Michael Rocks ! “They don’t really care about us"

Click above for the video. Super

Reminded of the wonders of Michael Jackson by Dom Lucre’s tweet below. An anthem for the dispossessed. And the feelings of many

	Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives ⁦‪@dom_lucre‬⁩ Happy Belated Birthday to Michael Jackson, he was also an enemy of the media and was slandered the way we are now. Look at the symbolism in this performance. The entire world is fighting the fight that he was right now. pic.twitter.com/6SV84E4tQ1   31/8/2023, 12:43 am

“What are we going to do about pretty boy?” | Nasty words about Warren Mundine

I reacquainted myself with Warren Mundine through the “Voice” Referendum Campaign in Australia. A referendum to give a Voice to indigenous Australians via a change to the Constitution. Vote now set for October 14. Warren speaks for the No campaign. I have no view, and can’t even vote, despite being Australian, as I’ve lived too long in Hong Kong. 

But I've followed the campaign with interest. Concluding that it’s a very consequential referendum. If the outcome is Yes, the Constitution is going to be amended in ways that will affect Australia for ever. 

There’s vast sums of money on the side of the “Yes” campaign, from the government, industry, media, banking. There’s very little on the “No” side, Warren being one. The other high profile No campaigner, Jacinta Price. 

The Yes campaign is that it’s not a big change and that it will bring people together and help reconciliation. 

The No campaign is that there’s already plenty of representation by the Indigenous community and lots of money spent: best to get to know HOW it’s been spent, and WHY it hasn’t done much. And then HOW can it be better spent. 

“How have they spent the money?”, ask Warren and Jacinta, given over $A 30 Billion per year is spent. With very little positive result. 

That’s another way of saying/suggesting that there’s a degree of ... hmmm.. corruption. Noel Pearson in his Cape York Leadership program has been given $500 million for 3,500 people. Yet not a single measure of welfare has increased. Where has that money gone? They suggest, the No-sayers, that more money in Canberra, in the hands of activitists, is not going to help. Not to mention, they remind us, that it’s a racist proposal. A separate Voice, housed in Parliament House, with membership based solely on race. Racist, how not?

One of the problems is summed up in the headline above: “What are we going to do about pretty boy?”. Said by members of the aboriginal community when Warren changed from Labor to Liberal party. How can an aboriginal be a conservative? And even having a job was seen as selling out:

"On many occasions, we had to leave certain drinking establishments because we were tagged Uncle Toms and uptown niggers for daring to have a bloody job. We understood why people were saying it, but it did hurt.” [Ref]

That’s a real problem. And Warren is against it. And he’s right. He’s right to fight for aboriginal self reliance, getting jobs, moving to the cities. None of which is helped by the Voice. Which he sees as just one more bureaucracy in Canberra, with heaps of money, for the activists. 

One of the biggest reasons for poor aboriginal health is living remote communities. Where I have friends who’ve lived with and worked beside and doctored to, the Indigenous, but when I ask “what’s to be done?” answer “I don’t know". Warren answers: Get with modern Australia. Give up on the “mythical, noble-savege ideal”: 

Aboriginal people needed to embrace private ownership and enterprise, as his parents had done. .... In 2005, he was awarded a medal by the conservative Bennelong Society and used the occasion to hit out at those who sought to preserve "a mythical, noble-savage ideal of indigenous Australia”. [Ref]

And he’s also pro-nuclear. That’s thinking clearly. That’s thinking independently. That’s thinking Science. 

What a man!

Calling out hypocrisy: Greg Foreman is getting better and better. Watch a Black Conservative Perspective

 

Click above for video

Woooey! Greg Foreman is good. And getting better. You don’t have to like what he says, but surely it’s important to know what large swathes of the country are thinking. The Black vote. Including the Black conservative vote, which is increasing.  You don’t want to be surprised at an election outcome, because you were in a bubble. 

He’s also done some fun vids of how The Hood reacted to Trump’s indictment: “The more you indict, the more we unite!”. “You Good in the Hood, Don!”. 

While Rachel Maddow goes insane. Never forget: she served up the Russia Collusion hoax every day for four years. Greg: The danger is fascism on the Left. Democrats being the forever party. Like PAP in Singapore or the LDP in Japan. Forever parties. The danger is real. If they do indeed go ahead with trying to wipe Trump out via the 14th Amendment. Crazy stuff we live with now. 

“Believe the Science”… until you don’t like the science. Radioactive stupidity in Hong Kong

What many don’t know is there’s a natural amount of background radiation no matter where you are.

Note the article above: discharge as per Fukushima has been going in all over for many years. At below natural radiation levels and with approval of both the United Nations and the WHO.

Article online here.

CSI Hong Kong

Cochrane Review the latest scientific institution ruined by COVID ideology | The Mask study

Oh dear… masks again. As hints abound in the US that they want to reinstate Covid mandates. Because of some variant that’s apparently more transmissible than Omicron but also not more deadly. So … WTF? And. So we have to get back into the whole masks issue, again.  Where it’s “believe the science” until you don’t like the science. Science… until it confounds the narrative. 

Sigh…

From a recent article on the Cochrane report, which concluded not much effect of masking at a population level. Which should have been the final word, but wasn’t. The sum of which was: If you want to wear an N95 mask, fine. Just don’t mandate it for the population. (There are common sense obvious reasons, when you think about it, why masks, properly and tightly fitted, work on a lab-test mannequin, but not in a crowd of people, wearing masks every which way).

Snip:

Many people have been led to believe that the Cochrane study has been "debunked" or "retracted," but neither is the case. The sole purpose of the note attached to the study is to create the impression that it has been retracted while it has not. The research stands; the political impression is the opposite, as intended.

