"Debunking Palestine Lies"

 

You can fact check this, if you want. And perhaps should, if you're sitting on the fence, or, heaven forfend, on the  "other side", on the "Free, Free Palestine" side. 

Which I'm not. But if you are, you have a ways to go to get to accepting this history of where we're at there in that most troubled part of a troubled world. Perhaps you never will get to recognising the above history, for that's the nature of both cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. Still, fact-checking might help. 

For the classic case of Confirmation Bias, look no further than the world's Doom Goblin, Greta Thunberg, ex climate activist, now pro-Palestine activist. Last year when apprehended by the Israelis on her pathetic little "Freedom Flotilla", she was offered to watch the uncut videos of what the Gazans, Hamas and ordinary citizens, did to the young Israelis at the music concert that morning of the 7th October, most of which was filmed -- gloatingly, ghoulishly -- by Gazans themselves... When offered to watch it, she and all her crew mates refused. They didn't want to know the truth. They couldn't have their bias un-confirmed. 

I've done my own fact check of the above video, which I really didn't need to do, as I have a bookshelf full of books on the subject, on both sides of the argument. I sit, comfortably, on the side of Israel. I remain here, despite the many defections on the conservative to the Woke Right. 

I sit on the side of Israel so comfortably that I call myself a primo Zionist. 

By the way, the video is 14 years old. No matter. It remains relevant. The hatred of Jews by Muslims is as old as Muhammad himself.  He was the OG of Jew hatred. 1,424 years ago. That's the precise amount of time Muslims have been wanting to obliterate Jews. To do a genocide on them. 

Is Steve Bannon a racist?

Click above for the video

I’m not a particular fan of Steve Bannon, but have been watching a bit more of his YouTube appearance lately on Megyn Kelly that he’d had a falling out with during early Trump days. How these two came back together is interesting. 

I always thought he was a bit of a crazy. He may still be. But for sure there’s this about him: he’s smart; he’s done lots of things including working for Goldman Sachs (not an easy gig); an officer in the U.S. Navy; a daughter graduate of West Point and at war in Iraq;  the top adviser to then-president Donald Trump; and now being in jail for “contempt of congress”. 

So, he’s been round the block. And has some interesting views about what’s happening now, post the disastrous (for Biden), presidential debate last Thursday. 

And then I’m watching a video of Bannon being interviewed by Steve Edginton of GB News.

An Occasional Reader of this blog says that Steve Bannon is racist. I ask for where’s the evidence? And they say it’s in the Oxford Union Debate, six years ago. 

So, I listen to the debate, which is in the video above. 

I don’t find any racist things said by him. Indeed the opposite. But the OR responds that “many people say that he’s racist; are they all wrong?”. To which I think, (but don’t say): “Many people say Trump is Hitler, are they all wrong?”. To which my own answer, to both, is: yes they are. At least if the Oxford Union debate is the best evidence that he’s racist. Which is that he’s not. 

This is revealing of what some people think they can see, when there’s nothing to see. Unless there really is something to see, and I’m the one not seeing it. But I think it’s more like: they see something (racism), when it’s just not there. And part of “seeing” it is the thought that “lots of other people have seen it”. Therefore it must be true. Cognitive Dissonance. 

"Steve Bannon on Biden as National Security Threat, Fighting Trump Lawfare, and Preparing For Prison” | Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon

Click above for the video

If you want to know what’s going on in the world, you need to look at both sides of the aisle. You have to watch and read on the Left, and you have to watch and read on the Right. 

That’s how I knew that the Hunter Biden Laptop story was true, way back in 2019. When the New York Times only found out this year. Because I also read the New York Post. And I knew that 51 ex intelligence official lied when they said it was “Russian disinformation”. And that so did Joe Biden in the 2020 debate. Anyone with two brain cells would know that the Laptop was genuine, because all you had to do was to check the addressees of a couple of emails from the Hunter laptop, to see if they had received them. Simple. But you wouldn’t have known that if you only looked at CNN or MSNBC, or the New York Times. 

That’s how I knew that the Trump Russia collusion story was a hoax, way back in 2016, when the rest of the liberal media has only acknowledged with the publication of the Mueller Report, and sometimes not even then (so deep is the hoax virus). Because I also followed right-of-centre blogs. 

That’s how I knew that Trump did not say that Nazis and White Supremacists are “fine people”. Not only because I saw the actual speech, but because I saw subsequent debunking, all on conservative media. And that’s why liberals on the Left only knew that June this year, when the left-leaning fact-checking outfit Snopes, acknowledged it last month. But only last month. (Remember how important this was: Joe Biden said it was the main reason that he entered the 2020 race. IOW, on the back of a false story. Which, btw, he retailed yet again during last week’s presidential debate). 

