Friday, June 20, 2014

Fri Jun 20th Todays News

Today is remarkable for the charter given Oxford University in 1214. The record of greatness coming from that fine institution for learning is substantial, including 26 PMs and 27 Nobel Laureates. People from Oxford include Kings and Queens and heads of government, Bishops and Cardinals and religious leaders, poets and novelists from Joseph Heller, John Donne to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Dramatists like Oscar Wilde or Russel T Davies. Children's writers like Lewis Carroll or Richard Adams. Scholars like Melvyn Bragg, Samuel Johnson, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein. Rupert Murdoch. Richard Burton. Emilia Fox. Michael York. Rowan Atkinson. Dudley Moore. Donald Crisp. Hugh Grant. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Graham Wiggins. Kris Kristopherson. Edward James and Christopher Wren. Without her, the world would be poorer. 

But today is not just a one thing day. Samuel Morse got a patent for the telegraph in 1840. Alexander Graham Bell installed the worlds first telephone service in 1877. Victoria Terminus, the busiest railway in India first opened today in 1887. On this day in 1893, Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders of her dad and step mum. America is great. In 1940, Italy attempted to invade France, but the greater display of chutzpah was three Jews and a priest from Auschwitz dressing as SS and driving away in an SS marked car in '42. One of them fought for the Polish resistance before being jailed for 7 years by the communists following the war. Typically, the reprisals were tragic, with inmates being tattooed with a number following the escape and family members imprisoned and killed. There were race riots in Detroit in '43. Ed Sullivan show began in '48. A red telephone connected the US President and Soviet Premier in '63. Watergate tapes were found to be an imperfect medium in '72. In Nicaragua the US ABC lost a journalist in '79 .. Carter having done for him as Whitlam had the Balibo 5. 

In 1733, noted Cherry tree hacker Betty Washington Lewis was born, George would try to cover for her (I cannot tell a lie, I cut down that cherry tree). Cricketer Jack Worrall was born in 1860. Errol Flynn in 1909. Audie Murphy in 1924. Brian Wilson in 1942. Anne Murray in 1945. Xanana Gusmao in 1946. Lionel Ritchie in 1949 and Nicole Kidman in 1967. 
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Betty Washington Lewis, Jack Worrall and Audie Murphy. Born on the same day, across the years. Audie wrote his autobiography that I used to learn to read (To Hell and Back). On your day in 1685, The Duke of Monmouth declared himself King of England at Bridgwater. In 1887, Victoria Terminus, now the busiest railway station in India, opened in Bombay on the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. In 1900, Boxer Rebellion: The Imperial Chinese Army began a 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Beijing. In 1947, Mafia hitman murdered gangster Bugsy Siegel in Beverly Hills, California. 1963, The so-called "red telephone" was established between the White House and the Kremlin, after the Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated that direct communications between the two nations were necessary. What a day! Rebellion, confusion, building grandeur, and the death of a gangster in Beverly Hills .. it should have been Chicago.
Matches
Hatches 
Despatches
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SERIOUSLY

Tim Blair – Friday, June 20, 2014 (2:13pm)

Frightbat was actually a thing on ABC News 24. At the two-minutes mark:



In other frighty developments, Margo Kingston orders
Don’t contribute to Blair blog – trying build his brand off your energy. 
Oh, it’s already built, dear. Now I’m just adding a pool and a four-car garage. Clem Bastow complains
Good to see that Tim Blair went to the trouble of finding one of my skimpier Instagram shots to link to in his latest piece. 
No trouble, Clem. That shot appears at the top of the very first page of a Google search. Total effort: one click.
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PLOY REVEALED

Tim Blair – Friday, June 20, 2014 (12:50pm)

Isn’t marriage merely a clever ploy to keep us quiet about the trickier issues such as the deportation of lesbian asylum seekers? 
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The Bolt Report on Sunday

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (4:11pm)

On Sunday on Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm…

My guest: Labor’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles Immigration Minister Scott Morrison on boats and immigration.
The panel: Janet Albrechtsen and former Labor advisor Bruce Hawker.
NewsWatch: Sharri Markson,.
Plus the obligatory dig at the Greens, whose rudeness needs repaying.
And a question: how come the mud isn’t sticking to Bill Shorten?
The videos of the shows appear here.
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Latham smells conspiracy

