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shoot and boot to "save sharma"...

shoot n boot

Three weeks ago, the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, gave an interview to The Australian Jewish News, assuring Australia’s most prominent Jewish newspaper that the government’s policy towards Israel would not change under his leadership.

Australia would not be following the United States’ policy changes of earlier this year, Morrison said in the interview, published on September 27. Its embassy would remain in Tel Aviv.

“We don’t want to do anything that disrupts progress towards a two-state solution,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “It’s not so much having any philosophical or historical objection, I understand the US’s decision. But Australia will always make decisions based on its assessments.”

In May, the US rebadged its existing consulate in Jerusalem as its embassy, declaring it would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a highly sensitive issue at the heart of the stalled Middle East peace process.

In his AJN interview, Morrison also committed Australia to continued support for the Iran nuclear deal that former US president Barack Obama had struck but that his successor, Donald Trump, had abandoned.

“The question is what it would be replaced with and if it makes things any safer,” Morrison said. “Australia and the US are the closest of allies when it comes to support for Israel but that doesn’t mean that in every specific instance we will do exactly the same thing.”

On Tuesday morning, without warning, Morrison announced an about-face on both issues – four days ahead of this weekend’s byelection in the seat of Wentworth, the electorate formerly held by his ousted predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, the loss of which would force him into minority government.

At 12.5 per cent, Wentworth has the highest proportion of Jewish voters of any seat in Australia.

The sudden about-face from Morrison followed a weekend report in The Sydney Morning Herald that said influential Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins, of Woollahra’s Emanuel Synagogue in the Wentworth electorate, had written to his congregation urging them to consider “the moral issue of climate change” when they voted.

MORRISON SAID SHARMA HAD PERSUADED HIM THAT “YOU CAN ACHIEVE BOTH, AND INDEED BY PURSUING BOTH, YOU ARE ACTUALLY AIDING THE CAUSE FOR A TWO-STATE SOLUTION”.

The high-profile independent candidate Kerryn Phelps, who campaigned strongly on climate change and who the Liberals’ internal polling showed was on track to win, attends Emanuel Synagogue.

Morrison is understood to have reached his decisions about Israel at the weekend and put them to cabinet on Monday. Announcing them on Tuesday morning alongside Foreign Minister Marise Payne, he said of the possibility of formally recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving Australia’s embassy there: “Australia, and I as prime minister, am open to that suggestion.”

He did not mention having said the opposite to The Australian Jewish News.

He insisted the byelection had not prompted this sudden change of heart.

Rather, Morrison said Australia’s former ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma, who is the Liberal Party’s candidate in Wentworth, had persuaded him it might be possible to move the embassy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without jeopardising progress towards a two-state solution with the Palestinian people, who also claim Jerusalem.

The way to do that, Sharma had argued, was to recognise West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

Morrison said Sharma had persuaded him that “you can achieve both, and indeed by pursuing both, you are actually aiding the cause for a two-state solution”.

Morrison summed up: “Now, when people say sensible things, I think it is important to listen to them.”

Sharma’s argument is not new. He made it in a newspaper opinion piece published in May, four months before Morrison’s interview with AJN.

The assessments to which Morrison appeared to be referring in that interview came earlier this year when then prime minister Turnbull and foreign minister Julie Bishop sought Australian agencies’ advice after the US announced its embassy decision.

Those assessments universally opposed Australia doing the same.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade argued it could jeopardise bilateral relations with Indonesia and Malaysia and trading partners in the Middle East.

The department estimated moving the embassy would cost at least $200 million because of the high price of real estate in Jerusalem, where Australia doesn’t have premises, and of security.

Australia’s security agencies also warned that such a move could prompt a backlash that would put the safety of Australian diplomats at risk across the Arab and wider Muslim world. Leaked Australian Security Intelligence Organisation advice dated this week said the same.

Morrison’s commitment is only to consider the moves and is not yet a promise to do more. Both policy changes have strong support in the Jewish community.

On Monday night, Morrison telephoned Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to advise him of the preliminary decisions and to propose the two countries appoint military attachés in their respective embassies.

Israel and the United States warmly welcomed his decisions.

DFAT officials contacted Australia’s five-eyes intelligence partners – the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand – and Morrison messaged the Indonesian president Joko Widodo. Foreign Minister Payne also notified her Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi.

Marsudi was hosting the Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki in Jakarta on Tuesday and The Saturday Paper has confirmed she asked specifically if the Australian government could at least delay the announcement until her visitor had departed.

She was told this was not possible.

 

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/10/20/how-scott-morrison-changed-his-mind-israel

from the scomo noah's ark society...

Pacific leaders have come out swinging after Environment Minister Melissa Price allegedly said the region was "always" seeking "cash" from Australia, with Cook Islands' Acting Prime Minister Mark Brown comparing the remarks to something you would hear from the "flat Earth society".

