tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74076620881627601292024-03-15T05:49:52.596+11:00all right, all rightall right, alreadyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger264125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-8613082129770919632021-03-25T14:30:00.003+11:002021-03-25T14:46:57.596+11:00A Literary Precedent for Greens’ Feelings<div style="padding-left: 75px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Senseless Sensibility</b><br /><br />Jane Austen’s <i>Sense and</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Sensibility</i><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">*</span></span> provides</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Greens with their text:<br /><br />Marianne Dashwood’s</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />conjecture of one moment</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />is belief the next.</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br />For fine-feeling folk,</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />to wish is to hope and to</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />hope is to expect,</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br />overvaluing</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />feeling; for reason feeling</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />reason to reject.</span></div><div style="padding-left: 75px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #073763;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span><span style="font-family: times;">* In Austen’s <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> (Ch. <span style="font-size: x-small;">IV</span>), Elinor “knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment they believed the next—that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.”</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-32572824368922436132019-05-15T18:00:00.000+10:002019-05-17T00:47:00.154+10:00Not Inheriting the Kingdom of God<div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1">Hon. Bill Shorten, Australia’s Federal Opposition Leader, has declared, “</span>I actually think that the meanest commentary that I’ve seen in this election is actually the proposition that gay people are going to go to hell.”</span></div>
<div class="p2" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s2">Mr. Shorten claims to be Christian. Does he or does he not accept as scripturally-established doctrine the statement of St. Paul</span> to the Corinthians in <i>1 Corinthians</i> 6: 9-10 that among the unrighteous who, if unrepentant, cannot inherit the Kingdom of God are effeminate men and those men who bed men?</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.</span></blockquote>
<div class="p4" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The two words translated as “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” in the <i>KJV</i> (<span class="s3">μαλακοὶ</span> and <span class="s3">ἀρσενοκοῖται</span>) may be translated into modern English as “pansies” and “arse-bandits”. The Vulgate’s translation of <span class="s3">ἀρσενοκοῖται</span>, <i>masculorum concubitores</i>, in English is “[male] bedmates of men”.</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s4"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Koine Greek</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: </span></span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ἢ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὐκ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οἴδατε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ὅτι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ἄδικοι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">θεοῦ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">βασιλείαν</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὐ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">κληρονομήσουσιν</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">; </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">μὴ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> π</span><span style="color: #0b5394;">λανᾶσθε·</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> π</span><span style="color: #0b5394;">όρνοι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">εἰδωλολάτραι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">μοιχοὶ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">μαλακοὶ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ἀρσενοκοῖται</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">κλέ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">π</span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ται</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὔτε</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> π</span><span style="color: #0b5394;">λεονέκται</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">, </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὐ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">μέθυσοι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">, </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὐ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">λοίδοροι</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">, </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">οὐχ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">ἅρ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">π</span><span style="color: #0b5394;">αγες</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">βασιλείαν</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">θεοῦ</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;"> </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">κληρονομήσουσιν</span><span class="s5" style="color: #0b5394;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Vulgate</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394;">: An nescitis quia iniqui regnum Dei non possidebunt? Nolite errare: neque fornicarii, neque idolis servientes, neque adulteri, neque molles, neque masculorum concubitores, neque fures, neque avari, neque ebriosi, neque maledici, neque rapaces regnum Dei possidebunt.</span></span></blockquote>
<div class="p9" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By the way, why do those who denounce the proposition that men who bed men might go to Hell not also condemn the proposition that unrepentant fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, coveters, drunkards, defamers and graspers are similarly hell-bound?</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-68232368185322261472019-03-19T11:30:00.001+11:002019-03-19T15:32:05.678+11:00Rosebery Film Festival<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">I have been rather busy in recent times on various tasks such as, after my relocation to Rosebery, organising the</span> <a href="http://roseberyfilmfestival.org/" target="_blank">Rosebery Film Festival</a><span style="color: #073763;"> and its <a href="http://roseberyfilmfestival.org/challenge" target="_blank">48-Hour Challenge</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://roseberyfilmfestival.org/posters" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1485" data-original-width="1050" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4nsk9hpHBp6oZBKfwuqSDB_zpEmur3dwh_SSsBxLh2JMgqp4FORg0CCnFIBXOpEDxoFEnYYETe0766qZ6xgrDGS7eful8x4RtrocuL_DRJQoCevQtevwWrD5_Fb0yaIajRb0Uh_v7hgw/s320/rffposter01.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-33728374466436580612018-11-16T00:10:00.000+11:002018-11-16T00:10:01.120+11:00One Man’s Discovery Sinks a Major Climate Study<center>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-3950769877619719742017-10-31T11:00:00.000+11:002017-11-01T01:59:22.844+11:00Unbanning a Ban<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;">From Bloomberg comes “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/trump-s-promised-ban-on-trans-soldiers-blocked-by-federal-judge" target="_blank">Trump’s Ban on Transgender Soldiers Is Blocked by U.S. Judge</a>” by Erik Larson:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;">A U.S. judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s promised ban on transgender Americans serving in the armed forces, ruling that an earlier policy of inclusion must remain in effect.</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">The ban, due to be implemented in March 2018, is a form </span><span style="color: #073763;">[of]</span><span style="color: #0b5394;"> discrimination based on gender and is already causing harm to personnel, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington said in a ruling Monday. </span><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">Citing threats to troop readiness and morale, as well as costs associated with transgender medical services, </span><span style="color: #0b5394;">Trump in July said in a series of tweets that he would reverse former President Barack Obama’s policy allowing transgender soldiers to serve. The suit by the National Center for Lesbian Rights claims the plan violates the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;">The injunction means Trump’s policy cannot be implemented while the case is litigated. No trial date has been set. In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly said she was required to apply a greater degree of scrutiny to the government’s plan because it impacts a class of Americans that has lacked political power.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;">“As a class, transgender individuals have suffered, and continue to suffer, severe persecution and discrimination,” the judge wrote. “Despite this discrimination, the court is aware of no argument or evidence suggesting that being transgender in any way limits one’s ability to contribute to society.”</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;">Ignoring the obvious point that a person who is severely physically or mentally disabled might be definitely unfit for any military service but still able to “contribute to society” (and despite the fact that not all <a href="https://allrightallright.blogspot.com/2014/02/zero-discrimination.html" target="_blank">discrimination</a> is necessarily evil), let us apply a little <i>reductio</i> by exchanging one fashionable delusion accepted (seemingly uncritically) by the judge—that men who insist they are women and women who avow they are men, despite contrary biological evidence, are sane—with other forms of delusion:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;">“As a class, people who think they’re pet poodles, or have a firm belief that they’re garden walls, or possess deep certitude that they are intelligent vapours visiting Earth across the vast expanse of time and space from some settlement within the constellation which we call the Pleiades, have suffered, and continue to suffer, severe persecution and discrimination,” the judge might explain. “Despite this discrimination, the court is aware of no argument or evidence suggesting that allegedly being a dog or an inanimate structure or an alien emission in any way limits one’s ability to contribute to society, therefore I demand that such people must not only be allowed to enrol (or, if already enrolled, stay) in our military forces but thenceforth our military forces must bear the inconveniences, and the taxpayers must foot the bill, for any subsequent special treatment that the supposed canines, constructions or gases may require or demand.”</span></blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-85575885530413036012017-10-10T10:00:00.000+11:002017-10-10T11:04:54.963+11:00Tony Abbott’s Address on AGW<div style="text-align: justify;">
Hon. Tony Abbott, in an <a href="http://impactofcc.blogspot.com/2017/10/abbotts-address-to-gwpf.html" target="_blank">address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation</a> in London, said (<i>inter alia</i>):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Since the Global Financial Crisis, at least in the West, growth has been slow, wages stagnant, opportunities limited, and economic and cultural disruption unprecedented. Within countries and between them, old pecking orders are changing. Civilizational self-doubt is everywhere; we believe in everyone but ourselves; and everything is taken seriously except that which used to be.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"> Just a few years ago, history was supposed to have ended in the triumph of the Western liberal order. Yet far from becoming universal, Western values are less and less accepted even in the West itself. We still more or less accept that every human being is born with innate dignity; with rights, certainly, but we’re less sure about the corresponding duties.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"> We still accept the golden rule of human conduct: to treat others as we would have them treat us—or to use the Gospel formula to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”—but we’re running on empty.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"> In Britain and Australia, scarcely 50% describe themselves as Christian, down from 90% a generation back. For decades, we’ve been losing our religious faith but we’re fast losing our religious knowledge too. We’re less a post-Christian society than a non-Christian, or even an anti-Christian one. It hasn’t left us less susceptible to dogma, though, because we still need things to believe in and causes to fight for; it’s just that believers can now be found for almost anything and everything.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"> Climate change is by no means the sole or even the most significant symptom of the changing interests and values of the West. Still, only societies with high levels of cultural amnesia—that have forgotten the scriptures about man created “in the image and likeness of God” and charged with “subduing the earth and all its creatures”—could have made such a religion out of it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"> There’s no certain way to regain cultural self-confidence. </span><span style="color: #990000;">The heart of any recovery, though, has to be an honest facing of facts and an insistence upon intellectual rigour</span><span style="color: #351c75;">. </span><span style="color: #073763;"> […]</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Beware the pronouncement, “the science is settled”. It’s the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages. Almost as bad is the claim that “99% of scientists believe” as if scientific truth </span></span><span style="color: #073763;">[were]</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> determined by votes rather than facts.<br />
