Voters on the left are only slightly more stupid than the people they vote for. Ten months of lockdown and look what happens:
World witnessing greatest rise in inequality on record... Billionaires thriving as poor suffer...
Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years...
If you stop production [ie enforce lockdowns on our economies] you stop consumption, and that is the order in which things happen. And this is just the start of it.
THAT the ‘nations’ of the Americas about which Bruce Pascoe carelessly writes in today’s Fairfax numbers were indeed barbarous cannot be denied. It is sad to contemplate the hardships endured by peoples so rudely bested by more advanced civilisations. Death by disease, the abuse of women, the eradication of admirable custom and the ignorant disregard of native genius – all tragedies. But there isn’t one of us whose ancestors somewhere (or even grandparents) did not live through such trials. Old though the New World itself is now growing, the only question that matters today is whether the Christian new, as portended by the ships of Columbus (and Cook), is morally and materially superior to the Edens of unreason it forever altered. Nobody seriously denies the answer to that question is yes. The No case is nothing more than romantic showboating.
What was happening in the European mind when they built ships big enough to cross oceans?
The spread of Christianity, bringing light to the dark places? Or gold? Enough gold to gild a king’s palace or a priest’s church.
After Columbus and his journey to the Americas, Pope Alexander VI provided the answer in his papal bull of 1493, The Doctrine of Discovery, which deemed that Christians could lay claim to the territory of other nations on the grounds that the Indigenes did not know the name Jesus Christ. If they resisted the right of this most reasonable test, they could be justifiably killed.
Alexander VI never wrote anything called The Doctrine of Discovery. He promulgated Inter Caetera in 1493 for the purpose of bringing order – and, yes, a missionary zeal – to a process of colonisation and ‘conquest’ that the great powers of the day were steadfastly committed to pursuing, regardless of what any pope decreed. While it’s true the discovery doctrine (subsequently formalised over the next few centuries) did sanction the usurpation of non-Christian “barbarous nations” (and only these nations), the more lurid claim that Pope Alexander breezily authorised the killing of Indigenes in Inter Caetera is a complete fabrication.
Liam Hemsworth and others are spruiking nonsense which is also being taught to school children as they protest against ‘invasion day’:
We are spiritually and culturally connected to this country.
This country was criss-crossed by generations of brilliant Nations.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were Australia’s first explorers, first navigators, first engineers, first farmers, first botanists, first scientists, first diplomats, first astronomers and first artists.
Australia has the world’s oldest oral stories. The First Peoples engraved the world’s first maps, made the earliest paintings of ceremony and invented unique technologies. We built and engineered structures – structures on Earth – predating well-known sites such as the Egyptian Pyramids and Stonehenge.
Our adaptation and intimate knowledge of Country enabled us to endure climate change, catastrophic droughts and rising sea levels.
Always Was, Always Will Be. acknowledges that hundreds of Nations and our cultures covered this continent. All were managing the land – the biggest estate on earth – to sustainably provide for their future.
This statement is a work of poorly written fiction. All humans are descended from ancestors that roamed Africa. At some stage – perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 years ago according to archaeological records – some Homo Sapiens (so far as we know, Homo Erectus do not appear to have migrated to the land mass now know as Australia) moved to this continent during the Pleistocene (ice age) when sea levels were much lower allowing transit without seafaring. Later the ice age abated, ice melted and the Australian continent became separate and its inhabitants isolated.
In Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel – the Fates of Human Societies, he argues that circumstances (pressure on resources etc) lead to innovations and changes to society. On Australia he wrote
Australia is the sole continent where, in modern times, all native peoples still lived without any of the hallmarks of so-called civilization – without farming, herding, metal, bows and arrows, substantial buildings, settled villages, writing, chiefdoms or states. Instead Australian Aborigines were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, organised into bands, living in temporary shelters or huts and still dependent on stone-tools.” – (p. 297).
“Compared with Native Australians, New Guineans rate as culturally “advanced”…most New Guineans …were farmers and swineherds. They lived in settled villages and were organised politically into tribes rather than as bands. All New Guineans had bows and arrows, and many used pottery.” – (p. 297-8).
