Category Archives: Politics – international

Betraying Diana West

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Since reading M. Stanton Evans’ Blacklisted by History and then Ronald Radosh’s highly negative review I have mistrusted Radosh to the point where I can only think of him as a far left socialist plant here on the right. Radosh, from the deepest of leftist motivations, wrote a book about the Rosenbergs in which he was hoping to defend them but was compelled by the evidence to conclude that they actually had been Soviet spies. Unexpectedly for him but not for me, his friends on the left immediately drove him out and would no longer associate with him. No principle of his had changed, only the people who were now willing to talk to him. Thus under the my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend principle that if you are shunned by the left then you must be something else, the assumption has grown that he is one of us. But from everything he has written this is so obviously untrue it only amazes me he is not so utterly discredited that no judgment of his is ever accepted amongst ourselves.

Radosh has done the same again in a review of Diana West’s American Betrayal which was published in Front Page Magazine where you would hope for better. West has now replied at Breitbart in an article titled, The Rebuttal – Part One which presumes there will be at least one more section to come. You can read her reply for yourself – long and detailed – but here are the reviews of her books that were put up on the Amazon website:

“Diana West masterfully reminds us of what history is for: to suggest action for the present. She paints for us the broad picture of our own long record of failing to recognize bullies and villains. She shows how American denial today reflects a pattern that held strongly in the period of the Soviet Union. She is the Michelangelo of Denial.”– Amity Shlaes, author of Coolidge and the NYT bestseller The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

“This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow. Must-reading for serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and domestic.”– M. Stanton Evans, author of Blacklisted by History

“If you haven’t read Diana West’s “American Betrayal” yet, you’re missing out on a terrific, real-life thriller.”– Brad Thor, author of the New York Times bestsellers Black List, Full Black, and The Last Patriot.

“What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.”—Lars Hedegaard, historian, editor, Dispatch International
“Her arguments shred our preconceived notions of twentieth century history.”—Jeff Minick, Smoky Mountain (NC) News

“American Betrayal is a monumental achievement. Brilliant and important.”–Monica Crowley

“Diana West’s new book rewrites WWII and Cold War history not by disclosing secrets, but by illuminating facts that have been hidden in plain sight for decades. Furthermore, she integrates intelligence and political history in ways never done before.”–Jeffrey Norwitz, former professor of counterterrorism, Naval War College

“Enlightening. I give American Betrayal five stars only because it is not possible to give it six.”–John Dietrich, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.

If it is endorsed by M. Stanton Evans, the one person more likely than anyone to know whether this kind of book is on the hunt or not, it is a book that is worth your time although by the time you are through you will wonder whether the betrayal continues to this day and where its gangrenous tentacles now reach.

David Horowitz Replies: This is the reply at FrontPageMag that leaves me unsatisfied. I don’t know what Horowitz is afraid of but he should mistrust Radosh. Unless he has read the book himself and decided that her misjudgments are seriously unacceptable, he should not be policing such a debate in such a heavy handed way. The first of the comments after Horowitz’s very brief remarks captures the issue:

I read West’s book, as well as the one by Evans and Omerstein, Stalins Secret Agents. Both complement each other, and West made a reasonable case, even if some parts of her work lapsed into speculation. She was clear about that, however. Hopkins appears condemned by the facts to have been a Stalinist agent, either that or FDR was, and was instructing him to do what he did. Whatever the truth, massive help was given to the Soviets by FDR, and more than just Dodge trucks via Murmansk. America helped Stalin on many factors, and West exposes them, unmercifully. Did FDR deserve mercy? Not if half of what West dug up is true, and I say more than half is true, and well documented. Her facts mirror those of Evans and Omerstein.

This ‘debate’ between West and Horowitz has lost focus, and should return to the “search for truth” which is always the first duty of good scholarship. it has now become something more bitterly personal. The acid being thrown around seems to be far greater than any mere disagreement on the facts.

