As goes California, so goes America

"As goes California, so goes America"

Well, we better hope not. Because --

The story of California in my life time has been --

California: from Leader to Laggard. 

California heydays. The Beach Boys. Haight-Ashbury. The Hippies. The Grateful Dead. All that was cool was California.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers sang  Californication:

It's the edge of the world and all of Western civilization

The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location

No longer. Who wants to Californify? People are leaving CA faster than rats off a sinking ship. Companies too. People and companies have had enough. Those that stay are not Grateful, just Dead. Because of endless green tape, red tape, buck tape. 

Gavin Newsom, the CA governor who made this happen, denies reality. Harps on about the size of the CA economy. But that's old news, which he had nothing to do with; and in any case is destroying.

Today California is no.1 in:

• Highest cost of housing
• Highest cost of petrol
• Highest cost of electricity
• Highest grocery costs
• Highest unemployment
• Highest poverty rate
• Highest homelessness

It doesn't help that many of these failures are the outcome of well-meaning policies. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

And yet, Newsom is leading the polls for the Democrat nominee to the 2028 presidential election. 

Heaven help us. 

Adam Carolla, Mr Common Sense, talks to Congressman Kevin Kiley. About all this and other things. E.G.: the hi-speed train to nowhere that will never be finished.

It's worth anyone from anywhere watching this. Because it's not just As goes California, so goes America. It's also "As goes America, so goes the World". Much as the world denies it, because of their TDS. 

Can the tide be turned? Like "Californication's'' creative destruction? 

Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation...

Deconstructing Jordan B Peterson

Remember Jordan Peterson? He shot to fame in 2016 when he refused to use "compelled pronouns" at the University of Toronto where he taught psychology. 

Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto psychology professor, was not fired but faced significant controversy starting in September 2016 when he publicly refused to use gender-neutral pronouns like "they" or "ze" for transgender or non-binary students, citing concerns over compelled speech and Bill C-16, a Canadian law adding gender identity and expression to human rights protections. Link

Many of us followed him for that, though many of us also grew a little tired of his strained voice and tendency to go on... and on... and on... and... yawn.... Prolixity, thy name is Jordan. 

Still, he's prospered off the back of the notoriety of standing up to the Man. Standing up to a growing gender ideology movement, that then swept the western world, sweeps it still, only now -- perhaps --ebbing.

His YouTube channel has 8.7 million subscribers. For context only around 3,000 channels out of a total 114,000,000 YouTube channels have over 8 million subs, making him one of 0.0026% of accounts with that many followers. 

So he's doing well and his books do well. I'm sure his "12 Rules for Life", a bestseller, helped many people, especially young men, confused in a confusing age. 

Of all the Canadians on the world stage, apart from Justin Trudeau, it's Jordan Peterson who would have the best name recognition, even more than the new PM, Mark Carney, or the opposition leader Pierre Poilievre. The Toronto Star calls Jordan Peterson "Canada's biggest digital export". 

All this is to set the table for the challenge that came my way from an Occasional Reader, pointing to a clip of Peterson, saying a couple of things to which the Reader took offense:

...Peterson used phrases such as he’s told by [1] “very wealthy and very well connected people” that Carney is not good .. and he knew what’s going on in Trump’s inner circle because [2] “I have extensive contacts in DC which I have carefully developed in the last five years precisely for a moment like this, and they tell me what’s going on”…  it sounds like using an anecdotal nepotism to persuade followers .. I don’t think it’s a good look....

Now it may be that the clip left out context, in which case those statements might well come across as "anecdotal nepotism". 

I couldn't find the clip and only watched the whole piece of 1:26:00, which is linked here. 

Reference [1] “very wealthy and very well connected people”

In the full video of nearly 1.5 hours, it's clear that in the first case, Jordan Peterson is talking about the effect Mark Carney, as head of the Bank of England, had on the Stock Market, and hence on the feelings of the very wealthy, who are the ones most loaded up on equities. Moreover, it's not quite correct to say that they thought "Carney is not good'. As Peterson says, the rich "had a conscience as it turns out", because when Carney's QE policies at the Bank of England led to rapidly increasing stock prices after the 2008 crisis, they felt that there should have been more done for the not so wealthy, as well. Pangs of guilt, I guess. 

