BULLY PULPIT

Another target on the lefts agenda, the military...render it useless and the social engineers have a clear field to experiment and do their worst. I personally know soldiers who left the army because of this man:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sorry_david_but_its_the_wrong_fight/

Australia wake up!

The left is debilitating our military strength out of ignorance, ideology and political avarice. The problem is that when the real bully steps in, the first people to lose the gamble will be those useful idiots who weakened us, but by then it will be too late. Freedom lost is usually not regained within a lifetime or two if ever.

UN-HINGED

A remarkably prescient overview of the calamity-zone a.k.a the UN, by a commentator on the blogs called 'motherlode'.....bravo ML:

Sadly there are still a lot of naïfs out there who believe the UN is a wonderful, benign organisation - one that staved off hot war when the Cold War was playing out, which has spared countless 3rd world innocents the ravages of disease and hunger, and so on.

Perhaps in its early days this was true. Perhaps to a nevertheless ever diminishing extent its humanitarian mission continues (although this ignores the misery it has wrought through such things as banning DDT on the basis of a very inadequate book and forbidding developing nations access to reliable electricity)

But since the end of the Cold War the UN has turned on the victors. It is now a club for dictators and the dictatorially inclined (Rudd, take a bow). It teems with bureaucrats and politicians who issue diktats on things hopelessly outside their skill set because the objectives are, in actuality, political.

 Rabidly anti-democratic, unabashedly anti-Semitic, it is a socialistic weeping sore, buzzing with syphilis, its stink forever beckoning farther afield to every form of midden-born insect, filth encrusted bat, and ancient ill-formed marxist creature that would blacken the world to make it in their own image.

They really should weld all the doors and windows shut in Turtle Bay and pump the place full of sulphuric acid. I don’t think that is going too far.

I agree.

Purpose

As Ralph Waldo Emerson discovered, “All men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labour, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. That man is only half himself, the other half is his expression” (Emerson, 2001, 190).

NIETZSCHE'S ACHILLES HEEL

Truth from Peter Hitchens:

And in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.”

Ergo...........................?

PS refer to previous blog: DANGER, BEWARE SLEIGHT-OF-MOUTH

THOSE WHO LIE WIN!?

A must read for all Climate Change sceptics and I would hope, also for those who fluctuate between belief and non-belief in AGW.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2016/01/hansenist-climate-alarmism/

BREAK OUT THE TAXPAYER CHEQUEBOOK!

A devastating new evolutionary discovery...............the cuttlecrab! Donors and subscriptions to ongoing scientific explorations welcome, share in the glory and ultimate funding bonanza.

BIG GOVERNMENT = SMALL CITIZEN

I have frequently been in the presence of friends who bleat endlessly about the inadequacies or 'immoralities' of 'big business', 'big banks' or 'big oil', but take no interest in the failings and/or immoralities of big Government. Many don't even look at the government as a problem because we have been indoctrinated for years and years that government will take care of us, will look after our health and our education and will pick us up if we fail/fall.

It's actually rather tragic how much we have come to rely on big government, we have been subtly indoctrinated over a long period into a neo-socialist mindset that has captured the zeitgeist. Big government is the enemy, it is the engine that destroys little business, taxes the productive citizen to re-distribute back to the overt supporters of  big government; the indolent, supports crony capitalism (which is NOT free enterprise) and rewards the minority activists over the silent majority:

Nearly all development economists agree that good institutions—legislatures, courts, administrative agencies—are crucial. When poor countries improve their institutions, economic growth soon accelerates. But what about rich countries? If poor countries can get rich by improving their institutions, is it not possible that rich countries can get poor by allowing their institutions to degenerate? I want to suggest that it is.

Consider the evidence from the annual "Doing Business" reports from the World Bank and International Finance Corporation. Since 2006 the report has published data for most of the world's countries on the total number of days it takes to start a business, get a construction permit, register a property, pay taxes, get an export or import license and enforce a contract. If one simply adds together the total number of days it would take to carry out all seven of these procedures sequentially, it is possible to construct a simple measure of how slowly—or fast—a country's bureaucracy moves.

Seven years of data suggest that most of the world's countries are successfully making it easier to do business: The total number of days it takes to carry out the seven procedures has come down, in some cases very substantially. In only around 20 countries has the total duration of dealing with "red tape" gone up. The sixth-worst case is none other than the U.S., where the total number of days has increased by 18% to 433. Other members of the bottom 10, using this metric, are Zimbabwe, Burundi and Yemen (though their absolute numbers are of course much higher).

