Friday 31 March 2023

"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” | Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Beria, the most ruthless and longest-serving secret police chief in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror in Russia and Eastern Europe, bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” was Beria’s infamous boast.

He served as deputy premier from 1941 until Stalin’s death in 1953, supervising the expansion of the gulags and other secret detention facilities for political prisoners. He became part of a post-Stalin, short-lived ruling troika until he was executed for treason after Nikita Khrushchev’s coup d’etat in 1953. Beria targeted “the man” first, then proceeded to find or fabricate a crime. 

Beria’s modus operandi was to presume the man guilty, and fill in the blanks later. 

By contrast, under the United States Constitution, there’s a presumption of innocence that emanates from the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments, as set forth in Coffin vs. U.S. (1895).


Do we think the Democrats give Trump the presumption of innocence? 

Trump indicted for jaywalking...

It’s not April Fools till tomorrow, but that could just about be it -- Trump indicted for jaywalking! Given the nonsense of the case brought by New York DA, Alvin Bragg.

So I’m just memorialising it today: the first time a US president has been indicted. 

And for the crime of? Filling in the wrong from -- allegedly! -- when his people booked a -- perfectly legal! -- payment to so-called “hush up” -- aka sign a Non Disclosure Agreement -- Stormy Daniels, an ex-porn star who he shtupped -- but claims he didn’t, but in either case is not illegal in New York -- because he didn’t want his wife to know. 

I listend to the ABC Radio from Australia and watched CNN. Both had on good Democrat folks who were so hyped by the news that they could barely contain their glee. “No one is above the law” and all that sententious stuff. Which of course is more noble ideal than reality. Hillary did the same thing and was given a fine, after a year’s investigation. 

There’s no need to be a Trump lover to find the indictment ludicrous. Many senior Democrats say the same. Eg: Andrew CuomoAlan DershowitzElie Mystal, David French, Cyrus Vance. All hate the Orange Man; all say the indictment is frivolous and dangerous. They, and many others, say the indictment is an overreach. Especially given that the Feds had looked closely at the case and decide there was not enough to charge. ADDED: New York Times, Vox and CNN have all said the indictment is weak.

The ABC in Australia was particularly disappointing. Giving one view only: that all this is very wonderful. It’s the rule of law, “no one is above the law” — which is nonsense because no one is arguing that. What’s at issue I’d the triviality of the charge against a former president, which sets precedent for using the law as a political weapon. Nine of that addressed by the ABC coverage.

The other side of this debate is not just that the Feds looked and and dropped the case. But also: the case is a misdemeanour, which not only us subject to a fine, not jail time, but is also passed its “use by date”, that is past the statute of limitations 

This is clearly a case of “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. (Beria, Stalin’s Secret Police Chief).

Democrat DAs have kept on saying that they will find something to indict Trump with. Which is crazy when you think about it. The usual thing is to identify a crime and then find who is the perpetrator. But if you want to pin a crime on someone in the United States, the law is so complex that they say anyone could be charged with a crime in any normal year. Anyone.

Claming this is just “the law at work” and is not politics, is disingenuous. This is indeed a witch hunt. A political prosecution, à la Beria. 

Think about it the other way around. If the Reps hold the House in ’24 and even more if a Rep takes the White House, think of them going after Joe Biden and his crime family. There’s more than plenty to go after, even just in Hunter’s laptop, and all of it more than just jaywalking. 

(So speaks a non-American, with no vote there; and a non-Trump supporter)

Jennifer Bilek | Who is Behind the TRANS AGENDA?

Click above for the video 
What we were talking about this morning. Where does all this radical woke, radical gender ideology, Trans Radical Activism come from?

I've not heard of Jennifer Bilek before today. Nor do I know some of the people she mentions at the beginning of her talk who developed and promote all this stuff.

But she does help explain why this ideology is so prevalent, why it's spreading and why it's getting stronger. And, I guess, why it won't go away soon. Or perhaps won't do away at all. If we become "trans human"….

She also says "follow the money"!

"With mainland help, Hong Kong can popularise solar energy use” | Yeah, but no

Our place in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, with Rooftop Solar PV
My comment at the site:

I put solar panels on our place in DB. I know the economics of Rooftop Solar PV, for Hong Kong.  It's simply not a feasible solution for green power in this dense, vertical city of ours. It's too *dilute*.  What we need *concentrated" green power and the easiest, quickest, safest, most realisable, most *concentrated* way for us is more NUCLEAR. We can either build our own, or buy more from Guangdong.

The article is here. I’ve also written about solar and nuclear in Hong Kong, here and here

I’m not at all against solar power. We’ve done our rooftop, FGS! Just that it’s better in some places than others. Better in lower latitudes than higher latitudes. Not so good for Hong Kong, which is a very concentrated, vertical city. Which means land is at a premium. And the land needed for solar is about 400 times the amount needed for the same amount of Nuclear power. 
Same true for wind. We don’t have the land, nor do we have the steady, prevailing (gradient) winds to make it efficient. While we do have place for Nuclear -- either make it ourselves by replacing the natural gas facility on Lamma Island, or buying more from the other four Nuclear power stations in Guangdong apart from the Daya Bay station where we already get our nuclear f





Thursday 30 March 2023

“Fatal school shootings in the US trend down"

Source: Rockefeller Institute of Government here

Fatal school shootings in the US trend down”: A headline no-one has ever printed. 

Yet: above. That’s the trend. Down.

The latest horrific school shooting was at a Nashville Catholic Primary School. A transgender man (ie a natal woman) killed 3 nine year olds. And 3 adults. Then was killed. 

The panic was not for the Christian communities around America. But for the fact the shooter had been “misgendered” and for the danger now to .... the trans community. Not the danger to the actual victims, but concern for the perpetrators. 

