liars

Thomas Sowell on the big lies of politics:

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them; it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth catches up with both the politicians and the people in the long run. Among the biggest lies of the welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic is the notion that the government can supply the people with things they want but cannot afford. Since the government gets its resources from the people, if the people as a whole cannot afford something, neither can the government. There is, of course, the perennial fallacy that the government can simply raise taxes on “the rich” and use that additional revenue to pay for things that most people cannot afford. What is amazing is the implicit assumption that “the rich” are all such complete fools that they will do nothing to prevent their money from being taxed away. History shows otherwise. 

Viridian psychosis

Another of the multiple hypocrisy's which undergird the ideologies of the end-is-nigh green fanatics:

The federal government (American) last August imposed hefty fines on seven petroleum companies in North Dakota over the death of 28 birds near their open waste pits.
The wind farms championed by promoters of “green energy,” by comparison, kill more than 400,000 birds a year — including dozens of eagles — yet they pay not a penny in fines.
“Team Obama wants to give wind-power companies long-term permits to butcher bald eagles, America’s national symbol, on the altar of green energy,” writes Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.  

The question I would like to pose to green fundamentalists is

A voice from the wilderness

T S Eliot as editor of The Criterion on politics between the World Wars:

For myself, a right political philosophy came more and more to imply a right theology—and right economics to depend upon right ethics: leading to emphases which somewhat stretched the original framework of a literary review. In retrospect, it would seem that perhaps I devoted too much of my gossiping attention, as Commentator, to the doctrines of communism. I can only say that I was commenting on ideas, or the lack of them, and not engaging in political prophecy. I was concerned with ideas chiefly as they originated in, or penetrated to, England; and the version of fascism, which was offered locally, appeared to have no great intellectual interest—and what is perhaps more important, was not sufficiently adaptable to be grafted on to the stock of Toryism—whereas communism flourished because it grew so easily on the Liberal root.

It seems prophetic regarding our current Labor government and its 'grafting' of the deep green ideological baggage.

Not graffiti

I am about to give vent to one of my favourite gripes.

Having just watched the tail end of a program about 'saving' (from the consequences of their stupidity? Sorry!!!) young offenders by offering them self esteem in the form of various classes at a youth drop-in centre...a most admirable programme I might add...nevertheless the issue that always gets my steam up is when the programme directors/instructors whatever you call them, refer to the painting these kids do as 'graffiti' just because they use spray can paints.

Whilst these paintings might be in the style and use the mediums used by 'graffitti artists' (an oxymoron if ever there was one) IT IS NO LONGER GRAFFITI WHEN THE WORK IS BEING DONE ON CANVAS, BOARD, OR ANY OTHER SURFACE THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THEM BECAUSE IT IS BEING DONE WITH KNOWLEDGE AND PERMISSION.

Graffiti is by definition something done out of frustration, rebellion or both and usually on someone else's property. Its intent is to 'dis the bourgeois', to revolt against the constraints of rules, it is in short; VANDALISM.

And when one of the aspirant artists then says with a knowing smirk that human beings' first artistic responses were those of graffiti, by which I assume that she is referring to cave paintings, that's when I am glad I don't have a gun so I cannot pull an Elvis on my TV. 

Watch this space

My recent musings have led me to tentatively exploring a suspicion that the current thrust by radical left-wing as well as the 'green' ideological political entities, towards a one-world-government is the PoMo equivalent of an ancient biblical zeitgeist; specifically the sect of Nicolaitans (Rev 2:6) and their 'Mother Earth' heresy:

“Tertullian reports the lust and luxury of the Nicolaitans, cites evidence from Revelation, and adds that there was another sort of Nicolaitans, a satanic sect, called the Gaian heresy [worship of Mother Earth, which has reared its ugly head today]

...and looking back even further to the machinations behind the tower of Babel putsch:

Josephus, in Antiquities of the Jews, tells us, “Now it was Nimrod (the architect of Babel)who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God.  He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah – a bold man, and of great strength of hand.  He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage that procured their happiness.  He also gradually changed the government into a tyranny, -- seeing no other way to turn men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his power” (Bk.I, iv, 2). Nimrod was the first great “victor of [or over] the people.”  He was the first “Nicolaus.”  He is the one for whom the WHOLE SYSTEM is named!  His name is stamped on the forehead of this “Mystery, Babylon,” religious system which seeks to bring the whole world into one unified religious system of belief, doctrines, and religious globalization. 

Interesting!

The Emperor had similar clothing

A logical progression to the Duchampian notion and subsequent post-modern dictum that art is everything (i.e. what the artist says it is) with its logical conclusion being that it therefore becomes nothing:

Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, has promised it will "set our imaginations alight".

And so his gallery's latest exhibition will have to, considering the fact that every piece of art inside it will be invisible.

From a bare plinth to a canvas painted entirely with invisible ink, the imagination of the paying public will play a decisive role in the success or failure of the show, the first of its kind in Britain.

For £8 visitors will be able to marvel at – or search in vain for – 50 works of "invisible art" by leading names including Andy Warhol, Yves Klein and Yoko Ono.

Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957 – 2012 , which opens on June 12 and has been billed as "the best exhibition you'll never see", is designed to show how the goal of art is to stimulate people's imagination rather than merely present interesting things for them to look at.

Who knew that Marcel Duchamp and Hans Christian Anderson has so much in common.

Race matters (to some)

Columnist George Will speaks about the core doctrinal belief of our self-declared 'intellegentsia':

This makes perfect sense to a liberal subscriber to the central superstition of the diversity industry, which is the premise of identity politics: Personhood is distilled not to the content of character but only to race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference.

Martin Luther King jnr. must be spinning like a turbine.

Deeply wrong

For anybody who is thinking of or has already voted for the Greens party a little history on their 20th Century antecedents might be appropriate.
I do not think that all green are like those mentioned in this article, but I do believe and have experienced naive believers whose ideas of the Green movement are shaped more by Utopianist dreaming than hard reality.
The article is found at: http://www.martindurkin.com/blogs/nazi-greens-inconvenient-history and is an interesting read from numerous perspectives.
A challenge to the deep greens amongst us...go on I dare you!

Green sin

An excerpt ever so slightly altered...written by Walter Starck:

No other moral crusade has had such an ongoing, widespread and ever increasing detriment as has environmentalism. While the benefits of cleaner air and water have been apparent and undeniable, the damage inflicted by misguided environmentalism has been largely unrecognised even though massively extensive and deleterious to human wellbeing.
This damage has included direct impacts and benefits prevented as well as the more indirect effects of repression and loss of freedom and opportunity:

Some Direct Damages of Misguided Environmentalism

1. Tens of millions of deaths and debilitating infections by malaria which could have been prevented by indoor use of DDT with minimal environmental impact.
    
2. Destruction of millions of Ha of rainforest to grow biofuels for an immeasurably trivial reduction in CO₂ emissions.
    
3. It has been estimated that as many as 20 million people have been robbed of their lands and forced into poverty as conservations refugees. After millennia of harmonious co-existence with their natural environment they have been driven out to “protect” it.
    
4. Even in developed countries multitudes of honest, productive families of small farmers, stockmen and fishermen have also been stripped of a long standing sustainable livelihood to pander to the uninformed notions of green urbanites.
    
5. In recent years significant increases in food prices have resulted from large areas of land being removed from food production in order to grow uneconomic subsidised biofuels. In addition food production has suffered from reductions in water rights, prohibition of native vegetation clearance, expansion of parks along with myriad environmental restrictions and demands that reduce productivity or increase cost with little or no actual environmental benefit. A further direct consequence has been an increase in malnutrition, especially in underdeveloped countries dependent on staple food imports. This affects tens of millions of people and the trend is getting worse not better.
    
6. One of the more serious effects of misguided environmentalism has also been the corruption of science. This is resulting in a marked dulling of our most effective tool for informed decision making at a time when it is needed more than ever to deal with an increasingly complex world. In the environmental sciences repeated exposures of junk science and concerted scientific misconduct along with exaggerated predictions which fail their reality test have damaged public trust in all science. Lavish funding for agenda driven junk science has also resulted in a virtual abandonment of sound basic research in favour of research aimed at promoting the existence of purported threats. 

