On my bike trip around Siena Park, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. That's Tiger Head Mountain in the middle at back, up which we've climbed many times. It's a grand trek. On the other side, goes down to the town of Mui Wo, 20 or so miles south of us here.
The domed structure is Discovery Bay College, a private school teaching the International Baccalaureate. Our son, John, attended for a few years.
Kind of dated, but still relevant. If you go ask AI it'll tell you that the prevailing theory is that the origin was Zoonotic. Aka, natural transmission. Even though there is little evidence of that. And there's plenty of evidence for the Lab Leak theory.
One day we may learn the truth. If a worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology decides to blow the whistle.
Anhoo, this is a good summary. Because I agree with it...
Key Takeaways:
"The establishment of Israel inflamed Palestinian anger".
First of all they weren't known as "Palestinians" at the time. They were known as "Arabs". The term "Palestinians" has referred, since Roman times, to the Jews, and then under the British Mandate, to both Jews and Arabs.
The "Harbour Bridge Bigots" who marched in Sydney last Sunday, believe -- completely wrongly -- that prior to Israeli independence in 1948, the "Palestinians" were Arab only. They believe, again wrongly, that there were a small number of Jews in the land, but that the majority came from Europe and stole their land. That was not true because (i) the number of Jews already in the land was close to the number of Arabs and (ii) the land that new arrivals acquired in Palestine was bought from absentee Turkish landlords (this is well documented and not in dispute).
The Bridge Bigots believe a fantasy: that before Israel was established all was good in the land of "Palestine". A mostly Arab Palestine. "We were fine with the Jews. We all go along. Until they came in from Europe, stole our land and established their illegitimate state."
Not true. The Jew hatred did not start from the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel.
There were hundreds of cases of Muslims attacking and massacring Jews, since Muhammad first killed jews in the Battle of Banu Qurayza, in 627 -- where he and his followers decapitated 600 to 900 Jewish men. That battle is recorded, in exultant and celebratory detail, by Ibn Ishaq in his "Sirah of Muhammad", The Life of Muhammad (which I have). This is core doctrine to Muslims. Muhammad, this mass murderer, is the Jesus of the Muslim community. He is "the perfect man". To be emulated.
It's important for we non-Muslims to know that. It's foundational to Muslims, core and important to their belief system: Muhammad is the perfect man who must be emulated at all times.
To keep the numbers of Muslim attacks on Jews down to a manageable level I've looked only at those between 1900 and 1947 (just before the establishment of the State of Israel).
Muslim attacks on Jews in Palestine:
Ok, but what about Jews attacking Muslims in the same period?April 4-7, 1920: Jerusalem Riots (Nebi Musa Riots) – Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem during the Nebi Musa pilgrimage, killing 5 Jews and injuring 211.
May 1-6, 1921: Jaffa Riots – Arab rioters attacked Jewish residents in Jaffa, killing 47 Jews and injuring 146, spreading to other areas.
August 23-29, 1929: Hebron Massacre – Arab mobs in Hebron killed 67 Jews, looting homes and synagogues; survivors were evacuated by British authorities.
August 23-29, 1929: Safed Massacre – Arab rioters in Safed killed 18-20 Jews, burning and looting Jewish homes and businesses.
1936-1939: Arab Revolt in Palestine – Widespread Arab attacks during the revolt killed 415 Jews, targeting settlements and civilians across Mandatory Palestine. [Source]
"No major documented massacres by Jewish groups against Arab Muslims in the Middle East from 1900 to 1947 meet the criteria of deliberate, large-scale attacks causing significant civilian deaths." [Source]
The corollary is: there were no cases of Jews attacking Muslim villages and driving them out of those villages. That did happen post 1948, as a part of the war effort. Israel was attacked, after all. Unilaterally and unprovoked, by all the surrounding Arab states. Which themselves had driven Muslims out of their villages -- on the grounds that they didn't want them in the way when they went about destroying the Jews, and with the promise that they could return once that genocide had been completed.
Sadly, for the Arab armies, and for their Muslim populations, they did not succeed in massacring the Jews or in defeating their new army. They lost. This was their Nakba. Their "disaster". Which they spin today as their "holocaust". And which they spin as the Jews kicking them out of their land.
Did not happen.
All this above is one or two of the many reasons I don't agree with the Bigots on the Bridge, the crowds who marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge, for "Humanity", in reality, whether they knew it or not, they marched for the victory by Hamas over the Jewish state. For the victory of a supremacist, misogynist, homophobic, exclusionary, genocidal, apartheid terrorist outfit called Hamas. That's what they do, if they know it or not.
I do not stand with them. They are either deluded or outright terror supporting. If not outright Hamas supporters, they are useful idiots. And I'm done with them. Even if I'm in the minority. Even if millions more march. Numbers don't make the truth here. Numbers are not the morality here. Numbers are not a persuasive argument here.
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Comedian Roseanne Barr talks with fellow YouTuber Tal Oran (The Travelling Clatt) and another guy.
The other guy has recently visited Jerusalem for the first time. He gives his impressions. Which I agree with. Namely that Jerusalem is unique, magical, special. A kaleidoscope of humanity in all its ethnicities, religions, races and beliefs. All bumping up with each other and getting along. He finds Jerusalem very special. And so did we.
I’ve lived, I've spent three years or more, in some of the world's major cities. Tokyo, Sydney, Canberra, Rome, New York, Berlin, Cape Town, London, Beijing, Shanghai and now Hong Kong. Even compared to these wonderful places, Jerusalem is most special. Really! And utterly so.
I remember our own visit. The Nuns in full habit, Muslim women in chador, Muslim men in their Dishdasha and Kufi, Jewish men in their funny hats and curly side whiskers, and we atheists in our daggy shorts and flip-flops, all wandering through this wonderland of sights, sounds and smells, unhassled, unruffled.
This city is unique. There is none approaches it in the world, let alone in the Arab world.
Would you rather a country where this interaction and mutual rubbing along is possible? Or one in which all but Muslims are expelled, repressed? Would you rather, in short, an Israel; or a Syria? An Israel or an Iran?
There is not a single Arab country run as well, or even half as well, as Israel. I've been to many: Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Lebanon, UAE, Qatar. Not just Arab, there’s Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia too. There's not a single Muslim country, of the 57 in the world, that is run well. That’s not just me saying that. The United Nations Human Development Report concludes the same: countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference countries all at the bottom of the rankings. (Added: some of the Gulf countries are run well, as in competently; they do not pass the democracy and freedom test, however).
Islam is a curse. A curse on Muslims as much as we "infidels". Stating ths simple truth makes me a horrid right-winger, of course. Don’tcha know… all cultures are equal! Well yeah, but nah. Some are more equal than others. And some are a whole lot worse.
A western culture which allows free speech, equal rights for all religions, for all minorities and for all beliefs, that gives equal and fair treatment, to women, to the LGBT community, such a culture is superior to one which is supremacist, homophobic, misogynist, censorious and intolerant of anyone not of their beliefs.
In short: Western culture is good; Islamic culture is bad. If any Occasional Reader (OR) has a different view I’d be pleased to hear it. Especially pleased to hear how today’s Islam is even equal to today’s western culture, let alone better.
Have at it.
https://youtu.be/3jVBcsXoriU?si=pMH8uKZFeoL8b407
PS: I forgot to say. Roseanne may be “just” a comedian. She’s a YouTuber now. A commenter. She has clear-headed, sharp, insightful views. I enjoy her.
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A. When information comes from the Israeli Defence Forces, it is to be doubted, by default, until and unless it can be unimpeachably verified, by at least several sources.B. When the information comes from Hamas, or any of its surrogates, like the Hamas Ministry of Health, or the UNRWA, it is to be accepted, by default, unless there is immediate, clear and unambiguous debunking of the claim. Even then, even if it is debunked, the debunking will be reported at the bottom of page 57.
Re "B" above, the most recent and egregious example of this was the photo on the front page of the New York Times. A Gazan woman is holding a severely malnourished infant in her arms, just skin and bones. The story was that this child was starving to death in his mother's arms because Israel was withholding food.