 Reference [2] "“I have extensive contacts in DC which I have carefully developed..." 

In the latter case, "carefully developing contacts" is what one does. Whether you're a diplomat, or a politician, or a member of the media, or a major influencer on YouTube, like Peterson, what you do is precisely go around developing contacts. It's what I did when I was in the Australian Embassy in Peking then Shanghai and Hong Kong. It's what one does. I see nothing sinister in that, Occasional Reader, sorry.

I offer to Occasional Reader the chance to come back at me, and I'll post what he says in full, anonymously, if that's what he wants. Or not. 

I guess this is all a bit of a storm in a teacup. Then again, I do like a nice cuppa. 

The bigger issue here is what Jordan Peterson has to say about the new Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney and his chances against the opposition Conservative, Pierre Poilievre in the forthcoming election. This is important stuff, which Australians follow closely. Jordan Peterson, a major YouTuber and influencer, has worthwhile things to say about it. 

He talks of Trump as the elephant in the china shop, blundering around, putting all Canadians offside, and I agree with that. It does seem remarkably reckless. Then again, as Peterson says at the end, it may be that Trump would prefer to deal with a weak Liberal, than a strong Conservative. (Liberals in Canada being the Democrat equivalent and Conservatives the Republican equivalent).

Peterson goes over in detail in the video below, Mark Carney's Values, taken from Carney's book (timestamps below the fold). Peterson critiques Carney strongly, as do I. I didn't like Carney as PM from the outset, mainly because he's on the Net Zero train. In my view that's a recipe for disaster, for national impoverishment, that is being foolishly followed by the U.K., by Germany, by Canada, by New Zealand and by us in Australia. There's plenty of data and many experts that agree: Net Zero is unattainable, but the effort to get to Net Zero will crush economies. We may well become the first developed nations where the children end up poorer than their parents, all because of policy. Deliberately done, IOW.

Mark Carney in Canada or Chris Bowen in Oz may well have Good Intentions. 

But, remember, Good Intentions are what the Road to Hell is paved with. 

“Women on Top”| Bettina Arndt

The Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey world, I know you think Israel's the bully

Hey world, I know you think we're the bully, but you should know that those of us who live here feel, maybe reasonably or maybe not, that the existence of the state of Israel--the only homeland of the Jewish people, is on the line in this moment. 

We were brutalized by Hamas on October 7th and since then, Hezbollah has pounded us from the north. And along the way, Iran sent 350 missiles our way. 

You might think because only a thousand or so people have died in those attacks that we need to show restraint. But this is not a territorial dispute over some islands like the Falklands. 

This is the only place we have. 

And it feels like it could all disappear. Over 100,000 of our citizens have evacuated their homes near Gaza and in the north. That land is essentially under the de facto control of our enemies. We don't know how many of our people are being held in Gaza or if they're alive. We can't live like this. No nation can.

If you hate Jews or the idea of a Jewish state, just enjoy the drama. But if you care about either, you might want to remember that we are surrounded by people who want us destroyed on religious grounds. We are in a very tough situation. Most of the world does not seem to understand this. This is a moment of great peril for the world and for Israel. 

If you care about us and if you care about the world, you might want to start pressuring Iran and its proxies. We are in great danger and do not see this conflict the way you do. We have way too much skin in the game. If you do not appreciate that, you will make the wrong policy choices. 

Don't wait until it's too late.

== Russ Roberts, President, Shalem College, Jerusalem

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

What will be an immediate “Palestinian”objection to the above?  

It’ll be: “What about us? What about our land? From the River to the Sea, we must be free!”. 

An answer to that: You Palestinians have the other 99.83% of the immediately surrounding Arab lands to settle in. Including in the Palestinian state of Jordan. We, Israel will just keep this 0.17%. 

