What a pack of burqas
Piers Akerman – Saturday, July 23, 11 (05:42 pm)
In the middle of its cold summer holiday, Europe is struggling with two major issues - the fragile Euro economy and unwanted Islamic migration. The Left’s obsession with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is no longer news.
Those among France’s hard-working middle class who do mention Murdoch, proprietor of this newspaper, do so with admiration for the drive and determination he has displayed throughout his corporation-building career.
The big topic is the economic survival of the European community. French president Nicolas Sarkozy held a press conference last Thursday night after an all-day summit with German chancellor Angela Merkel, Greek prime minister George Papandreou and other European leaders and bankers on Greece’s debt crisis.The Clayton’s solution Sarkozy outlined embraces a lowering of the interest rates on Greece’s crippling loans and an extension of the period in which the nation may repay them. This is not an end to the problem, it merely places Greece on an economic drip and its loans on the never-never.
It’s a classic European dodge. Push the problem into the future and hope that when it next erupts, someone else will have to deal with it.
I like migration and want more. I think it is important that the law be applied too. Equally and fairly. I think if we didn’t nuke our ability to grow, by not having water available, people would be less inclined to complain. Also bad immigration policy is an aggravating factor. The pacific solution was fair. The current policy is unfair.
Sat 23 Jul 11 (06:07pm)
Sun 24 Jul 11 (09:41am)
Well that’s just jim dandy for you. I am totally unimpressed with the quality of immigrants we are getting and I want a moratorium, to allow time for INTEGRATION and not multiculturalism, which has been and will continue to be an abject failure.
Sun 24 Jul 11 (09:45am)
A New South Wales police officer commented recently that he and his colleagues would have far fewer problems if Temporary Protection Visas were still being issued, meaning that troublemakers from the refugee communities here would be less likely to misbehave.
I agree that the Pacific Solution was fair. I cannot understand why Labor abandoned it and I am very annoyed that they pretend that it is not the solution and ignore its past success.
Sun 24 Jul 11 (09:26pm)
They gives us patheic referendums on Republics, flags, daylight saving, and any other mediocre farce that comes to mind.
Don’t let those dirty plebs have a say on immigration and muliticulturalism though. It might upset the dual passport holder developers who have put us in the top twenty of the world’s most in debt countries !
Tue 26 Jul 11 (10:06am)
Rule 303, I get the reference to the Boer War order which was unfairly ignored so as to execute the Australian poet Morant. I haven’t been following Pier’s commenters well enough to know if you are using it for this post or to identify you for all posts. Anyways, I am totally unimpressed with your argument. The Australian story is based on successful migration. I challenge you to find one successful Australian who didn’t have ancestors who migrated here. I’ll make it easier for you and insist it is ok if either the mother or father weren’t.
Here’s a PowerPoint presentation that I gave as part of a lecture that I delivered today at Cato University. It’s an updated version of these two posts – here andhere – on shopping today in a Sears catalog from Fall/Winter 1975.
In this presentation, I calculate how many hours each non-supervisory worker earning the average nominal hourly wage of such workers had to work in 1975 to buy a variety of ordinary goods, and how many hours each non-supervisory worker earning the average nominal hourly wage of such workers must work in 2011 to buy similar (or, really, in almost every case far superior) or comparable goods.
The dollar figure beside each photo from the 1975 Sears catalog is the 1975 price(s) of that product(s) adjusted, using the CPI, into 2011 dollars. (The photos of the various pages of the Sears catalog, BTW, were taken with the camera in my iPhone. Just FYI.)
Before starting this PowerPoint presentation, I showed this recent clip from Robert Reich – one of many, many instances of people insisting that ordinary Americans are no better off today (at least materially) than they were since just before the age of alleged laissez faire descended upon us circa 1980.
This presentation, of course, does not prove that middle-class Americans are today better off than were middle-class Americans of the 1970s. Other factors must be controlled for and considered and factored in. But this presentation, I fancy, does strongly suggest that the oft-heard claim of middle-class stagnation should bear a much heavier burden of proof than it seems to bear in popular discussions.
Here’s a letter to the Boston Globe:
James Carroll interprets Borders bankruptcy as evidence that corporations’ involvement over the past 20 years in book retailing has spawned “massive cultural impoverishment” in America (“As stores die, so does book culture,” July 25). With “sacred” independent booksellers destroyed by the “predatory capitalism” of big-box retailing (and now also by the “screen technologies” of e-books), Mr. Carroll is convinced that illiteracy and ignorance stalk the land.