I admire both West and Horowitz. How about you both take a cooler, and get back to debating the facts about the many Soviet spys and communist betrayers in FDRs administration, and how that connects to the modern very similar situation.

This, then, is the second comment:

David,

I have just one question for you, what the heck were you thinking when you let Ron Radosh talk you into this nonsense?

And please don’t deny it because I know Radosh talked you into this. You have already admitted that it was Radosh who first called to alert you to the ‘mistakes’ in Diana West’s book and the folly of the initial review that was since removed, so anyone who can add 2+2 knows Radosh took you down this road in the first place.

That said, don’t you realize who you are in the conservative movement and on the anti communist right, as compared to Ronald Radosh?

Ron Radosh may be a big-shot in academic circles, but most grassroots conservatives couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup, not if there was a million dollars at stake, not if their lives depended on it, therefore Radosh has nothing to lose by alienating conservatives, he has nothing to lose by attacking Diana West just as he had nothing to lose when he attacked Stan Evans and Evans proceeded to clean his clock. Ultimately the only people Radosh is beholden too are the folks he encounters at think tanks and in the faculty lounge, that’s where his bread is buttered and none of this stuff alienates that crowd, and he knows it, so he risks absolutely nothing by going after West or Evans, viciously or otherwise.

You, on the other hand, are an icon in the movement with a direct connection to grassroots conservatives. Prior to this, had you asked the grassroots to contribute to this endeavor or that endeavor, the checks would come fast and furious because the grassroots trusted you and believed wholeheartedly that your causes were our causes. If you said ‘this is important too me’, most conservatives would automatically say, ‘then it must be important to all of us.’

Do you realize how rare that is and that its more precious than gold?

How many people in the movement have that kind of clout with the grassroots and why on earth would you do anything to damage that?

This is what I tried to explain to you weeks ago!

Heck, now you are calling West’s defenders an ‘army of kooks.’

Really David, is that where you want to take this now?

Think David, think long and hard about this, in fact I suggest you consider what your mentor, the late/great Reed Irvine, might have advised you here.

You knew Reed much better than I did, I know that you were like a son to Reed, I simply adored him from afar, but I find it hard to believe, knowing how much Reed cared about you, that he ever would have allowed the likes of Ron Radosh to talk you into this fools errand. I think he would have reminded you, right or wrong, Diana West is on our side and if you must correct some factual errors, do so in a constructive way, and say or do nothing to bring embarrassment on this woman, do not put her in a position where she can be abused and ridiculed by the left.

Just my opinion, for whatever its worth.

So what if Mitt Romney was right about everything

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There was an article yesterday under the heading, Was Mitt Romney Right about Everything? The point of it was that much of what we see today was foretold by Romney. But how little relevance that has! The real lesson is that his critics – and we are not talking about the American president who might occasionally by accident be right about something – but the American media who are the chorus of American politics. They call it fact checking but what it really amounts to is everything critical they can think of to say about the more conservative candidate. We now have our political systems across the west whose potential leaders are judged by people with about as much knowledge and depth as your Grade 7 teacher. These media critics would never have understood what Romney was saying, firstly because it would have required too much in-depth thought but secondly, and more importantly, because they would not have wanted to. Our civilisation is being led to its doom by the members of this chorus and there is not a thing in the world that can be done about it.

Alinsky and his rules for radicals

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Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals are the playbook of the left. Alinsky, largely a nihilist himself, put together a set of rules on how to win power that contained not an ounce of policy. With the world not a perfect place and envy the single most powerful social force, he constructed guidelines on how to present a critique of others that have proven to be formidable in the midst of political debate.