“While New Guinea…developed both animal husbandry and agriculture,…Australia…developed neither.” – (p. 308).
Isolated from other populations, and lacking little in the way of resources, Australia’s first inhabitants were not pressured into changing their ways of life and remained essentially hunter gatherers and nomadic societies. I make no judgement on whether this is good or bad, merely that despite the lack of competition over resources, life wasn’t always rosy and violence and skirmishes, murder and rape occurred as much among those humans as it did elsewhere.
It was inevitable that this isolation would not persist – it is perhaps surprising that it persisted as long as it did. But contact with other humans was inevitable and the outcome of that contact would be widely varying depending on whether the contact was made by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, British or others. The fact that Australia became a British colony is probably the best of the many alternatives that could have sprung from colonialisation. And we are all affected, mostly positively, by that contact – there would be few Aboriginal Australians (perhaps none) who today could say that they have no ancestry at all from settlers who arrived after 1787. We are all of mixed blood and we all descend from those original Homo Sapiens who evolved in Africa. It is time to talk about unity rather than division.
As for claims that pre 1788 Aboriginals were explorers, navigators, engineers, farmers, botanists, scientists, diplomats, astronomers and artists that’s just baloney. There are no engineering structures in the archaeological record, and they were no more navigators and explorers than the myriad of early Homo Sapiens that migrated out of Africa.
In truth their life was simple, with the daily struggle to maintain shelter, clothing, food and water. They were not a civilisation, let along multiple civilisations because they did not have advanced political and economic structures that comprise a civilisation. And the phrase ‘Always Was, Always Will Be’ is total bullshit. The earliest Homo Sapiens are around 200,000 years ago, and it is presumptive indeed to assert that any species will live forever. We already know that the Earth will not exist forever.
The indulgence of these ridiculous claims is putting a brake on the improvement of remote Aboriginal Australian settlements and condemning many to poor living standards and a short life expectancy. It is similar to the excellent piece by Paul Monk on Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf’s book The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace. This is similar – the indulgence of fantasy claims hinders reconciliation, peace and mutual prosperity. Instead people like Hemsworth want to bask in their moral superiority and dance on the future of poor Aboriginal Australians by seeing them as a form of living museum. It is an absolute disgrace.
Happy Australia Day
Global sea levels during the last Ice Age
So it turns out that recipients of Australia Day awards are notified in advance and consulted as to whether they will accept the award. This is done to avoid embarrassment to the Governor General and the government.
This year there has been a kerfuffle over Margaret Court receiving an AC – the highest ranked award. She already has an AO – hold that thought – and this is some sort of promotion. I had never heard of Margaret Court until the gay marriage debate a few years ago. I do not know if she has done more to deserve the promotion or not, but clearly others do. Beyond lefties going bananas (‘going’ you say?) over a conservative receiving an award on Invasion Day, it’s hard to get too excited over this award.
One thing, though, the story that Margaret Court had received another gong was leaked – I understand by a journalist – also in an effort to embarrass the government, not to mention the good Reverend herself. That person should be fired and the media organisation censured by the government.
Now … step up Kerry O’Brien. Former journalist with the ABC. Known for good reason as ‘Red’ Kerry. O’Brien had obviously already accepted the award – in full knowledge that Margaret Court already holds an AO. He wasn’t too proud then to accept the award, even with it being Invasion Day and all. But on Sunday, apparently, he wrote to the Governor-General now declining the award. About two days after the leak.
So what do we have? First he declined the award too late for his name to be withdrawn from the newspaper announcements.
But in time for his withdrawal to be news in and of itself. So O’Brien has managed to get himself into the news, and stick it up the government (and the Governor-General) one last time.
Now if the government were smart they would advise the Governor-General to refuse to accept the rejection and then strip him of the award. But, they are not smart.
In fact, if they were smart an award for O’Brien would never have been on the cards at all.
