Category Archives: Media

Refugees have stopped flowing into Europe

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Either that, or the news has stopped flowing to the rest of us. In somehow related news:

Turkey says two male suicide bombers behind Ankara blasts…
Govt Imposes News Blackout…

And then there is this:

China asks world to impose ‘code of conduct’ on Internet…

The best bit in this last story is in the final para, that “observers will be watching to see what China’s conception of a ‘code of conduct’ entails.” Yes, we will all be watching closely. Who could possibly guess what they would want? Which then leads to this:

WIKILEAKS release of Obamatrade text stokes ‘freedom of expression’ fears…

From which we find:

One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread.

I don’t suppose that means that if there can be no trial, the thieves who stole this information would then immediately go free. Depending on judges to maintain free speech is such an old fashioned idea. How’s this for a story: Judges plan to outlaw climate change ‘denial’.

Including senior judges and lawyers from across the world, the three-day conference on “Climate Change and the Law” was staged in London’s Supreme Court. It was funded, inter alia, by the Supreme Court itself, the UK government and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

As one of the two UN sponsors of its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP has been one of the main drivers of alarm over global warming for 40 years. The organiser and chairman of the conference was the Supreme Court judge Lord Carnwath, a fervent believer in man-made climate change, who has worked with the Prince of Wales for more than 20 years, and with UNEP since 2002.

The purpose of this strange get-together was outlined in a keynote speech (visible on YouTube) by Philippe Sands, a QC from Cherie Blair’s Matrix Chambers and professor of law at University College, London. Since it is now unlikely that the world will agree in Paris to a legally binding treaty to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees C from pre-industrial levels, his theme was that it is now time for the courts to step in, to enforce this as worldwide law.

“The most important thing the courts could do,” [Justice Sands] said, was to hold a top-level “finding of fact”, to settle these “scientific disputes” once and for all: so that it could then be made illegal for any government, corporation (or presumably individual scientist) ever to question the agreed “science” again. Furthermore, he went on, once “the scientific evidence” thus has the force of binding international law, it could be used to compel all governments to make “the emissions reductions that are needed”, including the phasing out of fossil fuels, to halt global warming in its tracks.

Better not to know any and all of this, specially with the world in such competent hands. Our elites are doing everything they can to cut off all sources of information that are not officially sanctioned. The rest of us can go on if we like here on the net since virtually no one reads any of this anyway. And you can see this for yourself by just asking all of your friends about global temperature growth for the past eighteen years. You know what it’s been and I know, but even so it is the best kept secret in the world.

A political cartoon you will find only in Australia

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bill leak from bad to verse

Political correctness does not work in this country, at least not yet. You can also find the cartoon – from The Australian today – on Tim Blair’s blog, where there is also the following comment from the Letters to the Editor in The Daily Telegraph:

After bringing in Muslim refugees and giving them free healthcare, free education, open-ended Centrelink payments, and priority public housing, we now have to pay for de-radicalization programs so they don’t kill us. Why can’t the Muslim community pay for this themselves via the money made from halal certification fees? Malcolm Turnbull is off with the fairies on immigration and national security matters – a slave to political correctness.

We have always been able to Australianise our migrants because we believe in our heart of hearts that we are superior to every other society on earth. Wherever you come from, it’s not as good as here. And not only do we believe it, it may actually be true. So to all those ungrateful migrants who feel so aggrieved that they can shoot police IT workers of Chinese descent dead on the street for some kind of bigoted racist jihadist reason, it won’t work on us, in spite of what our elites might like to pretend. Look at that cartoon, and ask yourself where else it might get published. I cannot think of another place on earth, and as long as we can do it, we will remain all right.

The views expressed here are my own

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There is a very nice article in today’s Oz by Maurice Newman with the fairly accurate title, Coup takes credibility of politicians to a new low. It’s not so much politicians in general who are being dealt with but Malcolm Turnbull in particular. So it was with great interest that we find this at the end of the article:

Maurice Newman is a company director and former chair of the Australian Stock Exchange. He is the former chairman of the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council. The views expressed here are his own.

That they are the columnist’s own views was something I had always assumed up until now, but apparently wrongly. Clearly, they are not their own views unless we are told so, which with The Oz is something I now take for granted (with the honourable exceptions, other than Maurice, of Nick Cater and Henry Ergas). But to be so blatant about it does truly eat into the credibility of the paper. We are, at least in theory, supposed to assume that these are journalists who will say what they believe, come what may. You know, all that truth to power stuff.