And we’re done. We’re done. We’re done. We Are Done.

While we’re about it, let’s also be done with UNRWA. Which has only perpetuated the problem of “refugees”.

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

And in the meantime all parties bar Hamas have bought the most recent Ceasefire proposal from the United States. Which is an abomination; but still Israel has accepted and Hamas is still hemming and hawing.

I don’t know why. After all, this is all “Ceasefire" means to Hamas:

Maybe Bibi trying to win over some of that world-wide “political opinion”. While Alan Dershowitz tells us that he had a phone call with Bibi today, who said that the ground operation in Rafah was going well.

"Who Gave Hamas the Cement for Tunnels?” | Rafael Medoff

I read that Hamas had built 500 km of tunnels under Gaza. That’s a blast. It’s more tunnels than the London Tube.

So I wondered: where on earth did Hamas get all the cement? All the building materials? After all, they were blocked from getting it from Israel. And the southern border with Egypt was closed (supposedly). 

I found that some of it was down to that old old old thing: good intentions. Gone wrong. The Road To Hell once again being paved with Good Intentions. 

Here’s one of the guys involved, Dennis Ross U.S. Mideast Envoy:

“At times,” he wrote in the Post, “I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.”

And that’s just fine with some of these people. Just another civil servant cocking things up. Totally screw things up, then say, Oh, well, too bad. Shucks.  Happened with Covid. Oh well, we got it wrong; let’s just look forward and move on. And with Hamas: we thought they’d be nice guys; the Israelis told us they’d steal the cement. Turns out they were right. Oh well. Move on....

Now we’ve learned that there are huge tonnels under the southern border of Gaza with Egypt. Big enough to drive trucks through, they say. Tell me they don’t drive trucks through with cement to build even more tunnels, tell me they don’t use those tunnels to bring more munitions into Gaza; tell me all that, and I’ll sell you that infamous Brooklyn Bridge.

"Who Gave Hamas the Cement for Tunnels?”

Looking up this cement issue, for some weird reason, the algorithm led me to the article below. Once again, Palestinians saying: WE DO NOT WANT a two-state solution. As I pointed out recently. 

What they want is a ONE STATE solution, the destruction of Israel. A United Nations-created country. And yet, all the pressure is on Israel. 

"The Two-State Solution Is an Unjust, Impossible Fantasy” Tareq Baconi New York Times Guest Essay, 1 April 2024.

“Harrison Butker Right about Men and Women”| Rich Lowry

[This is about Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker and the backlash over his graduation speech at Benedictine College, a traditionalist Catholic school, where he talked about women and  “homemaking”]

I hope I don't get into trouble for this. 

Immediate family aside, I've had three long relations with women, two in marriage. All of them had strong and important careers. All are grandmothers now.

I haven't asked them*, but I venture to guess that each would say that what they feel most fulfilled by, over their long careers, over their rich, varied and successful lives, what they are happiest about, is the wonderful children they brought up.

And that's all Harrison Butker was saying in his commencement address. Bunker being a famous NFL football star, giving a commencement speech at a Catholic college. 

He did NOT say that women should not aspire to a career. That’s a given. But he also said they should not feel ashamed to enjoy motherhood, even staying at home to bring up kids.

The well-meant movement to "liberate" women from housework has had a lot of downsides. Especially in the Black community where Big Society programs of Lyndon Johnson led to huge increases in single motherhood and fatherless children. (e.g. Liberals: “Please stop helping us” by Jason Riley).

The Left are now attacking Butker for the mere suggestion that women might want to stay at home to raise a family. That the only way a woman can fulfil herself is to spend a life toiling away at a career, even if this means no family (as it increasingly does). They are calling him a misogynist; a bigot; and, of course, a racist. They are quoting Taylor Swift now on tour, who has said she has to interest in marriage or motherhood. And that’s what to aspire to: career uber alles.

I think it’s all pretty sad. Even liberals like Bill Maher are calling out the crazies. Saying, for goodness sake, it’s just a view, and lots of people have it. Ease up.