There’s plenty on the MSM about his shooting, though it will disappear soon, because the shooter doesn’t fit the narrative (preferably white male killing POC or LGBT). Meantime, the coverage is all pro-trans, which is fine, but not at all pro-the victims and potential future victims. As a conservative black perspective, Greg Foreman, shows here. Which I post because OR’s may not see conservative views on this otherwise. BBC won’t show it, for sure. Also: The Lotus Eaters, here

Wednesday 29 March 2023

Elon Musk drops 'extraordinary' bombshell on AI dangers

Wow
https://youtu.be/yPOEr7JDze4


Sent from my iPad

Reading tea leaves of Jack Ma’s movements

Click above for video 
It used to be China-watchers pored over the front-page pictures of the politburo of the CCP, in the Peoples Daily to discern who was in, who was out, where policies might head.

These days we have to follow the overseas movements of Alibaba founder and Chief, Jack Ma, to see what China might be up to in its industrial policy. 

There has indeed been a big push lately by the likes of Premier Li Qiang to say China “fully welcomes” private enterprise. This after several years of backtracking. 

Above, Lei gives some good insights into what’s going on. 

Lei is asked about the credibility of the SCMPHer answer is fine. I added at the comments on the vid:

I’ve been reading the “South China Morning Post “since 1976, and I live here in Hong Kong. My bottom line assessment is: it remains the premier English language paper in Asia about Asia. The Op-Ed and Letters pages continue to carry both pro and anti-Beijing articles (including by me), and pro & anti CCP commenters. 

Considering what many feared might happen to it after being bought by Jack Ma, it remains pretty good. 

I recommend Lei’s followers take an SCMP subscription. It has a good App (though a technically lousy Comments section).

ADDED: some interesting figures on China January - February 2023 government revenue here. It looks bad… but there may be another reason! (Spoiler: to make incoming Li Qiang look better than outgoing Li Keqiang)

Monday 27 March 2023

Talk TV - Kellie-Jay talks to Julia Hartley-Brewer about what happened i...

Two strong women. Fighting for women's rights.

Andrew Doyle on Posey Parker being physically assaulted in Auckland

More on what I just wrote.
Take a position.

Let Women Speak | Women speak about their experience at the Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Poise Parker) event in Auckland

It was some pretty shocking stuff. However, the ABC in Australia, the NZ media, the BBC, have all reported “mostly peaceful” gatherings, and nothing about the violence against Kellie-Jay Kean, founder of Let Women Speak, who was just organising an event for any woman to speak about... well... whatever. Whatever they wanted to speak about. But they got no chance, because they were violent assaulted and drowned out. And KJK had to flee New Zealand on the advice of the police. They got shut down by -- mostly -- men. Trans Activist Men. And some trans women. But mostly men-men.  

The mainstream media have their narrative about his happening. That it was “peaceful” and “full of love”. And that KJK is “full of hate”. None of that is true. You may have your own views about what happened in Auckland last Saturday, but I’d say: “you can’t have a view”: at least until you’ve heard from the women who were actually at the event. 

That’s in  three-part recording by Sean Plunket, in New Zealand. Where many women who were there say what happened and what they felt about it. Part 1Part 2Part 3. (each is about an hour)

There’s some real heartfelt stories here. From women who were there. And saw that the police deliberately stood back and did nothing. And that Kellie-Jay was in real danger. You can see that from various videos, like here

Shhh…

Not the Good News : “Police rain on parade”

80 demonstrators, 50 police. 

People demonstrate more freely on the mainland now! For heaven’s sake, get a grip government!

Covid: maybe the Chinese were right all along: it’s the USA wot done it


… of course with Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology involvement. Would explain a lot about Fauci's early suppression of lab leak theory.

Important views on the next pandemic. How did this one happen? | ex CDC Director speaks out

 

Click for video 
Robert Redfield speaks to The Rising. He’s very no nonsense. Gives credit to Anthony Fauci, but says “I disagree with him on the science”. He’d wanted robust investigation of both theories early on: the zoonotic and the lab leak. He was excluded from meetings and the zoonotic origin became the only one we were allowed to talk about. Until it became obvious that the lab leak hypothesis was rather more likely. We still don’t know, but I have my money on a lab leak. 

It’s important to know because we need to know it we ought to be stopping any more Gain of Function research, it that’s what led to the Covid outbreak. As seems likely. Dr Redfield says we ought have a moratorium. Whereas, I gather from what he says in the interview above, that labs all over the world are still doing gain-of-function research. I’m not sure I could name, or think of, any benefit that we’ve had to date from GoF, but then I’m not a virologist. And anyway what do I know? A: not much!

Sunday 26 March 2023

The Military Should Reject DEI and CRT | The Wall Street Journal.

I'd also been wondering what on earth is the American military doing upsetting the most successful integration program in history. Long known to be that. Long admired. "We recognise no colour but green". Now being screwed with. Why? Coz woke.

Two army officers speak out.

Snip:

The U.S. mil­i­tary faces a self-in­flicted threat to its pre­pared­ness to de­ter, fight and win wars. An es­sen­tial, bat­tle-tested ele­ment of mil­i­tary cul­ture—col­or-blind­ness—is be­ing un­der­mined. Un­less the trend is re­versed, our na­tional se­cu­rity will be at in­creased risk. The re­ver­sal could be done at no cost, re­quir­ing only a pol­icy de­ci­sion and the re­ori­en­ta­tion of rel­e­vant train­ing.

The Military Should Reject DEI and CRT

“First Impressions” of an Aussie traveller to Asia a century ago | Jason Wordie

Today’s South China Morning Post Magazine
The “grandson” mentioned above is David Whyte, elder brother of an old friend of mine, Jenny. She was the one who arranged to get the book published. I bought a copy and found it a good read. I passed it on to a Jason Wordie, result the story above.

