A daily column on what the ALP have as a policy, supported by a local member, and how it has 'helped' the local community. I'll stop if I cannot identify a policy. Feel free to make suggestions. Contact me on FB, not twitter. I have twitter, but never look at it.
Gabrielle Williams was appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Carers and Volunteers, working with the Minister for Housing, Disability and Ageing. Housing is an issue in Dandenong, and throughout Melbourne. Melbourne is growing quickly and the ALP has no plan to deal with it. Infrastructure ALP impose, without mandate from election, does not address emerging issues. It is reminiscent of a corrupt, lazy ALP NSW government planning for Sydney 2050 without including spaces for graveyards. Council has profiteered, prior to the 2016 council election, Dandenong refused planning permission for some hundred homes proposed by developers matching zone building criteria. Councillors said at the time they had had a 'gut' feeling. After election, re elected council were able to approve plans, which would have cost developers many thousands of dollars in opportunity costs, but meant the council bottom line would look better moving forward. Papers did not mention the issue until after the press black out prior to the election, denying candidates from having a say.
Also growing with population numbers is the need for community activity. Dan Andrews government is proposing a sporting stadium for Dandenong. But, religion is being given short shrift. One growing group, evangelical Christian New Life offer a full range of service for their members, which might be around 300. They meet regularly on a Sunday in a venue they do not own and cannot control, connected with Deakin University. The venue charges reasonably, but wants the space for their own. So, where do they go? Why is there no space in Dandenong for such? They are a cultural asset. They are not a commercial venture, but they have an international footprint. What of Buddhists and Hindu and Jews? There are churches for shrinking congregation of Anglican, Uniting etc etc, but they are too small for growing community groups.
As part of the November 24th Vic election campaign I have a petition I want to bring before the Opposition Leader Matthew Guy. I believe Matthew will be the next premier of Victoria and so I am petitioning him as I raise the issues of Employment, Crime and Education in Dandenong. I am also seeking money for my campaign. I don't have party resources, and so my campaign is on foot, and on the internet. Any money I receive that is not spent on the campaign will go to Grow 4 Life. I am asking questions like "What do you love about Dandenong?" and "If you could change something in Dandenong to make it better, what would it be?" I'm not limiting the questions to state issues. I'm happy to discuss anything, and get things done.
Via JN "This guy is a strange one, he has it so right, but then gets it so wrong at the same time, i am glad he brings up the subject and keeps discussion going, but man, he way oversteps the mark. If his own theories are correct as i believe many are, including the lack of evidence, then we can't throw out wild claims before we find, study and present said evidence.
yes grinding stones, and the wodden pestle mortar, yes carvings on bones of extinct animals that indicate human predation, but in the case of cropping we have found stored seed in africa, middle east, south america, china etc etc.
where is the grain ?
fish traps are fishtraps thats wild harvesting not farming, this guy goes too far, but i like his general direction."
yes grinding stones, and the wodden pestle mortar, yes carvings on bones of extinct animals that indicate human predation, but in the case of cropping we have found stored seed in africa, middle east, south america, china etc etc.
where is the grain ?
fish traps are fishtraps thats wild harvesting not farming, this guy goes too far, but i like his general direction."
AGW is not happening
I am a decent man and don't care for the abuse given me. I created a video raising awareness of anti police feeling among western communities. I chose the senseless killing of Nicola Cotton, a Louisiana policewoman who joined post Katrina, to highlight the issue. I did this in order to get an income after having been illegally blacklisted from work in NSW for being a whistleblower. I have not done anything wrong. Local council appointees refused to endorse my work, so I did it for free. Youtube's Adsence refused to allow me to profit from their marketing it. Meanwhile, I am hostage to abysmal political leadership and hopeless journalists. My shopfront has opened on Facebook.
Here is a video I made For The Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon
Todays is Remembrance Day for Israel.
Old post at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B1DVRYAwH0
Robert Laurence Binyon (10 August 1869 at Lancaster -- 10 March 1943 at Reading, Berkshire) was an English poet, dramatist, and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services.
I was raised as an Atheist. I learned, after reading the Bible, that God loves me, and you. This is his song for you too. He loves you, and wants to be with you.
All the elements are me and mine. ARIA ISRC number AUAWN1304115
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
=== from 2017 ===
Some things should not happen, but they do. Further to yesterday's article on a male being marked low by a stalinist female philosophy professor at a prestigious Australian University, we have an example of writing from a site given $80k funding from Australia Council. Via John Roskam sourcing Overland "The idea that lulzy racism and transgression is either polysemic or the corollary to a new disruptive network enabled democracy owes to a cheap Deleuzianism deployed by techutopians, culture jammers and autonomist Marxists alike. The Rhizome, the Multitude, the wisdom of crowds and peer-produsage all rest on an ideal of a latent affective human connectivity, that passes between bodies in cyberspace, enabling new decentralised forms of resistance and democracy." My friend's writing was clear, composed, original, but a little bit affected.
In 1099, First Crusade: Fifteen thousand starving Christian soldiers marched in a religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders looked on. The first crusade was beginning to falter. The crusaders were divided and weary. A priest declared he had a vision. As news came of a large army approaching would defend Jerusalem, the motivated Crusaders attacked. 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail on the first direct European voyage to India.
In 1663, Charles II of England granted John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island. Rhode Island had been disliked by other colonies. Clarke, a baptist, went on mission to Massachusetts where Baptists were banned and was jailed. Rhode Island needed the charter to survive. 1853, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo bay with a treaty requesting trade. 1876, White supremacists killed five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina. Democrat paramilitary groups wanted to prevent blacks voting. They successfully ended the reconstruction. 1898, the death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, released Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. 1947, Reports were broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident. In 1960, Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union. 1962, Ne Win besieged and dynamited the Rangoon University Student Union building to crush the Student Movement. 1970, Richard Nixon delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. 1982, assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. 1994, Kim Jong-il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program. 2014, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza amidst rising tensions following the killing of Israeli teenagers.
Meanwhile in Australia, a strong argument can be made for changing the leadership of both major parties post-election. ALP have gone from their worst general election result ever to their second worst. Their leader, Bill Shorten clearly lied in his election platform and should be held to account by responsible ALP party members, of which there are none. But now the conservatives have government, an argument can be made that says they can privatise Medicare, with ALP support. After all, that was what the ALP claimed was a major issue. On the other side, the Liberals also performed abysmally, saved from losing government by a few handfuls of votes. Mainly because ALP Victorian Premier Dan Andrews corruptly tried to destroy volunteer country firefighters. Turnbull has failed every single one of his performance measures. If he clings to power, he faces further humiliation. Party loyalists will toast Turnbull in the long run, with political flames.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
In 1099, First Crusade: Fifteen thousand starving Christian soldiers marched in a religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders looked on. The first crusade was beginning to falter. The crusaders were divided and weary. A priest declared he had a vision. As news came of a large army approaching would defend Jerusalem, the motivated Crusaders attacked. 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail on the first direct European voyage to India.
In 1663, Charles II of England granted John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island. Rhode Island had been disliked by other colonies. Clarke, a baptist, went on mission to Massachusetts where Baptists were banned and was jailed. Rhode Island needed the charter to survive. 1853, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo bay with a treaty requesting trade. 1876, White supremacists killed five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina. Democrat paramilitary groups wanted to prevent blacks voting. They successfully ended the reconstruction. 1898, the death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, released Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. 1947, Reports were broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident. In 1960, Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union. 1962, Ne Win besieged and dynamited the Rangoon University Student Union building to crush the Student Movement. 1970, Richard Nixon delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. 1982, assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. 1994, Kim Jong-il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program. 2014, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza amidst rising tensions following the killing of Israeli teenagers.
=== from 2016 ===
A tragedy has engulfed the United States, with an instigator being the US President. In seperate police shootings, police were labelled racist. One female preacher spoke out against racism involved with one shooting. She was rewarded with millions of views of her 11 minute spoken word poem she had not the wit to provide a transcript for. Because the words don't matter, but the emotion does? In one incident, two police hold down one victim and shoot him dead. They claimed he had been armed, and he had been. I don't know if it was a clean shooting or not, but to label it as racist is to invite what followed. In Dallas, Texas, a protest for #BlackLivesMatter was joined by snipers who targeted police. At least five police have died, ten injured. Because labels are more important than words. Because the divider in chief has decided police are racist even when using deadly force sometimes means tragic accidents. Five cops died for Obama today.
Meanwhile in Australia, a strong argument can be made for changing the leadership of both major parties post-election. ALP have gone from their worst general election result ever to their second worst. Their leader, Bill Shorten clearly lied in his election platform and should be held to account by responsible ALP party members, of which there are none. But now the conservatives have government, an argument can be made that says they can privatise Medicare, with ALP support. After all, that was what the ALP claimed was a major issue. On the other side, the Liberals also performed abysmally, saved from losing government by a few handfuls of votes. Mainly because ALP Victorian Premier Dan Andrews corruptly tried to destroy volunteer country firefighters. Turnbull has failed every single one of his performance measures. If he clings to power, he faces further humiliation. Party loyalists will toast Turnbull in the long run, with political flames.
For some, at the moment, the Sex Party has more credibility.
=== from 2015 ===
UN says Israel should give Iron Dome to Gaza for their rockets which fall short. There is no excuse for such a demand. It diminishes the cost to Israel of facing such attacks endorsed by the UN.
Shorten before royal commission faces questions early which he must answer. His defence is compelling and difficult to get past. He forgot. He forgot to inform the ALP of forty thousand dollars in donations to his election campaign eight years ago. He did declare it a few days ago. What would Barry O'Farrell do? He has a deputy campaign organiser who is female whom he refuses to name. The alternative PM doesn't want the pubic to know whom it is they have employed. Or maybe he forgot? And then he forgot members of his union which he brought on board in 1997, and which in 2010 he authorised their anonymous membership paid for by their business which traded union fees for worse conditions for members.
Tennis player Nick Kyrgios gets in spat with sporting legend Dawn Fraser. Fraser correctly said his behaviour on court was unacceptable. The 19 year old has said the criticism is racist. Nick has Tamil ancestry and his parents are from Greece and Malaysia. He should be proud of his heritage. His talent means nothing if he can't behave himself on court. Maybe he should resign from tennis.
Ray Martin and the ABC inquiry are travelling along, not paying attention to those paying the bill. Or the ABC charter. Ray should step aside, because he has prejudged the situation and shown himself to be partisan.
Shorten before royal commission faces questions early which he must answer. His defence is compelling and difficult to get past. He forgot. He forgot to inform the ALP of forty thousand dollars in donations to his election campaign eight years ago. He did declare it a few days ago. What would Barry O'Farrell do? He has a deputy campaign organiser who is female whom he refuses to name. The alternative PM doesn't want the pubic to know whom it is they have employed. Or maybe he forgot? And then he forgot members of his union which he brought on board in 1997, and which in 2010 he authorised their anonymous membership paid for by their business which traded union fees for worse conditions for members.
Tennis player Nick Kyrgios gets in spat with sporting legend Dawn Fraser. Fraser correctly said his behaviour on court was unacceptable. The 19 year old has said the criticism is racist. Nick has Tamil ancestry and his parents are from Greece and Malaysia. He should be proud of his heritage. His talent means nothing if he can't behave himself on court. Maybe he should resign from tennis.
Ray Martin and the ABC inquiry are travelling along, not paying attention to those paying the bill. Or the ABC charter. Ray should step aside, because he has prejudged the situation and shown himself to be partisan.
From 2014
The terrible, murderous, exploitative people smuggling trade has many victims and few upsides. It was wrong of the ALP to promote it and remove the effective policy of Mr Howard, known as the Pacific Solution. It is to Mr Abbott's credit that the new policy has been as effective as it has. The High Court may be acting correct in law in their current action, but if it derails effective policy and promotes more death, it is damning of those who promote the lie that it is ok for people smugglers to exploit poor desperate people and drown them.
Not all of those being exploited by people smugglers are poor and desperate. Some are craven, stupid and evil too. One Iranian, who came to Australia by boat in 2010, was in his early thirties, and so desperate to migrate he destroyed his identity papers in the customary way, and stayed on a protection visa. He found a girl who dumped him for another. Yesterday, he approached the chosen guy in a mall, argued with him over a cosmetics counter in a shopping mall full during a school holiday. He had bought a machete from a local shop, and knifed the rival with it about four times in the chest, leaving the knife there as his victim died. He then lit a cigarette and waited for the police. He taunted the police as they arrested him. The penalty for murder in Iran is death. So, clearly, he must be fleeing those who want to kill him.
The thing about education and training is that there is a feeling that the wheel needs to be reinvented, instead of applied. The slightest change in curriculum results in people throwing up their hands screaming "It can't be done." But when it is done right, a new curriculum can be invigorating and inspiring. There was a need for change, and a naval officer who had fought in the war of 1812 and the Mexican American wars addressed it. Mathew Perry was a commodore in charge of many ships on this day in 1853, where in Edo Bay he signed an agreement in Japan. Perry had instituted a naval academy for the US. The partnership with Japan transformed Japan, and in fifty years, Japan would beat a Russian force in battle. And within a hundred years, Japan would threaten world domination through her naval force.
It didn't happen when Rudd was elected, although he tried. The worst day in Dow Jones average history was today in 1932, with the market indicator reaching its lowest point. The New York governor would apply his full opportunistic presence to be President less than a year later, and exploit the loss and extend the depression through poor policy. In 1933, the first Rugby test between Wallabies and Springboks occurred. In 1947, a weather balloon crashed at Roswell. A Burmese socialist leader, Ne Win, attacked Rangoon University in 1962. Today is the birthday of Zeppelin (1838), Binet (1857) and Bacon (1958).
Not all of those being exploited by people smugglers are poor and desperate. Some are craven, stupid and evil too. One Iranian, who came to Australia by boat in 2010, was in his early thirties, and so desperate to migrate he destroyed his identity papers in the customary way, and stayed on a protection visa. He found a girl who dumped him for another. Yesterday, he approached the chosen guy in a mall, argued with him over a cosmetics counter in a shopping mall full during a school holiday. He had bought a machete from a local shop, and knifed the rival with it about four times in the chest, leaving the knife there as his victim died. He then lit a cigarette and waited for the police. He taunted the police as they arrested him. The penalty for murder in Iran is death. So, clearly, he must be fleeing those who want to kill him.