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (10:47am)

The AWU scandal

Most people of reason would think three independent witnesses testifying to the same thing as a powerful corroboration.
Mark Latham sees it as conspiracy:
Documents aside, what verbal evidence has come before the commission concerning Gillard? Like a parade of ageing Oompa Loompas, three impish men – Ralph Blewitt, Wayne Hem and Athol James – claimed to remember cash being exchanged in and around her Melbourne home.
Indeed, the nature of their recollections is remarkably similar.
Bizarre.
(Via Michael Smith.)


Icon Arrow Continue reading 'Latham smells conspiracy'
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Gore blames Syria on global warming

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (10:25am)

Al Gore blames the jihadist uprising in Syria on global warming:
Syria is one of the countries that has been in the bull’s-eye of climate change. From 2006 to 2010, a historic drought destroyed 60 percent of the country’s farms and 80 percent of its livestock - driving a million refugees from rural agricultural areas into cities already crowded with the million refugees who had taken shelter there from the Iraq War. As early as 2008, U.S. State Department cables quoted Syrian government officials warning that the social and economic impacts of the drought are “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.” Though the hellish and ongoing civil war in Syria has multiple causes - including the perfidy of the Assad government and the brutality on all sides - their climate-related drought may have been the biggest underlying trigger for the horror
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ABC campaigns against royal commission

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (10:13am)

The ABC’s bias is now shameless - and dangerous in a state organisation that is now by far our biggest media outlet:
THE ABC and its Melbourne radio host Jon Faine have been attacked over their reporting of the royal commission into union corruption, with a veteran Coalition senator calling on managing director Mark Scott to step in to ensure the broadcaster’s coverage was accurate, fair and balanced.
Liberal National Party senator Ian Macdonald ...  last night told the Senate that Faine had been “reprimanded before by his bosses for not being impartial in relation to the royal commission, and it would seem he needs to be reprimanded again’’.
He said the ABC appeared to have joined Faine in imposing a “reporting ban’’ on covering any critical news out of the commission.
“The ABC’s editor-in-chief Mr Scott really needs to review his organisation’s coverage of the royal commission and instruct them to report accurately, widely and fairly in a balanced way. That is what the public demands for their dollar,’’ Senator Macdonald told parliament.
Senator Macdonald ... quoted Media Watch’s criticism on Monday of the ABC’s reporting of the royal commission and the subdued coverage in Fairfax publications, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
UPDATE
Piers Akerman on the ABC’s shameful protection racket, running dead on the AWU slush fund story:
The ABC, under its ­self-­described editor-in-chief Mark Scott, flatly refused to run any news stories about the investigations launched by the Victorian police into Gillard’s former boyfriend and her role in providing legal advice for the ­establishment of a slush fund which was later shown to be the vehicle for his ­corrupt behaviour, the AWU Workplace ­Reform Association.
ABC Insiders’ host Barrie Cassidy, and his Left-leaning guests, rejected any discussion of the ongoing case… Other ABC figures ­continuing to run interference for Gillard include Melbourne radio host Jon Faine and the Sydney radio host Linda Mottram.
On Tuesday last week, Faine laboriously read on- air a lengthy statement by Bruce Wilson, which ­included some claims that he had allegedly been ­offered $200,000 by veteran union lawyer Harry Nowicki to fabricate ­material implicating Gillard in the AWU Reform Association scam.
Two days later royal commissioner Dyson Heydon said flatly: “I would reject those paragraphs as irrelevant.”
The ABC’s Faine was at it again this week with another attack on Harry Nowicki based on a 2011 Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal reprimand against the Melbourne lawyer.
Nowicki had admitted swearing to an affidavit without properly reading and investigating the ­material attached, which ­related to how his firm had divided a settlement it won for a woman injured in a car accident.
“That’s about as bad a finding short of getting struck off that a solicitor can have,” Faine said, branding the decision as “extraordinary stuff”.
In reality, a reprimand is possibly the least finding that could have been made given that both parties agreed to the facts and ­indeed made joint submissions as to disposition ­including penalties and submitted consent orders for the tribunal to consider. A reading of the VCAT ­decision shows deputy ­president Michael Macnamara actually wondered whether Nowicki’s failure to ­adequately probe the ­affidavit prepared by his ­office really amounted to professional misconduct.
“I think it is a relatively finely balanced issue and one on which minds might differ,” he said.
Faine, a former lawyer, was reprimanded by ABC management last year ­following interviews he ­conducted with broadcaster Michael Smith and Age ­editor-at-large Mark Baker about the case.
And he deserves another whack for his attempts to impugn the commission’s witness.
Faine is entitled to his opinion, ill-founded and politically motivated though it is. The question for the ABC is: which of its other presenters offers the balance?
The ABC is out of control.
UPDATE
It takes only 400 Leftists to turn up at a pub for the ABC to treat it like a new mass movement:
CHRIS UHLMANN: Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser says the major parties are showing a “descent into inhumanity” in their treatment of asylum seekers. In front of a packed crowd in a Sydney pub last night, Mr Fraser was critical of policies on both sides of the political divide… AM’s Thomas Oriti went along.
(Sound of noisy pub)
THOMAS ORITI: The weekly Politics in the Pub event in Sydney is described as a discussion for the political left. But at what was arguably the most successful event in its 26 year history last night, former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser was the star… Over the years, Sydney’s Harold Park Hotel has hosted countless events. But the publican, William Ryan, says he’s never seen a crowd quite like this.
WILLIAM RYAN: We’ve always done the Politics in the Pub, the Poets in the Pub, but tonight probably caps off everything we’ve ever done.
THOMAS ORITI: And the event attracted all ages.
Ardy Prasad was born almost a decade after Malcolm Fraser lost the 1983 election.
ARDY PRASAD: It’s just really out of curiosity and to see a man who has been in the Liberal Party and to see how much things have changed in the past 30 or 40 years and how he’s reacted to that sort of change.
Wow. The next time I speak to 400 people, will the ABC give me that awed treatment, too? Or is it reserved only for speakers of the Left?
Stupid question. 
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Richo: Labor would lose an election now