William Farmer Whyte writes simply and elegantly, no snobbishness, curious about the societies he visited, and he visited a lot all over Asia, 100 years ago. Quite the adventurer. 

Suneel Dhand on all matters Covid and pandemic handling

Click above for video 
Dr Suneel Dhand, front-line physician who treated thousands of Covid patients, with observations on how the pandemic was handled by the authorities. 

“You can’t mandate a vaccine that is non-sterilising”. Polio vaccines are sterilising. Covid vaccines are not. 

It was crazy not to focus on the elderly and those with comorbidities. We knew very early in how skewed to the elderly the virus was. (He’s echoing without mentioning, the Great Barrington Declaration).

“Germophobia would be the downfall of the human race”. We need exposure to bugs and nasties. That’s why I pick up food off the floor and eat it!

Birds love cheese

I’m in the kitchen, prepping my latest Osso Buco, cutting the mould off some blue cheese and eating the good bits. I throw the mouldy bits out on our kitchen garden for whoever. And it’s birds! They zoom in like Hitchcock’s Birds. Birds fluttering everywhere. 

I eat anything that’s not rotten. Out of date? Smell it and eat it. Drop on floor? Pick it and eat it. That’s kept me healthy. I’m too fat. Sure. But healthy, as in not sick? Sure. 

Stuff in the pantry that’s out of date? I don’t throw it. I open and smell it. Taste. If it smells ok and tastes ok, then it’s ok. That’s it. “Use by dates” are a nonsense.

I recall my essay of whether or not we should feed birds. Here it is. Short answer is: yeah, sure, feed birds. 

With the cheese: the birds were so keen they didn’t budge when I came out with some more. They were so keen, they froze in place. Where’s my cheese? Who moved my cheese?

We’ve had so many dogs, and I say from observation: there’s not a dog in the world who doesn’t love cheese. Cheese. The bread of life.

Vis Moot

Opera House Vienna site of Vis Moot
Son John is off to represent the UCLA Law School in the Vis Moot competition in Vienna, starting on 31 March. The have a pre moot competition in Budapest, that he’s on his way to now. It’s 400 teams of four. 

Above that’s where they argue their cases in the competition, the Opera House in Vienna.

Vis Moot.

Saturday 25 March 2023

“The Sheilas will not be silenced” | Jo Burchill

In the last three years the only news of Australia has been negative: how uptight and woke it is.
Novak "Novax" not allowed to play the Australian Open in 2022, because he was unvaxxed, despite having had Covid twice and being super fit. Zero science there. Just the "no one is above the law" sanctimonious sludge.
Then Victoria, took the prize as the most locked down place in the world, under wretched Premier Dan Andrews. And they're proud of it! Including of the cops who beat up elderly protesters. No freedom of assembly there.
Now the hate on women. Misogyny masquerading as trans rights. “Misogyny in drag”. The rights of men who say they are women to invade women's spaces trump the rights of women to privacy. For which delusion men and other Trans Radical Activists bay for the blood of women. TRAs include Dreadful Dan, who gleefully weighed in, smearing Kellie-Jay Kean, the founder of Let Women Speak, with untrue conflation of her with neo-Nazis. Untrue and nasty. Does he know KJK has zero to do with the Nazis? I don’t know. If he does and still conflates her with them, he’s a Knave. If he doesn’t know, he’s a Fool. A Fool or a Knave, Mr Dan Andrews. In either case, anti women.
If I didn't think that the majority of Aussies thought all this was so much nonsense, and thought that women ought be allowed to speak, I'd be truly ashamed of Australia.
I hope I'm right.
I can't be fully sure. I read in the South China Morning Post the other day that "Australia is the wokest place on earth". God help us if true.
PS: There's a lot of pretty negative reporting in Australia in the AUKUS treaty and its commitment to nuclear powered submarines.
I don’t know who thinks Australians still say “Sheilas” except the Brits, but still… here’s the headline article.
ADDED (27/3): Things went even worse in Auckland where threats, intimidation and assault by a group of Trans Radical Activists, many plain-vanilla men, led to Kellie-Jay Kean having to flee. As in flee New Zealand. Virtually all the main media will report this on the side of the TRAs, conflating Let Women Speak with Nazis, and “anti-trans activism” (it’s not). For balance: views from the other side, the pro-feminist side, here and here and here and here (“Aussie pussies”, including Nick McKim’s non-stop ad hominem)

"Shannon Curry: Johnny Depp & Amber Heard Trial, Marriage, Dating & Love" | Lex Fridman

Click for the video

Lex Fridman is much taken by Shannon Curry. He says so at the get-go. He’s not the only one. Me too! First met her when she gave expert testimony at the Amber Herd/Jonny Depp trial. I was much taken not just by her clear and cogent smarts, but by her beauty, her tousled hair, which we learn was because “I lost my bobby pins"(!). She’s stuck with the tousled look. Good look.

She speaks so well on relationships, the first part of this podcast. “Dating and Love”. I suspect she’s right about arranged marriages being more long-lasting than marriages for love. Also: the headiness of love: she calls it a heroin rush. Then you get over it... Shakespeare had other words for it, for love, the “violent delight”.  In Romeo and Juliet: 

"These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume.” (Act II Scene VI)

I have two observations -- a mid-seventies man in second marriage -- to keep going, to get past love, the “violent delight”, to survive the “violent end”, to live in harmony and tender, mutual respect:

1. Don’t hold a grudge. After a fight, go to your corners, lick the wounds, give it some time, then get over it. For most of my life I haven’t done this. Our family are rather given to holding grudges, I think. But I’ve learned from my wife, to give it up, to not hold a grudge. 

