Monthly Archives: December 2016

3000

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This is my 3000th post. Begun just for fun and to communicate with friends and family, there is now a surprisingly large number of people who wander in. It hasn’t changed what I do since this is still just for me to keep track of what’s what and to remember what’s been going on that has interested me.

But I will mention this, since it is now more likely to happen then not, specially since the contracts have been signed. My collected blog posts on the American election – which comes to 135,000 words – is going to be published in January. My provisional title is, A Blog History of the American Election: 2016. So far as I know, this will be near enough the first time a collection of blog posts has been turned into a published narrative. I have now read these over in order four times and they really do bring back each of the moments, since each moment was the most recent moment of the election process – and that is even assuming that the process has even yet come to an end. It therefore has the quality of suspense since until the voting was over, no one could say how it would end. What makes this one work so well is that I was at one of the very first Trump rallies in July 2015, heard him speak and watched the election first hoping that that he was worth backing, and then when I decided he was, that he would win.

I actually think that blogs will become the first draft of history. The media have so completely sold out to the left that it is impossible to get anything like an objective sense from them. I, of course, am also a partisan, but have no pretensions that I can and could affect the result so I just react to events without attempting to shape them. That is all the more the case since I have been watching the election from Australia so am remote from even the most limited ability to affect the outcome. The media’s aim is to get you to vote a certain way, and the only way they want to you vote is for the left. They are now a pernicious force that Donald Trump has gone some limited way towards containing, but their poison has hardly diminished. I will certainly let you know where you can get a copy when the book is published.

Meantime, this still remains a way to communicate with family. Hi Joshi.

The night of the living dead

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Where does this go? Is it just more of the process that GWB was selected and not elected, or do they really mean to turn over the election result. The latest:

PODESTA QUESTIONS ELECTION LEGITIMACY…
White House moves to undermine victory…
Media try to delegitimize…
CNN HOST: Trump win a ‘national emergency’…
CONFUSION: Earnest says CHINA did hacking…
CIA pushes ‘conspiracy theory’…

CHILL JILL: Judge rejects Pennsylvania recount…
Completed Wisconsin recount WIDENS Trump margin…

It’s the first one that is the most sinister. The actual title at the link is, Clinton campaign backs call for intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote.

Hillary Clinton’s top political adviser John Podesta said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election.

“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” he said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.

The claims are groundless and the election is over, unless the electoral college decides to go rogue. To understand just how groundless any of this is, there is this: Former UK Ambassador Blasts “CIA’s Blatant Lies”, Shows “A Little Simple Logic Destroys Their Claims”.

Socialism is a cult religion

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capitalism-is-religion

Capitalism is an economic system. Under capitalism, most of the means of production are owned by people who must make their living by selling the things they produce at prices that cover their costs. You can see capitalism in operation anywhere living standards have been rising.

Socialism is a form of parasitism. It bleeds productivity with its hunger for revenge against the successful and envy of what others have achieved that they cannot achieve themselves.

A socialist would rather be poor than that others should be rich. If socialists are to become rich themselves, they will never do it by producing something and creating value, but by finding their way into a position of political power that allows them to syphon off the wealth created by others.

John Stuart Mill: On the Treatment of Barbarous Nations

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Dated 1874, a year after his death, but it does sound exactly like something he would say:

To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error, and one which no statesman can fall into, however it may be with those, who from a safe and unresponsable position, criticize statesmen.

Among the many reasons why the same rules cannot be applicable to situations so different, the two following are among the most important. In the first place, the rules of ordinary international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives. In the next place, nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners. Independence and nationality, so essential to the due growth and development of a people further advanced in improvement, are generally impediments to theirs. The sacred duties which civilized nations owe to the independence and nationality of each other are not binding towards those to whom nationality and independence are either a certain evil, or, at best, a questionable good. The Romans were not the most clean-handed of conquerors; yet would it have been better for Gaul and Spain, Numidia and Dacia, never to have formed part of the Roman Empire?

To characterize any conduct whatever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject. A violation of great principles of morality it may easily be, but barbarians have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treatment as may, at the earliest possible period, fit them for becoming one. The only moral laws for the relation between a civilized and a barbarous government are the universal rules of morality between man and man.

It is becoming impossible to trust any official source of information in the West and not just the media

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A follow-up from The Russians are Coming!. This is titled, Former UK Ambassador Blasts “CIA’s Blatant Lies”, Shows “A Little Simple Logic Destroys Their Claims”. The writer is Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was the Rector of the University of Dundee. Who can you trust, but certainly he seems more credible than any of the official sources who imply everything but provide evidence for nothing.

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”

“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.

“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes “Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump.” Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a “credible source”? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

We really do live in frightening times. Who can you trust? And it is madness to find that WikiLeaks are more authoritative than the actual authorities. Because even if you and I have a counter-source of information, 99% of the people we deal with do not, and don’t want it either.

The link was provided by OldOzzie with thanks.

The Russians are coming!

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In fact, according to the latest forms of Democrat hysteria, they have already been. I’m not even sure I know what the Russians have been accused of doing. Here’s a version of the story that mirrors my own scepticism: Trump on Russia meddling in US election: ‘I don’t believe it’.

US intelligence has previously linked Russia to leaks of damaging email from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign but saw it as a broad bid to undermine confidence in the US political process.

On Friday, however, the Washington Post reported that the CIA has since concluded that the aim of the cyber intrusions was to help Trump win the election.

