Trump Is Right About Nationalism | WSJ

I was going to write about the "nationalism" brouhaha and may as well do so on the back if this article in the WSJ. It's Marco Rubio, but that alone doesn't make it wrong. The first several paras seem spot on. 

When Trump first used the term in one of his midterm rallies, I wondered if it was wise. So I looked it up both on Google and Dictionary.https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nationalism In both, the first definition is that it's a synonym for patriotism. A synonym. Not the opposite, as Macron claimed on Armistice day in Paris. Other definitions include the desire to have ones own independent nation, like Scottish nationalism or Kurdish nationalism. Surely those are nationalisms we all support.
Only one definition is the nasty one alluded to by Macron. But that's always prefaced by "far right".
No such nuance for Macron. He just went ahead and elided all the meanings into one nasty one, just so he could trash Trump... at a remembrance ceremony.
Hence the twitter tirade from Trump. Not that that's wise, necessarily, but then it's Trump after all. Trump Is Right About Nationalism

California’s Paradise Lost | WSJ

I was a touch tough on greenies yesterday. It's a bit more complex than I said, although the basic story remains the same: well-meaning policies to protect the environment have had the unintended consequence of fuelling raging wildfires in California.
A follow-up problem is that the greenies won't learn from this. They won't admit consequences even if they're unintentional. They are already excuse-finding. It's the fault of Trump because he pulled out of the Paris climate accord and so: global warming. And global warming, so: forest fires, hurricanes and floods. And never mind that if we hadn't had the greenies, in the shape mainly of Greenpeace, stop the development of nuclear power in the 70s, we wouldn't have had the rise in CO2 and consequent global warming, in the first place.
Greenies never admitted that the 1970s nuclear scaremongering was wrong. Even if the science says it's wrong. And remember they always say they believe in science. Like the science of global warming. We must all accept it.  But the science, if it's about nuclear, or GMOs, fuggedaboutit.
So, even if Trump's tweet on the fires was wildly inappropriate, it's true. But to greenies, it's Trump, so... wrong.
Here's the WSJ on the issue:

What happened when I wrote about Islam in Britain | Spectator USA

How is this contributing to our cultural fabric?  Women showing their sons
how women should be clothed

A follow up to Andy Ngo's article I posted recently. He's right about the islamisation of Britain. I've seen it with mine own eyes. It's a kind of multiple monoculturalism. Not multicultural, but like little Balkan states. The dream of the tapestry of tolerance and inclusivity is dead. And in some of the Muslim areas it's dangerous for a non Muslim to visit. Unlike the Chinatowns of yore. 

What can be done? Very little, I fear. Even with a will, the entrenched interests are too strong. And there's not even the will. As the reactions to Ngo's earlier article show. Ignorance and wilful blindness rule the day.  

Farewell, England.  Sic Transit Gloria Brittania.
The country, the kingdom, your veterans fought and died for, immortalised yesterday, is disappearing. 

It's not that I have any racial issue. I live in a multicultural multi-racial society here in Hong Kong and it's fine.  I have issue in the UK with how it's working out as "plural monocultures,". Or maybe "multi mono cultures". Separate and unequal.  And that way because of the votaries of the intolerant ideology of Muhammad.

'I was segregated from non-Muslims from the beginning, not just physically, but also in terms of the core beliefs I had instilled in me,' Sohail Ahmed tells me. He's a soft-spoken 26-year-old student from East London who grew up in a fundamentalist Muslim community. In 2014, Sohail's parents sent him to an Islamic exorcist in Newham because they believed his homosexuality was caused by a jinn, or spirit. The exorcisms didn't work and his parents eventually kicked him out of the home. Sohail had previously contemplated a suicide attack in Canary Wharf to redeem himself.