Why is it getting harder to do business in America? Part of the answer is excessively complex legislation. A prime example is the 848-page Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of July 2010 (otherwise known as the Dodd-Frank Act), which, among other things, required that regulators create 243 rules, conduct 67 studies and issue 22 periodic reports. Comparable in its complexity is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (906 pages), which is also in the process of spawning thousands of pages of regulation. You don't have to be opposed to tighter financial regulation or universal health care to recognize that something is wrong with laws so elaborate that almost no one affected has the time or the will to read them.

Who benefits from the growth of complex and cumbersome regulation? The answer is: lawyers, not forgetting lobbyists and compliance departments. For complexity is not the friend of the little man. It is the friend of the deep pocket. It is the friend of cronyism.
We used to have the rule of law. Now it is tempting to say we have the rule of lawyers, which is something different. For the lawyers can also make money even in the absence of complex legislation.

In short, big government is the enemy of the West, has always been the enemy of free people everywhere and yet has become the model we all seem to want governing us. I don't get it!

SETTLED SCIENCE: AN OXYMORON!

"There is a second kind of science that uses methods very different from those of “established” science. In fact, this science, if indeed it might be called such, uses the exact opposite method. It consists of constructing a conclusion and then testing that conclusion with a hypothesis that is repeated over and over again using doubtful data to back it up.
The “logic” of this particular scientific method is that the truth of the conclusion is determined by the number of times the hypothesis is affirmed. With enough repetition, even the data starts to take on the appearance of the truth. The secret is to get as many people and media as possible to parrot the great discovery. At a certain point, the conclusion can be enshrined in a special pantheon that might be called “settled” science, and woe betide any “denier” who dare question it.
Like its cousin “settled” law, “settled” science can be useful even outside its field. It can be employed to silence opposition, impose laws and promote political agendas. It respects no rank or positions. August researchers and famous professors can be toppled from their positions if they express the slightest doubts about a “settled” position. Even the strongest evidence is ignored with disdain and disbelief. Meanwhile the hypothesis mantra is just repeated over and over again."


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/save_us_from_the_tyranny_of_settled_science.html#ixzz3xfg3eLde Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

DANGER: SLEIGHT-OF-MOUTH!

Beware the slogans and 'sleight-of-mouth' that bellows in its defense for; 'the good of the community' or for the 'people'. Like so many of the current fear mongers and artificial 'scare campaigns'; i.e. over-population, climate change, the industrial/military, complex, 'big oil/banking' etc, their actual motivation lies in a Nietzschean 'will to power' organised by an aristocratic elite seeking to re-establish their position at the top of the pecking order, preferably with a huge gap between them and all the 'others':

The current debate is a public policy debate with enormous implications. It is no longer about climate. It is about the government, the politicians, their scribes and the lobbyists who want to get more decision making and power for themselves. It seems to me that the widespread acceptance of the global warming dogma has become one of the main, most costly and most undemocratic public policy mistakes in generations. The previous one was communism..[President Vaclav Klaus, Climate control or freedom 20.10.10)

Representative democracy and the free market of the post war years made an unacceptable (to the 'overseers') number of 'ordinary' people 'comfortably middle class' (bourgeoisie) and therefore not easily 'managed'. Therefore since the embryonic revolution of the 60's we have witnessed a gradual infiltration and the subsequent ruination of credible education in the West and a neo-Marxist occupation of the media/Hollywood/arts complexes  ala Gramsci/Alinsky and culminating with Obama.

An almost total capture of the major 'organs-of meaning-and-communication' which has resulted in the mass programming of the masses into a philosophically relativised, emotionally driven, politically correct horde incapable of sound reasoning, and believing only what their (limited) 'teachers' have told them.

Unfortunately the truth of the matter is that most of these post-modern, 'educated' people (specifically in the humanities and arts) are woefully ill-equipped for a real-world existence, and such a gap between expectations and reality leaves such folk feeling victimised, dissatisfied and with larger appetites than incomes. Add these 'educated elites' to societies genuine victims (often of circumstances and/or bad decisions) and mix in the ones who have swallowed the media driven scare-mongering, those corrupted by institutional religious hypocrisy, and you have the makings of a massive swell towards big government, simply because these folk feel inadequate, excluded, defenceless, embittered and ultimately incapable of making a difference in the face of  current 'reality', not realising (or incapable of understanding) that it is fact 'big government' itself that causes many of the problems. Ergo the dream of a cultural revolution.

