Sunday, February 02, 2014

Sun Feb 2nd Todays News

Nguyen Van Lem and Daniel Pearl both died on February 1st on different years. Lem died in 1968, shortly after the Tet offensive failure of the Viet Cong. Pearl died in 2002. Both were different to the other. In each case the issue was terrorism. And in each case elements of mainstream press legitimised the terrorist point of view. 

The Tet offensive was a desperate coordinated attack on South Vietnam by North Vietnamese forces with Chinese expertise. Chinese generals advocated large strikes with land armies, Mao Zedong had advocated guerrilla warfare. A two day cease fire had been agreed to. As part of the guerrilla war, Lem was to find South Vietnamese police officers and their families and kill them. It is alleged he was successful. He was captured and interrogated before the famous scene with General Loan. 

The picture and video was used by the peace movement to justify their anti war stance, without compassion for the victims of those they supported. 

Daniel Pearl was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. He was tracking leads from shoe bomber Richard Reid to Pakistan. He had Jewish ancestry and was Jewish. In Pakistan, he was captured by terrorists who made him read a card before beheading him and showing the film to the press. The card Daniel read had to do with his Jewish heritage, but the threat given by the terrorists was to all foreign journalists entering Pakistan. Pearl was not a spy. He was not a 'target.' He was a victim of terror. Much has been made of his heritage, but if he had been an Islamic rapist in Sydney, nothing would be made of his heritage.

There are myriad ways that the international press legitimise terror by not labelling it correctly. Daniel Pearl was an innocent victim of terror. Lem was a terrorist who was summarily executed. Same day, across the years, and the press collectively fail to report the facts. 
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Hatches
Happy birthday and many happy returns Harry Lime and Daniel Ung. Born on the same day, across the years, along with

Matches
Despatches
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PM must tear up any thoughts of a treaty

Piers Akerman – Saturday, February 01, 2014 (9:47pm)

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott reopened debate about recognition of Aboriginal Australians in the Australian Constitution when he chose Australia Day to reiterate his government’s commitment to preparing a draft of a formal wording by September.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'PM must tear up any thoughts of a treaty'
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Family’s fight to escape tragedy

Miranda Devine – Saturday, February 01, 2014 (11:29pm)

THE freckled face of 13-year-old Jordan Rice made headlines around the world when he died with his mother in a flash flood that hit Toowoomba three years ago. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Family’s fight to escape tragedy'
several great articles here - ed
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RACIST HAT

Tim Blair – Sunday, February 02, 2014 (4:30pm)

“I found this hat for sale at my local ‘cheap crap’ shop this morning,” writes reader Waxing Gibberish. “Should I beoffended or is it OK because the people selling the hat were Chinese?”

image 
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EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES

Tim Blair – Sunday, February 02, 2014 (11:13am)

Julia Gillard, during her recent Dubai speech: 
The majority of Australians when polled say that they do want Australia to become a republic. 
Support for an Australian republic has collapsed to a 20-year low, with just 39.4 per cent of Australians saying they support a republic. 
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THEY WANT ACTION NOW

Tim Blair – Sunday, February 02, 2014 (11:05am)

An email went out on Friday from “Cole, Zoe, Opal and the QLD Leadership Team” of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, urging the movement’s claimed 90,000 followers to protest against Tony Abbott in Brisbane: 
Tomorrow is our chance to get out, get on our feet, and show Abbott and his cronies that we support ambitious climate action, and that we want climate action now! 
And here’s the turnout:

image

(Via Habib, who reports that the dismal protest “still got air time on every network, despite there being more punters in the pie shop than involved in this fracas. 10AM on a Saturday was always going to be a big ask.")
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And the dolphin makes 13

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (5:45pm)

The Australian Youth Climate Council urges its alleged 90,000 members to rally in Brisbane today to show Tony Abbott how much “we want climate action now”.
By an astonishing coincidence, the turnout showed about as much demand for climate action as the amount of warming we’ve actually had.
I hope Abbott was watching. 
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The Cat catches three mice

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (3:30pm)

