1786 – Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat completed the first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc in the Alps, an act considered to be the birth of modern mountaineering.
1918 – The Battle of Amiens began in Amiens, France, marking the start of the Allied Powers' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union was formed when Ndabaningi Sithole, Robert Mugabe, and others decided to split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union.
1988 – The 8888 Uprising, a series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots against the one-party state of the Burma Socialist Programme Party in Burma, began.
2008 – Eight people died and 64 more were injured when a EuroCity express train en route to Prague, Czech Republic struck a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the track near Studénka station in the Czech Republic and derailed. You have climbed your mountains, and split from that which holds you back. Hold fast to the Lord, for he has great things for you, conceived in love.
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The PM v the cute kid
Miranda Devine – Thursday, August 08, 2013 (12:33am)
A cheeky five-year-old boy upstaged the Prime Minister when he visited a Korean language class in the marginal Liberal electorate of Bennelong yesterday.
Joseph Kim pulled faces and cavorted behind Kevin Rudd during a photo opportunity at the the Ryde Uniting Church, and captivated the assembled media with his antics.
But then a strange thing happened, as you can see in this video, which ran on Sky’s Paul Murray Live program.
But then a strange thing happened, as you can see in this video, which ran on Sky’s Paul Murray Live program.
The PM turned to give little Joseph a high five, and then gripped the boy’s fingers and held on.
When the boy extracted his hand, he grimaced and said “Ouch”.
It takes talent to outshine the selfie king of Australia.
Video.MOV” title="Slow motion here.">Slow motion here.
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FACT NONE
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 08, 2013 (12:43am)
It could well be, readers, that the Prime Minister is a moron. Here he is again last night, repeating a claim about Rupert Murdoch that he must know by now is untrue:
What I’ve said is he owns 70 per cent of the print media in the country – fact one.
Once again for the hard of learning: the correct figure is 33 per cent. Nice of Kevin to describe the Telegraph as the “principal masthead in Australia”, though. Hope he enjoys today’s front page:
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EGYPTIAN TRAINING DRILL
Tim Blair – Thursday, August 08, 2013 (12:41am)
I have no idea what’s going on here, but it all looks very dramatic and important:
More than 250 people have been killed in Egypt since July 3, a rate that might be reduced if this new style of play-protesting catches on.
More than 250 people have been killed in Egypt since July 3, a rate that might be reduced if this new style of play-protesting catches on.
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SWAN DIVE
Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 07, 2013 (11:52pm)
Fairfax’s Jonathan Swan last week cited multiple Labor sources describing a “toxic mood” towards Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – but didn’t file anything besides a few tweets. He now explains:
Swan told The Australian he did not report the story elsewhere because “they were unnamed sources and that didn’t seem like stringent journalism to me”.
So let’s just leave it at that, then. Move along. Nothing to see here.
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SILENCED IN NEW ENGLAND
Tim Blair – Wednesday, August 07, 2013 (8:38pm)
Labor-style media reform at the old Wallabadah General Store:
Owners Glen and Kim Sheluchin were so outraged by the front page of a News Corporation Sydney metro they refused to sell copies in protest.
Do not speak its name, lest you summon it!
It featured a full-page photo of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with an editorial headlined “Kick this mob out”.Incensed Mrs Sheluchin, a proud Labor supporter, vowed then and there to remove it from her store.“I won’t have it on my shelves, it’s clearly prejudicial and I’ve got no reason to sell the paper to people.”
At the same time, her entire store is currently for sale. The ad appears at realestate.com.au, which is 60 per cent owned by News and is cited as one of the reasons behind Fairfax’s decline. Nice doing business with you, Mrs Sheluchin.
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Peter Beattie rushed in as a Labor candidate. And Opposition Leader?
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (12:54pm)
Labor turns to a big gun to win a Queensland seat:
Is Peter Beattie the next Leader of the Opposition? Is this Labor planning for a darker future?
UPDATE
Des Hardman is just the latest to discover what Kevin Rudd’s support is worth:
A “new way”?:
...former Queensland premier Peter Beattie will be parachuted in to contest the Queensland seat of Forde for Labor.Labor, if it loses, will be in desperate need of a credible Opposition leader. Kevin Rudd will be finished and Bill Shorten is badly damaged. Chris Bowen isn’t really cutting through and is presiding over financial chaos, albeit little of his own making.
Mr Beattie will replace Des Hardman, the pre-selected candidate for the marginal seat south of Brisbane.
Forde is held by the Liberal National Party’s Bert van Manen with a margin of less than 2 per cent.
Is Peter Beattie the next Leader of the Opposition? Is this Labor planning for a darker future?
UPDATE
Des Hardman is just the latest to discover what Kevin Rudd’s support is worth:
UPDATE
A “new way”?:
Julie Novak says Beattie will fit right into the Rudd way, standing for a kind of politics we cannot afford:
In essence, Beattie was a major contributor to the deterioration of Queensland state public finances from the late 1990s. Government expenditure growth, especially in social services, increased rapidly during the Premier’s tenure in office, with seemingly little attention paid to the efficiency of such spending. Further, a commitment to maintaining the state’s position as the lowest-taxing jurisdiction in Australia was eroded. His successor as Premier, Anna Bligh, effectively just finished the job that Beattie put in place to move Queensland away from the formerly bipartisan trilogy of low taxes, budget surpluses and low debts. A terrible fiscal and economic legacy has been left behind, as a result.Professor Judith Sloan:
Just look at the record of Queensland Labor:
The number of public sector workers in Queensland rose from 160,000 to over 200,000 under the Labor government. Employment in Queensland Health alone rose by two-thirds in a decade, to over 80,000 in total.
There was a blowout in the amount spent on public servants of 8.7 per cent a year under Labor. 3.5 per cent was attributed to the number of employees and 5.2 per cent to growth of wages. This was far higher public expenditure growth than the national average.
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Rudd teaches boy lesson for upstaging him
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (10:09am)
Kevin Rudd doesn’t seem to like being upstaged, even by a five-year-old
Korean boy, who gets his fingers squeezed so hard he says “ouch”. Watch here.
(Thanks to reader Le Trev. Via Miranda Devine.)
(Thanks to reader Le Trev. Via Miranda Devine.)
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Latest joke: one dead polar bear proves global warming
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (9:47am)
Pulling apart the latest global warming scare - the absurd global-warming-killed-an-old-polar-bear story.
(Thanks to reader Heywood.)
(Thanks to reader Heywood.)
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Dreyfus can’t say sorry for a Labor lie
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (9:43am)
Watch the sanctimonious
Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, wriggle when confronted by Malcolm
Turnbull with clear evidence of a Labor lie:
Channel 7 Two
Subjects: National Broadband Network and Federal Election
MARK FERGUSON:
Mr Turnbull to you first. It would be cheaper to build but slower to use under the Coalition. Is that a bit like buying a hatchback rather than a people mover?
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Not it’s not. Look what it is, our approach is one that is genuinely cost effective. The problem with Labor’s plan of running fibre optic cables into 93% of Australian premises is that it’s just taking far too long. They’ve missed their June 30 targets by about 90%. At this rate it will take decades. And it’s likely to cost, well we estimate, $94 billion. Some people think that’s conservative. And, you know, I got a good important question for Mark Dreyfus, who’s apparently running the Labor campaign. And Mark’s a distinguished lawyer. How does he feel about these Labor ads? Right here, here they go: ‘Under Labor’s NBN everyone is connected for free. Labor thinks that everyone should have the NBN at no cost. Not just those who can afford it.’ Now that’s a shocking falsehood Mark. And he’s a lawyer. You know if one of your clients did that in the corporate world, they’d have the ACCC all over them, with a lot of very unpleasant law enforcement personnel. Now this is outrageous. They’re telling people they’re going to get free Internet under the Labor Party it’s shocking.
MARK DREYFUS:
I hear Malcolm trying this on this morning. And he know that the shocking falsehood is actually coming from him…
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well there it is… there it is… there it is…
MARK DREYFUS:
I also hear Malcolm saying, I also hear Malcolm saying, that it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to connect your place, your house, your business, up to the node and that’s the point. He also said that he didn’t think many people would be interested in it. I think he’s got to think again. People know that the NBN is about faster speeds. The Liberal Party’s got a second rate plan. They’ve had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get to even recognition that the NBN’s the way to go. I’m actually looking forward to the implementation of the rest of the NBN which is fibre to your house, fibre to your business and that’s what matters.
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
Well you look like a man in good health Mark you’ll probably live to see it possibly, you may be around in some decades but you never know. The fact is it is proceeding so slowly and what you haven’t addressed is this literature that you are authorising all around the country which is telling lies. It is saying –
MARK DREYFUS:
It is absolutely not –
MALCOLM TURNBULL:
It is saying Labor believes everyone should have the NBN at no cost. You’re saying at no cost. That’s a lie.
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Liberals should save Albanese from the Greens
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (9:32am)
This is a moral
decision for the Liberals. Would they really argue that a Greens MP is
better for the country than a Labor one? Put the Greens last:
UPDATE
I might be wrong about Bandt:
NSW Liberal state director Mark Neeham said yesterday he thought the party would reverse its long-standing strategy of preferencing Labor last. “I expect we will be putting the Greens behind Labor,” Mr Neeham said.I’m not sure the Liberal preferences can sink Bandt, but they should save Albanese.
In NSW the move would probably cement victory for Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the Sydney seat of Grayndler. If it were mirrored in Victoria, the Greens’ lone lower-house MP, Adam Bandt, would be in grave danger of losing the seat of Melbourne. While the Victorian Liberal Party is still officially considering its position, it is expected to follow suit…
Mr Albanese holds the Sydney seat of Grayndler by 4.2 per cent over the Greens, with candidate Hall Greenland running a strong campaign against him. But the Greens benefited from more than 70 per cent of Liberal preferences to get so close to Mr Albanese at the 2010 election.
