Humanity Haters

Miranda Devine interviews (President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav) Klaus:

“Twenty years ago we still felt threatened by the remnants of communism. This is really over,” Klaus said.

“I feel threatened now, not by global warming—I don’t see any—(but) by the global warming doctrine, which I consider a new dangerous attempt to control and mastermind my life and our lives, in the name of controlling the climate or temperature."…

He said environmentalists had been arguing for decades that we should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, using various farcical ploys from the exhaustion of natural resources to the threat of “imminent mass poverty and starvation for billions”.

Those same environmentalists shamelessly talk now about dangerous global warming.

“They don’t care about resources or poverty or pollution.

“They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them.

“I used to live in a similar world called communism...”

Global warming alarmists “want to change us, they want to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences. They want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore ...what is in danger is freedom, not the climate”.

As much as I agree with these sentiments I despair at the vested interests controlling the AGW debate. Because this is more about a faith than reason, those who advocate a crippling of the economy and a steady return to the Stone Age are not listening to the facts. They are concerned with stopping any debate (witness the attack on the ‘hate press’) and changing the laws so that moral, economic, industrial and environmentalist decisions are made by the judiciary, most of whom occupy the same rarefied atmosphere as the Watermelon brigades.

Our changing brain

This small excerpt is from a disturbing article describing how the Internet is changing the 'wiring' of our brains, particularly in regards to information processing and reading...and not in a good way. Incidentally once again Nietzsche demonstrates his prophetic quality.

"Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

...As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

The article goes on to give examples of peoples faltering ability to concentrate on long passages as well as some who are losing their capacity to absorb complex premises, and I have to admit experiencing similar lapses. I have been worrying that it was a by product of the aging process but now I question whether it is the result of spending far too much time on the Internet. Even though I am quite disciplined with my reading (from books that is) I am still dedicating a large portion of my reading time to the net, a pastime I am about to change.

Double Standards.

I have commented previously on the hypocrisy rearing its ugly head over the Rupert Murdoch affair (congratulations to his lion hearted wife!)
, and in these excerpts from an article by Bill Meuhlenberg, the double standards being applied are even more elegantly elucidated:

"All I really wish to do here is expose some glaring cases of hypocrisy and double standards. And they can be found here in abundance. One simply has to compare the recent case of Julian Assange with this situation. While there are some obvious differences, both involve the unethical and at times illegal obtaining and dispersion of information.

Yet the mainstream media (rightly referred to as the lame-stream media) bent over backwards to turn Assange into a saint. He could do no wrong, and the Left sought to turn him into one of our greatest heroes ever. I even heard a quite confused Christian seek to compare him to the prophet Jeremiah!

But he is nothing of the sort. He is simply an ego-maniac and a raving lefty who hates America and who, by his own admission, wants to do as much damage to America as he can. Thus the reason Julian was treated as a hero and deified, while Murdoch is treated like a zero and demonised, is quite simple: The MSM loves Julian because he is a left-winger who hates America, whereas the MSM hates Murdoch because he is conservative and supports America. This explains much of this blatant hypocrisy.

As one commentator has asked, “Why do people make a distinction between ‘leaks’ and ‘hacks’? Talk about splitting hairs! In both instances, people exploited stolen information, for their own gain, and to the detriment of others.” Yes, and in the case of Wikileaks, actual lives were put at risk. But I hear no moral concerns about that coming from the Left."

The culture wars continue!
P.S. Let Wendi Deng/Rupert loose on Julian Assange and watch the sparks fly!

Wind Pollution

The law of unintended consequences. For those who believe in 'going green' (which is, I believe, different to having a concern about the ecological state of our earth) consider what Matt Ridley has to say about wind power:

Another policy is to bribe rich landowners to festoon the most picturesque landscapes with concrete pads on which are placed gargantuan steel towers topped with wind turbines containing two-tonne magnets made of an alloy of neodymium, a rare earth metal mined in inner Mongolia by a process of boiling in acid that produces poisoned lakes filled with mildly radioactive and toxic tailings.
The cost of this policy is borne by ordinary electricity users and their would-be employers. So far, the wind industry’s contribution to cutting carbon emissions is precisely zero, because it provides less than 0.5 per cent of world energy use and even that has to be offset by keeping fossil fuel plants running for when the wind does not blow.
Oh, and wind turbines have killed so many white-tailed eagles in Norway, wedge-tailed eagles in Tasmania and golden eagles in California that local populations of the species are in increased danger of extinction. And this is a green, “clean”, progressive policy?