The Cat catches the mice of disinformation. 
No, Harry Clarke, the pause in warming is not a falsehood and not mentioned merely by those fabled corrupt “deniers” in the pay of Big Tobacco (sic).
No, Insiders, it’s not false to say the SPC workers can get sick leave paid out (upon redundancy) or can get overtime.
No, Age/ABC/SBS, if you are going to hail Labor’s same-sex marriage campaign as a key election issue and big vote-winner, you can’t dodge the obvious conclusions when Labor’s vote gets hammered.
I’ve been worrying lately that there are just too many of “them” to fight. Thank heavens for a good Cat. Please feed it.
UPDATE
Reader the Old and Unimproved Dave:
Not too many to fight, Andrew. Simply a target-rich environment.
Reader Alan of Sydney:
Where the ABC has come unstuck this time is that, for the first time in 40-odd years, conservatives have had enough - and are pushing back - hard! This is what is is discombobulating the ABC as never before. They’ve never had to deal with a large and angry commentariet that says “no, what you are saying is biased and untrue”. Frankly, the ABC don’t have a clue of how to deal with “conservative resistance”.
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Wrong answer

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (7:23am)


image
This picture in 1999 of a man helping 16-year-old Andrew Johnson shoot up convinced the Carr Labor Government and many media outlets for some bizarre reason that a free heroin injecting centre was the answer:
So how did it work out for Johnson?
Not so good at all. Nor, indeed, for his three children, now in care.
But read today’s article at the link. Still not the slightest awareness that the wrong lesson was learned from that picture:
Dr Marianne Jauncey, medical director at the injecting centre, insists there is ‘’always hope’’. ‘’...[Johnson] is still only halfway through his story. While he is alive, there is a chance.’’
Tell that to his parents:

‘’He’s beyond help now,’’ his mother, Roseanna, says. ‘’The police say we would be better off trying to forget we have a son.’’ 
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The ABC’s Jon Faine says he’s not biased. Really? Click these links

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (6:07am)

Media

Jon Faine claims he’s not biased, because the ABC also offended Bob Hawke by questioning his decision to help liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein:
I remember Bob Hawke getting tetchy with us when he thought we were less than enthusiastic over his determination to participate in the first Gulf War.
Strange definition of unbiased, really, to note that both Labor and Liberal think you’re too much to the Left. But this is how Faine interprets it:
We know, as does the audience, that when we cop it from everyone we are getting it about right.
Faine is by no means a bad broadcaster, and I’d listen to him any day above his rivals. But the claim that he’s not biased is simply preposterous and I cannot tell if Faine is just trying to fool us or is just fooling himself. I suspect the latter, given that in the very same piece he likens Tony Abbott’s criticism of ABC bias to the real censorship and physical intimidation of journalists under the Putin government. Abbott equals Putin? Seriously, Jon?

But for those who need more evidence, here are some links about the completelyunbiasedJon Faine, a prominent Leftist in an ABC which lets only Leftists host its main current affairs shows, Note particularly Faine’s explicit refusal to cover the Climategate scandal, so embarrassing to his warmist cause, and the reprimand he earned from the ABC for his unprofessional hostility to reporters uncovering Julia Gillard’s role in the AWU slush fund scandal, now the subject of a police investigation. (Gillard insists she did nothing wrong.)
And, just for a laugh, who can forget his serious suggestion that the Herald Sun have a ”cleansing” of conservative columnists to mark the election of the Rudd Government?
Note. I do not criticise Faine for being biased. I criticise him for pretending he isn’t. We all have our biases, which inform our judgements on what is important and what is credible. My argument with the ABC is not that it gives a platform for Leftist presenters to decide what to cover and how, but that it denies the same opportunities to conservatives.
UPDATE
A Reachtel poll suggests the public are now onto a bias that for too long was not called out:
.Overall, 32.2 per cent believed the ABC was biased towards the Labor Party, while just 8.2 per cent said it was biased towards the Coalition.
Reachtel should have also asked how much the ABC was biased to the Greens.
This perception of bias is likely to grow. Not only is the ABC’s bias more strident than I have ever known, conservatives are more angry and prepared to challenge it. The ABC brand is slowly crumbling.
(Thanks to reader Peter.) 
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The elite confounded. Republic not so inevitable, after all

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (5:39am)

Everyone at the best and most elite parties agrees a republic is not just a good thing but inevitable. From 2008:
KEVIN RUDD ...  said the desire for a republic at the 2020 summit was overwhelming and “there was a sense of inevitability” about it
Of the 100 members of the [summit’s governance] group, everyone voted for a republic except for the former governor-general William Deane, who abstained, and the Liberal senator George Brandis, who opposed.