That’s how I know that the criminal cases brought against Trump are bogus “Lawfare” cases: as is (belatedly) acknowledged even on the Left, by such luminaries as ex-Democratic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, CNN senior editor Fareed Zakaria and legal scholar, and lifetime Democrat voter Alan Dershowitz.  And yet Left leaning super-pods like “Pod Save America” demand should have been a focus of last week’s debate. WTF?). 

So, in short, you have to read both sides of the aisle, both Left and Right. Sometimes it’s tough to do, because you don’t like to hear what “the other side” says. But you have to.

And that’s the case with Steve Bannon in the talk with Megyn Kelly above. I don’t like Bannon one little bit. But I know that he’s a smart cookie and has some good insights. He’s a smart tactician. Like his equivalent on the Dem’s side James Carville, who I also follow. And that’s why I’m watching the video above. 

In the immediate aftermath of the now-(in)famous presidential debate last week, Dems were saying that “Joe has to go”. The whole nine-member squad of commenters on the CNN panel after the show, with major Dem luminaries, were all united in how awful Joe Biden’s performance was, how it was “panic stations”, and how he had to be ditched. 

Since then -- and things are moving fast in the post-debate Democratic world -- the Dems seem to be coalescing behind not ditching Biden, but giving him another chance. A major factor here being his wife Jill Biden. And some of the Left -- like the “Pod Save America” podcast -- are saying that the Debate was “unfair". Because it wasn’t biased enough towards Biden (!). Whereas all of us who watched it thought it was a pretty good new format, which worked well and was fair to both sides. Just that Joe stumbled and fell. 

Let’s see. I think it’s better for Trump if Biden remains the Dem candidate. And better for Trump if they have another debate. I don’t like Trump's chances against the likes of Michele Obama or even of Gavin Newsome. 

And that’s what Megyn Kelly and Steve Bannon, two super-smart political pundits, discuss above. Well worth the time to listen, if you’re into this sort of stuff. Which we rather are, here in this family. 

Where else is there such interest in an election? Answer: nowhere. There’s a British election in a few days time. Who cares? No-one. It’s a given Leftward tilt to Labour. Yawn. There were European elections a month ago. Who cared? No-one, except for noting the right-ward tilt. There’s an election in Australia early next year; who cares? No-one. Save we who care about Nuclear. Point it: the United States presidential elections are an on-going fascination-fest. They are just so interesting. And the latest is just the latest in tilts and turns and surprises. 

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

"The Voice" Referendum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuclear for Australia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the disinformation industry - UnHerd

The nonsense info from the self-styled Global Disinformation Report

Disinformation about disinformation:

At its heart, the disinformation panic is becoming a textbook example of how a "solution" can do more harm than the problem it is designed to address. Educated campaigners such as Clare Melford may think they are doing the world a service, but in fact they are acting as intensifying agents, lending legitimacy to a conspiratorial world view in which governments and corporations are in cahoots to censor political expression. Unless something is done to stop them, they will continue to sow paranoia and distrust — and hasten us towards an increasingly radicalised and divided society.

Sound reflections from Freddy Sayers.

ADDED: Looking at the chart above, NPR is at the top of “Least dangerous”. When they have just had one of their senior staff, a whistleblower, tell us just how biased they are. They were non-stop on the Russia Collusion hoax, for three years, completely wrong, and not a whisper of apology. They refused to run the Hunter Biden laptop story, when it was true and highly newsworthy. Not to mention some of the others, like The New York Times, even, or the always-biased Huffpost. If you invert the chart, you’ll be better informed. Unless you like to be duped. And some people do. 

Gaza War and cognitive dissonance

Click above for video. I expected to be rather pro Israel, 
being German TV, but not so much

What do you do when you believe strongly in “A", and then see powerful evidence for “B” which is the opposite of “A”? 

Do you immediately give up A, and believe in B? Perhaps. But most often that will lead to cognitive dissonance and the way most humans deal with that is to rationalise. 

And so, when I see the video of the Marxist professor Ilan Pappè, “The Israeli New History and its Relevance”, and the causes of Palestinian anger, I get cognitive dissonance. 

It’s not that I don’t know about the “new history” of Palestine, of which he is a major mover; I do. I’ve read about it years ago, have books on it. Benni Morris is something of a “new historian”, and I’ve got his books. No, the reason for the onrush of cognitive dissonance is just that it’s been a while since I’ve seen the “new history” of the Middle East, of Palestine, put so forcefully. And so it’s cognitive dissonance redux (not anew). 