The thing about education and training is that there is a feeling that the wheel needs to be reinvented, instead of applied. The slightest change in curriculum results in people throwing up their hands screaming "It can't be done." But when it is done right, a new curriculum can be invigorating and inspiring. There was a need for change, and a naval officer who had fought in the war of 1812 and the Mexican American wars addressed it. Mathew Perry was a commodore in charge of many ships on this day in 1853, where in Edo Bay he signed an agreement in Japan. Perry had instituted a naval academy for the US. The partnership with Japan transformed Japan, and in fifty years, Japan would beat a Russian force in battle. And within a hundred years, Japan would threaten world domination through her naval force.
It didn't happen when Rudd was elected, although he tried. The worst day in Dow Jones average history was today in 1932, with the market indicator reaching its lowest point. The New York governor would apply his full opportunistic presence to be President less than a year later, and exploit the loss and extend the depression through poor policy. In 1933, the first Rugby test between Wallabies and Springboks occurred. In 1947, a weather balloon crashed at Roswell. A Burmese socialist leader, Ne Win, attacked Rangoon University in 1962. Today is the birthday of Zeppelin (1838), Binet (1857) and Bacon (1958).
Historical perspective on this day
In 1099, First Crusade: Fifteen thousand starving Christian soldiers marched in a religious procession around Jerusalem as its Muslim defenders looked on. 1283, War of the Sicilian Vespers: Roger of Lauria, commanding the Aragonese fleet defeated an Angevin fleet sent to put down a rebellion on Malta in the Battle of Malta. 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail on the first direct European voyage to India. 1579, Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, was discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan.
In 1663, Charles II of England granted John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island. 1709, Great Northern War: Battle of Poltava: Peter I of Russia defeated Charles XII of Swedenat Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe. 1716, Great Northern War: The naval Battle of Dynekilen took place. 1730, an estimated magnitude 8.7 earthquake caused a tsunami that damaged more than 1,000 km (620 mi) of Chile's coastline. 1758, French forces held Fort Carillon against the British at Ticonderoga, New York. 1760, French and Indian War: Battle of Restigouche: British forces defeated French forces in last naval battle in New France. 1775, the Olive Branch Petition was signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America.
In 1808, Joseph Bonaparte approved the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as king of Spain. 1822, Chippewas turned over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom. 1853, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo bay with a treaty requesting trade. 1859, King Charles XV & IV accedeed to the throne of Sweden–Norway. 1864, Ikedaya Incident: The Choshu Han shishi's planned Shinsengumi sabotage on Kyoto, Japan at Ikedaya. 1874, The Mounties began their March West. 1876, White supremacists killed five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina. 1879, Sailing ship USS Jeannette departed San Francisco carrying an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole. 1889, the first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published. 1892, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada was devastated in the Great Fire of 1892. 1898, the death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, released Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
In 1912, Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro led an unsuccessful royalist attack against the First Portuguese Republic in Chaves. 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. 1933, the first rugby union test matchbetween the Wallabies of Australia and the Springboks of South Africa was played at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town. 1937, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan signed the Treaty of Saadabad. 1947, Reports were broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident. 1948, the United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
In 1960, Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union. 1962, Ne Win besieged and dynamited the Rangoon University Student Union building to crush the Student Movement. 1966, King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi was deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi. 1968, the Chrysler wildcat strike began in Detroit, Michigan. 1970, Richard Nixon delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. 1982, assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. 1994, Kim Jong-il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program. 2014, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza amidst rising tensions following the killing of Israeli teenagers.
In 1663, Charles II of England granted John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island. 1709, Great Northern War: Battle of Poltava: Peter I of Russia defeated Charles XII of Swedenat Poltava thus effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe. 1716, Great Northern War: The naval Battle of Dynekilen took place. 1730, an estimated magnitude 8.7 earthquake caused a tsunami that damaged more than 1,000 km (620 mi) of Chile's coastline. 1758, French forces held Fort Carillon against the British at Ticonderoga, New York. 1760, French and Indian War: Battle of Restigouche: British forces defeated French forces in last naval battle in New France. 1775, the Olive Branch Petition was signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America.
In 1808, Joseph Bonaparte approved the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as king of Spain. 1822, Chippewas turned over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom. 1853, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo bay with a treaty requesting trade. 1859, King Charles XV & IV accedeed to the throne of Sweden–Norway. 1864, Ikedaya Incident: The Choshu Han shishi's planned Shinsengumi sabotage on Kyoto, Japan at Ikedaya. 1874, The Mounties began their March West. 1876, White supremacists killed five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina. 1879, Sailing ship USS Jeannette departed San Francisco carrying an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole. 1889, the first issue of The Wall Street Journal was published. 1892, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada was devastated in the Great Fire of 1892. 1898, the death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, released Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
In 1912, Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro led an unsuccessful royalist attack against the First Portuguese Republic in Chaves. 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. 1933, the first rugby union test matchbetween the Wallabies of Australia and the Springboks of South Africa was played at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town. 1937, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan signed the Treaty of Saadabad. 1947, Reports were broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident. 1948, the United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
In 1960, Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union. 1962, Ne Win besieged and dynamited the Rangoon University Student Union building to crush the Student Movement. 1966, King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi was deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi. 1968, the Chrysler wildcat strike began in Detroit, Michigan. 1970, Richard Nixon delivered a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. 1982, assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail. 1994, Kim Jong-il began to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung. 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program. 2014, Israel launched an offensive on Gaza amidst rising tensions following the killing of Israeli teenagers.
=== 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.
===
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 Joshua Park Praest and Gaetano Mastrangelo. Born on the same day, across the years. A day in which, in 1758, French and Indian War: French forces defeated the British at Fort Carillon on the shore of Lake Champlain in the British Colony of New York. 1808, Joseph Bonaparte approved the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as King of Spain during the Peninsular War. 1898, American con artist and gangster Soapy Smith (pictured) was killed in Skagway, Alaska, when an argument with fellow gang members turned into an unexpected gunfight. 1994, Upon the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il became the Supreme Leader of North Korea. 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in STS-135, the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program. Everything that has happened had a beginning and an end. Your rule is benevolent, but even so, you must take care of those sudden, erupting gunfights.
- 1528 – Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (d. 1580)
- 1621 – Jean de La Fontaine, French poet (d. 1695)
- 1760 – Christian Kramp, French mathematician (d. 1826)
- 1838 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and businessman, founded the Zeppelin Airship Company (d. 1917)
- 1839 – John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company (d. 1937)
- 1857 – Alfred Binet, French psychologist (d. 1911)
- 1883 – Oszkár Gerde Jewish-Hungarian two-time Olympic gold medalist in fencing in 1908 and 1912, murdered at Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp (d. 1944)
- 1895 – Igor Tamm, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
- 1907 – George W. Romney, American businessman and politician, 43rd Governor of Michigan (d. 1995)
- 1920 – Chandrika Prasad Srivastava, Indian civil servant (d. 2013)
- 1935 – Steve Lawrence, American singer and actor (Steve and Eydie)
- 1950 – Mary Ellen Trainor, American actress
- 1958 – Kevin Bacon, American actor and singer (The Bacon Brothers)
- 1966 – Ralf Altmeyer, German-Chinese virologist
- 1968 – Billy Crudup, American actor
- 1969 – Sugizo, Japanese singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and actor (Luna Sea, X Japan, Juno Reactor, and S.K.I.N.)
- 1982 – Pendleton Ward, American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor
- 1989 – Yarden Gerbi, Israeli world champion judoka
- 2000 – Sophie Nyweide, American actress
Deaths
- 810 – Pepin of Italy (b. 773)
- 901 – Grimbald, French-English monk and saint (b. 827)
- 975 – Edgar the Peaceful, English king (b. 943)
- 1695 – Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (b. 1629)
- 1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (b. 1792)
- 1973 – Wilfred Rhodes, English cricketer and coach (b. 1877)
- 1994 – Kim Il-sung, North Korean commander and politician, President of North Korea (b. 1912)
.JPG)
- 1663 – King Charles II of England granted John Clarke the Rhode Island Royal Charter, described by one historian as "the grandest instrument of human liberty ever constructed."
- 1709 – Great Northern War: Peter I of Russia defeated Charles XII of Sweden in Poltava, effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe.
- 1808 – Joseph Bonaparte (pictured) approved the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as King of Spain during the Peninsular War.
- 1947 – After various news agencies reported the capture of a "flying disc" by U.S. Army Air Forcepersonnel in Roswell, New Mexico, the military stated that what was actually recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance weather balloon.
- 2011 – Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched in STS-135, the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
Red is my favourite colour. Sweden forever! Statute is second to a good army. Weather balloons are alien. Remember Atlantis. Let's party.
Piers Akerman 2018
Turnbull’s pants are on fire over climate
PIERS AKERMAN THE Turnbull Government’s commitment to the Paris Climate Change Agreement is a costly and deadly exercise in vanity and futility, Piers Akerman writes.
===Miranda Devine 2018
John Edwards was evil. But he was also an aberration
MIRANDA DEVINE COWARDS like Edwards are no evidence of “toxic masculinity”, a myth which disempowers good men. Asking how he was able to access guns would actually save lives, writes Miranda Devine.
Why are feminists silent about sidelining of women?
MIRANDA DEVINE IDENTITY politics are erasing the words “mother” and “wife”, and the sisterhood stands by as the concept of womanhood is being stolen from under their noses, writes Miranda Devine.
Supermarket trolley stunt a ‘win-win’
MIRANDA LIVE A SYDNEY shopper who came up with an inventive way to avoid the plastic bag ban said he’s “sick and tired” of being hit with extra charges in day-to-day life — listen to the interview on Miranda Live.
Same old AHRC and trolley stunt
MIRANDA LIVE SENATOR Eric Abetz slams the human rights commission over an unusual decision, the man who defied the plastic bag ban and the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood on Tony Abbott’s Paris agreement reversal — listen to the podcast.
The “charity” proudly promoting Labor’s values
MIRANDA DEVINE BEING considered a charity makes it attractive to potential large donors, but this think-tank’s practices are anything but apolitical, writes Miranda Devine.
Women have become losers in battle of the sexes
MIRANDA DEVINE WHAT happened between Senators Leyonhjelm and Hanson-Young is about more than “slut-shaming”. It’s about a profound fraying of the relationship between the sexes, writes Miranda Devine.
Principal’s warning hits a chord
MIRANDA LIVE A PRINCIPAL who issued a scathing warning to parents who “catastrophise” small issues, says he’s surprised his newsletter has gone viral with his message of perspective resonating with society.
Parents urged to ‘chill’ and sexting outrage
MIRANDA LIVE A SYDNEY principal who issued a stern warning to parents joined Miranda Live for a look at how mums and dads are risking the education of their kids, and Lyle Shelton on a move to teach students how to ‘sext’ safely — listen to the podcast.
Sex offender decision ‘was wrong’
MIRANDA LIVE THE Attorney-General has responded to outrage over a decision to order financial services company Suncorp to pay compensation to a registered sex offender, telling Miranda Live the law should be changed.
Bob Carr: Abbott’s China policy ‘was better’
MIRANDA LIVE THE former Foreign Minister says Australia’s relationship with the superpower is being ruined by “anti-China zealots”, and the government should revert back to the balance it found under Tony Abbott — listen to the full podcast.
Human Rights lunacy and Bob Carr tell-all
MIRANDA LIVE WHY was Suncorp ordered to pay compensation to a paedophile? Attorney-General Christian Porter responded to the bizarre ruling on Miranda Live and former NSW Premier Bob Carr on his memoir.
Andrew Bolt 2018
REMEMBER HOW COFFEE WAS ALREADY BEING WIPED OUT BY WARMING?
Another busted scare. 2010: "Global warming....will cause a strong decrease in the coffee production in Brazil." 2011: "Climate change takes toll on coffee growers." Now: "The benchmark arabica coffee futures contract has dropped around 9 percent in 2018, ... pressured by expectations for top grower Brazil to harvest a record crop."
DALLAS UNDER FIRE
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 2016 (2:53pm)
Two snipers are reportedly still active in downtown Dallas following a Black Lives Matter protest:
In a statement, Dallas police Chief David Brown reported that two snipers shot 10 police officers from elevated positions during the protest. Three officers were killed in the shooting, two more were in surgery, and three more were in critical condition, Dallas police said.Dallas Area Rapid Transit police confirmed that four of its officers were shot, and one was killed, in the protest.
This continuing horror follows the deaths of two men in Louisiana and Minnesota who were shot by police.
UPDATE. A fourth police officer is now reported to have died.
UPDATE II. More from Dallas police: “The person of interest whose picture has been circulated just turned himself in.” That picture, posted previously here, has now been removed. The suspect’s brother has told media his brother was not involved.
UPDATE III. Front page of the Dallas Morning News:
UPDATE IV. A fifth police officer is now reported dead.
UPDATE IV. A fifth police officer is now reported dead.
MALCOLM’S TRUE BELIEVERS
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 2016 (5:51am)
Interesting thoughts from the SMH’s Matthew Knott:
It’s not just politicians searching their souls after Saturday night’s surprisingly close election result.Those political reporters not too hubristic to engage in self doubt are asking: did we get it wrong? Did we, as a collective, miss the story?The consensus, speaking to colleagues in the Canberra press gallery, is a reluctant yes. Some insist they got it spot on. But many admit they expected a more decisive Coalition victory than occurred. And they concede this influenced the way the media covered the campaign.One gallery veteran put it simply: “We didn’t believe the polls.”
The press gallery didn’t believe them? Australian opinion polls are very accurate. They generally don’t miss the mark by much at all, assisted in this by our compulsory voting system. As Knott mentions: “Week after week, media outlets published national polls showing a 50-50 tie or at best a 51-49 Coalition lead. The results barely shifted from week one to eight.”
Yet the Canberra press gallery were convinced we’d see an easy Coalition win. Why?
Yet the Canberra press gallery were convinced we’d see an easy Coalition win. Why?
Several ideas took hold quickly in the gallery’s collective brain. That Australians don’t kick out a first term governments (despite this happening recently at a state level). And that Malcolm Turnbull’s personal popularity was a decisive advantage against the less prime ministerial Shorten.
The myth of Turnbull’s popularity is now exploded. Turnbull is not popular. He was briefly a blip, a bounce, a bogus Betty buddies boost. Now he’s just a seat or two from being begone. And, if things fall the right way, so might too be a certain pundit:
Leading commentators on Sky News predicted between 80 to 85 seats for the Coalition, with Peter van Onselen saying he would quit in the event of a hung parliament.
Today’s numbers will be fun to watch.
ACTION AND REACTION
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 2016 (5:42am)
In Switzerland, decisions have consequences:
USA Today reports that Muslim students refused to take mandatory swimming lessons at a Swiss school because they would be using the pool with the opposite sex. The girl and their families understood that the class was part of the federal curriculum and that refusal would result in disciplinary actions. Again, they refused, so authorities laid down the law.Finding that the girls had applied for Swiss citizenship, authorities immediately denied their applications, citing the students’ refusal to comply with school curricula like all the other children of various races, backgrounds, and religions. Their refusal to assimilate to and respect the very culture they wanted to take them in and give them the privilege of citizenship was proof enough that they weren’t there to better Swiss society but to force its citizens to adopt their foreign beliefs.
(Via Geoff M.)
ENDORSED
Tim Blair – Friday, July 08, 2016 (5:38am)
The latest edition of Spectator Australia:
Who let them in? Why is the cost being hidden from you?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (3:58pm)
Several descriptors given bar race - which with other clues in the police report suggest yet again that the media and police are collectively hiding the true and alarming level of crime among the African refugee community:
UPDATE
Reader Jenny reports from Melbourne:
===Melton police are on the hunt for a group of teenagers terrorising families during violent home invasions across the west.When you check with witnesses from those apparently linked previous burglaries, you will then discover that - yes, indeed - the race of the offenders has again been kept from you:
Six males armed with hammers forced their way into a Pilgrim Drive, Hillside home, where a woman was sleeping with her eight-month-old baby, about 6am on Tuesday.
Police say the group “aggressively” demanded the woman hand over her valuables and car keys. The woman obliged and the offenders subsequently fled the scene in the victim’s white Holden HSV sedan.
The same group are allegedly responsible for about six aggravated burglaries across the western suburbs in as many days…
Sergeant Rob Henley, of the Melton Crime Investigation Unit, said while police had not been able to confirm a link between the offenders and the Apex gang, they were not ruling out the possibility.
Later in Essendon at about 4.55am a family of four, including two children aged six and three years, were woken when a boulder, believed to have been from a neighbours garden, smashed through their rear bi-folding doors.First you were betrayed by the political class which admitted a group of people who were bound to struggle to fit in and came from a tribal culture Now you are betrayed by a political class which refuses to inform you on the dangerous consequences of their decisions.
The Essendon father told the Neil Mitchell program on 3AW ... he saw three males of African appearance in his house.
UPDATE
Reader Jenny reports from Melbourne:
Just now on the 6pm nine news 3 African kids were caught robbing Majaf Jewellery store in Coburg, 9 African teenagers were in a car accident on the freeway in a stolen BMW, the car is destroyed, bad luck for the owner who spent a fortune buying the car.I saw the same report.
Race war ignites in US. 10 police shot
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (2:50pm)
The race-baiters and their media allies have won. They have started the first skirmish of a race war:
===Three Dallas transit officers are dead and at least ten officers were reportedly shot during demonstrations over the recent fatal police shootings in the US.Next step will be police refusing to uphold the law in black areas. From there…
Two of the officers are in surgery and three are in critical condition.
Two snipers shot at the police officers from elevated positions…
The second fatal police shooting of a black man in Minnesota sparked widespread outrage in the United States, prompting the protest.
Neil Brown was once the Liberals’ deputy leader. Now he cannot vote Liberal while Turnbull leads
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (9:33am)
In the latest Spectator Australia, at the newsagents now, this cry of despair from Neil Brown, former deputy Liberal leader:
===The party that I joined when I was fifteen was a party that stood for some basic principles that were worth defending, the principles so effectively promoted by Tony Abbott…
It is now virtually unrecognisable. Its decline to its present state of despair has been brought about by the Turnbull experiment which must now be seen as an abject failure in every way. I cannot discern a single benefit that has come from it. The Turnbull experiment was supposed to provide leadership that the party allegedly needed, although I was never persuaded that any such change was needed. In any event, it certainly failed miserably in that regard, and if one thing has emerged from the election it is that the public do not want the leadership on offer from the Prime Minister. The Turnbull experiment was also supposed to bring stability; instead, it has brought chaos. It was supposed to win votes; it has lost a million. It was supposed to have as its centrepiece an economic plan; but if it had one, it was well concealed and buried under a mountain of gobbledegook and three word slogans that must have been incomprehensible to most of the public…
On top of this, to link the Senate changes to a double dissolution, when the industrial relations legislation was scarcely mentioned in the campaign, when the election of at least some independents was guaranteed, and with an eight week campaign from which the government could not conceivably benefit, was clearly a reckless plan. The result: the loss of so many seats in the House and a Senate more polyglot and unmanageable than it was before.
All of this amounts to bad judgment, the potential weakness in Turnbull that always threatened to come to the surface under pressure… But perhaps it is not just a matter of judgement with Turnbull. It is his real beliefs that worry me and the default position to the left to which he is clearly inclined. None illustrates this more than his statement that the British settlement of Australia was an invasion. This strikes at the foundation of the nation and is the basis of the whole left wing attack on all of our institutions. Worse still, I was shocked that such a thing could be said by the leader, with none in the party prepared to deny it....
Frankly, I could not care less whether he resigned or staggered on. All I can say is that I will not vote for it while he is their leader and there seem to be a million or so people who are thinking along the same lines.
Don’t want to join us? That can be arranged
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (9:29am)
Switzerland sets us a most excellent example:
===USA Today reports that Muslim students refused to take mandatory swimming lessons at a Swiss school because they would be using the pool with the opposite sex. The girl and their families understood that the class was part of the federal curriculum and that refusal would result in disciplinary actions. Again, they refused, so authorities laid down the law.9Thanks to many readers - and via Tim Blair.)
Finding that the girls had applied for Swiss citizenship, authorities immediately denied their applications, citing the students’ refusal to comply with school curricula like all the other children of various races, backgrounds, and religions. Their refusal to assimilate to and respect the very culture they wanted to take them in and give them the privilege of citizenship was proof enough that they weren’t there to better Swiss society but to force its citizens to adopt their foreign beliefs.
The Turnbull team exposed
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (8:53am)
Joe Aston can write a bit:
UPDATE
More from this misfiring campaign. Heath Aston:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===Turnbull brought Malcolm Fraser’s advancer Vincent Woolcock out of retirement – the husband of anti-Peta Credlin author Niki Savva. As despair sunk in on Saturday night, one cynical wit pointed to the septuagenarian loyalist on stage at the Sofitel Wentworth and remarked: “while the Titanic is sinking, Vince is fluffing the curtains.”Shouldn’t Savva declare her interest every time she lauds Turnbull and vilifies Abbott?
In the 2007 campaign, I was seconded to the tactics team in John Howard’s campaign headquarters, helmed by another Fraser adviser, Darcy Tronson, but also including then Howard staffer Jamie Briggs, Turnbull’s now senior advisers Brad Burke and Tony Parkinson, our London correspondent James Chessell and James Hird spinner Ian Hanke. In my experience, our idea of tactics was collating old newspaper clippings and having a whiteboard on which we wrote which side won the 6pm news bulletins (Darcy still had a whiteboard column for This Day Tonight and one morning wanted a fax number for Jana Wendt). It’s totally unsurprising to now learn that this crew are still marking that whiteboard under the stewardship of Tony Nutt, who makes Brian Loughnane look like a Silicon Valley start-up founder.
UPDATE
More from this misfiring campaign. Heath Aston:
Liberals involved in the dismal defence of western Sydney are furious that an “early warning system” of the impending swing to Labor was not activated by party bosses in Canberra…In fact, the quality of the polling analysis was so terrible that Turnbull never campaigned in the Labor-held seat of Chisholm, thinking it was unwinnable. Yet the Victorian Liberals managed to just snatch a win, helping to save the Turnbull Government.
Liberal Fiona Scott ... was told on a number of occasions during the campaign that she was tracking at three to four percentage points ahead of Labor’s Emma Husar [in the bellwether seat of Lindsay] and campaign resources were diverted from there into Macarthur, which, in hindsight, should have been written off as a loss weeks out.
Ms Scott, who had pleaded with party officials without success to make an announcement positive for Nepean Hospital in a bid to blunt Labor’s Medicare scare campaign, was given no warning of the four per cent swing to the ALP in Lindsay.
A senior NSW Liberal said something went “dramatically wrong” with the tracking polls overseen by a small group in the campaign headquarters, led by federal director Tony Nutt.
“When you are getting swings of 10 and 12 per cent [like that in the Liberal-held seat of Macarthur] and you saw nothing coming, there is a problem with the research… You are fighting a campaign in a blindfold,” the Liberal said… Victorian Liberal state director Michael Kroger ... did not deny that state campaigns were kept in the dark on exact numbers.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
How grubby will this Parliament get? UPDATE: And how much damage will it do?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (8:20am)
What is Malcolm Turnbull giving away in his desperation to stay in the job? And what has Bob Katter accepted?
UPDATE
And meanwhile we have a Parliament too divided, weak and badly led to save the country from the financial crisis to come.
David Crowe:
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
===The Queensland independent [Katter] declared that his support [for the Government] was limited to supply and confidence and could be withdrawn at any time, while also warning the Coalition against embarking on any “union-bashing” policies.Now, why would Katter be so against a measure to tame the lawless CFMEU, and other unions active in the construction industry? Via Michael Smith, this peek into donations to Bob Katter’s party:
“We’re comfortable that they’re not going to go on some union-bashing crusade,” the MP for Kennedy said, adding that there would be “some bashing coming from me as well” if the Coalition went after the unions.
The Australian was told this meant Mr Katter would vote against any move to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission — a core Coalition policy that underpinned Mr Turnbull’s decision to call a double-dissolution election — but that there was no attempt to prevent Mr Turnbull proceeding with this reform.
Turnbull’s first days after his election humiliation already suggest he will spend what time he has let trashing the brand both of the Liberals and Parliament.
UPDATE
And meanwhile we have a Parliament too divided, weak and badly led to save the country from the financial crisis to come.
David Crowe:
The nation has been given six months to break a political deadlock on budget repair as Malcolm Turnbull gains certain victory in the federal election, igniting a fight over whether a fractious new parliament will act on the warning and cut the deficit…David Uren:
(R)atings agency Standard & Poor’s issued a brutal alert on the need for both major parties to act on the dangers facing the federal budget and overcome a stand-off on how to cut spending or lift taxes. S&P;’s revised its Australian government outlook to negative in a step that prepares the ground for a formal downgrade of the nation’s AAA credit rating, the yardstick that helps decide lending costs for state and federal governments and the finance sector..
The Coalition’s Scott Morrison and Labor’s Chris Bowen are denying central elements of S&P;Global’s warning that Australia would lose its AAA credit rating if there was any further downgrade to the budget outlook…Budget blowouts, debt and decline will be the economic story of this government.
S&P;’s said it would monitor the budget performance over the next six to 12 months, signalling it would not tolerate any further blowout in the deficit in either the mid-year budget update or next year’s budget…
But the Treasurer appeared to reject S&P;’s claim that further remedial action was required beyond the passage of measures stalled in the Senate… S&P;’s believes the economic forecasts in this year’s budget are not credible and that a further downgrade in the outlook for the deficit is likely in the absence of significant new spending cuts or tax increases.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Germany imports a dangerous underclass
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (8:05am)
The dangerous fantasy peddled by so many of the Left is exploded by the threatening reality:
===The vast majority of major German companies reported not having hired any of the million plus migrants who arrived in the country last year.It was always obvious that Germany was in fact importing a massive new underclass, primed for resentment and armed with an ideology of anger. This can only end badly.
The German government, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Deutsche Bank predicted the migrants would be an economic boon for the country. Much of the international media echoed these claims, saying many doctors and architects were among last year’s influx of immigration to Germany.
In a survey by the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, however, most of the top 30 companies on the German stock exchange (DAX) said they were unable to employ any of the new arrivals. The companies said migrants lacked the necessary qualifications needed to fill any of their roles.
Although the companies surveyed employ four million workers, FAZ reported that between them, they had only hired 54 migrants.
Fifty of these are employed by the German post office… The Kiel-based Institute for World Economics estimated that only two per cent of recent migrants to Germany are employable.
Richardson on the destructive vanity of Malcolm Turnbull
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (7:50am)
Graham Richardson is right about Turnbull and right about the numbers for Abbott. What he fails to add is that the Liberals must realise Abbott is their only option:
===But either way, at 75 or 76 [seats], there is only one certainty. Governing will be nigh impossible. For the man who believed his ascension to the prime ministership was his destiny, it must be slowly dawning on him that he has failed dismally.
He managed to squander the huge reservoir of hope and goodwill that his overthrow of Tony Abbott brought with it. I remember writing so many times in this space about the stupidity of waiting six months to find a tax plan. As various proposals were vanishing off the table as fast as they were thrown on it, Turnbull demonstrated to the nation that, like Peter Sellers in the movie Being There, he wanted the job to complete his CV.
There was no plan, despite the years he had to prepare one. Indecision became institutionalised as he went out of his way to make his Treasurer, Scott Morrison, look like a weak and vacillating character. This was the man some of us knew. That it would all end in tears was obvious long before Turnbull’s visit to the Governor-General…
If I were a senior Liberal I would make sure that the PM was in the company of other Liberals when he tried to put in place a regime to cling to power. To Malcolm, nothing is more sacred that his own prestige… Good government has been sacrificed at the altar of one man’s ambition…
Senior liberals are scratching their heads about ditching the PM. Their problem is that there is no obvious successor.
Morrison has been damaged to some extent and Julie Bishop is seen as the perennial deputy. Those suggesting Tony Abbott can’t count, and that means reaching further down into the barrel. Names such as Christian Porter have been bandied about, but the practical problem is that nobody has heard of him…
Turnbull has been terminally wounded. He will limp on for a while but you wouldn’t put your house on his political longevity.
Labor’s Hoenig vilifies Hanson as first step to a Holocaust
Andrew Bolt July 08 2016 (7:32am)
This is a grotesque misuse of 6 million dead to silence a politician who has urged death on nobody and has instead warned against the very kind of preaching likely to kill even more Jews. NSW Labor MP Ron Hoenig should be ashamed of himself:
(Thanks to reader Jeremy.)
===Let us hope that Hoenig’s extreme vilification of Hanson as someone who leads to the gassing of Jews does not put her in even greater physical danger. Hoenig should apologise not just to Hanson but to every Jew who lost family in the Holocaust for so brutally exploiting the memory of the dead.
(Thanks to reader Jeremy.)
BILL SHORTEN’S MYSTERY WOMAN
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 08, 2015 (6:23pm)
What sort of politician has secret campaign staff?