UPDATE
I might be wrong about Bandt:
The ReachTEL poll, taken on July 29, reveals a primary vote for Labor candidate Cath Bowtell of 36 per cent, compared with 33.9 per cent for Mr Bandt and 22.9 per cent for Liberal candidate Sean Armistead.
Based on the preference flows at the last election, the poll of 653 people, obtained by Fairfax Media, indicates Labor would reclaim the seat with 54.5 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
It came as senior Liberal sources confirmed the party will direct voters to preference the Greens behind the ALP in the seat.
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The Coalition had better promise more cuts than this
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (9:12am)
I’m not worried that the Coalition will make cuts it has not yet divulged. I’m worried that it won’t:
As for Labor, forget costings or cuts:
TONY Abbott has detonated the first major costings row of the election campaign as Labor demands proof he can fund his $5 billion cut to company tax…Whether the Coalition is a few billion short or right on the money, the truth is this: the cuts so far are much smaller than are needed to shrink the size of government, restrain the entitlement culture and return to the Budget to surplus in good time. Dropping the absurdly generous parental leave scheme would be a start.
The Opposition Leader insisted he could fund the policy by drawing on $17bn in budget cuts he unveiled earlier this year…
The Australian has been told that over four years the Coalition expected to save $4.7bn by trimming the public service, $4bn by scrapping the Schoolkids Bonus, $2bn by delaying superannuation increases, $3bn by cancelling a super contribution for those on low incomes, $1.3bn from reducing the migrant intake, $1bn from welfare cuts and $1bn from cancelling green programs…
The Treasurer, Chris Bowen, attacked the costings, arguing the Coalition was $5bn short of the money it needed to cover all its commitments so far.
Coalition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey fought off earlier questions over the costings by declaring there would be further savings announced during the campaign.
The Coalition is yet to reveal how it will offset the loss of revenue from repealing the carbon tax, dropping the mining tax and not proceeding with Labor’s recent changes to add $1.8bn to fringe benefits tax on cars.
Last Friday’s economic statement showed scrapping the carbon pricing scheme from July 1 next year would sacrifice $9.5bn in revenue and doing the same to the mining tax would give up $4.7bn over the forward estimates.
Mr Abbott’s plan for paid parental leave could cost as much as $14bn in its first three years, according to the PBO, but Mr Hockey has disputed the figure amid suspicions it was requested by Labor.
As for Labor, forget costings or cuts:
THE Parliamentary Budget Office, which is responsible for costing Coalition election policies, has been barred from finding out what is in the secret budget reserve that contains the government’s election policies.
The head of the PBO, Phil Bowen, has written to parliamentarians saying that election policy costings he prepares will be “qualified” by the absence of information about possible impacts from items in the budget “contingency reserve”.
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Labor started this alleged war with Murdoch’s papers
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (9:00am)
THE ABC smells a conspiracy. The Prime Minister is in a snit and tearing at his hair - literally. And Labor, which for three years has kicked Rupert Murdoch’s papers and trashed free speech, is suddenly paranoid it might be getting payback.
The reason? One of Murdoch’s News Corp newspapers said on Monday this Labor Government hadn’t actually been very good and should go.
A reasonable conclusion, I’d have thought. The only thing slightly unusual about the Daily Telegraph’s announcement was that it was blared out all over the front page, with a huge headline urging, “KICK THIS MOB OUT”.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was livid, given the Telegraph is popular in the western Sydney seats that could cost Labor the election. At a press conference that day, Rudd refused to take questions from a senior journalist from The Australian, which, like this paper, is also owned by News Corp.
The next day, at another press conference, he furiously flicked his hair at least 20 times, sometimes dashing at it in what seemed a barely repressed fury.
“I think (Murdoch) made it fairly clear ... that he doesn’t really like us and would like to give us the old heave ho and get his mate (Opposition Leader) Tony Abbott in,” Rudd said. Flick.
He suggested the Telegraph was just doing the bidding of a media boss “all the way from the United States” who wanted to punish Labor for building the National Broadband Network.
“Does he sense it represents a commercial challenge to Foxtel, the major cash cow for his company or not?”
This was just more Rudd deceit.
(Read full article here.)
UPDATE
Rudd losing it:
LEIGH SALES: Let me ask you one final question. On your stoush with Rupert Murdoch this week, I don’t recall you complaining about bias or corporate agenda when he backed you in 2007.Malcolm Turnbull has no tears:
KEVIN RUDD: If you look carefully at the events of 2007, what you will see, Leigh, written right across the newspapers at that time was a whole series of negative attacks, negative articles, including the most personal attacks on me and my family in the years leading up to that election. You seem to have forgotten those in this discussion. I could list those for you one by one, which went to my wife, her business and the rest of our personal affairs as well. So let’s put that into a bit of context.
The second point is this: I have not said anything about Mr Murdoch doing X, Y and Z. What I’ve said is he owns 70 per cent of the print media in the company - fact one. [Actually false: see my column.] Fact two, day one of the campaign, through his principal masthead in Australia, they say “This government must go”. Thirdly he says through his own direct statements that he wants Mr Abbott to replace me as Prime Minister. That’s fine. That’s his democratic right. It’s a free country. But the question that I’ve posed through this is simply as follows: what is underneath all this? Is it to do with the National Broadband Network representing a commercial threat to Foxtel? [No. See my column.] I’ve seen some commentary on that, and I’ve only just been looking back on the files today and discovered that in fact Mr Abbott’s NBN policy was launched at the Fox Studios here in Sydney. I would like to hear some answers as to what discussions Mr Abbott may have had with Mr Murdoch on the future of Australia’s National Broadband Network.
Coalition broadband spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said Mr Rudd sounded ‘‘more and more like a jilted lover’’.
‘‘Once the darling of the News Ltd tabloids, guest of Col Allan at Scores no less. Now his years of sycophancy and duchessing editors with juicy leaks about his colleagues count for nothing. No wonder he’s bitter.’’
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Labor set to keep Thomson’s seat
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (8:42am)
That would be one seat gone that the Liberals were hoping for:
The Daily Telegraph shows no mercy, even though it risks alienating its Labor readers:
CONTROVERSIAL former Labor MP Craig Thomson has no chance of retaining his NSW central coast seat of Dobell, according to internal party polling, but Labor is in a strong position to win it.The Deputy Prime Minister has a very unwise beer with a man thrown out of Labor after findings he’d acted corruptly:
The secret internal Labor polling conducted 10 days ago shows Labor leads the Coalition by a two-party-preferred vote margin of 55-45 per cent, almost identical to the 2010 election result. Mr Thomson, who is running as an independent, is attracting just 6 per cent of the primary vote.
Last night, Labor united behind Emma McBride to be the party’s candidate to contest Dobell, after she was the only person to nominate for preselection.
THE Coalition yesterday upped its efforts to smear Labor with the taint of Craig Thomson as Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tried to play down the significance of his evening beer with the expelled Labor MP.Niki Savva:
Albo should care too. Although he cleaned it up later, his initial version of what happened - that Craig Thomson happened to pop along at beer o’clock for an ale - differed slightly from the account of the politically astute passerby who took the picture, and who saw them walking down the street together from the direction of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Offices.UPDATE
The Daily Telegraph shows no mercy, even though it risks alienating its Labor readers:
A SECRET meeting for beers between Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor pariah Craig Thomson has undermined PM Kevin Rudd’s claims he is forging “a new way” for the ALP.(Thanks to reader Steve.)
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Deal with the facts, not the alleged motive. This government is bad
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (8:17am)
The Australian detects a McCarthyist trend - or actually a post-modernist one, making motive everything and reason nothing:
Fairfax’s Paul Sheehan:
DAVID Bradbury no doubt regrets his intemperance during a radio interview with journalist Glenn Daniel on Tuesday…UPDATE
Nonetheless, the implications of Mr Bradbury’s extraordinary allegation, that Daniel was asking difficult questions because he was a Liberal stooge, demand further examination. Daniel’s political affiliation, if any, is irrelevant. What matters is his performance as an inquisitor, which by all accounts was exemplary. The value of his questions should be judged on their adherence to the facts alone, as should Mr Bradbury’s replies.
The Bradbury/Daniel exchange is an ugly example of a post-modern virus infecting public debate in which those who make inconvenient arguments are discredited with a claim that they possess a “vested interest”. It was the same tactic the ABC’s Emma Alberici employed on Tuesday night in an interview with former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin. Alberici tried to undermine the sober assessment of the economy by one of Australia’s leading independent economists by suggesting that his professional judgment was coloured by his politics. Professor McKibbin’s involvement with John Howard’s government was relatively minor and his integrity has never been questioned, yet the damage was done.
The casual division of protagonists into those with a supposed vested interest and the altruists assumed to be contributing from a higher moral plain is an unwelcome intrusion in Australian politics. The truth of a proposition or the soundness of its premises should be judged by their intrinsic merits, not according to the assumed character of those who make them…
In recent days it has been argued that The Australian and other newspapers in the News Corp Australia stable are acting out of a vested interest in putting the Labor Party under scrutiny… It is claimed that News Corp’s chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch wants to prevent the re-election of Kevin Rudd’s party because the completion of the National Broadband Network will threaten the value of the company’s stake in the pay-TV network Foxtel. Never mind that the NBN is hopelessly behind schedule, or that the opposition has pledged to deliver a cheaper network more quickly with speeds sufficient for most video-on-demand services. Never mind that the real value of the business is its creative content, not the platform on which it is presented…
There is no need to resort to a conspiracy theory to explain why Mr Murdoch, or indeed anyone in the corporate world, might be nervous about the re-election of Mr Rudd.
Fairfax’s Paul Sheehan:
Rudd has lied. I use the term ‘’lie’’ as in lie, as in knowingly saying something that he knows not to be true. After shadow treasurer Joe Hockey stated the obvious, that the decision by the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates to their lowest level in 53 years was a response to a softening economy and rising unemployment, Rudd claimed Hockey, and the opposition, wanted families to pay higher interest rates.