Unfortunately if such a revolution were to be fully realised, it will render the very people who promote it voiceless and ultimately its actual victims, that is if history is an accurate indication, and it usually is. Most however, are too indoctrinated to see it; the blind leading the blind:

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!"

—Ludwig von Mises, as quoted in the preface to The Devil's Pleasure Palace.

BIG AL LOVES BIG OIL

Don't just listen to what Al Gore says, watch carefully what he does...and note well what a great, big, unadulterated hypocrite this little(?) 'god' of the environmentalist cult is:

Gore is set to pocket around $70 million from the sale of his low-rating Current TV cable channel network. How is this an environmental issue? Well, the purchaser of the network (which averages just 42,000 nightly viewers; were it Australian, that would work out to a viewership of barely 3000) is Al Jazeera ...
Al Jazeera is owned by the state of Qatar. Qatar is financed almost entirely by its state-run oil industry. Al Gore’s windfall is directly thanks to Big Oil, the planet’s most demonised industry.

PoMo B S

Some classic PoMo bovine faeces brought to you direct from David Thompson's (a must) blog:

Slacking for Social Justice

It’s the latest thing, according to Riyad A Shahjahan, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and whose areas of expertise include “social justice theory” and “pedagogies of dissent.”

In recent years, scholars have critiqued norms of neoliberal higher education by calling for embodied and anti-oppressive teaching and learning. Implicit in these accounts, but lacking elaboration, is a concern with reformulating the notion of ‘time’ and temporalities of academic life. Employing a coloniality perspective, this article argues that in order to reconnect our minds to our bodies and centre embodied pedagogy in the classroom, we should disrupt Eurocentric notions of time that colonise our academic lives. I show how this entails slowing down and ‘being lazy’. 

Yes, comrades. We must “disrupt Eurocentric notions of time.” And temporalities, obviously. Postcolonial theorising is the only way to challenge the “neoliberal higher education climate” – hold that thought - and those “colonial binaries such as superior/inferior.” We must “dislodge higher education from neoliberal personhood.” You see, being expected to keep up with the pace of lessons and deliver course work on time can induce feelings of discomfort and inferiority in those less able and conscientious, thereby resulting in “exclusionary effects,” which, it turns out, are oppressive and unjust: 

These internalised temporalities may have especially exclusionary effects on bodies and selves. For example, Brandt (2008) found that the hurried pace of homework, exams and research associated with molecular biology laboratory class conflicted with a Navajo student’s sense of time. Thus, Navajo students internalised a sense of ‘being less than’ and felt guilty. 

However, armed with our postcolonial theorising and postmodern bafflegab, and by stressing the mystical exoticness of people with browner skin, will shall set the people free from the “dominant culture of disembodiment” and the “temporal colonisation of our bodies” – i.e., expectations of punctuality and general competence:

To undo this colonisation of our bodies, we should strive to ‘embody’ ourselves: inhabit our bodies fully, acknowledge the interconnection between mind, body, spirit, and contest the insertion of the body into the market. 

Yes, we must contest the insertion.

SCARY TRUTH

Sobering comments from Daniel Greenfield about the Cologne fiasco:

"The authorities claim not to know who was responsible, but are somehow able to assure the media that none of them were refugees. Feminist groups protest broadly against sexual harassment, but insist that there “should be no racism under the guise of women’s rights.” When a handful of the perpetrators are finally brought to trial, their lawyers will claim that like so many Muslim sex offenders before them they were unfamiliar with European “culture” and were “overwhelmed” by all the non-burqaed women.And those will be lies. The horrifying scene in Cologne is commonplace in the Muslim world.
While many remember the horrifying sexual assaults of the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square, including the attack on Lara Logan, such incidents are actually commonplace in Egypt, especially around Eid Al-Fitr. It doesn’t matter how the women are dressed. A 2006 story describes mass attacks on “any and every girl in sight, whether a Niqabi, a Hijabi or uncovered. Whether Egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones.” 99% of Egyptian women report being sexually harassed. This behavior has is common in Muslim lands.

In Iraq, it’s eight out of ten women. In Afghanistan, rape and honor killings are routine. And this is the population that Germany’s mostly Muslim migrants are drawn from.
What happened is inevitable and it will go on happening. More surveillance cameras and patrols won’t stop it. Instead, as in the UK, it will go underground. Muslim men will groom and abuse troubled girls. The authorities will turn a blind eye until a decade later the story gets too big to be covered up. And by then thousands of lives will be ruined. The only way to stop it is to keep it out of Europe and America.