To give you an idea how slapdash the editor's response was, consider this: Soares-Weiser got an email from the New York Times and hastily responded, undermining the scientists–without even making an attempt to speak with them. She implied that the study was wrong without even seeking comment from the people who did the study, on a subject with which she was utterly unfamiliar.

This is science in the modern world. [More…]

"White supremacy" killings: the figures

Talking of the Florida killings: three Black men by a racist white man, with Nazi tattoos (a”lowlife” Florida governor Ron De Santis called him, accurately, surely), ABC’s Chuck Todd asks GOP Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy why all the “White Supremacy", assuming that White Supremacy is a given. That it’s inarguably the biggest threat to America, as Joe Biden has repeatedly told us. “The gravest danger to the Homeland is White Supremacy”, goes the line. After every time there’s a killing of Blacks by a white man.

But the figures tell a different story and have done so for as long as America has kept data. From the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division (above):

• Blacks killing whites = 566 out of 3299 = 17%
• Whites killing Blacks = 246 out of 2906 = 8%

So, a bit over double. The discrepancy is greater when adjusted for relative percent of the US population: Blacks 13%, white 67%. Which gives a ratio of 11:1 for Blacks killing whites, vs whites killing Blacks.

I’m only making this point because the refrain is constantly the opposite. The opposite, that is, of what the data tell us. Could we just report all killings? Or none? Just not selectively. 

A similar rusted-on perception is about police killings of unarmed Blacks. Common perception: it’s in the thousands. Actual number: under 100/year. 

How can pushing all these wrong things help American society? 

Bird song and dance

First, let’s align ourselves.

We’re on Lantau island to the west of Hong Kong island, still part of the territory. Part of the the Other system of the One country.

Our house, seen from a drone, is a thick “I”. Aligned north and south. To our East is Hong Kong Island the South China Sea, the Philippines, the Pacific Ocean, British Columbia, California. To our North and West is China. The Mainland. Our mother. Our sovereign. 

I’m sitting in our lounge listening to Jing play Chopin on her beautiful  Bösendorfer Grand.

I hear a cacophony of birds next door. Sounds like they’re delighting in life, chirruping their love of our dear planet.

I wait for a break in Jing’s practice, and say “listen to the birds having a wow of a time”. 

We go out to watch and listen. We see they’re fighting, not dancing. They’re squabbling over something terribly important to them. Their whole life and focus taken up with squawking and spitting and shrilling as they do.

And it makes me think how we all are in our bubbles. We humans and our deep-dish haggles, births, marriages, elections and wars. We think them all so important. 

We think during the battle that that’s all there is to the world. That’s all there is to life. But we’re just like the birds. Obsessed. Yelling, screaming, for our rights. For me. For me. Squawking and Skittering. 

Xena China Sea Race Hong Kong to Philippines 2014

With Celine Xu, on-board reporter for China Daily 

Wangarra Nature Reserve, Victoria, June 2017

Mutti (96) taken by me, on our Oz road trip 

Exciting! Bronze Age collection to come to Hong Kong

This should be a fabulous collection. Entirely new, (3,800 year old!) artefacts, never before seen outside China, to come to the Palace Museum here in Hong Kong at the end of September. Just in time for us to take my sister and husband for a visit.

5 Daddies, 2 Mummies, 7 Babies: Swim class at Club Siena

 

Shot from the gym, right by our place, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. 

Cute, right?

So, who won the debate? And how did my summary do?

Click above for the video of Nate the Lawyer

Nate the Lawyer, above, looks at the first Republican Primary debate, from Left (CNN, MSNBC) to Right (Fox, Newsmax). Interesting differences, even within camps. No overall (unqualified) winner.

Another good analysis is at National Review.  Which were a bit more like my hot take.

Compared to my hot take, I give myself a middling to not bad score. Maybe C+.

Most agree with me that Nicky Hailey and Mike Pence did better than expected. Generally agreed that Ron De Santis didn’t win didn’t lose. 

The main areas that I’m different: many/most of the media thought Vivek Ramaswami won. And that Tim Scott lost. I thought the opposite. Even I’ve liked Vivek for a long time; maybe why I downgraded him. Others were seeing him for the first time and found him invigorating. Which he is. He’ll be happy, I’d guess. Though here’s a thing: he increased his Positives. And also increased his Negatives by more than his Positives. So net/net, his negative score increased. 

Some say Trump won by not being there. 

More to come.  Ancora c’e da fare. 

Bari Weiss at the Free Press. 

Instant icon. CNN tortured

Mug shot ➜ Mug Meme ➜ Mug

And CNN are tortured. Pained that Trump isn’t “treating it seriously enough”, when he has merch made. Making fun of an indictment which is clearly political. How dare he?

His Mug says “Never Surrender”. I’ve ordered one. How can one not? So historic. If crazy and dangerous. And not good for the Republic. 

Merch happened, like, straight away. I ordered a mug, for the history of it.  Two minutes after the mug shot appeared. They were ready!

ADDED: Babylon Bee: “Trump indicted again for looking too stunningly handsome in his mug shot"

“Carmakers must steel themselves to address carbon emissions in supply chains” | Wenjie Liu, SCMP

Couple of things here: 

• (1) BEVs use more aluminium than steel, compared with ICE vehicles. Aluminium uses even more electricity to make than steel. Green or not depends on how the electricity is generated. 
• (2) Making steel via electric arc furnace is still difficult and expensive. 
• (3) writer ignores all the other rare and difficult-to-mine products in BEVs and their batteries, like cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium etc. 
• (4) Today BEVs don't become "carbon neutral" vs an ICE car until about 70,000 miles driven (VW and Volvo studies). 
  