There are laws of physics; there are objective facts; there are moral and ethical truths. But there is almost nothing important where no further enquiry is needed. What the “science is settled” brigade want is to close down investigation by equating questioning with superstition. It’s an aspect of the wider weakening of the Western mind which poses such dangers to the world’s future. </span><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Contrary to the breathless assertions that climate change is behind every weather event, in Australia, the floods are not bigger, the bushfires are not worse, the droughts are not deeper or longer, and the cyclones are not more severe than they were in the 1800s. Sometimes, they do more damage but that’s because there’s more to destroy, not because their intensity has increased. More than one hundred years of photography at Manly Beach in my electorate does not suggest that sea levels have risen despite frequent reports from climate alarmists that this is imminent.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">It may be that a tipping point will be reached soon and that the world might start to warm rapidly but so far reality has stubbornly refused to conform to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s computer modelling. Even the high-priests of climate change now seem to concede that there was a pause in warming between the 1990s and 2014.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">So far, though, there’s no concession that their models might require revision even though unadjusted data suggests that the 1930s were actually the warmest decade in the United States and that temperatures in Australia have only increased by 0.3º over the past century, not the one degree usually claimed.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">The growing evidence that records have been adjusted, that the impact of urban heat islands has been downplayed, and that data sets have been slanted in order to fit the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming does not make it false; but it should produce much caution about basing drastic action upon it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Then there’s the evidence that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide (which is a plant food after all) are actually greening the planet and helping to lift agricultural yields. In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heat waves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it </span><span style="color: #073763;">[be]</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">In what might be described as Ridley’s paradox, after the distinguished British commentator: at least so far, it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Australia, for instance, has the world’s largest readily available supplies of coal, gas and uranium, yet thanks to a decade of policy based more on green ideology than common sense, we can’t be sure of keeping the lights on this summer; and, in the policy-induced shift from having the world’s lowest power prices to amongst the highest, our manufacturing industry has lost its one, big comparative economic advantage. </span><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">As a badge of environmental virtue, the South Australian state Labor government had been boasting that, on average, almost 50% of its power was wind-generated—although at any moment it could vary from almost zero to almost 100%. It had even ostentatiously blown up its one coal-fired power station.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">In September last year, though, the wind blew so hard that the turbines had to shut down—and the inter-connector with Victoria and its reliable coal-fired power failed too. For twenty-four hours, there was a State-wide blackout. For nearly two million people, the lights were off, cash registers didn’t work, traffic lights went down, lifts stopped, and patients were sent home from hospitals.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Throughout last summer, there were further blackouts and brownouts across eastern Australia requiring hundreds of millions in repairs to the plant of energy-intensive industries. Despite this, in a display of virtue signalling, to flaunt its environmental credentials (and to boost prices for its other coal-fired plants), last March the French-government part-owned multinational, Engie, closed down the giant Hazelwood coal-fired station that had supplied a quarter of Victoria’s power.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">The Australian Energy Market Operator is now sufficiently alarmed to have just issued an official warning of further blackouts this summer in Victoria and South Australia and severe medium term power shortfalls. But in yet more virtue-signalling, energy giant AGL is still threatening to close the massive Liddell coal-fired power station in NSW and replace it with a subsidised solar farm and a much smaller gas-fired power station relying on gas supplies that don’t currently exist.</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;">Were it not rational behaviour based on irrational government policy, this deliberate elimination of an essential service could only be described as a form of economic self-harm.</span></blockquote>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-9337769767502175972017-08-01T10:00:00.000+10:002017-08-02T17:30:45.236+10:00A Case for Sergeant Beef<div style="text-align: justify;">
Over at The <a href="http://booksofleobruce.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Books of Leo Bruce</a>—since the first post-war Sgt. Beef novel now seems to be out of print, and it is my policy to provide texts of all Leo Bruce’s out-of-print novels—I have begun providing the text, chaptermeal, of Leo Bruce’s <i><a href="http://booksofleobruce.blogspot.com/2017/08/case-for-sergeant-beef-chapter-one.html" target="_blank">Case for Sergeant Beef</a></i> (London, 1947).</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-65097427341568896022017-06-06T14:00:00.000+10:002017-06-08T18:20:53.304+10:00The Most Thorough Screening<div class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Australians occasionally wonder how thorough the screening processes of various governmental agencies and departments are; here are a few recent transcripts released by concerned insiders <i>viâ</i> Lippiweaks.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>A recent examination at the Border Control area of a major Australian airport</i>:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Junior Border Control Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Recently Arrived Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: No.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Junior Border Control Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: I shall ask a second time. Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Recently Arrived Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: No.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Junior Border Control Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: I shall ask you yet again. Have you any dangerous or illicit items to declare?</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Recently Arrived Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Well, yes, I have some explosives and opiates—oh, I mean, <i>No</i>. Damn! You got me bang to rights.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Senior Border Control Officer</i> (to the visiting Minister)</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Ha! The third question gets them every time.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Minister for Immigration</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: What would happen had he said “No”.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Senior Border Control Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: No one can answer thrice falsely. If someone say “No” for a third time we immediately allow them entry, of course.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Minister for Immigration</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Of course. Rightio. Carry on.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="color: #073763;">A recent interrogation a</i><span style="color: #073763;"><i>t the border control station near a minor Australian seaport</i>:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Junior Immigration Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Are you a real refugee, one fleeing genuine persecution?</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Unlawful Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Umm. Not really.</span></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Junior Immigration Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Look, if you want to enter this country under our refugee programme you need to say “Yes”. Now, I’ll ask you again. Are you a real refugee, fleeing from persecution?</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Unlawful Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: No.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Junior Immigration Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Let’s try this another way. I’ll ask a question and you just say “Yes” to anything I ask, right?</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unlawful Non-Citizen</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Yes?</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Junior Immigration Officer</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: That’s the way. Well done. Okay. Are you a real refugee, fleeing genuine persecution, and entering this country without any seditious or terrorist intent, just wanting to enjoy our free way of life including generous welfare payments and the like? Say “Yes”.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Unlawful Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Well, I do have plans to—</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Junior Immigration Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: The correct answer is “Yes”.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Unlawful Non-Citizen</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Yes.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Junior Immigration Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Welcome to Australia. Here is your free cell ’phone. Oh, you already have one. Never mind, here’s another. Here are your brochures and vouchers. Just head to that door marked “Completely Vetted Refugees”. Bye!</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>A recent hearing at the Parole Board of a large Australian prison</i>:</span></div>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Parole Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: I see that you have been convicted of conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack, murder of witnesses, kidnapping, rape, sedition and arson, that you have served only six months of a six-year sentence, and that you still have to face trial on other serious charges once the public prosecutor finally collates all the evidence against you and your accomplices. If you are released on parole will you promise to be of good behaviour?</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Convicted Terrorist</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: I shall, of course, behead all those who insult the Prophet (PBuH) and generally smite all unbelievers, which I consider to be fairly good behaviour—</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Parole Officer</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Just say “Yes”.</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Convicted Terrorist</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Yes, you filthy pig.</span></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Parole Officer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Good. Here are you papers. Off you go.</span></blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-74663011503831871962017-06-06T11:55:00.000+10:002017-06-06T15:34:50.493+10:00Effective Fatwas<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A few rulings from scholars will soon put an end to terrorism, surely.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQ3sy-M6dqccoayhmymWqjrtjdapDoWa-ok2E9jZwyOCpK4clMVp7crege50nOKmGce1N_uKk7F5gFU6uQs6uSCBLS4yrRuz8-C6lDDFEhZHO0aB9Bc17dymfBXWMyjvTAbvrWSH5Q0Y/s1600/infidel01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="490" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdQ3sy-M6dqccoayhmymWqjrtjdapDoWa-ok2E9jZwyOCpK4clMVp7crege50nOKmGce1N_uKk7F5gFU6uQs6uSCBLS4yrRuz8-C6lDDFEhZHO0aB9Bc17dymfBXWMyjvTAbvrWSH5Q0Y/s320/infidel01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljiXBu0DHdSUTcjwWubTszgvHCJ-mHTRrHkHXoBPeP9jEzswH_FIIA8naV71zWRVFXtxMihUrEFBkngDQzORW1Eh3OI3ADmkVqtJONeYkccSdFgnlN0vRoWktLvXOwTk7xBw9Vz6rY88/s1600/infidel02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="75" data-original-width="501" height="47" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljiXBu0DHdSUTcjwWubTszgvHCJ-mHTRrHkHXoBPeP9jEzswH_FIIA8naV71zWRVFXtxMihUrEFBkngDQzORW1Eh3OI3ADmkVqtJONeYkccSdFgnlN0vRoWktLvXOwTk7xBw9Vz6rY88/s320/infidel02.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>In an apartment, somewhere in the West</i>:</span><br />
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<i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahummed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Okay, our vests are primed, our guns are loaded, our knives are sharpened, and the van is fully fuelled; let’s go out and slaughter some infidels for the glory of Allah.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Wait, wait; I’ve just read a ruling from some scholars which affirms that “suicide attacks, armed insurgency against a state, and use of force in the name of imposing Shariah” is forbidden.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahummed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Yeah? Who are these clowns when they’re home?</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Thirty-one noted scholars at a seminar at the International Islamic University in Islamabad.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahummed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: And does <i>our</i> own Iman endorse this so-called ruling?</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Not so much.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahummed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: And does <i>anyone</i> in our community ever pay any attention to the International Islamic University in Islamabad?</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Not that I can recall.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahommed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Right. Well, I guess we’ll stay home today and watch the… Wait, <i>why</i> should we not go out and slaughter immodestly dressed infidels and thereby deliver ourselves straight to a rather nifty paradise?</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: It seems our terror group does not belong to the true Muslim faith.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahummed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: What moron asserts that?</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahommad Mahmoud</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Umm, some infidel on Facebook.</span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #a64d79;"><br />