2. Use emojis to apologise. Connected with the first: the argument may be your fault. Or not. If it is, or even if it partly is (most often the case, I reckon), then apologise. But apologising is difficult. Difficult to do face-to-face. So, use emojis and send the apology by WhatsApp. I’ve found -- we’ve both found -- that you can do that more easily than face to face and it works! 👆👋

🙏

“Has there ever been a time when the people doing censorship are the good guys?”

Answer: No. Except now. When that’s what the game is. Censorship is good. Being “a free speech fundamentalist” is now considered far-right! 

The extraordinary birth and growth of the Censorship Industrial Complex. 💬

Is it really true that “every little bit helps"? Not always


How many times have I heard that phrase.... “well, every little bit helps”. Sometimes that’s true. But often it’s not. Let’s see where it’s not. 

It’s not true that every little bit helps if the "little bit" that’s helped is outweighed by a “big bad”. 

Examples: in the pandemic, we had lockdowns. The idea that we should stay at home was a kind of “every bit helps” strategy. But it was not balanced against the bits that weren’t helped: jobs, businesses, sanity. All impacted. Also masks: they did help a bit. But they also don’t help a lot, like with kids at school who suffered from not seeing faces, not being able to see teachers lips, when new words are explained. 

Most often though I’ve heard “every bit helps” in relation to Climate Change, now known as the Climate “crisis”. "Every bit helps” we keep being told. 

But does it?

Netherlands farmers and nitrogen fertilisers. The Dutch government has declared war on Dutch farmers and trying to shut down 3,000 farms. Because they use nitrogen fertilisers. And fertilisers are one of the Greenhouse gases. The government hasn’t quite said so, but we sense that it’s a “every bit helps” policy. Even if the Netherlands is only responsible for a small portion of nitrous oxide released by fertilisers, nevertheless, every bit helps. 

But look at some figures: 

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) contributions to global warming (2017): Carbon dioxide 76%, methane  16% and Nitrous oxide: 6%. 

Worldwide nitrogen fertiliser use (2019): 191 million tonnes. Netherlands nitrogen fertiliser use (2019): 277,000 tonnes. Netherlands use of nitrogen fertiliser as % of the world: 0.277/191 = 0.14%.

Assume that the Netherlands stops all farmers using nitrogen fertiliser, the effect on GHG = 0.14% of 6% = 0.0084%. Clearly even the tiny number is an exaggeration, for not event the Dutch government is suggesting a complete stoppage of farming. But still, take that top end figure. It’s tiny. 

But “every little bit helps”. Right? 

Wrong. The Dutch farming industry -- and I’ve only just learned this -- is huge; much bigger than Holland’s small are suggests. Holland is a major supplier of food for Europe and the world. Its farming sector employs thousands of farmers, many small holders, farms that have been in families for generations. Now about to be stolen from them for an ideological position, based on and absurd notion that “every little bit helps”, even when the Netherlands’ “little bit” is miniscule. The other side, the “big bad” is not nothing. It’s huge. For the arguable “every little bit helps” -- in fifty or a hundred years -- the Dutch government attempting to destroy today the competitive, lively, modern industry. (No, this is not “climate denial” or any such nonsense. We all know the climate is changing and we have to address that. It’s that this way of addressing it is simply absurd, cruel and useless).

It’s not “every little bit helps:. It’s more like “Every little bit harms”, if the harm is immediate and the “help” is distant, doubtful and itself miniscule. 

Australia and Climate Change. Australia is a similar case. We’re agonising and arguing and fighting and going bananas over how much or how too-little we’re doing to “fight to climate crisis”. But the fact of Australia is that with our emissions at around 1.5% of the world total, we could stop them tomorrow (at what massive cost?!) and it would make approximately zero difference to the world temperature in 2050 or 2100. Mainly because the increase (or decrease) in Chinese emissions in just one year is greater than the whole of the totality of Australian GHG emissions. I know Australians don’t like to hear this, because it renders them useless in the fight agains the Climate Emergency. So they argue the “every little bit helps” line. And also the “we’re setting an example” line. Sad story: neither holds any water. The “every little bit helps” doesn’t hold water, because the benefit from Australia cutting emissions will be indistinguishable from background noise, unseeable. And “setting an example”? Sorry, but nobody cares about Australia. I mean almost literally. Nobody cares. Set an example or not, nobody cares. 

In short, sometimes “every little bit helps”. Like when you’ve got a tug-of-war going on at the local village fête. But it doesn’t help in things like Covid policy and Climate policy when the little “bit” is outweighed by the very large“bad”.

I can’t finish a climate change related post without a plug for Nuclear energy. The Dutch have the capacity to generate clean, clear, cheap, safe, constant electricity  at zero carbon dioxide. They don’t do it, again because captured by ideologies of the Greens. As in Germany. That’s insanity and it’s down to the Greens. Sorry, but it is. 

Friday 24 March 2023

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it” | a metaphor for Hong Kong

Click to enlarge 
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it”: The infamous phrase uttered by an American lieutenant in the Vietnam war, as his troops razed the village. Flamethrowers.

So too for Hong Kong. U.S. senators think they’re punishing China for the National Security Law, by removing actual, real, ways in which we’re independent, operating the policy of “One Country, Two Systems”.  But they’re harming us. Harming Hong Kong. In the name, apparently, of “saving” us. Go save somewhere else, Senators! 

Good on Andrew Lam for calling them out. We don’t need their flamethrowers, flaming us, while masquerading as saviours.

Three words:

WTF?!