The only evidence that Mr. Carroll gives for the demise of the book, however, is “the shrinking number of published book reviews” and “today’s shallow political discourse.” Were Mr. Carroll actually to look at the data (Oh how cold and factual; fit only for a Gradgrind!) he’d find that the number of new titles and editions published in the U.S. has risen spectacularly over the past 20 years. In 1990, 46,738 new book titles were published in the U.S. In 2002 the number was 247,777; in 2005 it was 282,500, and in 2009 the total number of new titles and editions published in the U.S. was a whopping 1,335,475 – the last figure reflecting the huge increase in the number of e-books whose publication is made possible by the ‘predatory capitalists’ and the “screen technologies” that Mr. Carroll is so very certain keep Americans from reading.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
This week’s EconTalk is with Keith Hennessey talking about the debt ceiling, the budget process, and what’s going on behind closed doors. He is very clear and I learned a lot talking to him. You will, too.
THANK YOU FOR SUNOCO RACING FUEL
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (06:02 am)
Behold the greatest sermon in the history of all religions:
The speaker is Pastor Joe Nelms of the Family Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tennessee. Testify!
TURBINE STEW
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (05:58 am)
If a fellow wasn’t the fussy kind, he might easily mash together some form of critter-mince dish from the remains of wildlife killed or threatened by renewable energy. You’ve got your 10,000 bats just going to waste every year in Pennsylvania, for example, and tasty whooping cranes are grill-ready in the Gulf lands. A massive solar project in California could provide kit foxes and blunt-nose lizards to bulk the meal out a little.
But still there’s something missing. We need an Australian component, and possibly a side salad. On all counts,Boorowa delivers:
The people of Boorowa are afraid the bright green superb parrot – and seven other species of plants and animals – will be wiped out by a wind farm planned for the district, in the NSW Southern Tablelands.
Biodynamic farmer Charlie Arnott, who plants thousands of trees every year, said: “The poor old superb parrot is going to get caned. It’s a threatened species and Boorowa is its main breeding area. The habitat around here supports the majority of the superb parrots left in Australia, and Boorowa prides itself on the birds.
“If this wind farm goes ahead Boorowa might have to change the town emblem to a wind turbine because there might be more of them than superb parrots.”
The superb parrot really isn’t that superb to look at, so I’m guessing it’s named for its flavour.
GREAT LOVE IN THE FACE OF GREAT TRAGEDY
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (05:53 am)
More than 40 dead in a Chinese train wreck, and the government sends out media instructions:
Chinese officials have instructed the media not to sensationalise the accident, and fresh instructions sent to reporters yesterday said: “Do not report the accident too frequently. Report moving stories about people donating blood or taxi drivers not taking fares from victims. Do not investigate the cause of the accident.”
The instructions added: “The name of the Wenzhou accident will be ‘The 23 July Wenzhou Line Railway Accident’. From now on, use the headline: ‘Great Love in the Face of Great Tragedy’. On television, provide the relevant information, but be careful of the music used.”
Oddly, communists seem almost as keen on media control as are our own carbon tax pushers. Citizens resist, as best they can:
One popular comment circulating around the Chinese internet said: “When a country is corrupt to the point that a single lightning strike can cause a train crash [...] none of us is exempt. China today is a train travelling through a lightning storm. We are not spectators; all of us are passengers.”
As Paul Sheehan points out, Julia Gillard is on the train.
SQUEEZE THE BEES
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (05:23 am)
Further on the government’s animal-based home heating plan – “Snuggle up under a rug, snuggle with your family orcuddle your favourite pet” – from Gemma Jones, Professor Bunyip and the Daily Telegraph editorial:
This isn’t great news for the tropical fish population. Bee-keepers, too, may be at a loss to make use of the directive.
PREFERRED VICTIMS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (04:18 am)
Apologists for Islamic terrorists are still crowing because someone besides an Islamic terrorist has behaved like an Islamic terrorist. In their world, this counts as a win. A response from Mark Steyn, who notes that mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik’s cut-n-paste “manifesto” is shaping the post-massacre media narrative:
The opening sentence from USA Today:
Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe.So, if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that’s now an “Islamophobic” mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder. Yet the Associated Press is on board:
Security Beefed Up At UK Mosques After Norway Massacre.
But again: No mosque was targeted in Norway. A member of the country’s second political party gunned down members of its first. But, in the merest evolution of post-9/11 syndrome, Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent.
And from John Hinderaker:
Over the last several decades, jihadists have launched hundreds if not thousands of terrorist attacks. They dwarf, in numbers, similar outrages perpetrated by anyone else. That is why, whenever a bomb kills innocent bystanders or an armed man guns down children, the first thing everyone thinks is that it likely will prove to be another instance of Islamic terrorism.