Up the Arts

Comedian Matt Hayden gives new meaning to 'colourful insults' in his description of the elite in the world of art: "But in the global collective of bong-suckling quarterwits known as Artsville". I couldn't agree more.

End is Nigh

Beware Agenda 21: (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_01.shtml ) the unscrupulous and devious attempt by World elites towards establishing one world governance by means of the apocalyptic scare campaign known as; 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'.

I do agree with one thing the AGW scaremongers are warning about...The end of the world (as we know it) is indeed nigh.

The true tradgedy

Our media is replete with indignation and moral superiority regarding the alleged Murdoch 'sins' and yet if you read this report by Paul Sheehan:
 http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/death-and-taxes-lies-and-truth-20110710-1h8tc.html
you will see how tragically corrupt the Australian unions and current Labor government have been and continue to be.
This is the real scandal and one that carries with it the possibility of truly transforming Australia from the 'Lucky Country' into a 'wretched country'. It appears that Gillard's oft repeated refrain of 'a new vision' for Australia owes more to the rampant (and often officially 'endorsed') corruption usually experienced in African and Asian cultures than it does to the now maligned values of the older 'Christian culture'.
Perhaps our self proclaimed 'Atheist' prime minister is at last showing her 'real Julia'?
However this attack on values, employment and the small businesses of Australia by Unions, Watermelons and Labor does and will ultimately affect every single Australian irrespective of race, creed or sexual proclivity.
The culture wars continue.

Culture Wars

The terrible hypocrisy being daily enacted regarding the News Corp scandal underscores the venom people on the left of politics seem to hold in their hearts. Do we truly believe that conservatives are the sole purveyors of antics such as as hacking and bribery...I think not, and as despicable as these things are they are a part of human history. The issues need to be addressed, punished and moved on with but what we see is the Left making a meal of it. I think they should be circumspect because there is evidence emerging that shows such practices being rather widespread, perhaps even impacting on these holier-than-thou apostates.
As C.S. Lewis once wrote about, we ridicule honour and courage then gasp with amazement when people evidence dishonourable and cowardly behaviour. Or as Lewis so imaginatively put it; We castrate the stallion then bid the gelding procreate.
Another English writer Melanie Phillips has this to say about the very personal attacks on Rupert Murdoch:

 No, the real reason is that for the past three decades the Left has been desperate to bring Murdoch down. For such people, he is a hate figure of diabolical proportions. The venom and hysteria he inspires are truly irrational.

He ignites passions far more incendiary than are generated by any tyrant or war criminal. Indeed, to them the Left turns a blind eye, while treating Murdoch as if he dismembers babies before breakfast.

Why?

...Murdoch’s real crime in the eyes of the Left-wing intelligentsia is simply that he has stood in the way of their total capture of the culture.

The dominance of Left-wing ideas has been such that even among so-called conservatives many of them have become accepted as mainstream. And one of the most powerful architects of that shift has been the BBC.

The same thing is rampant in Australia and we are deeply involved in a culture war.

UPDATE
From the Wall street Journal:

The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician…

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur.

The biggest problem that stems from this debacle is that ordinary people are now less inclined than ever to trust what journalists have to say, which makes the dissemination of accurate information even more difficult.
It reminds me of living in South Africa where no one knew what was going on, what was true or what was about to happen...a perfect recipe for totalitarianist rule.

UPDATE 22.7.11
As I mentioned earlier in this piece the hypocrits had better be careful lest their diatribe turns around to bite them on the bum...see this piece from Tim Blair:

A former Daily Mirror reporter adds his old paper to the News of the World phone disgrace:

James Hipwell, 45, told The Australian Online he saw show business reporters on the Daily Mirror regularly intercept voicemail messages when he worked there from 1998 to 2000.
Hipwell is the only Fleet Street whistleblower who is offering to go on the record with accounts of voicemail hacking at newspapers other than the News of the World, which was closed down by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation two weeks ago.
“I know that for one simple reason: I used to see it going on around me all the time when I worked at the Daily Mirror,” he said ...

The paper denies the accusation. It should be noted that Hipwell himself spent time in prison for market rigging via a Mirror business column. Others point to a stablemate:

The New York Times yesterday reported that five former journalists at the Mirror’s stablemate The People had said that they regularly witnessed hacking in that newsroom in the late 1990s to early 2000, but they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“I don’t think anyone quite realised the criminality of it,” said one of the unnamed former reporters at The People.