Matt Ridley is about the most knowledgeable non-scientist on the origin of the Covid virus. Here, he trashes the recent article in The Atlantic later repeated in the New York Times, neither with any link to any study, because no study has been done and the data that was a accessed was suddenly and mysteriously “disappeared”, a fact that neither of the Atlantic or NYT mention.

If you can’t access the original article above at The Spectator site, here’s a Word version, with thanks to the Speccie. 

Jimmy Dore also has some fun with it.

Thursday 23 March 2023

‘You have to understand how a society works’: Swedish epidemiologist defends light-touch pandemic response – The Irish Times

Sweden excess deaths lowest in Europe 
Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has described criticism of his Covid-19 approach as “exaggerated”, after a Swedish newspaper presented statistics it says vindicates his light-touch strategy.
While the rest of Europe responded to the pandemic with lockdowns, school closures, face masks and widespread testing, Mr Tegnell (67) pushed a strategy of few restrictions in Sweden. More…

The immediate result of not going lockstep with the rest of the western world, handling Covid, was that Sweden was pilloried.  In the end it’s the excess deaths that tell the fullest story, one that can’t be hidden or manipulated (Covid case numbers, for example, vary depending on how much testing is done). 

On that basis, have a look at excess deaths in Sweden vs the rest of Europe in the chart above, from Our World in Data. Sweden is lowest.

Realizing God

 

But it’s nonsense, isn’t it. Fu.Saisee@gmail.com ifyou disagree 

BREAKING: “There are only two sexes, and that’s all there is to it” | Richard Dawkins

Click for the video clip. Full video here
During an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored, famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins dismissed the claims of transgender activists who want to change the language about human sexuality saying, "there are two sexes and that's all there is to it.”
There are two sexes and that's all there is to it.” As there have been in the mammalian world for 500 million years. And as there have been in the Homo Sapiens world for 200,000-odd years. And as there are today. Two sexes, which are easy to define. It’s easy to answer the question “what is a woman?”. An adult human female; with two X chromosomes; and a large immotile gamete. 

Why do I care about this? As a mid-70s man living in Hong Kong? Why should I care? 

Because it’s part of a bigger movement to undermine western science. Really!

We’re being asked -- demanded -- to agree to a false fact, that identifying with the opposite sex makes you that sex. If we agree to that falsehood, we will more readily agree with others. Of course, trans folks who identify with the opposite sex need to be respected and accommodated. Just not at the expense, in particular, of women, when trans women occupy women’s spaces, when 95% have fully intact male genitalia. That’s too much to ask of girls and women. 

The bigger movement is for “social justice”, like doing away with SAT testing for Uni in America, on the grounds that they lead to disparities and are hence racist; the doing away with testing and merit; the downplaying of science, of the enlightenment, in favour of indigenous “ways of knowing”; of identarian theories of race and gender, which lead to more, not less, division in society. That’s a whole lot right there and some who don’t follow these issues daily might think I’m exaggerating or conspiracy theorising. I’m not. It’s all there, it’s all open. And it’s most open in the struggles surrounding the rights of Transgender people. Which we all are in favour of, just not at the expense of women. Hence the concern and hence my letter to the ABC, this morning:
TO ABC RADIO, in response to a news report that conflated Kellie-Jay Kean with Nazis. Shocking. 
I link not to that report, but to an earlier and related one,
Kellie-Jay Kean is routinely described as an “anti-trans activist”. Look in Wikipedia and she’s none of that. 
The movement she founded is “Let Women Speak”. (LWS). She founded it to promote the rights of women to their own spaces. Where the interests of trans women and biological women conflict, these days the interests of the former are always primary. Yet women — that is, born female —  girls and young women are threatened when biological males who identify as women, 95% of whom are pre- operative with full male genitalia, enter their spaces, The areas of concern being change rooms, prisons and sports tracks. All these are fair concerns of women (“Cis women” if you must).
She also has concern about medications and operations on minors. That’s a concern that’s now shared by increasing numbers of governments in Europe and in the UK the Tavistock clinic has ceased puberty blockers and surgeries in minors. 
All these are issues for serious discussion. Not for hysterical denunciations. 
Let alone conflating Kellie-Jay Kean and LWS with the Neo Nazis. Who knows why Nazis turned up, but Kellie-Jay has nothing to do with them. 
Here’s a thought: why not have her on a program to speak for herself.? You know, do some “news”, do some investigative journalism, instead of relying on Wikipedia. 
You’ll find a caring mum. 
That’s it. 
I’m a 75-year old man living in Hong Kong. I have no dog in this fight. But I do know Kellie-Jay Kean is  being maligned, and vilified, and that the  ABC is complicit in that.
(I think the guy giving the news is Andy Messenger.)
Peter Forsythe

ADDED: here’s a thing: go Google “Richard Dawkins two sexes”. Remembering Richard Dawkins is super famous, a man of the left (he hates Trump!), the pre-eminent evolutionary biologist in the world. 

But what you get is a page of links all of which are to conservative sites. There’s not a single report in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Boston Globe, CNN, MSNBC, BBC.... not a one. Because to do so, they would be attacked by Trans Radical Activists (TRA). How do we know this? Because the New York Times did come out on the side of science a few weeks ago and got hammered, from within and without. The warning was clear. They won’t raise their heads above the parapets again. The only place you can get a dose of the reality of science these days, on this issue of sex/gender, is on the conservative side of the ledger.  The MSM, left wing, is too afraid to talk, as it’s in hock to the TRA movement. My friends who don’t read anything right of the Guardian won’t even know that this is an issue and that it’s being fought out as we speak, right down in Australia. 

Below: screenshot of the first page of Google search “Richard Dawkins two sexes”. 