It turned out that this was a photo of a boy who was suffering from a birth defect of severe, and incurable, Muscular Dystrophy. His younger brother, who had been cropped from the photo, was in perfectly good shape, when the full photo was revealed. The New York Times had carried the photo on its main digital page, "The New York Times dot com", with its 55 Million subscribers.
When the NYT were forced to retract the photo, they did so on their "NYT PR" page, which has 55 thousand subscribers. IOW, only 0.1% of the readers of the original, and horrific photo, would have seen the retraction. Of course, the NYT can say "we retracted the photo as soon as we knew it was fake".
What the NYT did NOT do -- nor did the many western media outlets that also carried the photo -- was to try to verify the photo before publishing. They didn't do so because it had come from Hamas, and ... see "B" above.
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Dear Jewish community in Australia,
Thoughts on contemplating the Bridge Bigot Brigade:
Because of the principles in this Declaration, Israel is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious state, with equal rights for all, including its 22% of Arab citizens.[Article 13] THE STATE OF ISRAEL will ... ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (Preamble)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)
Palestine is an Islamic land... Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be. (Article 13)
The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression. (2017, Article iv).
These are two foundational documents. The Israeli Declaration of Independence and the Hamas Charter. Both are still in effect.
[Article 13] THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
Because of the principles in this Declaration, Israel is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious state, with equal rights for all, including its 22% of Arab citizens.
ADDED: Israel called on the very people that were then attacking them, to join in building the State of Israel:
[Article 16]. WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. [Here]
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. (Preamble)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)
Palestine is an Islamic land... Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be. (Article 13)
The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression. (2017, Article iv).
Could there be more stark differences between a Declaration of “peace and freedom for all” vs a Charter of “kill all the Jews? Kill all people who re not Muslims?” There is much much more, along similar lines to make this point a fortiori.
Because of the principles in this Charter, Gaza is a uni-cultural, uni-ethnic, uni-religious, xenophobic, genocidal state with no rights for minorities, gays, women, Jews.
Gaza population: 2 million. Number of Jews: 0. Number of Christians: 700, mostly foreign aid workers. Number of Arab Muslims: 1.999 million.
The Hamas Charter makes clear in many places that it is explicitly genocidal. It urges killing all Jews in all of "Palestine" and then in all the world.
These things in mind, it's a bit of a "thing I don't get" why people are violently anti-Israel, and worshipfully pro-Hamas. And are proud to repeat, to chant, the doctrines and hatreds of this vile outfit.
“Free, free Palestine”. It’s nonsense. And implicitly genocidal.
Me... I love Israel, Jews and their cult of life. I hate Hamas and their cult of death.
Love Israel; Hate Hamas.
I'm not buying any moral equivalence. One of these is good. The other is bad. T'were ever thus and remains thus.
Central Hong Kong, from Discovery Bay, before our wild thunderstorms of the last coupla days.
I read this essay decades ago.
It's worth reading again, when socialism seems to have a hold on young people in America. To the extent of making an avowed Marxist, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York. He's full of crazy ideas, ideas that will provably, from past experience -- that I've personally experienced in 1970s China -- be the ruination of New York.
I, Pencil, is about how freedom to make choices on where and when to buy and sell, create the best products, for the most people, at the best price.
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.∗
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that's too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see?ttps://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/read-i-pencil-my-family-tree-as-told-to-leonard-e-read-dec-1958
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Aussie-based Musk fan-boy and Tesla Bull, Steven Mark Ryan, conducts a test. Which he describes above. Interesting.
I got the same results when I Googled "Tesla". Every single result was negative.
The real crime here by Google is that they post anecdotes not data. Anecdotes about one single accident of a Tesla using self-drive software.
Whereas the data are these:
1. Tesla vehicles are the safest cars in America. The Model Y has been rated THE safest car in America, for the past seven straight years, as tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Here.