The judicial inquiry into all of this is going to be spectacular.

Will the lame stream media run this as much as they have the Murdoch attack...I suspect not.

A Modern 'God' falls...

The corruption of science: http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2011/7-8/fishy-science-on-the-great-barrier-reef

"For a scientist to speak out against the widespread misconduct that has developed is, at the least, to invite strong disapproval from one’s peers. Almost certainly it would be highly detrimental to obtaining research funding, approval for publication and career advancement. Most researchers simply raise no objections and accept what is happening. Even if not guilty of any overt misconduct of their own, they are complicit in the prevailing dishonesty. Worse yet, the suppression of critical thinking has resulted in the creation of environmentally correct beliefs which are unquestionable but which incorporate fundamentally incorrect understandings of the real world. Science has been badly corrupted and scientists are no longer to be trusted just because they are scientists."

Will our world be better or worse off? In the meantime some sound advice from the author:

"...it would be prudent to regard any claims attributed to scientists as you would those made by a used car salesman, politician, telemarketer or anyone else trying to sell you something. Don’t be impressed by the soothsaying, proclamations of authority, techno-babble and eco-waffle or the chorus of researchers singing for their supper. Insist on answers to questions and to seeing the evidence—not just a selection, all of it.

Until the questions are answered and the evidence is examined in detail, don’t buy. You don’t have to commit to an opinion on everything that comes up. Reserving your opinion until you are well informed about a matter is far better than having one that is poorly informed and wrong. In short, the best way to avoid being fooled is to be a sceptic."

Green sock puppet!

Piers Ackerman is a very astute observer of politics, in particular his illustrative prowess. I thought I might add a little illustration to this excerpt myself:

"Gillard’s problem is she handed her government over to the Greens and now has little control over its direction whether it’s on coal or cattle.The evidence is compelling. Over a year ago, Brown outlined his cult’s goals as bringing in a carbon tax that would deliver some $10 billion a year from the nation’s 1000 biggest polluters. This would become Labor’s goal, too, until Gillard blinked at the last moment and characteristically irrationally halved the number of big polluters she sought to punish. According to the Hansard of May 13, 2010, Brown even nominated the carbon-tax price of $23 a tonne. Talk about Gillard the Green glove puppet."

Mad hatter?

Given recent statements and behaviours the question must be asked. Is this fellow barking mad?

Reflection not emotion

This excerpt from an article by Janet Albrechtson conveys the essential difference between the reflective personality and the emotive:

"Look at how Sampson (Earth hour co-founder) cleverly uses a literal truth to convey a substantive untruth. The literal truth that “we care” about the environment is used like a bait. If you accept that bait, then maybe you will swallow the rest of what he says, hook, line and sinker. It is true that people care about the environment. The substantive untruth is that Australia should be out in front, leading the world on climate change with ambitious targets to reduce emissions."

We all need to reflect more deeply on issues affecting this country.  

INFINITE DAMAGE

"No correct accounting of what this tax will cost the average household is possible. The only answer to the question of how the so-called Carbon Tax will impact on the average family budget is: the damage will be infinite."

I could see the logic of this since I first heard about this atrocious tax. The only people I meet who are in favour of it are those whose jobs and income are protected (public trough) and who live in a very small world, usually of the 'Ivory Tower' kind. Beware citizens, consider Greece and even the current crisis in America; NO ONES INCOME IS SECURE IN THIS AGE OF RADICAL PARADIGM CHANGE!

 

S.O.D.

This current government is indubitably the worst by far that this country has ever experienced. Gillard last night on the sycophantic 7PM show, once again declared that she wanted to 'change the country' and she most certainly is. Unlike Robert Mugabe's iron fist, she is embracing what might be termed a 'petticoat revolution' with its chief administrative principle being SOD (standard operating deception), nonetheless the end result will be the same.

Three monkey's

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil:

“The time for uncertainty is over. We are moving to a new future,” said Greens Senator Christine Milne, as the chills went down sensible spines.

James Delingpole on the Moral superiority as outlined by the three monkeys:

"No one has a less deserving claim to the moral high ground than the (Labor)-left, for in the name of making our “society” kinder and fairer it is actually eroding our freedoms, stealing our livelihoods, stoking resentment and social division, destroying our economic future. Yet daily we go on letting these disingenuous bleeding heart scuzzballs get away with it. Why?"