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (9:23am)

Graham Richardson says Labor shouldn’t be daring Tony Abbott to call a double dissolution election: 
Newspoll captures the mood of the nation at a given point in time. Last weekend the government would have lost an election by a considerable margin, and that is all well and good up to a point — there was no election. Moreover, elections are held only after a minimum five-week campaign where Labor and the Greens will be massively outspent by the Liberal and Nationals parties, let alone the Clive Palmer spectre now lurking in the foreground of Australian politics.
Such a campaign would feature millions of dollars in advertising Labor’s failures in economic management. While those claims would no doubt be highly exaggerated, it would be impossible to camouflage the political ineptitude and downright stupidity of the Rudd and Gillard prime ministerships. The images of that incompetence are still vividly imprinted on the minds of voters and the 53 per cent-47 per cent two-party preferred result in Newspoll would be reversed in the first few weeks of any election campaign held any time soon.
Labor will not win an election held this year and would do well to chloroform those who push this envelope too far.
And of course:
Shorten has ...  been less than inspiring.... [H]e must tell Australia soon what he would do as opposed to what he refuses to allow the government to do.
And Richo is right to warn the Government against counting on Palmer’s rabble of Senators to split from him any time soon:
Dio Wang from Western Australia works for Palmer and will be financially dependent on him when he fails to be re-elected in six years — and fail he will.
Jacqui Lambie from Tasmania is a former spurned Liberal whose capacity to spit out nasty rhetoric is the most impressive talent she appears to have.
Then there is Glenn Lazarus, who seems a fundamentally decent fellow but is quite obviously seriously out of his depth. He is the likeliest to break away from his boss, but it won’t happen in time to save any measure in this budget.
The brilliant work done by Mike Willesee on the Seven Network a couple of weeks ago demonstrated a level of dependence on Palmer from these three that was almost sickening. Ricky Muir’s level of dependence on Palmer was actually sickening. 
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Party of bad bosses

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (9:07am)

How embarrassing for Labor - again:
DANIEL Andrews has issued a grovelling apology and party figures are questioning his judgment after Labor’s bully fiasco. 