So, how do I deal with it? Am I going to move from A to B? Am I going to support the Hamas-loving kids around the western world, calling for the death of Israel? Am I going to join in their blood lust for the death of Jews, and for a “Free Palestine”?

No I am not. Which is what most people do. Which is why it’s so hard to change people’s minds on fundamental beliefs. We will always default to finding a way to reconcile our dissonance. 

In my case, it’s simple. I just zoom out. I look at history from a more abstracted plane. Thus:

• Should the Jews have been given a land, a place to stay, a place to call their home, a nation, in the aftermath of the holocaust? Answer, for me: Yes. 
• Where should it be? Of the options, Uganda, the USS, Japan, Madagascar and Palestine, clearly the old historical land of the Jews, in what we now call Palestine, was the obvious one. 
• Should the non-Jews living there have been expelled? No. Were they? Yes. To some extent. By whom? The “new historians” tell us it’s entirely by the Jews. But it was not. There is clear evidence that the surrounding Arab states planned to attack Israel when it was named, by the United Nations, as a new state, and that they told the Arabs living in the new state, that they should leave, to get out of there way, while they busied themselves with annihilating the Jews. 
• 56 countries are members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, many of them Arab states surrounding Israel, the one Jewish state in the world. That seems rather little to ask, even if some Arab families had to suffer, for that ask to become true. 
• Muslim states surrounding Israel (the “Middle East”) own 99.6% of the land; Israel only 0.4%. Is that really too much to ask?
• Other countries were created like Israel: Pakistan and Bangladesh, for example. We don’t obsess over their creation stories, even though even more people were displaced and killed, that were in Israel. 
• There were some 60 million refugees in the wake of the second world war. There were about half a million Arabs displaced in the creation of Israel. Only the refugees displaced in Israel in 1948, only they, remain refugees. All the rest are now resident in other countries. Why is it that the surrounding Arab states have refused to take in any Palestinian Arabs? 

That’s my cognitive dissonance rationalisation for the fact that Jews Behaved Badly, at the birth of their nation. But they needed and still need a nation. And in the grand scheme of life, their crimes were both understandable and (relatively) minor. It’s time we called out the Palestinian Arab victimhood and said, enough, get on with it. And called out the surrounding Arab states for not taking them in. 

ADDED: Pappè is a Marxist. Marxists have a particular way of analysing. That all history is down to a battle between oppressed and oppressor. I don’t trust them. I know of none whose views I find useful. Sometimes I’m asked about China. How is it that China, a self-avowed Marxist-Leninist state, has done so well in the last forty years? And the answer is simple: they have done well exactly and precisely to the extent that they have given up, not followed, Marxism-Leninism. As soon as they veer back to M/L, they lose their zip. As is happening now. There’s nothing good about Marxism-Leninism. Not time. No where. And I’m seeking here as a guy that lived in China when it was way more hewing to the M/L playbook, back in the 1970s. It was that that made me hate socialism. 

Musk closes Twitter deal

Tweets “the bird is freed”, and “let that sink in”. And produces a rationale for the purchase. (Though to the BBC and the Guardian he just “claims” to want to help humanity)

I post the above meme coz it’s pretty funny. Musk-haters will no doubt point out how “arrogant” he looks. But that look is from his night at the Met, when he took his mum, coz she wanted to go, and he did a bit of a prance up and down for the cameras, making fun of the red carpet folks, the Met attendees themselve. That was the Met do at which AOC turned up in a “Tax the Rich” dress.

People I see in the background: Parag Agrawal (just fired CEO of Twitter), AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Taylor Lorenz (?), the Lizard meme-man, the crazy lady screaming at Trump’s election in 2016, and ❓

For me: big Yay! I’m a big Elon fan-boy. Have been for many years. 

Hard to feel sorry for the top folks fired. Each has a package of $40-50 million. 

“Why Republicans are surging” || David Brooks, New York Times

 

Above: from my post here. Liberals read/watch almost exclusively liberal news
Moderates and Conservatives read/watch much more widely

Says David Brooks, /snip:

I’ve been watching the campaign speeches by people like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona. G.O.P. candidates are telling a very clear class/culture/status war narrative in which common-sense Americans are being assaulted by elite progressives who let the homeless take over the streets, teach sex ed to 5-year-olds, manufacture fake news, run woke corporations, open the border and refuse to do anything about fentanyl deaths and the sorts of things that affect regular people.
In other words, candidates like Lake wrap a dozen different issues into one coherent class war story. And it seems to be working...” “Why Republicans are surging

Thing is, each of these things that Brooks quotes, above, and which troubles him, is true. Like in my post yesterday --  there’s surprise on the Left about things said by Republicans that are patently true. Indicating how deep in the pit many on the Left are. In a swirling vortex.  (I’m not saying there are no delusions on the Right. There are, many. Just that there are some deep seated delusions on the Left that are not understood by them, because they are in such a vortex).