This is yet again the danger of good intentions. Ideologically driven. The road to hell is lined with good intentions. 

*I’ve since asked one, and she confirmed my guess. Yes, the most fulfilling has been family.

Even though career was important. And important too, to the family.

/Snip:

To judge by the internet reaction, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker is guilty of a dreaded double doink — a missed field-goal attempt that embarrassingly hits both uprights — with his commencement address the other day.

The NFL has distanced itself from Butker's unadorned socially conservative speech at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Kansas. He's accused, meanwhile, of potentially driving women away from the NFL and, even worse, perhaps offending Taylor Swift by quoting one of her lyrics.

The first thing to say about this is that Butker is a traditionalist Catholic giving a speech to traditionalist Catholic students graduating from a traditionalist Catholic school. Should we be surprised he sounded like a traditionalist Catholic?

Read on…

“Progressives ruin cities” | Michael Shellenberger

Click above for the video 

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

Above he talks to Zuby. 

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

Kerry, exeunt stage right....

This is a case of “the road to hell...”. Except that the rest of that saying is “... is paved with good intentions”, and I’m not sure that the intentions are good. As opposed to being the reduction of Homo Sapiens, by the folks on the Green side who see us as being a “virus” on the earth. 

I’m not. I’m a big fan of Homo Sapiens. We are the smartest thing in the universe that we know. We may well be the way that the Cosmos comes to know itself. To be self-aware. 

Shutting down coal and natural gas when there’s no stable base supply is going to be a major disaster for America. For no net gain on the reducing global temperature side of the equation. None. Especially while the biggest elephant in the room remains China, and China says it’s not going to allow the global climate alarmist lobby to stop its development. Albeit that it has the world’s largest growth in renewables. 

/Snip:

Eliminating methane is a de facto ban on natural gas power plants.

Here is the most sinister part of this story that no one in the Biden administration is telling you: Eradicating coal and natural gas plants will ravage America’s electric power capacity.

These regulations will cause rolling blackouts and brownouts across the country, much like we’ve already seen in California — America’s forerunner of radical anti-fossil fuel policies. 

The lights will go out intermittently, and home heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer will have to be turned off or rationed. 

Without gas and coal plants, hospitals, schools, the internet, construction projects and factories will be routinely shut down when unreliable alternative energy sources like wind and solar power aren’t delivering enough juice.

Upward of 60% of America’s electric power generation will go away — and soon. 

Coal still provides roughly 20% of our electric power; natural gas supplies around 40%.

What will make up for this lost power, especially given that our demands on the power grid are only going to multiply over the coming years as the greens want the entire network of cars, trucks and vans to be powered by charging up on the electric grid?

The Biden administration, in other words, wants to nearly double the demands on the electric grid network at the same time it wants to shut down more than half of the nation’s power generation — and the most reliable sources at that.

Something must give. Read on....

“Beijing and HK condemn U.S. over proposed trade office legislation”

This is the United States hurting our “One Country Two Systems” because it’s so obsessed with hurting China. 

This  is crazy. I join Beijing and Hong Kong in condemning the move. 

It’s plain silly. And harmful to us.

Taiwan: Do NOT press for “independence” — the status quo is fine!

"Independence": That was the real trigger in 2020, for Beijing to step in to Hong Kong with the National Security Law (NSL). 

After hotheads, mostly from the so-called "pan Dems", called for Hong Kong independence. We knew at the time that that was crossing a clear Red Line. But they didn't listen. Yet the pre-NSL status quo for Hong Kong would have been just fine. We had all our freedoms. Now, rather less….

Instead we now have the Chinese University of HK being upbraided for not adhering strongly enough to the NSL, and declaring itself "grateful" for the criticism. Sigh… 

Taiwan parties, and the U.S. must listen to what Beijing says. The status quo on Taiwan is fine for all parties. Stick to it.

Beijing is deadly serious. NO independence. Not even any calls for independence. No, non, nyet, 不要!