If you would like some information on what the three monkey's envisage for our future, read this:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100095817/un-reveals-its-master-plan-for-destruction-of-global-economy/
Remember Sideshow Bob is on record as saying what a good thing handing over our sovereignty to a One World Government (UN) would be!

18thCentury wisdom

This quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that point on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

is from an eighteenth-century political theorist, Alexander Tytler. I wonder if any of our current political leaders are familiar with these thoughts?

If I were more cynical (or a conspiracy theorist) I might believe that like Robert Mugabe, some politicians see bankrupting their country as a tactic to achieve management over the distribution of food and economic welfare programs and thereby to assume absolute control over the population.

What I am sure of is that if we continue to throw money away on corruptible schemes such as the spurious and Quixotic attempts to placate 'Gaia' we will find ourselves serving a dictator... perhaps even sideshow Bob.

The Prophet Nietzsche

A must read for insight into the euthanasia debate. http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/birthday_blue/
The article ends with:

All this suggests that clashes between traditional human dignity and the debased utilitarianism which characterises public debate in Australia are all but insoluble. Ultimately the problem is that the side which sees meaning in suffering is willing to reason it out. The other side isn’t.

Unfortunately this dilemma is experienced today across many, if not most disciplines, largely because Post Modern philosophies have reduced truth to opinion and often not even an informed opinion. Unfortunately the only way to overcome the impasse that such a position imposes on society is to gain the power to over-rule the 'other', and that is what we are witnessing in today's political arena. The will to power above all else.
Nietzsche was so prophetic it hurts.

The new Inquisitors

Just been viewing an American Q&A with Brian Lamb interviewing columnist SE Cupp and she said something I have found to be true in Australia as well. They were discussing the 'hate mail' she receives frequently on her Website and she makes the comment of how interesting it is that the press have managed to convey the illusion that most hate mail comes from the right of politics.

 Actually she says, experience as well as the flood of email traffic to her site has shown her that the opposite is in fact true. Unfortunately, and in opposition to what we hear on a daily basis from the mainstream press, the most hateful reactions to differing opinions do seem to stem from the left. My experience tells me the same story.

Some commentators have postulated that this is so because the left luvvies believe that they are MORALLY in the right (superior) and therefore to disagree with them is to not only be wrong intellectually, but it is to be a heretic as well, which means that the same spirit that drove the inquisition drives them, ergo: hate!

UPDATE
A qoute from journalist James Delingpole to expand on the above premise:

What is it about the liberal-left and its pathological loathing of freedom of speech and open debate? And why, instead of engaging in ideas – supported by facts – must it instead so invariably resort to this crude, smear technique whereby its opponents must forever be dismissed as morally compromised?

Tanner the Manner

Don't you just love Daryl McCann's image laden description:

There are those in Labor, including some with genuine influence, who believe the ALP, the party of salt-of-the-earth Ben Chifley, can be rescued from the pretentious “dregs of the middle class” that have hijacked it. They delude themselves. Political correctness has insinuated itself into the organisation in much the same way as the cane toad now pervades northern Australia.

All in all the essay is an amusing and insightful critique of Lindsay Tanner's Magnum Opus:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2011/7-8/the-labor-sideshow

...and it appears to render my transmogrification of Bob Brown into 'sideshow bob' perspicacious.

Stolen sympathies

Read this article: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/establishment_challenged_on_the_stolen_generations/
and you will get an idea of how the current crop of ideologues occupying academic posts have conned the Australian public and how they have contributed to the mass manipulation of Australian schoolchildren. As a teacher I have seen  the propaganda  at work and how negatively History and Australian/Indigenous studies subject teachers react to any questioning of the current 'indigenous genocide' paradigm. The indoctrination of an entire generation is happening.
Janet Albrechtsen ends with an observation of how this propaganda has soured many school students on the current plight of the indigenous population and the reality of this is another illustration of how the cultural policies of the 'Tofu socialists' diminish the lives of the very people they claim to represent.

Watermelon Utopia

Read this:  http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/gillards-tax-on-carbon-pollution-the-facts/  and you will realise that the 'carbon tax' is not about preventing a worldwide catastrophe, nor is it the result of environmentalist concern for our world. Rather it is an unrepentant ideological grab for taxes, a redistribution of wealth and an attempt to manipulate our culture to conform to the ideal of a Watermelon Utopia.

