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Category: Current Affairs (Page 16 of 76)

Building Submarines in Adelaide… Why?

I cannot join in the general rejoicing about the subs being built in Adelaide.

Submarines and other defense requirements should be built so as to provide the best possible equipment for our defense personnel, at the best possible value for Australian taxpayers.

Building the subs in Adelaide will cost an additional $18 billion. That is, at a cost of approximately $15 million per new job in Adelaide.

$15 million per job in Adelaide in additional taxes which have to be extracted from businesses and workers. Which of course means $15 million per job that can no longer be used in private enterprise to employ people, to research and develop and provide new products and services.

To put this another way, each new job in Adelaide in the sub project will cost the jobs of approximately fifteen people employed elsewhere, because the money that would have been used to pay them will now be going in additional taxes to fund make-work in Adelaide.

This is not job creation; it is exactly the opposite.

Or of course, if we were willing to pay the taxes required to fund an extra $18 billion, that would have been enough to buy an extra four subs.

This decision is not good policy. It is economically illiterate, and very poor value for Australian tax-payers.

Norfolk Island Transition

Over the last twelve months the administration of Norfolk Island has gradually been assumed by the Australia Federal Government.

Norfolk Island is part of Australia, but has been largely autonomous. No outsiders have been allowed to purchase property there, and those who come from outside to provide services are generally limited to a three year stay before they are required to leave. This would be fair enough if the island were genuinely autonomous, capable of running its own affairs. But it is not. Apart from tourist income which does not even come close to paying the bills, every aspect of life on Norfolk  is paid for by Australian taxpayers. After a couple of hundred years of subsidising a lavish lifestyle on a tropical paradise for an exclusive and pampered few, Australian taxpayers have finally had enough.

Now Norfolk Islanders are whining about unfair it is, and how their island is being colonised. See the article on the Norfolk Island transition from the Guardian copied below. Of course if they don’t like what is happening, there is one very simple solution. Declare your independence, and pay your own way.

The former chief minister of Norfolk Island, Lisle Snell, has called for a royal commission into the Australian parliament’s decision last year to revoke the island’s autonomy, and the subsequent running of the island by the commonwealth.

As of 1 July, Norfolk Island will be subject to Australian immigration and border protection rules. Islanders will fall under the Medicare system and will be eligible for social benefits, including the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. They will also fall under Australia’s tax system.

Since May last year, the island has been in a transition period as Australian government buildings are established and the island’s health and welfare systems abolished. The Australian government argued the island relied on the mainland for financial support, and that its laws and government services were outdated.

The changes meant that Snell was left without a job. His anger has only escalated since May.

“I took a very bad turn,” Snell told Guardian Australia. “I was distressed for months after my dismissal. To be dismissed in such a manner as was conducted at that time, so illegally, so unjustly, so unfairly … it took me many, many months to get over that. I was forced into semi-retirement, although I can’t afford to be.”

Snell and other islanders have established the group Norfolk Island People for Democracy, which is calling for an independent review of the process of bringing Norfolk Island under Australian governance, which Snell describes as an “illegal takeover”.

“Really what should be done is, a royal commission into the manner of Norfolk Island’s takeover should be held,” Snell said. “There was no proper process done. There should be a royal commisison into the farcical situation that has occured. We are a peaceful people, we don’t like conflict. But the situation has never deteriorated to an extent like this before.”

On Tuesday the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC delivered a petition against the perceived takeover signed by the islanders to the United Nations in New York. It would take months for the UN to reach a decision, Robertson said.

“There is a special committee on decolonisation which will consider the matter later this year,” Robertson told the ABC.

He said he supported the islanders in their fight for autonomous governance.

‘We’re not Australian’: Norfolk Islanders adjust to shock of takeover by mainland

“They will be kicked out of the commonwealth parliamentary unit, they won’t be able to compete under their own flag at the Commonwealth Games, they will have to join an Australian team,” he said.

“What is more, I think, rather pathetic in fact in Australia’s conduct, the first thing the Australian administrator did was to have the radio station ban any criticism of Australia.

“This is typical colonial behaviour, isn’t it?”

Snell confirmed that the island’s radio station was now under Australian government control, and said islanders were barred from saying anything negative about the Australian government on air.

Guardian Australia has contacted the relevant minister for comment on the claim.

Islanders had also received notices from the government that their jobs were defunct or were likely to become so, Snell said.

“The feeling on the island is now one of great distress,” Snell said. “People in administration, those working in roads or mechanical fields, in forestry and so on, have all had their jobs affected. In some cases, both husbands and wives will no longer have a job from 1 July, so there’s now increased unemployment and financial distress.