There was a bizarre moment when Mr Shorten asked that the name of his second campaign worker be kept secret.Mr Shorten wrote down the name of the woman on a piece of paper which was then handed to the Commissioner, former High Court judge Dyson Heydon.Mr Shorten: “Sometimes being mentioned in the commission even in passing can embarrass people even when they’re perfectly innocent.”Mr Stoljar: “I’ll merely refer to this person as the mystery person for now. You had a mystery person working in your office.”When Mr Shorten said he was uncomfortable with this description, Mr Stoljar answered: “What pseudonym do you want me to use Mr Shorten?”Mr Shorten: “The second campaign worker.”
As John Lyons asks: “How can Mr Shorten – the alternative Prime Minister – expect that the identity of his deputy campaign director be kept secret?”
MASSIVE AUDIENCE ALL MINE
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 08, 2015 (2:57pm)
A note from Elle Hardy, lately romping through Central Asia:
Your blog is accessible in Turkmenistan, ranked only ahead of North Korea in world press freedom, but Bolt’s is blocked along with most other News sites.
Greetings to Merv.
BILL OVERDUE
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 08, 2015 (1:07pm)
An interesting moment during Bill Shorten’s appearance at the unions royal commission:
11.33am: Mr Shorten and his lawyers had notice of what was coming, which precipitated the last minute filing this week of AEC documents. Mr Shorten told the Commission he sought legal advice and decided to file the returns “once I’d seen all the Royal Commission documents”.11.32am: Mr Stoljar told the commission the total amount paid by Unibilt came to $40,000 with a further $12,000 written off by the AWU. Things aren’t looking any better for Shorten, who concedes the “donation” – $40,000-odd that Unibilt supplied to the AWU to acquire Lance Wilson’s services – was declared to the AEC only days ago.
This revelation relates to Shorten’s 2007 federal election campaign. Here’s the Labor leader’s signature on a 2008 AEC declaration:
ANYONE FOR DESSERT? NO?
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 08, 2015 (12:59pm)
A post-fast meal in Islamic State-held Mosul turns deadly:
According to Saeed Mamozeny, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, 145 ISIS fighters took part in the iftar meal, the traditional evening meal when Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset. Shortly afterwards, 45 members were reported dead. The spokesman also said that they have not determined if the cause was food poisoning or deliberate poisoning.
Should’ve stuck with McDonald’s.
(Via Adam I.)
TALES FROM THE CRYPT
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 08, 2015 (12:48pm)
Reader Andrew R. discovers hidden treasure following ceiling repairs in North Carlton:
Those magazines date from 1937, but their message is timeless: nothing ruins the mood on a first date quite like a zombie mummy.
Those magazines date from 1937, but their message is timeless: nothing ruins the mood on a first date quite like a zombie mummy.
Shorten at the royal commission - #2 - the Cleanevent donation
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (12:36pm)
The royal commission now turns to the 2006 deal with Cleanevent, approved by Bill Shorten as national secretary.
Cleanevent also gave the AWU Victorian branch up to $25,000 a year after the union traded off higher wages and casuals’ penalty rates, saving the company about $2 million.
Counsel assisting the commission asks Shorten about an email he was copied in on that was sent by AWU negotiator John-Paul Blandthorn to Ivan Dalla Costa from Cleanevent on October 20 2006 which noted: “I have spoken to the hierarchy of the AWU and they can’t afford to trade core award conditions at the moment, because we can’t afford other unions attacking us.”
UPDATE
Shorten says he was only aware in very recent times of the 2010 side-deal under which Cleanevent paid $25,000 a year to the union. Says had no discussions of similar deals in his time.
===Cleanevent also gave the AWU Victorian branch up to $25,000 a year after the union traded off higher wages and casuals’ penalty rates, saving the company about $2 million.
Counsel assisting the commission asks Shorten about an email he was copied in on that was sent by AWU negotiator John-Paul Blandthorn to Ivan Dalla Costa from Cleanevent on October 20 2006 which noted: “I have spoken to the hierarchy of the AWU and they can’t afford to trade core award conditions at the moment, because we can’t afford other unions attacking us.”
Counsel: “Did you say that to Blandthorn?”Shorten was the organiser responsible for Cleanevent from 1996. Says he does not know of Cleanevent workers were given forms allowing them to opt out of union membership.
Shorten: “No, I wouldn’t have put it that way and I wouldn’t have thought that either.”
UPDATE
Shorten says he was only aware in very recent times of the 2010 side-deal under which Cleanevent paid $25,000 a year to the union. Says had no discussions of similar deals in his time.
Shorten at the royal commission - #1 - Shorten failed to declare big donation from bosses
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (12:15pm)
Labor leader Bill Shorten wades straight into strife at the royal commission into union corruption.
He is asked about a deal with the labor-hire company Unibuilt which had it employ an alleged “research officer”, Lance Wilson, a Young Labor campaigner who was picked by Shorten and in fact worked as manager of Shorten’s 2007 campaign to win the seat of Maribyrnong. The deal lasted from February to the election in November. Wilson then worked as Shorten’s electorate officer and then in his ministerial office.
Wilson’s services were donated to Shorten when he was national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. Meanwhile Unibuilt was negotiating a workplace deal with Shorten’s successor as Victorian AWU secretary, Cesar Melham. Shorten says he was not involved in those negotiations, even though the deal notionally covered more than one state and therefore needed Shorten’s approval as national secretary.
Shorten says once he picked Wilson he took him to meeting Unibuilt boss Ted Lockyer to employ Wilson for the benefit of Shorten. And he got the union to draw up a contract which (falsely) claimed Wilson would work as a research officer for Unibuilt.
Now, why would a boss want to donate a staffer - at $50,000 a year - for the personal advancement of a union head?
UPDATE
Shorten says a second person - who he does not want to name - worked on his election campaign and was paid for by the union. From “time to time” union officials would donate their help with letter-box drops. Another paid union official also helped at times.
Shorten denies having direct say on how the contract to hire Wilson was drawn up and dodges questions on why the contract described the job as a “research officer” for Unibuilt when he was actually a campaign director for Shorten, which Shorten concedes. “I cannot explain why the term was used.”
Shorten says he would have asked Unibuilt for the donation. Says he would not have been involved in the negotiation between the AWU Victorian branch and Unibuilt later in 2007 of an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. Says he does not recall Unibuilt asking for a favour in return. Notes the Unibuilt EBA had a 12 per cent pay rise over two and a half years.
Question: what is the national secretary of the union doing discussing a donation - an “advantage for yourself”?
Shorten arcs up: “I completely disagree with what you’ve said.”
UPDATE
Shorten concedes that Cat Sullivan, a national AWU staffer who worked on media, worked from “time to time” on Shorten’s campaign.
Shorten is taken through a list of people on the campaign - three campaign workers were AWU staffers and one was paid for by Unibuilt.
UPDATE
The Wilson arrangement was changed at some stage so that Wilson became an AWU Victorian branch employee, with the AWU invoicing Unibuilt for his wages. Shorten says Cesar Melham should asked about this change. Wilson, though, remained as Shorten’s campaign director.
Unibuilt later went broke. There is also a Unibilt, the same owner, which negotiated the EBA with the Victorian AWU.
UPDATE
Shorten denies that taking a donation from Unibuilt weakened the negotiating position of the AWU when it was negotiating a new EBA. The deal was good, he insists. “I don’t think there is any evidence this was a bad agreement.”
UPDATE
By September Shorten says he was campaigning “pretty much full time” for the election. As the AWU national secretary?
UPDATE
Unibuilt did not pay the AWU’s last invoice for $12,700 for Shorten’s campaign director. Shorten assumes the AWU wore it. “The AWU was very supportive ... of my campaign.”
UPDATE
Counsel assisting the commission, Jeremy Stoljar, adds up the donation from Unibuilt for his campaign director was about $40,000 (plus the $12,700 worn by the AWU when Unibuilt did not pay). Did he declare this donation to the Australian Electoral Commission?
Shorten says this has been brought to his attention “in the last few days”. The donation is missing from his signed declaration at the time. “There was an incomplete form sent to the ALP office.... and we have now updated it… within the last 144 hours.”
Ouch - Shorten is hurt:
In fact, Shorten asked Labor only on Monday to amend the return to the Australian Electoral Commission to include the Unibuilt donation for his campaign manager, plus another $12,000 from the AWU for a campaign worker.
UPDATE
Another tricky moment for Shorten. He admits he knew for “many months” that he had failed to declare the donation of Wilson’s salary. He says he did not declare then but waited until he received the full information from group certificates and other information before sending a letter to Labor asking it to correct his declaration.
The counsel assisting asks if it was a coincidence that Shorten sent his letter to Labor only on the day that evidence about this gift surfaced in the commission. Had he delayed until it was clear the royal commission had discovered this gift? Shorten denies it.
UPDATE
Shorten trying hard to distance himself from the appearance of breaking the law, saying it was common for politicians - he mentions Tony Abbott several times - to declare “nil return” when disclosing donations to the Australian Electoral Commission, while leaving it to the party to file an “omnibus” declaration for donations to all candidates. His failing was to misinform Labor, Shorten suggests (which isn’t breaking the law).
Well, that’s his argument and he’s sticking to it.
===He is asked about a deal with the labor-hire company Unibuilt which had it employ an alleged “research officer”, Lance Wilson, a Young Labor campaigner who was picked by Shorten and in fact worked as manager of Shorten’s 2007 campaign to win the seat of Maribyrnong. The deal lasted from February to the election in November. Wilson then worked as Shorten’s electorate officer and then in his ministerial office.
Wilson’s services were donated to Shorten when he was national secretary of the Australian Workers Union. Meanwhile Unibuilt was negotiating a workplace deal with Shorten’s successor as Victorian AWU secretary, Cesar Melham. Shorten says he was not involved in those negotiations, even though the deal notionally covered more than one state and therefore needed Shorten’s approval as national secretary.
Shorten says once he picked Wilson he took him to meeting Unibuilt boss Ted Lockyer to employ Wilson for the benefit of Shorten. And he got the union to draw up a contract which (falsely) claimed Wilson would work as a research officer for Unibuilt.
Now, why would a boss want to donate a staffer - at $50,000 a year - for the personal advancement of a union head?
UPDATE
Shorten says a second person - who he does not want to name - worked on his election campaign and was paid for by the union. From “time to time” union officials would donate their help with letter-box drops. Another paid union official also helped at times.
Shorten denies having direct say on how the contract to hire Wilson was drawn up and dodges questions on why the contract described the job as a “research officer” for Unibuilt when he was actually a campaign director for Shorten, which Shorten concedes. “I cannot explain why the term was used.”
Shorten says he would have asked Unibuilt for the donation. Says he would not have been involved in the negotiation between the AWU Victorian branch and Unibuilt later in 2007 of an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. Says he does not recall Unibuilt asking for a favour in return. Notes the Unibuilt EBA had a 12 per cent pay rise over two and a half years.
Question: what is the national secretary of the union doing discussing a donation - an “advantage for yourself”?
Shorten arcs up: “I completely disagree with what you’ve said.”
UPDATE
Shorten concedes that Cat Sullivan, a national AWU staffer who worked on media, worked from “time to time” on Shorten’s campaign.
Shorten is taken through a list of people on the campaign - three campaign workers were AWU staffers and one was paid for by Unibuilt.
UPDATE
The Wilson arrangement was changed at some stage so that Wilson became an AWU Victorian branch employee, with the AWU invoicing Unibuilt for his wages. Shorten says Cesar Melham should asked about this change. Wilson, though, remained as Shorten’s campaign director.
Unibuilt later went broke. There is also a Unibilt, the same owner, which negotiated the EBA with the Victorian AWU.
UPDATE
Shorten denies that taking a donation from Unibuilt weakened the negotiating position of the AWU when it was negotiating a new EBA. The deal was good, he insists. “I don’t think there is any evidence this was a bad agreement.”
UPDATE
By September Shorten says he was campaigning “pretty much full time” for the election. As the AWU national secretary?
UPDATE
Unibuilt did not pay the AWU’s last invoice for $12,700 for Shorten’s campaign director. Shorten assumes the AWU wore it. “The AWU was very supportive ... of my campaign.”
UPDATE
Counsel assisting the commission, Jeremy Stoljar, adds up the donation from Unibuilt for his campaign director was about $40,000 (plus the $12,700 worn by the AWU when Unibuilt did not pay). Did he declare this donation to the Australian Electoral Commission?
Shorten says this has been brought to his attention “in the last few days”. The donation is missing from his signed declaration at the time. “There was an incomplete form sent to the ALP office.... and we have now updated it… within the last 144 hours.”
Ouch - Shorten is hurt:
Counsel: “Your proposition as I understand it, from your evidence this morning is that the $40,000-odd that Unibilt supplied to acquire Lance Wilson’s services was some form of donation. Did you declare that to the AEC, for example?”UPDATE
Shorten: “Well, it’s come to my attention that the declaration hasn’t been made until very recently.”
Counsel: “Well, when you say very recently, what do you mean by that?” Shorten: “In the last few days.”
In fact, Shorten asked Labor only on Monday to amend the return to the Australian Electoral Commission to include the Unibuilt donation for his campaign manager, plus another $12,000 from the AWU for a campaign worker.
UPDATE
Another tricky moment for Shorten. He admits he knew for “many months” that he had failed to declare the donation of Wilson’s salary. He says he did not declare then but waited until he received the full information from group certificates and other information before sending a letter to Labor asking it to correct his declaration.
The counsel assisting asks if it was a coincidence that Shorten sent his letter to Labor only on the day that evidence about this gift surfaced in the commission. Had he delayed until it was clear the royal commission had discovered this gift? Shorten denies it.
UPDATE
Shorten trying hard to distance himself from the appearance of breaking the law, saying it was common for politicians - he mentions Tony Abbott several times - to declare “nil return” when disclosing donations to the Australian Electoral Commission, while leaving it to the party to file an “omnibus” declaration for donations to all candidates. His failing was to misinform Labor, Shorten suggests (which isn’t breaking the law).
Well, that’s his argument and he’s sticking to it.
What is it with unions and the law?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (10:32am)
How many bad apples must there be in this barrel before the union movement admits it’s got a real problem?
===The construction union and 21 of its representatives allegedly broke the law 822 times during an industrial campaign that shut down two Queensland building sites for a combined 97 days.(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
The national building watchdog wants penalties imposed on the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and a host of officials over action taken on the $60 million Queensland University of Technology project and the Enoggera army barracks site in 2013.