Can you imagine waking up on Australia Day under a future Shorten government and reading the news that Andrew Bolt or Paul Murray had won the Order of Australia for distinguished service to journalism and the media?
Me neither.
So why is it that Kerry O’Brien got one? This reflects very poorly on the government’s judgement. Now people will doubt make all sorts of excuses. Sinclair, you just don’t understand. The committee that makes the decisions is at arms-length from the government. This is an award that goes beyond partisan lines. There is more that unites us than divides us. Blah. Blah. Blah.
So let me repeat myself:
The ABC’s conscientious objectors never ‘reject’ any portion of their massive payouts, do they?
America sinks further into protectionism, imposing costs on taxpayers and foreigners.
President Biden is set to sign an order that will revise the definition of American-made products as he seeks to boost government procurement of U.S. goods.
Inability to understand the benefits if trade was a blind spot with Trump and it is even more so with the Democrats. Trump was correct to attempt to get more balanced trade treaties with countries that got free access to the US market but restricted their own access. That’s something that Australian agricultrural exports have suffered from for 60 years (though for much of that period we had tariffs of 80 per cent plus on cars and clothing).
He was also correct to draw attention to the patent theft that was prevalent by China. And in seeking to depose the Paris Accord, he demonstrated the benefits (at least in those states that avoided Eurocentric climate policies) of less energy regulation, benefits that would eventually have caused the entire climate con to collapse. But too much of his policy was simply seeking to force US firms to source product in-country and to gain access for American produce at the expense of that of other countries.
We will see far more of this with the Dems – trade protectionism was just about the only bipartisan area of government policy in the golden years of Trump. And, as I suggested in previous postings, we will see the new administration using trade policy to try to impose its climate policy with its attack on coal and oil.
We are now facing a darker era of international politics than we have seen since the 1930s
I assume the Biden presidency will be a lot like the Obama presidency, and that they will be responsive, and will be able to quickly back up what they’re saying.”
– The work of Glenn Kessler is done
I saw this and found it funny. I asked myself, what if it were true? How would you know? “I believe the military is in control”, “Joe Biden is a fake president”.
The one thing I am more sure of than anything else. Joe Biden is not running his administration, and if Kamala Harris took over, she wouldn’t be either.
And then there was this: A Report from a guardsman in Washington on Capitol Hill. There you find this, and while you read the story, ask yourself what are these people doing in Washington right now?
My guard unit was called up last [week] to help secure the Capitol and has been providing security since [January 16]. In 48 hours of on-duty security I have not seen a single protester — only one drunk guy who cussed my 2nd platoon (which raised morale for a good two hours – soldiers like and respect fluent profanity).
Last night I saw probably 2000 riot-prepared soldiers unload from buses and enter the perimeter. This level of military involvement surpasses overreaction, skips past overkill, and pegs “insane.” Whoever ordered this response is completely out of touch with reality.
Twenty thousand is a difficult number to explain. It’s especially strange how it’s a much larger number, relatively, than in 7 A.D. when Varian lost about that many in the Teutoburg forest. But 20,000 troops is three times as many as I deployed to Kuwait with in 2019 for a rotation there, and that seemed huge.
The cost of having these troops in the District of Columbia for one week, including all the movement, food, hotel rooms, and medical probably runs over $100 million. It is just another data point that indicates the people running the country are not living in the same reality as the rest of us.
And now (I wrote my first draft several days ago) there is word that “some National Guard units” will remain in DC through MARCH to “guard the senate.” To guard the Senate? For THREE MONTHS?
And then there was this: Health Sec Says It’s a ‘Long, Long, Long’ Way off from End of Lockdown. Covid is all but gone, but not the lockdown! The story is about Britain, but could just as well have been about the US.
And then to add to the picture there was this to ponder: Your Government is Afraid of You.
The Swamp is terrified of Trump – still. That explains their fixation on eradicating him and his movement. “Trumpism” was not extinguished when Joe Biden raised his right hand to become the 46th president.