Greenprace should stay out of this climate debate, given they scared the world away from safe, clean and reliable nuclear power the 1960s. That act alone has measurably increased CO2 emissions globally. We are better off without GreenPeace.

Trump Stare

 

“A growing force” | David Dodwell

This is pretty gross. BRICS. The gang of looters, villains and scoundrels just got bigger, and David Dodwell sees it as "a voice of hope”? 

Adding Iran and Saudi Arabia, to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

A kleptocracy (Brazil), a Marxist dictatorship (China), a theocracy (Saudi), a Jew-hating would-be genocidist (Iran), and a revanchist military state (Russia), club together and that's the "hope" of the world. 

ADDED: Just had a look at the UNDP Human Development Report and the BRICS present and future, take bottom positions on the table. FWIW

Bill Maher talks to Vivek Ramaswami, fireworks ensue

Click above for video

Bill Maher, a man of the left, also a critic of the crazy Left, talks to Vivek Ramaswami, Republican presidential candidate and it’s critiqued by Greg Foreman from a Black Conservative Perspective. 

Some of what’s best about American politics. People with firmly held views, duking it out.

ADDED: what upsets Bill about Trump is the whole disturbance to the “peaceful transfer of power” thing. I wonder if he knows of the amount election denial on the Dems side, all the videos out there of Dems saying that Donald Trump was “illegitimate”, and so on. And if he does know about them and says something like “it’s different with Trump”, the response is “no it’s not”. Not according to Dershowitz, prime legal scholar of this issue, and knowing more about it than Bill. It’s the case, it seems, that he has to believe the narrative, that Trump “impeded the peaceful transfer of power”. And he demands that Ramaswami believe it too. Which Ramaswami pushes back on, without getting into details. 

ADDED (ii): Maher also gets wrong the Russian Collusion hoax. He seems still to believe it. Despite Mueller an Durham reports. Which, opposite of what he says, were not “Republican” reports, but almost exclusively staffed and run by Democrat operatives. And still the conclusions was that there was “no collusion between the Trump team and Russia”. Bringing up the Papadopoulsos meeting with Alexander Downer in London as some sort of proof of collusion is nonsense, as all investigations into it have shown. It’s a hard one to kill, that “Russian collusion”! As hard as getting Dems to accept that their own, Hillary, Carter, Obama, consistently denied the legitimacy of the 2016 election. Hmm...

Who “won” the first Republican Primary debate?

Or rather who did best?

I watched it all on Rumble, the YouTube for folks that don’t like censorship. 

Somehow Rumble got the exclusive rights to stream the debate. On cable, it was with Fox. Which we no longer have in Hong Kong, and we don’t bother to stream.

Below my hot take before watching any of the pundits.

First Trump didn’t bother to show up. He’s so far in front, in the primary polls that it was beneath him, I presume. 

I don’t think the rest of the candidates laid a glove on Trump, in his absence. They should have. Cause he’s a loser. He lost the 2020 presidential, including losing the Senate because of his idiotic hissy fit, telling Reps not to bother voting in the Georgia Senate race; he lost the 2022 midterms for the Reps, by his poor choice of candidates to endorse; and is now under four indictments, three of which are completely unnecessary, as he brought them on himself. 

Not to say that the Dems are not overreaching and prosecuting shameless partisan law-fare on Trump, because they most surely are, but that’s another issue. Trump is a loser and should have been hammered in this debate. He wasn’t. Trump was not even in the debate, yet didn’t suffer, at least at the hands of these milquetoasts.

The winners, according to me. 

Note: These have no relationship to those that I think should be the Republican Presidential candidate. Which IMO ought to be one of: Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott or Vivek Ramaswami. A Latino, a Black or an Indian-American. That’s the depth and diversity of the Republican bench!

Still, this is who I feel did best:

Mike Pence: Trump’s VP. And Mr Boring. But came out swinging, powerful, clear, forceful. Definitely performed beyond expectations. Mine, at least. 

Nicky Hailey: She was clear, forceful, fought back when attacked. Said strong stuff about actually getting things done, like a Federal law on abortion, post the overthrow of Roe v Wade, and also on the Ukraine war. She lingers in the memory after this debate. Where before she hadn’t made any impression. On me, at least. 

Tim Scott: I’m going to say that he performed as I’d seen him perform before, in that he’s a powerful eloquent voice for working hard and making your own success: born dirt poor, of a poor single mum, nothing handed to him, but made it to community college, started and sold a successful business and is now a Federal Senator. That’s quite a resumé. A powerful message of non-victimhood and he got that across well in this debate. At least according to me. 

That’s it for the winners. I’ll give all three a B-plus. 

Now for the ones that underperformed: 

Ron DeSantis was pretty much as we’ve seen him before. Steady, resolute, solid, dependable. But nothing out of the box. He gets a steady C from me. Which is my definition of underperforming. Because he had to do better, to break through to the top. To get near Trump.

Vivek Ramaswami: I’ve really liked what he’s been doing on the campaign trail, but I don’t think he gave us the best he can be. And he came across as sometimes crazy: like his “kill the Deep State” ideas. The other candidates really hit him hard, like he’s the main danger, especially Chris Christy, and Vivek didn’t take it well. Didn’t handle it as well as I’ve seen him do in the many appearances on podcasts and on cable, including in “enemy” territory, like CNN and MSNBC. He was on The Breakfast Club pod, very left wing, and did well. Killed them. Not here, not this time. He gets a C-minus from me. 

Chris Christy: what to say? Nothing much. He’s supposed to be the Trump-killer, but no verbal homicide in this debate. He’s the B-minus bluster-blubber.