Unfortunately history, (a subject much maligned by Gramscian Pomo's...why? Truman provided that answer!) shows that socialist economies eventually implode causing untold misery for the poor and powerless...the very people Labor are reputedly trying to protect. This government is all about spin, smoke and mirrors and a bare-faced grab for power all of which combine to make the current Gillard oligarchy, liars of a truly frightening magnitude.

Yes we need to treat our world with greater respect, we must up the ante as stewards of this earth but for goodness sake don't lets fall into the trap of flirting with a paganistic attitude toward the concept of 'gaia'.

Thank you!

I realise that in the great scheme of things one thousand (1000) page views means very little, but to those who have 'tuned in' to my ramblings I thank you for your attention in the face of some rather incoherent and sometimes even insensitive expressions of frustration as well as a long period of being 'missing in action' due to major heart surgery.

I was for many years quite opposed to the Internet, thinking that it was a distraction, a suspicious receptacle of erroneous information and a conduit for negative attitudes but, I have gradually been 'converted' to the opinion that the Internet (with all of its problems) can actually serve a positive function. Indeed I have witnessed how, in an age of exceptionally biased main stream media reporting, the Internet has been a vehicle for the dissemination of truth, an elucidation of arguments and (rather cathartically) a means for self-expression.  

Cliches work!

The increased tactical intimidation being employed by (one obvious example) the anthropogenic global warming cultists are worrying developments in the ongoing 'culture wars' of Australia. We can and must stand up for truth wherever possible, because all it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. Now where have I heard that before?

The grim truth

We live in an age when it is too easy to claim to be something else. We hear of people claiming to be religious and then of them having broken every belief in their systems code of ethical practice. We hear of politicians claiming to be 'economic conservatives' and then witness them throwing taxpayers money around like it grew on trees. We hear the leader of a worldwide religious order claiming to be a Marxist. What we see and hear every day are people claiming beliefs which are completely at odds with their behaviour, consequently we take it as axiomatic to believe in nothing yet consistently vote in politicians who claim to believe in something and act shocked when they prove by their actions that they believe in nothing; other than power at all costs.

Do we truly believe that such people will stand up for us?
Do we actually believe that such hollow people can and will stand up for honour, liberty, and ethical principles when to do so will mean sacrifice and hardship?

"We need fundamental answers. In this respect, politicians should be forced to articulate their bedrock principles, and our media needs to be intelligent and independent enough (pace the useless ABC) to interrogate them in depth. Above all we need an education system that teaches people to learn how to think for themselves and question their own assumptions. At present all our cultural institutions - universities, media, even the church - seem to exist only to bolster the socialist worldview. The result is that at present we live in kind of semi-benign one-party state, under a kind of unconscious Pol Potism. But there is never really any such thing as equilibrium in politics: sooner or later a tyrant arises to exploit the mass' ignorance and accede to real power...."

Two legs bad, four legs good!

I would like to be able to say that we live in a free enterprise, freedom of expression, free country, but the reality is, Australia is rapidly beginning to adopt the mantle of a socialist 'paradise'(not). 

"The state cannot ‘create’ wealth; only the private sector can. So when, instead of being properly grateful for the private sector’s generosity, the state only abuses it by raising taxes, creating stifling regulation and punishing wealth creation."

Australia Today!

Read this Australia and weep:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_things_i_never_thought_id_see_here/

Eco-fascism rears its head!

I blogged in 'Swamp Life' about the superficial emotionalism that appears to be an emerging cultural paradigm within the West. Perhaps this article: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2011/07/eco-fascism-the-greens  illustrates how such a shallow view of life provides the opportunity for those in our society with totalitarian impulses to gain a foothold they might otherwise have struggled to achieve.

Demagoguery sweeps aside all attempts to conduct a reasoned debate and appeals instead to people's emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a deliberately exaggerated and manipulative fashion. Hamilton made his views here quite explicit, speaking about the nature of Green propaganda: “The purpose of political exaggeration is to stimulate stronger emotional responses, usually fear, and make [people] more likely to act in the way desired” by those seeking to manipulate the people.

Hans Rookmaaker has stated that manipulation works as a 'hidden persuader', and I would invite all to examine how the main stream media tend to 'hide' indiscretions, lies and obvious lunacy on the part of the left-wing from public scrutiny whilst exaggerating the most insignificant errors from the conservative side of politics.

Thank goodness for the Internet I say, and bring on a new election, hopefully before  Ju liar and Sideshow Bob wreck the economy forever.