The Prime Minister is throwing dust and debris into the eyes of the debate. He is running against ‘’vested interests’’. He is running against ‘’big tobacco’’. He is claiming credit for a AAA credit rating he inherited. He is running against Rupert Murdoch who, suddenly, is Tony Abbott’s ‘’mate’’. As if the pounding the News Corporation newspapers have given his government had nothing to do with policy debacles.
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NBN misses targets again - by 273,000 homes
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (8:12am)
It is frightening to think how many billions of dollars we are set to lose from Rudd’s thought-bubble:
Labor’s centrepiece infrastructure project, the national broadband network, will miss its June 2014 rollout target by more than a quarter of a million homes, as construction delays and problems with subcontractors continue.
Leaked internal forecasts seen by The Australian Financial Review indicate NBN Co now expects to have 855,935 existing homes and businesses ready to connect to the fibre network by June 2014. This is 273,065 fewer than the company forecast it would reach in the latest corporate plan, released in August last year.
NBN Co revealed last month it had reached 163,500 homes and businesses with fibre at the end of June 2013. This was 57 per cent fewer than it had forecast in its corporate plan.
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Rudd accused in home insulation legal action
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (7:56am)
What warnings did Kevin Rudd get about his disastrous free insulation scheme and why didn’t he heed them?
KEVIN Rudd’s direct knowledge of serious risks to public safety and other major policy defects in the deadly $2 billion home-insulation debacle will be examined in a new legal action by 65 companies that lost more than $100 million…
Peter Stewart, the Brisbane-based chairman of the action group, ... accused Mr Rudd of being disingenuous for hiding confidential documents and briefing notes that the Prime Minister and cabinet received when safety and other risks were obvious and being stressed by experienced industry figures…
The legal documents quote named public servants, including a senior figure in Mr Garrett’s department who allegedly asked one of Mr Rudd’s top aides: “Is there any way of delaying this scheme while we sort installer training, safety standards - that sort of thing?”
The Rudd aide’s reply is quoted as: “The Prime Minister wants it started now and it’s very difficult to argue with a Prime Minister with a 76 per cent approval rating.”
In another alleged conversation, a department project officer discloses to a company representative: “We expect houses will burn down.”
A company operator, Matthew Hannam, states that he told one of the key public servants: “You’re going to kill people if you let (untrained) installers in from outside the industry.”
The public servant allegedly replied: “It’s all about jobs. We understand there may be injuries.”
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Fairfax readers don’t need to know what Rudd’s colleagues think of him
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (7:10am)
Fairfax reporter Jonathan Swan tweets that “multiple sources” tell him the mood in Kevin Rudd’s office is “toxic”
But while it’s worth tweeting, it’s not worth reporting to readers of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald:
But while it’s worth tweeting, it’s not worth reporting to readers of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald:
Swan told The Australian he did not report the story elsewhere because “they were unnamed sources and that didn’t seem like stringent journalism to me”.Having unnamed sources hasn’t stopped Swan in the past from quoting them:
A senior minister has told Fairfax Media that the only certain effect of Mr Rudd’s “revenge mission” has been to send the ALP’s stocks into the basement, guaranteeing that Tony Abbott will be prime minister after the election…Having an unnamed source hasn’t stopped Swan from “understanding” something that turned out to be untrue:
One MP told Fairfax Media he thought the ballot would be held on Thursday and that the party was heading for disaster if it did not go to a leadership vote.
A logistics company that stands to profit from the Coalition’s ‘’tent city’’ on Nauru funded the trip of its immigration spokesman Scott Morrison to the remote island to announce the plan to house up to 2000 asylum seekers in tents. It is understood Toll Holdings chartered the flight for the Coalition and News Corporation.
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Boats slow
Andrew Bolt August 08 2013 (7:05am)
Kevin Rudd seems to have slowed the boats, though not yet stopped them:
And Rudd’s fix will only work while it seems credible. But:
AUTHORITIES believe there are about 10,000 asylum-seekers in Indonesia seeking to come to Australia by boat and who still pose a major challenge to Kevin Rudd’s Papua New Guinea Solution.But Rudd remains responsible for having disastrously broken what was fixed:
But a massive public outreach campaign conducted by the International Organisation for Migration since the new policy was announced on July 19 is believed to have reached at least 3000 of those potential arrivals, many of whom are delaying or reconsidering their plans to come to Australia…
Officials briefed on the intelligence said significant numbers of Iranian and Afghan asylum-seekers were now delaying their departure from their home countries and adopting a “wait and see” approach. But they warned that the situation was now at a “tipping point”, with the success or failure of Labor’s plan to refuse to settle any asylum-seeker who arrives by boat likely to be clear within weeks, rather than the months the government originally mooted.
...the Opposition Leader said the Prime Minister’s decision to dismantle the Howard government’s regime was a “terrible failure of judgment”. “Since Mr Rudd turned out not to be man enough to leave well enough alone we’ve had more than 50,000 illegal arrivals, almost 800 illegal boats, $11 billion in border protection blowouts, and tragically more than 1000 deaths at sea, this has been an absolute disaster for our country,” he said.UPDATE
Yesterday morning HMAS Albany delivered 65 Iranians to Christmas Island as guards and police prepared to send a fourth group of men to PNG.
The new arrivals were on the 26th boat to reach Australia since July 19 when the PNG Solution was unveiled. So far more than 1800 men, women and children have arrived at Christmas Island since the policy shift.
And Rudd’s fix will only work while it seems credible. But:
THE PNG government says it will work with the UN refugee agency to resettle asylum seekers to third countries that boat arrivals to Australia would “prefer.”(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s spokesman, Daniel Korimbo, said the country expected very few of the almost-2000 already eligible to be sent to PNG would remain there, despite the government doing an almost half billion dollar aid deal in return for resettlement…
When asked if some refugees or even failed asylum seekers, who are not covered in the deal, could return to Australia, Mr Korimbo said: “That’s a possibility.”...
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Pastor Rick Warren
I trust Him when my heart is weak
I trust Him when I cannot speak
I trust His plan is good and best
By trusting Him I find my rest
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Pastor Rick Warren
Trusting God completely in radical abandonment,even when it doesn't make sense, is what turns ordinary people into saints.
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Pastor Rick Warren
Doing what's right even though it costs you and no one will ever know about it, is integrity.
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Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
Father, today I choose to abide in You. I don’t want to live life on my own, so I choose to trust in You. I choose to keep my heart and mind stayed on You. Help me to stand strong against distractions and negative voices so that I can hear You clearly and follow Your ways.Teach me Your love and Keep me close to You always in Jesus name. Amen.
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Madu Odiokwu Pastorvin
Without me you can do nothing.(John 15:5)
Jesus put it this way, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” In this passage, He talks about a vine and branches. Just like a vine will die if it is cut apart from the vine, we also won’t survive without being vitally connected to Him.
How do we stay connected? First, by acknowledging Him. By talking to Him. By reading and following His Word. By praising Him.See, when you acknowledge God, that’s a sign of humility. You’re saying, “God, I know You created the whole universe. You flung the stars into space. You tell every raindrop where to fall. I’m not here by accident. You breathed Your life into me. You made me in Your image. You crowned me with Your favor. Now God, I can’t do this without You. I can’t make it on my own. I need You in my life.” When you show that kind of dependency on God, there is nothing He won’t do for you. God will move heaven and earth to get you to where you’re supposed to be.Try it,God bless you.
How do we stay connected? First, by acknowledging Him. By talking to Him. By reading and following His Word. By praising Him.See, when you acknowledge God, that’s a sign of humility. You’re saying, “God, I know You created the whole universe. You flung the stars into space. You tell every raindrop where to fall. I’m not here by accident. You breathed Your life into me. You made me in Your image. You crowned me with Your favor. Now God, I can’t do this without You. I can’t make it on my own. I need You in my life.” When you show that kind of dependency on God, there is nothing He won’t do for you. God will move heaven and earth to get you to where you’re supposed to be.Try it,God bless you.
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J.John
The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still. Exodus 14:14
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My new book just10 is a contemporary understanding and application of God's Ten Commandments and is now available for pre-order. Click here - http://ph-ilo.com/16zjAqx
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My latest addition to the fleet. This is one of the Land Rover 6 wheel drive infantry fighting transport vehicles from the Australian Army. The army is currently getting rid of a huge number of their vehicles and they are in the process of upgrading their fleet. This truck has 8 seats facing out in the back with full racing seat belts and rather cushy upholstery too. The rear has a full roll over protection system built in. This truck has been to Timor according to the log books. Could have bene a commanders car as well as it was outfitted with full radion gear since removed though before sale. Love the winch on the front which is PTO winch so will pull forever and not affect the battery as it runs off the transmission. The rear end hasn't got a huge amount of articulation in it which is a pity. Yet to take it in any real rough terrain. The damn thing only has a 4 speed box would you believe. I do have to do a little rust remediation work on it, nothing major just a littel surface which is easy fixed with a bit of rust remover and paint followed by rust prevention. Can't wait o get it on the road.
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The Greens don’t like being called watermelons, however Lee Rhiannon proves that they are green on the outside but red to the core. Support my campaign to stop the watermelonshttp://ow.ly/nCMYg
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TWO QLD DISASTERS RETURN... with no guarantee of success
So, not only do we need to endure the return of a walking wanker called Kev, we are now faced with an incompetent called Pete.
Peter Beattie’s elevation to ALP candidate in the seat of Forde is yet another example of Labor’s lack of democracy.
It’s still very much the old ALP.
Branch pre-selection means little in Labor Party circles and the very injustices that Uncle Kev claims to have reformed he now heralds with the dumping of the properly pre-selected candidate, Des Hardman, in favour of Peter Beattie.
Julia Gillard did the same with Crossin yet Tony Abbott can’t, and won’t, do the same with the hapless Diaz. Is it the Libs who run the more democratic party? Seems so.