Islam was a declaration of war against women and non-Muslims by Mohammed and his followers. From the mob outside the Cologne cathedral to the rape rooms of the Islamic State, Mohammed’s followers continue fighting the dead warlord’s brutal and ugly war against women.
Mohammed had told his men that the majority of those condemned to hell are women (Bukhari 2:24:541), that they could rape non-Muslim women (Koran 4:24) and that women who weren’t wearing Hijabs or Burkas were fair game (Koran 33:59). This isn’t an aberration. This is Islam.

EMOTIONAL NIHILISM

Irrational emotionalism first and best exemplified by Diana and Oprah (you don't even have to know their surnames to know who I speak of) has programmed our scared new world into believing that a hash tag is all that is needed to stop evil and/or violence from happening. Just  like the post modern hymnal 'Imagine' by Lennon, if we can just 'believe', all will be well.

Magical thinking! Evidenced in the Christian community as much as in the secular, pagan community and it is particularity dangerous amongst the political elite:

"On internet social networks crucifixions, torture and the slavery of women are selling points used by the Islamic State to attract followers to a let’s-pretend world of Play Station-Islamism—which is actually all too real. Yet a photo of an accidentally drowned little boy was used to accuse Europe of intolerance, heartlessness and racism and successfully directed politicians into disastrous non-decision-making. Counter-terrorism cannot be waged by forces who do not believe in the justness of their cause or, as in our case, no cause. Dying for nihilism has never had much appeal.

Dumb dhimmi's

One wonders if the French are even aware of the irony illustrated by these double standards in the service of dhimmitude:

After the terrorist attack a French priest, father Hervé Benoît, wrote that they, the killers and their victims, were “Siamese brothers”. He discussed the song being sung when the firing began: “You summon the devil for a joke? He will take you seriously.” He was firm in his opinions: “It isn’t a return to the Middle Ages, contrary to what the cretins say, it’s postmodernism in all its absurdity.” A Left website organised a petition calling for him to be reprimanded. In several days it collected over 40,000 signatures. Who knew there were so many Catholics in France? The priest was admonished and dismissed by his bishop. Meanwhile, the major bookselling chain FNAC is continuing to sell books calling for jihad against France and the West. The company has refused to remove the books in the interests of free speech. [Michael Connor, Quadrant, 8.1.16]

The priest correctly identified Post-Modernism as the key and lost his position as a result.
All hail our brave new world!

MEDIA MANIPULATION

The media of the West has been taken over (by and large) by an extreme left-wing zeitgeist whose aim is the deconstruction of what they view as 'capitalist/imperial/patriarchal/white' culture.

Most of these useful idiots (who often reflect the very definition of the culture they hate) are too brainwashed to realise that whilst they rail against the status quo (bourgeoisie), it is this very culture that gives them the freedoms to say and act the way they do...and when they eventually usher in (if allowed to do so) their new socialistic utopia, and if history is anything to go by (which it is - view previous blog post) it is going to be themselves who will be the first to feel the bite.

Idiots!

This is the result of brainwashing students in politically correct memes rather than educating them to spot the fallacies which abound in the left-wing philosophy they worship:

Following delayed news of Cologne’s New Year’s Eve mass molestation, the UK Telegraph reports:  Senior politicians have accused the press of self-censorship over fears the men’s reported ethnicities could lead to scapegoating of migrants in general, amid tensions in Germany over its high levels of refugee arrivals.

More than 120 criminal complaints have been filed by women who were sexually assaulted or robbed, including at least two cases of rape. A police spokesman said at least three quarters of the complaints had a sexual component …

There has been widespread condemnation of the city’s police force after an official press release on New Year’s Day described the celebrations as “peaceful”.
Even Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, spoke out in rare public criticism of the police. “I expect urgent clarification: was it organised, was it really North Africans, and how could they say it all went peacefully the next day,” he said …
Questions are being asked over why it took five days for the media to report the incidents.
The ZDF public broadcaster issued a public apology after it failed to include the assaults in its main evening new broadcast on Tuesday.
Hans-Peter Freidrich, a former interior minister, accused the media of imposing a “news blackout” and operating a “code of silence” over negative news about immigrants.

Further on this from Jorg Luyken in Germany:
In the autumn police unions and women’s right groups both accused the authorities of playing down or even hiding cases of rape at refugee shelters.
“There is a lot of glossing over going on. But this doesn’t represent reality,” police union chief Rainer Wendt said at the time.
The national media also seems to be in on the act.
Despite the seriousness of the allegations of police cover-ups and a pattern of evidence of sexual abuse, major news outlets stay well away from the issue.