In his worst day as Opposition Leader, his candidate for the key seat of Frankston was forced to resign over a bullying scandal revealed by the Herald Sun.

Helen Constas, who aimed to topple rogue MP Geoff Shaw at November’s election, stood aside yesterday after the ALP was briefed on a confidential workplace bullying case brought by her former assistant at the Peninsula Community Legal Centre.
According to a court statement of claim, Ms Constas “screamed” and “threatened” the 60-year-old during repeated phone calls the day she resigned.
It was alleged that she presided over a culture of “bullying and harassment” while chief executive of the Frankston centre.
The Supreme Court claim, which was settled confidentially last year, escaped Labor’s vetting process for new candidates.
I’m always suspicious about bullying claims, but it’s odd that the party of workers seems to attract them.
Clare O’Neil, who at 23 became the youngest female mayor in Australian history, has emerged as a contender for the safe Labor seat of Hotham.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday announced the preselected Labor candidate, Geoff Lake, would be dumped after revelations that he had verbally abused a wheelchair bound woman during a 2002 council meeting.
UPDATE
A friend of Constas and Liberal donor says I have every reason to be suspicious of bullying claims. So easily made, so hard to defend, so tempting to reach a settlement which in this case is confidential, leaving Constas now unable to defend herself. 
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Obama puts back troops he withdrew. UPDATE: Terrorists seize Saddam’s chemical weapons

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (8:43am)

Barack Obama yesterday blamed Iraq for making him pull out all his troops in Iraq in 2011:
[JOURNALIST]: Just very quickly, do you wish you had left a residual force in Iraq?  Any regrets about that decision in 2011?
THE PRESIDENT:  Well, keep in mind that wasn’t a decision made by me; that was a decision made by the Iraqi government.  We offered a modest residual force to help continue to train and advise Iraqi security forces.  We had a core requirement which we require in any situation where we have U.S. troops overseas, and that is, is that they’re provided immunity since they’re being invited by the sovereign government there, so that if, for example, they end up acting in self-defense if they are attacked and find themselves in a tough situation, that they’re not somehow hauled before a foreign court.  That’s a core requirement that we have for U.S. troop presence anywhere.
The Iraqi government and Prime Minister Maliki declined to provide us that immunity.
Question: if Iraq’s refusal to offer immunity to troops in 2011 forced Obama to pull out all troops in 2011, why does he now feel free to send back troops in 2014?:
We’re prepared to create joint operation centers in Baghdad and northern Iraq to share intelligence and coordinate planning to confront the terrorist threat of ISIL ... and we’re prepared to send a small number of additional American military advisors—up to 300—to assess how we can best train, advise, and support Iraqi security forces going forward.
American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region, and American interests as well.
Has Iraq offered those 300 soldiers immunity, after all? Or is Obama dropping that demand, at least for advisors?
And just how hard did he argue for immunity in 2011?
UPDATE
This is not satire:

Sunni extremists in Iraq have occupied what was once Saddam Hussein’s premier chemical-weapons production facility, a complex that still contains a stockpile of old weapons, State Department and other U.S. government officials said.
U.S. officials don’t believe the Sunni militants will be able to create a functional chemical weapon from the material. The weapons stockpiled at the Al Muthanna complex are old, contaminated and hard to move, officials said.
Nonetheless, the capture of the chemical-weapon stockpile by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS or ISIL, the militant group that is seizing territory in the country, has grabbed the attention of the U.S.

