Category Archives: Cultural

A Carr bomb in Israel

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I went into a second hand book shop at lunch and saw a copy of Australia’s Most Deadly Snakes and I immediately thought of Bob Carr. I then opened the book and the page I turned to showed a Red-Bellied Black Snake and again thought of Bob Carr. This particular snake can apparently be found in the swamplands of Eastern New South Wales, about which it said that when cornered behaves in a way that is mostly bluff, and I again for some reason thought of Bob Carr.

Why I kept thinking about Bob Carr I am not too sure, but perhaps it is because he has decided he no longer wishes to support Israel in its existential fight against its relentless and well-funded enemies and instead now supports Hamas. And perhaps it is also because on Sunday I went to see a documentary at the Jewish Film Festival – which I recommend to no one if they would like their peace of mind left undisturbed – that dealt with the efforts made to create a film record of the Nazi concentration camps just after they were overrun by the allies in 1945. I thought I had seen it all, but I hadn’t seen anything. I could only barely get through a documentary about the recording of the victims. An hour and a half of an actual film record could be watched by no one, at least no one with a human soul. No film was released at the time anyway because the British government preferred not to encourage anyone to support the Jews trying to get to Palestine, their entry being at the time blocked by the British. The thousands of feet of film was therefore simply left in storage until now. Must have been an early incarnation of Bob Carr who made the decision.

Meanwhile, Israel is filled with people who either were in those camps or are descendants of people who were in those camps. No one has persecuted Muslims for a thousand years, other than other Muslims. Jews have not been so lucky. Their memories are very real of just what might happen if they let their guard down even for a moment. Carr is worried that the Israelis have been building housing in Jerusalem in which people can live, both Arab and Jew. What a tragedy that must be. No modern atrocity can stand comparison with such actions. Good to see Bob Carr again on the side of the angels.

But here is part of the back story. The UN gave the Jews a bit of land in a decision in 1947. Not a lot. If left in peace in their own designated area, it might have come to not much more than the size of Singapore and Hong Kong in total together, most of it desert. But Arab armies attacked from the south, north and east in 1948 with the specific intent of killing every Jew they could while driving into exile those who survived. Nevertheless, the Jews were not overrun and when all the dust had settled, ended up with a larger piece of territory than they had originally been allocated. And this they defended when they were attacked in 1967, also by armies that had they prevailed, would have murdered every Jew they could. But again, the Jews prevailed and again they ended up with more territory than they originally had held, including the old city of Jerusalem.

Although Bob Carr is too stupid to understand this, there are reasons for the Israelis not to trust their Arab neighbours. Carr also does not seem to understand that the Israelis are intending to stay right where they are until some kind of settlement is reached to divide the area up into permanent borders. In the meantime, since the only policy Hamas seems to have is to drive the Israelis into the sea and kill every single Jew they can, we will have to wait until there is a more accommodating negotiating partner. In the meantime, whatever lack of progress there seems to be towards a final settlement, if one were to apportion blame, would be around 95% on the Arab side and 5% on the Israeli.

Now I can agree that the Jews who settled in this land – a land in which Jews have lived continuously without interruption for the past three thousand years – might have chosen somewhere else to go after the war. There are so many places that undoubtedly would have welcomed the millions of impoverished Jewish refugees who were desperate to find a place to settle in quiet and peace. Perhaps they could have found just such a place in one of the old and civilised states of Europe, perhaps the birthplace of Beethoven and Wagner (no doubt amongst your favourites, Bob), and would have found a home amongst people who would have welcomed them and taken them in and who the Jews knew they could trust and with whom they could live in perfect security. Why did the Jews not seek such a place of refuge, do you think, you big stupid ignorant fool? Sounds pretty good to you, I suppose, you dimwitted jerk of a supposed student of history as you are. Why didn’t the Jews do that?

So look Bob, we can all sympathise with the Palestinian people whose misfortune is to be cursed with such stupid and obtuse leaders – people similar to yourself, no doubt – who are unwilling to allow peace in their land. I was not a great sympathiser with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, but I warmed to her unwavering personal support for Israel that was only overridden by you and that fellow dimwit Tanya and no doubt others who travel under Labor Party colours. I have followed your career and you have not made a single correct judgement in your entire political career on anything significant, not as Premier, not as foreign minister nor in your new role as an envoy of the Middle East. Your consistency in stupidity is astonishing, but at least it is consistent.