In this case, it wasn’t. The left seems to find significance in that fact, but the appropriate response is, so what? …
As we know, there is only one political movement in the world that 1) has an ideology that both excuses and glorifies the mass murder of innocents, and 2) actually uses terrorist attacks as a tactic to advance its political goals. That movement is Islamic jihadism.
A point on which it is difficult to disagree. Except if you’re the type who thinks one Norwegian lunatic-Christian-gamer-conservative-whatever somehow ties the game.
UPDATE. A new book from Steyn. Hit that link.
NEXT: THE GREAT COCOA IMPOST
Tim Blair – Monday, July 25, 11 (07:02 pm)
A shock poll result in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Support for Carob Tax Rises Slightly
What a busy little ABC character assassin
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (06:37 pm)
My word, but hasn’t Jeremy Thompson been busy back at the ABC headquarters, smearing conservatives?
Jeremy Thompson
Updated July 26, 2011 15:39:39Accused Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik praised four Australian conservative leaders - including former prime minister John Howard - in his 1,500-page manifesto.
Not mentioned is that Breivik’s “praise” for Howard and Pell was actually just a lift-and-paste from this 2007 “Americans for Serbia” website, and not written by Breivik at all. But who checks when it fits the preferred narrative?
Young Jeremy’s other effort today:
Czech bounced: leader refused entry to Parliament
By Jeremy ThompsonUpdated July 26, 2011 18:34:00
Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus, made famous in a viral internet clip showing him pocketing a ceremonial pen in Chile, was not taking any chances of souvenirs being found in his pocket at Parliament House today.
The president, in Canberra to address the National Press Club, was on his way for an interview with ABC1’s 7.30 - which has its Canberra studio within the House - and through the security checkpoint.
Waiting for him there was Michelle Ainsworth, mild-mannered producer for 7.30, ready to usher him up to the ABC studio where reporter Chris Uhlmann was already seated at the desk, lights on, cameras focused.
But going through security with all the plebs was not on the Mr Klaus’s agenda
You’ll find Klaus’s thoughtful speech to the National Press Club on global warming mentioned briefly in the very last two paragraphs. He’s a sceptic, you see, but you’d guessed that already.
Thompson has form for smearing sceptics and doubters of climate change “action”, of course. Here is his appalling effort earlier this month on Professor Bjorn Lomborg, after he was quoted by Tony Abbott:
However, it is the credibility of Mr Lomberg rather than Australian economists which may not stand up to scrutiny.
In 2003 the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty upheld a series of complaints laid about Lomberg’s book The Skepical Environmentalist.
The findings were later declared invalid on procedural grounds.
Merely “procedural grounds”? Professor Sinclar Davidson introduces Thompson to the truth.
Tell me again that the ABC is not biased.
(Thanks to readers Correllio and Mike.)
China isn’t buying these extra costs
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (12:16 pm)
You know how the Gillard Government plans to hit iron ore miners with a new mining tax? And hit them again with a carbon dioxide tax?
You know how it’s also hit those miners with new industrial relation laws that give unions more power, as we saw yesterday?
You know how it’s done all this on the blithe assumption that miners are a cash cow that nothing will kill, thanks to China’s insatiable demand?
Now read this warning, in The China Post:
China, the world’s largest steelmaker and iron ore consumer, has set a target of dramatically increasing ore imports from Chinese-invested resources in the steel industry’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), an industry official said. Iron ore imports from Australia, Brazil and India accounted for 62.3 percent last year.
Li Xinchuang, deputy secretary-general of China Iron & Steel Association, told China Daily that the country will only be able to break the grip of the three major global miners — Vale SA, Rio Tinto, and BHP Billiton — if it gets half of its overseas ore requirements from Chinese-invested sources.
“China currently owns less than 10 percent of imported iron ore. We should seek 50 percent of ore from Chinese-invested overseas resources in the next five to 10 years,” he said....
Liu Han, chairman of Hanlong, told China Daily that West Africa is emerging as a key region, as investment in Australia and Brazil faces a number of challenges. “Australia and Brazil both have great resources, but they don’t provide many opportunities for Chinese investors due to rising cost pressures and policy barriers...”
Cost pressures? In Australia? Now, what would those be?
(Thanks to a reader whose name I unfortunately deleted before taking a few phone calls that drove it from my mind.)
UPDATE
Apologies. Second link fixed.
So scared of debate that she snubs the Czech president
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (12:08 pm)
Julia Gillard today posed with former British prime minister Tony Blair, here on a visit, because he agrees with her on global warming.
Julia Gillard is refusing to meet the current Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, here on a visit, because he disagrees with her on global warming:
But don’t miss Klaus’s address to the National Press Club today.
New study: little warming to come
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (09:59 am)
Dr Craig Loehle and Assistant Adjunct Professor Nicola Scafetta say most of the recent warming is in fact natural, and not much more is expected:
Cycles in solar motion and activity of 60 and 20 years were used to develop an empirical model of Earth temperature variations. The model was fit to the Hadley global temperature data up to 1950 (time period before anthropogenic emissions became the dominant forcing mechanism), and then extrapolated from 1951 to 2010. The residuals showed an approximate linear upward trend of about 0.66°C/century from 1942 to 2010. Herein we assume that this residual upward warming has been mostly induced by anthropogenic emissions, urbanization and land use change…
Our results suggest that because current models underestimate the strength of natural multidecadal cycles in the temperature records, the anthropogenic contribution to climate change since 1850 should be less than half of that previously claimed by the IPCC. About 60% of the warming observed from 1970 to 2000 was very likely caused by the above natural 60-year climatic cycle during its warming phase.
A 21st Century forecast suggests that climate may remain approximately steady until 2030-2040, and may at most warm 0.5-1.0°C by 2100 at the estimated 0.66°C/century anthropogenic warming rate, which is about 3.5 times smaller than the average 2.3°C/century anthropogenic warming rate projected by the IPCC up to the first decades of the 21st century. However, additional multisecular natural cycles may cool the climate further.
(Thanks to reader Steve.)
A cool look at global warming
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (09:39 am)
A very impressive presentation by Philip Wood on the great global warming scare. You may find his material useful.
(Thanks to many readers.)
UPDATE
An updated version of Wood’s presentation is now on the link.
Gillard denies changing her mind about changing her mind
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (07:10 am)
Julia Gillard says the claims leaked to the Financial Review - by whom? - are wrong:
JULIA Gillard has offered a passionate defence of her belief in the need for a carbon emissions trading scheme.
And has flatly rejected a newspaper report that she dismissed such a scheme little more than a year ago...
There was a fresh claim yesterday in the Australian Financial Review, which reported that Ms Gillard had written a document advocating a fallback position under which Labor would dump its carbon trading proposal and instead seek talks with Tony Abbott about areas of action on climate change, outside of a tax or trading scheme, on which they could agree…
Ms Gillard rejected the AFR report as wrong.
“I have never believed that this nation could reach its minus 5 per cent emissions reduction target other than by putting a price on carbon,” she said.
The Australian understands that what actually happened a year ago was that Ms Gillard had floated the idea of attempting to start talks, with whoever led the opposition, on seeking common ground on a tax or trading system.
Several senior sources told The Australian that while many options had been considered, Ms Gillard had never advocated dumping all plans to address climate change through a tax or trading scheme.
And would these people lie to you?
Milne: let’s have an inquiry into laws to silence climate sceptics
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (06:13 am)
The Greens have never spelled out so clearly their demand for a new political censorship as deputy leader Christine Milne did last night:
The Murdoch press has been running a very strong campaign against action on climate change. The bias is extreme, in the Australian in particular. You’ll see column inch after column inch of every climate sceptic in the country…
You’ll find day after day a real attempt at regime change…
And one of the useful things about the hacking scandal in the UK is that It will lead to an inquiry into the media in Australia…
We are at least going to see some real discussion ...around issues such as the level of ownership and dominance of the Murdoch press in several capital cities in Australia. We’ll also have a look at a range of other issues including who are fit and proper people into into whether we need that test into people to be running media outlets…
It’s time we had a good inquiry and certainly bias is going to be one of the things that’s certainly to be looked at.
What a dangerous point we’ve come to that a party with such power over a government could propose something so extreme and hostile to free speech, and without any word of protest from an ABC audience. This really, without a word of exaggeration, is the first step to totalitarianism.
At least former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie fights back against this sinister lurch to media censorship:
Every rational person would agree what happened at London’s News of the World is a disgrace and those responsible, including police, should feel the full force of the law… To date I have seen nothing to seriously suggest that similar behaviour has occurred in Australia by any news organisation…
Australian politicians should carefully examine the rest of the world before getting too sensitive to media criticism and having a media inquiry. I can understand political opportunism and was guilty of it myself, but the federal government and Greens need to be very careful not to use the illegal activity at the News of the World as an excuse to attack their media critics or the public will turn on them in droves. I always knew the limits of opportunism and the federal government needs to as well.
