I would never have known but my dentist and her assistant both recognised it when someone rang when I was having my teeth checked. Bad to the Bone! Myself I couldn’t listen to this through even for a minute and twenty seconds but it is funny that iPhone just uses this like Muzak.
Actually don’t click there but click here to assist Mark Steyn. But just how broken is the American justice system. This broken:
After a year and a half ensnared by poisonous fecal tendrils in the unpumped toxic septic tank of DC “justice”, I don’t think “broken” quite covers it. To any non-American, this system is utterly repulsive. In England, trial by jury replaced trial by ordeal. Somehow America has managed to turn trial by jury into a mere postscript to trial by ordeal. I think it ought to be possible to litigate a 270-word blog post in under 270 weeks. So let’s get on with it.
In the meantime, Steyn doesn’t think Michael Mann actually wants to go to court, but with a $30m countersuit in the way he will have no choice. Steyn will some day end up with a bit of that Nobel Prize loot Mann never actually won.
A philosophy for those who can’t make it in the world as it actually exists:
If the tech scene is really a meritocracy, why are so many of its key players, from Mark Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs, white men? If entrepreneurs are born, not made, why are there so many programs attempting to create entrepreneurs? If tech is truly game-changing, why are old-fashioned capitalism and the commodification of personal information never truly questioned? . . .
The undue emphasis placed on entrepreneurship, combined with a limited view of who “counts” as an entrepreneur, function to exclude entire categories of people from ascending to the upper echelon of the industry. And the ideal of authenticity privileges a particular type of self-presentation that encourages people to strategically apply business logics to the way they see themselves and others.
It is with their ignorance that the world we have built will be torn to pieces. Just go thou and achieve. Not so in America any more, at least not amongst some of those who would like to pull down merit as an actual criterion for success.
Digital elitism is optimistic, in that technology is positioned as a solution to an array of difficult problems. At the same time, it inculcates an air of superiority and a universality of experience that truly only applies to a very small number of the world’s most privileged individuals.
Digital elitism does not reconfigure power; it entrenches it. It provides justification for enormous gaps between rich and poor, for huge differences between average people and highly sought-after engineers. It idealizes a “better class of rich people” (as Kara Swisher put it) who evangelize philanthropy and social entrepreneurship — but it also promotes the idea that entrepreneurship is a catch-all solution, and that a startup culture is the best way to solve any problem.
But not everyone can work at a startup, and the business model of startups cannot be applied to all situations.
And if an entrepreneurial business model can’t be applied to all situations it therefore apparently shouldn’t be applied to any. The fantastic ignorance of how things work by people who can only tamper with mechanisms they have no clue about, as sensible as putting a screw driver into an electric socket, will only destroy, only destroy. Nihilists with a collective death wish.
[Came upon this website via a link that went through Instapundit]
This is about the United States but the point is just as valid here:
Our Immigration Policies: An ideal immigration policy would be based on merit, would focus on adding highly skilled immigrants, would be easily adjustable, wouldn’t change the demographics of our country and would be simple and inexpensive for law-abiding immigrants. Our current system meets none of these requirements.
Instead, we have a system that for all practical matters favors a law-breaking 17 year old from Mexico with a third grade education over a British neurosurgeon or a German engineer.
Moreover, at times like these, when so many Americans are out of work, it’s worth asking whether it makes sense to be bringing in any new citizens. That’s not a slam on immigrants because we have a lot of hard-working entrepreneurs who came here because they saw America as a land of opportunity; it’s an acknowledgement of the most basic fact of immigration: the whole purpose of it is to benefit people who are already American citizens. Bringing in uneducated ditch-diggers who’ll never pay income tax doesn’t benefit most Americans.
Intentionally changing the demographics of the country doesn’t benefit most Americans.
Rewarding lawbreakers who come into the country illegally doesn’t benefit most Americans.
Bringing in more than a million new immigrants a year when there are less people working today than there were seven years ago doesn’t benefit most Americans.
Immigration could be America’s greatest strength, but our poorly designed system makes no sense.
No business could survive if it brought in the same number of new employees every year, regardless of qualifications or need, then added everyone who could sneak into its lobby onto the payroll. Long term, our nation isn’t much different than that business.