What Alinsky would never have imagined is that the left would join forces with the media so that almost nothing said by a politician of the left is ever challenged in the popular press or network TV. For the left, it’s almost become too easy. The nature of the political battle for those with a more centralist and conservative perspective is now a minefield of potential explosives. If you are from a party of the centre or the right, these are rules you must know yourself, recognise and carefully think through how they can be dealt with since they will with certainty be used against you. In summary here are Alinsky’s rules but you should also read his book:

1) “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”

2) “Never go outside the expertise of your people.”

3) “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

4) “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”

5) “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

6) “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

7) “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

8) “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.”

9) “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

10) “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”

11) “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.”

12) “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

13) “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

I have an article at Quadrant Online that looks at these rules in relation to Rupert Murdoch who is the great villain of the left for no other reason than that he can be effectively used as part of the last of the rules on personalising a target. Rudd has not a constructive thing to say in this election, representing a party with no runs on the board. Every major aspect of policy has deteriorated over the past six years and there is no reason to think they would get better if he were re-elected. The economy is worse, social cohesion has deteriorated, our borders are a sieve, living standards are falling and a series moonbat ideas in a host of areas have been endorsed. Yet what do we hear time and again, that this criticism is evidence of a press conspiracy by the Murdoch papers to see this government thrown out. Forgotten and seen as irrelevant is that these same papers, disastrously, sought to install Rudd in the first place in 2007.

How to deal with this rules-based criticisms is difficult but the first thing is for everyone to know these rules when they see them in action so that they can say, there they go again, using that same old tired Alinsky rhetoric. They bring up Murdoch, you bring up policy. Put the question straight, are you trying to change the subject from these policy failures of yours to the irrelevancy of who sells the most newspapers. Point out that they are trying to change the subject because sticking to the subject will only point up just how little they offer, how empty their policies are.

And let me just finish with a bit of context. In thinking about Alinsky and his rules, it is worth remembering this:

Hillary Rodham as a student at Wellesley in 1969, interviewed Saul Alinsky and wrote her thesis on Alinsky’s theories and methods. She concludes her thesis by writing,

‘Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such he has been feared, just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths, ‘democracy.”‘

Alinsky offered Hillary a job upon graduation from Wellesley but she decided to attend Yale Law School where she met her husband Bill Clinton.

And then there’s this from that same source:

Obama taught workshops on Alinsky’s theories and methods for years and in 1985, he started working as a community organizer for an Alinskyite group called, ‘Developing Community Projects.’ While building coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama was criticized for not attending church and decided to become an instant Christian. He then helped fund the Alinsky Academy. Obama was a paid director of the Woods Fund, which is a non-profit organization used to provide start-up funding and operating capital for Midwest Academy, which teaches the Alinsky tactics of community organization. Obama sat on the Woods Fund Board with William Ayers, the founder of the, ‘Weather Underground,’ a domestic terrorist organization.

The fact is that irrespective of which side of politics you are on, you are not in the game unless you have made a study of Alinsky’s rules, understand its tactics and if you are on the conservative side of politics, thought through how you will deal with these tactics when they inevitably are brought into play by the other side.

Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals

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It is useful to remember Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals at all time when dealing with the left. These are not just an aimless series of generalisations but the actual tactics used in political war.

The abuse piled onto Rupert Murdoch is a straightforward application of Rule 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” People in general don’t understand abstractions but are happy to wallow in a specific upon which any number of negative characteristics can be attributed. It ought to be obvious that this is in part a tactical manoeuvre to rally the troops just as it is, in part, an attempt to silence critics of Labor’s incompetence. How to deal with those who apply these rules is a serious issue.

Everyone on our side should therefore be 100% aware of what is going on when an attack is focused on one individual who is intended to become the metaphor for all that is supposedly wrong on the conservative side of politics. Here are all twelve rules. They really do constitute the tactics applied by the shock troops of the left who have nothing to offer in terms of useful policy but are masters of the rhetoric of the class war.

* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)

* RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don’t address the “real” issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)

* RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

* RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity’s very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

* RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

* RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid “un-fun” activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)

* RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)

* RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

* RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists’ minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)

* RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management’s wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)

* RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)

* RULE 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

The list is as compiled by Glenn Beck.