</span></i><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;">Mahmud Mahommed</span></i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Uh huh.</span><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mahommad Mahmoud</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: You don’t think we should heed infidels on Facebook?</span><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mahmud Mahummed</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Now, what do <i>you</i> reckon? Perhaps you’d prefer that the interpretation of the holy scriptures come not from your own constant reading thereof, or from the wise lessons of our learned Imams, but from some emasculated atheist who is too scared to arm himself and announces that we should all co-exist. Perhaps you’d rather just spend an entire lifetime doing really good deeds in the vague hope that you might somehow work your way into a slightly inferior paradise instead of immediately entering the paradise for martyrs. Perhaps you like the idea of a world ruled by infidels yelling that people may dress and dance and drink as they please and that the true religion is just like their own effete, incoherent set of contradictory beliefs which consists mainly of saying only nice things about everyone and giving every runner in every race a participation certificate instead of rewarding the actual winners. Perhaps you’d rather we just sauntered down to the local pub dressed like infidels and have a few pints, instead of doing Allah’s mighty work, eh? Perhaps you reckon it’s perfectly fine to sit back with a few cold ones whilst young girls and sodomites freely dance to the so-called music of a young celebrity cavorting like a semi-naked, devil-worshipping whore. Perhaps—</span><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mahommad Mahmoud</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Nonetheless, I do think we should stay home and be nice to our godless neighbours.</span><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Mahmud Mahummed</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: All right then.</span></blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-19668253917142458592017-05-24T13:15:00.000+10:002017-06-06T15:33:29.046+10:00As in the Blitz!<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the wake of yet another attack (which had nothing to do with Islam, obviously, </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">by a deluded lone wolf</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">), some people (the same folk, for the most part, who blether of tolerance and the pressing need not to blame our Mahometan neighbours who are, as ever, the real victims here) urge Britons to carry on as normal—as in the Blitz!—in order to defy evil terrorists. Of course, though Londoners, for example, did do their best to live their lives as normally as possible during World War II they did so whilst their military forces were actually fighting the Axis powers by, say, constantly bombing the enemy.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Things would be very different if the politicians of today had been in power during WWII:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>BBC announcer</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394;">: Here is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, speaking from the smoking ruins of the Palace of Westminster.</span></span><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br />
</i></span><span style="color: #741b47; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Prime Minister</i></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Good evening. I speak to you tonight, grief-stricken by the horrid events of this day. As you are probably aware, waves of aeroplanes of the <i>Luftwaffe</i>, Nazi Germany’s airforce, again dropped thousands of bombs over south-east England today, many over the great city of London, and many hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent civilians are dead and many, many more are grievously injured. There has been great destruction of property, including damage to our most beloved buildings of outstanding cultural worth.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But we cannot allow loss of life and heritage—which is just part and parcel with living in a modern city, really—to fill our minds with hate. Not <i>all</i> Germans are Nazis, and not <i>all</i> Nazis are evil. Furthermore, National Socialism is a great political ideology, with many peaceful adherents, and a long and rich history. Nazism has absolutely nought to do with war or terrorism. Many</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> (or, at least, some) Nazis, according to reliable surveys, are quite moderate and are not <i>entirely</i> supportive of the total abolition of democracy, the brutal repression of “non-Aryan” peoples, and the pitiless extermination of Jews.<br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We ought to send only good wishes to our enemies, as we send our thoughts and prayers to those in sorrow, and we must let Nazi Germany know that we shall welcome them all, with loving, open arms, not with force of arms, whenever they choose to visit our rich and hospitable, borderless land. We shall welcome the Nazis on the beaches, we shall welcome them on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, we shall welcome them in the hills; we shall never surrender to hate. The way to stop conflict is to <a href="http://allrightallright.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/the-easy-way-to-stop-troubles-ignore.html" target="_blank">refuse to participate</a> in conflict! </span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We must shew the good people of Germany, in word and deed, that we shall not stoop to similar acts of destruction and intolerance. Instead, let us send messages of peace and good will to the ordinary people of Germany whilst shewing those who attacked us that they cannot triumph over us.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We will live our lives as if Herr Hitler and his arrogant but wrong-headed cohort of intolerant National Socialists had not declared war on peaceful democracies and completely subjugated the citizenry of France and Poland and several other countries which few have heard of. We will keep our streets well lit, we will impose no curfew, we will continue to work and play as if nothing untoward occurred and, in short, we will bravely carry on as usual.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It won’t be long before the leadership of Nazi Germany realises that diversity beats uniformity, open-hearted liberalism overcomes narrow-minded provincialism, tolerance defeats intolerance, and love vanquishes hate and no one ever achieved anything with <a href="http://allrightallright.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/proof-were-not-violent-we-havent.html" target="_blank">violence</a>.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Good night from what was, once, the House of Commons and the home of representative government.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-size: x-small;">UPDATE I</span><span style="color: #073763;">: see “<a href="https://www.steynonline.com/7841/dangerous-woman-meets-dangerous-man" target="_blank">‘Dangerous Woman’ Meets Dangerous Man</a>” by Mark Steyn:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">“Carrying on exactly as before”, as <i>The Independent</i> advises, will not be possible. A few months ago, I was in Toulouse, where Jewish life has vanished from public visibility and is conducted only behind the prison-like walls of a fortress schoolhouse and a centralised synagogue that requires 24/7 protection by French soldiers; I went to Amsterdam, which is markedly less gay than it used to be; I walked through Molenbeek after dark, where unaccompanied women dare not go. You can carry on, you can stagger on, but life is not exactly as it was before. Inch by inch, it’s smaller and more constrained. </span><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11. But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamisation is both unstoppable and manageable. It is neither—and, for the sake of the dead of last night’s carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May’s statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at <i>The Spectator</i> to be “defiant”, but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality. So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic: candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it—like the Eloi in H G Wells’ <i>Time Machine</i>, too evolved to resist the Morlocks.</span></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the supposed inutility of violence, see <i>Starship Troopers</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (New York, 1959), Chapter II:</span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One girl told </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[the teacher of History and Moral Philosophy]</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> bluntly: “My mother says that violence never settles anything.”</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“So?” Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. “I’m sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn’t your mother tell them so? Or why don’t </span><i style="color: #0b5394; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">you</i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">?”</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">They had tangled before—since you couldn’t flunk the course, it wasn’t necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, “You’re making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!”</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“You seemed to be unaware of it,” he said grimly. “Since you do know it, wouldn’t you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea—a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE II</span> (25 May)</span><span style="color: #073763;">: Mark Steyn writes a <a href="https://www.steynonline.com/7846/an-orwellian-inversion-of-language" target="_blank">sequel</a> to his article quoted <i>supra</i>:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My thoughts yesterday did not meet with universal agreement. Linda Cianchetti emails:</span></span></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The killer was the queen of England’s clan.<br />
Rothschild Soros club.<br />
Stop zionist Israel jews from manufacturing all this illusion. They are the banking cartel around the world. Stop blaming everyone but the culprits, themselves. Or we will have no respect for journalists and the tales they put out.</i></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Well, thanks for clearing that up.</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I get a lot more of this than I used to. I suspect Ms Cianchetti would blame “zionist Israel jews” and “the queen of England’s clan” whatever happened, but it’s a close call whether she’s any more detached from reality than, say, </span><i style="color: #0b5394;">Newsweek</i><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> fretting about “</span><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/muslims-manchester-fear-reprisals-isis-claims-responsibility-concert-attack-614159" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;" target="_blank">reprisals</a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">” against Muslims or the nincompoop diversicrat who serves as Chief Constable of Greater Manchester sternly warning that we must not “</span><a href="http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/23/manchesters-top-police-say-we-wont-tolerate-hate-after-ariana-grande-terror-attack-6656860/" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;" target="_blank">tolerate hate</a><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">”—by which he means not the hate of people who shred little girls’ bodies with nail bombs but the mean-spirited Tweets of people who get angry at the people who shred little girls’ bodies with nail bombs</span></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Official Lies are getting more ludicrous, and (with respect to the investigation of Fleet Street columnists for entirely innocuous observations) dangerous and totalitarian. One further danger of the Official Lies is that their obvious fraudulence bolsters the confidence of Ms Cianchetti and the similarly inclined in their derangements.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE III</span> (25 May)</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;">: see “<a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/after-manchester-its-time-for-anger/#.WSZg6iN96iY" target="_blank">After Manchester: It’s Time for Anger</a>” by Brendan O’Neill:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As part of the post-terror narrative, our emotions are closely policed. Some emotions are celebrated, others demonised. Empathy—good. Grief—good. Sharing your sadness online—great. But hatred? Anger? Fury? These are bad. They are inferior forms of feeling, apparently, and must be discouraged. Because if we green-light anger about terrorism, then people will launch pogroms against Muslims, they say, or even attack Sikhs or the local Hindu-owned cornershop, because that’s how stupid and hateful we apparently are. But there is a strong justification for hate right now. Certainly for anger. For rage, in fact. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">The post-terror cultivation of passivity speaks to a profound crisis of—and fear of—the active citizen. It diminishes us as citizens to reduce us to hashtaggers and candle-holders in the wake of serious, disorientating acts of violence against our society. It decommissions the hard thinking and deep feeling citizens ought to pursue after terror attacks. Indeed, in some ways this official post-terror narrative is the unwitting cousin of the terror attack itself. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span></span></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That the post-terror narrative is fundamentally about taming our passion and politics is clear from its sidelining of all issues of substance. We are actively warned against asking difficult questions about 21st-century society and why it has this violence in it, this nihilism in it. Question the wisdom of multiculturalism, of refusing to elevate one culture over another and instead encouraging people to live in their own cultural bubbles, and you’re racist. Wonder </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">[whether]</span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> the obsession with combatting ‘Islamophobia’ might have given rise to a situation where some Muslims, especially younger ones, cannot handle ridicule of their religion, and… well, you’re ‘Islamophobic’. As for immigration: this is the great unmentionable; you’re a fascist even for thinking about it. The post-terror narrative that barks ‘You must empathise!’ also says, implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, ‘You mustn’t think! </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">It is wrong to have core values in a society built on diversity, apparently, and we mustn’t ever suggest that any particular ideology poses a threat to those values, because that might involve ‘punching down’, singling people out, </span><i style="color: #0b5394;">etc</i><span style="color: #0b5394;">. We end up with a unity of shallow feeling, a union of highly individuated mourners, not a unity around real ideals and things and vision. Their cry of unity is a lie. The fact is there are people in our society willing to attack us, others who will think those attacks are justified, and others still who will apologise for those attacks by saying they’re a product of ‘Islamophobia’ or Western intervention overseas. </span></span></span><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span><br /><span style="color: #0b5394;">
Stop and think about how strange it is, how perverse it is, that more than 20 of our citizens have been butchered and we are basically saying: ‘Everyone calm down. Love is the answer.’ Where’s the rage? If the massacre of children and their parents on a fun night out doesn’t make you feel rage, nothing will. The terrorist has defeated you. You are dead already.</span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-265136306662337192017-05-13T02:37:00.000+10:002017-07-03T22:37:43.797+10:00Potato, Sweet Potato & Misnomers<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If I were given some sugared flesh when I asked for a sweetmeat, or supplied peas after I ordered some sweet peas I should be disappointed almost as much, I warrant, as a diner who asked for a plate of sweetbread with some sweet corn on the side and was instead served a slice of bread and honey, say, with some sugared wheat or barley; similarly, if I ordered some mashed potato or fried potato chips and was instead given some mashed sweet potato or fried sweet potato <a href="http://allrightallright.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/advertisements-and-stupid-males.html" target="_blank">chips</a> I should be rightly peeved. The sweet potato (<i>Ipomoea batatas</i>) is not the same as the potato (<i>Solanum tuberosum</i>), and perversely providing a dish of sweet potatoes instead of a dish of potatoes when potatoes were ordered is insultingly wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On a recent episode of MasterChef Australia a contestant, Benjamin Bullock, deliberately provided a meal featuring sweet potato beignets (which he called “doughnuts”) though the meal was meant to feature potatoes—it was a “potato challenge”—wherefore he failed entirely to supply a meal which had to feature (in the words of Gary Mehigan, one of the judges) potato as “the heart of the dish”; that mischievous contestant should have been soundly horse-whipped and sent home in disgrace. The contestant who was instead eliminated from the competition, Josh Clearihan, had prepared inadequate gnocchi (which he insisted on pronouncing “nocky”); he ought to have been punished for his wilfully wayward pronunciation of a classic Italian dish but at least he used real spuds in the potato challenge.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8xJ1eWaZKWg3dVtwBLPbUqNHJfxBIwZcVjZ41tXF2WG3qDVJTfUYl7-0-bIwWS0MBjBDBm6qcwc_edzmMpuLzmDoEu-NENFXhR8Vu0oWSPZFm4yJqYp4R3FkaFXjzB1mjZXdTBxS_s4/s1600/potatoes.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU8xJ1eWaZKWg3dVtwBLPbUqNHJfxBIwZcVjZ41tXF2WG3qDVJTfUYl7-0-bIwWS0MBjBDBm6qcwc_edzmMpuLzmDoEu-NENFXhR8Vu0oWSPZFm4yJqYp4R3FkaFXjzB1mjZXdTBxS_s4/s320/potatoes.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">quite appropriate for a potato challenge</span></span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZ5CC9jCs3dirBIA9Bb_EUokgmIw4AJ9P5jiW5x8l6UEDizhJRer7a_QIbOB51qOr0gtpgxeHGUo4_FvXJJPgmH3NoS30JFHwSQJzjFzw04N7bLXdwEuvza9nXL12_oSqs8URmvJrwIQ/s1600/sweet+potato.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUZ5CC9jCs3dirBIA9Bb_EUokgmIw4AJ9P5jiW5x8l6UEDizhJRer7a_QIbOB51qOr0gtpgxeHGUo4_FvXJJPgmH3NoS30JFHwSQJzjFzw04N7bLXdwEuvza9nXL12_oSqs8URmvJrwIQ/s320/sweet+potato.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="color: #c27ba0; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">quite inappropriate for a potato challenge</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See the the first paragraphs of Chapter One, “Misnomers”, from Thomas Love Peacock’s novel, <i>Gryll Grange </i>(London, 1861):</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">‘Palestine soup!’ said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; ‘a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and which we also call artichoke, because it resembles the first in flavour, although, <i>me judice</i>, a very inferior affair. This last is a species of the helianthus, or sunflower genus of the <i>Syngenesia frustranea</i> class of plants. It is therefore a girasol, or turn-to-the-sun. From this girasol we have made Jerusalem, and from the Jerusalem artichoke we make Palestine soup.’<br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Gryll.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A very good thing, doctor.</span><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Rev. Dr. Opimian.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A very good thing; but a palpable misnomer.</span><br />
<br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mr. Gryll.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am afraid we live in a world of misnomers, and of a worse kind than this. In my little experience I have found that a gang of swindling bankers is a respectable old firm; that men who sell their votes to the highest bidder, and want only ‘the protection of the ballot’ to sell the promise of them to both parties, are a free and independent constituency; that a man who successively betrays everybody that trusts him, and abandons every principle he ever professed, is a great statesman, and a Conservative, forsooth, <i>à</i> <i>nil conservando</i>; that schemes for breeding pestilence are sanitary improvements; that the test of intellectual capacity is in swallow, and not in digestion; that the art of teaching everything, except what will be of use to the recipient, is national education; and that a change for the worse is reform.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-67146139265345087422017-04-01T17:10:00.000+11:002020-04-28T17:43:23.049+10:00Parsing Presidential Pronouncements Perversely<div style="padding-left: 75px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Misreading Trump</b><br /><br />When President Trump</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">uses metaphors fools parse</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">them literally</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">but when he speaks plain</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">truth those clowns interpret that</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">figuratively.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The media take</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump’s jokes and flippancies far</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">too seriously</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">whilst treating his</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">serious announcements as</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">flippant, wilfully.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wise folk, as ever,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">would do well if they disdain</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">such perversity.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-59362347360267469702017-02-14T17:00:00.000+11:002017-08-17T17:29:59.386+10:00If You Need to Lie anent an Opponent’s Supposed Lies…<div style="padding-left: 75px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b style="color: #073763;">Speakers of Lies in Hypocrisy</b><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I should have hoped that<br />
decent people would not need<br />
this explanation:<br />
<br />
all those who condemn<br />
liars on moral grounds have<br />
an obligation<br />
<br />
to ensure their own<br />
claims are based on facts and true.<br />
A declaration</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> which merely repeats</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> another man’s fallacious</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> representation,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> unchecked, is as wrong,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> morally, as a willful</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> calumniation.</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">†</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Still, it’s good to see</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> that even liars dislike</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> tergiversation.</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">‡</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">* “ἐν ὑποκρίσει ψευδολόγων…” (I Tim., iv:2).</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">† I say this because the leader of the world’s most powerful nation is called a liar by the most flagrant liars; their denigration seems moved by hatred for popular policies on immigration (and the like) which, they assert falsely, are quite fascist in motivation.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">‡ Some readers mentioned that they had to search in a dictionary for the word “tergiversation”; I responded: “I’m sorry for the eccentricity; it would have been an infelicity to use the non-rhyming “duplicity”.</span><br />
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE I</span> </span><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(16 Feb. 2017):</span><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> see John Nolte’s “<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/13001/omg-list-last-week-msm-spread-much-fake-news-john-nolte#exit-modal" target="_blank">24 Pieces of <span style="font-size: x-small;">MSM</span> Fake News in 5 Days</a>” and Daniel Payne’s “<a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/02/06/16-fake-news-stories-reporters-have-run-since-trump-won/" target="_blank">16 Fake Stories Reporters Have Run since Trump Won</a>”; see also “<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-if-you-just-started-caring-about-political-scandals-again-youre-a-brazen-hypocrite/" target="_blank">If You Just Started Caring about Political Scandals Again, You’re a Brazen Hypocrite</a>” by Matt Walsh:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The truth matters. It matters now just as it mattered for the past eight years. So when Dan Rather claims that Trump may already be guilty of the biggest political scandal in his lifetime, and the New York Times insists that Obama had a scandal free White House, and USA Today along with many other outlets echo that absolutely ridiculous assertion, it behooves those of us who value the truth to calmly respond: <span style="font-size: x-small;">UM, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE II</span> (16 Feb.)</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: see “<a href="http://www.wnd.com/2017/02/when-lying-about-secret-meetings-was-ok/" target="_blank">When Lying about Secret Meetings Was OK</a>” by Jack Cashill.</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE III</span> (16 Feb.)</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: watch “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb5v2RMEuI8" target="_blank">Lying to America</a>” written and directed by David Gray:</span></span><br />
<br />
<center>
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</center>
</center>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE IV</span> (17 Feb.)</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: Katty Kay, an alleged journalist for the BBC, posted a series of complaints on Twitter mocking Pres. Trump including this inaccurate assertion:</span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAyGWumJ0gP6MhyphenhyphenbD_cxKqcV2rvB-HDiBoeAp73RKDbWA2Xxl7KAMeAM2HxNqsAt3Q3WD96eH6oaK6flzpSZMtjs1d1ikQmmVNPUuq67-ZXVCx7xLgSOmes38_OLU20u42FLDP49iEPVY/s1600/katty+kay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="63" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAyGWumJ0gP6MhyphenhyphenbD_cxKqcV2rvB-HDiBoeAp73RKDbWA2Xxl7KAMeAM2HxNqsAt3Q3WD96eH6oaK6flzpSZMtjs1d1ikQmmVNPUuq67-ZXVCx7xLgSOmes38_OLU20u42FLDP49iEPVY/s320/katty+kay.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I posted a response:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Katty Kay is dissatisfied.<br />
“Some people say we’re fake,” she cried,<br />
“and then Mr. Trump said ‘They lied’!”<br />
(BBC folk cannot abide<br />
being criticised; <i>they</i> may chide<br />
leaders but it’s undignified<br />
for a president to deride<br />
the world’s self-appointed news guide.)<br />
Katty Kay, have you really tried<br />
to be more honest and less snide<br />
and, for once, to try to provide<br />
accurate news, not of one side,<br />
but with fairness strictly applied?<br />
No, you are completely one-eyed.</span></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chuck Todd, an alleged journalist for NBC News, posted this complaint on Twitter:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9XpzkkHih06tcqBkfMb1DHrPxaM-nyRQ_2AVifmgjpWvH087yPmNyBRo7J3VCgj4_TQ5fCyUmXROZp461i309EWPGEh9u2e85TesOzt03R1G7EvEyCO5JpFwkw8QTiaDCJVLGdBFhEY/s1600/chuck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="79" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim9XpzkkHih06tcqBkfMb1DHrPxaM-nyRQ_2AVifmgjpWvH087yPmNyBRo7J3VCgj4_TQ5fCyUmXROZp461i309EWPGEh9u2e85TesOzt03R1G7EvEyCO5JpFwkw8QTiaDCJVLGdBFhEY/s320/chuck.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I responded:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If delegitimizing the press be so heinous, @chucktodd, perhaps the press should stop delegitimizing itself with crazed bias.</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE V</span> (2 March)</span><span style="color: #073763; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">watch the NRA’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpDcP2yJ_Wk" target="_blank">Truth Doesn’t Matter to <i>The New York Times</i></a>”:</span></span><br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-63330320158364053292016-10-16T12:00:00.000+11:002017-06-06T12:20:21.561+10:00Soundtrack: Excerpt from Jane Austen’s Love & Friendship<div style="text-align: justify;">
See the <a href="http://loveandfriendshipmovie.blogspot.com.au/">Love & Friendship Movie</a> blog for details of the forthcoming short film, “<a href="https://vimeo.com/192377147" target="_blank">An Excerpt from Jane Austen’s Love & Friendship</a>”, which constitutes a pitch for making a full-length motion picture based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novella.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-78257853818820923322015-11-17T01:00:00.000+11:002015-11-21T16:20:00.793+11:00The Easy Way to Stop Troubles: Ignore Them<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Facebook is full of people repeating such silliness as this:</span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Everyone is worried about stopping terrorism.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>Well, there’s a really easy way:<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>Stop participating in it.” </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">—Noam Chomsky</span></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">How wise and true! Here’s what will surely happen:-</span></span></span><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></i></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a back street of a large, major city a jihadist grabs a passing stranger, Joe, and holds a scimitar to his throat.</span></span></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Jihadist</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">Die, crusading bastard! </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Joe</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">Hey, stop! I’m not involved.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Jihadist</i> <span style="color: #0b5394;">(<i>holding his scimitar away from Joe’s throat but still holding Joe in a strong grip</i>)</span><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">What? </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Joe</i>: <span style="color: #351c75;">Your struggle has nought to do with me. I don’t participate in terrorism. I believe in live-and-let-live and, to the extent that I have any awareness of the issues, I support your freedom to follow your religion in any way which seems best to you for I am a man of cultured reason and tolerance.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>I have “an audacious confidence in the fundamental goodness of others”, including your good self.<span style="color: blue;">*</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Jihadist</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">You’re not a tool of the oppressive, imperialist crusader dogs? </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Joe</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;"> No, not I. I am the very definition of a non-participant. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Jihadist</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">Wait, I don’t kill you?</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Joe</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">If it’s no trouble. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Jihadist</i> <span style="color: #0b5394;">(releasing Joe)</span><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;"> Oh, well, sorry to have bothered you. I’ll go grab another victim to behead then. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Joe</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">Nice chatting with you. Good luck with your endeavours. See ya.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> Jihadist</i><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span> <span style="color: #351c75;">Thanks. Bye.</span></span></span></span> </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">* the words from “I am” to “self”, featuring a quote from the ABC’s jihadist-loving Jonathan Green, were suggested by a poster, Rabz, at <a href="http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/11/14/open-forum-november-14-2015/comment-page-4/#comment-1857528" target="_blank">Catallaxy Files</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Remember, you too can gain an underserved reputation for wisdom simply by <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">voic</span>ing similarly quotable admonitions; for example, try “<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">T</span>here’s a really easy way to stop <i>x</i>: stop participating in it”, wherein <i>x</i> = “murder”, “rape”, “burglar<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ies</span>”, “the heat-death of the universe”, “poverty”, </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“rough, dry elbows” </span></span></span></span>or “superhero sequels”.</span></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-52619721295096370692015-10-26T10:51:00.002+11:002015-10-26T11:31:57.980+11:00The Great Heritage Highway Walk<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFf6XzRTBxPcuVPu1u2c8BAeGlYHvbJvWkWsP1B5E2s9zP8Nz_6fBN4bLwNKr8hwULgUkyUo9Rt9HwvzFnQElm_X5isJHranwqGeiJ5BuVHdUM2Ks_yZCSEPl3W-0qn9rLGK8bt7yEFN0/s1600/GHHWA31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFf6XzRTBxPcuVPu1u2c8BAeGlYHvbJvWkWsP1B5E2s9zP8Nz_6fBN4bLwNKr8hwULgUkyUo9Rt9HwvzFnQElm_X5isJHranwqGeiJ5BuVHdUM2Ks_yZCSEPl3W-0qn9rLGK8bt7yEFN0/s320/GHHWA31.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOApNnR2tccAfFbdNvbqUhuz_Ua7aY80dR7hFR4BEsKfV-ziTAf7kufo2FuP5vRv_FKgGmORQSm_3vr99UT_ZatUcTf-xgM_uFMz51hSrVPz_IN8dnD4y9D8_RqbJsU4oIpeGSRdRF47g/s1600/GHHWmap02b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOApNnR2tccAfFbdNvbqUhuz_Ua7aY80dR7hFR4BEsKfV-ziTAf7kufo2FuP5vRv_FKgGmORQSm_3vr99UT_ZatUcTf-xgM_uFMz51hSrVPz_IN8dnD4y9D8_RqbJsU4oIpeGSRdRF47g/s320/GHHWmap02b.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_81cDzslpRVki57d-IV0i9hxAj9xHQJmibJ8qAZ2h5GC5hE5q6FMstxLxZxgLzlfvUJAQl6F8KoQ-XVcCEdKYtK_9QnCPRlJna2F-i4qSULwf9YAxhLika-mP7u62ruIMTAxcg7guVzQ/s1600/smallermap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_81cDzslpRVki57d-IV0i9hxAj9xHQJmibJ8qAZ2h5GC5hE5q6FMstxLxZxgLzlfvUJAQl6F8KoQ-XVcCEdKYtK_9QnCPRlJna2F-i4qSULwf9YAxhLika-mP7u62ruIMTAxcg7guVzQ/s200/smallermap.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjN7WZpq2ryfUQwxpaU40EgBw9ztl3wlSh74zsMsFOeS7U-1go2Y0hF-vthN3iq7xkBtfc8IvW8dAFK8EwwFQNELURK7S_aAryLMavDRCwmM6-_cPpkNszvaky-Megls02VOzM-WVwyFU/s1600/GHHWA42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjN7WZpq2ryfUQwxpaU40EgBw9ztl3wlSh74zsMsFOeS7U-1go2Y0hF-vthN3iq7xkBtfc8IvW8dAFK8EwwFQNELURK7S_aAryLMavDRCwmM6-_cPpkNszvaky-Megls02VOzM-WVwyFU/s320/GHHWA42.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Please print and display these posters wherever it is appropriate and legal to do so.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For more information, see the Great Heritage Highway Walk <a href="http://properfootpaths.net/GHHW" target="_blank">website</a> and <a href="http://greatheritagehighwaywalk.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">blog</a>.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;">The first and fourth posters are by Jonty Dalton; the second and third are by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BasilTheScribe?fref=ts" target="_blank">Basil the Scribe</a>.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">PDF</span> versions can be found <a href="http://properfootpaths.net/posters/GHHWA31.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://properfootpaths.net/posters/GHHWmap02b.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://properfootpaths.net/posters/smallermap.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://properfootpaths.net/posters/GHHWA42.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-12528793391896855222015-10-21T12:29:00.000+11:002015-10-21T12:34:39.736+11:00Everything Is Gonna Be All Right<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="298" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BGLGzRXY5Bw?list=PL0jp-uZ7a4g8rH1IctYya7Pt4xXTy3pGy" width="529"></iframe></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-25919886499353935912015-09-18T16:00:00.000+10:002015-09-18T16:11:46.101+10:00“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief”<div style="padding-left: 75px; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">Illuminating Mischief</span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">Turnbull’s light-bulb ban</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">was, I say, emblematic</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">of the statist man.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></span></span> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">His awarmist views</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">suggest that Turnbull’s present</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">restraint is a ruse.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">Awarmists can’t be</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">rational, logical or</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">prudent</span><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: blue;">*</span></span> <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: blue;"></span>fiscally</span>.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">* earlier, at <a href="http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/09/17/turnbull-man-of-vision-or-sound-administrator/comment-page-1/#comment-1799856" target="_blank">Catallaxy Files</a>, I posted this comment:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As I have suggested elsewhere it it impossible to be an awarmist and a fiscal conservative at the same time. To believe in the pseudo-scientific conjecture of AGW a person has to reject logic and science in favour of immoderate irrationality; to support the supposed solutions to the non-existent problem of global warming—which involve massive spending, increased taxes and illiberal statist controls—believers perforce deny personal liberty and freedoms in general; such a person cannot reasonably be expected to consider other issues logically, scientifically or prudently.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The egomaniacal, amoral and seemingly psychopathic Turnbull is evidently more dangerous than Rudd and Gillard combined.</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-37117043867507928922015-09-04T08:45:00.000+10:002019-11-21T08:28:26.219+11:00“Death or Liberty”<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #073763;"><i><a href="http://tilefilms.ie/productions/death-or-liberty/" target="_blank">Bás nó Saoirse</a></i> (2015):</span></span><br />
<br />
<center>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="305" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/137590428/" width="525">BÁS NÓ SAOIRSE</iframe></center>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The docudrama (in two parts) will be screened in Eire on 6 and 13 October. A <a href="http://www.phm.org.uk/whatson/death-or-liberty-film-screening-and-panel-discussion/" target="_blank">screening of both parts</a> (with a panel discussion, as part of Parliament Week) will be at the People’s History Museum, London, on 19 November. <strike>Australian broadcasting dates have yet to be announced</strike>. A shorter “Death or Liberty” will be screened on ABC1 on <strike>5 January</strike><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><strike><span style="color: #0b5394;">Sunday, 24 January, 2016 at 10:00 pm (see updates <span style="font-size: x-small;">III</span> and <span style="font-size: x-small;">IV</span>)</span></strike><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>Thursday, 14 January at 9.33 pm.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Many scenes were filmed in Tasmania and I was an (uncredited and unpaid) extra in a few:</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXJtLt6w244St40HNcRDaW3dIvYChW7lsUDgIZo4e9dg9DemgrNUPLaPiX6agBY1c4lJ2chyphenhyphenG_6GapaX3dAhVlzTOGTB-2mNiQyZQk4rcVWP5-P9AhvJYjEwcILDqronyGtnvXHXX604/s1600/informal-convict-DeathofLiberty2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXJtLt6w244St40HNcRDaW3dIvYChW7lsUDgIZo4e9dg9DemgrNUPLaPiX6agBY1c4lJ2chyphenhyphenG_6GapaX3dAhVlzTOGTB-2mNiQyZQk4rcVWP5-P9AhvJYjEwcILDqronyGtnvXHXX604/s320/informal-convict-DeathofLiberty2.jpg" width="123" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08s4JgvPAX117pzMlmZ1B2mqWbZ4rYDNMITHy-JzKw7XeGf6ziL2KpY2CQGOjxy_iiZ3r-y30C1JZqGVfISKEHvAKbX4t5zCEUvBcgihYgAWIqQ07NfFh4iA0LmHQyPETucZ1io2I9ao/s1600/informal-convict-DeathorLiberty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg08s4JgvPAX117pzMlmZ1B2mqWbZ4rYDNMITHy-JzKw7XeGf6ziL2KpY2CQGOjxy_iiZ3r-y30C1JZqGVfISKEHvAKbX4t5zCEUvBcgihYgAWIqQ07NfFh4iA0LmHQyPETucZ1io2I9ao/s320/informal-convict-DeathorLiberty.jpg" width="125" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh234dtABqxFPZ3MDb6Mg_odP0CTeY97czhQYGTQLjqIMB1Q4fPb6TfIKvys0iv_zupNwgpBVRQ_52eOGH9dHnNgPk_pydi6AgwM-tF2VnM5KsAV9XY-dD3ZG5NwfRasuyRfSVkUR43kNc/s1600/even-in-this.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh234dtABqxFPZ3MDb6Mg_odP0CTeY97czhQYGTQLjqIMB1Q4fPb6TfIKvys0iv_zupNwgpBVRQ_52eOGH9dHnNgPk_pydi6AgwM-tF2VnM5KsAV9XY-dD3ZG5NwfRasuyRfSVkUR43kNc/s320/even-in-this.