The media’s code of conduct is, as the former interior minister puts it, a code of silence.

And from another report, this time about the American media:

Hillary Clinton is now telling lies about her lies. Lies about why Americans died halfway round the planet. This would be crippling to any other presidential campaign, and yet it takes The Conway Daily Sun even to put the matter to her.
It is a great shame that Mrs Clinton does not encounter more interviewers like Tom McLaughlin. But then, at the rarefied levels far above Conway, New Hampshire, American journalism is not about ferreting out the truth but about knowing when to avert your gaze, draw a veil, and ask no questions.

SURREPTITIOUS DESTRUCTION

Manipulation can only work when it operates as a hidden persuader, that is why we are witnessing the quiet eradication of history and the subtle deconstruction of language in our educational establishments:

"The virtual elimination of any parts of authentic history that might conflict with the prevailing and politically correct history warps our thinking, usually without us even being aware of our ignorance." [Bruce Walker, American Thinker, 4.2.16]

CHRISTIAN/MUSLIM = CHRISLIM = THEOLOGICAL RELATIVITY

A currently fashionable lie being promoted by the Islamic Dawa is that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I cannot believe that Christians would be seduced by such an obviously nonsensical claim but let G. Shane Morris speak to the heart of the issue:

What matters, and what the media can’t for the life of them seem to understand is this: We, as Christians, do not worship a generic God-of-the-philosophers, non-trinitarian, and infinitely customizable to various faiths. Our God insists on being known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as revealed in the New Testament.

When a Christian or a journalist demands we act like Jesus and just get along with everybody, I remind them that Jesus wrecked the Kumbaya of first-century Jewish theology by making exactly the claim about himself I’m making now: He is God in human flesh.

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same god? Well, is Jesus Christ God? You can’t answer “yes” to both, no matter how loudly the theologians in the media insist otherwise.

Former Muslim Nabeel Qureshi speaks to this in more detail as he lays out the obvious differences:

Christians believe Jesus is God, but the Quran is so opposed to this belief that it condemns Jesus worshipers to Hell (5.72). For Christians, Jesus is certainly God, and for Muslims Jesus is certainly not God. How can it be said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God? This fact alone is enough to settle the matter, but at the very least, no one should argue as Volf has that “there isn’t any theological justification” for believing Christians and Muslims worship different Gods. There certainly is, and it is the obvious position when we consider the person of Jesus.

Another difference between the Islamic God and the Christian God that is quite personal to me is his Fatherhood. According to Jesus, God is our Father, yet the Quran very specifically denies that Allah is a father (112.1-4). In fact, in 5.18, the Quran tells Muslims to rebuke Jews and Christians for calling God their loving Father because humans are just things that God has created.

The same is the case when we consider the doctrine of the Trinity. Islam roundly condemns worship of the Trinity (5.73), establishing in contrast its own core principle: Tawhid, the absolute oneness of God. Tawhid specifically denies the Trinity, so much so that it is safe to say the doctrine of God in Christianity is antithetical to the doctrine of God in Islam. Not just different but completely opposed to one another.

There is much more to be said about the differences between the Christian God and the Muslim God, but this much can already be said with confidence: the Christian God, both in terms of what he is (Triune) and who he is (Father, Son, and Spirit) is not just different from the Muslim God; He is fundamentally incompatible. According to Islam, worshiping the Christian God is not just wrong; it sends you to Hell. They are not the same God.

The final word by Al Mohler:

Evangelical Christians understand that, theologically, there is a genetic link between Judaism and Christianity. That is why Christians must always be humbled by the fact that we have been grafted onto the promises first made to Israel. In terms of both history and theology, there is no genetic link between Christianity and Islam. The Qur’an claims that to confess Jesus Christ as the divine Son and the second person of the Trinity is to commit blasphemy against Allah.Hard times come with hard questions, and our cultural context exerts enormous pressure on Christians to affirm common ground at the expense of theological differences. But the cost of getting this question wrong is the loss of the Gospel. Christians affirm the image of God in every single human being and we must obey Christ as we love all people everywhere as our neighbor. Love of neighbor also demands that we tell our neighbor the truth concerning Christ as the only way to truly know the Father.

We must also understand that the most basic issue is the one Jesus answered with absolute clarity. One cannot deny the Son and truly worship the Father. There is no question that the Muslim is our neighbor, but there is no way to remain faithful to Scripture and the gospel and then claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.