A foreign policy blog to watch

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Here is a foreign policy blog to keep an eye on, The Diplomad 2.0, which is interesting for a number of serious reasons but also because it is an American at the US State Department writing even though the blog address extension is “au”. But it is the substance that’s striking and I share his sense of hopelessness at the idiocies that surround us. The particular article which was brought to my attention at Instapundit is titled, Obama and an Edouard Daladier Moment. And as he asks, who was this virtually now forgotten Daladier chap? In his effort to resurrect this name, his relevance is made all too clear.

Daladier, a classic leftist politician of the era, became Prime Minister three times. French politics were rough and tumble, with alliances made and dissolved, and little attention paid to foreign policy. There was a general refusal to acknowledge that Germany was re-arming and preparing for another round. Daladier was a voice in the wilderness. He saw the threat coming from Germany and became particularly alarmed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Unlike many others of his time, and today, he understood that Communists and Nazis comprised two sides of the same totalitarian coin. Daladier became PM for the last time in April 1938. By this time, the West’s appeasement policies towards Hitler were firmly set. Daladier desperately tried to convince Britain’s Neville Chamberlain to take a firmer stance against Hitler. Chamberlain would have none of it, and France’s parlous military state prevented Daladier from striking out on his own. Chamberlain had decided to yield to Hitler’s demand for the Sudetenland, and to the effective dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Daladier argued against this, but found himself helpless to do anything but go along. To his life-long shame, Daladier became a signer of the September 1938 Munich Agreement, the now universally recognized monument to appeasement. Heading back home from Munich, Daladier assumed angry French patriots would rip him to shreds. He, instead, got a hero’s welcome. Enthusiastic crowds sang his praises, prompting him to turn to an aide, and utter the famous, bitter, and prophetic words, “Ah, the fools! Why are they cheering?”

Not that they’re cheering at the moment, only paying no attention at all as the world we knew is falling apart with the West led by someone even worse than incompetent. A fine post this one on a blog I will continue to follow.

The guns of August

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It was 99 years ago this month that Europe meandered its way into the bloodiest war in its history, a world changing event whose effects have in no way died down even yet. Now watching the news and reading the sites, there is an eerie sense that events are unfolding with a logic of their own towards an outcome that cannot in any way be foretold. The headline on Drudge reads:

DAWN OF WAR

And then there are the subheadings that have this extraordinary list:

DOES OBAMA KNOW HE’S FIGHTING ON AL-QAEDA’S SIDE?
FLASHBACK: Biden Wanted to Impeach Bush for Attack w/o Congress…
Strike within days…
Warplanes begin arriving in Cyprus…
Armed forces ‘making contingency plans’…
White House: Not regime change!
Arab Allies Withhold Support…
NKOREA caught trying to send gas masks, weapons to Syria…
STOCKS JOLTED…
Oil Reaches 18-Month High…
Russia warns ‘catastrophic consequences’…
Kucinich: USA Will Become ‘al-Qaeda’s air force’…
‘Rebels’ vow revenge attacks…
IRAN THREATENS ISRAEL…
WILL BE ‘FIRST VICTIM’…
POLL: Attack On Syria Would Be Most Unpopular…

Is Barack Obama the Kaiser Bill of the modern era? He is obviously clueless and unfit to be President but he’s the Commander-in-Chief and American credibility is supposedly on the line. Off he therefore goes, perhaps about to plunge us into a conflict he has no idea about, and would have no idea about even if he was Talleyrand, Castlereagh and Metternich rolled into one. But with the simpletons at the helm in the US, where this might end up is anywhere.