The two others there, I can barely recall. Asa Hutchison, ex (I think) Governor of Arizona (I think) only said stuff, mainly about Trump, which got the crowd booing. Rightly so, as he supported all the indictments, which to many-most Republicans, and to us here in this Hong Kong household, are clear cases of unequal treatment under the Law, no matter how much one might bleat “no one is above the law”. Right. Except Hillary (her emails), Joe (Ukraine, China, Romania, etc, etc...). 

And there was another dude, a Governor, of somewhere mid western, I didn't catch, but was big bundle of nothing. Nothing I recall, anyway, ‘cept for something he said that the crowd really, really didn’t like. So I’m hoping he and Asa will go the way of the wisp. D-s to both. 

There we have it from me. I wonder how the pundits see it. No doubt different from me. Then, that’s what they’re paid for. And many of them real smart cookies. And I’m just a fat old Aussie dude here in Hong Kong. What do I know?

Except this: that at the end of these primary performances, it’s going to be like they say about Germany v England in the Football (Soccer): play for 90 minutes and Germany wins on penalties. That’s how it goes. And with these Republican primaries it’s: you have the debates, and at the end Trump is the winner. 

Sigh... and CYA!

ADDED: It was a pretty spicy debate! Fun to watch. Quick moving. The moderators (Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier) kept it pretty much under control, but also let it flow when needed. I thought, while watching: the best of democracy, the best of what the US does, open, transparent, even if -- of course! -- we don’t get to hear any detail, almost don’t get to hear any policy at all. But we do get to see how the would-be president of a great democracy handles themself, under tough questioning, in front of a large crowd. That takes some gall, and also takes high performative skills. 

Richard Dawkins’ post on X, re the Trans debate

 How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?

I was about to start work on this commission, when in came an email from Twitter. They’d received a complaint that the following tweet violated their standards.

“Sex is not the same as gender.” But it’s not your gender that gives you the physique to tower over woman athletes & break their swimming records. It’s your sex. It’s not your undressed gender that upsets women in changing rooms. It’s your sex. You can’t eat your cake & have it.

Twitter sensibly over-ruled the complaint and cleared me of the proscribed sins that they helpfully listed for me:

“Climate refugees” or just “refugees”?

The figures quoted above are wildly exaggerated. At least according to the UNHCR, hardly a right-wing bastion. Which says the number of “climate refugees" is 21 million since 2008 vs 350 million plus quoted by the two immigration lawyers above. Immigration lawyers support immigration. Dog bites man. Also: who says they’re *climate* refugees, as opposed to just plain old refugees, as we’ve always had, just more recently for a host of reasons, maybe none of which has to do with climate, but more with iPhones, social media and ease of movement?

Over decades people have been displaced by natural disasters. They move inland for a typhoon. And come back when it’s passed. Move for a flood. Come back when it recedes.

Historically impact on mortality of natural disasters has dropped 98% since 1920. So there’s that.

Economic damage from natural disasters has been on downward trend too.

The IPCC “estimate” of number of “climate refugees” is based on RCP 8.5 which is the worst case and is no longer being used even by the IPCC itself. These two immigration lawyers continuing to use it is misinformation. 

Polls of actual, real, in-person refugees, asking them why they came to, eg, the U.K., the answers are “for a better life”. Not “because of climate change”.

The German population did not “welcome the refugees”. Not even the majority. Hence the growth of AfD.

Throughout Europe around 75% of people are against illegal immigration. 

Charlamagne Tha God, The Breakfast Club and Larry Elder

My earlier post on The Breakfast Club and Larry Elder.

The Breakfast Club is a group of left wing podcasters, Black-centred, led by Charlamagne Tha God. 

I first heard of Charlamagne when Biden went on his Pod last year. And said the now infamous: “If you’re Black and you don’t vote Democrat, you ain’t Black!”. Which Larry pushes back to Charlamagne when asked a question: “Have you ever had a N-word Wake-Up Call?”.

Recently the Breakfast Club had the conservative candidate for president, Larry Elder on the show. And he really gave them what for. I reported it here. 

Since then, heaps of Vids clipping the show. Most from Black folks. Most support Larry. Most really against “the woman”, aka Tezlyn Figaro. Who really is a piece of work! As Larry says “Oh Boy..”.

Here’s some of them: 

• Larry Elder humiliates Charlamagne Tha God
• Larry Elder appears on The Breakfast Club
• Black Liberal Wasn’t Ready
• Larry Elder Went Off!
• Larry Elder mopped the floor with Charlamagne
• Larry Elder Shuts Down The Breakfast Club
• Larry Elder DESTROYS the Breakfast Club!
• They pissed me off! Larry Elders DESTROYS... “Black Victim Mentality”
• Larry Elder DESTROYS Charlamagne Tha God on Breakfast Club

Phew! That’s just some that were sent to my YouTube algorithm! Just cause I watched the original post from The Breakfast Club. All on Elder’s side. And all hating on “that woman”, aka Tezlyn Figaro. 

I hate the way Figaro keeps referring to Elder as “Sir” or “Mr Elder”. Supposed to be “respectful” I guess. But the opposite. Comes across as very disrespectful, at least passive aggressive. 

China banning Teslas!

Click above for the video 

From “Serpentza” a South African guy who’s lived a long time in China, speaks Chinese, etc. 

Tells us the story of why Teslas are being banned in some places in China. In short: it’s to do with the potential for spying, as the Chinese see it, near their military bases. 

We ought have the same concern about Tik Tok. And China's electric cars sold in the US: Xpeng, BYD, etc. Until something is worked out. It’s the old principle of reciprocity. 

