Sinistra delenda est
Saw this on Instapundit:
WELL, NO. IT MIGHT BE COMING. I MEAN, THEY WANT TO GO CARBON-FREE: Australia Becoming Unlivable–BBC.
Personally, seeing this mentioned by the Poms on an American website does make me laugh. I can only say I consider it my greatest good fortune that I ended up in Australia, not in Canada where I was born, nor in the UK where I spent two-plus lovely years in the 1970s, nor in the US which I lived next to growing up and visited many times.
It may not last the way things are going, but if one surveys the entire planet at the present moment, there is nowhere else better. This is a secret we should, of course, keep to ourselves since it is better to discourage others from overrunning the place.
Hopefully this is also a sign of things to come: Labor return Sri Lankan asylum seeker boat as Operation Sovereign Borders enforced.
As for climate change which is supposedly what will make Australia uninhabitable, this was a comment at Instapundit:
In 2015 – Australia absorbed between 37 and 45 million kilotons of CO2, according to peer reviewed science
https://acp.copernicus.org/…
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In the same year – Australians emitted an estimated 376 000 kilotons of CO2 total.
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(2015 was an El-Nino year (typically a year of low vegetative growth in OZ) with the only aspect at all unusual was 17% above average rainfall across the Top End – despite the impact of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole)
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If the Australia’s goal was to become ‘carbon neutral’ – this peer reviewed scientific study confirms that Australia has ALWAYS been carbon neutral.
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Job done, next…
Not that I think any of it actually matters, but for the crazies who take climate change seriously, we are certainly doing our bit.
PLUS: There is then this which I just picked up at The Spectator Online [for subscribers only].
- According to Professor Ian Plimer, Australia doesn’t need to worry about the ‘Net Zero’ goals that caused the guilt-ridden, city-dwelling rich list to vote Green (well, Teal but same-same). Net Zero by 2030? 2050? No worries, ‘Australia sequesters some five times as much carbon dioxide as it emits. Australia’s net contribution to global atmospheric carbon dioxide is negative. We are already at Net Zero. This is validated by the net carbon dioxide flux estimates from the IBUKI.’
I came across this at The Gateway Pundit: Australian Politician at Davos Explains that We Need a “Recalibration” of Freedom of Speech. Really, I said, so I watched the video. This is the summary of what she said:
‘Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant tells the World Economic Forum we need a “recalibration” of freedom of speech. Which only means eliminating their ideological competition.’
Or according to the link to the above post:
Australian politicians forced shutdowns and restrictions on citizens based on COVID. Their leaders have no regard for their citizens or their human rights….
This became clear today in Davos as Australian Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told the World Economic Forum that we need a “recalibration” of freedom of speech.
Who is this Julie Inman Grant speaking on behalf of us. This is who she is, and she really does apparently speak on all our behalfs: eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant reappointed for another five years
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has been reappointed for a further five years as new laws granting her new internet takedown powers come into effect.
Ms Inman Grant, a former Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe executive, has been eSaftey Commissioner since 2017. On Sunday, communications minister Paul Fletcher announced she will remain in the job until 2027 with another maximum appointment term.
The reappointment comes as the controversial Online Safety Act comes into force, giving Ms Inman Grant new powers to issue take-down notices to a range of online services in relation to online content deemed to be harmful.
“Today’s reappointment, and the simultaneous commencement of the Online Safety Act, will enhance Australia’s position as a world leader in online safety.”
Ms Inman Grant was appointed eSafety commissioner in 2017 when the government agency responsible for children’s online safety expanded its remit to all Australians’ online safety and was renamed to the eSafety Commissioner.
The Commissioner is an independent statutory office holder, supported by around 67 staff, contractors and the national media regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The office has an annual budget of around $25 million but will receive more this year to support its new powers.
We have a “national media regulator”? Who knew? And they have been given new powers. Meanwhile the nincompoop Minister who was in charge may yet lose his seat to some Teal candidate.