In documents filed in the Federal Court, the Fair Work Building and Construction inspectorate claimed the union and its officers shut down the sites in a bid to force the projects’ main contractors to agree to a workplace agreement…
CFMEU representatives allegedly led workers to down tools at various times, despite a Fair Work Commission order in October 2013, preventing the CFMEU from organising industrial action at the sites… The maximum penalties available to the court in this case are $10,200 for an individual, and $51,000 for a union per breach.
What has race got to do with art?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (9:41am)
Any form of art which involves having to flash your racial credentials before participating or commenting is an art that diminishes us as human beings.
That this new form of racism is state sponsored is chilling.
From the pages of the taxpayer-funded Overland magazine, this exchange:
(Thanks to reader Patrick.)
===That this new form of racism is state sponsored is chilling.
From the pages of the taxpayer-funded Overland magazine, this exchange:
By Leuli Eshraghi…Credentials flashed:
In March, the Shifting Gear car design exhibition opened on the ground floor of the National Gallery of Victoria’s NGV Australia space in the Ian Potter Centre, Federation Square. Since 2001, the purpose-built ground floor galleries have been home to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and ceremonial practices. After Shifting Gear opened, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collection was rehung as Indigenous Art: Moving Backwards into the Future and relocated to the third floor of the building. ... a genuine cultural blow…
I would imagine the move from the ground floor spaces, to the jam-packed level three gallery is less than ideal for the NGV’s two non-Aboriginal curators of Indigenous art. But it is also unacceptable for the NGV to move the works and gallery spaces without observing cultural protocols and adhering to the wishes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples…
There are more changes ahead for Federation Square. Victorian Aboriginal organisation the Koorie Heritage Trust opens its feted new premises there today. The new KHT spaces at Federation Square represent a dream realised, but only if Aboriginal curators and artists come to visibility. Where is the Aboriginal voice in exhibitions at the NGV and KHT when no Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander curator is in a leadership or supporting curatorial role at either the largest public art museum or the community-run organisation?…
Decolonisation in the Australian context can be defined as the end of intersecting forms of colonial oppression such as patriarchy, heterosexism, capitalism, and race-based hierarchy. Genuine Indigenous presence and agency at the centre of our public institutions will be transformative.... Without Indigenous curators who articulate uniquely Indigenous perspectives, both the NGV and KHT are symptomatic of the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander presence and agency more broadly.
Léuli Eshraghi is a Narrm Melbourne-based artist, curator and PhD candidate at MADA. His practice is centred on indigeneity, language, body sovereignty, and queer possibility. Léuli holds qualifications in Indigenous Arts Management and Cultural Studies.Then this reply, with flashing of racial credentials:
From Tom Mosby…Mosby now asks Eshraghi to flash his own racial qualifications:
I wish to correct a very important error, which I will assume is unintentional, in this article by Leuli Eshraghi’s. I am the CEO of the Koorie Heritage Trust and working with the Trust’s Board of Management, led the Trust in its relocation from the fringes of Melbourne CBD at King Street to a central meeting place for all peoples here at Federation Square.
Giving Mr Eshraghi the benefit of the doubt, but he may not have known that I am in fact an Indigenous Australian from the Torres Strait, a proud descendent of Central and Eastern Islanders (Iama, Meriam and Erub with extended family connections to nearly all of the island of the Torres Strait). Co-incidentally, acknowledging the Pacific ancestry of Mr Ashraghi [sic] (admittedly an assumption on my part), I also trace my family tree to the Pacific islands of New Caledonia (Lifu) and Rotuma…
As an Indigenous person with over 20 years in art curatorial and museum management experience and practice nationally and internationally, and working with my exhibitions coordinator and manager here at the Koorie Heritage Trust, I am without doubt able to articulate and bring to my role the unique Indigenous perspective that Mr Eshraghi assumes is missing from the KHT as well as the Indigenous voice that Ms Moulton refers to and which Mr Eshraghi quotes to justify his argument. I agree with Mr Eshraghi that our new Federation Square spaces represent a dream realised. I do not understand however what he means by “if Aboriginal curators and artists come to visibility”. As an Aboriginal arts and cultural organisation, our exhibitions program revolves around supporting and promoting Aboriginal artists particularly our Koorie artists, and this is evidence by our exhibitions program...
Finally, I would be very interested to hear of Mr Eshraghi’s Indigenous Australian heritage given his critique.Racial qualifications flashed:
From Léuli Eshraghi ...A reader then flashes racial qualifications:
T’lofa lava Tom,
Thank you for your considered response. I wish to clarify that I am not criticising or speaking about your leadership of the Koorie Heritage Trust in this article, and fully respect your Zenadh-Kes cultural practices, career and perspective. I’m lending my voice to emphasise the long advocacy by Aboriginal elders, artists, curators and community members for Victorian Aboriginal curators to be agents of change and representation within the National Gallery of Victoria, and the present Koorie Heritage Trust. The NGV has not employed an Aboriginal or Zenadh-Kes/Torres Strait Islander Australian curator for 5 years… Where are the southeastern Australian First Peoples’ curatorial voices at the NGV and at the current KHT?…
At no point do I question Tony Ellwood’s or your cultural competency or deep understanding of First Nations cultural practices across contemporary colonial Australia. I’m simply reiterating southeastern Aboriginal communities’ calls for decolonisation of the largest collecting and exhibiting art museum in Australia…
I do not claim to be Indigenous Australian in this piece. I am Indigenous S?moan (S? Seumanutafa) and Persian (Najaf?b?di), not that my global indigeneity is relevant as I have discussed this issues for years with peers in the arts sector here, including the three curatorial leaders I reference in the article. All of my writing, art and curatorial work is situated within S?moan, Persian and neighbouring visual cultural and intellectual practices. Living as a guest in Bunjil’s country, in unceded Wurundjeri biik, the realisation of Aboriginal agency and presence in art and political institutions alike is more than important to me, it is part of the respectful customary protocols and practices of my ancestors. I look forward to further discussions about how the NGV will implement a decolonised, share future that is responsive to Aboriginal, Zenadh-Kes/Torres Strait Islander and diasporic Indigenous Moananui / Pacific communities’ stated wishes. Ia manuia le soifua,
Léuli
From Paola Balla…How much of this is about the art? How much about power?
I believe the NGV is negligent in its’ responsibility to the support of, promotion of & participation with a broad range of First Peoples artists within the state it represents & in de-colonising their practice in systemic, structural & cultural & social approaches… The most senior Indigenous curatorial position in the state is held by & has been held by for over what, twenty years? By Judith Ryan, who is a white woman, her identity is important in this dialogue as her continued position results in an Indigenous curator not having the opportunity to be appointed. This is not an attack on Judith, I would love to have this conversation with her, or anyone from the NGV.
Why hasn’t there been another Indigenous curator appointed since the departure of Stephan Gilchrist five years ago? Why is this acceptable? When will the changes that are being activated for in the black arts community be reflected in the NGV?… Leuli does not need to be a Victorian Indigenous person to ask these questions, they just need to be asked. I am asking them as a Wemba Wemba & Gunditjmara woman, a Victorian Aboriginal practising artist, curator, producer, writer and educator of over 15 years experience.
(Thanks to reader Patrick.)
Has Ray Martin resigned yet from this farcical ABC “inquiry”?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (9:05am)
Ray Martin, asked by the ABC to review Q&A’s bias, has a bias towards forgiving what he’s yet to check:
===We’re looking back at the last 22 programmes. I would like to see what happened last year, as well – the year before, rather, when there was a Labor Government. I suspect Tony Jones was just as tough on the Labor Government as he has been on the Coalition right now.Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
Martin might find the 1 July 2013 episode of Q&A;instructive: not sure if five Leftists - including Jones - ganging up on one conservative following Rudd’s resurrection qualifies as being particularly ‘tough on Labor’.Liberal Senator James McGrath is right, of course:
McGrath has accused veteran reporter Ray Martin of bias in favour of the ABC and called on him to quit his role investigating Q&A…What a joke:
His comments came after Martin described a boycott of Q&A by ministers as “silly” and suggested the Government was attacking the program as part of a focus on terrorism.
Senator McGrath said Martin was “clearly biased” and called on him to “stand aside from the review”. “He is supposed to be conducting an independent review into the last 22 episodes of Q&A. Well, following his comments today, he is anything but independent. He is an apologist for Q&A, rather than a reviewer of Q&A.”
An ABC spokesman said Martin was chosen to conduct the audit because “he is independent and the public perceive him to be”.
Turnbull dials down the urgency of Abbott and Bishop
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (8:53am)
Malcolm Turnbull decides to strike a discordant tone to what’s been said before.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop:
Yet it’s very odd that Turnbull feels it useful to create this distraction outside his portfolio.
===Foreign Minister Julie Bishop:
Over the past two years we have seen the emergence of a terrorist organisation backed by an ideology the likes of which we have not seen since World War II.Prime Minister Tony Abbott:
This illustrates yet again that as far as the Daesh death cult is concerned, it’s coming after us. We may not always feel that we are at war with them, but they certainly think that they are at war with us.Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull:
Now, just as it’s important not to underestimate or be complacent about the national security threat from Daesh, it is equally important not to overestimate that threat.... Daesh is not Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan or Stalin’s Russia. Its leaders dream that they, like the Arab armies of the seventh and eighth century, will sweep across Middle East into Europe itself. They predict that before long they will be stabling their horses in the Vatican. Well, Idi Amin wasn’t the king of Scotland either. We should be careful not to say or do things which can be seen to add credibility to these delusions.Mind you, while the tone Turnbull strikes is different, in what way do his words actually contradict Abbott or Bishop’s?
Yet it’s very odd that Turnbull feels it useful to create this distraction outside his portfolio.
Obama’s war is going so well he suggests we fight harder
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (8:46am)
Barack Obama says the war against the Islamic State is going pretty well:
===Altogether, ISIL has lost more than a quarter of the populated areas that it had seized in Iraq. In Syria, ISIL lost at Kobani.... In short, ISIL’s recent losses in both Syria and Iraq prove that ISIL can and will be defeated.In fact, it’s going so damn well that we have to fight even harder than first thought - Australia, too:
Indeed, we’re intensifying our efforts against ISIL’s base in Syria… This continues to be a challenge, and, working together, all our nations are going to need to do more...And Obama has finally dropped that nothing-to-do-with-Islam patter, and is sounding an awful lot like Tony Abbott now - the Abbott attacked by the media Left:
But around the world, we’re also going to insist on partnering with Muslim communities as they seek security, prosperity and the dignity that they deserve. And we’re going to expect those communities to step up in terms of pushing back as hard as they can, in conjunction with other people of goodwill, against these hateful ideologies in order to discredit them more effectively, particularly when it comes to what we’re teaching young people. And this larger battle for hearts and minds is going to be a generational struggle ... It’s going to be up to Muslim communities, including scholars and clerics, to keep rejecting warped interpretations of Islam, and to protect their sons and daughters from recruitment.
The great reform of the Abbott Government has stalled
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (7:51am)
Paul Kelly says the Abbott Government is reverting to old and bad habits - and I agree with many of his points:
And what happened to the much-promised addition of Tony Nutt to the team - either the Prime Minister’s staff or the Liberal HQ? Have I been misled?
===Abbott is not engaging with the public or much of the media. On issue after issue he has positions but does not make arguments. It is a sign of weakness and a sign of his difference with John Howard. It is the reason his apparent unilaterally imposed boycott of the ABC’s Q&A program is a dangerous omen.Abbott is successful in looking more authoritative. Big tick. But he is starting to look as aloof as ever.
It makes no sense. It is arrogant. It treats his ministers as children…
This is relevant because the outstanding feature of the government is its feeble effort to offer persuasive arguments for its positions…
The government wants tax reform yet lacks any effective argument for this stance. It believes in industrial relations reform yet seems intimidated about venturing into this area.
Abbott is passionate about an indigenous recognition referendum yet his absence from the debate has seen the agenda completely hijacked in a way that is unacceptable to the Coalition.
The Liberal Party has a policy of opposition to same-sex marriage yet seems struck dumb on mounting a tenable case…
Politics is about persuasion. A government that cannot persuade lives on borrowed time. Abbott is good at taking popular positions but this does not equate with persuasion… Abbott needs to beware becoming too dependent on national security issues. His rhetoric, notably that Islamic State is “coming after us”, invites cynicism from a suspicious yet legitimately worried public.
And what happened to the much-promised addition of Tony Nutt to the team - either the Prime Minister’s staff or the Liberal HQ? Have I been misled?
The Berlin Wall fell faster than Labor’s platform
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (7:37am)
Nearly 26 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Labor debates changing its own professed ideology to match:
===NSW Labor leader Luke Foley has urged the party to abolish its historic commitment to socialism and its attachment to state ownership and embrace competitive markets alongside individual freedom and opportunity, and will move this formally at the party’s national conference.It says something about the Labor membership that this should still be controversial. And it is a warning against giving members much more say in the party.
What’s this deal, then, Bill?
Andrew Bolt July 08 2015 (7:34am)
This will be hard to explain:
===The royal commission into union corruption has been contacting key executives connected to controversial cleaning company Cleanevent to give evidence ahead of today’s appearance of Bill Shorten.
The Australian can also reveal that the reduction of employee conditions under a 1998 enterprise agreement signed by Mr Shorten’s AWU Victoria and Cleanevent cost 5000-odd workers as much as $400 million, substantially more than previously thought.
The royal commission has in recent weeks contacted former Cleanevent senior executive Steve Hunter to provide evidence, following reports in The Australian detailing serious concerns he had about the relationship between the union and the cleaning group.
Mr Hunter has said the 1998 sweetheart enterprise bargaining agreement left workers far worse off and had been denied to Cleanevent’s rivals, placing them at a disadvantage. He said AWU Victoria had good reason to be friendly with Cleanevent, given Cleanevent ... staff were automatically signed up as AWU members on employment, unless they actively ticked a box to opt out. That arrangement meant “up to 90 per cent” of Cleanevent’s workers were union members at the time… Mr Hunter became particularly aggrieved with the sweetheart Cleanevent deal after leaving the firm in 2003 .... Mr Hunter set up his own cleaning business at that time but despite several years of negotiations, AWU Victoria refused to provide his company an enterprise bargaining agreement similar to Cleanevent’s.
Posted by Filomena Cautela on Sunday, 5 July 2015
===
14-time best seller Claire Cook shares 4 positive ways self-publishing changed her career: http://bit.ly/1CmNcKA
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Tuesday, 7 July 2015
Why are the Arab countries not progressing like European countries? Kuwaiti Imam
Posted by Takmeel-e-Pakistan on Friday, 14 November 2014
Siblings = love-hate relationship.
Posted by Mumbership on Tuesday, 7 July 2015
Write the next 2 sentences that come after this: It didn’t take long to realize that when she went missing, I was going to be suspect number one.