I met Sohail while researching an article about Islam in Britain. This was eventually published in the Wall Street Journal on August 29. It was called 'A Visit to Islamic England.' The article briefly became a Twitter sensation, for the wrong reasons. I made a mistake, which was widely picked on. I described the existence of 'alcohol restricted' signs in Whitechapel, East London, and implied it was because of the heavy Muslim presence in the area. Such signs actually exist in various areas across the UK and have nothing to do with religious sensibilities.

https://spectator.us/british-muslims-ngo/

Greenies are responsible for the deaths in California wildfires

Greenies, take a bow

These wildfires in California are the fault of the Greenies. It was Greenies who demanded the "wilding" of California forests. Leaving them natural, with no cutbacks and no clearing. That's kind of fine, but the killer is that they also opposed the occasional natural fires that would have burnt out underbrush. Natural fires were suppressed.
Result: a huge build up of flammable materials.
So that when the weather turned hot and dry and some idiot tossed out a cigarette butt the result is our current fiery hell.
The Greenies bear responsibility for this. Not Republicans, not Democrats, but Greenies. They pushed and pushed and got local authorities to serve their bidding.
They bear responsibility. The Greens.
Just as the Greens bear responsibility for our high carbon dioxide levels (with their anti-nuke policies) and for the war in Iraq and subsequent Mid-east chaos (with Nader's ill-advised run in 2000).
Sure they meant well. So what? The road to hell is surely paved with good intentions. And our road to today's fiery hell is paved with greenies' wilding intentions.
I used to be a greenie. I was an early member of the Australian Conservation Foundation, back in the 1970s.
Now I'm ashamed of that.
Ashamed that I bought into such a well-meaning but destructive ideology. Ashamed that I bought into the naivety and harmfulness of it all.
For all they mean well, the Greens have consistently harmed our planet.
And killed people.

Do women add value?

That was the question on BBC's World Service this morning.

Specifically: do women on company boards add value to the company? In economically measurable ways, that is. 

The woman being interviewed, whose name I didn't catch, talked about research that she and a colleague had done into the boards of hundreds of public companies. Their conclusion? That women on company boards did not necessarily add measurable economic value to the company. If the company was in need of tough love then women added value because they tended to be tougher on issues than men (that, I kind of knew, but interesting to have some data put to it). If, on the other hand, the company was already being driven tough then women did not add value. (I suspect this is a glimpse of the obvious, but it's not me making the point). 

She thought it best to argue for diversity on boards in the basis of morality and fairness, rather than in the basis of economic value-add. 

Next came another woman, again whose name I didn't catch, who said that there was "no doubt" that women added value to a company board. 

Now, we had just heard — with data and charts and circles and arrows — that this was not the case. That there is "some doubt". That "it depends". Typical BBC, the presenter did not push back. 

This second woman said that she was on a company board herself and felt she had added value partly because she was a woman, as women have different perspectives. 

I reckon that's true — that is, that women add economic value to a company, even if "it depends" to some extent. Women do add different perspectives and that's a strength and value in itself. 

But here's the thing: in other contexts if you make the same point — namely that women are different from men and have different perspectives —  you're liable to find yourself in hot water. Because women are the same as men, don't you know. They are not different from men. 

Ask James Damore, author of the famous "Google memo", how he got on suggesting — with data and charts and circles and arrows — that women are somewhat different from men, maybe have somewhat different preferences and somewhat different aspirations in life. How did Damore get on? Answer: he was sacked from Google and roundly condemned by his boss his colleagues and by SJWs of every sex (and none). 

What I'd like to see here is some consistency. 

For me, the consistency would be something like this: women and men are different physically and mentally, but with huge overlaps in the bell curve. 

That used to be a platitude. But if you're still in employment and especially in academia, you better watch out saying that. Could be a tenure buster. 

I can say it 'cause I'm retired. Hah!

“100 years since end of first world war: how Hong Kong celebrated” | SCMP

Hong Kong harbour just before WW1. Kowloon at top. Naval shipyards and
Bowen Street military hospital foreground.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of silence. One minute’s silence to honour the end of the First World War.
Lest We Forget. 

When I turned on ABC Australia's Radio National it just happened to be 11:11 in Australia. 11:11 of our eleventh month.  11,11,11.  Of 1918-2108. 