Let’s look at the items in bold above, that Brooks seems to believe are just a “narrative”:

• “...homeless take over the streets”: That’s objectively the case in many cities in Pacific states: LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland. As Michael Shellenberger, a Time Magazine “Climate Hero”, eco activist and man of the left who has done a deep dive on the issue, shows how well-meaning progressive policies in these cities has caused -- or worsened -- the homeless problems. We have relatives living on the West coast. They attest to how bad it’s gotten, having to step over homeless and their detritus, wherever one walks in central LA and even along its famous beach front. We have friends who have fled Portland because of it. 
• “... teach sex ed to 5-year olds...”: again, this is happening all over the US. The response from the Left is:  “it’s not happening. But if it is, it’s good”. It is happening and it’s not good. Plenty of evidence from teachers, parents and the online curricula attests to this. 
• “... manufacture fake news...”: Where to start? How about a monster bit of fake news: “The Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation story”. This was the summary of a letter by 51 former intelligence analysts, who at the time they said it, they knew was false, as the FBI had the laptop and knew it was Hunter's. Joe Biden used the “laptop is Russian disinformation” story in the final debate to deflect attention from his own misdoings. Joe knew at the time it was false. Because he knew the laptop was Hunter’s. In other words, he lied. And it was a lie that was hugely consequential, given he won by 21,500 votes over three states. That’s a pretty big manufacture of fake news.
• “... run woke corporations...”: Again, where to start? There’s Google, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, over in the west. There’s Disney, Blackrock, New York Times, over in the East. And plenty in between. It’s inarguable that most major US corporation are now driven by a woke agenda. Not to mention places we would never have thought of before, like the Military. 
• “... open the border...”: The Biden Administration, on day one, rescinded previous deals with Mexico and previous tough border-enforcement measures. The result is the largest increase in illegal crossings in the history of the US. From around 100k per year, they are now running at 2 million. 
• “.... fentanyl...”: it’s true that the current administration is doing nothing about the import of a drug that is causing the deaths of nearly 100k per year. 

The reason for going through these, is that David Brooks, and most of the commenters, seem to think that all these things are whipped up from whole cloth by Republicans, that this a “narrative” that somehow, and unfairly, “seems to be working”. It doesn’t seem to connect with Brooks that the reason the are working is that they are true. 

This is the same as the  MSNBC interview with a Republican focus group the other day, in which the participates were correcting the interviewer, and knew more about the issues than she did. But which Democrats, because they don’t know the other side of the story, read as “misinformation”. The reason they’re in such a bubble is that they consume the mainstream media. The mainstream media is all on the Left. Liberals tend not to Right-of-centre sources. Whereas people on the Right are also exposed to mainstream media (because it’s mainstream) but also have other sources. This was shown by various polls that I’ve posted in the past, see at top.

The net result is that the extent of the bubble, the vortex, is sometimes breathtaking for those of us who are not of the Left, and also not of the Right. Not to say we don’t have our own vortices, we do; everyone does. But the swirls is not quite so strong. Or at least there are counter currents. 

I find it breathtaking that a well-informed focus group is seen by the Left as “misinformed”, when they are the opposite. I find it breathtaking that a major columnist for the NYT should consider a list of major issues, all of them palpably true, just some form of “narrative”, which to him, unaccountably, “seems to be working”. This is truly troublesome stuff. 

Deep, deep pits and swirling vortices of misinformation

This tweet (below) is extremely weird. I thought it was parody at first. It's not. Don Winslow believes that what the participants in the focus group say is “Republican misinformation”. But it’s not. 

Everything these people being interviewed say is factually true, and in some cases they correct the incorrect info of the MSNBC interviewer: 

• Only one person was killed on J6 and it was a protester: true. 
• No police were killed: true. 
• One policeman did die, but it was of a heart attack, after the event: true. 
• A person acting like a federal employee (Ray Epps) was urging the crowd to attack the Capitol: true. 
• The crowd denied him: true. 
• They had the right to gather and protest: true.
• Some doors were opened up for the protesters: true.
• Some protesters attacked barricades: true. 
• That was not an "insurrection": true. 
• Trump was elsewhere and couldn't have stopped the "insurrection": true (also true that he should have done more, earlier to defuse. And also that he was urged to do so by senior Republicans). 