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE I</span> (15 September)</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> </span></span><span style="color: #073763;">Another trailer:</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<center>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="305" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/138727813/" width="525">Death or Liberty</iframe></center>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE II</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">The BoFA festival has announced that it will feature the world premiere of <i>Death or Liberty</i> on 5 November in Launceston. (A strange world premiere that would be of a documentary which had already been broadcast on television.) In<i> The Mercury</i>, </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">Kane Young—</span></span>being a modern sort of journalist who, seemingly, cannot distinguish between journalism and rewriting media releases—not only agrees that the screening in Launceston will be the world premiere, and neglects to mention a co-director, but also gets the date wrong; he <a href="http://www.themercury.com.au/entertainment/breath-of-fresh-movies-five-day-festival-to-screen-the-worlds-best-new-cinematic-offerings/story-fnj3tycr-1227527325789" target="_blank">writes</a>:</span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-size: small;">BOFA’s five-day program <span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span> kicks off on November 4 with the world premiere of new Tasmanian film Death or Liberty, directed by Steve Thomas.</span></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">The documentary is co-directed by Keith Farrell and Steve Thomas.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWqGnMXvGrWE_F4edDHYBFAJ609nT5ubSNdkt4QL8-k3lQ8yCv1OsZz382W-Ue1tXrMl52Bpiuqe7dYxlEIKAutcC92zpPgmTW5ejObctcve3LSgxJFyIy1mB-O848RdO_UAJ4Esveh5A/s1600/bofa-worldpremiere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWqGnMXvGrWE_F4edDHYBFAJ609nT5ubSNdkt4QL8-k3lQ8yCv1OsZz382W-Ue1tXrMl52Bpiuqe7dYxlEIKAutcC92zpPgmTW5ejObctcve3LSgxJFyIy1mB-O848RdO_UAJ4Esveh5A/s320/bofa-worldpremiere.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE III <span style="font-size: small;">(18 September)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> co-director Steve Thomas kindly explained that there are now three versions of <i>Death or Liberty</i>: the version which will be broadcast in two parts (of 50 minutes each) on Irish and Welsh television</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">; the abbreviated film version of 80 minutes which will be screened at the BoFA festival; and an even more attenuated version of 57 minutes which is all that the ABC would accept. (The longest version, in two 50 minutes parts, has itself two variants: the English and the Irish.)</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE IV <span style="font-size: small;">(5 October)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> t</span></span></span></span></span></span></span>he Australian version of <i>Death or Liberty</i> will be screened on ABC 1 <strike>on 5 January, 2016, at a time yet to be announced</strike> on<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><strike><span style="color: #0b5394;">Sunday, 24 January, 2016 at 10:00 pm</span></strike><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>Thursday, 14 January at 9.33 pm.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE V <span style="font-size: small;">(7 October)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> from the broadcast by <a href="http://www.tg4.ie/" target="_blank">TG4</a> this morning (our time) of the first part of <i>Bás nó Saoirse</i>, I pull a coal-cart; I follow and then precede Llion Williams as Zephaniah Williams; I also listen to John Xintavelonis as Sir John Franklin admonish Zachary Lennon as Linus Miller:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE VI <span style="font-size: small;">(14 October)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"> from the broadcast by <a href="http://www.tg4.ie/en/player/home/?pid=4555130619001&title=B%C3%A1s%20N%C3%B3%20Saoirse&series=B%C3%A1s%20N%C3%B3%20Saoirse" target="_blank">TG4</a> this morning (our time) of the second part of <i>Bás nó Saoirse</i>:<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE VI <span style="font-size: small;">(27 October)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> </i></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><i>Death or Liberty</i> will be shewn at <a href="http://www.suntheatre.com.au/component/yco/?view=movie&movie=SDEATHORLIBERTY" target="_blank">Melbourne’s Sun Theatre</a> on 29 and 31 October and on 3 November.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="color: #073763;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE VII <span style="font-size: small;">(<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3</span></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Novem</span>ber)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I asked the director of t</span>he BoFA <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">festival why it still <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">calls</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">its</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">screening of <i>Death or Liberty</i> this Thursday as the “world premiere<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">” <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">since the film has now been screened elsewhere; he kindly responded<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, writing (<i>inter alia</i>):</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We are the World <i>Festival</i> Premiere. We’ve changed that on our website.</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE VIII <span style="font-size: small;">(<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3</span></span></span></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Novem</span>ber)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">recently, on ABC <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">R</span>a<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">d</span>io Nation<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">al<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, Micheal Cathcart discussed <i>Death or Liberty</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> with Steve Thomas<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, </span>Dr. Tony Moore and Mick Thomas; you can listen to “<a href="https://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgX4G0y586?play=true" target="_blank">Death or Liberty: Australia’s rebels and radicals on Books and Arts</a>”:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A new documentary film by Steve Thomas <span style="color: #073763;">[and Keith Farrell]</span> tells the story of the rebels and radicals transported to Australia as political prisoners during the convict era.</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE IX <span style="font-size: small;">(<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">11</span></span></span></span></span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">January, 2016</span>)</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">:<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ABC TV (w<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ith no one <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">within th<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">at vast organisation</span></span>, apparently, who knows not to capitalise conjuctions) has announced <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/death-or-liberty/" target="_blank">a new time</a> for screening <a href="http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/death-or-liberty/MP1502H091C00DS1#playing" target="_blank">the shortest version</a> of <i>Death or Liberty</i>:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A stirring lyrical journey into the heroic lives of the Empire<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">’</span>s rebels exiled to Australia <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">–</span> the prison without walls.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>They were martyrs to the cause in their homelands but their convict lives are an amazing untold story <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">–</span> until now. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-8602776381821506512015-07-08T01:00:00.000+10:002015-11-17T12:13:18.316+11:00“Don’t Overestimate Threats,” Shriek Scaremongers<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dont-overestimate-islamic-state-threat-malcolm-turnbull-20150707-gi7715.html" target="_blank">Don’t overestimate Islamic State threat: Malcolm Turnbull</a>” David Wroe (of the seditiously scaremongering, awarmist <i>SMH</i>) reports the soothing words of Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, the former federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources:</span></span></span></div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group should not be overstated, and critics of new national security measures should not be denounced, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said.</span></span></span></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The threat posed by the Islamic State terror group, judging only by its murderous acts and not by its quite minatory pronouncements, is great; the threat posed by a very slight increase of average temperatures around the world, in contrast, is extremely slight. When Malcom Turnbull was Minister for the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Environment and Water Resources</span>, however, he banned incandescent light-bulbs in Australia, “in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”, and because of his deep but groundless fear that their extremely slight contribution to supposed global warming would doom us all:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“A normal light bulb is too hot to hold—that heat is wasted<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: blue;">*</span></span> and globally represents millions of tonnes of CO<sub>2</sub> that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting.”</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">On his own department’s projections (at the time), his banning of incandescent light bulbs was expected to reduce Australia’s total output of allegedly threatening “emissions”—<i>i.e</i>. beneficent </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">CO<sub>2</sub></span></span>, essential for life—by as much as 0.1%. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, a real, murderous regime trying to impose a barbaric caliphate—meh; a fantasy of doom predicated on a pseudo-scientific conjecture insisting that the world’s climate might warm by as much as half a degree—run for the hills after destroying industry!</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The man is a nincompoop.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">* in cold weather, in many homes, the heat from internal incandescent light bulbs was not wasted: <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">it</span> helped warm living spaces.</span></span> </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-81912372434891388202015-06-20T23:59:00.000+10:002015-06-21T17:42:09.237+10:00Entering the Sixth Mass Hysteria<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">Meanwhile, Paul R. Ehrlich—notorious doomsayer </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">and anti-Cassandra, predestined to be wrong but believed</span></span></span>, famous for inaccurately foreseeing all manner of catastrophes, who predicted in the ’60s (in <i>The Population Bomb</i>) that “[t]he battle to feed all of humanity is over” and that we’d all die of starvation in the ’70s—has co-authored “<a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253" target="_blank">Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction</a>”.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">Hysterical, credulous, unsceptical journos naturally cover such stories as, for example, “<a href="http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/earth-s-sixth-mass-extinction-has-begun-new-study-confirms">Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun, New Study Confirms</a>” [using the word “confirms” in its rare meaning of “asserts”]; note the cool, unemotive, scientific language:</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This latest research tells us what we already knew. Humans have in the space of a few centuries <i>swung a wrecking ball through the Earth’s biosphere</i>. <i>Liquidating</i> biodiversity to produce products and services has an end point. Science is starting to sketch out what that end point could look like but it cannot tell us why to stop before we reach it.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If we regard the Earth as <i>nothing more than a source of resources and a sink for our pollution</i>, if we value other species only in terms of what they can provide to us, then we we will continue to <i>unpick the fabric of life</i>. <i>Remove further rivets from spaceship earth</i>. This not only increases the risk that it will cease to function in the ways that we and future generations will depend on, but can only reduce the complexity and beauty of <i>our home in the cosmos</i>.</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE</span> (21 June)</span>: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33209548" target="_blank">the BBC</a> has uncritically reported the alarmist findings of the <span style="color: #073763;">“sixth mass extinction” paper—disingenuously describing it as “a study by three US universities”—</span>and, of course, the awarmist, misanthracist, duplicitous misanthropes who infest the “progressive” movement are </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">incoherently </span></span>wishing that mankind perish very soon whilst </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">simultaneously</span></span> lamenting all the other species whose final days are supposedly nigh.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-34991593514743467292015-05-28T09:53:00.002+10:002015-11-17T01:16:42.465+11:00A New Protector of Marriage<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In “<a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_gay_marriage_advocates_must_now_protect_marriage_as_ive_tried/" target="_blank">Gay marriage advocates must now protect marriage as I’ve tried</a>” Andrew Bolt claims:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The battle for same-sex marriage has been won. Now the winners must defend marriage as fiercely as we conservatives tried.