We should have listened to Putin, and his repeated, extremely clear, calls to stop the eastward expansion of NATO. Putin had designs of Ukraine anyway, part of his Soviet revanchism, but the U.S. push on NATO sure was a trigger.

So: DPP, listen to Beijing and be serious. NO calls for independence!

“CLP Power … to reduce charges by up to 16%” | SCMP

Electricity prices in Hong Kong going DOWN! How’s that! Where else is that happening?

Bringing our electricity charges to around $US 0.12 per kWh, just one-third of Australia, where price trends are sharply UP, as it moves relentlessly to subsidy-needing wind and solar. 

We have ONE-THIRD the carbon emission per capita of Australia, because of a policy of nuclear and natural gas. 

Australian Greens are infected with the “perfection is the enemy of action” gene. They are so focussed on renewables that any fossil fuel, ANY, is not OK, not even natural gas; which has been a great interim solution, not just here but in the United States as well, But Greens don’t like interim solutions. Only “perfect” solutions like wind and solar. 

And the reasons the costs are going up is that we’ve been conned into believing renewables are cheap. They are not, when you take account of intermittency and the need for a whole new transmission system. Not to mention that in Australia, as in other places, people are getting fed up with the land needed for the solar and wind arms and the transmission lines taking up valuable farm land. Wind and solar take up 300 to 600 times as much land as nuclear. Land is not unlimited not even in Australia where its “abundance” is one of the arguments against nuclear. 

But no, for them it’s “nuclear takes too long” (it doesn’t) and “nuclear is too expensive” (it’s not). Though it guess its movement of some sort that they don’t talk of their previous bugbears, waste and safety.

Caliphate Crazies. We’re here again, after a decade or so

	Amy Mek ⁦‪@AmyMek‬⁩ Muslim Migrants in Germany Send Warning: 'We have to make a Caliphate – An Islamic Europe" Mobilizing the Umma (global Muslim community) to establish their Islamic Civilization is their Admitted goal... I have been warning the West of their goals for years, but when will… pic.twitter.com/MzUjHzjTPs   19/10/2023, 3:13 pm

This gets the “Road to Hell” label, because the initial intentions in letting so many Muslims enter Europe were noble ones. At least I assume so. They were never expecting that Islam would want to take over. Even though they were warned that that’s inherent in Islam (which of course they labelled “Islamophobic”). 

Now it comes home to roost. And who do we think is going to win this battle?  My money is on Islam. Do I like it? No. But that’s the most likely reality for the Europe of the not too distant future. The Islamic Union of Europe.

George Soros and His Bulging Pile of Body Bags

We used to admire George Soros, we two in this household, we two educated cosmopolitan sino-westerners.  Admired his hardscrabble holocaust to riches story. His philanthropy. His Open Society Goals. 

We have both become totally disillusioned. This is a man, we think, who is a net negative to the earth. Who has made the world a worse place. 

How so?

Most recently in his adopted country, the United States, where he is known for the funding he gives to local District Attorney races, always supporting for election to the DA role, the most progressive. How can that be bad? you might ask. Well, because in all cases they are so progressive with their soft-on-crime policies, no-bail conditions, shortened or fully-waived prison sentences, that crime rates have spiked sharply in every city with a Soros-funded DA. San Francisco has become a ghost town because of the crime, directly due to the polices of Soros-funded DAs. Other Soros-funded cities have gotten a whole lot worse thanks to his evil interference  in elections of DAs and AGs — Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York. All measurably worse because…Soros.

One might think that this is the result of “the road to hell being lined with good intentions” and that Soros might learn. But he has not. He has only doubled down. Which is weird and kind of puzzling; but it’s the fact. 

Worse is what he’s done overseas. 

In 1989 in China, he had the Fund for the Reform and Opening of China (China Fund) which supported the demonstrations in Tianmen Square, which led to the brutal crushing of the students on June 4th 1989. You might argue that this is nothing to do with Soros, and that his Fund was benign. And aimed to do good. However, it doesn’t take much paranoia, certainly not even at the level of the Chinese Politburo, to find the name creepy and ominous, particularly in hindsight. 