Former PM Paul Keating criticises AUKUS pact and discusses relations with China | ABC News

 

Click above for the video
Paul Keating spoke at the Press Club in Canberra, with some pretty spicy takes on the AUKUS treaty (he hates it) and our commitment to buy nuclear powered subs from the US and UK (he also hates that). And some very robust -- more like rude -- reactions to questions from the press.  For those in the comments saying we need someone with his wisdom back in parliament, well, he’s burnt all his bridges to his own Labor Party and to the Media. Quite a Q & A.

I met Paul Keating when he was Prime Minister, back in 1994 and I was Executive General Manager of East Asia for Austrade. I was flown to Canberra to brief him on his forthcoming China trip. In the room just him and a couple and on my side just me and a couple. As I went through the issues and what we needed to hit hard on the trip, he took notes by hand on an A4 lined pad. Detailed. Like... asked for me to repeat some bits so he could get it all down. I went to China and we next met in Beijing, with the then Chinese President, Jiang Zemin. I was in the room sat one away from Keating, next to our Ambassador. What impressed me was that when it came to trade issues, Keating made the exact points I’d asked him to make, and word perfect. 

I don’t know anything about submarines, but it appears that Keating does. He makes a good case why we’re crazy, in Australia, to buy these nuclear subs. When we could by 45 Collins-class subs, for the price of the 8 nuclear ones we’re going to get. And we’d get them sooner. And they’d be more relevant to Australia defending its borders, as opposed to going into the South China Sea to confront China. 

He mocks -- rightly, it seems to me -- the last PM, Scott Morrison, boasting of making the decision to buy the nuclear submarines in less than 24 hours. Crazy!

All that said and even agreed, on the overall China-Australia relationship he most certainly does come across as a China Bull, to the extent of being a China shill. Not a single criciticm of China. Not a one. When there are many that impact us directly. Or on which we ought have views, because of International Treaties we’re signed on to. 

On the latter point, of course, there’s Xinjiang and the treatment of the Uygurs. The imprisonment of one million in camps for “reeducation”, which has been called a genocide by the United Nations and senior politicians in the UK and the US. Keating dismisses it as “there’s some debate on it.” Shame. 
There’s the trade embargo on Australia. Which is against all WTO rules. Which, again, he dismisses as a piffle. 
There’s China’s encroachment in the South China Sea, which has upset countries in SE Asia. They have historically high distrust of China, per various polls. Keating again dismisses this with a wave of the hand, as just some islands the size of Centennial Park in Sydney. 
There’s the way China has manipulated the WTO to its benefit in a case of mercantilism on steroids.  Yet again, Keating dismisses this. Even though it was the US that ushered China into the WTO and it was the Chinese manipulation of it that led to US tangles with China that persist to today. 
Connected with it: theft of Intellectual Property. Not a fantasy, as I’ve been involved in business deals where it’s been a real and actual thing. We know it happens widely. 
Of course Hong Kong and the imprisoning of media people and causing of dissent. 

That’s not an exhaustive list. Just some that come to mind, without going off an Googling. But for Keating all of this is for nothing and he has only the highest praise for China. And only criticism for Australia. For that I’m kinda anti the guy. Even if he may be right on the submarines. 

ADDED: I had views on his 18 November 2019 speech. Here

Wednesday 22 March 2023

COVID origin case reopened: A lab leak is a legitimate question - Matt Ridley

Four months ago but still relevant from Matt Ridley, the man who knows most about the issue, who is not a US government scientist. Most of whom have an agenda to trash the lab leak theory -- because, one assumes, the US government, and hence Dr Anthony Fauci, have a deep desire for the world not to know how much gain-of-function research they carried out in Wuhan, and even some in the United States.
The other day I posted about Lord Ridley's comments on the recent Raccoon Dog theory, which has even less credibility than all the other zoonotic origin theories.

Nostalgia

 


How wrong could I be about Covid? A lot wrong!

 Me, three years ago:

22 March 2020

 

The BBC says  “Coronavirus restrictions could last a year”.

I say no. No, they can’t. I’m not saying the virus won’t last a year. I could well last a millennium or more. Our annual flu virus has been with us for over 2,000 years. I’m saying the restrictions can’t last a year and so they won’t last a year.

Two reasons:

a.  People won’t put up with it. Not being allowed to go the pub, to restaurants, to the theatre, to work? After a while the naturally bolshy brits are going to go “up yours, Boris”. (Ditto in the US, I reckon).

b.  Cure worse than the disease.  The disease being something with a death rate of around 3%, vs a “cure” that destroys the economy and the lives of millions, which bankrupts our governments, which loads crippling debts on our later generations. While apparently not even wiping out the virus entirely.

This morning I saw an interview on the BBC with a woman who had recently signed a five year lease on a pub.  It was her first time with her own business.  Her and her husband’s dream. And now they've been hit with this. No customers, no fault of their own. She was on the verge of tears -- as was I -- as she said they were trying hard to cope, she and her husband, but she didn’t know what she was going to do, what with zero cash coming in. I empathised totally: we’ve owned a business here in Hong Kong, faced challenges, had tough times, but nothing like this. To stare bankruptcy in the face, to realise that your life’s savings, your dreams, are about to be lost, all ... gone.... It’s heartbreaking and it’s going all over the world.

And that’s because we need to “flatten the curve”? Because there aren’t enough hospital beds to tend to all the sick? No.

I speak as one in the high risk category. An over 70 male. I’m at risk from this virus more than the young. But I don’t want the livelihoods of the young at risk because there aren’t enough hospital beds for us oldies, for goodness sake!

There’s going to be a crunch and it’s between lives -- mostly still of older people like me -- and the economy going down the gurgler, then it has to be the lives that go. It’s either that, or the lives and the futures of all our young. As Boris and Macron have said, “it’s war”. And in war you have to sacrifice.

So, these restrictions? They can’t go on. So they won’t. That’s my prediction.  At most three months of these restrictions and then we will start easing them. Or we’re down the gurgler. All for some old farts like me?  I say, No. No, and no again.

TODAY (22 March 2023). Reasons for getting it wrong: 

1. Id been through the 2002-03 SARS outbreak. It had finished quickly. 

2. The people did put up with all the restrictions. Id said people wont put up with it. Not only did they put up with all the restrictions, they said we should have done them “faster, harder, longer.... Even up to today. The extent to which people in free countries will welcome restrictions on their freedoms is brutal and sobering. 

23 March: Brits are still in favour of lockdowns, mandates, etc! Sigh…

What a horrible duo!

My wisdoms. So I’ve lost wisdom.... Came out this morning. 

Aren’t they horrible?!

China population happiest in world | IPSOS

Click to enlarge 

Do we believe these figures? Do I believe them? That 91% of Chinese tell the IPSOS Global Happiness Survey pollsters that they’re happy? Well, yes, on the whole and based just on my trips to China, where I always make a point of chatting to folks. All I talk to are happy, optimistic. Then again, I find that about the States, too, despite all the sturm und drang we see on the news. And most place, tbf. Except Russia, when we went across it in 2017, everyone seemed as sour as the borscht. 

But Saudi Arabia at 86% happy? Huh? I’ve been there and I find it grim. Perhaps it’s because most Saudis haven’t been outside. Netherlands at 85%? Yes, believe, kind of… though there’s plenty of farmers who aren’t too happy with the government that wants to take away their farms because …”climate crisis”.

I wonder where Australia is. Hong Kong is fairly down the list. 

ADDED: Australia is on 80%, quite high, but 4% down on the last survey. Hong Kong is not covered. Here

Yesterday on Victoria harbour | ART BASEL Hong Kong

25 metre (80’j catamaran. HSBC, our bank, invited us for afternoon drinks yesterday. To promote Art Basel, Hong Kong, of which the bank is prime sponsor, on 21 to 26 March. 
Early onboard. More folks turned up later!

This is terribly important. If we believe Dr Redfield we should stop Gain of Function research

Dr Robert Redfield was the head of the CDC in the United States. Which I’d always thought of as the gold-plated repository of knowledge on all matters health. But no. During Covid and the new head Rochelle Wolenski  it has crowned itself in shame. Misinformation about masks, vaccines and mandates. To today. 

We see the playing out of the battle between highly-credentialed scientists on opposite sides of an issue. That’s science. Never settled. Redfield v Fauci on lab leak v zoonotic origin of Covid. 

Update from Matt Ridley on the latest story about Racoon Dogs as a spreader. Word doc here

Tuesday 21 March 2023

Is THIS the moment you’ve been waiting for?

 


“Steady hands Joe”. Really?

A mate here in Hong Kong, a man I’ve known and loved for years and who I’ve always thought sound, says that he’s a full-on Biden supporter because, he says, Biden is a “steady pair of hands”.

Now here goes. And here goes — please to note — from a non-Trump person. Just I’m a Biden Bear big time. Joining other Democrats who criticise the man. As the late-night comedians used to do to any administration, part of the deal, to keep the powerful to account. But who now to a man are simply Biden boosters. Enough. 

Off the top of the head, re Biden as a “safe pair of hands”. Nothing Googled:

“A steady pair of hands?”

A man who screwed up handling Covid, with unnecessary mandates and lockdowns — many that continue to this day. With zero sense and less science. 

That locked down the economy, ruining mom-and-pop stores nationwide. That closed schools. When told Europe kept their schools open, said “that’s Europe, this is the US”. Science, right? 

That pumped Trillions— with a “T” — of US dollars into the economy, to make up for his lockdown damage and when told this will lead to inflation said “no, it won’t”.

And when did lead to inflation was told it would lead to increase in interest rates, and said “no, it won’t”.

And when it did lead to increased interest rates, we have banking collapses, and stagflation — high interest rates, high inflation and high unemployment. 

Which is where we are now.

And that’s just domestically. (And far from a full accounting of the domestic damage from Joe’s “steady hands”. E.G. the whole Title IX stuff, room for a book).

Internationally there’s: 

Afghanistan which he abandoned, even though he didn’t have to, that was just “steady hand Joe”. Which handed the Taliban not just the country, and all its women to suppress, but also hundreds of billions of latest American armaments. All unnecessary and so, so sad, for the abandoned people of Afghanistan. It as a geo-strategic blunder, which likely emboldened Putin to push into an Ukraine. It was wrong to invade Afghanistan 20 years ago; it was also wrong to leave. That’s 100% down to “Steady Hands Joe”.

And then have the green light for Putin to invade Ukraine, by letting him know the US would do nothing if they “just” invaded the East, the Donbas region. And so: Ukraine war. 

And then bombed the Nordstream gas pipeline, to punish Germany for being too close to Russia, and lied about it, even as we know he did it — you could only believe he didn’t do it, if you’re the person that believes he’s a “steady pair of hands” — that’s an act of war on an ally.

And none of this to even mention his dealings with spies in China, with crooks in Ukraine, the money he made from them, all recorded by his crackhead son, on Hunter’s laptop, which the MSM assiduously ignores, because … well, “steady hands Joe.” 

And not to mention — how can we?— that he shat in his pants in Germany. That he farted in front of the Queen. Well, she did laugh, so there’s that. 

We have in Joe Biden a President who shits on the world, literally and figuratively, who farts in the face of royalty. Who screws up his own nation. And this man, this senile, this flatulent, this incompetent, this corrupt, this pathetic old man is …

“Steady hands Joe.”

Right. 

BIDEN SUPPORTERS: give me the counter! 