Beattie, a self-confessed media tart, will campaign with old enemy Rudd with neither showing any sign of embarrassment.
Yet both are returning to the hustings with a record of destruction any arsonist would be proud of.
Forde is no easy target for Beattie, it’s a marginal semi-rural seat and Queenslanders remember him well. He handed Anna Bligh a poison chalice of all his own work.
Old ALP failures mostly have opted for retirement and now a retiree wants to rejoin the fray. Golly!
Oh well, Rudd and Beattie will make a lovely couple holding hands, pretending they like each, while ignoring their previous disastrous tenures.
If both are returned, a new set of kitchen knives will be in demand.
The old set is just about worn out!
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Matt Drudge noticed something about Jay Leno’s interview with President Obama ==>http://twitchy.com/2013/
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Eid Mubarak brothers and sisters! This Ramadan has taught me a lot of great lessons. Training and working without food and water has taught me to acknowledge the power of our mind and our soul, our most supreme source of energy. I learnt that although we carried out our day to day tasks on almost nothing, that it should never mean we perform things with less effort or to lesser degree. We are stronger than we think and now that we're back to normal eating habits, we have little excuse for doing anything half-heartedly. May we continue to carry on our valuable lessons, and may you my brothers and sisters, (and all my non-Muslim friends out there too!) all be blessed with peace, love and perpetual energy in your lives! x
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Attacking babies by Palestinians
This baby is an Israel, Jewish, baby girl, by the name of Na'ama, that was stoned by a Palestinian in the face! But, there's nothing on the Israeli leftist media, and the international media. SEE what the Palestinians are doing, but suddenly the whole world is blind!
If it was a Palestinian person (NOT EVEN A BABY!), the whole world will rumble in screams to stop the Israeli occupation, and the apartheid, together with the Israeli Leftist Media such as Channel 2, Channel 10, Channel 1 etc. Immediatly the UN would have called on sanctions towards Israel RIGHT WAY!
But, this baby is not Palestinian, it's a Jewish baby, that didn't do nothing wrong. And yet, no one is doing anything. NO ONE is doing anything to stop the Palestinian mosters! And why? Well because of two reasons:
1. The most common - Everyone is buying the Palestinian lies, that the Israelis are the problem.
2. The real reason that everyone refuse to accept - ANTI-SEMITSM. Because of the Anti-Semtism towards Israel, and the interior treason in the country by the hands of the Leftist activists and Media, no one will deal with it.
I'm stating now what is obvious - All the world nations are hypocrits. Including the UN.
The baby girl, Na'ama, only 1.5 years old, survived, with injuries on her nose and face. She will recover. Her face will recover. But the wound in the new family, will never recover.
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The Flying Leathernecks – Trailer
- Film Clip -
At this link:
http://
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After days of relentless trekking, arm-in-arm, these paratroopers reached the summit of#Israel's highest mountain. Wish them luck for the next stage of their journey.
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Today I released the first element of the Coalition’s Plan for Tasmania. Unemployment in Tasmania is simply too high.
The Coalition will act to generate jobs growth in Tasmania.
You can read more at http://lbr.al/t1t9
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Lol .. woof .. meow .. in some ways, I am such a robot .. ed
Researchers at Toshiba’s Akimu Robotic Research Institute were thrilled ten months ago when they successfully programmed Kenji, a third generation humanoid robot, to convincingly emulate certain human emotions. At the time, they even claimed that Kenji was capable of the robot equivalent of love. Now, however, they fear that his programming has taken an extreme turn for the worst.
“Initially, we were thrilled to see a bit of our soul come alive in this so called ‘machine,’” said Dr. Akito Takahashi, the principal investigator on the project. “This was really the final step for us in one of the fundamentals of the singularity.”
Kenji was part of an experiment involving several robots loaded with custom software designed to let them react emotionally to external stimuli. After some limited environmental conditioning, Kenji first demonstrated love by bonding with a a stuffed doll in his enclosure, which he would embrace for hours at a time. He would then make simple, but insistent, inquiries about the doll if it were out of sight. Researchers attributed this behavior to his programmed qualities of devotion and empathy and called the experiment a success.
What they didn’t count on were the effects of several months of self-iteration within the complex machine-learning code which gave Kenji his initial tenderness. As of last week, Kenji’s love for the doll, and indeed anybody he sets his ‘eyes’ on, is so intense that Dr. Takahashi and his team now fear to show him to outsiders.
The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly. The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji.
“Despite our initial enthusiasm, it has become clear that Kenji’s impulses and behavior are not entirely rational or genuine,” conceded Dr. Takahashi.
Ever since that incident, each time Kenji is re-activated, he instantaneously bonds with the first technician to meet his gaze and rushes to embrace them with his two 100kg hydraulic arms. It doesn’t help that Kenji uses only pre-recorded dog and cat noises to communicate and is able to vocalize his love through a 20 watt speaker in his chest.
Dr. Takahashi admits that they will more than likely have to decommission Kenji permanently, but he’s optimistic about one day succeeding where Kenji failed.
“This is only a minor setback. I have full faith that we will one day live side by side with, and eventually love and be loved by, robots,” he said.
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I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. -Charlotte Bronte
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How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a weary world. - William Shakespeare
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Princess Cut Diamond Engagement Ring with a natural Pink Diamond Accent handmade by Diamond Imports #diamond #diamondring#engagementring #diamondengagementring#ring #princesscutdiamond #pinkdiamond#diamondimports #bride #wedding #engagement
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It angers me that Israel has been sold down the river by all parties and groups in politics. So that the word 'peace' becomes a bad joke at which a decent person might spit. But consider that when GOP has a President they must be balanced and not take sides, but when Dem's have the Presidency then it is said to be best for peace that the existence of Israel be threatened. - ed
Sometimes, tragedy and irony may arrive together. Now that it is reportedly back “on track,” the so-called Middle East Peace Process threatens Israel with additional dismemberment, and eventual disappearance.
Aware of these intolerable prospects, thousands of Israelis who are opposed to any further existential surrenders may soon prepare for an appropriate response to “Palestine.” Whatever its particular shape and expression, this "post-peace" response to a new Arab state, one that would be carved out of Israel's own still-living body, may take some recognizable form of civil disobedience.
To be sure, the Netanyahu Government, inexplicably confident in Palestinian compliance with pre-state agreements on “demilitarization,” will object strongly to any such tactics. Nonetheless, civil disobedience has a long and distinguished tradition in jurisprudence and democratic theory. In part, as the following argument will make clear, certain roots of this tradition actually lie in Jewish Law.
From its beginnings, Jewish law has been viewed as a manifestation of God's will. Biblically, the law is referred to as the "word of God,” never of humankind. God, therefore, is the sole authentic legislator, and righteousness necessarily lies in observance of His law. Moreover, for ancient Israel as well as for the ancient Greeks, the absence of righteousness is expected to place at risk the lives and fortunes of the entire community.
In ancient Israel, law was always regarded as the revealed will of God. All transgressions of the law were consequently offenses against God. The modern idea that human legislators might somehow make law independently of God's will would have been incomprehensible.
As God can be the only true legislator, the sole function of human authorities was to discover the extant law, and thereafter to ensure its proper application. According to the Talmud, “Whatever a competent scholar will yet derive from the Law, it was already given to Moses on Mount Sinai."[1]
In the Jewish tradition, the principle of a Higher Law is not only well-established; it remains the core foundation of all legal order. Wherever the law of the state stands in marked contrast to this principle, it is null and void. In certain circumstances, such contrast positively mandates opposition to the law of the state. Here, what is generally known as "civil disobedience" is not only lawful, but genuinely law-enforcing.
Exactly what sorts of circumstances are we describing? Above all others, they are circumstances that place at grave risk the very survival of the state. In such circumstances, which were already defined in the widely-disseminated 1995 Halakhic Opinion, issued by Prominent Rabbis in Eretz Yisroel Concerning Territorial Compromise,[2] the matter is one of Pikuach Nefesh (life-threatening situation, a halakhic principle, ed.), and demands apt forms of resistance.
Israel, it was duly recognized, cannot endure strategically without Judea, Samaria and the Golan. As the Torah is a "Toras Chaim," a Torah of life, Jewish authorities in theState of Israel are "forbidden, under any circumstance," to transfer Jewish land to still openly-genocidal Arab authorities.
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Further research showed that the sponsorships were done by a local Gaza bottling company, Yazegi, that apparently has permission to use the Pepsi logo when sponsoring sporting events and the like.
Pepsi never responded to inquiries about their public association with Hamas.
Now, this year, Gaza is again seeing the "Pepsi Cup" football championship during Ramadan. The Yarmouk Stadium that hosts the tournament was bombed by Israel during Pillar of Defense because it was used as a launch site for terror rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, and Yazegi helped repair or cover up the damage that is still there.>===
Marriage can't be part time, even though the journalist tries to sell it that way. - ed
'EVERYONE always says to me, how can you do that? And I just say, 'I can and I have and that's my life.'
Meet Justin, 39, a Victorian man who is married to Eva, a freelance writer and sex worker.
The couple first met in high school, have now been married eight years and are raising their nine-year-old daughter.
Justin told news.com.au that Eva's choice of career has never bothered him.
"The main reason is that I'd love to be a sex worker myself but because I'm not gay there's just no market for it. And why wouldn't I want to do it? Who wouldn't want to get paid for doing that - having sex," he said.
Not surprisingly, Justin and Eva's marriage arrangement comes with several caveats - for a start they've found it necessary to separate love and sex.
"Love is emotional and sex is just physical. It's like playing squash or something. You can do that with anyone, sometimes it's great and sometimes it's not," he said.
The couple have what they call an 'open relationship', meaning Justin is also free to pursue sex outside the marriage.
"I don't have as many opportunities as Eva to do this but when I do we have an agreement that we can just go for it. The idea is that you don't miss out on anything great," he said.
Justin also said the couple regularly host swing parties and "play with friends".