And you know what else, given the editorial line of the paper nowadays, you can see why the column irritated them. He explains what a disaster the change has been, but then goes on to make a much more important point:

The Liberal Party coup has wider ramifications than a simple transaction swapping one leader for another. It is one more blow to the credibility of leaders and the moral compact between the ­government and the people.

It makes voters less likely to listen to pleas from government for noble sacrifices in the common good.

It suggests, absent a significant turnaround in our terms of trade, the tough decisions and long lead times needed for economic and fiscal recovery are likely to be defeated by the electoral cycle.

They will also be defeated because our new PM doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. But he is very articulate in saying nothing much at all and taking credit for the things Tony had already put in place. As for the other things he has done, you should read the column to see why The Australian wants to wash its hands of what Maurice Newman has said.

News balance in the modern media

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Well, there is this:

ISIS blows up ancient Arch of Triumph in Palmyra…

And then there’s this:

Violence intensifies in Jerusalem, West Bank, raising security concerns…
‘Back on the brink’…
Palestinians barred from Old City…
Netanyahu: ‘In fight to death’…
Three weeks of unrest…

And there is this as well:

Russia Intensifies Syria Bombing…
Assad forsees success…
Washington and Moscow can’t agree on definition of ‘terrorist’…
US Aims to Put More Pressure on ISIS in Syria…
PAPER: Putin sees Obama coolness as weakness…

And then, of course, there is the invasion of Europe:

Germany faces logistical nightmare as refugee inflows hit record

A logistical nightmare! It’s all just about transportation. From the story:

At the center in Berlin, asylum seekers, some of whom are sleeping outside, say they have been waiting as long as 25 days to register. With winter looming, the same frustrating delays are occurring in other cities across Germany.

“The biggest problem at the moment is the initial registration of people and providing them with the basics – that’s not working well in an awful lot of places,” said Rebecca Kilian-Mason, who runs a project in Munich that informs migrants about the asylum process in Germany.

The long waits to register are at the top of a list of problems that German authorities are wrestling with.

I guess once they are all registered the problems will come to an end.

Not the six o’clock news

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The world changing right in front of us but virtually none of it will be mentioned in any heated way by our journalist class. This is from Drudge:

EU chief fears union will collapse…
Migrant stream shows no sign of slowdown…
Rape, child abuse ‘rife in German refugee camps’…
Poll: Most U.S. Muslims would trade Constitution for Shariah
Dem mayors ask Obama for more refugees…

It is the first story that is the oddest. It begins:

THE European Union has lost control of its borders and risks total collapse if they are not sealed, a senior Brussels diplomat has warned.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, warned the EU was now facing a “critical point” and that the migrant crisis hadn’t even reached its peak.

As he chaired an emergency meeting of EU leaders in Brussels last night Mr Tusk painted a bleak picture of the EU’s future, saying the 28-member bloc was on the verge of breakdown with “recriminations and misunderstanding” pitting nations against one another.

The future of free movement was at stake, he said, as the continent had lost control of its borders as well as a “sense of order”.

He added: “The most urgent question we should ask ourselves…is how to regain control of our external borders.

“Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to even speak about common migration policy.”

He appeared to lay much of the blame with Germany, accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel of exacerbating the problem by sending the signal to desperate Syrians fleeing their war-torn homeland that Germany had no limit on the number of migrants it would accept.

It’s not “the EU” that is on the point of collapse but European civilisation. The narrowness of the perspective is what gets me, not to mention the madness of Merkel’s policy of open borders. Do they have any idea at all what they are doing?

Half of America are gullible fools – while the media clocks in at 95%

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A fraud and a hoax. The President could not care less since this is one of his teachable moments. It would be if only people were capable of learning. You and I may know what’s going on but does anyone else? Meanwhile, Ben Carson, running for the Republican nomination, started quite a commotion within the media which is 95% gullible fools.

Carson ignited a media firestorm in a Sunday morning interview with Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” in which he said he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

“I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson said.

In an interview with The Hill, Carson opened up about why he believes a Muslim would be unfit to serve as commander in chief.

“I do not believe Sharia is consistent with the Constitution of this country,” Carson said, referencing the Islamic law derived from the Koran and traditions of Islam. “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Carson said that the only exception he’d make would be if the Muslim running for office “publicly rejected all the tenets of Sharia and lived a life consistent with that.”



“Then I wouldn’t have any problem,” he said.

However, on several occasions Carson mentioned “Taqiyya,” a practice in the Shia Islam denomination in which a Muslim can mislead nonbelievers about the nature of their faith to avoid religious persecution.

“Taqiyya is a component of Shia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals,” Carson said.

Pushing back at the media firestorm over his remarks, Carson sought to frame himself as one of the few candidates running for president willing to tell hard truths.