Labor luvvies should get out more:
Support for an Australian republic has collapsed to a 20-year low, with just 39.4 per cent of Australians saying they support a republic.
Support was lowest among older Australians and Generation Y voters, with people aged 35 to 65 most supportive of abandoning the monarchy.
An exclusive ReachTEL poll of more than 2100 Australians, conducted on Thursday night for Fairfax, shows 41.6 per cent oppose the country becoming a republic...
I suspect opponents are actually rejecting the elitists and dividers pushing the republic as much as they are rejecting the republic itself.

Incidentally, here is one more example of how governments - often with media help - can manipulate perceptions so that what is widely rejected can seem what is widely accepted. The 2020 Summit was among the most brazen attempts yet to defraud us and I was shocked so many media executives and stars took part in this farce.
UPDATE
Julia Gillard last month, showing again her famous talent for reading the public will:

The majority of Australians when polled say that they do want Australia to become a republic.
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ABC orders reporters to stop hypeing boat people stories

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (5:04am)

It says plenty about the ABC’s bias that this edict needed to be sent to ABC reporters:
Head of ABC news content Gaven Morris ...  instructed senior staff, including director of news Kate Torney and ABC News 24 editor Tony Hill, to provide advice to their teams about reporting on ‘’incidents at sea’’…
‘’As you know, we currently have a set of claims by asylum seekers our editorial teams are continuing to work hard to get an accurate account of and to verify,’’ he wrote.
‘’During this process all our output should reflect the basic facts before us … we don’t need to interpret them beyond what we know, nor should be [sic] editorialising or seeking to add adjectives or any flourish.
‘’We’re not seeking to describe or embellish the allegations with descriptions like torture or mistreatment or violence and we’re not reporting whether we have proved or disproved anything the media has previously reported - the allegations and responses stand for themselves.’’
The edict has already had an effect. This is the ludicrous story the ABC published on Friday about an asylum seeker complaining the navy sprayed him during what turned out to be a fight over his boat’s sabotaged engines:
New details have emerged about asylum seeker claims that Australian sailors mistreated them during a boat interception operation earlier this month.
This is how it was quickly rewritten:
New details have emerged about a boat interception operation earlier this month …
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The Adventures of Dunsterforce

Andrew Bolt February 02 2014 (12:40am)

Your favorite books, poems and music - and mine

image
It is 1918. Lionel Dunsterville, Rudyard Kipling’s best friend from school, is now a Russian-speaking general in charge of a small force of soldiers, including Australians, on a ship. He writes:
A British General on the Caspian, the only sea unploughed before by British keels, on board a ship named after a South African Dutch President and whilom enemy, sailing from a Persian port under the Serbian flag to relieve from the Turks a body of Armenians in a revolutionary Russian town.
An incredible story, and in passing a tribute to the British public schools which gave even boys destined for the army a classical education. Also a challenge to the popular prejudice that reckons British officers of World War One to be dunderheads of little imagination.
If anyone can tell me how I can lay my hands on an original hard copy edition, I’d be grateful.
UPDATE
Thanks to the many readers who sent me links to sellers of the book. Appreciated. 
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Yes .. those are the lyrics - ed
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February 2Groundhog Day in Canada and the United States
Roger Federer
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Events[edit]

Births[edit]

Deaths[edit]

Holidays and observances[edit]

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“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-5
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
February 1: Morning
"They shall sing in the ways of the Lord." - Psalm 138:5
The time when Christians begin to sing in the ways of the Lord is when they first lose their burden at the foot of the Cross. Not even the songs of the angels seem so sweet as the first song of rapture which gushes from the inmost soul of the forgiven child of God. You know how John Bunyan describes it. He says when poor Pilgrim lost his burden at the Cross, he gave three great leaps, and went on his way singing--

"Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me!"