"I do think men can probably do the whole separation thing a bit easier than women," he said.
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Note, her colours chosen are for the Liberal Party even though she isa minister in the ALP. Is this sign a sign of what is to come?
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Cheers little Riley and Matt from SA. Fan picture makes my day. smudged face @aliceinframes#haha #KitchenWhiz #Channel9
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday that the situation with regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program is “not getting any better” but is “actually getting worse.”
Speaking to a pro-Israel congressional delegation to Jerusalem led by United States Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Netanyahu said that newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani could not be trusted, despite the fact that he is perceived to be more receptive to negotiations over the country’s nuclear program than his predecessor.
“I know that some place their hopes on Iran’s new president. He knows how to exploit this, and yesterday he called for more talks. Of course he wants more talks. He wants to talk and talk and talk. And while everybody is busy talking to him, he’ll be busy enriching uranium,” Netanyahu said.
Rouhani, labeled a relative moderate by some commentators when compared to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insists that he is determined to resolve Iran’s confrontation with the West over its nuclear program. Netanyahu, however, has made it clear he does not believe that Rouhani, who assumed the position of president on Sunday after the eight-year tenure of Ahmadinejad concluded, is serious.
“[Rouhani] says, ‘I talk and I smile and I enrich uranium.’ This is unfortunately going on as we speak. Iran’s work and quest towards the achievement of atomic weapons not only continues, it continues unabated – it’s actually accelerated,” he told the delegation.
The United States has said it would be a “willing partner” if Iran was serious about finding a peaceful resolution to the issue.
Iran’s critics say that it has used previous nuclear negotiations as a delaying tactic while continuing to develop nuclear weapons-related technology. Netanyahu, perhaps the most vocal among them, agreed, telling the delegation, “Iran is determined to get the bomb and we must be even more determined to prevent them from getting it.”
Watch a video of the Prime Minister’s comments below.
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<Undercover in Regents Park Mosque: A Shocking Expose
A reporter goes undercover in the Regents Park Mosque in England, a mosque whose mission is supposed to be to integrate Muslims into British society. The mosque holds many interfaith events and hosts famous politicians, but the preaching to men and women when no "infidels" are present tell a very different and shocking story.>
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I did number 3! I'm not limited to 1 or 2 anymore .. ed===
<The administrator of one of Fatah's official Facebook pages has reposted a series of facts about Fatah terror attacks in which dozens of Israelis were murdered. Fatah presents these terror attacks and killings as heroic achievements.
The celebrated attacks include the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history: a 1978 bus hijacking in which 37 civilians were murdered. Also praised is the attack on the Israeli Olympic team, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered at the 1972 Olympic Games. Fatah's Facebook page also celebrates a series of terror "firsts" achieved by Fatah: the first suicide bombing against Israel, the first suicide bombing by a woman against Israel, the first missile attack from Gaza against Israel, and others. The page glorifies an attack that it claims killed the "the most" Israelis in a single terror attack: a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv's central bus station in 2003. Fatah boasted it "killed more than 30 and wounded more than 200" in that one attack.>
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<Former jokes about siccing the IRS on his enemies or using Predator drones to go after suitors of his daughters are as eerie as they are comedic.>
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<Obama’s ‘promises’ to do “something” to Iran’s nuclear program was made to Bibi to force Israel to give in to Abbas. They will soon be exposed for the lies they always were.>
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<Israelis like to celebrate November 29 as a pre-Independence Day holiday, because that was the day when the newly established United Nations voted to approve a Jewish State. I don't consider that act to be all that worthy of our celebration for a couple of reasons.
One is that even though a majority of the members of the time did vote to approve a Jewish State, none of them was willing to do anything at all to ensure that the Jewish State would actually exist or survive the onslaught of Arab armies and terrorists which tried to destroy it.
The second reason is that we did and do not need the approval of international bodies for our legitimacy, our existence. We owe our survival and existence to G-d and only G-d. Our victories go against all logic and rules of warfare.
These two points must be remembered.>
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Reuters broke with Big Media’s muddled mantra that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the region’s “core conflict.”
More than 100,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict and violence has flared again in Iraq, with over 1,000 killed there in July alone, many at the hands of al Qaeda. Tensions over Iran’s disputed nuclear program have also risen, while a struggle for power between Islamists and the military is playing out on the streets of predominantly Sunni Egypt.
Arguably, none of these crises will come any closer to being settled should, by some miracle, Israel and the Palestinians finally agree to divide the land where they live . . .
In public, Muslim leaders have traditionally railed against Israel, happy to fan ordinary Arabs’ sincere anger about the plight of the Palestinians – and perhaps deflect criticism of their own failure to make badly needed reforms.
Arab leaders can no longer get away with this.
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If Independent editors refuse to refer to any Palestinian as a terrorist, is it really a surprise that they will try to defend their reference to a murderer as a political prisoner?===
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Yehuda Lev, an iconoclastic journalist and veteran of World War II and Israel’s War of Independence who established a European underground route to smuggle Holocaust survivors to Palestine, has died.
Lev died Aug. 3 in Providence, R.I., following a prolonged illness. He was 86.
Lev became the first associate editor of the newly founded Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles in 1986, continuing until 1993. He was best known for his column “A Majority of One,” which went after the Jewish community’s sacred cows.
Lev was born in New York City and raised in Forest Hills, N.Y., as John Lewis Low, the son of a successful businessman and a mother noted as one of the first female labor lawyers.
He dropped out of Cornell University to enlist in the U.S. Army during the latter part of World War II and was discharged in Germany when the war ended.
Moved by the plight of Holocaust survivors languishing in Displaced Persons camps, Lev established a route, mostly by foot, to bring the DPs to Mediterranean ports, where they embarked on “illegal” ships past the British naval blockade into Palestine.
Returning to the United States, Lev earned master’s degrees from the University of Chicago in political science/Arabic studies and Stanford University in communication arts.
He set off in 1947 to Palestine to help the Jews in their struggle to establish an independent state. Changing his name to Yehuda Lev, he joined the Israeli army when war broke out in May 1948.
While on patrol in the Negev, Lev’s jeep was blown up by a land mine that killed everyone else and shattered his feet.
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At a protest in downtown Toronto over the weekend, a speaker identified as Elias Hazineh, made this statement:
We have to give them an ultimatum. You have to leave Jerusalem. You have to leave Palestine … When somebody tries to rob a bank the police get in, they don’t negotiate and we have been negotiating with them for 65 years. We say get out or you are dead. We give them two minutes and then we start shooting and that’s the only way they’ll understand.
As JTA reported yesterday, Hazineh is the former president of Palestine House, which lost Canadian governmental support last year because of what Ottawa called a “pattern of support for extremism.”
Today, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the lobbying arm of the Canadian Jewish federation, announced it was submitting information about the rally to police for review.
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ABSTRACT: This study examines the role of the Bosnian and other Yugoslav volunteers who fought on the Arab side in the Palestine war, Israel’s War of Independence, in 1948. Previous studies have only mentioned these volunteers in passing but through the use of intelligence reports, archival sources and recently published interviews with surviving participants this article reconstructs their role in the war. The case of the Bosnian participation in the 1948 war is of consequence today because of the frequent use of globalized Islamic imagery to promote the interconnectedness of conflicts throughout the world to Muslim communities and encourage recruitment of Muslims for ’Jihad’ in an international context. The role of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al Husayni, in recruiting local Bosnians to fight in Palestine is an early example of this tendency in modern times.
http://www.rastko.rs/cms/
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Vilenberg was 20 when the camp was liberated. Despite his advanced age, he continues to tell his story to youth groups and IDF soldiers in order to pass on testimony from the Holocaust.
He spoke to MK Avi Wortzman (Bayit Yehudi) during the ceremony. “I feel good,” he related. “It’s hard to walk, but I’m still walking.”
“I’m a Polish hero,” he continued. “In Israel I’m not a hero, they have different heroes there,” he added with a cynical smile.
He was briefly thrown off when a foreign journalist approached to ask him what his connection was to Treblinka. “What does that mean, how am I connected to Treblinka?” he asked in Hebrew.
“I woke up in the hotel in the morning and said, ‘Let’s go to Treblinka,’” he told the journalist, who preferred not to ask further questions.
Vilenberg explained how he survived the death camp. “I was here for ten months, and they ordered me to work on the fences. There’s no doubt that the job saved my life,” he said.
His hope, and his parents, gave him strength to continue, he said.
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Billionaire George Soros’ philanthropy is bad news for Israel, according to an in-depth report from the NGO-Monitor watchdog group.
The report listed the many causes in Israel, or pertaining to Israel, that are funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
Among the top beneficiaries of OSF funding is Human Rights Watch, which has been criticized for targeting, and falsely libeling, the state of Israel. Another is J Street, which describes itself as “pro-Israel” but has been termed anti-Israel by others for, among other things, welcoming proponents of a boycott on Israel at its national conference and honoring IDF soldiers who refused orders.
Another recipient of OSF funding is the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which, NGO-Monitor reports, is headed by staff who have accused Israel of war crimes and have termed Israel an “apartheid state.”
NGO-Monitor expressed concern primarily over “problematic” OSF recipients in Israel.
Among the Israeli recipients is Adalah, which promotes the so-called “right of return” to Israel, which would allow millions of descendants of Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence to claim Israel as their home (without reference to the many more Jews displaced during the fighting and in the years that followed).
OSF also funds Al Haq, an Arab organization based in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem. NGO-Monitor’s researchers described Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin as “a human rights campaigner by day and a terrorist by night,” who is among the senior members of the PFLP terrorist group.
The extreme-left Israeli group B’Tselem also receives OSF funds. B’Tselem is notorious for publishing one-sided reports, and for inflating Arab civilian casualty figures. For example, the group included hundreds of Hamas policemen in Gaza as “non-combatants,” and counted Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – then the leader of Hamas – as not a definite combatant.