Ann Coulter on immigration

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It is not racist in any way to want your country to have sensible immigration laws to ensure that you are monitoring who enters your community and to ensure that one’s way of life is not undermined by an inability to cope with rapid increases of people from a different cultural background. Just because someone wants to come to your country to live does not mean you have to let them. When I think of the interviews I had to go through back in 1974 to migrate to Australia, the attitudes some people have today only make me laugh. And I had two university degrees and was coming to fill a job at a university that could not fill a lecturer’s position in economics. Boy were those the days! This is the always-sensible Ann Coulter discussing ‘DON’T SUCK UP’ ON IMMIGRATION in which she notes that even migrants to the US may not be all that keen on open migration either.

Columnist and author of “Never Trust a Liberal Over 3-Especially a Republican,” Ann Coulter argued that the Republican Party shouldn’t “suck up” on immigration during an interview on Saturday’s “Huckabee” on the Fox News Channel.

“Don’t suck up on things like amnesty and by the way, when I said that, you have the beautiful illustration in this one campaign, a wonderful new Republican Senator, Cory Gardner (CO), had just in a debate said something I’d consider a suck up and I don’t really want to attack a Republican I love. But he was attacking Udall for not pushing amnesty hard enough. Well, then after I said ‘this isn’t going to work, this is so stupid,’…then he came out with exactly what Republicans should be doing. And that is as Romney said, we will appeal to Hispanics the way we appeal to everyone by saying we are the party that offers opportunity and freedom from regulation and we won’t pass stupid bills like Obamacare that pay for abortions’…that totally worked” she argued.
She added “this idea that recent Hispanic immigrants want a huge wave of illegal immigrants to compete with them for the same jobs and drive their wages down, is silly. The Democrats are trying to persuade Republicans to fall for this so that the Democrats get more voters. But, I note, that when Obama was appealing for the Hispanic vote, he didn’t talk about amnesty in his Spanish language ads.”

Coulter also expressed faith in the new Republican Senate to push good policies, stating “everyone keeps saying, particularly on our side, ‘yeah, it was great and now the Republicans better not blow it. And I don’t think they will, I think [Sen.] Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is smart about this. But, I would like to warn the Tea Partiers there, do not expect the first bill to be a complete repeal of Obamacare that’s not the way Republicans should be playing this. They should send up a small piece, a small piece, things that are so overwhelmingly popular…that when and if, and probably when Obama vetoes it, the newspapers are going to have to report what Obama just vetoed. And people will say ‘wait a second, illegal aliens are getting earned income tax credit benefits?’”

You should go the link as well and listen to Ann speaking with Mike Huckabee, and I particularly liked his “President Oblivious”. There will be lots more of this in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

Preserving the right to defend ourselves against our enemies

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On November 25, 1994 Isaiah Berlin was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto for which he prepared what he called a “short credo”. Read it all. It is about is protecting ourselves from the enemies of our civilisation and the kinds of things we may need to do. Some of these enemies possess the potential to wield immense power in combination with a conviction that they are not only irrefutably right but that this certainty gives them the right to do whatever it takes to prevail. So far as they are concerned, the future of mankind is dependent on understanding whatever it is they believe. They will therefore do whatever it takes to make their own views ascendant. Recognise the type? Any current examples around? Free and unfettered speech for them and those who sympathise?

Here is part of what Isaiah Berlin had to say at the end of a long life thinking about these and other similar questions. He was thinking about a European menace that had come with The Enlightenment (so-called) which led to many a totalitarian ideology. Today it is a more ancient enemy of free thought that is the problem. And to tell the truth, with ISIS and its offshoots, it is hard to see that they are trying to do me or anyone else any good. Berlin may thus be even farther away from explaining the nature of the problem we face than he could have known. I don’t quite see the benefit to the people whose heads they cut off nor to anyone else. This is part of what Berlin wrote:

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used — if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

Nothing about our current marauders reminds me in any way of people who are looking for “a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society”. They merely look like the return of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. The overlay of bringing any kind of virtue to the world is not credible. They could not possibly even believe it themselves. That our own crew of leftist misfits and psychopaths give them cover is part of what Berlin was originally referring to when his thoughts only ranged as far as Lenin and Pol Pot. ISIS is a different world. So what should be done? How are we to protect ourselves from such evil? Here’s his advice:

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled — liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march — it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants — not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction.

We are able to talk to each other because we are, for the most part, bourgeoise and therefore prone to compromise while recognising the need to trade off parts of one desired outcome for others which compete and get in the way of each other. This is the world we live in, will always live in. There are people who would impose their wills on us if they could and literally by the sword and armed might. If you think you can compromise with such savagery you are wrong. They must be fought every inch of the way. Speaking for myself, I will not put our civilisation, my civilisation, at supreme risk to preserve some individual principle such as the right to say whatever I want whenever I want no matter what harm it may do to myself, my family, my friends, my country and my way of life. Berlin thought he saw a better world coming but he hadn’t seen what we have.

I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming.

Well if such a future is coming, it is not coming yet. In the meantime, we must do what we can to preserve this way of life that if snuffed out as so many wish to do will not soon return. It is up to us, we who are alive today, to defend the freedoms we inherited, which, as always, requires us to balance each of our rights against others of our rights to preserve what we have. If our enemies prevail, no one will be talking about preserving our rights for a very long time to come.

The green carding of America

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obama jobs americans wont do

Obama cares not in the slightest about anyone else or who he harms in getting his agenda through, and this applies to the Democrats as much as anyone else. His next act of sabotage will be the issuing of 34 million green cards to illegal aliens, some already in the US and others still to come.

The only mystery I find about Obama is that anyone finds him a mystery. He has been as transparent as a sheet of glass and has been from the first moment he came into view. He is still to some extent constrained by politics and the American constitution but not by much. He has ruined the medical system, subverted the economy, ground down America’s national defence (and therefore ours as well), and is now flooding the country with millions who may never assimilate. Not much more he really could have been expected to do if his mission was to undermine the United States and the West in general.

His personal motivations are somewhat obscure but only slightly. It is either the psychological damage of his early upbringing that has left him a seething mass of hatreds, or his ideological far left cast of mind that was formed at the hands of Frank Marshall, Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers. Some combination of the two is most likely. But the end result is an America that will never be the same as it was in 2008.

He is a political con man whose great pleasure is to laugh at those who support him as the stupid fools he perfectly well understands them to be.

Old Palmer Song

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My favourite folksong when I first came to Oz. A great tune which ended up as the theme for the series “Rush”. It’s about mining in Queensland and searching for gold and things like that. It just sort of came to mind for no reason I can think of.

Old Palmer Song

The wind is fair and free, my boys, the wind is fair and free
The steamer’s course is north, my boys, and the Palmer we will see
The Palmer we will see, my boys, and Cooktown’s muddy shore
Where I’ve been told there’s lots of gold, so stay down south no more

Chorus
So, blow ye winds, heigho
A-digging we will go
I’ll stay no more down south, my boys
So let the music play
In spite of what I’m told
I’m off in search of gold
I’ll make a push for that new rush
A thousand miles away

I also came across this looking for the above on youtube which is “The Old Maid’s Song” this time sung by someone named Clive Palmer. Have I mentioned that as part of my life on the left, I learned to play the banjo like all good children of comrades and naturally from Pete Seeger’s instructional manual. This is a great tune and well done but by today’s standards very non-PC.

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, the theme song from Rush was written by George Dreyfus but there ought to be no doubt that he was taking it from “The Old Palmer Song”. Lots of composers drew on folk song tradition. Here is Dreyfus’s version. And please do note the lovely sounds of the banjo.

FURTHER UPDATE: Again pointed out in the comments that the tune comes from an English sea shanty. But the “Ten Thousand Miles” of the title are about a lad who follows his true love off to Australia after she’s been shipped out as a convict. And if you go into this link on the history of the tune on disk, you can see a number of versions of the lyrics and one more video of the song being played. But if you are in England, the only place Ten Thousand Miles Away is Botany Bay so it may really be ours after all.

ABSOLUTELY FINAL UPDATE: Turns out it is neither a folk song nor a sea shanty but an music hall song from the nineteenth century which even comes with the name of the person who wrote it. I missed this on the discography I linked to before.

Written for the Music Hall by Joseph B. Geoghegan (1816-1889). He was born in Barton upon Irwell, Lancs, and probably wrote his songs while manager of the Star and Museum Music Hall in Bolton. More usually known as Ten Thousand Miles Away, it’s found—though infrequently—all over the English-speaking world, with 47 Roud entries.

The Swedish model

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I don’t know what everybody is worried about. In two, three generations at most, everyone will be completely used to it. Look at how well it’s worked out for Sweden:

The Swedish police has released a map of 55 areas where they publicly admit to having surrendered control to the criminal gangs. The report describes outright attacks on police officers trying to enter the areas, which is a step up from the previous problem with attacks on mailmen, fire trucks, ambulances and similar services; it used to be that fire trucks and ambulances had to wait for police escort to enter the areas, but now the police themselves need protection.