“They have not been offered the change to upskill or reapply.”

The word “mutiny” had been scrawled on the new Australian government buildings, Snell said, which he said indicated the levels of distress, because “we are a peaceful people”.

Many of the islanders are descended from the mutineers who captured HMS Bounty in 1789.

Snell said many of the island’s roughly 1,200 citizens would hold a rally on Wednesday at the old military barracks. People were fearful of losing their unique language and culture as they come under Australian law, he said.

“We will gather to talk and assist anyone in easing their pain and try to give them clarity and guidance through this,” Snell said.

The Australian federal minister for major projects, territories and local government, Paul Fletcher, has said islanders would be employed where possible. Last month, Fletcher announced Waterway Construction as the successful tenderer to construct the $13m upgrade of the island’s Cascade Pier. Islanders would be employed, Fletcher said, and local businesses would supply building materials.

“Once the project is complete, nominated members of the Norfolk Island community and regional council staff will receive training in the safe and effective operation of the hydraulic crane,” he said.

The New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, has said his state will help the federal government in providing health and education services to the island. Norfolk Island laws are being rolled in to NSW ones, with any legislation on the island that Australia considers outdated or inappropriate removed or replaced.

“The Australian government is committed to providing high quality, affordable and safe health and aged care services for Norfolk Island,” Fletcher said.

“I am looking forward to working with NSW government agencies to ensure the best possible outcomes for the Norfolk Island community.”

Tonga, or Not So Tonga

Tonga pleads with the world: Global warming is real and is affecting us today. Save our pacific island 😢

Two different islands, neither in Tonga

Two different islands, neither in Tonga

There’s only one problem: the picture shows two different islands, neither of which is in Tonga.

The top photo is Kwajalein Island and the bottom photo is Ebeye Island. Although both in the Kwajalein Atoll they are not the same island and are part of the Marshall Islands, a long way from Tonga!

A Cleaner, Greener World Thanks to Coal and Oil

No more the grinding poverty and filth of 150 years ago. Fossil fuels have made the world a safer, cleaner, greener place.

That’s something to celebrate! From Viv Forbes at Carbon Sense.

It was petroleum that provided the kerosene that replaced whale oil in lamps and greatly reduced the slaughter of whales.

Coal saved the forests that were being cut down for smelters, forges, charcoal, heaters and stoves. Steel made with coke then replaced wood for mine props, bridges and tall buildings. As steam engines and iron ships replaced wooden wind-jammers in world navies and merchant fleets, the forests expanded.

Coal gas and clean coal cured the smogs of London and Pittsburgh. Piped gas for home heating and street lighting and the even better “clean-coal-by-wire” (coal powered electricity) worked wonders to reduce air pollution in “The Big Smoke”.

Petrol driven cars and trucks removed horse manure from the big cities, and tractors reduced the amount of land required to grow food for those cities.

Nuclear power is the ultimate “green energy” – enormous amounts of clean energy generated on a tiny footprint, by minute quantities of fuel, with little effect on air or water quality. Its only disadvantage is that, unlike coal and gas, it does not recycle the gases of life to the atmosphere.

Naturally there are risks in every human endeavour but modern energy sources kill far fewer people and wildlife than were once lost in timber getting, horse breaking, wind-jammers, sulky capsize, air pollution and city wildfires. And to believe that man can tweak the climate with carbon taxes is non-sense.

In contrast, the so called “green energy” sources usually lauded on Earth Day have a heavy toll on the environment to produce piddling amounts of unreliable and costly energy.

Both wind and solar energy are so dilute that large areas of land must be sterilised by roads, transmission lines and construction sites to collect significant energy. Already many wind towers have been abandoned and others are being de-commissioned because of high maintenance costs or poor energy production.

Roof-top solar is a joke as a reliable supplier of energy for most of humanity. In most installations of wind and solar power, the facilities would not be built without subsidies and other political props, and it is doubtful that the green-power turbines and panels will generate enough useful energy over their limited life to recover the energy needed for their raw materials, manufacture, construction, roads, power lines, earth works, maintenance and decommissioning.

Green energy is not environmentally friendly.

Where big wind/solar facilities are constructed, many native birds and bats are sliced by whirling swords, or singed and fried by concentrated solar heat rays. Blinded by their obsession with blaming fossil fuels for everything, greens pretend that this unnecessary slaughter of wildlife is not occurring.

Without carbon and nuclear fuels, Earth would be raped for fuel and food by destitute people trying to eke out a living without the greatest boon to modern living – cheap reliable energy. As Alex Epstein, from the Centre for Industrial Progress says eloquently, “fossil fuels are the greenest energy”.

Osama Was Her Pin-up

Roger Franklin writes in Quadrant Magazine:

On the western flood plain of the Maribyrnong, the lesser of Melbourne’s two brown rivers, Buddhists have built themselves a handsome temple and, most arresting, a gigantic golden statue of their guiding philosophy’s founder. It is quite the spectacle and well worth a glance as your Werribee-bound train approaches Footscray station. But unless you have a particular interest in the sound of one hand clapping, a glance is all it’s worth — and, obligingly, Buddhists don’t see any need for grants and government programs to promote “understanding” of their creed. Alas that another religion were so content to mind its own business. As Fairfax Media demonstrates today with a series of profiles — Australia’s Muslims Speak Up — it seems that one cannot be regarded as a fair and unbiased citizen without an obligatory knowledge of Islam, its adherents, their agonies and the bigotry we are told yet again makes the lives of Australia’s faithful so very difficult.

That, at any rate, is the series’ intent. The end result, however, is the polar opposite. Unwittingly, wrapped in its gush of multi-culti pablum, at least one of the profiles illustrates why one doesn’t need to be a peddler of prejudice to find Islam more than somewhat alien and not a little unsettling.

Read the rest.

Reading Aisha’s story in The Age, it seems clear that her every experience of islam was violent or at least unpleasant, from her failed marriage to her repressive and hostile high school, and most of her experiences of non-muslim Australian society were by contrast warm and colourful and welcoming. Yet all this seems to prove to her is that Australians are racists and it is no wonder so many muslims are angry.

Judge Refuses to Jail Girl Who Stabbed Pedophile Who Raped Her

He raped her when she was eight, but was not sentenced to jail because, you know, cultural differences.

“A judge offered to pay a teenage girl’s court fine as he refused to jail her for stabbing the pedophile who abused her as a child.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC told the 15-year-old it would be a ‘disgrace’ to send her to prison, despite the fact she had attacked the man, 56, in his own home, stabbing him close to his heart.

And he refused to impose a mandatory victim surcharge on the girl when she appeared at Bradford Crown Court, after hearing that the paedophile had destroyed her life, adding: ‘If anyone tries to force you, I will pay it myself.'”

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC (pictured) offered to pay a teenage girl's court fine as he refused to jail her for stabbing the pedophile who abused her as a child.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC (pictured) offered to pay a teenage girl’s court fine as he refused to jail her for stabbing the pedophile who abused her as a child.

Thank goodness there is still some decency and common sense on the English bench.

Offensive Erdogan Poetry Competition

Definitely a contest worth entering:

From Douglas Murray at The Spectator

Introducing ‘The President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition’ – £1000 prize to be won.

Nobody should be surprised that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has instituted effective blasphemy laws to defend himself from criticism in Turkey. But many of us had assumed that these lèse-majesté laws would not yet be put in place inside Europe. At least not until David Cameron succeeds in his long-held ambition to bring Turkey fully into the EU. Yet here we are. Erdogan’s rule now already extends to Europe.

At the end of last month, during a late-night comedy programme, a young German comedian called Jan Böhmermann included a poem that was rude about Erdogan. Incidentally the point of Mr Böhmermann’s skit was to highlight the obscenity of Turkey already trying to censor satire in Germany.

What happened next happened in swift order. First of all the Turks complained to their German counterparts. Within a few days the programme had been pulled. A few more days and it was whitewashed out of existence altogether. In the meantime Mr Böhmermann himself was forced to go under police protection. The worst blow then came late last week when Chancellor Merkel allowed the prosecution of Mr Böhmermann to go ahead in Germany. Strangely enough, Chancellor Merkel is currently pretending that the trial of a German comedian in Germany for insulting a foreign despot is a liberal act.

Please submit all entries to theeditor@spectator.co.uk, under the heading ‘The President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition’. The winning poem will be announced by 23 June.

Rape? But how was I to know .. ?

By asking? Checking?

13-Year-Old’s Rape Case Dismissed Because Her Body Is ‘Well-Developed’

A Swedish court acquitted a 27-year-old man of raping a 13-year-old girl because she looked older. Add this to similar cases in the U.S. and U.K., and we’ve got a sickening problem.
A man who raped a 13-year-old girl has been acquitted on the grounds that her body was “well-developed” for her age. The Swedish teenager had lodged an appeal against the ruling on her perpetrator, 27, but it was thrown out of court this week as officials decided her figure exempted him from blame as he “could not have known” how old she was.

This latest case is horrifying, but it’s not the first in recent history to expose how authorities around the world mistreat young rape victims. Earlier this year, a London judge accused a 16-year-old girl of “grooming” her 44-year-old teacher for sex, likening her actions to a stalker and telling the older man: “If anything, it was she who groomed you. You gave way to temptation at a time when you were emotionally vulnerable because of problems with your wife’s pregnancy.”

Add to this the Montana judge who dismissed a 14-year-old girl as “older than her chronological age” after she was raped by her 47-year-old teacher, and therein lies a very bleak picture of our attitudes toward young victims of sexual assault.
The regular refrain espoused by prosecutors and judges—that these girls seem beyond their years, and therefore cannot benefit from the protective laws afforded to others of their age group—is a paltry excuse.”

But hell, yeah, men should have the right to use ladies’ bathrooms, and 12 year old children need to roleplay being in sexual relationships.

Mixed messages, anyone?

Wisdom and Justice are Not Always Popular and Easy

via Andrew Bolt:

Antigone’s brave stance for Justice and Nature against unjust human laws is what electrified me. We in the Western world live in days of mad, accelerating, and bewildering change. A same-sex couple is the same as a man and a woman; male and female is an illusion; an unborn baby has a right to life only when her mother grants her that right; children may be taken from their natural parents for the gratification of adults; and anyone who opposes these schemes may, for their intolerance and bigotry, be ridiculed, sacked, fined, imprisoned, and, most sinister by far, re-educated.

At this time when the laws of nature and basic justice are conscientiously unravelled and suppressed, Antigone’s defiance makes the heart swell.  “I was not like, who feared no mortal’s frown, To disobey these laws, and so provoke the wrath of Heaven.”

As the storm-clouds of social change gather and loom, here is Sophocles’ ancient and potent inspiration for all those who stand, whether in the Christian tradition or not, for Nature and Justice. Seeing that we must die, we had best do so, in this awesome battle, faithful and brave.

From a longer article by Campbell Markham at MercatorNet.

The Reverend Mr Markham refers to the bright and courageous Sophie Scholl. If you are not familiar with her story, this is a good place to start. With all respect to Anne Frank, Sophie Scholl is more inspirational by far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXtC08tWxqA

Veges Rule!

This image has been floating around Facebook for the last few days:

veges

Prompting various responses:

response

Here’s the mind-blowing argument: “If we each grow a large crop of different food, we could all trade with each other and eat for practically free.”

Where to start?

Well, for one thing, growing your own food isn’t exactly “free,” not even “practically free.” As anyone who has his own vegetable garden knows, it requires seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, protection from insects and birds and animals, and a lot of work. The cost may not all be measured in monetary terms, but it isn’t free. In fact, it’s notoriously easy for a vegetable garden to end up costing more money than it saves, which is why most of us do it just as a hobby.

But let’s not pick this apart. Let’s take the idea seriously. Hey, what if we all became small farmers and traded with each other? As they say on the Internet: you’ll never guess what happened next.

Maybe instead of everybody growing the same things, we could all produce what we’re best at and trade with others for what we need. We could come up with a catchy name for this, like “division of labor.” And we would need somewhere to exchange these goods with each other, which we could call a “market.”

Maybe we could get even more specialized. Some people could devote themselves just to growing young plants in greenhouses in the spring for others to plant when the weather gets warmer. Or they could provide seeds for other people to use, or breed hybrids with better yields or other desirable characteristics.
Maybe some crops would grow better in different areas, or at different seasons.

And maybe some crops would grow better in different areas, or at different seasons. I’ll bet you can’t grow blackberries in the middle of winter, but there are other areas of the country, or of the world, where these things still grow even when they won’t grow in your front yard. Maybe you could trade with people who live in those places.

Still, crops come ripe at different times, so maybe we need a system where I can trade my spring harvest of peas for somebody else’s fall harvest of pumpkins. Maybe we could write this all down on little pieces of paper which we pass between us to make trades. Has anybody ever thought of that?

Go read the whole hilarious article at The Federalist.

Chalk Banned on Campus

Because some mean nasty horrible people use it to write stuff we disagree with…

The struggle is real, my friends. We’ve already looked at the horror being inflicted upon special snowflakes around the country these days as #TheChalkening sends college students scurrying for their safe space. Who knows what sort of lasting damage could ensue if young adults turn a corner on their morning walk only to see a name or campaign slogan emblazoned on the sidewalk where they are walking, enshrined there for all time? (Or at least until the next rainfall.) Not everyone is taking this threat lying down, however. At DePaul University in Chicago, students will soon be able to perambulate around the quad without fear of such lasting mental scar tissue because the university has banned chalking the sidewalks after someone was tasteless enough to write the name of Donald J. Trump on the pavement. (Daily Caller and Campus Reform)

DePaul University will no longer allow students to chalk political messages on the sidewalks of its campus because of the “offensive, hurtful, and divisive” nature of pro-Trump chalking found on campus last week.