With increasing good reason, the general public is cynical about politicians and journalists but they also know a free media is absolutely essential for a strong democracy and keeping politicians honest. Media has a responsibility to keep elected officials accountable via an appropriate relationship. There is a thin line between media independence and arrogance but without independence there is no accountability; it is the difference between dictatorship and democracy.
One deal signed, another collapses
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (05:51 am)
Yet another backflip:
AUSTRALIA has undertaken to pay and care for the 800 asylum-seekers transferred under its refugee swap with Kuala Lumpur for as long as they remain in Malaysia, potentially extending Canberra’s liability well beyond the four-year life span of the agreement.
As Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Dato Seri Hishammuddin bin Tun Hussein lauded an “innovative and bold arrangement”, the Gillard government was forced into a humiliating backdown on the 568 asylum-seekers it had vowed to transfer overseas.
Mr Bowen said yesterday the 568 would be processed in Australia, defying a pledge he gave two months ago that anyone who arrived after the initial announcement of the deal would be sent to a third country.
Mr Bowen said the uncertain political situation in Papua New Guinea where the government had initially hoped to send the people was the main reason for the reversal.
And what’s this mean?:
Mr Bowen said there would be no blanket exemption for unaccompanied children...
Then there’s this implied admission of guilt for having lured some 200 people to their deaths at sea by so recklessly scrapping the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution:
“As Immigration Minister, I hope I never get another call telling me that people have drowned trying to make it to Australia and that children as young as two months old have drowned trying to come to Australia.”
If Bowen is saying that getting tougher stops boats, then he must accept that getting weaker lured them.
Which is the truth than damns this Government and leaves it with blood on its hands.
Why are Muslims the victims when non-Muslims were shot?
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 26, 11 (12:02 am)
Mark Steyn wonders how a white Norwegian shooting 93 other Norwegians is an attack on Muslims:
The opening sentence from USA Today:
Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe.So, if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that’s now an “Islamophobic” mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder. Yet the Associated Press is on board:
Security Beefed Up At UK Mosques After Norway Massacre.
But again: No mosque was targeted in Norway. A member of the country’s second political party gunned down members of its first. But, in the merest evolution of post-9/11 syndrome, Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent.
UPDATE
Some commentators, including us at spiked, have argued that acts such as 7/7 are more an extreme expression of the multicultural outlook than they are a traditional form of Islamic fundamentalism. Multiculturalism’s celebration of identity over solidarity, its promotion of the politics of self-pity and victimhood, of a perception that minority identities are continually under threat from the post-colonial and xenophobic attitudes of both society’s rulers and its native masses, found its most fanatical expression in the London bombings. In the bombers’ extraordinary levels of self-pity, combined with their arrogant belief that their Muslim identity gave them the right to hector the British throng, we got a glimpse of how far the multicultural ethos can be pushed. Breivik, for all his anti-multicultural pretensions, is not that different. Indeed, it is remarkable how much his so-called critique of multiculturalism seems bound by the parameters of multiculturalism itself.
In his claim that he wanted to protect ‘white Christian identity’ from being overrun and crushed by an external powerful force - in this case Muslim immigrants - Breivik is merely indulging in an alternative form of multiculturalism. In different ways, both the 7/7 bombers and Breivik express the same sense of cultural paranoia, of cultural siege and victimhood.
(Thanks to readers the Great Waisuli and Dean.)
Milne demands an inquiry into “bias” of journalists
Andrew Bolt – Monday, July 25, 11 (09:56 pm)
Tonight’s Q&A program is shameful jeer-and-cheer session for and by the Left.
The attempts to link Australian “shock jocks” to the slaughter in Norway is disgraceful, and the heckling of Liberal Senator Eric Abetz is not only gross but hypocritical, coming just after the same audience piously applauded appeals for a more civil debate.
For even the courtly Garry Bailey, editor of the Hobart Mercury, to be groaned at and sniggered demonstrated to me the incivility of the audience. Naturally host Tony Jones did nothing to stop the cat-calling.
I’m switching off, but not before I pass on a very sinister warning from the deputy leader of the Greens, the extremist Chrstine Milne, who is promising an inquiry into the media in Australia, accused the Murdoch papers of attempting “regime change” against the Labor-Greens alliance and warned that “cerrtainly bias is going to be one of the things that’s certainly to be looked at.t”..
It is chilling that such a threat against the expression of opinions inconvenient to those in power could be threatened with a government inquiry with the expressed view of curbing them. And the ABC crowd approves.
Free speech, anyone? Hello?
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