If only you guys on the left would act on your principles

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This is a great article about the hypocricy of the left. Matt Walsh is asking the left to stand up for what they believe in, or at least what they said they believed in when Bush was president. With Obama, very different. The kinds of areas he brings up are the one percent, anti-war, civil liberties, war on drugs, guns, race, etc. His final para:

Liberals, you are not slaves. You are independent human beings. I’m not asking you to come to church with me and become a radical right wing fundamentalist Christian like yours truly (although you’re more than welcome to do so), I’m just asking you to have the guts to be what you said you were. And that means you’ll have to oppose Obama, because he’s not on your side. He’s not on anyone’s side.

The left are just cannon fodder for stupidity. They have no consistancy other than to oppose personal merit, achievement and success which they take as an affront to themselves. Ignorant to a remarkable extent of how the world works, they insist it is a conspiracy of the wealthy against the poor, the powerful against the weak. Their numbers are growing as more and more are bought off with the very trinkets that will keep them poor and lacking in ambition and achievement, the essential ingredient of a middle class life. The leaders on the left laugh at their own supporters who in their own personal lives they would have nothing to do with. They don’t live with them, send their children to school with them or associate with them except when looking out for their votes.

It is the right who actually does care because we want everyone to be just like us. We want everyone to become productive, peaceable and independent. We want everyone to get on with their own lives in their own way. We are always willing to help those who need help as part of a journey of self-fulfillment. We are less willing to help those who would rather just live on the meagre handouts of a welfare state.

Seriously conservative

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An article on the seriousness of Margaret Thatcher filled with much good advice for Tony Abbott. I think he gets it anyway, but this seems particularly useful:

Seriousness is the central truth of Margaret Thatcher and the leitmotif of Charles Moore’s superb biography.

Ferdinand Mount makes a strong case that “will” was her main quality in his scintillating review in the Times Literary Supplement. Will, determination, fortitude—these were certainly powerful motors of her life and personality. But they were always controlled by realism, practicality, and necessity. And this combination was vital to her success, because her political views were shaped by a strong patriotism and such traditional conservative virtues as self-reliance—virtues that leading Tories in her youth were already discarding as unfashionable and repressive. Therefore, she not only had to fight, she had also to maneuver to advance herself; and she had to work unremittingly to master briefs that she would often be presenting to a skeptical audience. The net result was a deeply serious woman.

Falling below the minimal level of truth

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There was an interesting article the other day by Bruce Thornton which he has titled, “Lies, Democracy & Obama” but whose central point applies just as well here. He begins with a quotation from Jean-François Revel, a name wrongly disappearing into the past but whose books could be resurrected even more urgently for the present. This is the passage he took from Revel:

Democracy cannot survive without a certain diet of truth. It cannot survive if the degree of truth in current circulation falls below a minimal level. A democratic regime, founded on the free determination of important choices made by a majority, condemns itself to death if most of the citizens who have to choose between various options make their decisions in ignorance of reality, blinded by passions or misled by fleeting impressions.

To which Thornton added, conflating his text from the first and last paragraphs:

If Revel is correct, the rapidly diminishing level of truth in our public discourse suggests that we are in dire straits. . . . Following Revel, we can say a healthy democracy is one in which truth is allowed to circulate freely and inform citizens so they can make the right decisions. But today institutionalized lies have more influence than the truth, with baleful effects visible all around us. This suggests that we are a sick culture, and our condition is worsening.

And Thornton is most emphatically not talking about the fact that politicians don’t always tell the truth but something that goes more deeply. And while he thinks of this as a feature of the left in modern politics, as do I, where it starts is with the media which can no longer be expected to willingly publish anything that harms the political prospects of the left.

Two stories, both found on the editorial page of The Australian on Wednesday, are prime examples of the problem. Both spooked me, and while it is ironic that I am criticising the media for not revealing the facts when I have found out what I know by reading the media, it is still shameful that these are, firstly, opinion pieces rather than news stories and then, secondly, that they are not being splashed across the news so that everyone is aware of what’s happening and those who are responsible made to explain themselves.