Among other things, this demonstrates why removing Saddam was essential. What could terrorists have seized had Saddam’s weapons programs continued?
(Thanks to reader Alan RM Jones.) 
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Fixing Abbott’s messaging

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (8:07am)

David Crowe on the Abbott Government’s muddled media messaging:
The conventional wisdom is that Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, is pulling the strings behind every move. If that’s so, the ministers certainly aren’t responding as they should.
If anything, Abbott and his office seem to show remarkable restraint when ministers wander away from the government’s core business.
When Brandis aired his view on East Jerusalem, the Prime Minister’s first response was to let his minister have his way.
When Pyne opened a new front in the HECS debate, members of the leadership team could not even get their lines straight.
Behind the scenes in recent days, Abbott addressed some of these challenges in talks with ministers. While it might be going too far to say there were rebukes for those who haven’t been helping, the Prime Minister’s concerns would have been obvious.
My own observations:
- In fact, some of the media “mistakes” would seem less so if the Government actually took on its critics with verve and wit, instead of backing and filling. Apologise less, and assert more. Think Keating. It is better to seem too confident than too hesitant.
- Minor media stunts such as the video support of “Mike” Jedinak just aren’t up to scratch. It’s not up to Abbott to check Jedinak’s first name. And who on earth thought it would be convincing to have Abbott tape his support from an office with just a Socceroo scarf tossed over his suit to simulate interest in soccer? So clumsy and lazy. Howard at least got into green and gold tracksuits and released photos of him jumping with excitement as he watched sport. Bob Hawke got himself sprayed with booze watching the America’s Cup.
- Abbott is not being shown as natural. He always seems formal and often on the defensive, peppered by hostile questions. Why is he not shown out and about with people who like him, being as normal and easy as he privately is?
- Ministers often do media with an only too apparent - and only too justified - awareness of the hostility of most press gallery journalists and presenters. They seem then defensive or, in a couple of cases, smart-arse or aggressive in responding. Ministers should realise the people they must convince are not the journalists but the audience watching. Radiate more geniality and authority. More smiles. Don’t look so under siege. Learn from Hockey.
- Where is the attention to media happenings that the Liberals in Opposition did so well? Just calling a press conference is like putting yourself at the wrong end of a duck shoot. Don’t just tell but show. Illustrate more. I remember Abbott in Opposition going to business after business to show people complaining about their carbon tax bill. It worked for him then, so why hasn’t he repeated that kind of campaigning as PM?
- For heaven’s sake, look in charge.
This is exactly not the embattled look the Government wants, but which that hostile media is imposing:
image
Four senior ministers in the Abbott government have been assigned secret-service style protection amid an angry backlash over the federal budget, while a fifth minister is also receiving personal protection over specific threats.
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Petrol head wooed by Greens

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (7:55am)

The incompatibility of Senator and issue should be plain:
Ricky Muir could frustrate the Abbott government’s plans to dismantle Labor’s carbon tax package in its entirety as the likelihood the elusive senator-elect will decide the fate of the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation is growing…
Mr Muir, of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, ... is being courted by the Greens.
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McKitrick: the warming theory is falling apart

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (7:18am)

Global warming - dud predictions

Ross McKitrick, professor of environmental economics, says the warming pause is about to smash global warming theory:
Both satellites and surface records show that sometime around 2000, temperature data ceased its upward path and leveled off. Over the past 100 years there is a statistically significant upward trend in the data amounting to about 0.7 oC per century. If one looks only at the past 15 years though, there is no trend.
It will by 2017 be impossible to reconcile climate models with reality
A leveling-off period is not, on its own, the least bit remarkable. What makes it remarkable is that it coincides with 20 years of rapidly rising atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. Since 1990, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen 13%… Climate models all predicted that this should have led to warming of the lower troposphere and surface. Instead, temperatures flatlined and even started declining…
The chart on this page reproduces an important diagram from Chapter 9 of the IPCC report. The gray line shows the surface temperature record (HadCRUT4 from the UK Met Office) from 1860 to the present. The black line shows the average of climate model runs covering the same interval. The black line in effect sums up mainstream views on how the climate works....
image
The data prior to the year 2000 represent historical reconstructions. Modellers were able to “peek at the answer” ... . The match over the historical interval is therefore not proof of model accuracy since the models were forced to line up with observations.
But as of around 2000, the models are run prospectively, and this is where they begin to fail.... [T]he post-1999 gap is something new. It has not only run the longest of any previous gap but it is still widening… [I]t is difficult to see models and observations ever agreeing again…
We will reach the 20 year mark with no trend in the satellite data at the end of 2015, and in the surface data at the end of 2017. With CO2 levels continuing to rise, it will at that point be impossible to reconcile climate models with reality and the mainstream consensus on how the climate system responds to greenhouse gases will begin breaking apart… At this point it seems unlikely that climate models in their current form will survive another five years. 
(Thanks to reader Steve.) 
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Pensioner on jihad