JUST IN CASE YOU WOULD LIKE TO KNOW A LITTLE MORE: This his her profile from The World Economic Forum:
Julie Inman Grant is Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. In this role, Julie leads the world’s first government regulatory agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online. Julie has extensive experience in the non-profit and government sectors and spent two decades working in senior public policy and safety roles in the tech industry at Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. The Commissioner’s career began in Washington DC, working in the US Congress and the non-profit sector before taking on a role at Microsoft. Julie’s experience at Microsoft spanned 17 years, serving as one of the company’s first and longest-standing government relations professionals, ultimately in the role of Global Director for Safety & Privacy Policy and Outreach. At Twitter, she set up and drove the company’s policy, safety & philanthropy programs across Australia, New Zealand & Southeast Asia. As Commissioner, Julie plays an important global role as Chair of the Child Dignity Alliance’s Technical Working Group and as a Board Member of the WePROTECT Global Alliance. She was recently named one of Australia’s most influential women by the Australian Financial Review and a leading Australian in Foreign Affairs by the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2020, the World Economic Forum and Apolitical appointed the Commissioner as one of the #Agile50, the world’s most influential leaders revolutionising government. In 2021, Julie oversaw significant increases in the eSafety office’s budget, increased staffing levels and launched the global Safety by Design initiative. As Commissioner, she has led work to stand up novel and world-first regulatory regimes under the new Online Safety Act 2021, with implementation of a sweeping new set of reforms beginning on 23 January 2022. Commissioner Inman Grant was reappointed for a further 5-year term by the Australian Government in January 2022.
I thought she had an American accent. Not that I hold it against her, but still she does seem like an import contaminated with every stupid notion found amongst the Washington bureaucracy. And do note, she is “one of the world’s most influential leaders revolutionising government”.
“Give the people what they want, good and hard”. It’s a philosophy, I suppose, but not so good for those who didn’t want whatever it is that actually gets served up. So now Australia joins the Biden-Trudeau-Adern club of Mencken’s worst nightmare societies.
I am still a bit shell shocked from the outcome, not that I am all that surprised, so rather than say what I think, I will take a pair of comments from a previous post and then go read the papers – or at least do the crossword puzzle. First from Another Ian who quotes from JoNova.
“My daughter just finished a class in college about the alchemists. Before some of you rant about how useless this class was, it’s not It teaches us about the past and is a guide to the future. The alchemists did produce some useful discoveries. But they are most known for some of their absurd attempts to turn lead into gold and other nonsensical endeavors.
“Climate science is really the new alchemy. It is using regression analysis to figure out what level of CO2 will endanger the planet. But it makes no more sense than what the alchemists were doing. We don’t really have quality information on worldwide temperatures for past years. It’s questionable whether we have information on it for present years. We don’t know all of the variables that impact temperature. So the new alchemists are trying to predict future weather by generating computer models that are absolute garbage because they don’t take into account natural variability, urban heat zones, etc. They don’t know the variables and just fudge the numbers to get the programs to make it look like they work. But of course, how did they predict the Little Ice and the Roman Warm Period. These models can’t even accurately predict the past. And we are spending billions of dollars supporting this new alchemy and possibly trillions of dollars, endangering the health and welfare of our citizens because of this elitist nonsense.”
And then this from Bruce of Newcastle.
Unfortunately to some extent both parties are channeling the insanity of the voters. I was reflecting last night that I’ve been opposing the climate craze for nearly 15 years now, and in that time it has just gotten worse and worse. There’s still nothing much happening in the real world – no actual global warming, none of the dire prognostications. Yet this election is a choice between the totally bonkers Libs and the beyond insane Labor Party. Both are falling over themselves to destroy our country for a myth.
That’s because the voters demand this stupidity. The MSM demands it. The whole of the nation is stuck in a lemming-like race to disaster which only a literal disaster will crack the people out of.
The Covid arc illustrates this. You had guys like McGowan immensely popular for converting his entire state into a prison camp to save the people from a virus so innocuous that people often don’t know they have it. It took two years of disaster – closed businesses, lost jobs, lockdowns, vaccine injuries, masking and elderly parents dying alone for the people to suddenly, overnight, get over it. Now the pollies don’t mention the virus and it’s like it never existed.
The people haven’t yet gotten to this point on the climate scam, but they will once the pain really amps up. Which it is just starting to, particularly electricity and fuel prices. But with the elites all Believing like religious fanatics even that’s not going to be enough. Saving the world syndrome is a very powerful hubristic drug. It may take a full-on political apocalypse to stop these people saving us from an apocalypse which isn’t happening.
You know, there may have been people even during the height of the witch-burning phase of our own past history who understood it was all insane. Meanwhile, we are about to live through years of serious idiocy.
The truth of the matter is that everyone lives through “interesting times” as the Chinese like to say. It’s not a curse, it’s just the way it is.
There is a view I sometimes come across that argues that The Coalition should willingly lose the election since things are certain to crater over the next year or so and therefore, Labor will be blamed for everything. That way, The Coalition will be able to win in three years with an even more solid majority. Even more fantastic is the belief that being in opposition will allow the Libs/Nationals to sort things out so that when they return in 2025 they will be able to govern from strength based on the newfound wisdom they will have generated.