Fear grips The Swamp. Here is some evidence: the military occupation of Washington, DC; claims of “insurrection”; Speaker Pelosi’s interference with the military command structure; more baseless claims of dark Russian conspiracies; serious discussion of reeducation camps for Trump supporters; marginalizing and criminalizing all things “Trump” – those are all expressions of fear.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and President Biden keep using the word “insurrectionists” to describe the rowdy Trumpsters who raided the Capitol building unlawfully two weeks ago. That is deliberate. It makes all the respectable, career politicians, government drones and DC political operatives appear to be “victims” – draped in the flag and bravely defending the Constitution. It also criminalizes all of their opposition. Not just the protestors who raided the Capitol, but all Trump supporters – across the USA – and those opposed to The Swamp mentality to which we have now returned.
There were more troops in Washington, DC guarding the inauguration of Joe Biden than are in Iraq and Afghanistan, combined. 25,000 National Guardsmen from 13 states, plus more than 2,000 Active Duty military from the Metro DC region. There was also the full panoply of federal and D.C. law enforcement. From Metropolitan Police to the Postal Service. Remember: No one was allowed to go to the Inauguration. The National Mall was closed. Blocks and blocks of downtown DC were shutdown with jersey barriers, 12-foot metal fencing and armed checkpoints. You are supposed to believe this is a “normal” security precaution. You are not supposed to question if the reaction is excessive, heavy-handed or unprecedented.
And if someone were actually trying to launch a military takeover of the American government how would it be different? I would like to put some kind of lighthearted tail to this story – ha, ha, everything will be better come the morning – but somehow I don’t find any of this all that funny. It may just be optics plus my imagination, but how will I know and when will I actually know it?
Someone gets it. A comment from here.
I read the same thing, day after day, from “conservatives” thinking they have discovered something novel … “Democrat hypocrisy!”
Meanwhile, the Marxists continue their march, crushing our liberty, not giving a damn about our cries of “Hypocrisy!”
Imagine complaining to some Chinese official about “Hypocrisy!” He would look at you, smile, and then send you off to the gulag for being an enemy of the state. THAT is how we need to see our Marxist Democrats…as ruthless totalitarians. Because that is EXACTLY what they are.
Our side’s mortal weakness is the inability to truly see what the enemy is all about. We believe they are just like us, and want what we want … liberty and a good life. NO. They don’t. They want you under their boot, and a great life. Freedom for them, not you. THAT is what our side does NOT understand.
And because we don’t understand what the Marxists totalitarians are about, we cede ground to them, we cave to them, giving up more and more of our country and freedoms, thinking THIS TIME these barbarians will leave us alone to be free.
WRONG.
Their goal is ABSOLUTE POWER over you, from what you think, what you read, what you eat, what you drive, where you live, to even how you die. Again, think China, here.
Folks … our side is decades behind the Marxists, as these barbarians own and control almost every single institution in our country. Especially, and most sadly, our schools.
And until we FIRST learn to see these monsters for who they are … we cannot FIGHT these monsters. They are liars and deceivers of the first order, as decades of their behavior have shown us.
Again … their goal is absolute power, which means America, and the very idea of America, must be eliminated. Erased. Which is why Biden, on his very first day, cancelled the 1776 Commission, which was a direct refutation of the putrid evil 1619 project being taught nationwide in our schools.
It’s about America but it refers to all of us on the right across the Western world.
WITH THIS JUST TO HAND: Democrats’ first bill: H.R. 1. I sort of thought this must be just a joke, a kind of totalitarian wish-list, but it seems to really be an actual proposed piece of legislation. Here it is again. And if you don’t think it’s real, you can look at this: H.R. 1, the For the People Act.
Nationwide mail-in voting, banning restrictions on ballot harvesting, banning voter ID, criminal voters,DC Statehood roadwork, it’s all in here.
All those people who didn’t like that PDT ate with his elbows on the table and drank Diet Coke with his Big Mac, hope you are happier now. But maybe it really is just a joke.
AND HOW COULD I FORGET THIS:
