Make a Difference

Category: Politics (Page 2 of 43)

More Anti-Energy Silliness

There is no reasons why activists should not be allowed to have their say, as long as policy is based on facts rather than ideology.

A saw a video recently purporting to be of a Norwegian fisherman lamenting the negative impact of the oil industry, and particularly of acoustic imaging, on Norwegian fisheries.

OK. Except that output from Norwegian fisheries has almost tripled over the last twenty years, at exactly the same time as huge growth in Norwegian oil exploration and export.

There is no negative impact at all. Just as there has been no negative impact in Australia, where whale populations in Southern and Western Australia have grown at close to maximum possible numbers at exactly the same time as large areas of ocean floor have been surveyed and new areas opened up for exploration and development.

I am reminded of the pioneering work of Professor Irving Janis on groupthink:

1. A group of people come to share a view or belief without proper refernce to real-world evidence, or wihout weighing other options or risks.

2. They then insist their belief is shared by all caring, right-thinking people. Consequently, people who disagree are perceived as evil or uncaring.

3. Those who adhere to the “correct” view attach themselves so strongly to their beliefs that it forms the basis of their sense of purpose and self-worth. Any disagreement is seen as an existential attack on them personally.

4. Because their view has little foundation in reality, they can defend it only by repeating the same falsehoods over and over, and by making irrational and sometimes savage attacks on anyone with a different view.

Barnaby Joyce and the Media

Barnaby Joyce doesn’t talk to the media.
The media: Why won’t Barnaby Joyce talk to us? What is he scared of? What is he hiding?

Barnaby Joyce talks to the media.
The media: No one cares what Barnaby Joyce thinks. Barnaby Joyce is a publicity-hungry media whore. Barnaby Joyce should shut up.

Citizenship and Australian Politicians

It is not controversial that if you are part of the government of a country, then your loyalty to that country should be undivided. It is perfectly reasonable to require that members of the Australian Federal Government should be citizens of Australia, and not of any other country.

Finding a clear way to make this work, however, has not been easy, as the recent spate of people forced to leave parliament because they are dual citizens of Australia and some other country has demonstrated.

In some cases this was simply carelessness. Those standing for election did not familiarise themselves with the law, or their parties did not undertake adequate checking. But in other cases, the law seems to have applied in ways its framers did not intend.

Barnaby Joyce, for example, was born in Australia, in Tamworth, NSW. He never considered himself anything other than Australian, never had any reason to believe he was anything other than Australian, and never felt any loyalty to any other country. But under New Zealand law, New Zealand citizenship was conferred on him at birth because his parents, though they had permanently moved to Australia, were still New Zealand citizens when he was born.

In another instance, Senator Lucy Gichuhi, who was born in Kenya, renounced her Kenyan citizenship when she became an Australian citizen in 2001. She took expensive legal advice, which confirmed that at the time of her election to the Senate she was a citizen only of Australia. However, in 2010, Kenya changed the law to allow dual citizenship. Those who became citizens of another country did not by doing so automatically void their Kenyan citizenship. This has renewed politically-driven speculation about Senator Gichuhi’s eligibility to be part of our government.

Senator Lucy Gichuhi

Senator Lucy Gichuhi

It is absurd for Australian law to be so unclear in its meaning and application that the laws of other countries can determine who is and who is not eligible to be a member of the Australian  government. At the moment, someone validly elected to our Parliament, and eligible to be elected at the time, can suddenly be rendered ineligible, not by any decision of the Australian people or government, but at the whim of a country half way around the world.

The stability of our government should not be dependent of the whims of the leadership of any other country, or on the vagaries of its laws. This needs to be fixed, now.

The solution is simple:

1. If a prospective member was born overseas or to parents who were citizens of another country, that person must show they have taken reasonable steps to ensure they are not a citizen of any country other than Australia.

2. All prospective members, whether born in Australia or not, or to Australian parents or not, must make a public statement that they formally and irrevocably renounce any other citizenships they may hold, or may become entitled to hold, during the period of their membership of the Australian Federal Parliament.

The law must be changed to note that this statement is an adequate renunciation of other citizenships for the purpose of membership of Parliament, regardless of laws or regulations in force in  any other country.

Every Day in Every Way …

“Every day in every way, I am getting better and better” was the catch-phrase of Émile Coué, French psychologist and pharmacist, who believed people could be healed and their lives improved through the power of aut0-suggestion.

His theories have long since fallen out of favour. But what is true is that every day, in almost every way, the world is getting better and better; cleaner, safer, healthier, happier.

The driving forces behind this change have been free trade, rule of law and secure property rights.

It is interesting how much of this progress towards a cleaner, safer, healthier, fairer world has been accomplished by three types of industry; pharmaceuticals, oil, and agri-science. Yet, those are the three types of companies the luvvies love to hate.

Free trade, rule of law and secure property rights are a recipe for a better world.

Free trade, rule of law and secure property rights are a recipe for a better world.

Cheap energy and science help too!

Cheap energy and science help too!

Why is Britain Selling Weapons to our Enemies?

Erdogan is no friend to the West. He is a violent, oppressive dictator, and a supporter of terrorism.

Prime Minister May knows this; hence the “stern warning.” Is the UK so desperate for money it has to resort to selling powerful modern weapons to the enemies of civilization?

Turkey is a serial human rights offender and supporter of terrorism. Why sell them weapons?

Turkey is a serial human rights offender and supporter of terrorism. Why sell them weapons?

Iran May Name Bribe Recipients

Senior advisors in Iran are threatening to name Western officials to whom bribes were paid to seal the Iran peace deal.

Oh Yes. Please do. We all know which side of politics has absolutely nothing to fear from those revelations.

Of course, if Iran does release the names of officials and politicians who received, ah …  gifts, to ease the so-called Iran peace deal, Iran will be punishing those who made the deal, and helping those who broke it. Either they don’t care, or they are not very bright. Probably both.

Iran threatens to name bribe recipients after deal break

Iran threatens to name bribe recipients after deal break

To Reduce Debt, Cut Spending

It seems a simple enough solution; to reduce debt, reduce spending. This graph from Australia’s IPA (Institute of Public Affairs) shows just how effective a one percent reduction in overall spending would be, wiping out the deficit in the current year, and halving gross debt in two years:

A 1% reduction in spending would halve Australia’s gross debt in just two years.

Instead, we have another budget of the type to which we have become accustomed over the last fifteen years. Promises of a return to surplus sometime in the future if the wind blows in the right direction, and increased debt in the short term. Unless government develops a willingness to stand up to the insatiable demands of special interest groups and the welfare lobby in particular, nothing will change.

Despite what some economists and journalists may tell you, this is real debt; real goods and services are being purchased and they really have to be paid for. Someone has to pay for them. If we don’t, our children will. Older people will, as they find there is no money left to fund pensions and health care.

Next Year in Jerusalem

Firstly, that very strange girl from Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest. Not a song or a style that appeals to me, but nonetheless, well done. This means next year’s Contest will be held in Jerusalem. And that is great.

And, today marks the day when the United States finally does what its Congress voted to do twenty years ago, but which no President before Trump has had the courage to do; move its embassy to the  capital of Israel, which is and has been for the last 3,000 years, Jerusalem.

Workers prepare the stage for the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Workers prepare the stage for the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Eight hundred guests, including foreign envoys, religious and business leaders, academics and journalists, are expected to attend the opening of the new embassy today, Monday 14th of May 2018.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May all who bless you prosper!

Terrifying New Data on Sea Level Rise

Terrifying to climate alarmists, that is.

Sea level has been rising for the last 20,000 years, since the start of the blessed global warming that brought us into the light, warmth and buzzing with life bio-diversity of the current inter-glacial period. The most rapid increases in sea level occurred between fifteen and eight thousand years ago. With minor fluctuations, the rate of sea level rise has been declining since then.

Sea level rise over the last 20,000 years

Sea level rise over the last 20,000 years

Despite a modest increase in global temperature over the last one hundred and fifty years, and a modest increase in atmospheric CO2 in the last seventy years, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise.

Despite shrieks of terror from climate alarmists, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise 1855 to the present.

Despite shrieks of terror from climate alarmists, there has been no change in the rate of sea level rise from 1855 to the present.

Socialism is as Socialism Does…

And what socialism does is kill people.

Whether it is National Socialism killing off the Jews to usher in the millenial kingdom, the ideal society, the 1,000 year reich, or Stalinist, Maoist, or Venuzuelan socialism killing off the kulaks or bourgoisie to achieve the same end, socialism kills.

Socialism fails because it does not understand human nature. Scientific materialism has a profoundly unscientific view of both nature and society. Because it does not reflect physical and human nature,  socialism cannot work without coercion. And coercion always means violence. The failures must be the fault of saboteurs. The saboteurs must be identified and destroyed.

It is an old joke, and a particularly gruesome one, that Stalin was just one purge away from achieving the perfect society.

Socialism and its cousin radical environmentalism are always just around the corner from achieving a perfect world. There’s just that one last group of people who stand in the way and must be removed to reach the final solution.

Australian Federal Budget 2018

I am just back from a long day at work, and too tired to think in detail about the 2018 budget.

But the Greens hate it, so that is an indication that at least some aspects of it are positive.

These might include reducing the likelihood  of “bracket creep” for low and middle income earners.

And especially good news, no increases in Newstart allowance (unemployment payments, the dole – as someone once said, the best social welfare programme is a job), no increases in funding for climate alarmism, and no increases in foreign aid. Many of the countries we have been handing money to have bigger armies than us and hate us anyway. And those on welfare will be required to pay fines out of their allowances, which will prevent the egregious build-up of massive fine debts by people who believe they will never have to pay.

But the level of overspending continues to be frightening, the so-called Gonski reforms in education are nothing of the sort, come at huge cost, and will continue the evidence-free over-bureaucratic and PC nonsense that has afflicted our schools and damaged education for more than a generation, and the outlawing of the use of legal currency, ie cash, for transactions over $10,000 suggests a troublingly excessive desire by Treasury to scrutinise private transactions. Adequate reporting measures are already in place for large cash transactions, so why outlaw them?

Maybe more over the weekend…  Have a good night everyone 🙂

Climate Change is a Moral Issue

Vain attempts to stop completely natural climate variation – aka global warming – kill millions of people in developing countries. 4.3 million people die every year from indoor pollution casued by burning wood and dung on open fires for cooking and heating. Yet  greenies actively work to stop poorer nations developing the electricity supplies and other forms of cheap energy they take for granted.

“The grim irony of the pursuit of “green” energy is that it may be placing millions of people in poor countries at risk of living much shorter, unhealthier lives due to air pollution, according to a new report from The Global Warming Policy Foundation.”

The report, by eminent epidemiologist Mikko Paunio, says that international bodies and NGOs are trying to prevent poor countries from expanding their use of conventional fuels, have abandoned the so-called “energy ladder” — the gradual shift to cleaner types of fuel that underpinned the clean up of air quality in industrialised nations. As Dr Paunio explains, this will have devastating consequences:
“Indoor air pollution from domestic fires kills millions every year. But instead of helping poor people to climb the energy ladder and clean the air in their communities, the poorest people are being given gimmicks like cookstoves, which make little difference to air quality, and solar panels, which are little more than a joke.”

What is worse, the greens inside and outside the development community are blaming air pollution on power stations, industry and cars, as a way to prevent any shift to industrial power production. As Dr Paunio makes clear, most air pollution in poor countries is in fact caused by burning low-quality biofuels and coal in domestic stoves:
“Trying to blame power stations for indoor air pollution might make greens feel they are saving the planet, but the reality is that they are allowing millions of deaths from air pollution to continue. The body count is going to rival that of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century.”

And of course, the ones who shout loudest about the need for government and other people to “do something” about global warming are the ones who do least themselves.

All Israel Wants is to Live Peacefully Within its Borders

Time to end the false narrative of a right to return for millions of refugees who were never refugees at all.

By Aviv Ezra at American Thinker:

In November 1947 the United Nations voted to approve a partition plan that would have created a Jewish-majority state and an Arab-majority state in historic Palestine, and shared Jerusalem between the two parties. The Jews accepted the partition plan, and the results of the UN vote, though it provided insecure borders in a fragmented new state. Reaching a compromise is always a process in which neither side gets everything they want, but it is better than war, with all the destruction and upheaval which war brings.

Two thirds of the British Mandate given to create a homeland for the regions Arabs

Two thirds of the British Mandate was given to create a homeland for the region’s Arabs. The 1947 partition reduced this area again, leaving the Jewish people with less than half of their historic homeland, and less than 0.6% of land in the Middle East.

The Arab nations voted against the partition resolution in the General Assembly, and never accepted the results of the UN vote. The Arabs had never accepted the idea of a Jewish-majority state in any part of historic Palestine, and began a campaign of violence against the Zionists the very night the resolution was passed. During World War 2, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, holed up in Berlin, encouraged Adolf Hitler to turn his death machine against the Jews in Palestine while the Nazis were working to murder all the Jews in Europe. During the British mandate period, the Arabs had rejected earlier partition plans more favorable to them, such as the 1938 Peel Plan, because it allowed a tiny Jewish state to be created. In essence, the Arabs had fought Zionism for half a century, and were determined to deal the Jewish state a knockout blow as soon the British left in May 1948.