There is a lot of crazy around at the moment, but that is up there with the worst of them. Witness the United States under Joe Biden. The Democrats are perfectly aware that there is a large possibility that they will lose the presidency in 2024 along with Congress. They therefore are going about doing everything to fulfil their insane agenda right now. They also believe they will also likely be able to again cheat their way back in, but are hurrying things along just in case they might really lose.
So for Australia. Labor is not a party of sense and moderation with a slightly socialist bent. They are out and out full-on Marxists who will do as much damage as they possibly can. They will wreck the economy, they will open our borders, they will demolish the private sector, they will further subvert the education system, they will socialise every aspect of society they are able.
These are not moderates. Albanese is from the Socialist Left and he means every stupidity he says, plus all of the others that he now keeps to himself.
It would be a madness to allow Labor to govern if it is at all possible to prevent it by not electing them in the first place.
This is not a paid political advertisement in that I am not being paid. But I pass this along since I completely agree with the conclusion:
This is from Terry Barnes at The Spectator: Tezza’s how-to-vote card.
On Saturday, I’ll be voting Liberal, but out of loyalty rather than conviction. The party is no longer that of Menzies, Howard, or Abbott, and instead is riven with power-hungry egos and factional warlords.
The Liberal Party needs reform. It needs to rediscover its roots. It needs to be a party of the mainstream centre-right and to stop being so desperate in trying to appease affluent progressives on issues like ‘climate action’ and public health, even while knowing they’ll never vote for it….
I believe the only way necessary change will happen is from the heights of federal government, because the country can’t afford the Left-Labor alternative. Incumbency brings purpose and demands at least nominal discipline. Opposition would bring nothing but an open invitation for Liberals to eat each other alive, unleash ferocious factional wars, and set federal and state organisations against each other.
It’s a recipe for long-term opposition and unelectability, not a quick return to government….
As a Victorian, I also know that the shock of losing office to an inferior opposition can lead – not to a brief spell in the paddock – but decades in the unelectable wilderness….
If you’re a disillusioned Coalition voter, the Liberals’ need to retain your support gives you lasting influence and leverage over the Liberal Party’s (in a wordplay readers under 40 won’t get) future directions. You are their true base. Your preferences matter. Please use them wisely.
I only differ from this in giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt since on most issues I think he sees things in an entirely conservative way (but who knows?). With the world filled with climate and covid zombies whose votes also matter, and who are found in large numbers even amongst those who vote for The Coalition, there is no way to remain a purist on either issue.
Labor will follow Joe Biden on every issue. We will have open borders, massive deficits and a weakening of our national defence. Lockdowns and Covid restrictions will not come to an end.
Three years is a very long time in politics, specially if it stretches out to six years or even more.
I keep pointing out that the last person you should listen to about economic policy is anyone who has had a modern education in economic theory. Here is a bit of proof, from today’s Oz: Dismay at RBA as wages growth goes backwards. Here is the opening line of the article:
The person most disappointed with Wednesday’s sluggish wages growth figure is surely the Reserve Bank Governor. Real wages are now going backwards at 2.7 per cent.
How would it even have been possible for real wages to rise while the country has been in lockdown, our future sources of energy are under threat, government spending has risen at every turn, and while real interest rates are in negative territory?
Real wages can only grow if the flow of goods and services that wage earners can buy is rising. This can, of course, only happen if the private sector is expanding.
It is the proliferation of all these Keynesians who believe that increases in public sector spending on useless junk will somehow “stimulate demand” and therefore lead to a higher level of productive enterprise.
That is, these people believe that if governments waste our available resources and capital on unproductive projects of their choosing that when their overpaid virtually entirely unproductive public servants spend the wages they receive that this will propel the economy forward.
It does sicken me to watch all this in action since I can see how not only almost everyone else but also I too will have to experience a fall in my real level of income because of all this.
That central banks around the world seem to believe that negative real rates of interest are a stimulus to growth is just how it is. If you would like to be cured of this absurdity, the only place I can think to send you is to Chapter 17 of the third edition of my Free Market Economics: An Introduction for the General Reader which is titled, “Saving and the Financial System”. There are other books as well, but virtually all of them were written at least a century ago.
It is maddening to watch our economy trashed by such ignorance, but there you have it.
FROM THE COMMENTS: I try not to do this, and hardly do it at all, but this was the sole comment which to me really demands a response since I think it is so instructive. From Hubris:
I read these tirades. Do you essentially advocate a return to industrial protection and supply? It seems like you just don’t like markets.
I know I am beating my head against a brick wall, but massive levels of public spending, enormous unfunded fiscal deficits and adjustment of market rates of interest by central banks are not in any sense leaving things to the market. Why is that not utterly obvious?
