Kachow!

Roger Kimball has a way with words, and could that claim be any better illustrated than through this put-down of the global warming clownfish which occupy so much of the lame-stream-media space these days:

I regard the whole Green Lobby as a cocktail composed of three parts moralistic hysteria mixed with a jigger of high-proof cynical opportunism (take a look at Al Gore’s winnings from the industry) fortified with a dash of beady-eyed left-wing redistributionist passion. You can never be Green enough, Comrade, and if the data show a 20-year “hiatus” in global warming (so much for Michael Mann’s infamous hockey stick), that’s no reason not to insist that capitalist powerhouses like the United States drastically curtail their CO₂emissions right now, today, while giving egregious polluters like China a decade or more to meet its quotas.

The age of Nietzsche.......

These days whenever I read the news or, on the rare occasion subject myself to watching the news on TV, I am saddened at the state of willful blindness exhibited by most participants.  (2 Corinthians 4:4)

The worldview of the 21st century has become that of emotion over reason and comfort over distress, or as Solzhenitsyn puts it: 'the cult of material well-being'. 

Truth no longer exists in 'discussion' or 'debate' which renders such activities nothing but an airing of opinions. And the really frightening thing about that is that when reason is replaced by opinion and no one will be swayed by convincing argument then anarchy rules. When anarchy rules the only way to bring resolution is through power. Which is why the political process has become one of attaining power at all costs. Politically nothing of any value remains except concessions, attempts to gain time and ultimately betrayal. Shortens 'reign' as a union supremo illustrates that perfectly, hence the current attempt to discredit the commission.

It is also the reason why a demonstrably 'good' man such as Tony Abbott is so vilified in the press and therefore in the minds of many ordinary Australians. The anti-Abbott hate propaganda is unrelenting, extreme and willfully mendacious. 

Of course history shows us that the result of political chaos is totalitarianism because when reason fails the only alternative is power and the strongest wins. And when the strongman is in power?

Well; we are all the architects of our own fate willingly or unwittingly.

ITS A SCAM PURE AND SIMPLE!

With all the double-speak doing the rounds about how all 'climate change deniers' are in the pay of the nefarious 'big-oil' barons, I put it to you that so-called big-oil hasn't seen numbers like these since the early days of real robber barons and highway robbery...which is what the 'climate-change' spruikers actually are: robber barons and Nietzschean thieves:

The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth …

That also includes the climate change consulting market, which a recent report by the journal estimates at $1.9 billion worldwide and $890 million in the U.S.

Included in this sub-segment, which the report shows is one of the fastest growing areas of the climate change industry, are environmental consultants and engineers, risk managers, assurance, as well as legal and other professional services.

Figures for the climate change consulting market are expected to more than double in the next five years … 

The unintended consequences of Culling, Suttee and the Green religion.....

“Psychoanalyst Walter Langer wrote, ‘People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it often enough, people will sooner or later believe it.’”

If you believe that all of life has evolved from a common ancestor, it logically follows that all living things are equally valid and therefore no life form has the intrinsic right to impose itself on another. 

As evolution increasingly occupies the throne of worldview 'dominance' we should not be astonished that there exists the concomitant shadow of a simultaneous devaluation of human life with a veneration of animal life.

The inevitable result has been a philosophical shift where it becomes permissible, even desirable (see: Planned Parenthood), to kill millions of unborn humans every year, whilst at the same time people are willing to spend millions of dollars on the preservation of a handful of beached whales, even those not threatened with extinction.

"When man loses his sense of his place in the universe, all sorts of confusion arises. In India, while cows are elevated, widows are denigrated and neglected, having lost their identity and value within Hindu culture when their husband dies (before the British banned the practice in the 1800’s, widows were customarily burnt on their husband’s funeral pyre, a practice known as Sati or Suttee after the Hindu goddess of the same name)." (Marc Ambler, CMI magazine, Published: 11 October 2012)

Consider how the Green religion has negatively impacted the earth because of our post-modern tendency to place feelings above reason:

"For decades, conservationists used culling as a means of managing expanding herds. While not relished by conservationists, humane culling was seen as a necessary evil to properly manage the size of herds so that they could still be supported within their habitat.

A looming change—with consequences

Over the past couple of decades, however, culling has been fiercely denounced and resisted by ‘deep green’ lobbyists. Much hand wringing goes on in the belief that man has no right to kill elephants or any other creature and alternatives such as contraception were investigated. While this went on, elephant populations continued to grow and habitats were severely harmed as the elephants stripped vast areas of all trees in their desperation to find food. This in turn led to a deleterious effect on other species as ecosystems were destroyed. In some Southern African parks where culling had been stopped due to this opposition, elephants began to starve as their populations grew beyond the ability of the area to support them, quite analogous to the seemingly miserable conditions of domesticated (sacred) cows in India." (Ibid)

Cecil's legacy

I do not like trophy hunting because I cannot understand the motivation to kill for 'sport', but I acknowledge that some do and that they are not always 'bad guys'. In fact some good friends are hunters, albeit of feral creatures such as rabbits and foxes. There are also the necessary 'cullings' undertaken by conservation parks. Plus I have no doubt that were my family or friends lives dependant on it I would shuck my displeasure and assume the role out of necessity.

I think that many in today's world have become so removed from 'real-world' activities involving blood and sweat that their worldview has become infantilised. Any/all(?) blood shedding is viewed as something terrible, a perspective I believe to not only be inadequate but spiritually damaging as well.