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (7:06am)

image
We paid Khaled Sharrouf a disability pension, but he’s not too disabled to serve with jihadists in Iraq.
(Via Tim Blair.)  
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India fights green imperialism

Andrew Bolt June 20 2014 (6:59am)

image
India says no to green imperialism:

Following an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report that alleged foreign-funded NGOs were creating obstacles to India’s economic growth, the Home Ministry has clamped down on Greenpeace, an international campaign group present in 40 countries.
In a letter dated 13th June, the Ministry has directed the Reserve Bank of India that all foreign contributions originating from Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation — two principal international contributors to Greenpeace India Society — must be kept on hold until individual clearances are obtained from the Ministry for each transaction…
Greenpeace was specifically targeted because the IB report had charged it with orchestrating “massive efforts to take down India’s coal-fired power projects and mining activity.”
According to the report, public protests in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli region — which produces 15,000 MW energy — were being engineered by Greenpeace, “actively aided and led by foreign activists.”
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G’day friends,
Bad luck comes in threes, they say, and fate’s cruel blows cannot have had a greater recent impact than on the sports-minded residents of the Sunshine Coast. Hot on the heels of Queensland’s loss to NSW in the State of Origin, the first time that unnatural state of affairs has manifested itself in eight years, the Socceroos went down to defeat in Brazil. And just to cap off the litany of misery visited upon residents in the seat of Fairfax there can be no consolation off the pitch. After all, having sent the antic Clive Palmer to Canberra last September, every day’s headlines are reminder that the ballot box will suffice for a net when voters are determined to kick own goals.
Of course I am counting on the good sense of humour of my many Queensland friends who may just follow Rugby League & International Soccer……… Nothing personal!
Have a great weekend and I hope your team wins (as long as they are not playing against the Mighty Sydney Roosters)
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist
0414293765
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G’day,
I believe that if the Iraq Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government had not insisted that the US troops left back in 2011 and that the US President, Barack Obama had not been so compliment with the request, then the current civil war and quite possibly the sectarian implosion of the the Middle East would not be happing today. Nuri al-Maliki’s was  still struggling with a delicate power-sharing arrangement between Shi’ite, Kurdish and Sunni parties, leaving Iraq vulnerable to meddling by Sunni Arab nations and Shi’ite Iran and of course the interests of Syria. Sure puts truth to the adage , “Careful what you wish for, for you might just get it>”
Seems like a Vietnam all over again but this time, unlike Vietnam the US may just have to go back in and try to sought these warring sides out. Another damn waste of lives of course and I sure as hell hope that our PM stays well and truly out of this mess, we just do not need to be there. We’ll no doubt do our best when it comes to humanitarian aid and refugee placement. 
I hope I am wrong but I think this is just the beginning and that this conflict will set off a conflict that will engulf us all…… please I hope I am wrong!
Godspeed
Zeg
Freelance Editorial Cartoonist
0414293765
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afghangster:

If any photograph of Afghan children deserved to be the cover of National Geographic (or any publication for that matter), it’s this one. 
I guess a photograph of disillusioned youth is less appealing than the refugee and/or wounded children they usually exploit in their spreads. 

I saw Babel .. these kids don’t seem Afghan .. they seem Morrocan. 
I saw Babel .. these kids don’t seem Afghan .. they seem Morrocan. - ed
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=== Posts from last year ===
4 her, so she can see how I see her



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Check out this photo! You are accustomed to looking up at thunderstorms from the ground, but take a look at what a thunderstorm looks like from above! (via @EarthPics)
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Church tells girl to burn in hell
WHAT started as a five-year-old girl selling lemonade outside a church has sparked a twitter tirade of the most unholy kind.
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Why did the traffic light turn red?