So, one hundred years since the First World War ended and ABC was honouring a one minutes silence, but with tweety birds. Birdsong the only hint that I was actually connected. 

And then came on two women talking about how they'd made 62,000 silk poppies with bamboo stems that they'd planted in the gardens of the Australian War Memorial. That War Memorial that I remember visiting on my bike in 1958, riding down from nearby Ainslie suburb. 60 years ago. 

It's one red poppy for every Australian soldier killed in the Great War. 

Making Australia a country that lost amongst the most, per capita. New Zealand a bit more. So the ANZACs sacrificed hugely, especially given we are half way around the world. 

My grandfather was lucky not to be one of today's poppies. 

He served in that "Great" War. My grandfather. My mother's father. My children's great grandfather. My grandson Rocky's great-great-grandfather. 

Bruce Anderson from Cambridge, New Zealand. 

He fought in the New Zealand mounted division in Egypt. He was a farmer, so they put him together with horses. So I learned from the Military Museum in Auckland, from the very friendly staff there and their now computerised records. The family lore was that  Bruce had been in Gallipoli. It may be that he was, since most ANZACS who stormed its beaches took off from Egypt.  

Bruce Anderson was wounded and shipped back to New Zealand. Family lore has it that he said "well if that's overseas, I think I'll stop home". 

********

"100 years since end of first world war: how Hong Kong celebrated"

https://sc.mp/icgup

Check out the internal link to the story of the German ship in Hong Kong just before WW1. 

Sent from my iPad

“In Hong Kong, filtered water should flow and plastic bottles should go” | SCMP

Christiano Ronald: Getting rid of bottled water 

My letter re tap water was published in yesterday's Post along with a couple of others making the same point: Hong Kong water is safe to drink from the tap. I've been doing so for over forty years. 

Yet the bottled water industry has got Hong Kongers' thirst firmly in its grip. I can't even get members of my own family to take tap water. 

The Letter:

********

"In Hong Kong, filtered water should flow and plastic bottles should go"
https://sc.mp/l4vof

Sent from my iPad

Broward Brouhaha

Clowning around in Broward county

It's on again in Broward county Florida.
Remember Broward? It was ground zero for the recount of the vote in Bush v Gore 2000.
Now it's ground zero for a couple of consequential midterm elections, for governor and senator.
What's with Broward?
Some are talking of the parallels with 2000, but not making the obvious point.
The obvious point being Greenies' responsibility for that result. Obvious to me anyway. Not, it seems, to the MSM or even the blogosphere, as noone is taking about it.
You remember that 2000 recount was stopped by the Supreme Court on the matter of equal treatment? The court found that there was not a consistent way of counting a vote — what with hanging chads, pregnant chads, poked and prodded chads — so equal treatment required that the vote recounting stop entirely.
Result: W Bush won by 90 votes. The number he'd been in front at the start of the Broward recount.
90 votes. Keep that in mind. [Later: actually 538 votes.  But still, my point remains]
Because here's the thing: there was a third party in the race. Remember Ralph Nader? He stood for the Green Party.
Nader won about 90,000 votes in Florida. (IIRC. I'm not going to Google it because the number is about right and will do for my point.  Later: 97,488 votes).
If Nader had not been in the race pretty much all of those votes would have gone to Gore. Greenies tend Democrat not Republican, if they don't have a Green candidate, I think that's pretty well accepted.
But it didn't need all those votes to go to Gore. It didn't even need 10% (9,000). Or even 1% (900). Just 0.1% of those votes going to Gore would have put Al in the White House.
(Later:  given the corrections above, the figure is more like 0.55%.  But still, makes the point, because closer to 100% would have gone to Gore, from Nader)
So it's pretty clear to me that Nader kept Gore from the White House.
If Nader had not stood, and with President Gore in power, when 9-11 happened, the response would have been, not war with Iraq, but sending Special Forces to Afghanistan to rout Osama BIn Ladin. How do we know this? Because that's what Gore said at the time. And also what made sense.
Imagine the different world we would be in if the US had not invaded Iraq.
That we don't have that different world is down to the Greenies. It's absolutely down to the Greenies. Not that they meant that to happen. But good intentions don't matter. What matters is the actual result in the real world.
It's telling that, to this day, Nader desperately denies that his candidacy had had any effect on Bush v Gore.
He's feelin guilty, innit?!
Cause he did. He did impact world history. And not in a good way.
No doubt about it.