Increases in the price level (nowadays referred to as “inflation”) are embedding themselves across much of the world. And I would like to emphasise that it’s not just a money-supply thing. It is essentially caused by the growth of purchasing power relative to the growth in the amount of goods and services available for purchase. The key element is productivity growth relative to the level of spending.
I’m not interested in dwelling on any of this, other than to point out that getting inflation back down to zero hardly fixes the problem. Here are the latest data from the ABS:
Suppose the growth rate went down to zero from 5.1%, which it won’t any time soon, if ever. Since the CPI figure is a percentage change in the index you have not recovered your lost purchasing power.
Most extraordinarily to me, the ABS only just mentions the latest index number, which is 123.9. The publication, so far as I could see, doesn’t even mention the index level a year ago which I calculate to have been 117.9.
The point: unless the Index falls back to 117.9, a zero inflation rate still leaves you 5.1% behind.
It is people on fixed incomes who will be really punished, but everyone who has not had their incomes rise by that 5.1% will be financially worse off.
So we now have all the ingredients of a wage-price spiral. This is what Labor has promised: ‘Absolutely’: Albanese backs wage growth at rate of inflation.
“I believe the minimum wage should at least keep up with the cost of living,” Albanese told a press conference in the Melbourne seat of Chisholm on Tuesday morning.
Productivity has fallen backwards since the lockdowns and the covid restrictions. Governments everywhere – see Victoria specially – have thrown away billions of dollars on useless unproductive projects. (The US has gone absolutely insane.)
Put in place a system that adjusts wages to the movement in prices and the disaster that will follow will still be with us twenty years from now.
On the editorial page of The Oz today there was an article by Adam Creighton with the following heading: Trump’s star rising but he’s dead wrong about stolen election. How incredible and how disappointing, I said to myself, that the only journalist in Australia who writes honestly about the American political system has now gone over to the dark side. And then I read the article and what was absolutely clear was that the heading had completely misrepresented the contents of the story. In fact, when I opened the story at the link, this is now how the headline reads:
Trump’s rising star should force voting reform for GOP’s sake as well as Dems
Trump was miles ahead on the evening of the election and then was behind in the morning when all the counting was supposed to have ended. Here is the documentary that has brought all of this back into focus:
https://youtu.be/BJ6oQonfXpM
Here is how the doc is described by Adam Creighton in his article:
Trump screened and lauded a new documentary, 2000 Mules, at his Florida mansion for prominent friends and fans last Friday night. It was produced by conservative provocateur and author Dinesh D’Souza and a Texas not-for-profit, True the Vote.
Using vast troves of anonymised mobile phone location data – the kind that helped police arrest rioters on Capitol Hill on January 6 – the documentary suggests at least 2000 individuals in five key swing states visited at least 10 voter drop boxes and five left-wing activist organisations during the voting period. Some “mules” – those dropping off multiple ballots – visited drop boxes more than 50 times, it claim
The show also presented CCTV footage of people dropping multiple ballots off at strange hours, some wearing gloves (and a T-shirt; it clearly wasn’t to keep warm) at all hours of the night.
Of course it was a stolen election. What a notion that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were preferred to Donald Trump and Mike Pence! The question is whether these people will try the same in November for the Congressional elections. My guess is that they cannot be stopped. As Adam wrote:
Yet in 2022 it’s no exaggeration to say the Democratic Party has become obsessed with maintaining pandemic voting rules beyond the pandemic, casting anyone who wants to return to pre-2020 voting rules as a racist who is intent on “suppressing the vote”. It’s reasonable to ask why the party has become so insistent on keeping rules that it barely advocated for before 2020.
I wonder if anyone can guess the reason why.
CONTINUING THE STORY: The link to the video at Youtube has gone. Not all that surprising given the nature of the media, although it may well have just been withdrawn since, as discussed here, it is a commercially-produced documentary that is being sold:
The documentary made more than $1 million in under 12 hours on video streaming platform Rumble and its subscription platform Locals beginning at noon on Saturday. The take was “good enough to put ‘2000 Mules‘ in the estimated box office top ten for the weekend of May 6th to May 8th,” according to the video platform.
As of publication deadline on Wednesday, the film was earning an enthusiastic user rating of 7.4 on the 10-point scale of definitive film industry site IMDB.
“2000 Mules” is available for purchase at $29.99 on D’Souza’s Locals channel or for free with purchase of an annual $50 subscription to his channel. The controversial film had a limited theatrical release last week and is also available for purchase or rent on SalemNow.com.
Old Ozzie in the comments has provided this link from Rumble in case it can still be reached:
2000 MULES BY DINESH D’SOUZA (DOCUMENTARY)
And the trailer can be found here: 2000 Mules Trailer or perhaps here if one clicks on the link below if the vid itself does not appear: