Denpasar, May 2017

Denpasar, capital of Bali

“Women on Top”| Bettina Arndt

The Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory 

I went to the Australian National University with Bettina Arndt. Not that she knew it at the time. She was busy in Science while I was doing an undergrad degree in Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n Roll and Snooker. And Eco. 

Bettina became famous as the editor of Kerry Packer magazines. A true feminist icon of the sixties. Now she cops much grief because of her views that boys should get a fair go in trials. And men too. It’s all too much for the Wokesters, for whom it’s one story and one story only: men are beasts; they’re toxic. They’re at fault for whatever and we have to find them guilty and jail them whenever we can. Because of Domestic Violence. 

We have a mutual friend, Bettina and I, a same age woman who was my first proper girlfriend back in those sensuous sixties. Who has since told me that she’s friends with “Tina”, but that she thinks Tina “goes over the top” a bit. Which I take to mean she thinks Bettina is not Woke enough. Because she cares about boys’ issues. Which is weird on another level, as her three kids are all boys. I have boys and girls in my life and I don’t like that either one gets treated badly coz of their gender. Which is what Bettina is all about. I think. 

For sure she goes against the tide. Against the current. Against the narrative. 

The pleas I get for money, as an Alumnus of the ANU, are increasingly Woke. I used to be active in the Alumni stuff. No longer. I don’t like to put money to things that will only entrench more identitarian politics, more racism, more sexism. Even if the aims are the opposite. Even if that Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions. It’s past that now. We can’t forgive because of good intentions. 

A picture speaks a thousand words. Look at this line-up, showing all the ACT Supreme Court judges. This formidable female-dominated bench wouldn’t exactly inspire confidence if you were a poor sucker facing a last-ditch appeal of a guilty verdict following a false rape accusation.

All the more so when the bench is led by Chief Justice Lucy McCallum who recently grumbled in a newspaper interview about the “intractable problem” of “ensuring an accused person has a fair trial.” Women’s groups are working hard to solve her problem, with all sorts of inventive solutions that do away with any notion of a fair trial – like an alternate court system with a lower standard of proof.
Whenever there’s a big job announced in Australia, you can bet your bottom dollar that the prize will fall to a woman – even when that means the newcomer is decades younger and less experienced than her predecessors. Read on....

torn

torn 

Watching Debate 1: “Houston. we got a problem”.

 

18 minutes to go. 21:00 ET, 27 June 2024. In Atlanta, GA.

Early reactions from CNN: Dems are panicking about a dismal Biden performance. “Aggressive panic” amongst Dems. Talk of replacement. Dems: “we have a problem”. Dems: “a train wreck”. Biden is “diminished”. People are “shocked”. 

Dem Party official on Biden performance: “nothing good”.

Ay-may-zing! 

CNN are full-on giving Biden a super hard time.  All 9 of the CNN commenters above are saying that “Joe must go”. Even the ones that say “I love Joe”, then there’s the “But...”. 

Xena 30 April 2014

Xena and crew

Subic Bay. At end of race, Hong Kong to Philippines. 

"The Logic in All the Madness” | Victor Davis Hanson

Professor Victor Davis Hanson in full-throat roar: 

Most Americans believe it is unhinged to deliberately destroy the border and allow 10 million illegal aliens to enter the country without background audits, means of support, any claims to legal residency, and definable skills. And worse still, why would federal authorities be ordered to release repeat violent felons who have gone on to commit horrendous crimes against American citizens?

Equally perplexing to most Americans is borrowing $1 trillion every 90 days and paying 5-5.5% interest on the near $36 trillion in ballooning national debt. Serving that debt at current interest exceeds the size of the annual defense budget and may soon top $1 trillion in interest costs, or more than 13% of the budget.

Why would the United States suspend military aid to Israel as it tries to destroy the Hamas architects of the October 7 massacres? Why would it lift sanctions on a terrorist Iran? Why would it suppress Israel’s response to Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish homeland? Why would it prevent Israel from stockpiling key munitions as it prepares to deal with the existential threats posed by Hezbollah?

Read on...

Keating: not the PM I knew TL;DR version

[Based on this draft, which is 529 words, trying reduce to 200 words, SMH requirements. Got it to exactly 200]

LETTER to Sydney Morning Herald. letters@smh.com.au

In his recent tirade, Paul Keating attacks Dutton’s nuclear plans mostly with an avalanche of ad hominem --  “charlatan”,  “denialist,  “fantasist”,  "opportunist".... 

Ad hominem aside, his “facts” are wrong. 

Nuclear is “the most dangerous...”.  Wrong.  According to IPCC and UNSCEAR, nuclear is the safest source of power. 

Nuclear is “... the most expensive”. Wrong. The U.S. Department of Energy lists Nuclear as amongst the cheapest of electricity generating technologies. 

Nuclear is “backward”. Wrong. Fourth Generation reactors use the “waste” from previous generations.

Keating is shamefully intemperate and adds nothing to the debate.   

I’m Australian, based in Hong Kong for over thirty years. We live close to DaYa Bay Nuclear Station where we get a third of our power. We have no fear of it. We like its clean, reliable, safe energy. Result: carbon emissions per capita just 26% of Australia’s.*

I support the Dutton plan. It is farsighted, unlike Keating’s intemperate ramblings. In 70 years, when we are all three gone, our grandchildren will thank us.

What we need today is not the spleen of a Keating, but the unification of a Hawke. Someone who understands we need to talk about this together for the sake of the nation.  

Yours, 

Peter Forsythe
Siena One
Discovery Bay
Hong Kong
+852 9308 0799

* HK 4 Tonnes per capita per year, vs Australia 15 Tonnes per capita per year
The case for Nuclear

“There were few if any “noble savages” | Wilfred Reilly

 

Click above for the X post

Keating: not the PM I knew

LETTER: RE: “Statement of PJ Keating -- Peter Dutton: Climate Denialist -- Peddler of Danger” 

Back in 1993 I accompanied then PM Paul Keating on his trip to China. I was the senior Austrade representative in the region* and had been asked to go to Canberra to brief the PM and then to accompany him on the visit. 

I recall briefing him in a small office in Parliament House. I was impressed that he took his own notes in longhand. And even more so, later in Beijing, when we met President Jiang Zemin, PM Keating ran the line I’d suggested, with no reference to those notes. He had an impressive command of the brief, which he promoted to the benefit of Australia. 

Full disclosure -- I voted for Keating, As I had for his boss, Bob Hawke. 

Keating was a man with Big Policy. But who also vented his spleen. 

My how he has changed. The Big Policy is gone and all that remains is the spleen. 

I’ll leave aside Keating's recent speeches pandering to China. And those tearing into the media, who have sat mute, like masochists who’ve forgotten their safe word. 

I refer instead to his most recent tirade, the “Statement of PJ Keating”. 

There he attacks Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plans for Australia. 

But first we have to get through a miasma of his ad hominem. Dutton is variously a “charlatan”, a “denialist, a “fantasist”, a "low-rent opportunist".... “Wicked”.... “Cynical”....  

All up 33 ad homs on one A4 page!

Wading through the ad hominem, I find his assertions are all wrong. 

Nuclear is “the most dangerous...”, he says.  Wrong.  According to the IPCC and UNSCEAR, nuclear is the safest source of power. And emits less carbon than wind or solar. 

Nuclear is “... the most expensive”. Wrong again. The U.S. Department of Energy lists Nuclear as amongst the cheapest of electricity generating technologies. 

Nuclear is a “backward” technology. Wrong, third strike. Its technology is constantly developing: Fourth Generation reactors use the “waste” from previous generations, and cannot meltdown.

Keating’s “Statement” is a travesty of illogic. A shamefully intemperate piece that adds nothing but spleen to the debate.  

I’m Australian, based in Hong Kong for over thirty years. We live right next to Da Ya Bay Nuclear Power Station and get a big chunk of our power from it. I’ve visited the Station and sailed past it many times. We have no fear of it in Hong Kong; we thank it for providing long-term clean, reliable, safe energy that gives us carbon emissions per capita less than a third of Australia’s (4 T vs 15 T). 

Therefore I support the Dutton plan for Australia’s energy future. It’s a farsighted plan, quite the opposite of Keating’s manic imaginings. In 70 years, when we are both gone, our grandchildren will thank us.

What we need today is not the spleen of a Keating, but a unification of a Hawke. Someone who can see that the nation needs to talk about this together, seriously, for the sake of the nation.  

Yours, 

Pf … etc 

* Executive General Manager, Austrade East Asia, 1990 -- 1996

Discovery Bay, looking east to Central Hong Kong, June 2020

“Julian Assange's Plea Deal Is a Tragedy” | Noah Rothman

“Julian Assange's Plea Deal Is a Tragedy”, Noah Rothman, National Review 

 The article above is a different view on yesterday's release of Julian Assange.

I mean different from our view now which is to be sympathetic to Assange. As it appears also are people on both the Left and the Right who have welcomed his plea deal and release, and arrival back in Australia.

The article reminds me of why I was against him in the first place. 

Which view I then amended because the U.S. military had itself said no one was compromised by the Wikileaks releases. And that Taliban Intelligence had many other sources apart from Wikileaks.  And that I thought Wikileaks had redacted identifying information. 

But: If it's true that Afghanistan tribal elders were killed by the Taliban as a direct result of being named in Wikileaks — and of Wikileaks refusing to redact names — then there's blood on his hands. Or at the very least on Wikileaks'.

Meantime: the  release of confidential telegrams between embassies damaged the diplomatic effort for nothing much more than titillating voyeurism.

Here is a bit of the report, linked within the NR article above from the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point:

As noted above, the Taliban have attempted to exploit open source intelligence to gain useful information on U.S. and ISAF operations, with perhaps the best-known example being the Taliban's stated intent to search Afghanistan-related reports posted on Wikileaks to uncover possible government informants, following the failure of the Wikileaks organization to remove identifying information about informants such as their names, home villages, and family members.⁴⁸ Although the U.S. military later concluded that no intelligence sources had been compromised by the leaked documents,⁴⁹ numerous tribal elders in southern Afghanistan reportedly received death threats within days of the Wikileaks release.[Link]

Is this all terrible flip-floppery?

ADDED: Alan Dershowirz points out that it was Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning who broke the law, and the Oath that he (now she) took when he joined the Army, by stealing the materials he gave to Assange. And that Assange is protected by the First Amendment, and broke no law.

Some make the argument that Assange saved lives, net-net, by publishing the info. Which might be true. In any case, the Military said that here were no people killed as a result of the release of the info, in the Guilty Plea deal. Make of that what you will. 

I’m going to settle on the side of what I’ve been for a while: on the side of Assange. Admitting that I was against him at the outset. 

Jerry Seinfeld: “You just gave more money to a Jew"

Click above for the clip

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld teaches pro-Ham hecklers/protesters who paid money to heckle at his show the DOs and DON'TS of their craft.
 

"You need to go back and tell whoever is running your organization: We just gave more money to a Jew.’”

Katherine Brodsky on X

“We don’t understand Green Energy” | Brett Christophers and Aaron Bastani

Click above for the video 

A bit nerdy. And a bit long. But informative.

I found the above talk really interesting. A couple of kind-of experts —  Brett Christophers and Aaron Bastani— and of the Left to pretty-far-Left (if you consider Corbyn and Bernie, who the admire, far Left), who talk about Renewables with nuance and knowledge. Also pro-nuclear. And setting out the difficulty of being renewable-only, which the Labour Party in Australia, going hysterical anti-nuclear, doesn’t seem to understand. 

China’s economy, says Christophers, is not capitalist, but “directed competition”, a pretty good summary, I think. Which allows them to quickly install wind and solar. Which they’re doing at a world-beating rate. Despite which they’re still full-on fossils and nuclear. Renewables, world-wide, are not increasing their share of energy output, despite huge increases overall, because the demand for total energy output is so high. 

In democracies the problem is not that the cost of renewables is going down, but that the profit margin is too low for the private companies who are expected to carry out the transition. There are three proposed solutions: (1) Change the model from the old fossil-fuel based model to one suitable for solar and wind (2) keep the model but give the companies more subsidies (3) change to government-run Renewables industry. Brett discusses these towards the end. 

From Brett Christophers’ new book “The Price is Wrong”:

What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to renewables is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable?

This is Brett Christophers' claim. The global economy is moving too slowly toward sustainability because the return on green investment is too low.

Today's consensus is that the key to curbing climate change is to produce green electricity and electrify everything possible. The main economic barrier in that project has seemingly been removed. But while prices of solar and wind power have tumbled, the golden era of renewables has yet to materialize.

The problem is that investment is driven by profit, not price, and operating solar and wind farms remains a marginal business, dependent everywhere on the state's financial support.

We cannot expect markets and the private sector to solve the climate crisis while the profits that are their lifeblood remain unappetizing. But there is an alternative to providing surrogate green profits through subsidies: to take energy out of the private sector's hands.

3An essential intervention, The Price Is Wrong is as politically far-reaching as it is factually illuminating.

World’s top entrepreneur | Elon Musk

Click above for the video

Elon Musk wants humanity to become interplanetary. Inter-galactic. To keep the small flame of consciousness alive. To understand the workings of the universe. 

And in the process, has built several -- not one or two, but several -- globe-spanning, world-beating companies. Surely the entrepreneur of the last century. Or last millennium. 

Canberrans out of step on the VOICE and NUCLEAR: should they be proud or ashamed?

"The Voice" Referendum

In The Voice referendum, all states in Australia and Australia as a whole voted 60% NO, against The Voice. 

Canberra, the nation’s capital, was the only place that voted YES. 

I came to the issue late and from Hong Kong -- an Australian living here in Hong Kong, unable to vote in the Referendum, but interested in it, because I’m an Aussie, and referenda are rare and... interesting. 

I came to the question with no preconceptions. I decided just to look into the arguments for YES and for NO. I was as ready to agree with the “YES” case as I was to agree with the “NO” case. 

In the end, I decided that the NO arguments were more powerful. The spokespeople for the NO campaign, especially Jacinta Nampijimpa Price, and Warren Mundine made the better case and won the debate hands down, I thought. Here’s a summary of the for and against cases. 

And, in the end, the NO vote won, easily, despite the early polls showing a win for the YES vote. 

Canberra -- Australia’s capital city -- stood out. As a “Capital Territory”, it’s not a State, but more like Washington D.C. Its vote only counts to the overall tally, not as an individual state. In an Australian referendum there has be be a majority of the Six states and a majority of the overall population that votes in favour. For the Voice, it was all states, (but not Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory) and 60% of the overall that voted against. That was after the early polls showed a majority in favour. That is: the NO vote case was viewed as being more persuasive. 

What do Canberrans thinks of that? I don’t know, but I suspect that they feel they were on the “right side of history” and that the rest of Australia are the rubes. That’s the impression I get from the talk-back on Canberra radio. 

Click on Voice in the Labels. And here’s a summary of the YES and NO arguments. 

Nuclear for Australia

Now the latest is on the Nuclear for Australia debate. Overall, around 55% to 70% of Australians, depending on the poll, are in favour of nuclear power for Australia. [Here is a selection of polls]. 

But in an online poll last week on ABC Radio Canberra, AM666, the poll was 80% against nuclear. How do they feel about this, I wonder? Again, I’m guessing that they feel they are in the right and that the rest of us are simply dumb. 

But... I happen to know something about this nuclear business. 

I wrote a summary of “The Case for Nuclear”, at the request of an Australian Greenie friend of mine. Who then said she couldn’t or wouldn't read it, because...  well, I never did find out because why... Because it would perhaps have changed her mind on something so deep in her psyche. And she didn’t want to risk that level of cognitive dissonance.

Most of the comments I heard on ABC Radio Canberra last week that were against nuclear, ware ignorant. Like “WASTE”, which is a resolved problem. Like “PROLIFERATION”, which is an old and nonsense concern. Like “COST”, which is an overblown concern, and in any case ought not to be the primary concern, when we’re looking at a “climate emergency” according to these same folks. Like “IT’LL TAKE TOO LONG’, again an overblown concern, but again not something that ought not be a primary concern, when a single nuclear power station will last up to a century and we're looking at an issue with climate that goes beyond the next five or ten years. 

In all, I heard nothing new, and certainly nothing that should rule out nuclear for Australia. Some of the comments just out-and-out scaremongering. 

We here in Hong Kong live right near a Nuclear Power Station, around 30km away, the Da Ya Bay power station. I’ve visited it, and sailed past it many times. It’s a fine facility that’s been delivering a third of our power, safely, cleanly and cheaply for thirty years. To those NIMBY folks, I say YIMBY: “YES, in my backyard”. 

The extent of Labor Party hysteria over the plans by the Opposition Coalition to put nuclear power stations in soon-to-be decommissioned coal fired stations, is something to behold. Childish hardly mocks it enough. But the Canberra elites are right on side with the silly anti-nuclear memes and scare tactics. Shame on them all. 

================

So, how do they feel, these Canberra folks? Out of sync with the rest of Australia on two really major issues in the last half year. 

They ought to do some self-reflection, at the very least. They ought to wonder, why are we the odd ones out? Why are we so different? Are we in a bubble perhaps? 

For sure you are. You’re in a lovely, homely, middle-class, comfortable, white-privileged bubble.  

Maybe it’s asking a bit too much of you, to feel “ashamed”. But surely it’s not too much to ask to be reflective?  Is it? To reflect that perhaps you might be getting things wrong? That there are other views which might just be valid? That the rest of Australians might be the ones getting it right?

perfect

 

From here, where comments.

"Fareed Zakaria on revolutions, tribalism and the demise of the West" | Freddy Gray

Click above for the video

Fareed Zakaria, a senior host on CNN, talks to Freddy Gray. 

Interesting talk. Especially about the French Revolution. Which was a failure by all criteria. 

No mention of Islam and the Islamisation of the West, especially in the United Kingdom and in Europe. What’s going on there? Was that a taboo subject? 

Fareed is an independent thinker, who was brave enough to say, on CNN, that the trials against Trump seemed to be “Lawfare”, that is the law used to pursue political aims. 

Palestinian meets Palestinian diaspora

	Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib ⁦‪@afalkhatib‬⁩ When I was in Germany, I traveled outside of Berlin to meet some Palestinian friends who were part of the diaspora community in the country. I hung out with several individuals from Gaza or who have family in the Strip and are part of a network of individuals and organizations…   21/6/2024, 1:28 PM

Fifteen years ago I said this about Hamas and Jerusalem. I stand by it

Original Post on July 27, 2009, Titled Jerusalem United:

Apparently a UK Foreign Office Committee has recommended that Britain talk to "moderate" Hamas.  Rather like talking to "moderate" Nazis went one comment...

Led me to an article on East Jerusalem, which says it has never been Arab Jerusalem, save for a short period, 1948-67, when it was occupied by Jordan (and Jews expelled, synagogues burned).  The view -- eg within the BBC --  that Israel is "illegally" occupying East Jerusalem is simply not true.  The US Congress made this clear in 1995.

As Steve Lieblich, says 

The great obstacle to Middle East peace is not that Jews insist on living among Arabs. It is that Arabs insist that Jews not live among them.

======================

ADDED (19 June 2024): Israel's western allies are still trying to create this mythical beast, the “moderate” Hamas unicorn That’s the main line of the Biden Administration, as it pushes Israel to surrender (aka, “Ceasefire for a durable peace”) to a Hamas that is going to be a partner in creating a Secular, Democratic State. Or something. 

"You are being conned" nuclear DOES lower power bills | Dr Adi Paterson

Click above for the video

Dr Adi Paterson is the past chairman of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney Australia, which produces nuclear medicines, and has been doing so cleanly and successfully since 1958. It’s not correct to say that Australia has no nuclear; it’s just that it has no nuclear that produces electricity. 

The ABC Radio had a talkback on Nuclear for Australia, given the announcement of an Opposition (Liberal-National Party) policy to encourage the building of nuclear power stations in Australia. 

Australia is the only developed nation in the world that has a Federal level BAN on the building of nuclear  power stations. It was done in the deep of night, when they had to get a Bill through the next day’s parliament, and slipped in the ban on nuclear pretty much without anyone noticing. But it’s there, and is now used by the anti-nuclear folks to say that’s one of the reasons Australia can’t have nuclear. 

But now, at least, it’s the opposition policy. 

And so, the debate on ABC radio yesterday. Where they ran an online poll, by Text, which had 80% of Canberra’s saying NO to nuclear. That’s against the numbers in other polls showing 55% to 70% supporting development of nuclear power. Here. 

I sent a text, which they read out in its entirety: 

I live in Hong Kong and we have nuclear on our doorstep - Daya Bay c. 30 km as the crow flies. I've visited the station and sailed past it many times. Google it: it's good looking ! And caused zero angst here in Hong Kong while we get about a third of our electricity from it. 

I've no idea why the U.K nuclear station is going to cost so much but certainly across Asia they're nowhere near that cost. Nor in Canada or France. 

32 countries are planning nuclear plants. 400+ plants already in operation. Very safely and cleanly. 

It's beyond me why Australia should not able to have nuclear. 

Given we're a major uranium exporter. And have already one in operation at Lucas 

Peter Forsythe

Hong Kong.

Points from Adi Paterson: 

• Nuclear is cheap to the consumer, once you have it operational
• Wind and Solar need the creation of twice the amount of the current grid. This is hugely expensive and hugely complex. But is not taken into account in the costing of Renewable Energies. 
• There is no major developed economy that is powered only by Renewables. 
• Nuclear is the best option for reliable, sustained, clean and safe base power. 
• Waste from nuclear power stations is easily handled and is being handled by the current fleet of 400+ nuclear power stations in the world. 

“It shouldn’t be surprising that a Muslim son of immigrants is funding Reform” | Ross Clark

“It shouldn’t be surprising that a Muslim son of immigrants is funding Reform”. Ross Clark, The Spectator

That is funding REFORM, the most anti-illegal immigration party in the current British elections. 

The key word here being “illegal”. Many folks are pro-immigration, but not pro people gaming the system. And the system is being gamed. In Europe, in the UK, in the US. People coming in claiming “refugee” status when they are not refugees, but know the right words to say. 

The refugee convention was set up to handle genuine refugees from political persecution. Like Rudolph Nureyev, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Not 5,000 single men in a day, in rubber dinghies or across the southern america border, saying “I claim asylum, because I fear for my life in my country”, a form of words they’ve learned on their iPhones. 

People who have done things by the rules, hate it when others break the rules. Hence Zia Yusuf. 

Below from Ross Clark:

Should it really be a surprise that Zia Yusuf, a Muslim entrepreneur who made his fortune setting up a company that runs an app providing concierge services for posh blocks of flats, has chosen to support Reform?

It is clear that Mr Yusuf has not thrown his lot in with Reform in spite of its policies on migration, but because of them. Britain, he says, has ‘lost control of its borders’, adding, ‘my parents came here legally. When I talk to my friends they are as affronted by illegal Channel crossings, which are an affront to all hard-working British people but not least the migrants who played by the rules and came legally.’ It shouldn’t really shock anyone, any more than it shocks us to find out that people who pay their taxes are not terribly keen on people who evade them, or that people who took great trouble to stick to the rules during lockdowns tended to be the most upset when it emerged that Downing Street staff treated them with a more cavalier attitude. It is simply human nature: most people who stick carefully to the rules tend to feel affronted when others have cheated.

Yet it seems to confuse many people who, over again, get confused by the fact that so many of the politicians who have been toughest on illegal migration have been themselves migrants or the children of migrants. Priti Patel, Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, and before them Michael Portillo, for instance. Why are these people taking it out on migrants, their left-wing critics ask when they have benefited from migration themselves? For many progressives, someone like Braverman is a traitor to her own kind; they have to imagine deep insecurities which have led her to this dark place.

Progressives struggle with the likes of Braverman because they see people less as individuals than as members of class, racial, and ethnic identities. If you happen to be a British Asian, then you should share the values of all British Asians. Moreover, you should conform to the opinions which grievance politics has assigned to you – which in the case of ethnic minorities is that Britain is a structurally racist country whose white majority population is out to oppress you whether it means to or not.

But that is clearly not how Zia Yusuf, Suella Braverman, and others think. To them, they are not betraying their own people by opposing illegal migration – or even in wanting to slow down the legal variety. Rather, they are thinking back to the efforts their parents put into coming to Britain – which might have required many years of study, filling in forms, paying for visas, etc. – and they feel offended when they see young men (and they mainly are young men) who are exploiting the asylum process by pretending to be gay, Christian, or telling whatever other tall stories help them to play the system.

It all comes down to a basic sense of fairness. This doesn’t mean to say that a party that focuses on migration doesn’t also risk attracting people who are racists – like Ukip before it, Reform UK will face a constant battle to keep out such people, as we have found with its vetting issues this week. But no one should be surprised if other children of migrants are drawn to a party which is serious about wanting to tackle the problem. Reform UK’s opponents will have to find a more intelligent way of opposing it than simply trying to denounce it as racist.

China’s Taiwan Strategy

Click above for the video

Cindy Yu and Rana Mitter discuss the China-Taiwan situation. 

What do I think of their take? I don’t know. How can I? I’m not a member of the Chinese Politburo. Then again, neither are they. It’s all guess work. 

Still, it makes some sense. That China would not want an outright sea assault. Like on D-day. Which the invaders happened to win, but could easily have lost. 

The question then is: if China goes for the softer approach, like, to Taiwan: “joining with us is better for you”, what’s in it for Taiwan? A a genuine question. Especially if they look at the ruins of the “One China Two Systems”. I mean, can we really say that Hong Kong is better, 27 years after we “reunited with the motherland”? 回归祖国. Hui Gui Zuguo.

In sum, it’s been: Better than the pessimists feared. Worse than the optimists hoped. 

We’re still pretty free. In many ways more than some other democracies (eg, on the Woke issues, we have more freedom to speak without fear of “cancellation”). But also less free than we used to be, in terms of freedom of speech and assembly. Many will cheer than. I don’t. But then I’m just me. And I’m still blogging this. 

“Tesla shareholders will have no one to blame if things go south” | FT Headline

Click above for video

My Letter to sujeet.indap@ft.com of the Financial Times 

RE:    “Tesla shareholders will have no one to blame if things go south” | FT Headline 

You say: “Musk is being treated better than any CEO in history”. I respond that’s because he’s better than any CEO in history. IMO the most consequential entrepreneur of the last century+.

Your hit-piece makes:

1. No mention of the fact that Musk’s 2018 compensation package included very tough-to meet-hurdles on EBITDA and Sales growth. Which at the time people said he would never meet — in which case he would have got nothing. Zero. But he did meet them. As probably no other CEO could have done. And which enriched everyone. What’s the matter? Should success be punished now? 
2. No mention of the fact that the case was brought by a single shareholder with only five shares. Suspicious, much?
3. No mention that the lawyers for the plaintiffs are claiming fees of $Billions in TSLA shares, which only hurts TSLA and its shareholders. This, despite the shareholders rejecting the case brought by the plaintiffs via that legal firm. How can this be right?
4. No mention that TSLA shares have solidly outperformed all major indexes and other majors companies since 2018 (and more so since inception). You only mention that share price has dropped this year (as has every other car company becoz overall market softness).

My points above are an indictment of your poor, sloppy and clearly-biased piece of so-called “journalism”, in a paper we’re supposed to treat with respect.

Well, no, I do not treat you or your paper with respect. I give Financial Times zero respect for this piece of blatant propaganda masquerading as journalism. 

Yours, etc... PF

Happy Orchids, Flame Trees, Rain Singers

Happy Orchids in backyard 

Flame Tree, aka Phoenix Tree, aka Poinciana 

Goeppertia singing in the rain

Jonathan Netanyahu in “Bibi, My Story”: the death of his elder brother,

From “Bibi; My Story” by Benjamin Netayahu, about the death of his elder brother Jonathan (Yoni) int the battle against] Jihadi terrorists who hijacked a plane in Uganda's Entebbe airport in 1976:

Yoni expressed his soul in his letters and described his life and thoughts with the terse prose of a natural and powerful writer, at times rising to the poetic. Given that many of these letters were written by candlelight in pup tents or in the field after a grueling day, this was all the more remarkable. 

The book was published in English under the title Self-Portrait of a Hero: The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu. The New York Times wrote that the book was “a convincing portrayal of a talented, sensitive man who knew that good is no match for evil without the power to physically defend itself.”

The Boston Globe wrote that “Yoni’s unpretentious accounts of his accomplishments, simply written and thus more grand, make him the convincing hero he was and make us wish that more like him were among us.” 

Military Review said it was “a magnificent testament to the hero of Entebbe, containing a leadership credo of unmatchable quality.” 

I relate this not only to encourage others to read Yoni’s letters and discover for themselves who Yoni was; I bring this up because in many ways these letters saved me.

-- Bibi: My Story by Benjamin Netanyahu, Kindle edition, p.132, 18% 

Bibi Netanyahu fought in two of Israel’s wars -- the 6-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur war -- against Jihadist genocidists. 

Bibi's brother Yoni gave his life defending fellow citizens against the Jihadi crazies. 

Words like that -- Jihadis as “genociders” and “crazies” -- clearly makes me an Israel supporter. A Zionist. A hater on Palestinian rights, if you will. 

I have no problem with raising my hand and saying “yes” I support the independence of Israel, the existence of Israel, the right of Israel to defend itself, even in the surrounding sea of Islam and even at the cost of “innocent civilians”. 

As the New York Times said in 1976: “...good is no match for evil without the power to physically defend itself.”

I don’tget the hate on Bibi. Some allege that he’s only prosecuting the current Gaza war to keep himself in power, to avoid prosecution on charges pending. I don’t buy that. Can I prove that he’s not? No I cannot. I just doesn’t add up, for me, when looking at his life. Fighting a war to “avoid prosecution” would be the move of what the Chinese call a 小人, a Xiao Ren  a “small person”. And Bibi, by all measures that I’ve seen is a 君人 a Jun Ren a Great Man. A “monarch, a lord, a gentleman, a ruler” amongst men.

That’s my Bibi, and I’ll not buy the hate on him. The hate which comes from both Left and Right. The Left thinks he’s too Patton; the Right thinks he’s too Chamberlain. 

What a world. What a war. 

Which you can’t fight as you’d like to; you can’t fight as you should. Because you’ve got to watch over your shoulder for what the United States, your main ally, thinks. And what their know-nothing campus-children think. And what the United Nations, and its International Court of Justice thinks, driven as it is by a cabal of jew-hating countries. 

That. 

“Ok Doomer: Albo’s anti-nuke scare makes no sense” | Will Shackel

The Australian Labor Party -- our Prime Minister Antony Albanese -- is engaging in outright FearMongering! Putting out pix of the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, famous Beaches, with Nuclear Mushroom clouds. 

This is extraordinary. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. It’s lies. 

North Plaza, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, April 2020

From “MooFish” restaurant, to White Chapel, to S. China Sea

“Unmasked: inside Antifa” | Andy Ngo

Click above for the video 

I read Andy Ngo’s book when it came out. “Unmasked: Inside ANTIFA’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy”. 

It covers the craziness of the 2020 riots across America. Just after we’d had a year of rioting here in Hong Kong. Andy does an excellent job of exposing what’s going on with these radicals. 

Dr Phil is a good interviewer. He comments that perhaps 70% of the American people have no idea of what’s been going on. Because it can be going on in the next block from you, but you don’t know unless you go there. And won’t know if the mainstream media doesn’t tell you. As they don’t and haven’t with the Antifa riots.

The “Theory of Public Pressure" | Ze’ev Jabotinsky

 From “Bibi: My Story” by Benjamin Netanyahu 

Jabotinsky had developed the “Theory of Public Pressure” in an article he wrote in the spring of 1929.

He posited that the most potent influence on democratic governments is the pressure of public opinion. It matters not, he argued, if a government is headed by the friendliest of leaders. 

If your opponents apply sufficient pressure on that government, it will eventually tilt against you. To balance this, you must sway public opinion to your side by an unceasing public campaign “like the constant drizzle on a green English lawn,” he said. 

-- “Bibi: My Story”, p.112 Kindle edition, 15%  

I'd thought Ze’ev Jaobtinsky was perhaps the earliest proponent of the “Theory of Public Pressure”, but it turns out that it was much earlier, going back to Hellenic times. 

But still.... He was the one that made it a central pillar of Israeli influence in the United States. 

Which led to the Israeli public relations machine centred on “J Street” in Washington. Which has been so successful that people make a big issue out of it: “The Jewish lobby”, the “perfidious influence of Jewish public lobbying on American politics”, and all the rest of it. 

Once again, Israel, Jews, are so successful that they cop a malign backlash. 

Even from other Jews. I don’t forget John Mearsheimer's book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, which I read when it came out -- and agreed with the “1-star” reviewers, that it was a vicious anti-Jewish tract, not mitigated by Mearsheimer's own Jewishness. 

(At other times, I’ve rather liked Mearsheimer’s views on geo-politics. Just that when it comes to Israel, as with so many Jews and goyim alike, he’s blinded. Yes, “blinded” I say. Like the horrid Jew-hating Jew, “professor” Norman Finklestein, he who said of the October 7th Palestinian massacre of Jews, the worst since the Holocaust: “It warms my heart”, he exulted, while hiding under the mantle of “my family were Holocaust victims”. Yes, Norman, and they’d be turning in their ovens at your treachery).

To this day, we have dark warnings of the influence of the “Jewish Lobby” in America. Forgetting always that every other country in the world, every other ethnicity in the world, every other entity in the world, has some form of lobbying in the United States, for it is the biggest country, economy-wise, and the biggest country, military-wise and the biggest country, foreign aid-wise. 

And so of course you want to be there, in the fray, trying to get your own interests heard. 

But again, it’s only Israel, that horrid Jewish "ethno-state", which is singled out for opprobrium, for having the temerity to develop the best of the lobbying groups. 

How dare they? Those perfidious Jews. 

Palestinian leadership "Ali Baba and the forty thieves” | UAE Foreign Minister

UAE foreign minister called the Palestinian leadership "Ali Baba and the forty thieves" and claimed senior officials in the Palestinian Authority are "useless" and therefore "replacing them with one another will only lead to the same result.”

Click above, also here.

A conversation with a Palestinian apologist | a.k.a. Destroying the narrative

 “The Israeli occupation is the problem and the core of the conflict. That’s why Palestinians attack Jews.”

“Got it. So before the ‘occupation’, by that logic, there should have been no Palestinians murdering Jews, right?” “Exactly”. “Cool, cool, so why were hundreds of Jews killed by Palestinians between 1949 and 1956? How does that work?” “Well, because there was the Nakba in 1948 where Israelis kicked Palestinians out of their home!” “Got it. So before the ‘Nakba’, by that logic, there should have been no Jews killed by Palestinians?” “Exactly.” “Cool, cool, so why did Arabs massacre Jews in Hebron in 1929? No occupation, no oppression, no Nakba back then. There wasn’t even a state of Israel then, so what were they resisting then?” “Well, they already knew that the Jewish people intended on taking their land so they wanted to prevent it.” “Got it. So there should not have been any Arab violence against Jews outside of Israel, which was then called Palestine.” “Exactly.” “Cool, cool. So, why did Arabs massacre Jews outside of Israel? Ever hear of Farhud where Iraqi Jews were slaughtered for no reason other than them having the audacity of existing?” Arab/Muslim hatred of Jews has nothing to do with some fabricated occupation or some fairy tale event called the Nakba, which was really just an event in which the Arab countries attacked Israel and lost. Arab hatred of Jews dates back to the Quran. 

-- Hillel Fuld on X

Elon talks to Tesla troops

“We’re not just opening a new chapter. We’re starting a new BOOK"

Elon Musk at the Tesla Shareholder meeting, Texas, June 13, 2024. 

His compensation package had just been approved by the shareholders. After it had originally been approved in 2018, but invalidated by a Biden-appointed judge in Delaware. And is now reisntitued, with the only gainers being the lawyers not just for Elon, but also for the other side (which lost). How can that be fair? 

And we’re talking Billions here in legal fees. For a nuisance law suit. Brought about because Joe Biden doesn’t like Musk. Because Musk bought Twitter, renamed it “X” and made it a Free Speech platform that didn’t hew to Democrat talking points. 

Life in modern America. 

Summary of where money is coming from for Tesla in coming decades:

• Electric Vehicles. Manufacturer of the most popular car in the world
• Full Self Driving: and Robotaxis. A $5 Trillion opportunity 
• Humanoid Robots: a $25 Trillion opportunity 
• AI: Trillions 
• Other: Battery Storage and Solar

Overall, predicted share value: 10 x over next five years. See Cathy Wood at ArkInvest. 

Something we CAN do something about: Nuclear for Australia

Click above for the video 

The great Dick Smith. Aussie environmentalist, adventurer, entrepreneur, businessman, Australian of the Year (1986).

Now a powerful advocate for Nuclear in Australia.

You can go sign the Petition to legalise peaceful, clean, reliable, safe Nuclear Power for Australia. By the young and wonderful Will Shackel.

The late, great, Labor Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke was a strong advocate for nuclear in Australia. He’d be shocked that we actually passed a law banning it. Insanity. 

ADDED: My “Case for Nuclear in Australia”.

“No Blood, No News”: Hamas’ “Dead Baby Strategy”. Courtesy Yahya Sinwar

Murderer-in-chief, Gaza Division, Yahya Sinwar

“No Blood, No News”

So says the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. His version of “if it bleeds, it leads”. 

But also a summary of what they are about in Gaza: getting their own citizens killed. And then promoting the footage of them being killed. And counting on the West finding this horrid and “genocide”. And bringing pressure on Israel to stop the war. 

“The Dead Baby Strategy”. (Talked about as early as 2009)

One which I am not making up -- Hamas and Palestinians quite openly brag about it: “We love death more than you love life”, they say, ad nauseam. “We will happily send our children to be killed, to be ‘martyred’, for the sake of Allah”. 

Here’s the head of the Hamas in Gaza, the above mentioned Yahya Sinwar, in 2016: 

During an organized 2016 uprising at the Gaza border, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar admitted the group “decided to turn that which is most dear to us — the bodies of our women and children — into a dam blocking the collapse in Arab reality.” [Reference]

There’s plenty more quotes along the same lines. 

Point I’m making here is that this is not my fervid imaginings. It’s the actual policy and strategy of Hamas. 

Which goes back to the earliest strategy of Islam in the days of Muhammad and the likes of early Muslim convert, the commander Khalid ibn-al-Walid. 

It is today the fundamental strategy of all Jihadis, of which Hamas is merely that latest offshoot. And hence we have suicide bombers. And putting their children in the line of fire. Which today we call The “Dead baby strategy”.  No matter how uncomfortable and ugly the term is. It’s not our strategy. It’s the avowed, specific, actual, strategy of Hamas and all Jihadis. 

Let that sink in.