Category Archives: Cultural

On veut vivre pas survivre!!

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France today, and who knows who’s next:

• The French state has been bankrupt since 2004. A minister finally admitted it in 2013.

• French GDP hasn’t risen above 2% in 50 years. Yes – FIFTY. The average annual GDP growth rate between 1949-2018? 0.78%.

• In 2018, 14% of the population in France live below the poverty line (they earn less than 60% of the median income).

• Worse, more than 50% of French people have an annual income of less than €20,150 a year (about $1,900 US per month).

• The ‘official’ unemployment rate is 10% – about 3.5 million citizens (in reality, it’s much higher).

• The youth unemployment rate is 22%. Yes, you did read that right.

• Astonishing but true: the French government employs 25% of the entire French workforce…and it’s impossible to fire them.

• Because the citizens make such little money, they pay no tax. Less than 50% of French pay any income tax at all; only around 14% pay at the rate of 30%, and less than 1% pay at the rate of 45%.

• The government can’t deliver services without taxes, so it borrows money. France’s debt-GDP is now 100%.

The world of my youth is virtually gone. It’s a fantastic loss. What will replace it? What could replace it?

From Understanding the Gilets Jaunes Uprising which you should read through for some real insight.

Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed

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Total collapse of civilisation in the 12th century BC.

One of the biggest mysteries in history is the late Bronze Age Collapse. There’s no good explanation for why an early globalized civilization should suddenly disappear at around 1177 BC. “Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

There is no explaining the inexplicable, but one may nevertheless still wonder. A story I have never come across before, told as if it is common knowledge.

“The people of this country don’t want …”

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Full story: PELOSI, SCHUMER PLEAD TO TRUMP: ‘LET’S DEBATE’ BORDER FUNDS ‘IN PRIVATE’. Instead, very public with the best bits in the video above. Might also mention this as well: Pew Survey: Out Of 27 Nations Polled, Zero Want More Immigrants to Move to Their Country and that includes Australia. As for Trump and the Dems, here’s the transcript of the relevant bits on border protection:

TRUMP: “We need border security. People are pouring into our country including terrorists. We have terrorists — we caught 10 terrorists over the last very short period of time. Ten. These are very serious people. Our border agents, all of our law enforcement has been incredible, what they have done, but we caught 10 terrorists. These are people that were looking to do harm. We need the wall. We need — more important than anything, we need border security of which the wall is just a piece. It’s important. Chuck, did you want to say something?”

SCHUMER: “Yes. Here’s what I want to say. We have a lot of disagreements here. ‘The Washington Post’ today gave you a whole lot of Pinnocchios because they say you constantly misstate how much of the wall is built and how much is there, but that’s not the point. We have a disagreement about the wall, whether it’s effective or not —“

TRUMP: “’The Washington Post’ —“

SCHUMER: “— not on border security, but on the wall. We do not want to shut down the government. You were called 20 times to shut down the government. You said, ‘I want to shut down the government.’ We don’t. We want to come to an agreement. If we can’t come to an agreement, we have solutions that will pass the House and Senate right now and will not shut down the government. That’s what we are urging you to do. Not threaten to shut down the government.”

TRUMP: “If you don’t want to shut down the government —“

SCHUMER: “Let me just finish. Because you can’t get your way — let me say something, Mr. President. You just say, ‘My way or we shut down the government.’ We have a proposal that Democrats and Republicans will support to do a C.R. that will not shut down the government. We urge you to take it.”

TRUMP: “If it’s not good border security, I will not take it.”

SCHUMER: “It’s very good border security.”

TRUMP: “If it’s not good border security, I will not take it.”

SCHUMER: “ It’s what —“

TRUMP: “Because when you look at these numbers of the effectiveness of our border security and when you look at the job we are doing —”

SCHUMER: “You just said it is effective.”

TRUMP: “Can I tell you something?”

SCHUMER: “You just said it is effective.”

TRUMP: “These are only areas where you have the walls. Where you have walls, Chuck, it’s effective. Where you don’t have walls, it’s not effective.”

PELOSI: “Let’s call a halt to this. We have come in here with the first branch of government. Article One. The legislative branch. We are coming in in good faith to negotiate with you about how we can keep the government open.”

SCHUMER: “Open.”