Ms Price is accused of approaching former Kiribati president Anote Tong in a Canberra restaurant and telling him, "I know why you're here. It's for the cash", according to the account of Labor frontbencher Pat Dodson.

Multiple sources told the ABC she continued by saying: "For the Pacific it's always about the cash. I have my chequebook here. How much do you want?"

The man at the centre of the story, Mr Tong, offered a relatively muted response, but other Pacific leaders have now hit out against the alleged comments — which Ms Price denies making.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-19/pacific-leaders-slam-melissa-pric...

as scomo was starting to look like trump...

Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps has claimed victory in the Wentworth by-election, promising voters she will not let them down.

Key points:
  • Dr Phelps has been named as an "easy winner" by ABC elections analyst Antony Green
  • The Liberal Party has held the seat for decades, but their vote has collapsed
  • The result means the Morrison Government has lost its majority in Canberra

 

ABC elections analyst Antony Green called the result just over an hour after polling booths closed.

Counting so far shows the Liberal Party has suffered a projected swing of more than 20 per cent against candidate Dave Sharma. 

The Liberal Party, and its predecessors, have held the eastern Sydney electorate since Federation and the historic result means the Federal Government will lose its one-seat majority in Canberra.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-20/kerryn-phelps-wins-wentworth-by-e...

a rolling display of government incompetence...

Let’s not sugar coat this, the outcome in the Wentworth byelection is a disaster for the Liberals. Counting isn’t over yet, but the anti-government swing in this contest will be north of 20%, which is the biggest swing ever recorded against a government at a byelection.

It is a repudiation. A repudiation of a chaotic period in government characterised by self-obsession and self-harm. A repudiation of the party’s lurch to the right, and the hollowing out of the sensible centre.

A repudiation of amoral plots, schemes, coups, and seat-of-the-pants bullshit – a howl of frustration from voters, from the most well-heeled to the couch surfers, about the endless weasel words from their disconnected, half-deranged politicians – a group with scant respect for facts and evidence, intermittent competence and no plan in evidence to address the problems the country faces.

20 October 2018 is a clarion repudiation of Punch and Judy politics, of a sideshow signifying nothing, conducted at taxpayer expense. The good people of Wentworth have stood up as a job lot, grabbed politics-as-usual by the lapels, leaned into its smug face, and screamed get stuffed you absolute morons.

And who can blame them? It’s the only thing to be said. It is the only, intelligent, honest response to what goes on in Canberra these days.

Funnily enough, Kerryn Phelps can thank Alan Jones for her victory in Wentworth. When Jones created a storm a few weeks back by advocating advertising a horse race on the Opera House, it created a focal point for outrage that helped galvanise her people-power insurgency in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. A rolling display of government incompetence, and desperation, over the final fortnight of the campaign, did the rest – a live laboratory experiment of events inspired to depress Dave Sharma’s primary vote.

Phelps didn’t need to submit a brief of evidence that politics-as-usual, and the toxic media chorus intent on making corrosion a business model, is intent on debasing itself in the middle of the public square; it did that all for itself, and at the most convenient time possible.

Phelps just had to be Not That, and have the emotional intelligence to be something more, something as simple and as powerful as a force for good in public service, someone who could focus on the things that matter to people, someone connected enough to know what those things might be.

As a medical doctor, Phelps could diagnose the ailing polity of being in need of critical care, and propose herself as being the person qualified to provide it, and having been invited to do so, Wentworth called the ambulance.

Scott Morrison was completely tin-eared in his response to the revolution of Saturday night. Chin up he said, it’s all a bit wonky, sure, but we’ll smash those Labor bastards until the last, until the bell rings. Hurrah said his fist-pumping supporters in Double Bay – the last partisans in the village.

The people outside the Intercontinental had just voted against crude partisanship, and talking-point pugnaciousness, and the endless fighting about nothing, and embraced something else, embraced anything but that.

Unless Morrison regains consciousness quickly and works out that’s what’s happening – that the Australian people are increasingly intent on taking politics into their own hands, and reshaping it – then the swing we saw on Saturday night won’t be the last of his humiliations. It will just be the beginning.

The rise of the independents isn’t just a problem for the Liberals. Representatives connected to their communities, with a will to serve them, can take seats away from Labor too, and from the Nationals. This is a major party problem, not just an affliction confined to a government that has forgotten how to be competent.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/20/the-wentworth-bye...

 

ScoMo was looking like a preacher still trying to prove that Noah's Ark, as ludicrous the legend is — think about it seriously for a second, please: it doesn't make any sense — was a true story to use to oppose the science of planetary warming... And he pointed his fingers, banged the table and gesticulated like a puppet the stringmaster of which was about to sneeze.