“We are a different kind of nation,” Carson said. “Part of why we rose so quickly is because we wouldn’t allow our values or principles to be supplanted because we were going to be politically correct. … Part of the problem today is that we’re so busy trying to be politically correct, that we lose all perspective.”

Carson told The Hill that the question of a Muslim president is largely “irrelevant” because no Muslims are running in 2016. He said the question, which Todd is posing to all of the Republican presidential hopefuls who go on his show, “may well have been” gotcha journalism meant to trip the candidates up.

However, he acknowledged the question “served a useful purpose by providing the opportunity to talk about what Sharia is and what their goals are.

The question really is, why would anyone want to talk about that when there are other more important issues to discuss?

UPDATE: They really do have to be shockingly stupid, and the lack of an apology is even more revealing. This is picked up at Instapundit.

The first to say “racist” loses the argument

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trotsky racist

I came across the above poster the other day, which seems to be a widely held belief although I wouldn’t know myself. Since he spoke Russian it’s a hard one to confirm. Yet the point is clear enough. Those without an actual argument just say “racist” and then let the thought-police do the rest. As an example of almost an infinite number that might be found, I did come across this today on Drudge which is a story from last night’s Emmy Awards in the US:

ATTACK: Trump Called ‘Racist’ in Opening Monologue…

Which is all related to Donald Trump’s off-handed reply to a query from the stands the other day on what religion he thought Obama followed. In the wake of this non-story, which has, of course, become explosive in the hands of the American media, here is what we can also find on Drudge:

CARSON: A Muslim should not be president…
Video…
Stephanopoulos Grills Trump: Why Can’t You Say That Obama Is Not Muslim?
FLASHBACK: Obama ‘My Muslim Faith’…

This business about Obama’s religion has led to plenty of advice over what Donald Trump ought to have said, and has now extended to the entire Republican field who are also being asked to answer what no one can possibly know, what religion does Obama really follows in his heart of hearts. Mark Steyn has his own views which he has addressed to the American media and is thus filed under the heading, Get Lost, You Palace-Guard Creeps. Naturally you need to read it all where he provides seven different possible answers. This is number six.

As to whether he’s a Christian, have you asked him whether he has attended even semi-regularly any church other than that of Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright? A man is free to attend the Westboro Baptist Church but if he chooses to do so I’m not obligated to defend his Christianity. And frankly, whatever the President’s personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama’s watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless – for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.

When you think about all this, what possible difference does it make what he believes. What he has done, or not done, is what counts. What religion he follows matters not at all.

And as a general principle, the first to call someone else a racist loses the argument immediately.

What should Trump have said about Obama’s religious beliefs?

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This business about Obama’s religion does go on with plenty of advice with what Donald Trump should have said, and now extending to the entire Republican field who are also being asked to answer what no one can possibly know, what religion does Barack Obama really follow in his heart of hearts. Mark Steyn has his own views which he has filed under the heading, Get Lost, You Palace-Guard Creeps. Naturally you need to read it all where he provides seven different possible answers, all good. This is number six.

As to whether he’s a Christian, have you asked him whether he has attended even semi-regularly any church other than that of Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright? A man is free to attend the Westboro Baptist Church but if he chooses to do so I’m not obligated to defend his Christianity. And frankly, whatever the President’s personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama’s watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless – for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.

When you think about all this, what possible difference does it make what he believes when it is what he has done, or not done, that is what counts.

If she doesn’t know this, how can you trust a thing she says?

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This is Gerard Henderson asking a question that needs to be asked: With Tony Abbott gone, what will ABC ‘comedians’ laugh at now?. They might think of starting with the ABC’s Fran Kelly, ace reporter.

The truly stunning performance by Ms Kelly this week occurred towards the end of her interview with Barnaby Joyce — the Minister for Agriculture and deputy leader of the National Party. Let’s go to the transcript:

Fran Kelly: Barnaby Joyce, as deputy National Party leader, as Agriculture Minister, did you vote for Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull?
Barnaby Joyce: I’m in the National Party, I tell you what we —
Fran Kelly: Oh, you don’t get to vote?
Barnaby Joyce: That’s right —
Fran Kelly: Oh, I beg your pardon —
Barnaby Joyce: But what we get to do is do Coalition agreements after they’ve finished [the leadership vote] — that’s how we bargain.

This is no verbal “typo”. One of the leading ABC presenters did not know as of Wednesday morning that the Liberal Party — and the Liberal Party alone — elects the leader of the Liberal Party. Can you bear it?

This should actually be on the front page, that the ABC’s most senior political reporter did not know how the vote for PM was conducted. Beyond incredible.