2. The Tesla FSD "Full Self Driving", with human oversight, is NINE times safer than driving without the FSD. Here.
To repeat: driving with Tesla's self-driving software is FIVE times safer than driving by oneself. That's the real story. Not that there's the occasional crash. For there will always be. But that it's way safer, by almost an order of magnitude, to use Tesla's FSD than it is to drive oneself. Imagine the benefits for society at large when this software becomes the standard. The benefits will run into the billions, apart from the benefits of fewer families ripped apart by the tragedy of a serious car accident.
These facts are surely relevant.
But not to Google.
You find them nowhere in the Google results. How can this be a fair search result? Obviously it is not.
Turns out that YouTube, for all its own faults and biases, does a better and fairer job than Google in giving a balanced story.
Musk and Tesla are improving life in America. Its environment and its people. But the mainstream hates him. Because, you know, Trump. And Doge. That is a seriously warped view, IMO. One that is bad for America.
https://youtu.be/7c2Pmjxhpes?si=ensJKN4jwDwxnLWF
For the record: Tesla Bulls and Bears are here
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| Photo taken by Sail Magazine camera boat |
Popped up in my daily photo feed this morning.
That’s me on the helm. We won that regatta.
Koh Samui is an island off the East coast of Thailand. It’s very beautiful. We sail Xena down from Hong Kong. Takes about a week of sailing.
Ahhh… those were the days! Of youth and ease of movement. When I was a stripling of 61.
Xena is an X-55 by X-Yachts in Denmark. We bought her new in 2008.
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There are really only two sources: Hamas or Israel. Most of the world, most of the media, most of academia, most of the people I know, most everyone, takes their information from Hamas. Often without checking as happened with the image of the skeletal boy, allegedly dying of hunger, that went viral last week.
I take my news from representatives of Israel, usually the IDF. And from people who are in Israel, and in Gaza, with feet on the ground.
There is no guarantee that one or the other is the most accurate. Just that history has shown, in previous wars with the Palestinians, the information from the IDF has been found to be vastly more accurate than that trom Hamas. Information from Hamas is often wrong deliberately. Where the IDF is wrong it's by accident.
That's the facts of the matter on this issue of information. The truth.
To Hamas: "Surrender. Release the hostages. Put your weapons down". Result: peace and no more hunger for the children of Gaza.
This is what I've long said on these pages. That the blame for what is happening in Gaza has to be placed clearly, repeatedly and unabiguously on who deserves the blame. Hamas.
That the Israel’s many enemies have a huge incentive to promote the idea that Israel is using starvation as a tool of warfare. The New York Times, along with most major media outlets throughout the world, turned a photo of a skeletal toddler in Gaza, Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, into a rallying cry against the supposed Israeli policy of starvation. But the outlets did not report that the boy was born with a muscular disorder, which helped explain his sickly appearance, and they did not print part of a photo that showed his healthy-looking brother beside him. Days after the deception was exposed, the New York Times, which ran the photo on the front page, quietly updated the story, but only after the original photo had been spread around the world....Trump, who is clearly growing frustrated and angry about the conditions in Gaza, has been right to forcefully speak out against moves to reward Hamas by recognizing a Palestinian state, and to point the finger where it belongs. On Thursday morning, with his envoy Steve Witkoff in Israel for talks about a cease-fire and the situation in Gaza, Trump posted on Truth Social: “The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” If the rest of the world were to echo this statement, rather than attacking Israel, there’d be a better chance for a deal to end the war and allow more aid to reach the people of Gaza.
First up, why would you want to hurt anyone? Not physically, I mean, but verbally. Why?
Well, of course, the answer is you might want to hurt someone when you're in an argument and you're losing. The standard line then is to use ad hominem. That is to attack the person, not the argument.
If you're on the Left and you're losing an argument to someone on the Right, you might use one of these old favourites:
And so on. And on, and on...
But I reckon the one that's a real arrow to the heart of your conservative interlocutor (hereinafter, m'lud, known as "the enemy"), before you blow them right off, before you leave the field of battle, before you ghost them on FB and cancel them from your life, is this one:
"You're just captured by your YouTube feed"
[Or Facebook or Instagram, or Tik Tok, or whatever]
Sure, this one looks feeble compared to the others above. But consider this:
First, it is of course ad hominem. It says nothing at all about argument being made by your enemy.