The no-go areas heavily coincides with the map of the 186 “exclusion areas” aka. crowded, predominantly muslim immigrant ghettos, where education is low, employment is lower, and the only local business thriving is that of the drug dealing (which takes place openly and continues to do brisk business.)

As the real law backs away, organized crime emerges to take its place. The police report notes that “a wider clientel [in the areas] are increasingly turning to the criminal authorities for justice” in a Godfather-like fashion. Unofficial courts and punishments are often meted out according to the codes of the home cultures of the dominant gangs. The report also point out that there are vehicle checkpoints at the borders of some of these areas. The bad news is that it’s not the police doing them; it’s the gangs securing their home turf against law enforcement and rival crime families.

Your vote is sacred, unless you vote Republican

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The video is of another instance from the story quoted here, but the story is just the same: Voting machine casts candidate’s vote for his Dem opponent.

Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

voteballotbox“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.

You will not be surprised to find that this is not a story on the front page of the New York Times. There are so many scandals within the American political system that it is impossible to keep up.

It’s not easy being non-green

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I went along to hear ex-Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore last night and a very rewarding evening it was. A fellow Canadian and from our west coast so I may even have travelled in the same circles during the dropout stage of my life in the early 70s. I certainly knew whereof he spoke. I encourage you to go along, and also catch up with him on Andrew Bolt tomorrow. He has a roadshow presentation which you can hear for yourself, so I will stick to the Q&A which was as interesting as the rest. And if you are of the opinion you have heard it all before, you may have but I hadn’t so it may be worth your while. He has also not yet been scheduled for an interview by the Trotskyists at the ABC.

First my own question, which is something that worries me a very great deal. Moore presented a long line of statistics and other evidence, some I was familiar with and some I wasn’t, in large part pointing to the fraudulence of the global warming scam but also dealing with other areas of the environmental movement and the massive damage it is causing. So my question was to point out that anyone who has the inclination to follow the evidence and look at the data has already caught on and understands there is nothing to concern us. What, therefore, do you think, I asked, about green policies really being a form of religious observance, not science based, and therefore unreachable by the use of rational argument. To which he replied:

“I have no answer.”

I think that is the same answer I have and it is the essence of the problem. There is always some stray fact or random event that will keep people who desperately want to believe the worst about our way of life from straying from the fold. There are no crucial tests they set themselves. There is no actual standard, such as seeing whether or not temperatures have actually risen, which you would think ought to be fundamental. To a true fundamentalist there is no evidence actually required. The old cartoonist standard of the old man with the “we are doomed” sign is the mainstream. We live in an age of faith and nothing is allowed to disturb that faith.

The other answer to a question I found interesting was about why the environmental movement has been able to maintain such a strong position in spite of the massive harm it does and the absence of any serious factual basis for their claims. This was his answer:

There is a great convergence of our elites, each of which sees advantage to themselves in promoting and going along with the environmentalists:

1) the greens
2) politicians
3) the media
4) the grant-seeking academic community
5) businesses who want to look green as a promotional activity
6) most religions

That is a formidable combination that, quite frankly, I don’t see any prospect of defeating. In more authoritarian regimes green politics is a nullity but here in the West, I can see it is one more reason to believe we are at the end of time. It is only the fantastic cost to individuals that may eventually slow but never stop the damage being done. When your electricity bill is $1000 a quarter, there may be some reconsideration. In the meantime, I might go and get myself one of those “we are doomed” signs for myself.

If you would like to see Patrick, this is where you still can while he is in Australia. Also on Andrew Bolt tomorrow, at 10:00 am. A very good speaker and comes with the authority of someone who has been there and knows where all the bodies are buried.

Where you can still see Patrick Moore in Australia

MELBOURNE
27 Oct. 12 for 12:30 The Australian Club 110 William St 2-course lunch $110 p.p. (dress code)

CANBERRA
30 Oct.

1st Session 2-3pm afternoon tea 3-30 pm,
2nd session 3:30- 4:30 pm

Hughes Community Centre Wisdom Street, Hughes
$20 donation ($10 for students) requested plus $2 for afternoon tea payable at the door

PERTH
1 Nov.
1st meeting 4 – 5pm (GM crops) C3 Church, 94 Waratah Ave. Dalkeith.
2nd meeting 5:30 – 7pm (Climate), C3 Church, 94 Waratah Ave. Dalkeith
a $20 donation ($10 for students) is requested to cover costs – covers both sessions.