Dr Clare Craig on the scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic, lock...

Click above for video
Dr Clare Craig is a consultant pathologist with over twenty years’ experience. She is co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART). I don’t know HART and haven’t googled it, but I suspect it might be described as a “misinformation” group, on the basis that it doesn’t agree (or doesn’t always agree) with the government agenda. I’d rather just listen to what she says, with her expertise. She’s not a YouTube rando!

Above she talks to “British Thought Leaders”.

Monday 20 March 2023

Victorian Premier conflates Nazis and women’s rights activists

Click above for video
Kellie-Jay Keen is the “controversial anti-trans activist” mentioned in so many articles, one from The Guardian right here. She is in fact leader of a group she calls “Let Women Speak” whose aim is to protect rights women have fought for over half a century. 

She is a women’s rights activist. Saying “anti-trans” is wrong. As you’ll see from the long-form interview above.  

She speaks for women’s rights in the face of intrusions by some in the trans community and Radical Trans Activists (TRA), many of whom are left wing and not at all trans! 

Nazis turned up. Who knows why. Spoiling for a fight maybe? Or could they have been a Fifth Column? Sent in by TRAs to make Kellie-Jay look bad? So that bad across like the Victoria Premier Dan Andrews can call her a merchant of “hate speech”?

What she actually talks about is:

  • The intrusion into women’s spaces by biological men, identifying as women. 
  • Specifically into women’s prisons: where men who have committed crimes take advantage of new self-identity laws lets them demand to be in women’s prisons. That caused a huge ruckus recently in Scotland and led to the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon. 
  • Against the transitioning and radical surgery in minors. Something which has now had a backlash in the UK and an increasing number of European countries. So why so controversial in Australia. 

And yet when I look at Dan Andrews’ tweets, in all he talks as if the Nazis and Kellie-Jay Keen’s “Let Women Speak” were made to sound ine and the same. I’ve seen Keen in several long-form podcasts and she is in no way a Nazi and would have been horrified by Nazis intruding her get together, a gathering of women who are speaking up against the erosion of rights that were hard win over the last half century. Shame on Andrews, and all the MSM that you read if you Google “Kelly Jay Keen in Melbourne”.

ADDED: Kellie-Jay Keen on Wikipedia says she’s an “anti-trans activist”. If you look at what that means, she is none of it. She is only concerned with protecting the rights of women in the face of challenges by radical trans activists to overtake women’s spaces. Imagine young girls and women in female spaces being confronted by biological males, with full kit (around 95% of trans women have not removed their male genitalia). Women and girls don’t like it. Understandably. So where are the trans women to go? Answer: in the men’s room or in gender-neutral places (or ok in women’s room for the 5% who are post-operative, I presume). The answer to the sensitivity of some, can’t be to ignore the sensitivity of many. 

Saturday 18 March 2023

The Biden-DeSantis Rebalancing Act | Andrew Sullivan

Anything but Trump And also Anything but Biden
An interesting analysis of where we stand on the Biden for 2024 campaign   
I'm not sure about Sullivan's comment on the "unconstitutionality" of some of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ moves.  I don't see it, but then I'm not a US Constitutional lawyer That'd be our son John who I must ask about that.
Surely Andrew is not talking of some of the moves to control what books are allowed in schools. Because that's an issue of curriculum not of Free Speech.

Friday 17 March 2023

US extremist violence

Sitting here in Hong Kong with my print copy of The Atlantic, I'm very clear that this is a liberal — maybe uber-liberal — magazine. So I expect a left-of-centre slant. But did Adrienne LaFrance's piece on extremist violence in America have to be quite so partisan? Does balance count for nothing these days at The Atlantic?
Sure, she mentions left-wing violence. In early 20th century United States, she reminds us of the anarchistic violence, the mass-murderous bombings by the Galleanists. Then there's Italy in the 1960s and 70s, the "Years of Lead" (when I lived there, by the way), with its ultra-left bombingly murderous mayhem. In today's United States, she mentions, glancingly, violence by the left-wing Antifa. No mention of BLM. But the real threat today, she says, is not those left wing rioters, but… the Proud Boys! Horrid right wingers! 
I'm sat here in Hong Kong, as I was in 2020, with full access to all the world's MSM and all the world's Social Media. I watched the violence that erupted across the US in 2020. 
I watched it on CNN and on MSNBC and on BBC and also on Fox (forgive me!). 
I was not there in Portland, so I have to go on what I saw. And what I saw was that the violence, not just in Portland, but also in Seattle, in Kenosha, in Los Angeles, in New York, in Chicago, across the country was mostly Antifa and BLM. The Proud Boys may have been there, but they weren't obvious. And you'd think that if they were there, certainly the likes of CNN & Co, would have pointed them out.
I have friends in Portland who took photos of the graffiti. The graffiti I saw in Portland and Seattle was all left-wing and anarchist. "ACAB" (All Cops are Bastards), "Kill the cops" and "Kill a MAGA-man today". "Destroy Capitalism". That sort of lovely stuff. 
Yet still, LaFrance concludes the biggest danger is from the right.  I would urge her, and The Atlantic, to heed their own advice: to follow the science. Follow the data. Follow the facts.
This has impact. The readership of the The Atlantic is almost all liberal left. They read this and are confirmed in the their belief that it's all the fault -- not just of "far-right terrorists” -- but of all Republicans!  And therefore they hate even more on their political opponents. Remember: in his last SOTU, Joe Biden said half the country are "semi Nazis". WTF??
A decent society should allow for political differences, without thinking the opposite party are your enemies.
If each side were more aware of the violence each side does, maybe there's some chance to tone it down.
As it is LaFrance's essay only serves to stoke tensions.