Ridiculous and idiotic...

 

a massive storm hits sydney...

Huge thunderstorms rolled thick and fast across NSW on Saturday evening, sparking severe weather warnings for most of the state and descending skies into near-absolute darkness.

The nature of the first storm system, which hit at about 6pm, was unpredictable, and saw heavy hail, lightning, thunderstorms, and rainfall of between 5 and 30 millimetres spattered across many regions.

The storms in the metro Sydney area only lasted about an hour before they moved north-east, up through the Hunter region and headed out to sea, but another storm system was expected to sweep through the city between 10pm and 1am.

"There are very widespread storms across most of the state as this low pressure system moves through," Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jake Phillips said.

"We just need to watch individual storm cells as they evolve ... it's difficult to say with rainfall because it's quite variable from place to place. [Between 5 millimetres and 30 millimetres] is a wide range I know, but that is just the nature of thunderstorms."

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/severe-thunderstorms-wreak-ha...

 

 

If god existed (god does not exist), she would had her way to show ScoMo some humility and some understanding... Send a super big storm by closing of polls in Wentworth. But the Mo cobber has not understood anything. So By 19:18 yesterday, after the lightnings had stopped, the ABCidus oracle Antonius Greenius Spoketh to announce that Scomo's ship had taken a major broadside in Wentworth...

 

Humility not being his middle name despite being that of Jesus we are told, ScoMo said something like: "the Liberal Party must own the disastrous Wentworth by-election result, saying it paid "a big price" for its latest leadership coup." 

 

Nothing much to do with this leadership crap, moron! All to do with policies, especially those related to the crazy weather. Nothing to do with paying a "big price". The bigger price will be when the likes of Tony Turdy and his idiots are turfed out of parliament.

 

The Wentworth rout is a kick in the gonads of ScoMo's crummy lack of understanding. He is an Idiot who on tele points a nasty foreboding biblical finger at the crowd of unfaithfuls. Scomo still believes in the 4,000 year old legend of Noah's Ark and has no clue about scientists explaining PRESENT global warming.

 

The big storm last night (20/10/18) was an indication of global warming on the rise.

 

scummo eats shit...

Malcolm Turnbull has hit back at his successor after Scott Morrison criticised the former prime minister's performance during a diplomatic trip to Indonesia.

Key points:
  • Mr Morrison told broadcaster Alan Jones Mr Turnbull spoke about issues not in his brief
  • Mr Turnbull tweeted the prime minister asked him to discuss trade and the embassy issue
  • Mr Turnbull will make his first major media appearance on Q&A next Thursday

 

Mr Turnbull travelled to Bali to meet with President Joko Widodo at the request of Mr Morrison earlier this week.

During that trip he warned against Mr Morrison's plan to consider moving Australia's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

That prompted Mr Morrison to today say he would not send Mr Turnbull on any more diplomatic trips.

Mr Morrison, in an interview with 2GB, said "issues of trade and other things" were "not really part of the brief" for Mr Turnbull's trip.

That prompted Mr Turnbull to take to Twitter to respond to the criticism.

"A few facts. @ScottMorrisonMP asked me to discuss trade and the embassy issue in Bali and we had a call before I left to confirm his messages which I duly relayed to @jokowi," he tweeted.

"There was a detailed paper on the issue in my official brief as well."

During his trip, Mr Turnbull said moving Australia's embassy to Jerusalem would provoke a "very negative reaction" from Indonesia.

This morning, 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones asked Mr Morrison whether there would be "more missions for this man to be able to go and spout his own, discredited views".

To that, the Prime Minister replied, "no".

But Mr Morrison said he would always act "with respect" towards the country's previous prime ministers "regardless of who they are".

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/scott-morrison-malcolm-turnbull-diplomatic-trip-israel-indonesia/

 

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scummo's noah's ark society applauds jerusalem...

What is it with the current, temporary prime minister’s thing about moving the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? While Indonesia is not impressed with this idea, straight from the handbook of right-wing derangement, it does find support among SloMo’s prayerful clappers.

God has told Pentecostals that Jesus will come again to Jerusalem and the end days are at hand. There are a few steps to this: first, after the Jews build a temple in Jerusalem there will be Armageddon, humanity’s last great war, then we’ll see 1000 years of peace; soon followed by the Jews converting to Christianity; and, finally, the Second Coming.

It’s all centred on Jerusalem, so it’s best our embassy is there to roll out the red carpet for the Saviour. Forget the idea that this was a Wentworth byelection thought bubble – it’s actually all about “dispensational pre-millennialism”.

Little wonder that 80 per cent of evangelicals voted for Trump, while he found support among only 28 per cent of confused Jews.

Hallelujah.

 

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2018/11/17/gadfly-the-mitch-trials-b...