Cinematic Zoom

	Figen ⁦‪@TheFigen_‬⁩ Cinematic zoom. pic.twitter.com/ehPD76whsu   23/8/2023, 9:02 pm

Ayymayyziinng!

It’s time the killing of young people stopped: Ukraine war must be stopped

Click above for the video

Look at the bloodthirsty wording in the New York Times article above. Amazing. What do they want? The killing fields of WWI trench warfare? Where the sons killed are Ukrainian sons? Not the brave reporters on the New York Crimes! Oh, no! It’s the Ukrainians who are “casualty averse”. Shame on the NYT.

I’m finding it harder to ignore the evidence that the war in Ukraine is supported by the US because of its military industrial complex, because of business, the business of war, selling -- via the US government -- old weapons to Ukraine, trying out new weapons on the youth in other countries, degrading the military of Russia. Nothing to do with any particular principle. 

This war could have been over in the first months, but Biden sent Boris to Kiev to say, no, not yet, matey. We’re not finished offering your youth up to the entrenched Russkies. Stay in there a while longer. And we’ll make sure to keep the Ukrainian flag on our Twitter profiles. 

Glenn Greenwald so worth following. 

“Quest by China to revamp image now more important than ever” | Shi Jingtao

Check out the hi-lighted paras. Trenchant criticism of China and Xi Jinping. 

You don't get "soft power" from the centre down. Especially when the centre is the Communist Party of China.

Meantime China is at a summit of the BRICS. Has there been a bigger gang of villains and scoundrels? With Iran and Saudi Arabia in the wings to join. Really. This is Xi Jinping's concept of a "force for good"…. Heh.

For the sake of balance: An argument *against* the Lab Leak Theory | Quillette

 The Lab-Leak Illusion

The laboratory accident hypothesis of COVID-19’s origins is a bust, but the popular consensus is unwilling to accept it.

Here. And be sure to read the comments. 

My own quick comment is: that I read the leaks of the internal emails from the Wuhan Lab and I read them in the original Chinese, and I don’t share the author’s “nothing to see here” conclusion. I thought they could easily be read as showing deep concern about something having gone awry.

For the record, I’m one of those that thinks the balance of probabilities is that the cause of the Covid pandemic as a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There’s no final proof, just a balance of probabilities. I’m not the only one. 

Eric Weinstein claps back. This is not an issue of one or the other, but of open minds on what the origin could have been, which was not allowed by the prevailing narrative. 

I don’t think you are getting it here Claire. Many of us have never thought this was proven either to be Zoonotic or Lab authored. There is only one thing of which I am totally certain as a STEM PhD: the laboratory hypothesis was never “a bust” or “racism” or “a tin foil hat conspiracy theory” etc. when it was raised. That is what the fuss is about. Why did our institutions treat the **scientific** imperative to consider *all* viable hypotheses without bias as anti-science, pseudo-science, nuttery, or bigotry???? And why are you joining this movement to make those who want this answered look like they are acting bizarrely?? The bizarreness and pseudoscience started from the instant imperative not to consider the laboratory. And all that came from the institutions who all knew better. 100%.

In the annals of “you won’t see this on CNN”: Alan Dershowitz roasts Laurence Tribe

Click above to see video 

Two octogenarian law profs, practicing 60+ years. Alan Dershowitz challenges Laurence Tribe to a debate.Tribe hides. Goes on CNN instead. 

Dershowitz is a lifetime classic liberal, always voted Democrat and wants the opportunity to vote against Trump again. Stands on the side, not of one party or the other, but on the side of the Constitution. For that he’s been roasted by his erstwhile friends and colleagues. Dershowitz now Roasts Tribe as “unconstitutional” by pushing to rule Trump out of the 2024 election. I mean, even before the election.

Dershowitz has paid dearly for his principled stand. For that he’s one of the few worth listening to. 

I see somewhere that Gavin Newsome, the oleaginous Governor of California, has put a Bill to the State House to ban Trump from campaigning in California. If true… bad. Bad for America. Bad for society. Bad for politics . For the reasons Dershowitz lays out above. Unconstitutionally. And then any state could do it, to any candidate. Texas to Biden? Hell, yeah! If Newsome goes ahead, hell yeah. Then it’s gloves off and no good comes of it. You can’t stop Mutually Assured Destruction.  Mad …

“For sake of economy, China must stop using capital as a dirty word” | Zhou Xin

Going down the bits I’ve highlighted above: 

Karl Marx defines “Capital” as “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. Elsewhere, he and Engles, in The Communist Manifesto, call for 

• The end of private property
• State confiscation of all property
• Extinguishing (ie murdering) the bourgeoisie
• Abolishing the nuclear family
• Nationalising all industry and “means of production”
• Nationalising all credit, transport and communications

It’s all there, plain and in the open. What a horrid ideology! Which has ended in disaster and pyres of bodies everywhere it’s been tried. But Gen Z, young people? Fully 60%, want Socialism (aka Communism, or commie lite, if you must) in the US!  Because they haven’t been taught communism’s murderous history. Which I saw first hand when I went to China in 1976.

"The old Chinese joke": you tell your god-son over and over, he’s your son; you don’t have to keep telling your actual son that he’s your son. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” => “The Party doth reassure too much, methinks!” The Communist Party constantly telling private entrepreneurs that they needn’t worry... makes them worry!

"China’s growth in the last 40 years". I’ve said a million times, China has grown its economy in exact proportion to the extent to which Beijing allowed the spread of private enterprise. Zhou Xin: “China’s economic miracle over the last forty years is a historic process of liberating growth potential …”.