The drama issues from the assailability of vital, tenacious men with their share of peculiarities who are neither mired in weakness nor made of stone and who, almost inevitably, are bowed by blurred moral vision, real and imaginary culpability, conflicting allegiances, urgent desires, uncontrollable longings, unworkable love, the culprit passion, the erotic trance, rage, self-division, betrayal, drastic loss, vestiges of innocence, fits of bitterness, lunatic entanglements, consequential misjudgment, understanding overwhelmed, protracted pain, false accusation, unremitting strife, illness, exhaustion, estrangement, derangement, aging, dying and, repeatedly, inescapable harm, the rude touch of the terrible surprise — unshrinking men stunned by the life one is defenseless against, including especially history: the unforeseen that is constantly recurring as the current moment.
The French economy is a mess but what this article alludes to as well is that it is running down its capital so that, at some stage not too far off, the true horrors of its deterioration will finally be fully exposed. It’s titled, Down and out: the French flee a nation in despair. This is the choicest morsel but it is a generally meaty article worth the read:
What went wrong, says Régniez, was a bill passed by the then socialist Lionel Jospin government reducing the working week to 35 hours. “Where our competitors, especially the Germans, saw the need to keep prices and costs down, France spent money she couldn’t afford.” The entire system, he explains, tilted fatally to the side of salary hikes, perks and a lowering of retirement age, in the face of every observable demographic trend. Investment slowed down in the private sector, and almost stopped in the public one. “Each year, France has missed out on four GDP points of capital investment. By now, after a decade-and-a-half, we are not only lagging behind, it’s not certain we can make up for it. It would cost a 4.5 per cent hike in VAT, and other significant hikes in payroll taxes. That, quite simply, is not realistic.”
Even France’s vaunted infrastructures – those trains, roads, telecoms cables, the once ultra-performing electrical grid, the nuclear plants, the delayed 4G network – have taken a severe hit.
A French businessman who moved to London last year and asked not to be quoted by name, “because my tax audit would be even more retaliatory than what I’m currently being subjected to”, compares July’s Brétigny train crash, France’s worst rail disaster in a quarter of a century that killed six and injured 100, to the Paddington and Potters Bar derailments. “The rolling stock is ageing, the tracks are in a constant state of disrepair, even the TGVs now have regular delays because of catenary failure.”
The ageing rolling stock, a metaphor for the entire crumbling stock of productive capital that is being neither updated nor replaced. It’s the story of everywhere right now and it is hard to see how it can be unwound given the institutional obstacles in place. The contrast with the UK is quite astounding because who would have thought that England would, of all things, become one of the strong economies of Europe. Everyone needs a decade of Thatcherism once every ten years.
[Picked up at Smalldeadanimals]
Joe McCarthy is a name so long gone into history that all that remains is that he was the bad kind of defender of our values against totalitarian tyranny. Yes, we are told, there were a few communist spies in the West but however bad Stalinism and communism might have been, what McCarthy did was much much worse. So if we were going to rate McCarthyism and Stalinism on the Political Richter Scale, Stalin would come in at around a 6 but Senator Joe would be a 9. A very handy scaling for the left since at various times when someone attempts to draw attention to what it does and where it aims to go, out comes the handy dandy McCarthyist tag. Sometimes it works better than other times, but since the conservative side of politics has adopted the left’s view of McCarthy, it is a very effective tactic. But it will only work if you think McCarthy was in the wrong.
McCarthyist tactics are, in fact, the preserve of the left. They are the experts in labelling others with some kind of tag that may or may not fit but does cause those they attack to retreat. A very interesting example of the effect such labelling can have may be found just the other day. Andrew Bolt put up a post which he titled, Called racist just once too often. To fight or to hide? and whose point may be found in the opening paras:
STRANGE, after all I’ve been through, but Monday on the ABC may have been finally too much for me.
You see, I was denounced on Q&A – on national television – as a racist. I watched in horror as Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton falsely accused me of subjecting one of her colleagues – “very fair-skinned, like my children” – to “foul abuse … simply racial abuse”.
Langton falsely claimed I was a “fool” who believed in “race theories” and had “argued that (her colleague) had no right to claim that she was Aboriginal”. I had so hurt this woman she “withdrew from public life” and had given up working with students (something seemingly contradicted by the CV on her website).
And when Attorney-General George Brandis hotly insisted I was not racist, the ABC audience laughed in derision. . . .
My wife now wants me to play safe and stop fighting this new racism, and this time I’m listening.
