“I am not a Jew with trembling knees.”

This is not a protest against a faceless, nameless monolith. We’re standing right here, and you’re calling for our destruction.

From HeyAlma

Based on the famous retort by Israel PM Menachem Begin to then Senator Joe Biden, way back in 1982:

I would be tempted to say that our present circumstances call for a proud Jew to tell that to Joe Biden, but the fact is that he’s already been told — by Begin himself. In 1982, at a closed-door meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden had threatened Begin with cutting off military aid for Israel’s offensive campaign in Lebanon. As Tevi Troy noted in the Wall Street Journal, the story went that Begin responded in fiery outrage:

Don’t threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles. I’m not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.

Forty-two years later, Joe Biden has learned nothing.

Joe Biden: real good at Betrayal, something learned in his long career as a civil servant. By the way, we knew about this from the book by Justice Clarence Thomas. He tells the story of how he’s going to Senate confirmation hearing the next day, and is worried about how the issue of Anita Hill is going to hurt him. Joe assures him that there’s no problem. The next day, leading the Senate questions, Joe the Betrayer leads off by attacking Thomas over the Anita Hill issue (of which, for the record, he was found innocent). 

Joe has only honed his betrayal over the years. He now does it on a bigger stage. Afghanistan. Ukraine. Israel. 

BREAKING: US Intelligence Offer to Israel Sparks Debate Over Strategy in Rafah

https://themedialine.org/mideast-daily-news/us-intelligence-offer-to-israel-sparks-debate-over-strategy-in-rafah/

The offer is to give Israel specific actionable intelligence on the whereabouts of the Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas. And on tunnels and on where the hostages are. If they kill Sinwar and save the hostages, it's it's all over. 

If this is true I find it extraordinary. Revolting, in fact. That the U.S. would withhold such critical info from its major ally in the region. For what reason one can't fathom. Unless it be a simple as pique at Netanyahu. ie a Biden hissy fit? Surely not. But maybe so…. 

If you think about it, it's pretty much literally — and I mean "literally" literally — breathtaking. Surely this is malpractice. 

I mean, boggles the brain. What's Biden and Blinken and Sullivan and Austin and the rest of the ratty gang up to? Especially when they bang on and on about keeping Gazan civilians safe. Which this intel could have done if given to Israel sooner.

Sigh…

Gaza Palestinians

RE: BBC story on Palestinians fleeing Rafah to seaside camps where, says BBC, they have no facilities:

They could have NOT voted for Hamas. 

They could have demanded Hamas surrender. 

They could have demanded Hamas hand back the hostages it illegally captured.  

They could have said they want to recognize their neighbours. 

They could have said they want to live in peace with their neighbours.

And their neighbours would have gladly helped them prosper.

But no…

They chose Hamas. And thus they chose Terror. They chose genocide. They chose tunnels and rockets. They chose rape and plunder. They chose murder and Go-pro braggadocio. 

And now they moan and complain. Because their neighbours defend themselves. And are determined to exterminate Hamas. 

Too bad. 

This is all on the Palestinians and Hamas. 

It was all in their power to build a prosperous Gaza. 

They chose Jew-hatred instead, Jew-killing instead, Jew-genocide instead.

Peter Forsythe

Hong Kong

John Forsythe, Juris Doctor (J.D.)

 

UCLA Class of 2024
(Pro-Hamas Tent-city year)

For the record: “The Truth Behind the UCLA Protests” | Dr Phil

 

Click above for the video

Our very own are studying at UCLA. Soon to graduate, protestors permitting. That’s to say: the administration of UCLA permitting, because they’ve allowed the Tent-city to stay there, despite being against multiple College rules....

The above video is a good piece of reportage by Dr Phil, a guy who I’ve known about, of course, but never really followed. He’s now got his own show.

The situation on the quad at UCLA is a microcosm of the Middle East. The Jewish students go the protesters saying they'd like to talk; they want peace. The pro-Hamas student demonstrators tell them to fuck off and they want to kill them. The Israel/Gaza thing in a nutshell on one quad.

ADDED: 400 Jewish students at UCLA cleaned up the quad on 5th May. Story on X by Amy Alkon. Apparently the damage, the graffiti, etc, will cost in the millions to fix. I don’t doubt it. 

Giving “The State of Palestine” more rights at the United Nations: the spoils of violent terrorism.

Ambassador Erdan does the dirty

Speaking during the debate on the now passed United Nations Resolution to grant more rights to The State of Palestine, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan held up a tiny shredder and shredded a tiny version of the U.N. Charter. (See above vid).

Is that a smart thing to do? asks an Occasional Reader.

Yes, say I. Because it’s true. The United Nations General Assembly is shredding its own Charter. 

And I know it’s true because what the ambassador did made me go to the Resolution itself,  which says: 

Recalling that membership in the United Nations is open to all peace-loving States which accept the obligations contained in the Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations:

1. Determines that the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations in accordance with Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations; 

[Reference]

 And what is Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations? 

1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

[Reference]

There’s the catch: “peace-loving” and “peace-loving”.  You can’t get away from that loving of peace. 

BUT, the Palestinian State, run by the Palestinian Authority’ where the U.N. recognised the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as the leaders, and ruled de facto by Hamas in the Gaza strip, is most assuredly NOT “peace-loving”. 

The parties above, all Jihadist to more or even more extent, still hold to the “Three no’s policy” of Khartoum Resolution, one of which is “no peace with Israel”. 

The Charter of Hamas says that it will not recognise Israel, nor does it seek peace. It seeks the destruction of Israel, and the killing of all Jews. Everywhere in the world.

And then the procedural issue: any resolution regarding membership is to be recommended by the Security Council to the General Assembly, not the other way around. 

Thus: the United Nations, and 143 of its members, have voted:

• To reward the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th 2023, the worst killing of Jews since the holocaust.
• To reward a defined terrorist organisation bent on the genocide of its neighbour and a United Nations member. 
• To reward the Hamas tactics of using human shields, often children or even babies, to protect their cowardly “fighters”. 
• Thoroughly ignored the very UN Charter clauses that it quotes to justify the resolution. Specifically Article 4, requiring members to be peace-loving.
• Ignored the requirement for a “State” to have (1) a single recognised government (2) clearly defined borders (3) operate according to the rule of law.*
• Ignored the procedural requirements of the United Nations Charter. 

Australia supported the resolution. The likes of PM Anthony Albanese and FM Penny Wong seem proud that they managed to go against our oldest ally the United States. They should instead be ashamed. For how they’ve betrayed two staunch allies and rewarded naked terrorism. And helped along the destruction of Israel, the only home of the Jews in the world, and which the new-born United Nations voted into existence in 1947. 

This all after some tawdry grandstanding by Wong, the armchair general, lecturing Israel on how it should be conduction the war. And then demanding to send an “investigator” to look into the friendly fire deaths of the food truck convoy. Stick a sock in it, Penny!

ADDED: By the way, try to find anything like the above analysis anywhere on BBC, CNN or the ABC. Nothing. Just signalling how virtuous we all are, because we care for Palestine. Ugh.

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

*State. Definition from the Brittanica:

The state is a form of human association distinguished from other social groups by its purpose, the establishment of order and security; its methods, the laws and their enforcement; its territory, the area of jurisdiction or geographic boundaries; and finally by its sovereignty. The state consists, most broadly, of the agreement of the individuals on the means whereby disputes are settled in the form of laws. [Reference]

 How does “The State of Palestine” stack up?

1. “Order and security”: clearly there is none. And the responsibility for that is Hamas in Gaza and the PA on the West Bank. The “governments” of the West Bank and Gaza, such as they may be, spend their time building tunnels and trying to kill Jews. Sad but true

2. Laws and their enforcement. The State of Palestine gets a fail here too. Laws, if applied at all, are arbitrary, confiscatory and pernicious. Sharia law, sometimes: which suppresses rights of women, minorities, and non-believers. 

3. The “geographic boundary”: this is not settled because none of the peace proposals, the proposals to hand land to the Palestinians, in return for peace and recognition, has been accepted by the Palestinians. 

4. Sovereignty: The “ultimate overseer” of state power. Yet we have warring factions. Hamas, Fatah, the PLO, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Enough to say there is no real sovereignty over all the lands claimed under The State of Palestine. 

In short: a fail. There cannot be a “state” of Palestine, if only, but at the very least, because the preconditions for a state do not exist. 

But that doesn’t bother the UNGA. Or the poodles like our Penny, who happily trot along behind, tongues out, panting for their little doggie treats of virtue points. Ad hominem, I know, but I can’t resist. 

"This time, we are the horses: the disruption of labor by humanoid robots” | Tony Seba

One car in 1900. One horse in 1913

In fifteen years, between 1900 and 1915, horses went from providing 95% of transport in the United States, to just 10%. 

That was the disruption of the motor vehicle. 

The disruption of humanoid robots will have the same effect. Except that this time we are the horses. 

Tony Seba has a long history of spot-on predictions. 

From his blog post “This time we are the horses”:

The changes, the disruption coming up because the rapid development of humanoid robots, combined with the power of AI, will be the biggest opportunity and also the biggest challenge of humankind. 

Just as internal combustion engines gave automobiles the capability to disrupt horses, a convergence of technologies that together create what we call a labor engine is what gives humanoid robots the capability to disrupt human labor. The critical disruptive components of the new labor engine include:

• Sensors (cameras, tilt sensors, pressure sensors, microphones, accelerometers, etc.) to take in sensory data
• Computer hardware and software to process sensory data with powerful AI
• Actuators to move and interact with objects in the environment
• Batteries and power electronics to provide energy for hours of sensing, computing, and moving

Each of these technologies has gotten dramatically cheaper and more powerful in recent years, setting the stage for the disruption of labor.
Over the next 15-20 years, humanoid robots will disrupt human labor throughout hundreds of industries across every major sector of the global economy. The disruption of labor will be among the most profound transformations in human history, and therefore simultaneously represents one of the greatest opportunities and greatest challenges our civilization has ever faced.

Videos about this:

• The Electric Viking 
• Solving the Money Problem

Latest poll election 2024

If the election were held tomorrow. The result would be a wave of Red. A Trump landslide. 

“Does Biden’s Sabotage of Israel Remind You of Anything?” | Andrew McCarthy

Impeach Biden!

The GOP might want to hold back on the grounds that "we're not going to do tit-for-tat". That it's not good for the country, or some such reasoning, to launch spurious impeachment cases just because your opponents did. Fine. 

But at least they ought to make some noise about it. 

Surely. 

This point about Biden doing exactly what they accused Trump of doing was made on CNN last night! Amazing. 

Snip, from the great, the reliable Andy McCarthy: 

I

‘m old enough to remember when House Democrats impeached and Senate Democrats voted unanimously (though unsuccessfully) to convict and remove a president for withholding congressionally approved, taxpayer-funded aid from an allied country — one that desperately needed the aid while fighting a defensive war against a barbaric enemy — in order to pressure that desperate ally to help the president get reelected.

You're old enough, too — this happened less than five years ago.

And the Democrats who impeached and sought to convict and remove then-president Donald Trump are pretty much the same Democrats now holding House and Senate seats. Read on...

Israel, 16 April 2017, near Red Sea

Yonathan, Jing, Razi the camel driver. West Bank, Israel, 16 April 2017

THE PATTERN OF BIBI’S DESPERATE PROPOSALS | Seymore Hersh

My comment at the article: 

Forse

8 mins ago

What a dog’s breakfast of an article. “Analysis” by anecdote. The IDF soldiers are “grievously wounded” and thus, we are to assume, more insightful. Telling us that Bibi is “afraid of his own shadow” (and thus presumably should have been more forceful in Gaza), yet is somehow, and at the same time, to be negotiating with “Arab neighbours”. 

No mention of Hamas. No mention of the perfidy of Joe Biden. No mention of the severe constraint put on Bibi’s War Cabinet by the Biden gang. 

In one breath Bibi should resign or be ousted and in another breath it’s admitted there is noone capable of leadership. 

And yet, somehow, yet again the “two-state solution” lurches into view, like the zombie, all tattered raiments and blood-soaked bandages. Oh dear. 

And yet again, we have the comparison with Vientmam, Enough already. (Where the South Vietnamese are repeatedly described as “corrupt”, but not the North or the Viet Cong, equally corrupt, yet more venal, as they slaughtered their enemies, including baby Amerasians in orphanages, after America’s ignominious surrender. I know. I was there. 

And as for the war in Gaza being a defeat, that’s only if the Biden administration forces it. Had they not constrained Bibi, the cabinet and the IDF, it would all be over. 

There’s plenty of blame already to go around and a shitload of it is on Joe’s empty head. 

I’m a paying subscriber because of the excellent Seymour Hersh acticle on the Gazprom pipeline explosions. 

But I gotta say, Sy, this is a lazy and ill-thought out piece.

Disappointing.

Here. 

“How Marxism Subverted America” | David Josef Volodzko

Some are mocking the idea that the campus protests are driven by Marxism. Listen to the protesters, they say, they’re all about Gaza and Israeli genocide.

Well, not quite. At the outset, they knew nothing. We know this because many people went out to interview them. The main answer they got when asked “why are you here?” was a giggle and embarrassed look to their giggle friends; who also had no idea.

Then the leaders of the protests, folks from outside, got strict. Don’t speak to the media, they said. Direct them to the Press Office, they said. And that’s what’s happened. You can see that from the videos I posted recently.

So, the folks that are now running the narrative make sure that it focusses on Gaza. And the reason they do that is that it’s fine to carry on about Gaza and Israeli perfidy, and so on. But it’s not ok to say “we’re all about bringing Marxism to the United States. And the World, btw.”. Oh, no, you can’t be so open. So.

Back in 2001, Osama bin Laden wrote “letters to the west”, in which he said that the reason he and his terrorist mates were attacking the west, 9/11 and all that, was because they were upset at the inequities in Palestine. And the west bought this. Even otherwise smart people like Glenn Greenwald, to this day, buy this line. They mock the idea that OBL attacked the west for our “freedoms”. 

But in fact that is exactly what they were doing. OBL wrote various essays aimed at the Muslim world. They are collected in a book by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al-Qaeda Reader. Which I’ve owned for decades and read and which forms the basis for this statement: the reason Al-Qaeda, the reason its leader Osama bin Laden, the reason to this day Islamic Jihadis attack the west is because of our freedoms. They hate that we are not believers. They hate that we are infidels. That’s clear in the essays for the Muslim world. But they knew they couldn’t say this outright, because it would lead to much more aggressive push back.

And so it is today with Marxism in the west. With the push for Marxism. With the whole concept of “the Long March through the institutions”. That’s what’s happening but it has to be hidden. At least from public discourse. 

It is hidden now in the issue of Gaza. Just as it was hidden in 2020 in in the issue of BLM, a movement led by open Marxists.  

Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? Very well, I do. But the aims of the push to Marxism, while hidden on the public level, are not hidden in the writings. There’s plenty out there, in the curricula of schools and uniiversities, in the book lists, in the essays, in the teaching of Marxist think tanks, to make clear what the agenda is. The agenda is Marxist. The push at American colleges is to bring down the edifice of American-led capitalism and bring about the utopia of Marxism. 

Here is David Josef Volodzko, in his “How Marxism Subverted America”:

In his famous 1984 interview, Soviet dissident Yuri Bezmenov explained that Moscow knew it couldn’t defeat the United States in a head-on conflict. Instead, the Kremlin devised a four-stage plan to subvert U.S. society and turn the American public against itself.

The first stage, the former KGB agent said, was called demoralization and would take 15 to 20 years because that’s how long the media and sympathetic teachers needed to re-educate one generation of American students. But Bezmenov said this stage was already completed because the hippies of the 1960s, who were “contaminated” with Marxist-Leninist values, were entering positions of power by the time of the interview.

The next two stages would be marked by political polarization and the erosion of trust in our institutions. The final stage of communist subversion, normalization, would be realized once Americans began to freely express the views of their own enemies.

Forty years later, we have American teens on Chinese Communist-run TikTok telling us bin Laden had a point. We have champagne socialist vloggers on BreadTube arguing Russia invaded Ukraine in self-defense. We have Leninist antiwar activists cheering when Iran fires missiles at our allies, student speakers praising North Korea, and activists chanting “Death to America!” in California, Michigan, and New York.  

Read on...

Emerald City Flights

No, these are not photo shopped. They are really photos of what it was like to come into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport until June 30 1997. 

We arrived in Hong Kong in August 1976, in the evening, exactly like this. It was magical. I thought we’d landed in Emerald City. A bright jewel of rainbow neons. A Hotel Furama, on the 75th floor, overlooking the harbour, a panoply of sights, sounds, smells. I’ve been in love ever since, with the city I still live in.

Funding the campus protests. Worth a careful read

	Bill Ackman ⁦‪@BillAckman‬⁩ A detailed and highly comprehensive piece on the funding and organizations behind the campus protests. Worth a careful read. The People Setting America on Fire - Tablet Magazine tabletmag.com/sections/news/…   8/5/2024, 5:36 PM

Sent from my iPad

“Unscientific American” | City Journal

There’s something similar -- Unscientific Australian -- happening in Australia at the moment, regarding Domestic Violence. And specifically, the number of women killed by their male partners. 

The concern is that Australian Domestic Violence, the number of murders of females by male partners, is out of control. 

There was a demo on the lawns of Parliament House, last week. Where the PM, Anthony Albanese, spoke, but got into trouble for “lying”, according the rally organiser, because he said that he’d asked to talk, but had been told that he couldn’t. But then he was asked. “That’s a complete lie”, said Sarah Williams. 

But the bigger picture. And the one that I want to highlight here. What is the case of DV in Australia. 

What’s happening? Because when people call for “more should be done”, well…the fact is.. there’s always more that can be done. 

It took about 4.7 seconds to find out.

Since 1990, the rate of homicide in Australia has declined 68%. That included Domestic Violence homicide. The only homicide rates that have risen are those amongst Aboriginal communities. 

Australia: Murder rates per 100,000. Source: Global Economy

Aha! You see the problem. You can’t really say, as PM, "things are OK". Amongst us non-indigenous, at least. The only problems are in the aboriginal communities. You just can’t say that. 

Even if that’s the truth. The carry on about DV is essentially hysteria. And to the extent that it is happening, it’s in the aboriginal community. 

Yet, even if the PM can’t say it, someone has to. Because if not there’s no data to back anything. Nothing is done on the basis of an facts. “The Other Side” does that, very well, IMO.

The same problem is affecting science and data and facts more generally. 

As the City Journal reports, in the case of the famous sceptic Michael Shermer: 

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth. Shermer’s role models included two twentieth-century thinkers who, like him, relished explaining science to the public: Carl Sagan, the ebullient astronomer and TV commentator; and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a popular monthly column in Natural History magazine for 25 years. Shermer hoped someday to match Gould’s record of producing 300 consecutive columns. That goal would elude him.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned. More...

ADDED: Back to Oz, with Bettina Arndt:

Message to our politicians: If you have deluded yourself that you could ever harness the angry women’s vote, take a good look at the Albanese debacle last week.

Our Prime Minister indulged in classic virtue signalling by sucking up to the Canberra women’s protest rally, joining hundreds of women who had been cynically whipped up into a frenzy over the latest domestic violence tragedies – with the usual false claims of an epidemic of violence being used to fuel anti-male hatred and demands for more funding.

From “Winning over young men”.

Why are students protesting Gaza? They don’t know (or won’t say)

 

Click above for the video

Click above for the video. A Short version

Click above for the video

Above: a selection of vids about the the student demos in the U.S. — really, look at them; they’re a flock of sheep who don’t dare to have their own thoughts. They’re truly idiots, even if “intelligent idiots”. 

I’ve been following these since they began. At the beginning when asked what they were protesting about, they simply didn’t know. “From the River to the Sea”? they’d giggle together and say they had no idea. 

That was clearly not a good look so the organisers have told them to shut up. All media have to go the “press people” who focus on the Gaza thing. Which is obvious for a Marxist group to do. You can’t say “we’re out to push Marxism”. You can talk about the horrors of Gaza. Just like Osama bin Laden said his whole thing — 9/11 and such — was about the Palestine issue, when in fact it was indeed about attacking the west because of its freedoms, because it’s not Islamic, because we are infidels. 

The roots of college protests are Marxism not Palestine | Chris Watson

Click above for the video

I agree with a lot of what Christian Watson says in the video above. I though the same of the BLM protests and riots in 2020, and many of the same people are recycled today, though Christian doesn’t mention that. 

Marxism is a powerful ideology. At least in prospect. It never does well in practice. 

This understanding also explains why George Soros is funding the campus protests. 

dHe does so through his Open Society organisation which money trickles down -- perhaps streams down is better analogy -- to the likes of The Social Justice for Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. Wondering over the years why Soros, a guy both Jing and I used to admire, was so committed to funding District Attorneys and Attorneys General who were soft on crime, it was explained to me, by Soros himself, when he said that “you have to destroy something in order to rebuild”. You can’t be incremental, he said. That’s an out-and-out Marxist concept. You have to destroy. Problem is the rebuilding never quite works out. 

Apparently it was Mao Tse-tung who said “you have to break some eggs to make an omelette”. And someone with quicker wit that me, who said “perhaps, but where’s the omelette?”

Chris Watson: @offiialCWATSON

There is nothing conspiratorial about believing that it’s all down to Marxism. When Socialism, Communism, had its great failures in the 1980s and 1990s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the failure of the Soviet Union and so on, we all, so many of us, include me, thought “well, that’s it. Communism’s over. No-one can push it now”. Well, we were wrong. Because they brushed themselves off and regrouped. The likes of Antonin Gramsci and Michel Foutcault, and a group known as the Frankfurt School, started the concept of “the Long March through the Institutions”. That’s what they’ve done. Through our schools and our universities, and through out government civil servants. It’s now having its flowering. They were never secret about it. That’s why it’s not a conspiracy theory. They were and are open about it. 

We just didn’t listen. 

Jack Dorsey praises Elon Musk’s X as ‘freedom technology’

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey had criticised Elon Musk. Now praises him and X, as being “freedom technology”. Australia’s battle with Musk makes Australia look stupid. 

The “e-safety commissar” is a sick joke. Just sad that so many, on both sides of the aisle, think it’s good and are behind it. 

Dear Campus Protesters: what you could do if you really cared about Gaza | George Washington Law professor

UCLA the aftermath. For the record

	Hamas Atrocities ⁦‪@HamasAtrocities‬⁩ UCLA The aftermath They all went to Yoga class and to drink a vegan matcha latte But they forgot to tidy up... pic.twitter.com/VElCS74QWA   6/5/2024, 6:41 PM

One of the “Rules” the protesters themselves set out: keep clean, don’t litter.

Conservatives are the real progressives

Click above for the video

Because they base their actions on learning from the past, and doing so is what gave us modernism. What gave us the enlightenment, what gave us the industrial revolution and the huge gains in material and health prosperity in the world over the last four hundred years. That’s what makes conservatives progressive. 

Historian David Starkey tells us the reasons why. 

Along the way, quoting Chaucer: 

For out of old fields, as men saith, cometh all this new corn from year to year; 

and out of old books in good faith, cometh this new science that men can learn 

Consider G.K. Chesterton’s Fence, an argument against hasty abolition of laws, institutions, or customs. A person comes across a fence in the middle of a field. If he’s progressive he doesn’t know why the fence is there, and so tears it down. If he's conservative he also doesn’t know why the fence is there, but thinks that perhaps someone else has put it there for a reason and so leaves it alone. We’re currently infested by people who don’t know why the fence is there, but don’t care to wonder why, and so they tear it down. With no agreement from others who think that perhaps we ought think about it a bit more. 

We are facing a very real threat to our western civilisation. Both from inside, in the case of the Woke new-Marxists, and from outside in the case of Islam. 

Brendan O’Neill was saying something similar in Australia recently. He, like the goat Thomas Sowell is an ex Marxist. In Brendan’s case “mugged by reality”; in Sowelll's’ case changed his mind “due to facts”. I’m something similar. Not that I was ever Marxist. But I was something of a squishy socialist in my uni days. Then was mugged by the reality of Marxist China in 1976. A poor, corrupt and polluting society. 

Starkey recommends a dose of Friderich Hayak to set one straight. 

And in the end, around here, takes of what Britain has given the world, of “historical transcendence” and quotes T.S.Eliot from the “Little Gidding” from the Four Quartets:

We hear the feet that walked before

the rustle of the clothes that have moved here before

The echo of the ideas and of the hopes 

and the fears and the achievements. 

“De-civilisation” | Brendan O’Neill

 

Click above for the video 

The unraveling of all our great achievements. As Homo sapiens 

Biden Unveils Official Campaign Slogan 'Death To America'

Parody. But…

But almost not. Given the refusal of Democratic Congress members to deplore the calls, on campuses around America, for "Death to America”.

Memory Holes. (From “1984”)

Click above for the video 

I thought it was only China that did “memory holing” — of the Cultural Revolution, of Tiananmen June 4th…. 

But, no, it’s the west too. A whole political and media class have already forgotten how authoritarian they were during Covid. Horrid examples abound in Victoria, Australia, the United States and, as Brendan O’Neill says in his brilliant speech, in the U.K. 

Yes, College Presidents are responsible for the College turmoil

An Occasional Reader has said something along the lines that the College presidents are “damned if they do, damned if the don’t”, in how they’ve handled the uprisings, the rioting, the encampments -- the “pro-Palestinians”, more correctly, I think called “pro-Hamas". That is, at the places they’ve been most radical, the likes of Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Penn, UCLA, this OR is saying if the crack down they’re damned and if they don’t crack down they’re damned. 

I beg to differ. At the University of Chicago (in a Blue city) and the Univeristy of Florida (in a Red State) the presidents have been robust. They said “it’s simple”. To their students they say:

• You have the rights to free speech. 
• You also have the obligation to follow the law. And to follow College guidelines. You must not interfere with the right of others. If you breach laws and codes, we will stop you. If you continue to do so, we will punish you, which may include expelling you. 

End of story.

The others, the presidents of Columbia and UCLA and the rest, are pathetic panderers. They are weak. They are cowards. There is no need for them to “negotiate”. WTF? Or else they agree with the protesters, which is another possibility, since almost all of the faculty and administration are very left of centre at US colleges. And that’s also crazy. 

In short, they are damned if they don’t. If they don’t take a clear stand. If they don’t stand up to principle. If they don’t stand for western values. If they don’t stand for the rule of law; for college regulations. 

If they do, they’re fine. If they don’t they’re damned. Cursed. Reviled. Shamed. There.

“Progressives ruin cities” | Michael Shellenberger

Click above for the video 

Michael Shellenberger is himself a progressive. He’d probably say now lapsed. A one time Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment”. He’s written a book about homelessness in San Francisco, called San Fransicko which I’ve got and read.

Here he talks to Zuby. 

A big part of the problem seems to be a classic case of “The Road to hell is paved with good intentions”. 

Powerful speech to the United Nations General Assembly

Ambassador Erdan is right in all he says. The UN is rotten to the core. 

Hypocritical. Deceitful. Duplicitous. Corrupt. 

And Dad served there 1960-62 as we attended American primary schools.  And I recall he was not impressed even then. 

“The cost of Destransition” | Megyn, Mary, Luka

 

Click above for the video 

This is such a fraught subject and people are suffering. Many because they are not getting the right advice from adults, the medical community, who should be taking more care. 

Please watch the above video. It is powerful. Luka is so eloquent. 

Stories from young people who have transitioned and then de-transitioned, as they realised they have made a grave mistake. 

J.K.Rowling has said that we will come to see this period as a shame, a scandal, on our society. The likes of lobotomy. Remember when we considered that “caring” and “kind” as well?

Why Biden Is Saving Hamas - Tablet Magazine

/Snip, from “Why Biden is Saving Hamas”:

Reports are circulating that the Israelis are planning an operation in Rafah to eliminate the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza. If so, the Netanyahu government will be acting against the very public wishes of the Biden administration, which has spent the last half year moving heaven and earth to save a terrorist organization from destruction. Bizarrely, the White House's statements and actions show that Hamas' survival is more important than the security of a traditional American partner, Israel; more crucial to American interests than the preservation of the U.S.-led order of the Middle East; more precious than the dozens of American lives that Hamas ended on Oct. 7; more valuable than however many Americans and Israelis are still alive in the terror army's tunnels.

Why? As the money and prestige that the U.S. has invested month after month in protecting Hamas demonstrate, the Biden administration sees the terror group as a valuable asset.

There are explanations in the article. I’m not sure about them all, but it’s surely been a head-scratcher why Biden & Co have stopped Israel in their tracks, when they were on the verge of winning the war. That is, of killing all the top-level Hamas leaders. Stopped them. And continue to stop them. Crazy.  

"I decided to go and see for myself what is happening at UCLA" | Montana Tucker

	Montana Tucker ⁦@montanatucker⁩ After seeing everything on the news, I decided to go and see for myself what is happening at UCLA. I went in with the intention of having honest conversations to try and truly understand each others pain and suffering . However, no one would speak to me . The only thing they… x.com/i/web/status/1… pic.twitter.com/MuTlu2Ie5Z   28/4/2024, 11:28 PM

We have people close to us studying at UCLA...