The first is a column by Janet Albrechtsen dealing with Penny Wong and the amounts of money she has signed off on while Minister of Finance. The Finance Minister is the gatekeeper for government outlays, making sure governments do not spend too much nor waste what they spend. Well, forget it. The facts so far as they are even willing to admit – and this doesn’t include all kinds of outlays that are kept off the books – are maddening. Of Wong’s performance, Abrechtsen writes in conclusion:

Not even a nice smile can save Wong from being remembered as the $106 Billion Woman and this nation’s most incompetent Finance Minister.

Oh but yes it can. I read Janet’s article and maybe you read it but who else and who has shown that they care? Is it the scandal that it ought to be? Is there a hue and cry about just how badly she has managed her portfolio? Will anyone remember a day from now never mind when the new government tries to fix what is now seriously broken? Not a chance. Wong will walk away with not a care in the world, her credibility intact, remembered for her slick public persona, not for her disastrous role as the Minister of Finance.

And then we have a second opinion piece, this one from a surprising source given the contents. This is by Kevin Morgan who was “the ACTU member of former ALP leader Kim Beazley’s advisory committee on telecommunications”. And what he is trying to do is blow the whistle on the catastrophic hole in which the National Broadband Network is placing the finances of our country never mind the damage it is doing to our infrastructure. A report on the NBN has been given to the government and everyone knows it, but there is no outrage that is being suppressed nor a intensifying demand to have this report released NOW. From the article, where I have conflated the first and last paras:

KEVIN Rudd claims there is a conspiracy surrounding the NBN. He may be right. But it is not a conspiracy in which Rupert Murdoch seeks to bring down the Labor government to sabotage the NBN. It is a conspiracy to hide from the voters, until after the election, just how bad are the finances of the NBN. And the dire straits that the NBN is in can be sheeted back to the deals done by one man: the Prime Minister. . . .

Now Rudd’s back telling us, as he repeatedly did on Sunday night, that his visionary NBN is going marvellously. Well if it is Rudd will have absolutely no problem in immediately releasing an update of NBN Co’s corporate plan that is sitting on the desks of Penny Wong [sic] and Anthony Albanese, the two NBN shareholder ministers. To do otherwise would be a conspiracy and Rudd wouldn’t want to be accused of that.

Rudd cannot engineer this conspiracy of silence on his own. He needs help from the media who are apparently willing to go quiet on a program that is ruining their very own country – the very country they live in themselves – in order to maintain the most incompetent government in our history but so far as they are concerned a government of the right political shade. We have fallen below Revel’s minimal level of truth, well below, and we will pay for this dearly and for a very long time to come.

Rising poverty and modern economic theory

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This is the beginning of a story from the Associated Press which is also discussed here:

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

These are not “reasons” for the trend, they are evidence of the trend. The reasons for the trend are the galloping socialism of the United States, and indeed of the entire previously free market oriented economies of the West. The continuous undermining of the independent, growth oriented entrepreneurial managed economies that have been the cause of our prosperity in the name of equality and no end of other junk social concerns have created a wreckage that will be very hard to reverse.

And amongst the many reasons it will be hard to reverse is that a large part of the problem is the Keynesian theory that is supposed to be the reason that we are able to withstand economic contraction and maintain strong rates of growth. The more economies are driven by public spending with the supposed intend of keeping them strong and unemployment low the worse the economies will behave and the higher that unemployment will be. Almost as a finger to the eye of common sense, the second of the articles cited ends with this:

This past week, Obama pledged anew to help manufacturers bring jobs back to America and to create jobs in the energy sectors of wind, solar and natural gas.

Well there’s the answer to their problems if ever there was one. Does he pursue these ends because he really believes it or is he intentionally malevolent with the express purpose of doing down the US while pretending he is trying to do it good? And I can only think he is pursuing jobs in “natural” gas because he is unaware that it is a form of carbon-based energy and not a green technology at all.