You’d turn red, too, if you had to change in the middle of the street.
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‘Evidence of the depth and breadth of Obama’s radicalism’: President suggests Catholic schools are divisive ==> http://twitchy.com/2013/06/19/evidence-of-the-depth-and-breadth-of-obamas-radicalism-president-suggests-catholic-schools-are-divisive/
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.. I thought maybe it was just something left over after something was disconnected, like a trailer, but then I noticed the license plate .. - ed
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A ship in the Kiel Canal
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Events[edit]

Births[edit]

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Holidays and observances[edit]

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“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,” Ephesians 5:25-26 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost."
Acts 2:4
Rich were the blessings of this day if all of us were filled with the Holy Ghost. The consequences of this sacred filling of the soul it would be impossible to overestimate. Life, comfort, light, purity, power, peace; and many other precious blessings are inseparable from the Spirit's benign presence. As sacred oil, he anoints the head of the believer, sets him apart to the priesthood of saints, and gives him grace to execute his office aright. As the only truly purifying water he cleanses us from the power of sin and sanctifies us unto holiness, working in us to will and to do of the Lord's good pleasure. As the light, he manifested to us at first our lost estate, and now he reveals the Lord Jesus to us and in us, and guides us in the way of righteousness. Enlightened by his pure celestial ray, we are no more darkness but light in the Lord. As fire, he both purges us from dross, and sets our consecrated nature on a blaze. He is the sacrificial flame by which we are enabled to offer our whole souls as a living sacrifice unto God. As heavenly dew, he removes our barrenness and fertilizes our lives. O that he would drop from above upon us at this early hour! Such morning dew would be a sweet commencement for the day. As the dove, with wings of peaceful love he broods over his Church and over the souls of believers, and as a Comforter he dispels the cares and doubts which mar the peace of his beloved. He descends upon the chosen as upon the Lord in Jordan, and bears witness to their sonship by working in them a filial spirit by which they cry Abba, Father. As the wind, he brings the breath of life to men; blowing where he listeth he performs the quickening operations by which the spiritual creation is animated and sustained. Would to God, that we might feel his presence this day and every day.

Evening

"My Beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether."
Song of Solomon 2:16-17
Surely if there be a happy verse in the Bible it is this--"My Beloved is mine, and I am his." So peaceful, so full of assurance, so overrunning with happiness and contentment is it, that it might well have been written by the same hand which penned the twenty-third Psalm. Yet though the prospect is exceeding fair and lovely--earth cannot show its superior--it is not entirely a sunlit landscape. There is a cloud in the sky which casts a shadow over the scene. Listen, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away."
There is a word, too, about the "mountains of Bether," or, "the mountains of division," and to our love, anything like division is bitterness. Beloved, this may be your present state of mind; you do not doubt your salvation; you know that Christ is yours, but you are not feasting with him. You understand your vital interest in him, so that you have no shadow of a doubt of your being his, and of his being yours, but still his left hand is not under your head, nor doth his right hand embrace you. A shade of sadness is cast over your heart, perhaps by affliction, certainly by the temporary absence of your Lord, so even while exclaiming, "I am his," you are forced to take to your knees, and to pray, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved."
"Where is he?" asks the soul. And the answer comes, "He feedeth among the lilies." If we would find Christ, we must get into communion with his people, we must come to the ordinances with his saints. Oh, for an evening glimpse of him! Oh, to sup with him tonight!
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Today's reading: Nehemiah 12-13, Acts 4:23-37 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Nehemiah 12-13

Priests and Levites
1 These were the priests and Levites who returned with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and with Joshua:
Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra,
2 Amariah, Malluk, Hattush,
Shekaniah, Rehum, Meremoth,
4 Iddo, Ginnethon, Abijah,
5 Mijamin, Moadiah, Bilgah,
6 Shemaiah, Joiarib, Jedaiah,
7 Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah and Jedaiah....

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 4:23-37

The Believers Pray
23 On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. 25 You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
"'Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
26 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.'
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