The “debt-fuelled model” based on State Owned Enterprises is inefficient and wasteful. Amen.

"Time for China to stop treating capital as a dirty word". Yeah, but nah. Not going to happen. Not under Xi Jinping.

Ithaca: “Hope That the Road Is a Long One” | Constantine Cavafy

Mine, my road, is 73 years long. Has wound through each of the seven continents on this Earth.

At this age I perceive the road's end on a misty horizon, dropping over the pridecoloured-cloudy edge, quietly, like a Greek lateen-rig disappearing hull first, mast last…

Intimations of mortality.

"Ithaca". A wonderful poem by Constantine Cavafy read by Douglas Murray.

“The latest Camp David deal is just more US-allied overkill” | Alex Lo

What’s happening to me? Again agreeing with Alex Lo! Am I becoming a Noam Chomsky-ist? An America hater? An anti-globalist?

Well, no, I still love America. BUT… it’s easy to see how non-Americans are put off by this incessant militarism. The military bases everywhere. By some counts 1,200 and more. While China has just one. 

I remember in Subic Bay, Philippines, one time after our yacht race there from Hong Kong. Standing at the hotel check-in, along came a group of American army guys, in uniform. These are big white men. I’m also a big white man. But I felt overwhelmed, intimidated even. How then do the physically smaller and non-white Filipinos feel about them? When they bump into them often. As Japanese must do in Japan with America’s 120 (!) bases. They’re intimidating.

Ref the highlight above, Australia already is “another branch of the Pentagon”. We couldn’t even get America to release Julian Assange to us. They swatted us away like an uppity Pentagon section head. Be gone!

“Students drawn overseas as prospects dim in China” | SCMP

Figures above: 21.4% youth unemployment in China. So, many heading overseas for education. Which includes, for them, learning about other cultures and practices. Good on them. Joining the 8 million who’ve already studied o/s to 2021.

There’s a thing I don’t get. That we keep reading about youth unemployment around the world; and we also keep reading about labour shortages around the world. How to square that circle? Riddle me that.

An interesting comment from a student in the story above: too much political indoctrination in Chinese universities. “They don’t respect my time”, she says. 

As usual, most will go to the US. Australia will receive some of them  Whether or not welcomed in Oz I don’t know. 

In the Annals of: “You won’t see this on CNN” (or MSNBC): Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton project at each other

 

Click above for video

As Jimmy Dore (“stoner comedian” of the Left) says: “The Balls on These Two!”

There’s a clip in the vid above from a video that’s doing the rounds -- but not in progressive media! -- of 10 minutes of Democrats denying election results. 

Hillary and Rachel are projecting: blaming the Republicans for things that they’d done or are doing. They do it a lot!

And watching Rachel Maddow and Hillary Clinton sit there and lie to each other, while nodding along seriously, is quite something. Recalling, again, that Maddow was a prime cheer leader in the Russian Collusion conspiracy, which is now thoroughly debunked via two full Democrat-led investigations (Muller and Durham), awa the Horowitz report into Crossfire Hurricane. All of these, all, completely debunked any Russian collusion or involvement, but Maddow continues, in her $30mpa role, unfazed. Unapologetic. Savaging the other side, for exactly what she and her side actually did. 

Amazing!

For those that say “it’s different with Trump”, no it’s not. It doesn’t matter if he was told my heaps of people that the election was kosher. It doesn’t even matter if he, Trump, is lying about it. All that matters is if they can prove that he thought the election was clean, but went ahead and challenged it anyway. 

Also: the “fake electors”, are aka “Alternative Slate of Electors”. Which are set up any time there’s a contested result. JFK set up an Alternative Slate of Electors for Hawaii in 1960. There are other examples. It’s only now they’re out to Get Trump, that Alternative Slates become known as “Fake Electors”. Really. Funny if not so duplicitous. 

“Rich Men North of Richmond”

Click above for the video 

The splits in America are not so much Left v Right, or Black v White as Rich v Poor. And that’s what Oliver Anthony’s song is about. Greg Foreman talks about it. There’s some silliness around, about it. 

With a moving clip of folks all over the country enjoying the song. People of all classes and colours. 

“Hong Kong freedoms continued to erode in 2022, despite promises, EU says” | Reuters

Yes there were freedom erosions after the National Security Law of 2020. 

Which was brought in reponse to demands by radical firebrands for "Hong Kong independence". Independence was never on the cards and Beijing was always going to react sharply. 

The only evidence Reuters gives for the alleged "continued" erosion is the on going arrests of 2019 independence-pushing rioters. Who now number in the hundreds.

Hong Kong continues to enjoy a large degree of freedom — our "Seven Freedoms”. 

It's also very tempting indeed to compare the jailing of perhaps hundreds of pro-independence protesters in Hong Kong with the US jailing of thousands of "secessionists" protesters from the January 6, 2021 demos/riots. Where they are now seeking 30 year sentences! Nothing like that length here in allegedly repressed Hong Kong. 

 
I mean, it is an equivalence isn't it? One for "independence" one for "secession”. And on that equivalence, the US is doing worse than Hong Kong. 

I say phoooey to Reuters.

Greenwald v Goldman | Burisma v Shokin | Hunter v Devon | And Joe

Click above for video 

Wonderful stuff!

We know the Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin was after Burisma Co, and that Burisma desperately wanted Shokin sacked, because they, Burisma, told us they wanted Shokin sacked. 

Hunter Biden partner Devon Archer did not say what Daniel Goldman told CNN he said — that Burisma had Shokin “under control”.  Archer said the opposite — that Burisma wanted Shokin gone. Which was the case. And that was why Burisma paid Hunter & Co $US 1 million a year. To get his dad, Dear Old Joe, to sack Shokin. Which Joe did. And boasted about it.