One young participant makes an interesting and insightful point: Democrats are making this  (J6 and the hearings) their "Reichstag fire" moment of the election, as excuse to gain/hold power: true or not  it's a cunning inversion of the Nazi trope normally thrown at Reps. 

Nothing detracts from the stupidity, the plain inanity, of (some of) the demonstrators' actions on J6. Nothing excuses Trumpian failures of judgement. But the J6 hearings have proved very little other than stupidity, inanity and judgment failure. Nothing that rises to the level of "insurrection", as proven by the fact that no-one has been charged with insurrection. 

But for Winslow, somehow these people — who he calls "voters" — are peddling misinformation. False.

Also: why does Winslow have "voters" in scare quotes? They're everyday folks, quite well read, it appears, who happen to vote Republican. That's all. And that's about half the country. 

Winslow is in a deep, deep pit — a swirling vortex — if he thinks this is "misinformation". It's not. But at time of writing he had 16k likes. Oh dear 😞

	Don Winslow ⁦‪@donwinslow‬⁩ I urge you to watch this because it demonstrates the extraordinary success of Republican misinformation on voters in key states.  Democrats have completely underestimated the level of penetration that has happened.  These "voters" ignore facts and spit misinformation. pic.twitter.com/E5mtFfPeqt   25/10/2022, 5:12 am

Living in Interesting Times. Twitter-Watching discussion on how to avoid nuclear war in real time

It’s more than “interesting”. It’s downright amazing! That we can watch -- via Twitter -- some of the smartest people in the world, some of the most influential people in the world, some of the most consequential people in the world, discuss how to avoid going nuclear over Ukraine. 

Love or hate Twitter, surely that’s a good thing.

Elon Musk has tweeted a proposal to bring peace to Ukraine. Gary Kasparov, the former chess world champion -- and a Musk fan -- criticises the proposal. He had a spat with Elon over it. Others have come in on either side. And this is happening in real time, on Twitter. 

Will this influence the decision makers? Most certainly. It already has, Ukraine president Zalensky is in this Twitter battle. But better battle on Twitter than on the ground with nukes. Right??? 

Note: Musk has donated $US80 million in StarLink Satellite dishes to Ukraine. And $0 to Russia. Yet he’s been trolled as repeating “Kremlin talking points”. 

It may be that Putin needs an “exit ramp”. A Musk-like proposal might have the makings of an exit ramp. While giving significant victory to Ukraine over the course of the war. 

But my point here, is what an amazing thing it is that we can watch these people argue and agree, haggle and hate, dispute and discuss, right in front of our eyes. Right there, in real time. Hoping, as we do, that we avoid another 1914 or 1939.

Following this on Twitter, you have to make sure you’re tuned in to the right people. That you follow the consequential ones, the smart ones, and you need to make sure you cover all sides, as it’s all too easy to be blinded by confirmation bias, by cognitive dissonance and only “Follow” those who reflect your own views. You have to avoid that. Make sure >30% of your Follows are people on the "other side". 

It is not “Climate Denial” to state the facts about hurricane incidence in the US

Click above to go to Tweet and the thread
The red dotted line is the trend line 1900-2020

Which facts about hurricanes in the US are:

• The number of hurricanes making landfall in the US since 1900 has declined in the century.
• The costs of hurricanes making landfall in the US since 1900 are steady, no increase, in the century.
• The deaths by hurricanes making landfall in the US since 1900 have fallen sharply in the century.

Those are the data. And yet, all we see on the media -- like in the wake of Hurricane Ian -- is that hurricanes are more frequent and more deadly. That’s not true. Even the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration talking to CNN, saying this, doesn’t convince the likes of CNN to change their tune. 

The thing I realise is that if people have a fixed view, the science, the data, is not going to change their minds. So I wonder, what then? If people are impervious to the data, to the reality, to the truth, to the science, what can be done, and how do we move forward on tackling climate change, in a way that makes scientific sense? Or is it me? Am I the one suffering cognitive dissonance? 

Yet, we don’t deny the reality of climate change because we show these data. We merely show the facts. 

Yes, we must tackle climate change. But from a basis of understanding the facts. Not by scaring people. For scaring people can backfire, people not trusting anything said by the climate alarm proponents.