And particularly in the wake of arrests in America following the January 6th 2021 demonstrations at the Capitol, where demonstrators have been hit with 30-year prison sentences for “attempting to overthrow the legitimate government”. The government of China, much as we might not like it, was legitimate in 1989, and something like the “Fund for Opening of China”, would clearly have been as a threat to the government. And it seems that it was indeed engaged in activities that were by the Chinese government as subversion and secession. 

In short: Soros’s China Fund has blood on its hands for the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. 

Then we get to Ukraine. Take this in 2013, from his essay "Toward a New World Order: The Future of NATO”: 

There is only one deficiency in this design: it leaves Japan out of account. Japan should be asked to join NATO. Then we would have the beginnings of an architecture for a new world order. It is based on the United States as the remaining superpower and on open society as the organizing principle. It consists of a series of alliances, the most important of which is NATO and, through NATO, the Partnership for Peace which girds the Northern Hemisphere. The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the Partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder.

There’s a couple of things in there. First the casual reference to BODY BAGS. Not of Americans, but of Eastern Europeans and Asians. They don’t count, according to Soros. Wow. This is how we get to US officials saying in effect: “we will fight to every last Ukrainian”. 

And then the idea of Japan joining NATO. This is exactly what’s on the agenda of the US right now as I write this. Even though it was the expansion of Nato eastwards towards Russia that sparked the Putin invasion of Ukraine. How is the expansion of Nato to include Japan going to be seen by China, already feeling -- with some justification -- the pressure of being surrounded. 

Soros is a man drunk on his own power. A quote in the LA Times gives context: he sees himself as “God”. Really. And doesn’t even care for one minute to apologise for or reflect on his activities during the holocaust, when he, as a 14 year old, became the pointer out of jews to the Germans. 

Evil man. And just handing power to his son, who appears equally evil. 

But if you say so, the Left will tar you as anti-semitic. Nothing to do with that. It’s to do with the man and what he’s done with his wealth. Which is to create chaos wherever he goes and with whatever he touches. 

San Fransicko

This is a result of policy.

It didn’t just happen. It’s not because of capitalism. It’s because progressive DAs went soft on crime — all well intentioned, but “the road to hell…” — people looted and shoplifted with impunity and so business said “I’m done” and left. 

Policy did this. 

I guess there’s something in there too, about the change in retail: online shopping vs in-store. But then what about the F&B? And also kind of weird, seems to be plenty of people wandering around. 

Read the comments at the YouTube. How many people have lived and loved in SF. And are now shocked and saddened. 

Michael Shellenberger a San Francisco native and long time liberal environmentalist, has written a book about his, that I’ve read. Anyone going for public service in SF must read his book. “San Fransicko”.

In the category of: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” | US confusion re Hong Kong

US Army: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"
Said by a US Colonel during the Vietnam war, just after his troops had razed a village suspected of hiding enemy Viet-Cong.
Destroy the village — in order to save it.
And now Hong Kong: fighting (allegedly) for Hong Kong autonomy (One Country Two Systems), by destroying the autonomy it has.
Well done, US Congress!
Not.
"Bill that could close Hong Kong trade offices in US advances in Senate”

I’ll be charitable and assume good intentions, and so label this with “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. 

What if I’m wrong?

From the podcast “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling”, with Megan Phelps-Roper. Series 1 Ep 7. At ~ 47:00

Test yourself to see if you might be wrong about a deeply held belief. With these questions:

1.  Are you capable of having real doubt about your beliefs? Or are you operating from a position of certainty?

2. Can you articulate the evidence you’d need to see to change your position? Or is your perspective unfalsifiable?

3. Can you articulate your opponents position in a way they’d recognise? Or are you straw-manning? 

4.  Are you attacking ideas or the people who hold them? 

5. Are you willing to cut off relationships with people who disagree with you over small points of contention? 

6. Are you willing to use extraordinary means against people who disagree with you? (Like cancelling, getting them fired, deplatformed, etc). 