Sent from my iPhone

One divides into two

Me and my teacher, Gao Laoshi, Guilin 2 March 1977.
On our way to Mao's birthplace, Shaoshan, Hunan

When I arrived in China in September 1976, it was to attend what was then known as the Peking Languages Institute, the PLI (北京语言学院) [I don't know what it is now; I can't find it on Google Maps.. yikes!].  

I was being shown around the campus by a young lady, Miss Li, all pigtails and mao suit.  She spoke good English, necessary, as at that stage I had just arrived in China to study Chinese, but knew not a word on that first day.

So, there's Miss Li and me, wandering around the grounds as my introduction to the PLI, in north west Beijing. It was -- then -- quite far out of the centre of Beijing and I asked her why it was so far out. She said, and I quote this pretty accurately from memory because it was so unusual and arresting: "Chairman Mao said 'One divides into two'".  Huh? 

Later I learn it in Chinese:  一分为二  (you can see the "one" at the beginning and the "two" at the end).  And I learned that it was Mao's take on Hegelian dialectics, Mao being, if only in his own estimation, something of a peasant philosopher, though maybe not so "peasanty" (his parents were landlords in his home village of Shaoshan).  

In any case, I didn't quite get Miss Li's point, let alone Mao's and asked her what that meant.  She said that the PLI used to be an institute for the study of the petroleum industry and Mao had decreed -- apparently according to the "one divides into two" philosophy -- that the petroleum institute ought to be as close to the petroleum industry as possible.  Hence on the outskirts of the city. Only later that institute was moved somewhere else and this one was given over to Languages.  One divides into two.

I still wasn't sure that I got it, but I accepted it and we moved on.  But since that time, I've thought how true it is that "one divides into two".  No matter what: man and woman, light and dark, liberal and labor, democrat and republican, dog and cat, sunni and shia.  Take that last one.  An aim of Islam is to make the whole world accept god's last word, that of Muhammad the prophet of Islam.  Even if that were to happen the Sunni Shia split would carry on.  Even if the Sunni killed off all the Shia, there would then be a split withing Sunni to Salafi and Wahhabi.  And if Salafis killed all the Wahhabis the Salafis would split into "early" and "late" Salafi.  And so it goes.

Which is why I'd now add something to the wonderful Ann Althouse's "civility bullshit".  I'd add: "unity bullshit".  There's no such thing. And the only places that try to impose "unity" are totalitarian: fascist or communist.  I'm pleased to say, the late, the great Christopher Hitchens thinks the same (@ 1'20").  

In any case, I tried to find out a picture on Google of young Miss Li, as in a young Ms Li stand-in.  Someone who could stand in for my memory of that Ms Li.  I googled "1970s chinese girls" which comes up with some fun stuff, including Green Girl, which I had not known of before, apparently used to be a must-have bit of kitsch, like flying ducks or garden gnomes.  But really, isn't she lovely??  I love her, anyway. 

The Green Lady

Then I googled "girls in pigtails", because that was the original Ms Li, and one of the images was this one, which could indeed have been Ms Li.  I just wish I'd kept some of the revolutionary posters, so many like this, and now collectors's items:

Miss Li looked kinda like this

And then "China in the seventies" came up with this image, inter alia, and I'd say these are pretty damn typical of all the Chinese I met back then...  And like me, if you see the photo above.

And this is a typical look for the 1970s

And so, finally onto this one below, in which the young lady in the middle is pretty much Ms Li.  She'll do as my Ms Li stand-in.  I'll leave it at that.
Ms Li was a bit older than me in 1976, so she must be in her early seventies now. I wonder where she is.  And if she ever remembers that she tought a young Aussie student his first words of Chinese, which happened to be a Mao take on Hegelian dialectics: yi fen wei er:  一分为二 

Typical 70s.  The lady in the middle is close to "my" Ms Li

The Sleep of Reason produces monsters

I wrote the other day about the harassing of professor Roger Scruton. And how he was being pilloried for statements that are demonstrably true.  Truth is no defence in today's Europe.  See the recent European Court of Human Rights (sic!), which found that statements calling Muhammad a paedophile were a "crime", because they "hurt the feelings" of Muslims.  Not that the statements were false (they aren't), but that they upset the delicate sensitivities of our Muslim co-residents.
And so now with professor Scruton, he gets the Leftist treatement.
The good, the sound Melanie Phillips, tells it hard here, below the fold also.

Hearts and Heads on Immigration

From "March of the migrants poses dilemma for America"

I've often thought the difference between Dems and Reps is that the former are driven by the heart and the latter by the head. Meme or mind. Feelings or Law. 

Take immigration. The heart says "let them all in".  The head says "yes, but only according to the law". 

Dem: Let them all in because if you listen to their stories they're all pitiful and deserving. 

Rep: yes, but. Make it according to the law; it's not that we're against immigrants just that there's a process and they should get in line. 

Lionel Shriver has good points in the article below. The future may not be a straight line from the past. Refugees from the World Wars and from the Soviet Union: that's a past story. The future may well be vast numbers seeking the better life in the West and all at once. And you don't need to be a catastrophist to think that. Just look at trends. And read Shriver's scenario.  

And then which do you count on, heart or head? 

Shriver concludes:

If in the next few decades we're looking at migration on the scale I think we are, we may be required to develop a hard heart, or simply surrender to forces larger than we can control. I'm not sure which is worse.

It's an issue that needs more than the Dems "everything is fine" vs the Reps "everything is crisis". 

In favour of the more conservative view of this (the mind vs the heart) is that the Dems policy leads to dramatic and irreversible changes in society — some good no doubt, an unknown number not so good. Whereas the Reps policy does not, while allowing that some immigration take place on a controlled basis. That ought not be viewed as xenophobic or racist. 

Anyway here's Shriver's article in full, below the fold. 

Sack Roger Scruton over Soros comments, demand Labour MPs |The Guardian

The quote below from this article is supposed to make us think, I think, "oh my goodness what a horrid and Islamophobic thing to say"!".  But it is in fact a true statement. I've written elsewhere about the correlation between the percent Islamic and the civil and political rights of countries.

Here is the quote, referring to a speech Scruton made in 2014:

The lecture, first picked up by the Red Roar website, also argued that the nation-state is a Christian, European construct, which explained why a country such as Pakistan was a "failure". Focusing on Islam, Scruton wrote: "The same is true of many other countries in which Islam is the dominant faith. Even if such countries do function as states, like Pakistan, they are often failures as nations."

Now, it is true that the Peace of Westphalia created nation states in a then Christian Europe. Therefore it is true to say it's a "Christian, European construct...". And it's also true that Islamic states are laggards if not failed states. 

But to The Guardian, this is heresy.  They won't even touch whether it's true or not. We're supposed to yell, in unison, "bigot!"  

“Nikki Haley did well to point out UN hypocrisy” | SCMP | Letter

Well, they didn't run mine of 18 October, but they did run one similar.  Meh... it happens.  When several people write in with similar, they pick one.  Sometimes it's mine, sometimes others like Marian Schneps, here below.  The point is made.

“Why AMC Cinema will not serve unfiltered tap water” | SCMP | Letters

LETTER TO SCMP

AMC cinema needs to get its facts straight. Hong Kong tap water is amongst the safest in the world. It does not need to be filtered as suggested its customer service officer ("Why our AMC cinemas will not serve tap water", 6 November) [1].

It is perfectly safe to be drunk direct from the tap. 

This is not just the view of our own WSD or of the World Health Organisation[2].

When I worked in the Australian Consulate we tested Hong Kong water as part of due diligence for staff welfare. It passed Australia's highest standards.