Benefits Denied through Environmentalism

1. Ignorance and ill-founded fears about genetically modified crops has prevented their introduction in many places. While reasonable prudence is warranted in the adoption of this powerful technology, its blanket prohibition is unwarranted by extensive experience as well as our best scientific understanding. The benefits of increased production, disease resistance, and nutritional improvements as well as the reduced use of fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are huge. They amount to hundreds of billions of dollars per year in addition to more and better food for billions of people.
    
2. Unbelievably the GMO hysteria has extended even to the rejection of food aid in a famine in Africa because of concerns about it possibly containing GM material. Apparently the eco-logic is that it is better to starve than to risk an undefined possibility of some unhealthy effect from eating GM food which is consumed by hundreds of millions of people elsewhere with no adverse consequences known.
    
3. The energy from fossil fuels is the very foundation of modern society   and its rising cost is now having a damaging economic impact on all developed economies. Despite its vital importance, however, increasing imposts, restrictions and liabilities have become a major impediment to production. It appears probable that we are headed for a severe energy crisis including some nations with large natural reserves such as the U.S. and Australia. Certainly the increasing cost of energy is already having a significant negative impact on the prosperity of millions of people even in the most prosperous nations.
   
4. Although aquaculture has been highly successful in producing affordable high quality animal protein with minimal environmental detriment it has also become subject to increasing restrictions, prohibitions and costs imposed on the basis of ill-founded environmental concerns. At the same time recent large scale clinical and epidemiological studies have found strong correlation between increased seafood consumption and significant health benefits. These encompass a broad spectrum of major disorders including cardiovascular diseases, a variety of immune related disorders and neurological development and functioning. There is strong indication that increased seafood consumption in most Western nations could save billions of dollars annually in health care costs along with a greatly improved quality of life for tens of millions of people. Although globally there is limited potential for further increasing production in wild caught fisheries, there is great potential for expanded aquaculture. The only real impediment is misguided environmentalism. 

Repression and loss of freedom and opportunity imposed by environmentalism

1. Hunting, fishing and camping for recreational and food supplementation purposes have long been healthy activities open to people of all ages and social classes. Over the past few decades, however, increasingly harsh, restrictive, complex and costly regulations enacted under the banner of environmental management have taken much of the fun as well as the affordability out of these activities.
    
2. Strong property rights have been a core element of long standing in the development of Western democracies. A person’s home has been their castle and private property was indeed private. However, that is now history. The new eco-fascism is busy imposing myriad restrictions and demands regarding what one can, cannot and must do on one’s own land. Land ownership is becoming more a matter of onerous, ever increasing and arbitrary obligations than of any secure rights. Land holding is effectually in the process of being transformed into a new form of serfdom with the state as the true owner and the liege lord to whom all obligations must be paid and permissions sought.
    
3. For millennia fishermen were among the freest of people, the industry was open to anyone and the price of entry was only time and effort. The ideal of fisheries management was to maximise the sustainable yield. Then came the development of academically trained office based eco-management conducted by experts in theoretical ideas about things they have never seen and about which little is actually known. Management claims have expanded to include the entire marine ecosystem with a focus on the maintenance of species diversity and community resiliency while protecting from an endless array of possible threats, all with an eye to erring on the side of precaution. The favourite tool has become the computer model which can be readily adjusted to provide any desired result, lends an aura of high tech certainty and is safely inaccessible to independent examination. The freedom to fish has been transformed into privatised, corporatized, tradable rights accompanied by blizzards of paperwork. The result has been a declining industry with ageing participants and no new generation coming on to replace them. The rights to the most valuable fisheries are all becoming the private property of corporations and investors to be fished by struggling share croppers who bear all the risk and effort but enjoy only a minority of the profit.

The inverse relation of environmentalism and productivity -
While concern for the environment has unquestionably resulted in valuable benefits from pollution reduction, preservation of nature and more sustainable utilisation of natural resources; it has also spawned the development of environmentalism as a malignant ideological offshoot with far less benign consequences. Environmentalism has become both a powerful political lever putting dangerous power in the hands of ignorance as well as a convenient cloak for sundry hidden agendas.  That it has cost tens of millions of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and had significant impacts on health, prosperity, freedom and enjoyment of life over much of the world is all too real even if still largely unrecognised.
In most developed nations a large majority of the population now dwell in cities and only a minority toil to produce the goods and services which support us all. For many urbanites in particular the environment has acquired a romantic, somewhat sacred, status. Though themselves voracious consumers, they are removed from the production that supplies their demands. Those who provide their needs tend to be seen as greedy exploiters and defilers of nature. Even more ironically, their own lifestyle has virtually annihilated the natural world in a small portion of the environment and that is where they choose to live.
Environmental delusions and deceptions -
The reality of a constant struggle for survival in a dynamic, ever changing, often harsh natural world has been replaced by a romantic notion of nature in a blissful state of harmony and balance, something pure and perfect where any detectable human influence is by definition a desecration. This sacred perspective of the environment manifests itself in language where fragile and delicate become almost mandatory adjectives in describing the natural world.
An unholy coalition of politicians, activists, bureaucrats, academics, and the media have found it profitable to feed into and use the urban eco-delusions for sundry other agendas. For the politicians it affords a cheap shop at green votes. For activists it’s campaigns that attract public attention and donations. For bureaucrats it’s increased authority and budgets. For academics it’s grants and recognition. For the media it’s the attention grabbing drama of threats and conflicts.
Like every effective propaganda machine environmentalism has created it’s own special terms of emotional index designed to trigger reflexive notions of good and evil. Terms such as sustainable, biodiversity, ecosystem-based management, ecologically sustainable development, modelled, precautionary, overexploited, threatened, endangered, deniers and even the very words environment and ecology have been co-opted and associated with desired connotations to serve as buzz words.
A peculiar adjunct of all this has been the enshrinement of an imaginary precautionary principle concocted to mandate that any suggestion of a detrimental environmental effect must be addressed with full measures to prevent it. Its formulation makes no reference to probability, cost, or risks and it offers a ready cloak for sundry other agendas. Logically it would even preclude itself as everything we do or don’t do entails risk, including precautionary measures themselves. Amazingly, this vacuous and pernicious piece of nonsense has even been written into the enabling legislation of various government agencies charged with various facets of environmental management.
To make matters worse, environmentalism has also become heavily infected with the intellectual malignancy of political correctness wherein certain attitudes, beliefs and perspectives are deemed to be so unarguably true and proper as to be beyond any questioning or critical examination. To attempt to do so is not simply to be mistaken. It is evidence of moral degeneration and wilful evil.
This then brings us to the mother of all environmental threats, Anthropogenic Global Warming (a.k.a. Climate Change). AGW has been the eco-saviour’s ultimate wet dream. In the short term it has afforded healthy portions of fame, fortune, authority and great righteousness. Further along it promises to save the world, punish unbelievers and bring about a fair, harmonious, balanced, sustainable restoration of Eden. The fact that all such dreams of ideal societies have had a 100% track record of failure is not even a consideration. To the faithful every time, this time is always different and each time the believers are certain they “know” the truth and surely couldn’t be wrong because it is confirmed by all their fellow believers and politically correct as well. 
Ecology is above all holistic -
Every organism must have effects in order to exist. We are no exception. Aiming to maximise our beneficial effects and minimise our detrimental ones requires trade-offs and adjustments whereby we seek to spread our impacts across our whole resource base within the bounds of sustainability.
Every resource we lock up puts more pressure on others and makes genuine sustainability more difficult. An unnecessary restriction in one place becomes an increased impact somewhere else.
The reality of natural ecosystems is that they are far less delicate, fragile and balanced than is popularly imagined. They are in fact much more robust, dynamic and fluctuating with every organism impacting on others. Like all species the effect of our own can be either harmful or beneficial depending upon whether the net result is to decrease or to enhance the diversity, abundance and condition of life.
Environmentalism tends to view every accidental condition of nature as manifesting some beneficent balance but any evidence of a human influence as an unnatural impact. This perspective is baseless, irrational and is itself unnatural. Our species like all the others is a natural result of the evolution of life on this planet. Our rather sudden and amazing success after such a long, hard and often doubtful struggle is something to marvel about and be grateful for, not something to be disparaged.
Approaching the end times -
Unfortunately mass delusions with moralistic overtones have a way of continuing well beyond the point where they have departed from any relation to reality. Deep commitment, pressure to conform and suppression of dissent may maintain them for some time even when their failure has become painfully obvious. If a powerful and respected leader finally dares to admit that serious problems exist, followers are then free to admit reality and the seemingly invulnerable bubble of delusion may abruptly collapse. The collapse of the communism is a prime example. However, if leaders have too much to lose to admit any error, a delusion may continue until mortality removes them or followers may simply fade away over time leaving only an empty shell of fossilised fanatics.
The climate change delusion is now in its terminal battle with reality. The proclamations of the alarmists are growing more and more unhinged from the actual climate in which we exist. Increasingly costly and restricted energy supplies are having growing impact on people’s lives. Green energy has failed miserably to deliver cheap, adequate and reliable power or to result in any meaningful reduction in CO₂ emissions. It exists only because of subsidies which render it an indulgence we can no longer afford. Then, to top everything off, the science on which all the claims have been based has been repeatedly exposed as corrupted by incompetence, inappropriate methods, unexplained adjustments to data, cherry picking of evidence, exaggeration, supressing or ignoring conflicting findings and even outright fraud.
Where to from here-
The threat of catastrophic climate change has almost certainly been greatly exaggerated and the net effect of increased CO₂ in the atmosphere is much more likely to be beneficial than harmful. A growing majority of the public now reject the alarmism. After it collapses, or just withers away to irrelevance, we will be left with a need to better understand how the science became so corrupted.
There are several aspects in this regard about which we should begin thinking:

1. The current system of peer review is overrated and corrupt. The Internet makes possible a much more widely based, open and transparent approach.
    
2. Scientific training and practice is lacking in a clear understanding and implementation of the philosophy and ethics of science.
    
3. Government funding of research has become dominated by political agendas wherein support is awarded in accord with the production of desired findings.
    
4. Researchers, managers and activists in the environmental area have learned to manufacture hypothetical threats to obtain funding. With the precautionary principle no demonstrable problem is required, only the suggestion of a possible one.
    
5. A properly structured and resourced science court is needed to evaluate important scientific claims and disputes before public policies are based on them. 

Unfortunately the corruption is not restricted to science itself. Junk science is now being widely indoctrinated throughout the educational system. Instead of teaching students how to recognise and evaluate such malignant righteousness, they are being presented it as unquestionable truth.
In developed nations Virtually all productive activity now faces a morass of environmental regulations imposed through a multitude of different government bodies. The difficulties, delays, costs and uncertainties are having a major impact. More and more businesses are giving up altogether or moving offshore. For many who do try to go ahead or who are already committed the eco-demands result in marginal profitability. This trend is getting worse, not better, and it is already having a significant impact on national prosperity. For multinational companies it just means squeezing out what profit they can from their investment and diverting future expansion elsewhere. For increasing numbers of domestic businesses already at the margin of profitability it simply means closing down.
Moral crusades have a repeated history of imposing pain and ending in grief. There is nothing to indicate this one is any different. It’s time to recognise it for what it is, consign it to the rubbish bin of history and begin thinking about how to undo the damage.

Herr Gillard

This is a comment from a reader at Andrew Bolts blog about how the Labor vote has been further obliterated in Queensland:

What is deepening voter anger is this sense that Gillard and Labor are trying to make it impossible for the Coalition to unwind its decisions. This is the same as the evicted tenant smashing up the house so no one can live in it. Gillard, Labor and the Greens might think this a clever act of self-righteous defiance but the owner of this “house” is the Australian public.

There is a perception that this government is showing great similarities to Hitlers last days in the bunker when he blamed the German people for his demise and therefore felt that they (the people) deserved to have their 'house' (country) reduced to rubble.

Troll zone

I like to read comments posted about the stories published on the web because they often reflect the quality of the blog/news-piece almost as much as the quality of the reader...unfortunately I am discovering more and more that both the web and the comments column have become the zone of trolls.
A pity...however given the rapid retreat of society in general from manners and ethics I suppose we should not be surprised.

Art as decadence

I cannot phrase it any better than this:

...not only the work of the expensive artists who made the headlines like Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, but also many of the conceptual artists patronised by public galleries—and French rococo, a movement that extolled frivolity, luxury and dilettantism, patronised by a corrupt and decadent ancien régime. Boucher’s art represented the degradation of the baroque school’s classical and Christian values into a heavenly zone of soft porn, shorn of danger, conflict and moral purpose. Similarly, Hirst’s work represents the degeneration of the modernist project from its mission to sweep away art’s “bourgeois relics” into a set of eye-pleasing and sentimental visual tropes.

The ultimate goal of revolution is to end up in the same place only worse off than ever.
Read the full article on: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/05/why-is-modern-art-so-bad/

Green Ostriches

The interesting thing about this blog: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2012/05/aussies-abroad
is that it features comments by the Utopianists in our culture..i.e. readers of the AGE.
Their comments reflect an undisguised condescension and class consciousness...these are people living in a world they wish was returning to the previous master-peasant paradigm with themselves as the master.
That is what drives the Greens and likeminded 'progressives', they don't really want us back in the stone age,(though their power generation policies are doing that) rather just a few centuries back where the 'elite' are in total control and the 'peasants' their (un)willing 'slaves'.
The only problem with that scenario is that as soon as the barbarians who wait on the sidelines (see Frnace & Greece) have the upper hand, revolution happens and the 'elite' take a trip to the guillotine.
Just desserts I don't wonder, the problem is that many innocents suffer as well.

SAd but true

An unfortunately truthful observation by Melanie Phillips:

Moral rules were developed to restrain the worst in human nature and encourage the best. In this post-religious, post-moral society, selflessness, compassion and generosity of spirit have been replaced by selfishness, sentimentality and cruelty.

Civilisation is only ever a thin veneer. As Dr Wright said, the combination of the ‘me-society’ and the new anti-social media is toxic. The internet has peeled back our culture and given us Lord — and Ladettes — of the Flies.

The full article is here: http://melaniephillips.com/the-net-has-given-us-lord-and-ladettes-of-the-flies

Miffed!

If you believe in Anthropogenic global warming then what do you think of this?
 http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/heartland_faces_the_heat/

Beware the preacher!

From Bolts blog:

Nick Cater never dared confess to me that he’d not only worked for the BBC but had a sociology degree.  He’s now a fellow Murdoch minion, editor of The Weekend Australian, and explains how he came to love the evil Rupert Murdoch:

It’s interesting to imagine what would happen if an Australian government, presumably one better disposed to the fourth estate than this one, passed a law forbidding The Australian’s readers from voting with their wallets. The energy would drain out of this office in a month, or probably less. We would become lazier and more complacent, and start publishing stories that matter to our colleagues rather than our readers. Politically, we would start drifting towards the territory currently occupied by The Age.
Far worse would be the loss of restraint, the obligation to consider the interests of the whole country, not just the inner-city enclaves where most journalists probably live. We would end up hostage to group-think, reinforcing our own prejudices and eventually coming to secretly despise the readers. I know, because I once worked in such a place.

I agree with Nick. No Murdoch, and the debate in Australia would shrivel. Few other proprietors are as willing to risk profits to defend free speech and defy the political class that dominates the institutions.

A similar take from Marxist Brendon O’Neill on the Leveson show trial in Britain:

Here, we can glimpse what is really fuelling Leveson: not a simple desire to hold to account the small number of people who did wrong at the (Murdoch-owned) News of the World, but a thirst to remake politics in the image of the anti-Murdoch “decent classes”. It is their boredom with parliament and their disdain for the masses that has led them to see Leveson as the saviour of the political realm. In truth, this lordly show trial of politics and the press doesn’t enliven democracy - it endangers it.

Be very mindful of those who preach one thing whilst doing another. Pause and reflect.

Who are you

A rubric for life

If a Conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a Labor/Greenie doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.If a Conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat. If a Labor/Greenie is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a Conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life. If a Labor/Greenie is homosexual, he demands legislated respect. If a Conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. If a Labor/Greenie is down and out, he wonders who is going to take care of him. If a Conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels. If a Labor/Greenie doesn’t lake a talk show host, he demands that those he doesn’t like be shut down. If a Conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church. If a Labor/Greenie is a non-believer, he wants any mention of God and religion silenced. If a Conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it,or may choose a job that provides it.If a Labor/Greenie decides he needs health care, he demands that the rest of us pay for his. If a Conservative reads this, he’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh. If a Labor/Greenie reads this, he will delete it because he’s “offended”.

Decide

We decide:

My understanding of Finkelstein proposal is very simple: after the ill-advised and maybe even criminal multiple breach of privacy by the News of the World, the Left decided to use this pretext to advance their totalitarian agenda. As in the USSR, these

political hacks do not tolerate any critical appraisal of their activities. That is why they hate the independent media. The Greens, with their hardcore communist cadres, initiated the proposal, which amounts to the introduction of political censorship for the first time in Australia’s peacetime history. Naturally, they cited the need to protect innocent Australians from rapacious, power-hungry and manipulative media magnates.

Using the Trojan horse of protecting the people, the hardcore Left is preparing censorship legislation which threatens the fundamental freedoms of our country.

However, we should not be angry with these people and their modus operandi, any more than we should be angry that sea water is salty or that great white sharks are aggressive—it is their nature. It is in the nature of the hardcore Left to limit and, if possible, to abolish our freedoms in the name of the glorious future they envision. There are enough examples in history to demonstrate this inevitability. They are doing what they are supposed to do according to their belief system—no more, no less. Nothing to be surprised or be angry about.
The question which we, the freedom-loving people of Australia, have to ask ourselves is: What are we going to do about it? Are we going to let it happen?

Before its too late.

---

Courage

 I confess I am convicted by the courage and principles shown by this individual.

Just as earlier brave culture warriors – usually Christians – fought the evil slave trade, so too today some heroic believers are putting their life on the line for the unborn. Here is part of Graham’s latest story:

“A father of seven children will spend 8 months in jail starting Wednesday as a result of his efforts to the defend the unborn.  It is the longest jail-term ever received by an Australian pro-life activist. Graham Preston, 56, was called by police last week to arrange a time for his arrest. He negotiated to move it back from 8am to 9am this coming Wednesday, May 2, so he would have enough time to get his children to school.

“Mr. Preston will serve 232 days in prison – seeing him out just in time for Christmas – for refusing to pay roughly $8000 in fines that have accumulated after ten years of non-violently blocking the entrances of four abortion clinics around Brisbane.

“Since beginning non-violent direct action with the group Protect Life almost exactly ten years ago (April 16, 2002), Mr. Preston has endured more than ten months in jail over five separate jail-terms – mostly in Brisbane’s maximum security Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.

“The warrant for Mr. Preston’s arrest came after he received a letter from the Queensland Justice Department telling him he had until April 6 – coincidentally, Good Friday – to pay the fines or else face prison. Mr. Preston refuses to pay the fines on principle, arguing that trying to save the innocent from harm should not be regarded as criminal behaviour.”

The article continues, “Two years ago, Mr. Preston wrote on his website: ‘Going to jail is of course not a desirable thing, either for the person who does so, or for their family who may be very directly negatively affected. Yet our conviction is that this is probably an unavoidable part of seeing the value of all human lives given proper recognition. When anyone pays a very high price for something, it makes everyone ask the question, is it worth it? That is what we want our society to be asking, what are preborn babies worth? We want to say that babies’ lives are worth a person’s, or even many persons’, freedom.’

“Warwick Marsh, the National Co-ordinator of the Canberra Declaration, said: ‘Graham is one of Australia’s great heroes, truly putting the kids of Australia first. He is being unjustly imprisoned for his peaceful protests, while murderers and rapists walk free from our court systems and jails’.”

His wife Liz has also written about this latest stint in prison: “In the minds of some, if the mother or parents of a preborn child decide that they want to have an abortion, then their child loses absolutely all right to have their life protected. But not everyone is prepared to simply turn away and abandon such children to death. And not without good reason either.

When one considers the amount of truly guilty people getting off because of compromised court rooms and magistrates it gives an indication of where our society stands.
I pray for such strength.