Confounding Factors

I’m sitting in the Discovery Bay North Plaza watching kids and carers at play. That’s my pano photo above.

All are socially distanced all are masked. (Except me). Obeying our HK government’s mandate. 

If you took a similar group of people doing similar things with similar distancing, but had them unmasked, and then followed both groups up to see what happened to their infection rates and that of their close contacts, that would give us evidence of how effective masks are. Two conditions the same except for one factor.

The problem with all the studies (but one, see below) on mask effectiveness is that they are “observational studies” where they are unable to separate out the different factors such as social distancing or hand washing. These are called “confounding factors” and they are acknowledged in most studies I’ve seen but rarely mentioned in the reports of those studies. And that’s not to account for the possible (likely?) “confirmation bias” in such observational studies.  

There’s only one RCT of mask effectiveness — the Yale University study — which I’ve mentioned before, and even it is unable to separate out the confounding factors, as its authors acknowledged. (And which showed, at best, a 2% point decrease in transmission with strict mask wearing, but “no statistically significant effect” of cotton masks).

Looking at these people in the photo, laughing and playing outside, outdoors in a fresh northeasterly breeze, I can say — based on my study of studies — that they are gaining nothing by their wearing of masks. What they are doing is following government edicts. Should we say “good on them” for following the law? Or should we call out the law as an ass? For not following the science? For continuing to make people fearful? For leading us to a time when masks are a permanent part of our life? I shudder at that thought. At that grimness. 

Forgive me - or not, I don’t care - for not liking a society where masks are an everyday thing. Visible - and risible - signs of “safetyism”.  Blocking the faces of its most fervent acolytes. 

Covid deaths remains hugely age-skewed

 

 My charts from news reports today.
The charts look  just like the charts back in March 2020

This was the case in the beginning of the pandemic. And it remains the case. 

Median age of deaths from Covid in Hong Kong: 84. Average life expectancy in Hong Kong: 84. 

Percentage deaths in people who are unvaccinated : 81%. 

Vaccinated death rates, all ages: .03%. Over 80: 0.27%. Unvaccinated death rates all ages: 0.27%. Over 80: 4.34%. IOW: unvaccinated are 9 times (all ages) to 16 times (over 80) more likely to die from or with Covid.

If people say “all deaths are a tragedy” and don’t make any distinction between young and old, that’s not the way people have always treated deaths. Take a funeral for an 85 year old and the eulogies will all be about the life lived and contributions made. I know first hand recently: two friends and colleagues, in their 70s, died of Covid. All the talk was of what they’d done and the wonderful lives they’d lived. The atmosphere at their cyber-funerals was celebratory. 

Or take a funeral of a 5 or 8 year old, and the grief is much greater, palpable, the loss of potential, the horror, tragedy of a tiny coffin.

So in practice and culturally, we do treat deaths differently depending on age, and always have. And I say that as a someone on the right hand side of those charts above. Over 70, with comorbidities.

Yet we treat all deaths equally in the case of Covid. The infamous attacks on people for “wanting to kill grannie” if they expressed some doubts about the efficacy of lockdowns, are testament to that. 

We here in Hong Kong -- and the world generally -- treated every death the same. A kind of cognitive dissonance. Which led to massive and harmful lockdowns. Punishing the young and healthy to save the sick and elderly. That’s not the way we’ve usually done things.

We’re still at here in Hong Kong. About to lockdown. Again. Like two years ago.

The source of the above charts is my spreadsheet on Excel, here, based on data that just came out today.

Zero Covid strikes twice and Biden pays the price

 A “three-fer” of fun stories in the front page of today’s South China Morning Post. 

1.  Top story is about the closure yesterday of the whole of Hong Kong Disneyland. Because one case. Imported. 

2. The second story is also because zero Covid policy: FedEx says it’s pulling out its HQ from Hong Kong because there is “no clear pathway out” of the current  order lockdowns.

As I describe it, this is Hong Kong deciding on the GBA strategy rather than the GFC strategy. 

GBA = the Greater Bay Area of southern China. That is looking inwards to China. Part of Belt and Road. A boring government description of GBA, highlighting civil servants’ ineptitude at PR. Plenty of other descriptions at your favourite search engine…

GFC = Global Financial Centre, which is what we’ve been since the seventies. Which means looking outward to the world. Well, we e made our bed, it would seem. FedEx is just one more in the gathering departure of international companies.

3. The bottom story is Joe Biden asking China for more oil. Because he’s shut down pipelines and halted fracking. Which kind of means no net reduction of emissions due to oil hasn’t really changed, just that the source of the oil has changed. Fracked gas emissions are less than a fifth of oil’s. The escaped methane during fracking issue is largely fixed. Opponents are driven by opposing the good because it’s not perfect. Yet it did allow the US to reduce carbon emissions while increasing renewables. 