It is now common practice in Australia to provide a bottle of tap water at all tables. It has become part of the culture, as it has long been in the United States and Europe. 

Surely in Hong Kong we ought to be going down that path rather than encouraging the greater use of water in plastic bottles. 

It's time the Hong Kong government stepped up to promote our safest resource — clean, fresh and healthy tap water. 

And, AMC, if the customer wants tap water give them tap water!

P f. Etc 

********

[1] "Why AMC Cinema will not serve unfiltered tap water". https://sc.mp/xdklk

[2] http://www.chinawaterrisk.org/resources/analysis-reviews/8-things-you-should-know-about-hong-kong-water/

The Muslims Are Coming | NYT | Wajahat Ali

"The Muslims are coming", Wajahat Ali in the New York Times.

Nothing like erecting a good ol' strawman in your first para, so you can spend the rest of the article tearing it down.

Here's Wajahat Ali's man of straw: "… some Americans… holding on to the ridiculous belief that the world's 1.8 billion Muslims hate America…".

Of course it's ridiculous.  Because it's not true.  Not even the most rabid critic of Islam would claim that all its votaries hate the United States.  

So then it's all too easy for Ali to knock it down and spend the rest of the article telling us of various good Muslims, "proud Americans" all, who are vying for political office in upcoming mid-terms.

Of course they're all "proud Americans"; that's a given in US politics, and anyone not mouthing this platitude won't get to the starting line.

And of course they're all nice people. 

But to compare them with Kennedy?  A president who "happened to be Catholic"?  So these are politicians "who happen to be Muslim". Well, I for one, an atheist, don't fear Catholics, because I'm not an attending choir boy.  But I do fear Islam, because it is an assertive and supremacist ideology.  Unlike Catholicism, it seeks suzerainty over non-Muslims.  There are enough examples in history and around the world to make it superfluous to repeat them here.

It may be, and I'll even stipulate, that all the Muslim politicians Ali mentions are fine people, secular and democratic-minded in outlook.  But their faith, the ideology of the faith to which they openly and proudly adhere, is most assuredly not.

It's the case that there's a direct correlation between increase in the percentage in the number of Muslims in a country and the decline in freedoms.  See here.

One cannot find any country in which the increase in Islam, in which Islamisation, has been a benefit.  If there is one, please tell me.  

So, I cannot be a cheer leader to the increasing number of Muslims in politics.  It doesn't bode well.

Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN | The Guardian

This is the sort of hyperbolic nonsense that makes so many people turn off the main message of the environmentalists.  The main message being that we need to look after our world better. Absolutely. 

But "we're doomed!" ?  No, we're not. 

I'm old enough to remember the Club of Rome. Predictions of global food shortages.  Doom and death. 

Just before we had the surge in food production. 

I'm old enough to remember "peak oil". Didn't happen. 

Every few years we're told we only have two years.  Or doom.

And now we're supposed to buy the "fact" that we'll all die out if we don't overthrow capitalism in the next two years.  

And from the UN?  Which has the worst, simply the worst, record of prediction on just about anything, including on climate.

No tx fellas. Not buyin' gottedammerung today. 

"Lawdy! Mr Trump's rhetoric makes me faint!"

But to Dems if Republicans reply like this it's "Whatboutism", e.g. courtesy of the crazy Krugman.  (He's a Nobel laureate, but then again so was Yasser Arafat….)

Whaboutism is a more common or garden way of saying the "tu quoque" fallacy. That when you criticise someone for being a murderer, the tu quoque person will say "oh yeah, well you're a pickpocket".  You can see how the lesser crime, while still a crime, doesn't mitigate the greater crime. 

But it — whataboutery, tu quoque — is valid when the two crimes are about the same.  So, one hammering the other is hypocritical.  And that's just calling it out, like the cartoon above.  The Dems are out and out hypocritical to carry on about T's rhetoric.  The cartoon even missed out some key Dem crimes, like the Rep senators nearly killed in a mass shooting last year, because a Dem shooter worried about Health care, which Bernie Sanders had been banging on about.