Five Arab nations attacked Israel the day it became a new nation, assisting the Arabs in Palestine in their effort to destroy Israel. Despite enormous advantages in armed men, planes, tanks, and other weaponry, the Arabs were unsuccessful. Israel survived the onslaught, and defeated the Arab armies , creating new borders for the Jewish state, as well as for Jordan and Egypt. At the end of the war, Jordan held Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) and the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the old city, and expelled Jews who had lived there for thousands of years. Egypt captured Gaza in the war. At no point did Egypt and Jordan attempt to create a new Arab state of Palestine with the territories they had picked up in the war. Instead Jordan annexed the West Bank, a seizure recognized by only two nations, and Egypt held Gaza as a territory.

During the war, there were many people displaced on both sides. More than half a million Arabs became refugees. Most of them had left their towns as instructed by invading Arab armies to get out of the way of the coming planned slaughter of the Jews. Tens of thousands had left even before the UN partition resolution. Some fled a war zone, where there was very close fighting, a sensible thing to do. In some cases, the Israeli forces consolidated territorial corridors, particularly to Jerusalem. The Arabs also spread stories of civilian killings, which frightened many Arab residents to leave their towns, even though the stories were false or greatly exaggerated.

After the war, the Arabs demanded that the partition borders be restored, and all the refugees be allowed to return. This was a novel demand. If you start a war meaning to annihilate the enemy and you lose, you don’t get a do over. There are no do overs in history. The smart thing would have been for the Arabs to have accepted the partition plan and not started a war. There are consequences to starting a war and losing.

The Syrian Prime Minister during the war of 1948-1949, Haled Al Azm, wrote in his memoirs in 1973:

“Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call for them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wrote in 1976:

“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettoes in which the Jews used to live.”

This is the real tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs. Those who left their homes wound up not far from home, in Arab countries which had supported their cause during the war. They were among other Arabs, who spoke the same language, had the same culture, and the same religion. No refugee population should have had it easier, given that Arabs wound up among their own people. But the Arab countries refused to allow normal resettlement, as usually occurs with refugees, instead relegating many refugees to squalid camps, in which their families have lived now for 3 or 4 generations. Many Palestinians have chosen to remain in these camps dreaming of a return to Israel, clanging old keys from 70 years back, or been threatened if they wanted to leave. But how can you “return” to a place where you have never lived or even visited? The truth of the matter is that there may be no more than 25,000 refugees remaining alive from the 1948 war. The rest are descendants — children, grandchildren even great grandchildren of original refugees, none of whom have been in Israel or left it.

All the refugee populations in the world come under the jurisdiction of a single UN agency, except for the Palestinians. All other refugees do not pass refugee status on to descendants, only the refugees themselves are counted as such. Only the Palestinians are allowed to count all descendants as refugees, and many have chosen to live off their collective grievance, rather than move on with their lives.

Sephardic Jews, more than 800,000 of whom were expelled or encouraged to leave Arab countries in the years after the creation of Israel, provide a far better and more humane approach for dealing with refugees. Israel absorbed more than 70 per cent of these refugees (France and the United States took many others) and within a few short years, had moved them out of temporary housing and allowed them to start new lives in Israel. I know because my father and his 4 brothers and parents left all of their lives and assets behind when they fled from Iraq and they made themselves a new life in Israel.

Today there are 6.6 million Jews in Israel, and 1.8 million Arabs, more than 11 times as many Arabs as resided within the borders of Israel at the end of the fighting in 1949. So much for the absurd notion of ethnic cleansing. In essence, Israel’s war of independence resulted in a population exchange, something that is very common during wars or when new nations are created. 20 million Muslims and Hindus moved to new countries when India and Pakistan became nations.

The demand for a right of return for millions of Palestinians, including all the descendants of refugees, signals one enduring Palestinian goal — to destroy the state of Israel, by overwhelming it with Arabs from abroad. The Palestinians still do not accept a two-state solution, just as they refused the partition in 1948, but demand a single state they can dominate.

Israel will not commit national suicide to endorse a false narrative of what happened 70 years back.

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