ADDED: I like the list above. I’ve asked folks recently: “Have you changed your mind over anything of consequence?”. Which is along the lines above. And the answers, so far, have all been “no”. With some surprise that it’s “no”. Some thought that they have to think a little more about the question. But still coming up “no”. Which now amazes me. To think that you’ve been on this earth for ... forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, more.... years, and all your ideas, all the thoughts you had as a kid, you’ve still got them? You haven’t changed one? 

That’s Megan’s test above. Both sides on the issue of Trans rights -- J.K. Rowling and the Trans Radical Activists -- firmly believe they are right. Though it seems clear to me from the podcast that Jo Rowling is the more willing to examine her beliefs. The TRA folks don’t even want to debate. They say “debate is dangerous”. That’s where we are. That talking is no-no. Crazy. 

What if you’re wrong? 

“Values that make HK unique just as important as they were in 1997” | Cliff Buddle

Old mate Cliff Buddle, now moved back to UK. writes regularly about Hong Kong, for which he’s clearly got a soft spot. 

I wrote briefly about the handover, the other day, July 1 1997. Cliff remembers it too and gives a fair account of the happening since then, in the piece above.  

Note the highlighted bit at top right: the reason that progress towards universal suffrage was stopped in 2015 was not because of China, but because the local Hong Kong pan-Democratic camp voted down the measures that would have moved us forward to that goal, because “they were not enough”. That’s like “perfection is the enemy of the good”. Or: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. The pan-dems played a card, and it was a trumped. They were stupid... and naive too. I thought so at the time. As did many. We would done way better have taken what was on offer and then tried to move forward from that. Instead: riots of 2019 and the National Security Law, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Cliff has captured the essence of the last 26 years. If Hong Kong broadly stays as is and doesn’t get worse in terms of freedom of speech and the rule of law, then we’re fine. Especially when we look at the craziness of Europe. And now Australia with proposals to criminalise “mis and disinformation”, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing. 

Covid -19: not only a lab leak, but also funded by America

Click above for video 

The most likely reason for the Covid 19 pandemic is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It also seems likely that the funding to create coronaviruses at the WIV — to study them so as to avoid a pandemic — came from funds approved by Dr Anthony Fauci. 

That’s really where we’re at. The US funded gain-of-function research at the WIV, and a result was an errant man-made coronavirus that slipped out. 

Result = pandemic. 

Rising, The Hill, the site above reporting this, is rated as slightly to the left of “Centre” at the AllSides rating site.

"Indigenous Voice to Parliament will be a distraction from the real problems” | John Anderson

I don’t know about this, this thing called “The Voice”, so I don’t say anything neither. 

John Anderson does say some things, and I put them here as they’re on the “other side” of the debate, the other side of what is no doubt the narrative on mainstream media, that we must vote “yes”, or you’re a bigot. 

Thing is, there’s the whole “Road to hell is paved with good intentions”, thing. That’s mentioned at the end of John’s article. That that there may be damage to the indigenous community from the Voice and John sets out why and where and how. 

We ought not doubt “an apparent correlation between the progressiveness of policy and the degree of (Indigenous) community disaster” as Peter Sutton says. Look at the crime, the homelessness and the mental illness on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc, all clearly the result of hyper-progressive policies (decriminalising drug use; defunding the police). So could the same happen in Australia, with The Voice? Maybe. 

John Anderson’s article, and also below the fold:

German slow motion suicide

Prompted by neo-Malthusians who see Homo sapiens as a virus. We must appease Mother Earth by throwing virgins into the volcano. And so Germany continues its slide to deindustrialising 

Sad thing about this is that the worst affected by “DeGrowth” will be the poor people in Africa, Asia and South America. Over half the world will suffer. Who won’t suffer are the laptop class, the Apple iMac Air brigade, sitting comfortably here in Brussels, with their six figure tax free salaries. 

Hypocrites. Even if they are (maybe) well-meaning.