Second, it demeans your enemy. It condescends to them. It tells them they are foolish and naive. That they don't have the brain to discriminate, that they can't sort the wheat from the chaff. That they are subject to the craziest of conspiracy theories on the internet. That they believe anything they read and see. In short, That they can't think for themselves.
My counters are these:
Most people are not engaged with politics. They get on with their lives without worrying about any of the stuff that some of us do and that I do in the posts of this blog. It's perhaps only around 30% of the population that has enough of a deep interest in these topics to get to the stage of having to need a killer counter. This varies by age, with older folks more interested than younger. In the US, only 9% of 18-29 year olds are interested.
Of that 10 to 30% everyone is biased. Everyone. As I discussed here, years ago.
Most of us never go the the battle front, or to famine areas, or enter halls of Congress. Even those that do are not unbiased. They'll be affected by what they se and experience. We know from many war memoirs, for example, that the same battle, let alone the same war, will be seen so differently by everyone writing about it.
The challenge then is to try to understand as many facets of an issue as you can.
And here we have interesting data: those on the Left tend to read and watch only media on the left. Those on the Right tend to read both Left and Right media. Even if the conservatives did not do so, they are swimming in a sea of media, of government, of academia that leans heavily Left. So those on the Right have a default setting of being more aware of the other side's arguments than vice versa.
As for social media "capture", I can only speak about YouTube, as I don't do FB or Instagram. I'm on X mainly to see what important people of the world are saying.
Does YT "capture" folks? Does it "grab" people on the Right, to drive them down rabbit holes of disinformation, delusion and conspiracy? For sure there are some. But there are also people on the Left who are lured down rabbit holes. We learn in David Harsanyi's "The Rise of Blue Anon" about the conspiracy theories on the Left. Including the Grand-daddy of them all, the one that like a Zombie just wll not die -- the Russia collusion hoax.
YouTube has its downsides and dangers (for some). But overall I consider it a wonderful tool for humanity. We are blessed and privileged to have it. Never before in the history of humankind have we been able, at the press of a button, to see the speeches of world leaders, to watch debates in real time, to participate in Town Hall meetings, to listen to long-form podcasts with people of high intellect.
Am I "captured" by these? By only one side of the debate? Do I seek only confirmation bias via YouTube videos?
I won't say mea culpa. Because I'm not guilty, m'lord. Non mea culpa. Non ego felum. I am not to blame!
On YouTube I subscribe to a decent number of left-leaning sites. The likes of Pod Save America, the Daily and Charlamagne Tha God. On X, née Twitter, I follow about 300 people and I've made it personal policy to have half and half on each side of the aisle. So that I see posts even by the egregious Robert Reich. (Who has said, this Titan of the Left, "The Republican Party wants to turn American into a theocracy". Yeah, right Rob...).
So, yeah, I would find it pretty offensive to be told "you're just captured by your YouTube feed".
I'd rather be called a "racist" if it's a choice of slurs. I don't think I've ever been called a racist, TBH. Nor a "xenophobe". The closest call came in an encounter in our local supermarket. I was in line to pay and was idly eavesdropping on a young couple, mainlanders chatting in Mandarin. I guessed they were now living in California, as when they spoke to any other gweilo in the queue, they spoke in fluent SoCal. Then, something weird. The guy up and tried to push in front of me. I remonstrated. "Hey buddy, I'm in line here!". He went back to his wife and said to her, huffily, in Chinese Bai Pi Zhu, "White Skin Pig". Which is pretty racist I thought. I considered a stinging retort in Chinese -- was working on one -- but then was my turn to pay and I left without saying anything. I felt fine about that, because as with any of these racist issues, it's the person making the comment who's the dickhead. The bigot. They're the one fault, not you.
Just as I'm not the one at fault for wanting to read widely, on all sides of the aisle, and watch widely as well, on the wonder of modern technology called YouTube. Where I am not captured. No, not at all.
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