TRUMP: “We are going to keep it open if we have border security. If we don’t have border security, Chuck, we are not going to keep it open.”

PELOSI: “We will have border security.”

SCHUMER: “You are bragging about what has been done. We want to do the same thing we did last year this year. That’s our proposal. If it’s good then, it’s good now and it won’t shut down the government.”

TRUMP: “We can build a much bigger section with more money.”

SCHUMER: “Let’s debate in private.”

TRUMP: “We need border security. I think we all agree that we need border security.”

SCHUMER: “Yes, we do.”

TRUMP: “See? We get along. Thank you, everybody.”

REPORTER: “You say border security and the wall. Can you have border security without the wall?”’

TRUMP: “You need the wall. The wall is a part of border security.”

REPORTER: “Can you explain what it means to have border security?”

TRUMP: “Yeah. We need border security. The wall is a part of border security and you can’t have very good border security without the wall.”

PELOSI: “That’s not true. That’s a political promise. Border security is a way to effectively honor our responsibility.”

SCHUMER: “The experts say you can do border security without a wall, which is wasteful and doesn’t solve the problem.

TRUMP: “It totally solves the problem and it’s very important.”

PELOSI: “This spiraled downward from when we came at a place to say how do we meet the needs of American people, who have needs. The economy, people are losing jobs and the market is in a mood. Our members are already —“

TRUMP: “We have the lowest unemployment that we’ve had in 50 years.”

PELOSI: “People in the Republican Party are losing their offices now because of the transition. People are not —“

TRUMP: “And we gained in the Senate. Nancy, we gained in the Senate. Excuse me. Did we win the Senate? We won the Senate.”

SCHUMER: “When the President brags that he won North Dakota and Indiana, he is in real trouble.”

TRUMP: “I did. We did win North Dakota and Indiana.”

PELOSI: “We came in here in good faith and we’re entering into this kind of a discussion in the public view.”

TRUMP: “But it’s not bad, Nancy. It’s called transparency.”

PELOSI: “I know. It’s not transparency when we are not stipulating to a set of facts and we want to have a debate about you, confront some of these facts.”

TRUMP: “You know what? We need border security. That’s what we will be talking about. Border security. If we don’t have border security, we will shut down the government. This country needs border security. The wall is a part of border security. Let’s have a talk. We will get the wall built and we have done a lot of wall already. It’s a big part of it.”

Lost souls

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The reason I have been up in Sydney was to go to a Wiggles concert along with my granddaughter. The place was packed to the rafters and for the under-sevens it was a sensation. But for me, it was how they ended the afternoon that truly astonished me. First they brought on Santa Claus which I thought was amazing enough. And then, wildly beyond any expectation I might have had, notwithstanding this being December, they then sang Silent Night, but in German. Still I thought, that was amazing since they could not have been more Christian in their presentation. And then they continued in English, and there is no more Christian Christmas carol than Silent Night. It was a perfect way to end for me, although I doubt there were many there who noticed or thought this was particularly remarkable, but it was.

Now tonight, more than a day later, I was reading this typical piece of dreck, title: America’s New Religions, in which the point being made by Andrew Sullivan was that one cannot live without some kind of faith in the transcendent, which I did agree with, but there towards the end was this:

Now look at our politics. We have the cult of Trump on the right, a demigod who, among his worshippers, can do no wrong. And we have the cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical. They are filling the void that Christianity once owned, without any of the wisdom and culture and restraint that Christianity once provided.

This equivalence was obviously false. Only on the left is politics a religion substitute. These are lost souls. I will say no more than the obvious, that atheism is not a feature of the right and whatever may be the reason for our support for PDT, we do not think of him as a “demigod” who can do no wrong. But what is revealed is the tragic spiritual loss in the empty lives of so many on the left. There is much more that could be said, but will only add this from another website:

Liberty wasn’t born out of the United States Congress but from the heart of God. It is an inalienable right – a God-given right – a right which belongs to all men everywhere and in every age. The government doesn’t grant inalienable rights. Its task is to protect them. No person, no group, no government, is authorized by our Creator God to infringe upon what is the absolute inherent privileges of being made in the image of God or might interfere with one’s duty to God. When we try to separate liberty from the spiritual, when we base it in human definitions and objectives alone, freedom is corrupted, counterfeited, and dies.