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And their first test comes now. Before they get our politicians to take the final step and change the Marriage Act, they must help to maximise the good — and minimise the damage. <span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Moreover, the Yes vote in Catholic Ireland last week broke the back of any real resistance here, too.</span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">We can, no doubt, expect to hear discussions, in defence of marriage, like this very soon:<i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i>: Hey, Gay-chap, old friend, you were allowed to marry your boyfriend for two reasons according to you: “love” and “equality”. Well, I want to marry both my boyfriend and my girlfriend for the same two reasons: “love” and “equality”.<i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i>: Nah, but you could just live together and call yourself whatever you like. <span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: Isn’t that what people said to you?<span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: That was different. My man and I wanted a big, fancy wedding, with all our friends and family there to witness our eternal commitment to each other, and lots of wedding presents, and lots of flowers. <span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> We also had a big cake. Admittedly, we had to sue the baker because, though he made and decorated a lovely cake to our exact specifications, he didn’t enthusiastically <i>support</i> our marriage, the bastard. We did get a nice out-of-court settlement. Anyhow, cake, flowers, presents, and friends and family!<i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i>: <i>We</i> want a big fancy wedding too, with all <i>our</i> friends and family.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: You can still have a ceremony—just without State sanction. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span></span></i></span>: But we <i>want</i> State sanction; we want what <i>you</i> got.<span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: Well, you can’t. <span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: Why the hell not? <span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span></span>: Because marriage can only be between two unrelated, adult human beings, to the exclusion of all others. <span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: Yeah? Says who? <span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: I do.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: See, I want to be able to say that. Tee hee. Seriously, what’s the basis for this <a href="http://allrightallright.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/the-marriage-game-whole-family-can-play.html" target="_blank">old-fashioned, bigoted</a> and narrow notion that marriage must be between only two people?</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: Tradition, and, and, and that’s just the way it is<span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="color: #351c75;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: Isn’t that what opponents of your same-sex marriage said?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: There is no similarity and, anyway, it’s the Law. And it’s <i>different</i>. Because, well, <i>because</i>. <span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="color: #351c75;">So there. You can shut up now.</span></span></span><span style="color: #741b47;"><i> </i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Bi-bloke</i></span><span style="color: #351c75;">:</span><span style="color: #351c75;"> Now, look—</span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: Homophobe! Racist!</span><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: But— </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span></span>: Fascist! Hater! Misogynist! <span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: Hey, steady on, I’m not the one who won’t touch women<i>—</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: Police! Help, Police! I’m being oppressed by an opponent of same-sex marriage!</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Constable Sonja</span></i>: Is, uh, there, uh, a, a, oooh, is there a, uh, problem? Sorry, I, ooh, just had to, uh, jog nearly seven, oooh, yards then, uh, in full rig. <span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"> So, uh, wot’s goin’ on here, then?</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Bi-bloke</span></i></span>: I give up. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Gay-chap</span></i></span>: Yay! I have successfully defended marriage! I’m a <i>hero</i>!</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-90791285295546600642015-05-18T08:17:00.002+10:002015-05-18T08:19:38.092+10:00Ayaan Hirsi Ali Says No Mo’<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="298" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EHndKZfYtvI?rel=0" width="529"></iframe></center>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-3880909028795888502015-04-17T10:51:00.000+10:002015-11-21T17:50:05.664+11:00The ‘Marriage’ Game the Whole Family Can Play<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">Richard Griggs, the Tasmanian director of Civil Liberties Australia, has argued (for want of a better word)</span> <a href="http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/talking-point-same-sex-marriage-simply-gives-each-person-equality-in-law/story-fnj4f64i-1227304920208" target="_blank">in favour of same-sex marriage</a> <span style="color: #073763;">in <i>The Mercury</i>. His assertions in favour of same-sex couples marrying could just as well apply to siblings or other closely-related people (even by adoption</span><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></span><span style="color: #073763;">) who might wish to marry each other but, under current, bigoted laws</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: blue;">†</span></span><span style="color: #073763;">, may not thus ‘express their love’. Accordingly, here is Richard Griggs’s article only slightly amended:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Talking Point</b>:<b> Same-family marriage simply gives each person equality in law</b></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">[No one]</span> recently argued in these pages that same-family marriage was not a civil rights issue.<br />
Same-family marriage, <span style="color: #073763;">[no one]</span> said, did not equate with the historic civil rights movements which gave women the vote or dismantled whites only zones in public places.<br />
These are examples of civil rights campaigns but a full explanation of what actually constitutes a civil right needs to go much deeper. When we do that, same-family marriage clearly becomes a civil rights issue.<br />
Civil rights are about giving everyone the same opportunities to participate in civil society.<br />
When we change legislation in recognition of civil rights we give more people full participatory rights in society. We open the door and let more people in.<br />
You can tell it is a civil rights issue when an identifiable group in society is prevented from accessing a public institution for no reason other than their membership of that particular group.<br />
Public institutions can be physical, like shopping centres or public transport, or they can be rights of passage or rights of citizenship, like voting.<br />
Surely marriage must sit alongside voting as an important part of civil society and should actually outrank shopping and transport in terms of its importance.<br />
Marriage is a central part of civil society and, therefore, to exclude some couples from marrying is a civil rights issue.<br />
Marriage has been with us for centuries and parliaments have elevated the institution of marriage into law.<br />
Marriage is entered into by many couples. Some marry for good reasons, some for poor. Some marriages last a lifetime and others less than a year. And of course some people are perfectly happy never marrying at all.<br />
It is the freedom to choose to marry which is important. The freedom to have the same options as other couples <span style="color: #073763;">[or, surely, triples or quadruples, <i>etc</i>.]</span>.<br />
For some readers marriage is a religious institution of long standing that only in more recent history (the past few hundred years<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">‡</span></span>) became enshrined in law by parliament. There is historical debate in some quarters about which came first, marriage or organised religion.<br />
Current marriage laws passed by our Commonwealth Parliament make clear that marriage is now owned by the people and Parliament, not any single religion.<br />
The law allows non-religious couples to marry in a non-religious location with a non-religious marriage celebrant. It also allows for people of two different religions to marry.<br />
There will be some religions which do not support same-family marriage and they should be free to choose to practice <span style="color: #073763;">[<i>sic</i>]</span> their religious beliefs. But those same religions shouldn’t assert ownership or control over marriage for the remainder of society.<br />
They should be free to practice <span style="color: #073763;">[<i>sic</i>]</span> their beliefs but not free to mandate their beliefs on others.<br />
Earlier this year my wife and I were married on a summer afternoon in the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. Gathering together our friends and family and making a public declaration of shared loved and commitment in front of them was a very proud and emotional moment. It was a beautiful day which I will never forget.<br />
My wife and I were lucky to enter our marriage with the support of the law and the love of our family and friends. I feel deeply sad that same-family couples are denied the same opportunity to share such a wonderful life event.<br />
One day the law will be changed in Australia to allow same-family couples the same freedom to choose as unrelated couples.<br />
Why am I so sure? Civil rights movements grow in momentum over time until most in society no longer see the particular issue as a threat any more. We are very close to that point in Australia.<br />
Once society thought it best if only men could vote and only white people could use public transport and enter the shops. <span style="color: #073763;">One</span> day we will also see the error in denying same-family couples the freedom of choice to marry, just like everyone else, and have their marriage recognised by society, just like everyone else.</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">* see <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma196185/s23b.html" target="_blank">§22B</a> of </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">the Australian <i>Marriage Act 1961</i></span></span>:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(2) Marriages of parties within a prohibited relationship are marriages:</span></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(a) between a person and an ancestor or descendant of the person; or</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(b) between a brother and a sister (whether of the whole blood or the half-blood).</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">(3) Any relationship specified in subsection (2) includes a relationship traced through, or to, a person who is or was an adopted child, and, for that purpose, the relationship between an adopted child and the adoptive parent, or each of the adoptive parents, of the child shall be deemed to be or to have been the natural relationship of child and parent.</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">† for example, in Massachussetts, since at least 1784, no man may marry “his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, stepmother, grandfather’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, father’s sister or mother’s sister</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">”.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">‡ yet see, say, the Code of Hammurabi which, oddly, only a mere 3,370 or so years ago, featured many civil, secular laws relating to marriage.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE I</span> (2 July)</span>: see “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-ethics-council-calls-for-incest-between-siblings-to-be-legalised-by-government-9753506.html" target="_blank">German ethics council calls for incest between siblings to be legalised by Government</a>” by Lizzie Dearden:</span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Germany’s national ethics council has called for an end to the criminalisation of incest between siblings after examining the case of a man who had four children with his sister.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Patrick Stuebing, who was adopted as an infant and met his sister in his 20s, has launched several appeals since being imprisoned for incest in 2008 and his lengthy legal battle has prompted widespread public debate.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;">Sexual relations between siblings or between parents and their children are forbidden under section 173 of the German criminal code and offenders can face years in prison.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;">But on Wednesday, the German Ethics Council recommended the section be repealed, arguing that the risk of disability in children is not enough to warrant the law and de-criminalising incest would not remove the huge social taboo around it. <span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;">The Ethics Council’s recommendation only covered incest between siblings and members did not recommend decriminalising sex between parents and children.</span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE II</span> (11 July)</span>: </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">Virginia Utley (</span><a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/the-spectators-notes/9578592/charles-moores-notes-why-the-greek-no-is-a-great-moment-for-socialism/" target="_blank">according to Charles Moore</a><span style="color: #073763;"> in <i>The Spectator</i>) has written to both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the United Kingdom:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">‘Please could you tell me what a family is?’ Nowadays, she goes on, you teach us that a family can be made up of men who love men or women who love women, who must therefore be equally entitled to marry one another. ‘Now,’ she continues, her sister and she ‘both think boys are very nice but neither of us met one we quite liked enough to marry… So my sister and I have bought a house together and have lived happily there for years and years and years.’ So, ‘Please can my sister and I get married?’ If not, the sisters themselves, and Virginia’s sister’s daughter, will not get the benefits which accrue to married people. ‘I am sure,’ she entreats Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, that ‘you will not say “No” to us when you said “Yes” to all the others… Because that wouldn’t be fair, would it?’</span></span></span> </blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE III</span> (21 November)</span><span style="color: #073763;">: Hon. Will Hodgman, Premier of Tasmania, made a speech </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;">in the Tasmanian House of Assembly </span></span></span>support<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ing </span>a motion to legalise same-sex “marriage”; an edited version of that speech was <a href="http://www.themercury.com.au/news/opinion/talking-point-i-support-a-warmer-fairer-society/story-fnj4f64i-1227617190466" target="_blank">published in <i>The Mercury</i></a> and <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">here</span> is part thereof only slightly amended:</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">I have supported changes to the law that remove legislative provisions that were discriminatory of incestuous couples and polygamous groups or that did not adequately provide for incestuous couples and polygamous groupings—for example, where a partner was unable to attain a legal entitlement to a partner’s estate, property or financial or superannuation benefits, or indeed better provision or protections for children who are part of an incestuous or polygamous relationship.<br />