B’Tselem has listed OSF as a source of support, but OSF has not listed B’Tselem as a recipient, indicating that the grant may have come through an overseas entity.
The report listed several other controversial, far-left Israeli groups that receive direct or indirect OSF Funding, including Rabbis for Human Rights, Ir Amim, Yesh Din and the New Israel Fund.
Overall, information on Soros’ OSF “suggests a deliberate emphasis on influencing the highly complex Israeli-Palestinian arena,” NGO-Monitor concludes.
“There is no comparable focus by Soros family and OSF gifts or his foundation network on promoting democracy or economic development in Palestinian society, nor on surrounding Arab societies,” it added.
NGO-Monitor called on Soros philanthropies to implement transparency regarding overseas grants, and to ensure that beneficiaries “act in strict accordance with universal moral principles by abstaining from the promotion of totalitarian regimes, such as in Iran, as well as from participating in demonization of Israel through the exploitation of the language of human rights.”
The group noted that there is no indication that George Soros himself or his family are hostile to Israel, despite frequent criticism of Israeli policy.
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Sometimes I feel creationists give God too little credit. - ed
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Does this sound like the Kevin Rudd you know?
"One thing I know for certain, the old politics of the past just won't work for the future. Wall to wall negativity doesn't create a single job. Negative personal politics doesn't build a single school. The old politics of division doesn't build a single hospital."
- Kevin Rudd, Sunday 4 August 2013
A day later, Kevin Rudd launched a deceitful and negative attack ad that has now been pulled by both YouTube and Facebook.
We aren't going to sit back and allow Labor to run a dishonest campaign without a response. It's time to clean up the mess created by Labor. Please contribute $100, $50, or $6 to help end the last 6 years of Labor deceit, chaos and dysfunction.
These funds will help us launch an appropriate response and continue our campaign to win the election.
Thank you,
Brian Loughnane
Federal Director
Liberal Party of Australia
Federal Director
Liberal Party of Australia
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- 1786 – Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat completed the first recorded ascent ofMont Blanc (pictured) in the Alps, an act considered to be the birth of modernmountaineering.
- 1918 – The Battle of Amiens began in Amiens, France, marking the start of the Allied Powers' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
- 1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union was formed whenNdabaningi Sithole, Robert Mugabe, and others decided to split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union.
- 1988 – The 8888 Uprising, a series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots against the one-party state of the Burma Socialist Programme Party in Burma, began.
- 2008 – Eight people died and 64 more were injured when aEuroCity express train en route to Prague, Czech Republic struck a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the track nearStudénka station in the Czech Republic and derailed.
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Events
- 1220 – Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.
- 1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh,Scotland.
- 1576 – The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg observatory is laid on Ven, Denmark.
- 1585 – John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage.
- 1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada's attempt to invade England.
- 1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.
- 1647 – The Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill – English Parliamentary forces defeatIrish forces.
- 1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal in Lisbon,Portugal
- 1786 – Mont Blanc on the French – Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.
- 1793 – The insurrection of Lyon occurs during the French Revolution.
- 1794 – Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.
- 1844 – The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints(LDS Church).
- 1863 – American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
- 1870 – The Republic of Ploiești, a failed Radical-Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania.
- 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
- 1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.
- 1918 – World War I: the Battle of Amiens begins a string of almost continuous victories with a push through the German front lines (Hundred Days Offensive).
- 1927 – The predecessor to the Philippine Stock Exchange opens.
- 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight.
- 1940 – The "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel.
- 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.
- 1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle.
- 1960 – South Kasai secedes from the Congo.
- 1963 – Great Train Robbery: in England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £2.6 million in bank notes.
- 1963 – The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the current ruling party of Zimbabwe, is formed by a split from the Zimbabwe African People's Union.
- 1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
- 1969 – At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan takes the photo that becomes the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, one of the most famous album covers in recording history.
- 1973 – Kim Dae-jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped.
- 1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.
- 1980 – The Central Hotel Fire occurs in Bundoran, Ireland.
- 1988 – The "8888 Uprising" occurs in Burma.
- 1988 – The internal ending of The 20th century's longest conventional war after the Second Sino-Japanese War: The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Persian Gulf War. The public from Iraq celebrates this day by splashing themselves with water. Eid Mubarak, Nosa.
- 1989 – Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission – Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission.
- 1990 – Iraq occupies Kuwait and the state is annexed to Iraq. This would lead to the Gulf War shortly afterward.
- 1991 – The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.
- 2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence and 5 years after being filmed by a dive team funded by novelist Clive Cussler.
- 2007 – An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.
- 2008 – A EuroCity express train en route from Kraków, Poland to Prague, Czech Republic strikes a part of a motorway bridge that had fallen onto the railroad track near Studénka railway station in the Czech Republic and derails, killing 8 people and injuring 64 others.
- 2010 – 2010 China floods: A mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, kills more than 1,400 people.
Births
- 1079 – Emperor Horikawa of Japan (d. 1107)
- 1518 – Conrad Lycosthenes, French-German humanist and encyclopedist (d. 1561)
- 1605 – Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, English lawyer and politician (d. 1675)
- 1640 – Amalia Catharina, German poet and composer (d. 1697)
- 1646 – Godfrey Kneller, German painter (d. 1723)
- 1673 – John Ker, Scottish spy (d. 1726)
- 1693 – Laurent Belissen, French composer (d. 1762)
- 1694 – Francis Hutcheson, Irish philosopher (d. 1746)
- 1709 – Hermann Anton Gelinek, German monk and musician (d. 1779)
- 1720 – Carl Fredrik Pechlin, Swedish politician (d. 1796)
- 1790 – Ferenc Kölcsey, Hungarian poet and politician (d. 1838)
- 1807 – Emilie Flygare-Carlén, Swedish author (d. 1892)
- 1814 – Esther Hobart Morris, American jurist (d. 1902)
- 1824 – Maria Alexandrovna, German wife of Alexander II of Russia (d. 1880)
- 1839 – Nelson A. Miles, American general (d. 1925)
- 1857 – Cécile Chaminade, French pianist and composer (d. 1944)
- 1866 – Matthew Henson, American explorer (d. 1955)
- 1874 – Albert Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield, British transport administrator (d. 1948)
- 1875 – Artur Bernardes, Brazilian politician, 12th President of Brazil (d. 1955)
- 1876 – Varghese Payyappilly Palakkappilly, Indian-Syrian priest (d. 1929)
- 1879 – Bob Smith, American physician and surgeon, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (d. 1950)
- 1879 – Emiliano Zapata, Mexican general (d. 1919)
- 1880 – Earle Page, Australian politician, 11th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1961)
- 1881 – Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, German field marshal (d. 1954)
- 1882 – Ladislas Starevich, Polish animator (d. 1965)
- 1884 – Sara Teasdale, American poet (d. 1933)
- 1889 – Jack Ryder, Australian cricketer (d. 1977)
- 1891 – Adolf Busch, German violinist and composer (d. 1952)
- 1892 – Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, Spanish footballer (d. 1922)
- 1896 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, American author (d. 1953)
- 1898 – Alexis Minotis, Greek actor (d. 1990)
- 1901 – Ernest Lawrence, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958)
- 1902 – Paul Dirac, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1903 – Dayton Lummis American actor (d. 1988)
- 1904 – Achille Varzi, Italian race car driver (d. 1948)
- 1905 – André Jolivet, French composer (d. 1974)
- 1907 – Benny Carter, American musician, composer, and bandleader (d. 2003)
- 1908 – Arthur Goldberg, American politician and jurist, 6th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (d. 1990)
- 1909 – Bill Voce, England cricketer (d. 1984)
- 1910 – Jimmy Murphy, footballer and manager (d. 1989)
- 1910 – Sylvia Sidney, American actress (d. 1999)
- 1911 – Rosetta LeNoire, American actress (d. 2002)
- 1915 – James Elliott, American track and field coach (d. 1981)
- 1919 – Dino De Laurentiis, Italian actor and producer (d. 2010)
- 1920 – Leo Chiosso, Italian songwriter and producer (d. 2006)
- 1920 – Carol Lambrino, Romanian son of Carol II of Romania (d. 2006)
- 1920 – Jimmy Witherspoon, American singer (d. 1997)
- 1921 – William Asher, American director, screenwriter, and producer (d. 2012)