Posted by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing on Tuesday, 7 July 2015
===
DRACONIAN MEASURES
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 08, 2014 (4:12pm)
An accused murderer emerges from our peaceful refugee community:
The girlfriend of an Iranian refugee accused of murdering another man in front of hundreds of shoppers at Westfield Parramatta sobbed uncontrollably as her partner appeared in court over the killing.
Kazem Mohammadi Payam, 35, who came to Australia after being granted a protection visa in 2010, appeared before Parramatta Local Court today.
Meanwhile, the New York Times gets all bossy with us:
Australia is pursuing draconian measures to deter people without visas from entering the country by boat. In doing so, it is failing in its obligation under international accords to protect refugees fleeing persecution …The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, said recently that “something strange happens” in the minds of Australians when it comes to asylum seekers who arrive by boat without a visa.
This is absurdly disingenuous. Economic opportunists commonly discard their visas in order to make background checks more difficult, thereby improving their chances of gaining residency as genuine refugees. It isn’t strange at all that Australians reject this. Does the New York Times allow unknown and unidentified strangers to enter its building and stroll around on its editorial floors? If someone attempted to do so, would “something strange” happen, such as security or police throwing the intruder out?
HELLO CALIPHATE
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 08, 2014 (2:54pm)
Middle East correspondent David Kenner reports:
Sri Lankan “asylum seekers” confess
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (5:56pm)
The Sri Lankan “asylum seekers” sent back this week tell a Fairfax reporter of their terrible mistreatment by the Abbott regime:
And then the people the Greens claim fleeing persecution confess:
===One of the asylum seekers, Anthony Fernando, 38, told Fairfax Media that he had had been “mistreated” by Australian authorities and given food that was past its expiry date.Such cruelty. This is a job for our High Court.
And then the people the Greens claim fleeing persecution confess:
Anthony Fernando, 38, told Fairfax Media .... “I went [to] Australia to find employment and then settle and bring my wife and family…
Another man, Punchi Banda Podinilame, said he had one son, two sons-in-law and seven other relatives on the boat.
He said they had all gone to Australia to find employment.
Bruce Wilson wins court battle over documents. But only for now
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (11:31am)
Bruce Wilson has a court win - for now:
===A Supreme Court judge has upheld an appeal by former union official Bruce Wilson - Julia Gillard’s ex-boyfriend - against a magistrate’s decision to allow Victorian fraud squad detectives access to hundreds of documents over an alleged union slush fund.
Justice Terry Forrest on Tuesday agreed to set aside a ruling handed down by Chief Magistrate Peter Lauritsen in December that Victoria Police could inspect 363 documents seized under warrant on May 13 last year from the law firm Slater & Gordon.
Justice Forrest ordered the case be sent back to the magistrates’ court to be re-heard by Mr Lauritsen…
The notice of appeal documents filed with the Supreme Court claimed questions of law in dispute included whether Mr Lauritsen erred by admitting into evidence three statements from [former Wilson bagman Ralph] Blewitt made on November 23, 2012, and if the magistrate mistakenly relied for his reasons on the transcript of an interview between Mr Wilson and the ABC’s 7.30 Report.
Mr Blewitt ... has admitted involvement in an alleged union fraud… In the ABC interview, Mr Wilson admitted the association’s purpose was to fund election campaigns and that he had used some of the money to buy the Fitzroy house in 1993.
Justice Forrest said on Tuesday the magistrate had erred when he decided not to call Mr Blewitt to give evidence because it would involve undue expense and delay.
The judge said Mr Blewitt’s statements tendered to the court were hearsay and should not have been admitted. The magistrate however did not err when he admitted the ABC interview into evidence, the judge ruled.
The (mis)reporting of Peter Hannam
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (8:47am)
Peter Hannam, Environment Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, is once again in full alarmist mode:
Turns out Lord Deben is a green carpet-bagger, making a living from global warming and green business - not that Hannam mentions that:
===Tony Abbott’s plan to axe the carbon price this week has come in for some withering criticism from his own side of politics, with a former head of the UK’s Conservative Party declaring it to be an “appalling” move that “recklessly” endangers the future.Wow. Lord Deben said that? Er, who the hell is he? A global warming scientist? A leading intellect? Or just some bloke who shares Hannam’s brand of catastrophism?
Lord Deben, who served in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet and is now chairman of the independent UK Committee on Climate Change, said the Abbott government “appears to be more concerned with advancing its own short-term political interests” than dealing with global warming.
Turns out Lord Deben is a green carpet-bagger, making a living from global warming and green business - not that Hannam mentions that:
Chairman, Sancroft International Ltd (consultants in corporate responsibility and environmental, social, ethical and planning issues; payments made for certain work done by the Member in category 2 are made to Sancroft International Ltd)…Then Hannam adds this:
Chairman, Association of Professional Financial Advisers (formerly Association of Independent Financial Advisers)…
Chairman, Climate Change Committee
Chairman, Vision 2020 (informal group considering food waste, reduction and recycling)
Chairman, Advisory Board, 2 Degrees (aids sustainable efficiency and growth for members and corporations by enabling fully-linked collaboration (on and offline))
As UK prime minister, Mrs Thatcher was one of the first global leaders to identify climate change as a threat.What Hannam fails to add is that Thatcher later saw the light:
She told a 1988 meeting of the Royal Society the increase of greenhouse gases had led some “to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1 degree per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope”.
It is not widely appreciated, however, that there was a dramatic twist to her story. In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views.Hannam’s omissions make his article deceptive. This is not reporting but propagandising.
She voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us. Pouring scorn on the “doomsters”, she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, from the conviction that the chief force shaping world climate is CO2, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, to exaggerated claims about rising sea levels. She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. She cited the 2.5C rise in temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period as having had almost entirely beneficial effects. She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer. She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind. In other words, long before it became fashionable, Lady Thatcher was converted to the view of those who, on both scientific and political grounds, are profoundly sceptical of the climate change ideology.
Another evening of the ABC preaching Leftist politics
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (7:53am)
Record sea ice around Antarctica this year:
UPDATE
The Daily Telegraph reports:
(Thanks to reader Peter.)
===As for ice on Antarctica itself, even if you believe the calculations of the warmist US National Climate Assessment the loss is actually minimal:
Antarctica is losing about 0.0045% of its ice per decade—about 4.5/10,000ths of a percent per year.But here is how the ABC’s Lateline last night reported on Antarctica, omitting both the above critical facts:
EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: There’s more research tonight pointing to dramatic changes underway in Antarctica. Australian researchers have identified how warm water is increasingly pushing out cold water around the white continent, prompting more ice to melt and further sea level rises.Reader Lachie spent last night watching an ABC entirely captured by the Left:
It started with The Drum full of glee at Palmer blocking $8 Billion of savings of the budget and had refugee advocate Allan on arguing how Australia was in all manner of human rights breaches over the Tamil return, ably assisted by the host.The ABC is out of control.
The news was full of the same, making the Abbott Government look terrible and Clive Palmer look powerful. More condemnation of the Australian government over human rights abuses and the High Court decision to prevent the Sri Lankan handover. Showed Jenny Macklin demanding that they keep the schoolkids bonus.
The 7:30 programme went into full inner city latte mode with the following:
- Sabra Lane highlighting Abbott’s difficulties and the fawning over the PUP party power in the new SenateFour Corners then had a Steven Long piece only interviewing global warming alarmists and solar/wind carpet baggers [plus Environment Minister Greg Hunt] about how Australia was being completely left behind by not rushing out to pour even more borrowed billions to throw at renewable energy. There was no contrary viewpoint put about their inefficiency or the huge cost to power consumers.
- An interview with lawyer David Manne over Australia’s terrible human rights abuses of the current Sri Lankan boat people.
- A pro-Palestinian piece focussing mostly on the dead Palestinian youth and how the Israeli settlers are occupying more land in the settlements. (Just your typical left wing bias glossing over the barbaric Palestinian behaviours.)
Media Watch‘s Paul Barry had a huge whinge about the two new appointments to the panel appointing ABC board members, attacking their lack of impartiality and their inability to not be biased. The great irony is that Barry asked for impartial appointees, without observing the total Left wing bias of the whole ABC organisation.
Q&A was the usual four-against-one panel with poor Judith Sloan battling against a panel and an audience just wanting full-on spend-spend Keynesian economics and saying there was absolutely no budget emergency. The banner along the bottom was meanwhile running the headline with excited glee about the High Court stopping the refugee transfers. Q&A tonight was supposed to be only about economics but unsurprisingly a questioner still managed to ask a question about our refugee policy and whether Australians should be ashamed of our government and ridiculously likened it to late 1930s sending Jews back to Nazi Germany.
Lateline ran with glee the lead story of how the High Court has halted the Sri Lankan transfer and their guest for the evening was - surprise surprise - a refugee advocate. The political headlines were again about Clive Palmer’s success at punching an $8 Billion hole in Tony Abbott’s budget. Next was an global warming alarmist piece about how Antarctica is warming much quicker because they have now found warmer water is melting the ice at a much faster rate and will lead to tenths of metre rise increases over the next century (as in cm’s but it sounds much scarier said in tenths of metres).
How the ABC can continue to serve up this blatant leftist bias whilst violating their charter constantly? They must be feeling they are under no pressure to comply. For this to just be an average night’s viewing on this public behemoth is quite scary and I hope someone in the government takes up this issue - starting with the replacement of Malcolm Turnbull who is absolutely useless on the issue.
UPDATE
The Daily Telegraph reports:
Iranian man, 35, charged with murder of man at Westfield Parramatta after allegedly plunging knife into victim over and overGuess which detail the ABC omitted?
(Thanks to reader Peter.)
The CFMEU’s hands on super fund members’ tax file numbers
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (7:48am)
Would this have happened if the CFMEU weren’t linked to the super fund? Don’t the superannuation laws give enormous clout to unions, including the lawless?
===THE confidential tax-file numbers of members of the major superannuation fund Cbus were emailed to union officials, potentially breaching federal taxation laws.
The royal commission into trade union governance yesterday heard that the personal information of Cbus members was sent from fund email accounts on 68 occasions over a 16-month period…
The commission heard that the [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union’s] NSW secretary, Brian Parker, contacted Cbus chief executive David Atkin in July last year expressing concern that construction company Lis-Con had not paid a substantial amount in superannuation entitlements to workers. Cbus senior adviser Lisa Zanatta, who was asked to provide information to assist Mr Parker, told the commission that she informed Mr Parker the company was four months in arrears, but denied she had passed on the personal information.
Trust the public to punish racists
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (7:18am)
Nick Cater on another case that shows we can punish racists without draconian laws against free speech:
===Karen ... Bailey’s crass behaviour should remind us “how virulent racism is in this country,” suggests The Sydney Morning Herald’s Sam de Brito…
If we were to follow de Brito’s logic we would further conclude that the planet is being overrun by biped cats and dancing dogs, since these too appear on YouTube. Yet real-life experience suggests otherwise; the behaviour of most pets is wholly unremarkable.
We know too — if we can stop wringing our hands for a moment and think about it — that few people go bonkers on public transport. Fewer still are prepared to put their bigotry on display as unselfconsciously as Bailey…
The footage shows that Bailey’s fellow passengers are embarrassed. If anyone in the carriage shared her unreconstructed views they did [not] stand up to say so.
Some, however, objected strongly to her outburst. Indeed one chivalrous Caucasian makes a point of offering his seat to the woman of East Asian heritage who caught the brunt of Bailey’s abuse…
If Bailey’s behaviour were normal, no one would bother swiping on their phone camera. If her fellow passengers were indifferent to racism they wouldn’t try to interfere.
It seems perverse, therefore, that the incident should be cited by the defenders of clause 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act as an argument for heavy-handed regulation. As with the racist heckling of Adam Goodes, the Bailey incident exemplifies the self-governing society… The collective abhorrence towards her behaviour is in itself a statement that we as a society will not accept racist conduct.
A Senate that cannot save
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (6:09am)
We have a Greens/Labor/Palmer Senate seemingly determined to drive us broke, with another $9 billion of saving set to be rejected:
===CHRIS RICHARDSON, DELOITTE ACCESS ECONOMICS: My guess is it’s a bridge too far for the Government, that the Government has a budget problem and it’s trying to fix it, but you’re seeing various elements of the Senate be populist, basically, say yes to spending increases, no to tax increases.
Respect the science, insist warmists who believe in a virgin birth
Andrew Bolt July 08 2014 (5:57am)
Tim Blair:
===It isn’t often that a Fairfax environment writer comes up with the funniest line of the week. Congratulations are due to Tom Arup for composing this gem:
The Anglican Church has told the Abbott government to change its approach to climate change, urging it to respect and base its policy on scientific evidence.The comic power in that paragraph is equal to several kilotons of the finest plutonium. Here we have an organisation founded on belief and faith now demanding that selected scientific opinions inform government policy. These same people think they can talk to the planet’s inventor just by putting their hands together.
High Court stops transfer of Sri Lankans
Andrew Bolt July 07 2014 (8:37pm)
Here we go again - more encouragement to people smugglers, with all that entails from dead bodies in the seas to billions wasted:
===The High Court has granted an interim injunction to stop more than 150 asylum seekers being returned to Sri Lanka by the Australian Navy…
Refugee advocates seeking to protect those asylum seekers made an application to the High Court, which granted the injunction after an urgent hearing. The interim injunction will be in place until tomorrow afternoon, when the matter is set to be heard in the High Court.
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The age of global warming is over. I refer, not to any warming of the planet that may or may not be occurring, but to the world’s apparently serious and broadly shared belief in dangerous, man-made global warming and of equally serious attempts to implement policies of enforced decarbonisation to deal with it.===
LEADING KIWI SCIENTIST THOROUGHLY DEBUNKS CLIMATE SCARE
July 6, 2013: "GLOBAL WARMING, alias CLIMATECHANGE [the NON-EXISTENT, incredibly expensive, THREAT TO US ALL, including to our grandchildren]", by David Kear, PhD, FRSNZ, CMG, Whakatane, New Zealand. Dr. Kear is a South Pacific geologist, United Nations consultant and former Director-General of NZ Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.
"The widespread obsession with Global-Warming-Climate-Cha
Read the whole document:
http://
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Pre-Wedding ( Fadi + Karmeen ) Nohadra - North Iraq. from Diamond Films on Vimeo.
Plus it must be nicer to live in a nation where the price for a woman of being pretty is no longer facing rape by the leader or their sons .. and where a man may not be killed for being inconvenient. - ed
===
LABOR’S GRUBBY LIES & HYPOCRISY EXPOSED.