Believer, do you recollect the day when your fetters fell off? Do you remember the place when Jesus met you, and said, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; I have blotted out as a cloud thy transgressions, and as a thick cloud thy sins; they shall not be mentioned against thee any more forever." Oh! what a sweet season is that when Jesus takes away the pain of sin. When the Lord first pardoned my sin, I was so joyous that I could scarce refrain from dancing. I thought on my road home from the house where I had been set at liberty, that I must tell the stones in the street the story of my deliverance. So full was my soul of joy, that I wanted to tell every snow-flake that was falling from heaven of the wondrous love of Jesus, who had blotted out the sins of one of the chief of rebels. But it is not only at the commencement of the Christian life that believers have reason for song; as long as they live they discover cause to sing in the ways of the Lord, and their experience of his constant lovingkindness leads them to say, "I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth." See to it, brother, that thou magnifiest the Lord this day.

"Long as we tread this desert land,
New mercies shall new songs demand."
Evening
"Thy love to me was wonderful." - 2 Samuel 1:26
Come, dear readers, let each one of us speak for himself of the wonderful love, not of Jonathan, but of Jesus. We will not relate what we have been told, but the things which we have tasted and handled-of the love of Christ. Thy love to me, O Jesus, was wonderful when I was a stranger wandering far from thee, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Thy love restrained me from committing the sin which is unto death, and withheld me from self-destruction. Thy love held back the axe when Justice said, "Cut it down! why cumbereth it the ground?" Thy love drew me into the wilderness, stripped me there, and made me feel the guilt of my sin, and the burden of mine iniquity. Thy love spake thus comfortably to me when, I was sore dismayed--"Come unto me, and I will give thee rest." Oh, how matchless thy love when, in a moment, thou didst wash my sins away, and make my polluted soul, which was crimson with the blood of my nativity, and black with the grime of my transgressions, to be white as the driven snow, and pure as the finest wool. How thou didst commend thy love when thou didst whisper in my ears, "I am thine and thou art mine." Kind were those accents when thou saidst, "The Father himself loveth you." And sweet the moments, passing sweet, when thou declaredst to me "the love of the Spirit." Never shall my soul forget those chambers of fellowship where thou has unveiled thyself to me. Had Moses his cleft in the rock, where he saw the train, the back parts of his God? We, too, have had our clefts in the rock, where we have seen the full splendours of the Godhead in the person of Christ. Did David remember the tracks of the wild goat, the land of Jordan and the Hermonites? We, too, can remember spots to memory dear, equal to these in blessedness. Precious Lord Jesus, give us a fresh draught of thy wondrous love to begin the month with. Amen.
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Jesaiah, Jeshaiah 
[Jēsā'iah,Jē shā'iah] - jehovah is opulent or hath saved.
1. A son of Hananiah and grandson of Zerubbabel (1 Chron. 3:21). 2. A son of Jeduthun and a musician in David's time (1 Chron. 25:3, 15).
3. A Levite, son of Rehabiah and grandson of Eliezer, son of Moses (1 Chron. 26:25).
4. A son of Athaliah and head of his father's house at Elam, who with seventy males returned from Babylon with Ezra (Ezra 8:7).
5. A Merarite included in the above seventy (Ezra 8:19).
6. A son of Benjamin, the father of Ithiel whose descendants dwelt in Jerusalem (Neh. 11:7).
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Today's reading: Exodus 27-28, Matthew 21:1-22 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Exodus 27-28

The Altar of Burnt Offering
"Build an altar of acacia wood, three cubits high; it is to be square, five cubits long and five cubits wide. 2 Make a horn at each of the four corners, so that the horns and the altar are of one piece, and overlay the altar with bronze. 3 Make all its utensils of bronze--its pots to remove the ashes, and its shovels, sprinkling bowls, meat forks and firepans....

Today's New Testament reading: Matthew 21:1-22

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King
1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away."
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 "Say to Daughter Zion,
'See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.'"


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