- 1921 – John Herbert Chapman, Canadian physicist (d. 1979)
- 1921 – Webb Pierce, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1991)
- 1921 – Vulimiri Ramalingaswami, Indian scientist (d. 2001)
- 1921 – Esther Williams, American actress and swimmer (d. 2013)
- 1922 – Rory Calhoun, American actor (d. 1999)
- 1922 – Rudi Gernreich, Austrian-American fashion designer (d. 1985)
- 1922 – Gertrude Himmelfarb, American historian
- 1922 – Károly Reich, Hungarian illustrator (d. 1988)
- 1925 – Alija Izetbegović, Bosnian politician, 1st President of Bosnia and Herzegovina (d. 2003)
- 1926 – Richard Anderson, American actor
- 1927 – Johnny Temple, American baseball player (d. 1994)
- 1927 – Maia Wojciechowska, Polish-American author (d. 2002)
- 1928 – Don Burrows, Australian musician
- 1929 – Ronnie Biggs, English criminal, part of the Great Train Robbery of 1963
- 1929 – Larisa Bogoraz, Soviet dissident (d. 2004)
- 1930 – Terry Nation, Welsh novelist and screenwriter (d. 1997)
- 1930 – Jerry Tarkanian, American basketball coach
- 1931 – Roger Penrose, English physicist
- 1932 – Luis García Meza Tejada, Bolivian general and politician, 68th President of Bolivia
- 1932 – Mel Tillis, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Old Dogs)
- 1933 – Joe Tex, American singer-songwriter (d. 1982)
- 1933 – Serena Wilson, American dancer and choreographer (d. 2007)
- 1935 – Donald P. Bellisario, American screenwriter and producer
- 1935 – John Laws, Australian radio host
- 1936 – Keith Barron, English actor
- 1936 – Frank Howard, American baseball player
- 1937 – Dustin Hoffman, American actor
- 1937 – Cornelis Vreeswijk, Dutch-Swedish singer-songwriter, poet, and actor (d. 1987)
- 1938 – Jacques Hétu, Canadian composer
- 1938 – Connie Stevens, American actress, singer, and director
- 1939 – Alexander Watson, American ambassador and diplomat
- 1939 – Phil Balsley, American singer-songwriter (The Statler Brothers)
- 1939 – Paul Hogan, Australian comedian and actor
- 1940 – Dilip Sardesai, Indian cricketer (d. 2007)
- 1940 – Dennis Tito, American engineer and businessman, founded Wilshire Associates
- 1941 – George Tiller, American physician, abortion rights-activist (d. 2009)
- 1943 – Denis Payton, English saxophonist (The Dave Clark Five)
- 1944 – Brooke Bundy, American actress
- 1944 – Uli Derickson, Czech-American flight attendant, TWA Flight 847 survivor
- 1944 – John Renbourn, English guitarist and songwriter (Pentangle)
- 1944 – Michael Johnson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
- 1947 – Terangi Adam, Nauruan politician
- 1947 – José Cruz, Puerto Rican baseball player
- 1947 – Ken Dryden, Canadian ice hockey player and politician
- 1947 – Larry Wilcox, American actor
- 1948 – Svetlana Savitskaya, Russian astronaut
- 1949 – Keith Carradine, American actor
- 1949 – Ricardo Londoño, Colombian race car driver (d. 2009)
- 1950 – Willie Hall, American drummer (The Bar-Kays)
- 1950 – Ken Kutaragi, Japanese businessman, created PlayStation
- 1951 – Phil Carlson, Australian cricketer
- 1951 – Mohamed Morsi, Egyptian politician, 5th President of Egypt
- 1951 – Mamoru Oshii, Japanese director
- 1951 – Randy Shilts, American journalist and author (d. 1994)
- 1952 – Anton Fig, South African drummer (Spider and Frehley's Comet)
- 1952 – Jostein Gaarder, Norwegian author
- 1952 – Doug Melvin, Canadian baseball player and executive
- 1952 – Robin Quivers, American radio host, actress, and author
- 1952 – Sudhakar Rao, Indian cricketer
- 1952 – Ali Score, English musician (A Flock of Seagulls)
- 1953 – Mark Lazarowicz, British Politician
- 1953 – Nigel Mansell, English race car driver
- 1953 – Don Most, American actor
- 1955 – Diddú, Icelandic soprano and songwriter
- 1955 – Herbert Prohaska, Austrian footballer
- 1956 – Chris Foreman, English guitarist and songwriter (Madness)
- 1956 – David Grant, English singer (Linx)
- 1956 – Branscombe Richmond, American actor
- 1956 – Cecilia Roth, Argentine actress
- 1957 – Dennis Drew, American keyboard player (10,000 Maniacs)
- 1958 – Deborah Norville, American journalist
- 1960 – Ulrich Maly, German politician
- 1961 – The Edge, Irish singer-songwriter and guitarist (U2)
- 1961 – Daniel House, American bass player and producer (10 Minute Warning and Skin Yard)
- 1961 – Ron Klain, American lawyer and White House staffer
- 1961 – Bruce Matthews, American football player
- 1961 – Rikki Rockett, American drummer (Poison)
- 1962 – Kool Moe Dee, American rapper (Treacherous Three)
- 1962 – Mike Zanier, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1963 – Hur Jin-ho, South Korean director and screenwriter
- 1963 – Ron Karkovice, American baseball player
- 1963 – Jon Turteltaub, American director
- 1963 – Stephen Walkom, Canadian ice hockey referee and executive
- 1964 – Anastasia M. Ashman, American writer
- 1964 – Paul Taylor, England cricketer
- 1964 – Eddie Trunk, American radio host and author
- 1965 – Angus Fraser, England cricketer
- 1965 – El Hefe, American guitarist (NOFX)
- 1965 – Kate Langbroek, Australian talk show host
- 1966 – Chris Eubank, English boxer
- 1966 – John Hudek, American baseball player
- 1967 – Sable, American wrestler and actress
- 1967 – Eric Angle, American wrestler
- 1967 – Marcelo Balboa, American soccer player
- 1967 – Lee Unkrich, American director and editor
- 1968 – Abey Kuruvilla, Indian cricketer
- 1968 – Huey Morgan, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Fun Lovin' Criminals)
- 1969 – Yvie Burnett, Scottish soprano
- 1969 – Dick Togo, Japanese wrestler
- 1969 – Faye Wong, Chinese singer-songwriter and actress
- 1970 – Trev Alberts, American football player
- 1970 – Pascal Duquenne, Belgian actor
- 1972 – Joely Collins, Canadian actress
- 1972 – Axel Merckx, Belgian cyclist
- 1972 – Andrea de Rossi, Italian rugby player and coach
- 1972 – Steven Tweed, Scottish footballer
- 1973 – Shane Lee, Australian cricketer
- 1973 – Senta Moses, American actress
- 1973 – Scott Stapp, American singer-songwriter and producer (Creed)
- 1974 – Scott D'Amore, Canadian wrestler and manager
- 1974 – Brian Harvey, English singer (East 17)
- 1974 – Andy Priaulx, British race car driver
- 1976 – JC Chasez, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actor ('N Sync)
- 1976 – Tawny Cypress, American actress
- 1976 – Drew Lachey, American singer and actor (98 Degrees)
- 1976 – Lee Seung-Yeop, South Korean baseball player
- 1976 – Jeff Simmons, American race car driver
- 1977 – Kurt Bernard, Costa Rican footballer
- 1977 – Szilárd Németh, Slovak footballer
- 1977 – Lindsay Sloane, American actress
- 1977 – Rocky Thompson, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1977 – Nicolas Vogondy, French cyclist
- 1977 – Mohammad Wasim, Pakistani cricketer
- 1978 – Alan Maybury, Irish footballer
- 1978 – Louis Saha, French footballer
- 1978 – Miho Shiraishi, Japanese actress
- 1978 – Countess Vaughn, American actress and singer
- 1979 – Richard Harwood, British cellist
- 1979 – Paris Latsis, Greek shipping heir
- 1979 – Rashard Lewis, American basketball player
- 1979 – Pooja Shah, British actress
- 1979 – Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson, Icelandic handball player
- 1980 – Shayna Baszler, American mixed martial artist
- 1980 – Craig Breslow, American baseball player
- 1980 – Jack Cassel, American baseball player
- 1980 – Denisse Guerrero, Mexican singer-songwriter (Belanova)
- 1980 – Mike Hindert, American singer and bass player (The Bravery)
- 1980 – Sabine Klaschka, German tennis player
- 1980 – Pat Noonan, American soccer player
- 1980 – Michael Urie, American actor and director
- 1981 – Vanessa Amorosi, Australian singer-songwriter
- 1981 – Roger Federer, Swiss tennis player
- 1981 – Meagan Good, American actress
- 1981 – Kaori Iida, Japanese singer and actress (Morning Musume and Dream Morning Musume)
- 1981 – Bradley McIntosh, British singer (S Club)
- 1981 – Harel Skaat, Israeli singer-songwriter
- 1982 – David Florence, British canoe racer
- 1983 – Guy Burnet, British actor
- 1983 – Fred Meyers, American actor
- 1984 – Kirk Broadfoot, Scottish footballer
- 1984 – Brenda Gandini, Argentine actress and model
- 1984 – Devon McTavish, American soccer player
- 1984 – Norbert Michelisz, Hungarian race car driver
- 1984 – Martrez Milner, American football player
- 1985 – Toby Flood, English rugby player
- 1985 – James Morgan, Welsh actor
- 1985 – Brett Ratliff, American football player
- 1986 – Kateryna Bondarenko, Ukrainian tennis player
- 1986 – Pierre Garçon, American football player
- 1986 – Cody Lightning, American actor
- 1986 – Peyton List, American actress
- 1986 – Chris Pressley, American football player
- 1987 – Pierre Boulanger, French actor
- 1987 – Katie Leung, Scottish actress
- 1987 – Tatjana Malek, German tennis player
- 1988 – Princess Beatrice of York
- 1988 – Danilo Gallinari, Italian basketball player
- 1988 – Ni Ni, Chinese actress
- 1988 – Laura Slade Wiggins, American actress
- 1989 – Ken Baumann, American actor and author
- 1989 – Ali Cobrin, American actress
- 1989 – Sesil Karatantcheva, Bulgarian-Kazakhstan tennis player
- 1989 – Hannah Miley, British swimmer
- 1989 – Aleksandra Szwed, Polish actress and singer
- 1990 – Parker Kligerman, American race car driver
- 1991 – Nélson Oliveira, Portuguese footballer
- 1993 – Ben Breedlove, American blogger (d. 2011)
- 1993 – Jessie Rogers, Brazilian pornographic actress
- 1995 – Malin Reitan, Norwegian singer
Deaths
- 869 – Lothair II, Italian son of Lothair I (b. 825)
- 1303 – Henry of Castile the Senator, son of Ferdinand III (b. 1230)
- 1445 – Oswald von Wolkenstein, Austrian composer (b. 1377)
- 1553 – Girolamo Fracastoro, Italian physician (b. 1478)
- 1555 – Oronce Finé, French mathematician (b. 1494)
- 1588 – Alonso Sánchez Coello, Spanish painter (b. 1532)
- 1604 – Horio Tadauji, Japanese warlord (b. 1578)
- 1631 – Konstantinas Sirvydas, Lithuanian lexicographer (b. 1579)
- 1684 – George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer (b. 1622)
- 1719 – Christoph Ludwig Agricola, German painter (b. 1667)
- 1747 – Madeleine de Verchères, Canadian raid leader (b. 1678)
- 1759 – Carl Heinrich Graun, German composer (b. 1704)
- 1827 – George Canning, British politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1770)
- 1828 – Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish naturalist (b. 1743)
- 1863 – Angus MacAskill, Scottish giant (b. 1825)