Last night we had Kevin Rudd on TV claiming Australians “are sick and tired of negative politics” and “I believe people want all of us to raise the standard.”
Meanwhile Labor are down in the gutter, sending out a postcard (authorised by Bob Carr) full of blatant lies and negative politics, asking people to sign a letter saying they “Oppose Tony Abbott’sand the Liberal’s Plan to increase the GST” - this is despite the fact that there are NO plans to increase the GST whatsoever, and rate of the GST can only be changed by agreement with the all the states.
A bit rich coming from the party that promised faithfully before the last election there would be NO carbon tax, then gave us a Carbon Tax, and have just increased the rate of the Carbon Tax, and plan to increase the Carbon Tax again it next year.
This is just further proof of the complete hypocrisy of Kevin Rudd.
===
- 1579 – Our Lady of Kazan (pictured), a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, was discovered underground in Kazan, present-day Tatarstan, Russia.
- 1709 – Great Northern War: Peter I of Russiadefeated Charles XII of Sweden in Poltava, effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe.
- 1889 – The first issue of The Wall Street Journal, the world's most circulated business daily newspaper, was published.
- 1947 – After various news agencies reported the capture of a "flying disc" by U.S. Army Air Force personnel in Roswell, New Mexico, the military stated that what was actually recovered was debris from an experimental high-altitude surveillance weather balloon.
- 1994 – Upon the death of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il became theSupreme Leader of North Korea.
- 1099 – Some 15,000 starving Christian soldiers begin the siege of Jerusalem by marching in a religious procession around the city as its Muslim defenders watch.
- 1283 – Roger of Lauria, commanding the Aragonese fleet defeats an Angevin fleet sent to put down a rebellion on Malta.
- 1497 – Vasco da Gama sets sail on the first direct European voyage to India.
- 1579 – Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, is discovered underground in the city of Kazan, Tatarstan.
- 1592 – Imjin War: At the Battle of Hansan Island, the Korean Navy, led by Yi Sun-sin, Yi Eok-gi, and Won Gyun, decisively defeats the Japanese Navy, led by Wakisaka Yasuharu.
- 1663 – Charles II of England grants John Clarke a Royal charter to Rhode Island.
- 1709 – Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava, thus effectively ending Sweden's status as a major power in Europe.
- 1716 – The Battle of Dynekilen forces Sweden to abandon its invasion of Norway.
- 1730 – An estimated magnitude 8.7 earthquake causes a tsunami that damages more than 1,000 km (620 mi) of Chile's coastline.
- 1758 – French forces hold Fort Carillon against the British at Ticonderoga, New York.
- 1760 – British forces defeat French forces in the last naval battle in New France.
- 1775 – The Olive Branch Petition is signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America.
- 1776 – Church bells (possibly including the Liberty Bell) are rung after John Nixon delivers the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
- 1808 – Joseph Bonaparte approves the Bayonne Statute, a royal charter intended as the basis for his rule as king of Spain.
- 1822 – Chippewas turn over a huge tract of land in Ontario to the United Kingdom.
- 1853 – The Perry Expedition arrives in Edo Bay with a treaty requesting trade.
- 1859 – King Charles XV & IV accedes to the throne of Sweden–Norway.
- 1864 – Ikedaya Incident: The Choshu Han shishi's planned Shinsengumi sabotage on Kyoto, Japan at Ikedaya.
- 1874 – The Mounties begin their March West.
- 1876 – White supremacists kill five Black Republicans in Hamburg, South Carolina.
- 1879 – Sailing ship USS Jeannette departs San Francisco carrying an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole.
- 1889 – The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published.
- 1892 – St. John's, Newfoundland is devastated in the Great Fire of 1892.
- 1898 – The death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
- 1912 – Henrique Mitchell de Paiva Couceiro leads an unsuccessful royalist attack against the First Portuguese Republic in Chaves.
- 1932 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22.
- 1933 – The first rugby union test match between the Wallabies of Australia and the Springboks of South Africa is played at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town.
- 1937 – Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan sign the Treaty of Saadabad.
- 1947 – Reports are broadcast that a UFO crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in what became known as the Roswell UFO incident.
- 1948 – The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).
- 1960 – Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.
- 1962 – Ne Win besieges and dynamites the Rangoon University Student Union building to crush the Student Movement.
- 1966 – King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi is deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi.
- 1968 – The Chrysler wildcat strike begins in Detroit, Michigan.
- 1970 – Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.
- 1972 – Israeli Mossad assassinate Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani.
- 1980 – The inaugural 1980 State of Origin game is won by Queensland who defeat New South Wales 20-10 at Lang Park.
- 1982 – Assassination attempt against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Dujail.
- 1988 – The Island Express train travelling from Bangalore to Kanyakumari derails on the Peruman bridge and falls into Ashtamudi Lake, killing 105 passengers and injuring over 200 more.
- 1994 – Kim Jong-il begins to assume supreme leadership of North Korea upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.
- 2011 – Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.
- 2014 – Israel launches an offensive on Gaza amid rising tensions following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers.
- 1478 – Gian Giorgio Trissino, Italian linguist, poet, and playwright (d. 1550)
- 1528 – Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (d. 1580)
- 1538 – Alberto Bolognetti, Roman Catholic cardinal (d. 1585)
- 1545 – Carlos, Prince of Asturias (d. 1568)
- 1593 – Artemisia Gentileschi, Italian painter (d. 1653)
- 1593 – Peter Sainthill, English politician (d. 1648)
- 1621 – Jean de La Fontaine, French author and poet (d. 1695)
- 1760 – Christian Kramp, French mathematician and academic (d. 1826)
- 1766 – Dominique Jean Larrey, French surgeon (d. 1842)
- 1779 – Giorgio Pullicino, Maltese painter and architect (d. 1851)
- 1819 – Francis Leopold McClintock, Irish admiral and explorer (d. 1907)
- 1830 – Frederick W. Seward, American lawyer and politician, 6th United States Assistant Secretary of State (d. 1915)
- 1831 – John Pemberton, American chemist and pharmacist, invented Coca-Cola (d. 1888)
- 1836 – Joseph Chamberlain, English businessman and politician, Secretary of State for the Colonies (d. 1914)
- 1838 – Eli Lilly, American soldier, chemist, and businessman, founded Eli Lilly and Company (d. 1898)
- 1838 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and businessman, founded the Zeppelin Airship Company (d. 1917)
- 1839 – John D. Rockefeller, American businessman and philanthropist, founded the Standard Oil Company (d. 1937)
- 1851 – Arthur Evans, English archaeologist and academic (d. 1941)
- 1851 – John Murray, Australian politician, 23rd Premier of Victoria (d. 1916)
- 1857 – Alfred Binet, French psychologist and graphologist (d. 1911)
- 1867 – Käthe Kollwitz, German painter and sculptor (d. 1945)
- 1876 – Alexandros Papanastasiou, Greek sociologist and politician, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1936)
- 1882 – Percy Grainger, Australian-American pianist and composer (d. 1961)
- 1885 – Ernst Bloch, German philosopher, author, and academic (d. 1977)
- 1885 – Hugo Boss, German fashion designer, founded Hugo Boss (d. 1948)
- 1890 – Stanton Macdonald-Wright, American painter (d. 1973)
- 1892 – Richard Aldington, English author and poet (d. 1962)
- 1892 – Pavel Korin, Russian painter (d. 1967)
- 1893 – R. Carlyle Buley, American historian and author (d. 1968)
- 1894 – Pyotr Kapitsa, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1895 – Igor Tamm, Russian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)
- 1898 – Melville Ruick, American actor (d. 1972)
- 1900 – George Antheil, American pianist, composer, and author (d. 1959)
- 1904 – Henri Cartan, French mathematician and academic (d. 2008)
- 1905 – Leonid Amalrik, Russian animator and director (d. 1997)
- 1906 – Philip Johnson, American architect, designed the IDS Center and PPG Place (d. 2005)
- 1907 – George W. Romney, American businessman and politician, 43rd Governor of Michigan (d. 1995)
- 1908 – Louis Jordan, American singer-songwriter, saxophonist, and actor (d. 1975)
- 1908 – Nelson Rockefeller, American businessman and politician, 41st Vice President of the United States (d. 1979)
- 1908 – V. K. R. Varadaraja Rao, Indian economist, politician, professor and educator (d. 1991)
- 1909 – Alan Brown, English soldier (d. 1971)
- 1909 – Ike Petersen, American football back (d. 1995)
- 1910 – Carlos Betances Ramírez, Puerto Rican general (d. 2001)
- 1911 – Ken Farnes, English cricketer (d. 1941)
- 1913 – Alejandra Soler, Spanish politician (d. 2017)
- 1914 – Jyoti Basu, Indian politician, 6th Chief Minister of West Bengal (d. 2010)
- 1914 – Billy Eckstine, American singer and trumpet player (d. 1993)
- 1915 – Neil D. Van Sickle, American Air Force major general
- 1915 – Lowell English, United States Marine Corps general (d. 2005)
- 1916 – Jean Rouverol, American author, actress and screenwriter (d. 2017)
- 1917 – Pamela Brown, English actress (d. 1975)
- 1917 – Faye Emerson, American actress (d. 1983)
- 1917 – J. F. Powers, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1999)
- 1918 – Paul B. Fay, American businessman, soldier, and diplomat, 12th United States Secretary of the Navy (d. 2009)
- 1918 – Irwin Hasen, American illustrator (d. 2015)
- 1918 – Oluf Reed-Olsen, Norwegian resistance member and pilot (d. 2002)
- 1918 – Julia Pirie, British spy working for MI5 (d. 2008)
- 1918 – Edward B. Giller, U.S Major General (d. 2017)
- 1918 – Craig Stevens, American actor (d. 2000)
- 1919 – Walter Scheel, German soldier and politician, 4th President of West Germany (d. 2016)
- 1920 – Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, Danish businessman (d. 1995)
- 1923 – Harrison Dillard, American sprinter and hurdler
- 1924 – Johnnie Johnson, American pianist and songwriter (d. 2005)
- 1924 – Charles C. Droz, American politician
- 1925 – Marco Cé, Italian cardinal (d. 2014)
- 1925 – Arthur Imperatore Sr., Italian-American businessman from New Jersey
- 1925 – Bill Mackrides, American football quarterback
- 1925 – Dominique Nohain, French actor, screenwriter and director (d. 2017)
- 1926 – David Malet Armstrong, Australian philosopher and author (d. 2014)
- 1926 – John Dingell, American lieutenant and politician
- 1926 – Martin Riesen, Swiss professional ice hockey goaltender
- 1926 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and author (d. 2004)
- 1927 – Maurice Hayes, Irish educator and politician (d. 2017)
- 1927 – Khensur Lungri Namgyel, Tibetan religious leader
- 1927 – Bob Beckham, American country singer (d. 2013)
- 1928 – Balakh Sher Mazari, former Prime Minister of Pakistan
- 1929 – Bruce Gyngell, Australian television host and producer (d. 2000)
- 1930 – Jerry Vale, American singer (d. 2014)
- 1930 – Chris Adams, American author and retired United States Air Force officer
- 1933 – Antonio Lamer, Canadian lawyer and politician, 16th Chief Justice of Canada (d. 2007)
- 1934 – Raquel Correa, Chilean journalist (d. 2012)
- 1934 – Marty Feldman, English actor and screenwriter (d. 1982)
- 1934 – Edward D. DiPrete, American politician
- 1935 – John David Crow, American football player and coach (d. 2015)
- 1935 – Steve Lawrence, American actor and singer
- 1935 – Vitaly Sevastyanov, Russian engineer and astronaut (d. 2010)
- 1938 – Diane Clare, English actress (d. 2013)
- 1939 – Ed Lumley, Canadian businessman and politician, 8th Canadian Minister of Communications
- 1940 – Joe B. Mauldin, American bass player and songwriter (d. 2015)
- 1941 – Dario Gradi, Italian-English footballer, coach, and manager
- 1942 – Phil Gramm, American economist and politician
- 1944 – Jaimoe, American drummer
- 1944 – Jeffrey Tambor, American actor and singer
- 1945 – Micheline Calmy-Rey, Swiss politician, 91st President of the Swiss Confederation
- 1947 – Kim Darby, American actress
- 1947 – Jenny Diski, English author and screenwriter (d. 2016)
- 1947 – Luis Fernando Figari, Peruvian religious leader, founded the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae
- 1948 – Raffi, Egyptian-Canadian singer-songwriter
- 1948 – Ruby Sales, American civil-rights activist
- 1949 – Wolfgang Puck, Austrian-American chef, restaurateur and entrepreneur
- 1949 – Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, Indian politician, 14th Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh (d. 2009)
- 1951 – Alan Ashby, American baseball player, manager, and sportscaster
- 1951 – Anjelica Huston, American actress and director
- 1952 – Larry Garner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1952 – Jack Lambert, American football player and sportscaster
- 1952 – Marianne Williamson, American author and activist
- 1956 – Terry Puhl, Canadian baseball player and coach
- 1957 – Carlos Cavazo, Mexican-American guitarist and songwriter
- 1957 – Aleksandr Gurnov, Russian journalist and author
- 1958 – Kevin Bacon, American actor and musician
- 1958 – Andreas Carlgren, Swedish educator and politician, 8th Swedish Minister for the Environment
- 1958 – Tzipi Livni, Israeli lawyer and politician, 18th Justice Minister of Israel
- 1959 – Pauline Quirke, English actress
- 1960 – Mal Meninga, Australian rugby league player and coach
- 1961 – Ces Drilon, Filipino journalist
- 1961 – Andrew Fletcher, English keyboard player
- 1961 – Toby Keith, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor
- 1961 – Karl Seglem, Norwegian saxophonist and record producer
- 1962 – Joan Osborne, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1963 – Mark Christopher, American director and screenwriter
- 1964 – Alexei Gusarov, Russian ice hockey player and manager
- 1965 – Dan Levinson, American clarinet player, saxophonist, and bandleader
- 1966 – Ralf Altmeyer, German-Chinese virologist and academic
- 1966 – Shadlog Bernicke, Nauruan politician
- 1967 – Jordan Chan, Hong Kong actor and singer
- 1968 – Billy Crudup, American actor
- 1968 – Shane Howarth, New Zealand rugby player and coach
- 1969 – Sugizo, Japanese singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer
- 1970 – Beck, American singer-songwriter and producer
- 1970 – Sylvain Gaudreault, Canadian educator and politician[1]
- 1970 – Todd Martin, American tennis player and coach