This time I was so bruised by Q&A that I didn’t go into work on Tuesday. I couldn’t stand any sympathy – which you get only when you’re meant to feel hurt.
Andrew Bolt is not a racist but the label does penetrate. Call him a racist and some of the mud will stick and it will undermine his willingness to take on the various issues he does. It will also tend to undermine his authority and ability to communicate. Andrew is unique in the country, not only for the clarity of his thought, but because of just how effective he is in bringing his message into the light. Shutting him up is a major aim of the left and calling him a racist is one of the ways this might be done.
Joe McCarthy was not a McCarthyist. Virtually every accusation he made has been established since his time. His interest was in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and the government of the United States. Understanding the extent to which the White House was infiltrated with Soviet agents is still only in its infancy, with more revelations coming out year by year. That Senator McCarthy is bundled with the Democrats who ran the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) is part of the way in which the issues are confused, again only to the benefit of the Democrats and the left.
I have an article at Quadrant Online that follows my January-February article, America – the Big Dumb Ox. The movie reviewer at Quadrant, whether because he was offended by my article or just as a matter of chance, decided to write a column attacking McCarthy in the usual leftist way. Having a spare few hours on a Saturday afternoon, I wrote a reply which you can read here. But what was particularly interesting for me was that his defence of McCarthy actually exposed the extent to which McCarthy was taken down by the usual media suspects of the left. Today we would see it for what it is, and there is the internet to defend those who stand up for our values. But McCarthy was the first to be exposed to this full frontal media attack and it was devastating. I therefore encourage you to read my post, and then if you are interested in such matters, to go on and read M. Stanton Evans brilliant Blacklisted by History. You will then see the world in a very different way.
This is a picture from a post about me. Usual ignorant comment. They hadn’t liked what I wrote, but I quite liked the picture, specially since the bird’s feathers are green.
From Blazing Cat Fur, this is from Robert Spencer:
I am in Australia to speak at the SION/Q Society’s First International Symposium on Liberty and Islam. Pamela Geller, Ashraf Ramelah, Nonie Darwish and I made the trip from the States, and we will be speaking alongside a formidable roster of Australian freedom fighters.
Last night, our gracious hosts held a cocktail reception for the speakers and some friends at a local restaurant here in Melbourne. The happy and low-key crowd was taken aback when a gang of screaming, chanting, frothing-at-the-mouth fascist thugs suddenly appeared at the door, trying to get into the room. Our security detail held them back, but the fascists dropped leaflets declaring that they would be disrupting all of our events throughout the weekend.
This incident vividly illustrated the nature of our struggle: it is truly, as Pamela Geller has so indelibly put it, a struggle of the civilized man vs. the savage. One side was enjoying drinks and polite conversation, having gathered together in service of the cause of freedom and human rights. The other side, while it professes to be the true guardian of those things, came to the restaurant determined to harass, assault, and maybe even kill us. They are, as I have said before, the true children and heirs of the Nazi brownshirts who menaced and assaulted people at rallies and speeches of the Nazis’ opponents in the early 1930s. The struggle we are in is one that will determine whether our societies will remain civil and free, or fall prey to violence, thuggery, and authoritarianism.
And the story as told by Pam Geller:
The eagle landed in Oz today. Robert Spencer, Ashraf Ramelah, Nonie Darwish and other luminaries in the fight of freedom converged in Melbourne, Australia for SION/Q Society’s First International Symposium on Liberty and Islam. From the airport I headed to a press conference, where Robert and I were interviewed by SBS News (Australia’s PBS). I will upload that video as soon as possible. The interviewer was a typically hostile Leftist reporter (no surprise there).
Then this evening, the Q Society held a welcoming reception for us at a local restaurant. This event was neither open to the public nor publicly announced. It was a lovely affair with longtime supporters and activists greeting us, welcoming us, and taking pictures with us. We weren’t there ten minutes when suddenly a crazed mob of left-fascists attempted to storm the room, attacking and throwing their bodies against our security team while frenziedly screaming that we were the fascists — the irony was unmistakable. These savages were really out of control. Had they managed to break through our security cordon, it is clear that they would have brutally assaulted as many of the freedom-lovers in the room as they possibly could. It was eerily reminiscent of the Muslim riots that took place in Sydney in 2012….
What more do you need to know about the judgment of the American left and the media in the US than that they thought Barack Obama would make a better President than Sarah Palin would make a Vice-President?
Law of Markets 