HOBART
3 Nov. TO BE ADVISED.
Please register your interest in the Hobart event with Garth Paltridge (paltridge@iinet.net.au)

BRISBANE
Nov. 5th 7 for 7:30, Irish Club 175 Elizabeth St. A $20 donation at the door is requested to cover costs.

NOOSA
Nov. 6th 5 for 5:30, TheJ, 60 Noosa Dr, Noosa Heads
To book for this event, just click on:
http://sa2.seatadvisor.com/sabo/servlets/EventSearch?presenter=AUNOOSHI&event=mse0611

a $20 donation will buy a ticket.

The academic equivalent to foreign travel

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Back in April I noted the birth of what is known as Post Crash Economics. You can read this previous post but basically there is a concern that modern economics, in the way it is taught, is too narrow and shuts out alternative perspectives. As stated in the initial Report that was initiated at the University of Manchester:

This lack of competing thought stifles innovation, damages creativity and suppresses the constructive criticisms that are so vital for economic understanding and advancement. There is also a distinct lack of real-world application of economic ideas, with the focus being on abstract modelling that often seems devoid from reality. Finally, the study of ethics, politics and history are almost completely absent from the syllabus. We propose that economics cannot be properly understood with all these aspects excluded.

Well I agree with all of that, but with me it was Pre-Crash Economics as well. There is a need for wider vistas and a recognition that the various heterodox schools within economics ought to be actively engaged within mainstream discussion of economic issues. With a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and the endorsement of the Institute of Economic Affairs, there is at least a possibility that the PCE movement may not simply become another leftist rant of no consequence.

The first meeting of the Australian PCE Society was held today at the University of Melbourne and I went along. The chap who spoke, who had come all the way from Manchester to discuss what they had in mind. And while there were various moments when his own underlying agenda was all-too-obvious as a long-ago member of the left, his final slide had the words “It’s time to challenge the orthodoxy” and showed a woman with a “power to the people” fist in the air.

I therefore asked the first of the questions from the floor which was more of a comment than a question. And what I said was something like this:

If you would like to set up a group that widens the study of economics and introduces the full range of the various schools of thought to the education of economics students, then I am with you all the way. But if you are going to just use this grouping as another version of the ratbag left, then you will do nothing other than just create one more meaningless structure which someone such as myself will have nothing to do with. Your presentation was not neutral. You are without any doubt a person of the left. But you will only succeed if what you do really is neutral between all of the various groups that find neo-classical economics wrong in important respects. Economics, however, is not an easy subject that someone without formal training can choose amongst theoretical perspectives without serious study. If this is just one more anti-capitalist rant, then you can forget it. You cannot “democratise” the study of economics as some kind of all-in enterprise where everyone’s opinion counts for one and no one’s counts for more than one. But if you are genuinely interested in broadening the perspectives students receive, then, but only then, will you have the support of those of us from a more market-oriented perspective.

Unfortunately, Robert Conquest’s second law of politics seems destined to be repeated: “Any organisation not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing”. Given what I saw today, it will be sooner rather than later but I shall continue coming along at least for a while.

But let me stress this. The Australians who have done the organisation here are trying to make this work as it is intended to work. I was specifically invited and while only belatedly asked to bring along others, the invitation was sincere. If there is a proper spirit of inquiry – very rare but not unknown – then this could be a useful and interesting forum. There is never any doubt that those of a leftist persuasion will turn out. More difficult will be to find those of a free-market bent. Everyone who comes along does, of course, have their own agenda. But sometimes, as might be possible in this case, the mutual agendas will be reinforcing where each of us can get something of interest. And anyway, I like talking to others about economics and listening to what they have to say.

Which brings me to the lunch that followed the seminar. There I discovered one more reason to study the history of economic thought, one that had not occurred to me before. In studying HET, what you have to be able to do is make logical sense of what someone else has said. You have to be able to understand another person’s argument and make it coherent. You are not, of course, asked to accept this other argument but you have to be able to see why someone else might have thought it was true, and the circumstances that allowed them to think it is true. I don’t say it is easy but I do say it is a valuable skill. It is the academic equivalent to foreign travel. Some people go to other countries and learn not a thing other than how weird other people are and come back unchanged. And then some people go to other countries and find out how others live so that they can learn something about themselves by learning about these different cultures.