- 1971 – Neil Jenkins, Welsh rugby player and coach
- 1972 – Karl Dykhuis, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1972 – Sourav Ganguly, Indian cricketer
- 1972 – Shōsuke Tanihara, Japanese actor[2]
- 1974 – Hu Liang, Chinese field hockey player
- 1976 – Talal El Karkouri, Moroccan footballer
- 1976 – David Kennedy, American guitarist and songwriter
- 1976 – Ellen MacArthur, English sailor
- 1977 – Christian Abbiati, Italian footballer
- 1977 – Paolo Tiralongo, Italian cyclist
- 1977 – Milo Ventimiglia, American actor, director, and producer
- 1977 – Wang Zhizhi, Chinese basketball player
- 1978 – Urmas Rooba, Estonian footballer
- 1979 – Mat McBriar, American football player
- 1979 – Ben Jelen, Scottish-American singer-songwriter
- 1980 – Eric Chouinard, American-Canadian ice hockey player
- 1980 – Robbie Keane, Irish footballer
- 1981 – Wolfram Müller, German runner
- 1981 – Anastasia Myskina, Russian tennis player
- 1982 – Sophia Bush, American actress and director
- 1982 – Hakim Warrick, American basketball player
- 1983 – John Bowker, American baseball player
- 1983 – Jaroslav Janiš, Czech race car driver
- 1983 – Daniel Navarro, Spanish cyclist
- 1983 – Rich Peverley, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1985 – Jamie Cook, English guitarist and songwriter
- 1986 – Jaime Garcia, Mexican baseball player
- 1986 – Renata Costa, Brazilian footballer
- 1988 – Miki Roqué, Spanish footballer (d. 2012)
- 1988 – Jesse Sergent, New Zealand cyclist
- 1988 – Dave Taylor, Australian rugby league player
- 1989 – Yarden Gerbi, Israeli world champion and Olympic bronze medalist judoka
- 1989 – Tor Marius Gromstad, Norwegian footballer (d. 2012)
- 1991 – Virgil van Dijk, Dutch footballer
- 1992 – Ariel Camacho, Mexican singer-songwriter (d. 2015)
- 1992 – Son Heung-min, Korean footballer
- 1996 – Braidon Burns, Australian rugby league player
- 1997 – Bryce Love, American football player
- 1998 – Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, American actor and rapper[3]
- 689 – Kilian, Irish bishop
- 810 – Pepin of Italy, son of Charlemagne (b. 773)
- 873 – Gunther, archbishop of Cologne
- 901 – Grimbald, French-English monk and saint (b. 827)
- 975 – Edgar the Peaceful, English king (b. 943)
- 1153 – Pope Eugene III (b. 1087)
- 1253 – Theobald I of Navarre (b. 1201)
- 1261 – Adolf IV of Holstein, Count of Schauenburg
- 1390 – Albert of Saxony, Bishop of Halberstadt and German philosopher (b. circa 1320)
- 1538 – Diego de Almagro, Spanish general and explorer (b. 1475)
- 1623 – Pope Gregory XV (b. 1554)
- 1689 – Edward Wooster, English-American settler (b. 1622)
- 1695 – Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (b. 1629)
- 1716 – Robert South, English preacher and theologian (b. 1634)
- 1721 – Elihu Yale, American-English merchant and philanthropist (b. 1649)
- 1784 – Torbern Bergman, Swedish chemist and mineralogist (b. 1735)
- 1794 – Richard Mique, French architect (b. 1728)
- 1820 – Octavia Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor (b. 1816)
- 1822 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet and playwright (b. 1792)
- 1850 – Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (b. 1774)
- 1859 – Oscar I of Sweden (b. 1799)
- 1873 – Franz Xaver Winterhalter, German painter and lithographer (b. 1805)
- 1887 – Ben Holladay, American businessman (b. 1819)
- 1895 – Johann Josef Loschmidt, Austrian chemist and physicist (b. 1821)
- 1905 – Walter Kittredge, American violinist and composer (b. 1834)
- 1913 – Louis Hémon, French-Canadian author (b. 1880)
- 1917 – Tom Thomson, Canadian painter (b. 1877)
- 1930 – Joseph Ward, Australian-New Zealand businessman and politician, 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1856)
- 1933 – Anthony Hope, English author and playwright (b. 1863)
- 1934 – Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer and academic (b. 1848)
- 1939 – Havelock Ellis, English psychologist and author (b. 1859)
- 1941 – Moses Schorr, Polish rabbi, historian, and politician (b. 1874)
- 1942 – Louis Franchet d'Espèrey, Algerian-French general (b. 1856)
- 1942 – Refik Saydam, Turkish physician and politician, 5th Prime Minister of Turkey (b. 1881)
- 1943 – Jean Moulin, French soldier (b. 1899)
- 1950 – Othmar Spann, Austrian sociologist, economist, and philosopher (b. 1878)
- 1952 – August Alle, Estonian lawyer, author, and poet (b. 1890)
- 1956 – Giovanni Papini, Italian journalist, author, and critic (b. 1881)
- 1965 – Thomas Sigismund Stribling, American lawyer and author (b. 1881)
- 1967 – Vivien Leigh, English actress (b. 1913)
- 1968 – Désiré Mérchez, French swimmer and water polo player (b. 1882)
- 1971 – Kurt Reidemeister, German mathematician connected to the Vienna Circle (b. 1893)
- 1972 – Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian writer and politician (b. 1936)
- 1973 – Gene L. Coon, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1924)
- 1973 – Ben-Zion Dinur, Russian-Israeli educator and politician, 4th Education Minister of Israel (b. 1884)
- 1973 – Wilfred Rhodes, English cricketer and coach (b. 1877)
- 1979 – Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Japanese physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
- 1979 – Michael Wilding, English actor (b. 1912)
- 1979 – Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1917)
- 1981 – Bill Hallahan, American baseball player (b. 1902)
- 1985 – Phil Foster, American actor and screenwriter (b. 1913)
- 1985 – Jean-Paul Le Chanois, French actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1909)
- 1986 – Skeeter Webb, American baseball player and manager (b. 1909)
- 1987 – Lionel Chevrier, Canadian lawyer and politician, 27th Canadian Minister of Justice (b. 1903)
- 1987 – Gerardo Diego, Spanish poet and author (b. 1896)
- 1988 – Ray Barbuti, American runner and football player (b. 1905)
- 1990 – Howard Duff, American actor (b. 1913)
- 1991 – James Franciscus, American actor (b. 1934)
- 1994 – Christian-Jaque, French director and screenwriter (b. 1904)
- 1994 – Kim Il-sung, North Korean commander and politician, President of North Korea (b. 1912)
- 1994 – Lars-Eric Lindblad, Swedish-American businessman and explorer (b. 1927)
- 1994 – Dick Sargent, American actor (b. 1930)
- 1996 – Irene Prador, Austrian-born actress and writer (b. 1911)
- 1999 – Pete Conrad, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1930)
- 2001 – John O'Shea, New Zealand director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1920)
- 2002 – Ward Kimball, American animator and trombonist (b. 1914)
- 2004 – Paula Danziger, American author and educator (b. 1944)
- 2005 – Maurice Baquet, French actor and cellist (b. 1911)
- 2006 – June Allyson, American actress and singer (b. 1917)
- 2007 – Chandra Shekhar, Indian lawyer and politician, 9th Prime Minister of India (b. 1927)
- 2007 – Jack B. Sowards, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1929)
- 2008 – John Templeton, American-born British businessman and philanthropist (b. 1912)
- 2009 – Midnight, American singer-songwriter (b. 1962)
- 2011 – Roberts Blossom, American actor and poet (b. 1924)
- 2011 – Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States (b. 1918)
- 2012 – Muhammed bin Saud Al Saud, Saudi Arabian politician (b. 1934)
- 2012 – Ernest Borgnine, American actor (b. 1917)
- 2012 – Gyang Dalyop Datong, Nigerian physician and politician (b. 1959)
- 2012 – Martin Pakledinaz, American costume designer (b. 1953)
- 2013 – Dick Gray, American baseball player (b. 1931)
- 2013 – Dave Hickson, English footballer and manager (b. 1929)
- 2013 – Edmund Morgan, American historian and author (b. 1916)
- 2013 – Claudiney Ramos, Brazilian footballer (b. 1980)
- 2013 – Rubby Sherr, American physicist and academic (b. 1913)
- 2013 – Sundri Uttamchandani, Indian author (b. 1924)
- 2013 – Brett Walker, American songwriter and producer (b. 1961)
- 2014 – Plínio de Arruda Sampaio, Brazilian lawyer and politician (b. 1930)
- 2014 – John V. Evans, American soldier and politician, 27th Governor of Idaho (b. 1925)
- 2014 – Ben Pangelinan, Guamanian businessman and politician (b. 1956)
- 2014 – Howard Siler, American bobsledder and coach (b. 1945)
- 2014 – Tom Veryzer, American baseball player (b. 1953)
- 2015 – Ken Stabler, American football player and sportscaster (b. 1945)
- 2015 – James Tate, American poet (b. 1943)
- 2016 – Abdul Sattar Edhi, Pakistani philanthropist (b. 1928)
- Christian Feast Day:
- Air Force and Air Defense Forces Day (Ukraine)
“As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.”Psalm 18:30 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
This one morning in the year we reserved to refresh the reader's memory upon the subject of prayer for ministers, and we do most earnestly implore every Christian household to grant the fervent request of the text first uttered by an apostle and now repeated by us. Brethren, our work is solemnly momentous, involving weal or woe to thousands; we treat with souls for God on eternal business, and our word is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. A very heavy responsibility rests upon us, and it will be no small mercy if at the last we be found clear of the blood of all men. As officers in Christ's army, we are the especial mark of the enmity of men and devils; they watch for our halting, and labour to take us by the heels. Our sacred calling involves us in temptations from which you are exempt, above all it too often draws us away from our personal enjoyment of truth into a ministerial and official consideration of it. We meet with many knotty cases, and our wits are at a non plus; we observe very sad backslidings, and our hearts are wounded; we see millions perishing, and our spirits sink. We wish to profit you by our preaching; we desire to be blest to your children; we long to be useful both to saints and sinners; therefore, dear friends, intercede for us with our God. Miserable men are we if we miss the aid of your prayers, but happy are we if we live in your supplications. You do not look to us but to our Master for spiritual blessings, and yet how many times has He given those blessings through His ministers; ask then, again and again, that we may be the earthen vessels into which the Lord may put the treasure of the gospel. We, the whole company of missionaries, ministers, city missionaries, and students, do in the name of Jesus beseech you
"Brethren, pray for us."
Evening
Saved one, consider gratefully this mandate of mercy. Note that this fiat of God is majestic. In our text, we perceive a sinner with nothing in him but sin, expecting nothing but wrath; but the eternal Lord passes by in his glory; he looks, he pauses, and he pronounces the solitary but royal word, "Live." There speaks a God. Who but he could venture thus to deal with life and dispense it with a single syllable? Again, this fiat is manifold. When he saith "Live," it includes many things. Here is judicial life. The sinner is ready to be condemned, but the mighty One saith, "Live," and he rises pardoned and absolved. It is spiritual life. We knew not Jesus--our eyes could not see Christ, our ears could not hear his voice--Jehovah said "Live," and we were quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins. Moreover, it includes glory-life, which is the perfection of spiritual life. "I said unto thee, Live:" and that word rolls on through all the years of time till death comes, and in the midst of the shadows of death, the Lord's voice is still heard, "Live!" In the morning of the resurrection it is that self-same voice which is echoed by the arch-angel, "Live," and as holy spirits rise to heaven to be blest forever in the glory of their God, it is in the power of this same word, "Live." Note again, that it is an irresistible mandate. Saul of Tarsus is on the road to Damascus to arrest the saints of the living God. A voice is heard from heaven and a light is seen above the brightness of the sun, and Saul is crying out, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" This mandate is a mandate of free grace. When sinners are saved, it is only and solely because God will do it to magnify his free, unpurchased, unsought grace. Christians, see your position, debtors to grace; show your gratitude by earnest, Christlike lives, and as God has bidden you live, see to it that you live in earnest.
===
Andrew
[Ăn'drew] - manliness. Brother of Simon Peter, and one of the twelve apostles (Matt. 4:18; 10:2).
[Ăn'drew] - manliness. Brother of Simon Peter, and one of the twelve apostles (Matt. 4:18; 10:2).
The Man Who was the First Missionary
Because he brought his own brother to the newly found Messiah, Andrew earned the distinction of being the first missionary of the cause of Christ (John 1:41 ). Andrew belonged to Bethsaida of Galilee - was a disciple of John the Baptist - attached himself to Christ with whom he enjoyed a special friendship (Mark 13:3; John 1:35-37). He was ever prompt to help (John 6:8, 9; 12:21, 22). After Christ's ascension, Andrew preached in Jerusalem. Tradition has it that he was crucified because of his rebuke of Aegeas for obstinate adherence to idolatry. He was nailed to a cross in the form of an X, hence the name St. Andrew's Cross. Lessons to be learned from Andrew are:
I. It is only in true discipleship that rest can be found.
II. If we cannot perform more conspicuous service we can yet serve the Lord. Although Peter was the spiritual father of the Pentecost converts, Andrew was their spiritual grandfather.
III. We must discover our own gift and the gift in others and guide such into right channels of service.
IV. If we are Christ's ours will be the passion to lead others to Him.
===Today's reading: Job 34-35, Acts 15:1-21 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Job 34-35
1 Then Elihu said:
2 "Hear my words, you wise men;
listen to me, you men of learning.
3 For the ear tests words
as the tongue tastes food.
4 Let us discern for ourselves what is right;
let us learn together what is good.
listen to me, you men of learning.
3 For the ear tests words
as the tongue tastes food.
4 Let us discern for ourselves what is right;
let us learn together what is good.
5 "Job says, 'I am innocent,
but God denies me justice.
6 Although I am right,
I am considered a liar;
although I am guiltless,
his arrow inflicts an incurable wound.'
7 Is there anyone like Job,
who drinks scorn like water?
8 He keeps company with evildoers;
he associates with the wicked.
9 For he says, 'There is no profit
in trying to please God.'
but God denies me justice.
6 Although I am right,
I am considered a liar;
although I am guiltless,
his arrow inflicts an incurable wound.'
7 Is there anyone like Job,
who drinks scorn like water?
8 He keeps company with evildoers;
he associates with the wicked.
9 For he says, 'There is no profit
in trying to please God.'
Today's New Testament reading: Acts 15:1-21
The Council at Jerusalem
1 Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." 2 This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. 3 The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them....
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