As Glenn Greenwald reads from the transcript of Goldman v Archer in the Congressional hearings. 

“ASEAN rises to the challenge as climate change wreaks havoc” | Joy Pereira, SCMP

“Wreaks havoc”: the same sort of catastrophism as I showed in the case of the misinformation on “increased” typhoons “battering” Hong Kong. No such thing.

Maybe we ARE alone

I remember when I first heard of the Drake Equation. Around 1961, when we were living in New York. I read of this “equation”, a way to think about what we need to work out, to estimate the chance of extraterrestrial life out there, specifically intelligent life. 

I don’t recall the exact Drake formula, but the basics of it are simple, why I remember it. Sticking to our Milky Way galaxy for now, as that’s all we can usefully search for ETI:

It goes (something) like this. 

• N = The number of Human-like societies out there in the galaxy, EQUALS
• S = the number of stars in the galaxy, TIMES
• Ss = the proportion of those “S” that are like the Sun, TIMES
• Ps = the proportion of “Ss” that have planetary systems, TIMES
• E = the proportion of “Ps” that have planets like the Earth, TIMES
• G = the proportion of “E” that are in the Goldilocks zone, just close enough to the Ss to have liquid water, TIMES
• T = the proportion of “G” that have a civilisation that has reached Technical level same as ours

And it goes on a bit further, but you get the idea. Also, I’m sure not to have got the formula exactly right, as I’m going on what I recall, but the concept of it is so simple, that I’ve got it more or less right. And the main idea, the main principle, is surely clear. 

What I’ve always thought, and most folks seem to have thought, is that “S”, the number of stars in the universe is so huge that the likely number of “N”, Earth like planets with an advanced civilisation, is also likely to be high. 

HOWEVER, what we’re learning recently is this: that the number of “contingencies” that needed to happen to create an Earth is so great, that the likelihood of another Earth with beings like Homo Sapiens, is so small as to approach zero. 

The contingencies are like: Planet systems like those of our Sol are very rare. An Earth has to be protected by a gas giant like Jupiter, to protect against the bombardment by asteroids. An Earth needs to have a Moon, to create life-making tides. And just the right size and right distance from the Earth. That it turn needs a planet like Theya, to hit the other Earth, at just the right time and in the right way to create a perfect Moon. 

These likelihood of these contingencies have to be multiplied together to get the likelihood of another Earth. Some have calculated each one at a maximum of one in a thousand chance. And they may be much rarer. Say you have six such contingencies and each is one in a thousand chance, you get the likelihood of Another Earth, with Intelligent Life, as one in 10 with 18 zeros or 1x10^18. Less than one in a Qudrillion. That makes it less than the number of stars we know of in the Galaxy, max ~400 billion or 4x10^14. So the chance of Human-like life -- based on the likelihood of contingencies -- is less the number of stars in the Milky Way.

Therefore, goes the current thinking, at least some of the current thinking: the likelihood of another Human-like civilisation in our Galaxy is very unlikely.

I hope not. But there it is. 

“Slightly fewer typhoons of about the same strength” : the ACCURATE (but boring) headline. Instead of which …

This is the actual front-page headline
in the South China Morning Post 

The headline at the very top is what would have been correct. Accurate, but boring. Both by my analysis of past weather records from the Hong Kong Observatory and from the HKO itself. Note, for example, the last line in the HKO letter, below, that its Chief Scientific Officer wrote to the Post, in response to my letter, in which the CSO says our views “are not in conflict”:

The key sentence is “…projected increase in the proportion (not absolute number) of intense tropical cyclones…”

In the original article with the catastrophist headline above they did not say “not absolute number”. Just that there would be a higher proportion of intense tropical cyclones (aka “typhoons”). By which we were clearly invited to assume there would be more. And which gave us the scary front page headline. 

Here’s how that works: say there are 12 tropical cyclones (TC) each year that affect Hong Kong, of which four are intense cyclones (IC) ie typhoons. That’s four in twelve or 33%. If the number of TCs reduces to 10 per year, and the same number of IC, then the proportion, four in ten, increases to 40%. That the only way you get to have a higher proportion without increasing the absolute number. It’s by fewer total TCs. And in this both the HKO and myself are agreed, as Chief Scientist Lee says.  

So: the reality is that we expect slightly fewer TCs and about the same number to be Typhoons. But that has been spun into “Stronger typhoons to batter Hong Kong”. Which at the very least is misleading. If not outright false. Misinformation one might say.

What one book do you think should be read by everyone?

Some answers here 

One getting lots of votes and I agree with: Nineteen Eighty-four

Verbier Switzerland Skiing days 1973

Mont Gelée on the right

We skied all these lovely trails back in 1973. We had a chalet in Verbier that parents rented, they then being at the Oz Embassy in Berne. 

The Breakfast Club: Larry Elder discusses systemic racism, fatherlessness in Black communities and more



Click above for video

Wow! This is an amazing interview with The Breakfast Club, a very liberal-Democrat pod and Larry Elder a Republican candidate for President. 

Good stuff.

Fiery! Spicy!

The lady (Tezlyn Figaro) is a case study in moving the goal posts (like, all the time, every time, in every case), using the “Yes or no” demand -- which is a trick, for what complex thing can be answered with a Yes or a No? And “what you’re saying is....” but getting completely wrong what he’d just said. And projecting: as in “you’re confusing and conflating and cherry picking”, when that was all she was doing was confusing, conflating and cherry picking....

I thought Elder held his own rather well. Wining with facts and logic. So well remembered and wielded. 