The New York Times quoted a senior administration officials as saying there was “high confidence” that the Russians hacked both the Democratic and Republican National Committees, but leaked only documents damaging to Clinton through WikiLeaks.

There is no doubting that WikiLeaks made a difference, and it would be interesting if it turned out that the Russians thought of Hillary as the less reliable partner. There is, of course, Obama with his ‘the 1980s Are Calling, They Want Their Foreign Policy Back’ which he said after Romney had stated that Russia was the largest geopolitical threat during the debates in 2012. But more amusing was when Donald Trump Called on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails. This is from The NYT on July 27.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Since they have no sense of humour on the left, and specially no appreciation of irony, I will point out that it was meant as a joke. As the story concludes:

Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to avoid condemning Mr. Putin’s government is a remarkable departure from United States policy and Republican Party orthodoxy, and has fueled the questions about Russian meddling in the campaign. Mr. Trump has denied that, saying at the news conference that he has never met Mr. Putin, and has no investments in Russia.

“I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now,” he said, “so that we can go and knock out ISIS together.”

I would like to have Russia friendly as well. We are no longer in the middle of the cold war, and there is this business about ISIS.

Say’s Law, monetary growth and the absence of inflation

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At about 11:15 he actually brings Say’s Law into it, and this comes almost a minute after he bags Keynesian economics (around 10:25). The problem remains how difficult it is to keep track of the real side of the economy at the same time as you are trying to keep track of the money side. There are the real goods and services which are limited and finite and the amount of purchasing power that can be expanded forever.

The question that really does require a proper answer is why has there been no major increase in the growth in consumer prices even though there have apparently been massive increases in the amount of money.

It’s partly the way money has been kept from flowing into the economy generally, it is partly because we can produce standard goods and services more cheaply, it is partly because inflation has affected various products that do not enter into the CPI such as share prices, it is partly because the economy is do dead and it is partly because labour cost growth is so low.

[Spotted by Turtle of WA in the Catallaxy comments thread.]

If only we were as smart as they are

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The reality is that the left is more obtuse, less informed and cruelly indifferent to the social and political fates of those into whose hands entire nations fall. Vide Cuba and Venezuela for recent examples. What follows is typical snide and superior non-humour from the left: Conan’s Spoof Phone Calls Between Barack Obama And Donald Trump Will Never Get Old

What if Donald Trump kept bugging Barack Obama for advice?

Conan O’Brien imagines the kind of things the president-elect may be asking the current commander in chief in a series of hilarious spoof telephone calls.

From questioning whether Kazakhstan is a meat dish to complaining about the length of the Mexican border, Obama is luckily on hand to answer each of Trump’s queries.

These are the headings of the issues Trump will need assistance from Obama to deal with. The list is typical of the left’s ideological vision since they must imagine these are areas Obama has handled with aplomb and distinction.

1 On Presidential Medals Of Honor And Kazakhstan
2 On Gifts, Candy And The Mexican Border
3 On The Nuclear Codes, Iran And Jackie Chan
4 On Taiwan And The State Of The Union Address
5 On Time’s ‘Person Of The Year’ And The Mexican Wall

They have lost for now, but their self-contained ignorance makes them perennially dangerous. They have no sources of information outside their self-constructed bubbles and refuse to let any shards of reality disturb their information flow.

The most depressing part is that this article has been sent to me by an old school friend who has lived in California for the past thirty year or so, and sees this as a perfect representation of the actual Donald Trump. I have been trying to warn him off this stuff but he has continued it through since the election of GWB, always assuming I am in complete agreement with the things he sends. It is, in itself, their inability even to slightly appreciate that there are other points of view that may be the most tragic part in dealing with such people.

What does Gillian Triggs have to say about this?

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Everything about this story from the start to the present moment is disturbing. It is partly the legislation and even more the personnel of the Human Rights Commission that has led us now to this: QUT case: Cindy Prior must pay students $200,000-plus.

Section 18C complainant Cindy Prior faces being pursued into bankruptcy after a judge ordered she pay an estimated $200,000 in legal costs for three QUT students who were accused of racial hatred over Facebook posts.

Somewhere along the way, the AHRC did not head this off into what it is supposed to do, which is to bring the parties together and help them sort out the issues. Instead, it was left to fester, and Ms. Prior was allowed to think that this was some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. Instead, she has been brought to financial ruin.

What I want to hear is from Gillian Triggs and the others at the AHRC who seem to me to share a goodly portion of the blame for what has happened to Ms Prior.

Can anyone explain this?

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A very puzzling story I cannot seem to make sense of: Nation divided at school gate as progressives lead white flight. Here are the details:

Since 2002 the City of Yarra council has proclaimed Melbourne’s inner north “a Refugee Welcome Zone’’.

But in this ardently Greens-voting area — and in left-leaning suburbs in Sydney’s inner west — progressive, middle-class families have been accused of avoiding schools with high refugee, ­indigenous or non-English-speaking student populations.

“They are fleeing,’’ African community leader and former refugee Abeselom Nega says of white families who appear to be shunning inner Melbourne schools with large African-Australian student cohorts, many of whom live in social housing. . . .

Ms Ho agrees that even in progressive inner-city areas, parental support for diversity “stops at the school gate’’. Ms Ho says a recent study she co-wrote, focusing on public schools in Sydney’s inner-west suburb of Glebe, revealed how “there’s an acceptance of diversity that stops when it comes to ‘my own kids’. We saw that a lot.’’

Reading the comments section to the story does help me make some sense of it, but mostly it is hard to fathom.