“While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception,” Depaul’s vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform…

Campus Reform reached out to DePaul to ask why university officials chose to respond to this particular chalking instance despite claims that chalking “regularly” occurs on campus. No response was received in time for publication.

The entire idea of “chalking” as a form of expression has apparently been a tradition at DePaul for quite some time, just as it is on sidewalks around the nation. It may seem silly and even trashy (when attempted by those with less artistic flair) but if you’re going to allow the temporary defacement of the public thoroughfare in what is an essentially harmless exercise of the First Amendment it obviously has to apply to everyone. The alternative is to have it apply to nobody and that’s the course which the university has chosen.

And what led to it? You don’t even need to click on the link to determine that it was a Trump slogan. There was apparently no prohibition against competing Hillary vs. Bernie art or support for the minimum wage, Black Lives Matter or anything else. But if any of the College Republicans dare to try their hand at it, all bets are off. Thanks, Special Snowflakes! You continue to make the world a safer and stupider place.

A Million Students Demand More Free Stuff

Well perhaps they do, but they didn’t turn up to say so.

million

The Million Student March has four demands, which as many as a dozen people sat down to demand:

Tuition-free public college
Cancellation of all student debt
$15/hour minimum wage for campus workers
Divestment from private prisons

Which means they want other people to pay for their education, people who borrowed money from taxpayers to get an education not to have to pay it back, more unemployment in college communities, and umm, what on earth have prisons got to do with it? I don’t know, let’s just chuck that in there and see what happens…

Also, the patience of university administrations and students who want to study with those who want to block hallways and offices demanding free stuff is definitely running out.

I’d say that was a hopeful sign.

Hairy Blokes in Ladies Bathrooms – What Could Go Wrong?

Obviously the Governor of North Carolina is a homophobic pig for thinking little girls should not be forced to use the same public restrooms as sweaty middle-aged men. That includes me, incidentally, but I am pretty careful to use the bathroom that matches my own bathroom equipment, if you get my meaning.

If you really think the people of North Carolina are bigots, and especially their governor, and PayPal is tight to boycott them (I wonder what Geoff Boycott would think of this) while simultaneously operating in countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexual acts are illegal and homosexuals can be executed, then you probably won’t bother to read this article from the always illuminating Chicks on the Right. But if you have a brain cell or two, perhaps you should …

I hate to be That Person who gloats and says “I Told You So.” But – I told you so.

According to this, a person who is biologically a man claimed to be transgender so he could get into a women’s shelter in Toronto. Toronto, if you aren’t aware, allows transgender people to use whatever restroom they like – and it appears that also extends to other facilities meant solely for women. From the article –

Christopher Hambrook, 37, leaned on the ever expanding legal “rights” offered to people who “identify” with the sex opposite their biology. Under the name “Jessica,” he was able to get into the women’s shelters, where he sexually assaulted several women in 2012, the Toronto Sun reports.

Court heard how one woman awoke to find Hambrook assaulting her on her bed. “Her tights had been pulled down past her bottom and her bathing suit had been pulled to the side,” court documents reveal. “She yelled at the accused, demanding to know what he was doing. He simply covered his face with his hands, said ‘Oops!’ and started giggling.”

Court also heard evidence of Hambrook terrorizing a deaf woman living in the shelter. “The accused grabbed the complainant’s hand and forcibly placed it on his crotch area while his penis was erect,” court heard.

The same deaf women reported that Hambrook would peer at her through a gap between the door and its frame while she showered.

But you know – places like North Carolina are a bunch of bigots for passing laws that make it illegal for biological men to use facilities meant for women.

I’ve raised this point before, but it bears repeating – if progressives are so insistent on pushing statistics like 1 in every five women will be raped on a college campus and that all men are rapists simply by existing and women are helpless victims whenever men are around – then why in the name of all that is good and holy would they criticize a law that’s meant to prevent terrible things like rape and sexual assault from occurring?

Oh, that’s right – because they’re a bunch of hypocrites.

Here’s the scary part of this story: women’s shelters exist to help women and children who’ve been abused by scumbags who don’t even deserve to be called “men.” That includes everything from physical abuse to mental and sexual abuse. Why would you let a strange man into a shelter meant to protect women, just because he says he’s actually a chick? That’s the exact OPPOSITE of compassion!

Bruce Springsteen and every other wailing liberal moron can take their boycott of states who actually WANT to protect innocent people from predators and perverts and shove it.

I feel like a woman

 

Michael Moore - hypocrite

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