It’s a climate *emergency* so why don’t nuclear and gas even get a mention …

Taihang, China, solar farm. Click screenshot to go to the thread

… at COP26, let alone get discussed in detail as key to solving said emergency? Yet: not even mentioned in the two weeks ob gabbing at COP26. Weird. When you consider the massive solar farm above in Taihang, China, would need to spread out to 32 times the to equal just one 1GW nuclear power station. Solar needs 300-400 times the space of nuclear.

This one at Daya Bay below, does that job and more (it’s 1.5Gw capacity) — so it puts out power of roughly 50 times the area of the Taihang solar array, above. 

Daya nuclear is right near us, just to our north east. I’ve visited and been shown around. A fantastic experience.  

It provides half our power, clean, reliable, and gives us lower carbon emissions per cap than most Australians.

Daya Bay nuclear staton. We’ve sailed in the bay often. Lovely 

But no. No Nuclear. At COP26. Not even mentioned. 

ADDED: Sweden and France have nuclear power for 40% of their electricity. Lowest cost of electricity in Europe? Sweden and France. Lowest carbon emissions in Europe? Sweden and France. More 

Sitting in my office, contemplating revolutions ...

View from my office chair, Siena One, Hong Kong

I’m contemplating revolutions from this angle: how many in human history have been successful? 

I’m reading “The Temptations of Tyranny” by Peter Hughes, how revolutionary agitators see their ideas collapse into their opposite.

And I’ve just read about revolutions proposed by Biden’s candidate to oversee US Banking, Saule Omarova, in “Thus spake Omarava”, by Matthew Continetti, which I got to via a Josh Kraushaar tweet: "Since January, America has slowly awakened to the reality that it elected Joe Biden president only to be governed by Elizabeth Warren”.

And Omarova talks of revolutions by “... radically redefining the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a democratic economy—the People's Ledger”.

Matthew Continetti makes a point that I relate to, having moved to China in 1976, straight out of Uni, where I was, of course, a leftie, and saw what ultimate leftism, aka socialism, aka Marxism, does to a people, to an economy: 

What's striking is that immigrants from the former Soviet Union and its satellites tend to be viscerally anti-communist and anti-socialist: Having lived under totalitarian regimes, they are especially attuned to infringements of personal and economic liberty and are mindful of human-rights abuses conducted in the name of "People's Republics.” [my emphasis]

One: run for a mile whenever you see something with the word “People’s”, with a capital “P”. It’s bad news.

Two: Omarava is not at all “viscerally anti-communist". She’s still in thrall to the Soviet Union, as Continetti and her Tweets show. Like the revolutionary agitators in Hughes’ piece above, the failure of Soviet Socialism, of Socialism in every country over all time since Marx, does not dim its shine for Omarava. Even this failure does not damage the certainty with which she clings to this zombie idea.

And Biden plans to put her in charge of the US dollar? And oversight of the FED??? As an OR said “she’s poison”. As Continetti said, she is "… an activist intellectual who is—and I say this in the kindest way possible—a nut.”

But back to the original contemplation: how many revolutions in world history have been successful? The answer I have not, but it’s surely not a majority. You can wiki it, then it’s up to your priors how you decide which have been successful, or not. For example: is China’s 1949 revolution successful, or not? Many would say Yes. I’d be inclined to think No. The counterfactual is what if there had been a democracy all along, even after the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek version, might it not also have matured and squeezed out its corruption and given us a more open and tolerant China than the one we have today? 

Steven Pinker on rationality in our times

Click screenshot for the vid. (a bit over an hour)

Steven Pinker in a great talk with Andrew Sullivan, to discuss Pinker’s latest book “Rationality"  Both are heterodox thinkers, great minds at work.

Settle down to listen, all worth it. Some timestamps: 

33:00: On “My Side Bias”. The most common bias out there. Says Steven. We all have it

42:00: “Your mommy made you gay”.  Andrew Sullivan (gay himself and a major force in legalising same-sex marriage), discusses what you’re not supposed to discuss.

1:00:00: “Availability Bias”. Discusses its effect, eg on nuclear power debate. A kind of cognitive dissonance.

Skewed Risk Perceptions

If the party affiliations were reversed there would be no end of
“Republican deplorables don’t understand the science”

Ask around, ask your friends: "What percentage of unvaccinated people who catch Covid will end up in hospital?" Guessing is fine.