- 1879 – Immanuel Hermann Fichte, German philosopher (b. 1797)
- 1887 – Alexander William Doniphan, American lawyer and soldier (b. 1808)
- 1897 – Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian (b. 1818)
- 1898 – Eugène Boudin, French painter (b. 1824)
- 1902 – James Tissot, French painter (b. 1836)
- 1909 – Mary MacKillop, Australian nun, co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (b. 1842)
- 1911 – William P. Frye, American politician (b. 1830)
- 1921 – Juhani Aho, Finnish author and journalist (b. 1861)
- 1928 – Stjepan Radić, Croatian politician (b. 1871)
- 1930 – Launceston Elliot, Scottish weightlifter (b. 1874)
- 1934 – Wilbert Robinson, American baseball player (b. 1863)
- 1940 – Johnny Dodds, American clarinetist and saxophonist (b. 1892)
- 1944 – Chaim Soutine, Russian painter (b. 1894)
- 1944 – Erwin von Witzleben, German field marshal (b. 1881)
- 1944 – Michael Wittmann, German commander (b. 1914)
- 1947 – Anton Denikin, Russian general (b. 1872)
- 1950 – Fergus McMaster, Australian businessman, founded Qantas (b. 1879)
- 1961 – Mei Lanfang, Chinese opera singer (b. 1894)
- 1962 – Elizabeth Ann Duncan, American convicted murderer (d. 1904)
- 1965 – Shirley Jackson, American author (b. 1916)
- 1969 – Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, German eugenicist and nazi physician (b. 1896)
- 1971 – Freddie Spencer Chapman, British army officer (b. 1907)
- 1972 – Andrea Feldman, American actor (b. 1948)
- 1973 – Dean Corll, American serial killer (b. 1939)
- 1973 – Vilhelm Moberg, Swedish author and historian (b. 1898)
- 1973 – Nikos Zachariadis, Greek politician (b. 1903)
- 1974 – Baldur von Schirach, German nazi youth leader (b. 1907)
- 1975 – Cannonball Adderley, American saxophonist (b. 1928)
- 1977 – Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, British physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1889)
- 1979 – Nicholas Monsarrat, British novelist (b. 1910)
- 1980 – Paul Triquet, Canadian army officer (b. 1910)
- 1981 – Thomas McElwee, Irish hunger striker (b. 1957)
- 1982 – Eric Brandon, English race car driver (b. 1920)
- 1984 – Ellen Raskin, American author (b. 1928)
- 1985 – Louise Brooks, American actress (b. 1906)
- 1987 – Danilo Blanuša, Croatian mathematician (b. 1903)
- 1988 – Félix Leclerc, Canadian singer-songwriter (b. 1914)
- 1988 – Alan Napier, English actor (b. 1903)
- 1991 – Julissa Gomez, American gymnast (b. 1972)
- 1991 – James Irwin, American astronaut (b. 1930)
- 1992 – Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Iranian spiritual leader and scholar (b. 1899)
- 1992 – John Kordic, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1965)
- 1992 – Bertalan Papp, Hungarian fencer (b. 1913)
- 1995 – John Adams, American football player (b. 1937)
- 1996 – Nevill Francis Mott, British physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905)
- 1998 – Mahmoud Saremi, Iranian journalist (b. 1968)
- 2003 – Falaba Issa Traoré, Malian playwright (b. 1930)
- 2004 – Dimitris Papamichael, Greek actor (b. 1934)
- 2004 – Fay Wray, American actress (b. 1907)
- 2005 – Barbara Bel Geddes, American actress and author (b. 1922)
- 2005 – Ahmed Deedat, South African missionary and writer (b. 1918)
- 2005 – John H. Johnson, American publisher, founded the Johnson Publishing Company (b. 1918)
- 2005 – Gene Mauch, American baseball player (b. 1925)
- 2005 – Dean Rockwell, American wrestling and football coach (b. 1912)
- 2005 – Monica Sjöö, Swedish painter and writer (b. 1938)
- 2005 – Ilse Werner, German actress (b. 1921)
- 2007 – Joybubbles, American phone phreak (b. 1949)
- 2007 – Ma Lik, Chinese politician (b. 1952)
- 2007 – Melville Shavelson, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1917)
- 2008 – Orville Moody, American golfer (b. 1933)
- 2008 – Leonard Pagliero, English dog breeder (b. 1913)
- 2009 – Abdullah al-Asiri, Saudi Arabian terrorist (b. 1986)
- 2009 – Daniel Jarque, Spanish footballer (b. 1983)
- 2010 – Patricia Neal, American actress (b. 1926)
- 2012 – Sancho Gracia, Spanish actor (b. 1936)
- 2012 – Surya Lesmana, Indonesian footballer (b. 1944)
- 2012 – Kurt Maetzig, German director (b. 1911)
- 2012 – Hans R. Camenzind, Swiss engineer (b. 1934)
Holidays and observances
- Christian Feast Day:
- Cyriacus
- Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominican Order.
- Hormisdas
- Largus
- Mary MacKillop
- Smaragdus (and companions)
- August 8 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- Earliest day on which Melon Day can fall, while August 14 is the latest; celebrated on the second Sunday in August. (Turkmenistan)
- Farmer’s Day or Nane Nane, Swahili for "8-8". (Tanzania)
- Father's Day or Bā bā Day (爸爸節), Bā Bā is Mandarin for "father" and "8-8", or August 8. (Taiwan)
- Flag Day, namesday of Queen Silvia. (Sweden)
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“For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; it is he who will save us.” Isaiah 33:22 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
Morning
"The upright love thee"
Song of Solomon 1:4
Song of Solomon 1:4
Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection than they dare to give to any other being. They would sooner lose father and mother than part with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts with a loose hand, but they carry him fast locked in their bosoms. They voluntarily deny themselves for his sake, but they are not to be driven to deny him. It is scant love which the fire of persecution can dry up; the true believer's love is a deeper stream than this. Men have laboured to divide the faithful from their Master, but their attempts have been fruitless in every age. Neither crowns of honour, now frowns of anger, have untied this more than Gordian knot. This is no every-day attachment which the world's power may at length dissolve. Neither man nor devil have found a key which opens this lock. Never has the craft of Satan been more at fault than when he has exercised it in seeking to rend in sunder this union of two divinely welded hearts. It is written, and nothing can blot out the sentence, "The upright love thee." The intensity of the love of the upright, however, is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough. Would that our hearts were capable of holding more, and reaching further. Like Samuel Rutherford, we sigh and cry, "Oh, for as much love as would go round about the earth, and over heaven--yea, the heaven of heavens, and ten thousand worlds--that I might let all out upon fair, fair, only fair Christ." Alas! our longest reach is but a span of love, and our affection is but as a drop of a bucket compared with his deserts. Measure our love by our intentions, and it is high indeed; 'tis thus, we trust, our Lord doth judge of it. Oh, that we could give all the love in all hearts in one great mass, a gathering together of all loves to him who is altogether lovely!
Evening
"Satan hindered us."
1 Thessalonians 2:18
1 Thessalonians 2:18
Since the first hour in which goodness came into conflict with evil, it has never ceased to be true in spiritual experience, that Satan hinders us. From all points of the compass, all along the line of battle, in the vanguard and in the rear, at the dawn of day and in the midnight hour, Satan hinders us. If we toil in the field, he seeks to break the ploughshare; if we build the wall, he labours to cast down the stones; if we would serve God in suffering or in conflict--everywhere Satan hinders us. He hinders us when we are first coming to Jesus Christ. Fierce conflicts we had with Satan when we first looked to the cross and lived. Now that we are saved, he endeavours to hinder the completeness of our personal character. You may be congratulating yourself, "I have hitherto walked consistently; no man can challenge my integrity." Beware of boasting, for your virtue will yet be tried; Satan will direct his engines against that very virtue for which you are the most famous. If you have been hitherto a firm believer, your faith will ere long be attacked; if you have been meek as Moses, expect to be tempted to speak unadvisedly with your lips. The birds will peck at your ripest fruit, and the wild boar will dash his tusks at your choicest vines. Satan is sure to hinder us when we are earnest in prayer. He checks our importunity, and weakens our faith in order that, if possible, we may miss the blessing. Nor is Satan less vigilant in obstructing Christian effort. There was never a revival of religion without a revival of his opposition. As soon as Ezra and Nehemiah begin to labour, Sanballat and Tobiah are stirred up to hinder them. What then? We are not alarmed because Satan hindereth us, for it is a proof that we are on the Lord's side, and are doing the Lord's work, and in his strength we shall win the victory, and triumph over our adversary.
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Today's reading: Psalm 72-73, Romans 9:1-15 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Psalm 72-73
1 Endow the king with your justice, O God,
the royal son with your righteousness.
2 May he judge your people in righteousness,
your afflicted ones with justice.
the royal son with your righteousness.
2 May he judge your people in righteousness,
your afflicted ones with justice.
3 May the mountains bring prosperity to the people,
the hills the fruit of righteousness.
4 May he defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
may he crush the oppressor.
5 May he endure as long as the sun,
as long as the moon, through all generations.
6 May he be like rain falling on a mown field,
like showers watering the earth.
7 In his days may the righteous flourish
and prosperity abound till the moon is no more....
the hills the fruit of righteousness.
4 May he defend the afflicted among the people
and save the children of the needy;
may he crush the oppressor.
5 May he endure as long as the sun,
as long as the moon, through all generations.
6 May he be like rain falling on a mown field,
like showers watering the earth.
7 In his days may the righteous flourish
and prosperity abound till the moon is no more....
Today's New Testament reading: Romans 9:1-15
Paul's Anguish Over Israel
1 I speak the truth in Christ-I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit- 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
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