ADDED: Nate the Lawyer has a go at the woman, the one who shifts the goal post snd projects. The US doesn’t live in 1920s or 1990s Alabama. This is 2023 and there’s the most equality in history for Black people. So says Nate. My comment at Nate: “You can’t fix stupid”.

Snowy Snafu v New Clear Nuclear

From here

Back in 2017 then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced what he called “Snowy 2.0”.

For those of us alive in the 1950s we well remember the building of Snowy 1.0. That was the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme. A grand project, built by optimistic people for an optimistic nation. Many immigrants found their way to the Snowy Mountains in southern New South Wales. We called them “New Australians” then, a term I find endearing and inclusive, and I rather wish we’d kept it. I don’t know any one of them disliked it, felt “triggered” or any such nonsense. For the most part they were grateful for well-paid work in the fresh Alpine air of their adopted land. 

The headquarters for this grand project was the town of Cooma, an hour out of Canberra, where I spent my youth on return from five years in Italy. Unable to speak English at the time, I too shared the immigrant experience, put in a class at Ainslie Primary School for “New Australians”.

And thus was born the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric scheme, giving us clean green renewable electricity to this day.

We all loved the Snowy Scheme. Still do. So we were all well disposed to an expansion. 

And so to Malcolm’s Snowy 2.0. When he announced it I thought: “wonderful!” 

Great idea. And it may still be. Although there are problems. The first is cost blow-out, from $A 2 billion to $A 10 billion. That’s not counting the extra transmission lines needed. Cost blow-outs seem to be pretty much par for the course for big projects like this, so no surprise there, I guess. Then there are delays. Apparently a tunnel boring machine has been stuck in one of the tunnels for over a year. 

The idea of Snowy 2.0 is not so much to provide more deliverable power as to provide back up. Like a huge battery. Water will be pumped from the lower dam (Talbinga, 540m asl) into the higher dam (Tantangara 1,200m asl) when renewables generate cheap and excess power. The water from Tantangara will be released down to Talbinga as needed, powering turbines on the way. 

That’s still the concept. Just that it’s taking a lot longer and costing a lot more than predicted. 

Funny that. Because that’s the very push-back on nuclear. Takes too long and costs too much.

Let’s have a look at the figures. 

Nuclear power station: A 1GW nuclear power plant costs ~$US 10 billion and takes about 10 years to build. (China can do it in 6-8). This will produce around 8,322 GWh of power over a year (1GW x 8760 hours/year x 0.95 efficiency). 8,322 GWh is the same as 8,322,000 MWh per year.

 

Snowy 2.0 will cost around $US 10 billion and take about 10 years (my guess). That’s about the same time and cost as the 1GW nuclear power station. 

According to snowyhydro.com.au:

Snowy 2.0 will provide an additional 2,000 megawatts of dispatchable, on-demand generating capacity and approximately 350,000 megawatt hours of large-scale storage to the National Electricity Market. To provide context, this is enough energy storage to power three million homes over the course of a week.

350,000 MWh in a week is 6,730 MWh per year (350,000 MWh divided by 52 weeks). 

Nuclear divided by Snowy, MWh = 8322000/6730 = 1,236. 

Which means that Nuclear has over 1,200 times more dispatchable electricity on an ongoing basis, than Snowy 2.0. Of course Snowy 2.0 will refill the dam, the same as recharging a battery. I don’t know how often this can be done over a year, but assume all that 350,000 MWh is available all the time, the maximum. Then Nuclear still has 24 times more dispatchable electricity than Snowy 2.0. 

I’m not pushing here for Nuclear instead of Snowy 2.0. But just to put in perspective the fact the Nuclear produces more electricity, more regularly, as cleanly and safely, as Snowy 2.0 will, and does so at the same price and timeframe as Snowy 2.0. So let’s not continue saying that “Nuclear will take too long”, when we support alternatives that take as long or longer. 

The world IS getting better… despite the best efforts of politicians!

	World Bank ⁦‪@WorldBank‬⁩ We classify economies for analytical purposes into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income. In 1987, 30% of reporting countries were classified as low income, while in 2022, only 12% fell into this category.   3/8/2023, 6:12 am

Click above for the interactive map 

How is the United States viewed under various presidents?



From here

I looked this up because I saw David Pakman, a far-left blogger, say on Patrick Bet-David's podcast, that when Biden was elected the US became much more positively viewed and that "this matters". 

I'm not sure why it matters. I mean, it matters to us Aussies, how people see us. But that’s because we’re just a middling power and we’re insecure. America’s a super power. Why should they worry? 

But in any case, it's wrong. At least according to the Gallup polling. Looking at the Gallup poll chart above, of “The United States in the eyes of the world”:

W. Bush: oversaw very positive views of the US in the wake of 911, which became negative over his second term. 

Obama: views of US started off unfavourable, and became barely favourable over his second term. 

Trump: gave the US strongly favourable ratings in the second half of his term. 

Biden: makes the US marginally unfavourable. 

Overall, Rep and Dem pretty much of a wash I'd say.

Pakman mentions the United Nations laughing at Trump. He may be referring to the viral clip of German representatives smirking and tittering when Trump warns Germany, in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, that over-reliance on Russian gas will backlash on Germany.  Who's laughing now?

Pakman was on the Triggernometry show a while back and did an edited take on his own podcast that was very negative and unfair to the Triggernometry lads. We know this because we can see the full unedited version on Triggernometry. He strikes me as duplicitous. And he's wrong about how the world views the US under Trump v Biden. Or else Gallup is wrong. 

In short, the world viewed the US more positively when Trump was in power than now that Biden is. 

If you believe Gallup.