Yes! We do need to conserve, protect and steward the creation as the cultural mandate instructs us to do, but we are also to be particularly careful of how we can be influenced by the zeitgeist more than we should and what we call unnecessary or vile practices. Reason should trump our 'programmed' repulsion, although having said that I realise how much emotion has superseded reason in our post-modern society.

Interestingly this whole debacle highlights quite clearly the intellectual hypocrisy behind those much vaunted secular values of relativity and non-judgement!

I have attached what I consider a rather informative response (albeit from a utilitarianist w/v) to a blog on the issue of Cecil's demise:

"Here’s the thing though, with a billion dollar industry on the line, ranches are incentivised to protect big game like lions and rhinos and elephants.  Since the popularity of big game hunting has taken off huge tracts of land have been converted from farm land to safaris and lion, rhino, hippo and elephant numbers have increased, not decreased.  You also reduce the likelihood of poachers since ranchers are compelled to protect their investment.

The same simply does not apply to national parks in their current format, poachers run rampant, the funding is pitiful at best and so on.

Also Presidents of the US have a long a rich history of big game hunting, Teddy Roosevelt (the guy who invented the entire idea of national parks) was a very keen hunter and conservationist and long advocated the capitalisation of big game hunting as a means to conserve species like the buffalo.

The unhappy fact is those 9000 wealthy tourists contribute more to conservation in a year than you ever will in your entire life.  As deplorable as it is I’d argue that the suffering of a few animals to ensure the entire species survival is a price I’d happily pay.

The needs of the many outweigh the few in this instance, there is simply no better motivation to conserve resources in today’s society than the promise of a buck or two.  I don’t like big game hunting any more than you do but I can not deny the effectiveness of it either."

FOUR LEGS GOOD TWO LEGS BAD

I take it as a given that most of my friends have long ago realised how much I detest Socialism in all its deviant forms. Unfortunately the State of South Australia is ruled by a socialist clique who were voted into power by those I consider either idiots or infantiles.

For example it is the only State in Australia not to have allowed Uber to operate; why? Because Uber takes the power out of the hands of the government/union/bureaucracy and places it firmly into the hands of the public:

Ultimately, Uber, AirBbB and other cooperative social sharing networks and app-based service providers have sprung up in response to a corrupt establishment - a tangled web of cronyism that involves government regulators who want to tax, control and organize networks, and massive unions who seek to keep a stranglehold on jobs and industries. Uber openly subverts a scheme between local governments and labor unions to limit choice in transportation to that which is both approved by government and operated by unions. The result is inflated pricing, artificial scarcity and a market that doesn't operate with consumers in mind. Instead of changing their system to respond to consumer needs, transportation unions would rather just shut down the subversive businesses entirely. [ Emily Zanotti on 7.13.15 American Spectator]

FREE enterprise (emphasis on Free) is something a socialist bureaucracy has nightmares about. Incidentally South Australia also has the highest unemployment rates in Australia, correlation anyone?

These are people who believe in a utopian society where the State shapes behaviour because, well; every right-thinking person knows that whilst we were all born perfect, society has corrupted us and causes us to make bad choices, (the Rousseaun doctrine; foundational cause of the French 'revolution/bloodbath’ ‘everywhere born free, but now in chains' etc) ergo it is only the state (maternal/paternal bureaucracy) that can correct our behaviour.

Thus we have prisoners with more rights than victims, (shame, its not their fault, its our society's fault). We have traitors blaming the West for terrorists behaviour, we have state bureaucrats determining that lower and ever stupidly lower speed limits (in spite of research reaching an opposite conclusion) can eradicate death from the roads (an escapist mindset signalling that; we don't have to die if only we let the state look after us).

We have financial penalties becoming the social behavioural tool of the 21st century with 'experts' (always in white smocks) lining up to say how behaviour is modified by fining people (tell that to the dropkicks I spoke to when driving a cab who boasted of how they 'beat the system' by never paying and eventually being forgiven their debts) the exorbitant and in many cases unfair (invisible when you don't even know they exist) financial penalties levied on the population which in reality only punish the middle class conservatives, those who are trying to live responsible and honest lifestyles...the wealthy don't care two hoots and the drop-kicks just rort the system.

But don't tell that to the keepers of the 'system' because they already know that (many are opposed to the bourgeois anyway), besides they rely on the revenue to fund their hand-out mentality thus keeping the infantile/couldn't-care-less-as-long-as-I-get-my-handout's in line with goodies.

Capitalism and free enterprise are flawed systems, but they knock the socks off of the alternative which have proved to be not only failures but misanthropic to boot.

The power of the declared powerless....

For those of us on the receiving end of the looks and gasps of stupefaction (or anger!) when mentioning the almost overwhelming bias exhibited by the main-stream-media, (lame-stream?) a statement such as this one in the media, brings a refreshing I-told-you-so moment to the argument:

"What I admire about the anti-capitalist left is their ability to present their ideas as somehow "unorthodox" and "anti-mainstream", when they are clearly nothing of the sort. Go to any high street bookstore, and you will find that the politics section consists of little else but the tomes of Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Russell Brand, Owen Jones, Ha-Joon Chang, George Monbiot and the other usual suspects. If that is a "neoliberal hegemony", I dread to think what a left-wing hegemony would look like."

This approach is like a reverse psychology ploy of Saul Alinsky's first rule for radicals:

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

[Square brackets my inclusions]