it sparkles among the beatitudes of our Lord. But the blessing involves a promise. Such hungry ones "shall be filled" with what they are desiring. If Christ thus causes us to long after himself, he will certainly satisfy those longings; and when he does come to us, as come he will, oh, how sweet it will be!
Evening
My Master has riches beyond the count of arithmetic, the measurement of reason, the dream of imagination, or the eloquence of words. They are unsearchable! You may look, and study, and weigh, but Jesus is a greater Saviour than you think him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest. My Lord is more ready to pardon than you to sin, more able to forgive than you to transgress. My Master is more willing to supply your wants than you are to confess them. Never tolerate low thoughts of my Lord Jesus. When you put the crown on his head, you will only crown him with silver when he deserves gold. My Master has riches of happiness to bestow upon you now. He can make you to lie down in green pastures, and lead you beside still waters. There is no music like the music of his pipe, when he is the Shepherd and you are the sheep, and you lie down at his feet. There is no love like his, neither earth nor heaven can match it. To know Christ and to be found in him--oh! this is life, this is joy, this is marrow and fatness, wine on the lees well refined. My Master does not treat his servants churlishly; he gives to them as a king giveth to a king; he gives them two heavens--a heaven below in serving him here, and a heaven above in delighting in him forever. His unsearchable riches will be best known in eternity. He will give you on the way to heaven all you need; your place of defence shall be the munitions of rocks, your bread shall be given you, and your waters shall be sure; but it is there, there, where you shall hear the song of them that triumph, the shout of them that feast, and shall have a face-to-face view of the glorious and beloved One. The unsearchable riches of Christ! This is the tune for the minstrels of earth, and the song for the harpers of heaven. Lord, teach us more and more of Jesus, and we will tell out the good news to others.
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Today's reading: Psalm 110-112, 1 Corinthians 5 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Psalm 110-112
1 The LORD says to my lord:
"Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet."
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet."
2 The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
"Rule in the midst of your enemies!"
3 Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning's womb.
"Rule in the midst of your enemies!"
3 Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning's womb.
4 The LORD has sworn
and will not change his mind:
"You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek."
and will not change his mind:
"You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek."
Today's New Testament reading: 1 Corinthians 5
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father's wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3 For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4 So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord....
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Jemima
Scripture Reference - Job 42:14
Name Meaning - A little dove
Several commentators refer to Job's three daughters as those who were born to him after the return to his prosperity. The same is said of the seven sons born to him following his restoration to peace after severe trials, but are not the three daughters, "the three sisters" (1:4) who are assumed to have been destroyed when a hurricane destroyed their home? Although the sons and daughters were eating and drinking together before the storm struck (1:18), when it did fall upon the house we read that it "fell upon the young men , and they are dead" (1:19). There is no mention, however, of their "sisters" being killed with these young men. Are we justified in affirming that "the young men" who perished, were Job's sons? Then, seeing 1:2 is identical with 42:13 are we not right in affirming that the more Job had at his latter end refers only to the material blessings of sheep, camels, oxen and asses (42:12), and not to added children? If children were included in the statement "The Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before" (42:10), and his original seven sons and three daughters (1:2) were all killed by the hurricane that destroyed his house, livestock and servants, then we should read after his restoration to health and prosperity when his latter end was blessed more than his beginning - "He had also fourteen sons and six daughters." But the verse said, "He had (past tense) seven sons and three daughters." If all these whom the Lord gave were taken away, then it would be a most remarkable coincidence indeed if He gave Job at the end of his trials exactly the same number of children again. Certainly Job was blessed in this area also seeing he lived to love four generations springing from his original seven sons and three daughters. The writer adds to the original mention of three daughters, their names and facts about their beauty and inheritance. The sons' names are not mentioned.
Jemima, the name of the eldest daughter, is reckoned to have an Arabic association meaning "a little dove." Says Wilkinson, "the name, like those of her two sisters, is apparently due to some trivial occurrence, or experience, connected with early infancy...." The Septuagint renders Jemima as derived from the Hebrew word for "day," so that her name could mean "bright or beautiful as day." The three daughters were unsurpassed in their beauty in all the land (42:15). Jemama, a central province of Arabia, was so named by the Arabs, tradition says, in honor of Job's first daughter.
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Eutychus
[Eū'ty̆chŭs] - happy or fortunate. A young man of Troas who fell asleep during Paul's long sermon, fell off his window seat, broke his neck and was taken up as dead. Paul, however, revived him (Acts 20:7-12). Dr. Alexander Whyte speaks of Eutychus as "the father of all such as fall asleep under sermons."
[Eū'ty̆chŭs] - happy or fortunate. A young man of Troas who fell asleep during Paul's long sermon, fell off his window seat, broke his neck and was taken up as dead. Paul, however, revived him (Acts 20:7-12). Dr. Alexander Whyte speaks of Eutychus as "the father of all such as fall asleep under sermons."
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