I cannot link to these posts because of the primitive machinery I am on, but finding both online today does give me some hope for the future, not to mention the Wiggles who did the same.

Frank Zappa was a capitalist running dog, bless him

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Who would have expected this?

In a 1991 interview, Zappa reported that he was a registered Democrat but added “that might not last long—I’m going to shred that”.[104] Describing his political views, Zappa categorized himself as a “practical conservative“.[nb 13]He favored limited government and low taxes; he also stated that he approved of national defense, social security, and other federal programs, but only if recipients of such programs are willing and able to pay for them.[1]:315–16, 323–24; 329–30 He favored capitalism, entrepreneurship, and independent business, stating that musicians could make more from owning their own businesses than from collecting royalties.[105] He opposedcommunism, stating, “A system that doesn’t allow ownership … has—to put it mildly—a fatal design flaw.”[1]:315–16, 323–24, 329–30 He had always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988 he had registration booths at his concerts.[13]:348 He even considered running for president of the United States as an independent.[13]:365[106] …

In early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel. Havel designated him as Czechoslovakia’s “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism”.[113] Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa, who had great influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa’s 1968 song “Plastic People“).[114] Under pressure from Secretary of State James Baker, Zappa’s posting was withdrawn.[115] Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead.[13]:357–61 Zappa planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses.[78]

And of course, Brown Shoes Don’t Make It which I saw them perform live!

The single most terrifying story you will ever see

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If you think my title is over the top, watch the video. From the ABC of all things! The portrayal here is truly terrifying and should be circulated as widely as possible.

Last night, in a cab home from a late night venue, our driver was Chinese so I asked him about his background and how he was able to migrate to Australia. Turns out he is unemployable inside his own profession but with a degree in science. So I asked him about “social credit” and he went on about Mao and communism to the point where he reached my own levels of antipathy and disgust. All of which he had learned from his parents who, he said, he trusted since they were the ones who brought him his food, while he completely distrusted the lies he was fed in School and by the government of China. We sat in front of the house for ten minutes talking after we got home, and with the meter off. Actually tipped him and from my own money as well. Really, if this doesn’t scare people into some kind of sober reality, I don’t know what would.

China is marrying Big Brother to Big Data. Every citizen will be watched and their behaviour scored in the most ambitious and sophisticated system of social control in history. Matthew Carney reports.

And if you are not terrified by this you have no idea when to be frightened. Orwell was fiction. What they are doing in China is an actual present-day reality that any country can adopt since the technology and the methodology both already exist and will only keep getting better as time goes by.

And there’s more here: China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’ system — here’s what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demeaning ways they can punish you.

Not to mention this:

USA’s ‘first biometric terminal’ ready to go…

The “Progressive” checklist

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Attached to this post was a comment from Tel that needs to be brought to the surface.

Leftists take over stale causes and distort them towards socialism. They lack the ability to create. The original feminists got everything they wanted: votes, jobs, property rights. Having achieved their purpose they gave up and went on with their lives.

The cause was then picked up by a new generation of so called “feminists” who just stole the name and then invented new and pointless demands for the purpose of making people miserable and making themselves feel important. Be divisive, make your demands unreasonable, respond irrationally when called on it. They cloaked themselves in the legitimacy of the earlier cause and pretend to speak on behalf of all women.

The “Progressive” checklist:

* Steal the vocabulary, distort it to your own ends;
* Divide people into tribes and set them at each other’s throats;
* Pretend to speak on behalf of a whole segment of the population despite having no legitimate authority;
* Outrage, distraction and name calling when put under scrutiny.

It’s a system, this is merely one facet.

Social credit coming to a community near you

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Here is how it’s being done in Britain: Britain creates a more hostile environment for immigrants.

“Promiscuity or sexual preference within the law. Drinking or gambling. Eccentricity, including beliefs, appearance and lifestyle.” These are just a few of the criteria that Britain can use to deny citizenship, if “by the scale and persistence of their behaviour, [applicants have] made themselves notorious in their local or the wider community.”

Reading the wrong sort of blog will soon be part of the protocol. Meanwhile, the Chinese are leading the way.

In the West, we have tended to leave it to the private sector, with Facebook, Twitter and Google deciding what you should know, what you can say and what information you can access. We are only however just starting. Lots more to come.