My guess is that most are going to guess way high. In my case I knew the answer -- around 5% -- but friends I asked guessed from 10% to over 50%. 

The chart above is interesting. In America, Democrats way overestimated the likelihood of hospitalisation: 41% of them thought over 50% would be hospitalised, and only 10% of them guessed the correct number (1% to 5%) whereas 26% of Republicans guessed correct; and way fewer guessed the over-the-top number. 

Noah Carl at The Daily Sceptic talks, calmly, rationally, sceptically, about the possible reasons why in Why are People's Risk Perceptions So Skewed? 

It also reminds me that in the wake of 911 people stopped flying. Because they had skewed threat perceptions. They associated planes with flying into skyscrapers. Many more people travelled by car. More people died on the roads than normal and far more than if they'd continued to travel by plane, despite the (tiny) risk of being hijacked by Islamic nutters. 

People here in Hong Kong continue in ignorance of the threat of Covid to us here. We have zero Covid. Plus Covid is rarely caught outside. Yet people continue masking everywhere including outside.  Because the government told them to months ago and hasn't changed its mandate. That's not following "the science". Unless the science is now "you never know" or "better safe than sorry", in which case I fear my fellow Hongkongers are going to be masked to the end of my life.

This morning I heard on Australia's ABC radio Canberra that children going back to school will be required to mask. That's despite the fact that Canberra is homing in on 99% vaccinated for the 12+. That the vaccine reduces likelihood of hospitalisation and death by 100 and 1000 times, respectively. And that children are at more risk of flu than Covid (both for sickness and death). So what, exactly, is the "risk" that's being mitigated by masking children? Not one of the media at this presser asked: what about children and their need to see the teacher's face, to see their fellow pupils' faces? There's research — that is to say, “the science” — showing that suppressing facial expressions by masking is harmful to children. But, no, all must be sacrificed to mitigate the tiniest of risks to the great god Covid.

And while "anyone can catch Covid" (of course, just as "anyone" can catch cancer), the age of those dying from Covid remains stubbornly high, including in Australia (median age 89). Here are the official numbers from Health.gov.au: 

Thus the Risk, backed by “the science”, of young healthy people dying from Covid (even when they have it) is vanishingly small  (in America 0.002% for 0-17yo). You wouldn’t know that from the media coverage. (Of course the overall percentage is even lower because only a proportion will actually catch Covid, somewhere between one half and one eighth).

From US Centre for Disease Control via here

Back to Noah Carl, a quick read. Which, also explains a lot about current divisions in society — our different perceptions of threats. Broadest generalisation: people on the Left tend to be more afraid of bad things than than people on the Right. Fair?

Noah, take it away!…

"Why the West is best" | Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has seen it all. Born in Somalia, married-off, underage, to an abusive husband, forced into FGM, escaped to the Netherlands, where she got death threats from Islamists for writing the documentary "Submission", which got the director himself, Theo van Gough, killed. She fled to the United States when the Dutch government made clear it would not protect her.

A free-thinker, a politician, a feminist, a public intellectual. A brave woman.

Here she offers spot-on observations and analysis, on why, for all its faults, the liberal West is better than other "isms". 

After looking (briefly!) at socialism, islamism, authoritarianism and tribalism, she asks "You don’t like any of those -isms?" and goes on:

Well, maybe Western civilization is not so bad after all. It’s not perfect, but it is clearly the system that provides maximal peace, prosperity and freedom. The classical liberal system based on Enlightenment values has done more good for the world than any other system or civilization. Western civilization’s medical and scientific leaps eradicated smallpox, came close to doing so to polio and measles, and brought a host of other infectious diseases under control — most recently COVID-19. Is it a coincidence that the most efficacious vaccines were devised in the US, Germany and Britain, rather than China or Russia? [Read more] [Archive]

"Figuring things out on the spot"

Julia Galef on Richard Dawkins in 2015

Richard Dawkins (a hero of mine) had his recent "transphobe" imbroglio. He tweeted the above yesterday (click screenshot to go to vid as something of what he was trying to do. Fair enough. And good, too. Hos tweet.

Dear Richard, how about figuring out also why it is the "one divides into two", that democratic nations have electorates that divide into two, almost equal blocks? Can one side be fully virtuous and the other side fully wicked? 

Discuss. …

(Dawkins seems to have a blind eye when it comes to Republicans. To him, as far as his tweets attest, they are nothing but "deplorables", pig-ignorant troglodytes only to be despised. I say that's a blind spot in this otherwise spotless mind).