Ben Shapiro says neither side should be blamed for violence done by mad people.  And that both sided need to ratchet down the rhetoric.

Agree.

“Don’t count on a Democratic Congress to soften Trump on China” | SCMP | David Shambaugh

This is David Shambaugh of George Washington U saying that if China hopes for softer treatment from the US if the Dems win the House next week, Beijing had better think again because the current anti-China stance is bipartisan.  (Don't count on a Democratic Congress to soften Trump on China).  And that feeling has been growing since well before Trump.
I don't know about that, but will give Shambaugh's view some weight since he's right there in the centre of the capital.
I don't know Shambaugh, but some of the commenters do and seem to think he's a bit of an anti-China blowhard.
As usual for the Post the comments are vitriolically anti-American. Viciously so sometimes. I suspect that some commenters are Beijing stooges. We know that Beijing deploys an army of actual real people to police the internet within China, to influence discussion boards or shut them down. Why wouldn't they have some goons doing the same to the premier English language daily in Asia?
So I'd rather give a bit more weight to the article and treat the comments with a slab of salt.
Snip:

It is very unlikely that the election outcome will appreciably change the hardline China policy. The reason is because there now exists a quite strong bipartisan consensus for pursuing a toughened China policy.

“Australians Must Reject a Nationalist Push Into Our Universities” | NYT

Visigoths attack Rome

LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES:

Sydney University Lecturer David Brophy is upset that a conservative body wants to donate money to his university.  To fund "Western Civilisation" courses.  Horror!

He concludes his piece:

For universities to fulfill the critical role they were designed for, it's essential that they not simply serve as conduits for the viewpoints espoused by the loudest or wealthiest voices in the wider society. The values of pluralism and diversity that all Australian universities profess to represent shouldn't be reduced to mere advertising slogans — they're prerequisites for the participatory intellectual climate in which scholarly work thrives. It's time for our universities to live up to these promises and to reject Ramsay. [my emphases].

So, let me get this straight. To increase diversity one must reduce diversity. 

("... reject Ramsay")*

Rewriting his first sentence above, I could say this: 

".. it's essential that universities not simply serve as conduits for viewpoints espoused by the loudest and most numerous voices in the university". 

For consider: 85% of academics in the Australian academy are left of centre. Conservatives are a threatened species despite being about half of the wider community.

Yet Brophy and his ilk want to shut down even that minority voice?!  

They want it banned from the academy specifically because it does not comport with their fine leftist sensibilities. 

Brophy says this explicitly, so I'm not reading his mind. Just as SydneyU tried recently to ban the thoughts of feminist icon Bettina Arndt because they disagreed with her views. 

Shame on Lecturer Brophy and his supporters and shame on the New York Times for its ongoing shift to the Ctrl+Left. 

Pf, etc

********

ADDED: note the ""Must" in the headline. Always the way with the controlling left. People "must" kneel before their betters. 

*"Reject Ramsey", Bringing to mind, of course, the famous scene in The Life of Brian.... "release Roger", pronounced by by Biggus Dikkus as "welease wodger"...

The article ($):

"Politicians and activists are shaping nationalist sentiment into pride in artificial and ahistoric notions of civilisation". Read More...

“How China’s blatant IP theft, long overlooked by US, sparked trade war” | SCMP

This is a really good article. Explaining the frustration of China's trading partners to its consistent and long-standing breaches of agreed deals under the World Trade Organisation. American president after president has called it out and then done nothing. Until Trump. Mind, I don't think the action he's taking makes much sense (why pull out of the TPP?) and so think many other observers. But it's something. And whether that something turns out to be better or worse than doing nothing still remains to be seen. I'm betting something ok will come out of it. Not all that Trump wants, but more than the usual platitudes of "win-win" which usually means China wins and China wins. In short I'm guessing that China will have to do something concrete about its predatory mercantilist practices. And if that's so it will have been worth it. 

Another six months to a year I'd guess. 

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How China's blatant IP theft, long overlooked by US, sparked trade war