While it is true that in the early 2000s when I supported this legislation I did believe that significant relationship registration adequately dealt with the interests of those in <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">same-family</span> or polygamous relationships, in 2015 my perspectives and views have progressed.<br />
Reflecting on what I said in this place in that debate in June 2003, a year or so after being elected, predominantly they are things I still hold true, such as promoting a fairer, more accepting, tolerant society. As I said, I believe our society these days is more understanding and accepting as a community and I believe today that extends to incestuous and polygamous marriage.<br />
In 2003, I expressed a view that registering incestuous and polygamous relationships would not jeopardise the concept of marriage. I do not believe that incestuous or polygamous marriage will either; in many respects it will strengthen it. Particularly when any couple or other group upholds the values and the integrity of their marriage vows, they are displaying great commitment and their relationship is strengthened by doing so.<br />
Our community contains many healthy and stable <i>de facto</i> relationships and, as I said in 2003, these so-called non-traditional relationships can and do involve perfectly committed and secure individuals.<br />
The fact I am married does not automatically attribute greater standing or make less significant the relationship between those <i>de facto</i> or less traditional relationships, many of which have far outlasted formal marriages.<br />
We live in a world that contains non-traditional relationships, <i>de facto</i>, single parents, significant relationships, same-sex relationships.<br />
If I paraphrase what I said in 2003, I do not believe that the legislation before us then, nor do I believe that <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">same-family</span> or polygamous marriage in 2015, will affect the sanctity of the institution of marriage and those who choose that institution, like myself, and I would sincerely hope that many more will continue to embrace and revere it. For those who do not or cannot, why should we judge their relationship as any less valid or important?<br />
I intend to vote in support of the motion today. I intend to vote in support at the national plebiscite in support of incestuous and polygamous marriage.<br />
I believe it will allow an incestuous couple or polygamous grouping to strengthen their relationship and validate it in a way that <span style="color: #073763;">[wife]</span> Nicky and I are able to do. It will provide the same responsibilities, protections and entitlements that Nicky and I have, and in my view, it will strengthen the institution of marriage.<br />
I am offended by the notion that our community says <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">same-family</span> couples or polygamous groupings are less capable of love and commitment and marriage than heterosexual or homosexual people.<br />
It will remove a disadvantage that exists for incestuous couples and polygamous groupings who want to marry and it will allow them to be treated equally.<br />
I believe it will also provide better protections for children being raised by incestuous couples and polygamous groupings who want to marry.<br />
I believe it will remove discrimination and inappropriate community attitudes that incestuous couples and polygamous people suffer by accepting their diversity and validating their relationship, their choice, their decision and commitment to marry a lifelong partner or number of partners.<br />
I will table an amendment to the motion that will incorporate key elements of the matters I raise today. We recognise marriage is defined in the Commonwealth <i>Marriage Act</i>, that every Tasmanian should enjoy full freedom of belief and freedom of expression and a respectful debate leading to the national plebiscite proposed by the Australian Government.<br />
I give my in-principle support to <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">same-family</span> and polygamous marriage and the proposed amended motion which I now table.</span> </span></span></blockquote>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7407662088162760129.post-78448379834904307472015-03-18T14:10:00.002+11:002015-03-20T08:15:02.362+11:00St. Patrick’s Embarrassment<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Ireland, March, 2015</b>,</span></span></span><br />
<i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">a pub </span></span></span></i><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">with the usual Irish decorations…</span></span></span></i><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Declan</i></span>: Ah, Paddy, you seem glum; what’s upset you, lad?<br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Patrick</i></span>: Oh, Declan, I can’t enjoy my usual six or seven pints of Guinness tonight because I’ve heard in passing that the Australian PM might have implied, or at least said something that could be so interpreted, that many Irishmen are hard drinkers or, at least, that they enjoy a drink now and then. Or that they might. Or something. It’s a vile and bigoted defamation, I don’t mind telling you.</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Declan</i></span></span></span></span></span>: That is a perturbation, Paddy. So would you care to have another ball o’ malt?</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Patrick</i></span></span></span></span></span>: Well, just one more, then, to console myself, but I’m sure that I shan’t enjoy another whiskey with an <i>e</i> tonight (though I shall doubtless drink a few), and I’ll be having no more than four pints of Guinness, I’m that flustered and solely grieved.</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Declan</i></span></span></span></span></span>: Curse that evil Tony Abbott!</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
How did this sad situation come to be? We must look at the historical record:-</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Australia</b></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;">,</span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b> </b></span></span></span></span>March, 2009</span></span></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">,</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i>a pub decorated, it seems, with an assumption that the Republic of Ireland encompasses the entire island, and ignoring Ulster…</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Dave</span></i>: Did you hear what Kevin Rudd said, Gazza?<span style="color: #741b47;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Garry</i></span>: No, Davo, what did he say?</span></span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;"> </span></i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Dave</span></i></span></span></span></span>: He began by saying, and I <a href="http://www.irishecho.com.au/2009/03/25/kevin-rudds-speech-in-full/362" target="_blank">quote</a>, “it is customary on St. Patrick’s Day for politicians to lay claim to their Irish ancestry, however tenuously. To wax lyrical on the bonds of history that tie Australia—and in fact one in ten Australians who come from Erin’s shore—with Ireland itself and to so kiss the blarney stone on a night such as tonight that in fact we see fact itself form a seamless bond with folklore and fiction—so that by night’s end, courtesy of a Guinness or two, you’ll all be believed that in fact you are led by a lady called Anna O’Bligh and that her opponent is Liam Patrick O’Springborg.<br />
“Such is the power of Guinness.”</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Garry</i></span></span></span></span></span>: Ah, what an orator! He has a touch of the real Irish in him!<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">March, 2012</span></span></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">,</span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">a pub with the usual “Irish” decorations…</span></span></i></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dave</i></span></span></span>: Hey, Gaz, you hear what Julia Gillard said?</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Garry</i></span></span></span>: No, Davo, what did she day?</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dave</i></span></span></span>: She said, and I <a href="http://www.irishecho.com.au/2012/03/16/full-text-pms-address-to-lansdowne-club-lunch/17006" target="_blank">quote</a>,</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;">“Could you have a larrikin without Irish emigration? The answer is no.<br />
“And if we’re more English than we like to admit—well, we’re not nearly as Irish as we would like to be.<br />
“This year I took the opportunity to make the Federal Cabinet just that little bit more Irish.<br />
“I already had that fine Sydney Irishman Tony Burke, a grand representative for all the Irishmen who’ve been in the great south land for a century or more.<br />
“But this time, I thought two was better than one, and if I could get one who came out here on a boat “himself, all the better. […]<br />
“Patrick O’Farrell reminds us of the United Irishman Joseph Holt—a true political prisoner—sent here after 1798 and who found himself farming near Sydney, and he said in 1803: ‘My usual time to commence to sow crops was the first Monday after St. Patrick’s Day, it requiring a few days to get the men sober’.”</span> </span></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>Garry</i></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: #351c75;">: Ha! What a wit! She has a touch of the real Irish about her!</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><b><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">March, 2015</span></span></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">,</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">a pub with the usual “Irish” decorations…</span></span></span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><i><span style="color: #741b47;">Dave</span></i></span></span></span></span>: Gaz, you won’t believe what our retarded PM said!<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Garry</i></span></span></span></span></span>: Oh, Davo, what was Tony Abbott’s latest gaffe?</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dave</i></span></span></span>: The creep ended his foul St. Patrick’s Day speech with a feculent slur; he apologised because, and I quote, “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three”. He thereby unjustly and slanderously suggested that all the Irish are drunks and rascals.</span></span></span><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> </i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Garry</i></span></span></span></span></span>: Wow, what an embarrassment to our country that illiterate bastard is!</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">UPDATE</span> (19 March)</span>: see Andrew Bolt’s “<a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/andrew-bolt-sbs-takes-a-controversial-stance-on-family-values/story-fni0ffxg-1227268572344" target="_blank">If That’s a Gaffe, I’m from Ireland</a>”:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">How deranged have the Tony Abbott haters become?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sydney’s Lansdowne Club of Irish Australian businessmen had invited people to come “enjoy a Guinness or three” at its annual St Patrick’s Day lunch.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Abbott couldn’t make it, but sent a video in which he said this was “a great day for ... everyone who cares to come to a party”. He was sorry “I can’t be there to share a Guinness or two or maybe even three”.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">See anything offensive there?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yet a ninemsn report claimed immediately Abbott’s speech had “backfired” by focusing on “stereotypes around drinking”, with “Irish business leaders” calling it “patronising”. In fact, the “business leaders” was one person, unnamed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Why the exaggeration?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But that was all the media Left needed for yet another pile-on.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Abbott’s cringe-tacular St Patrick’s Day video”, crowed one <i>Sydney Morning Herald</i> headline.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“The rise and rise of Tony Abbott as an international laughing stock,” gloated another <span style="color: #073763;">[…]</span>.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The ABC news grimly reported the offence Abbott had allegedly caused before finishing its TV news with its own St Patrick’s Day tribute—with shots of, yes, Irishmen drinking Guinness.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But here’s the full measure of these hypocrites. Abbott is hanged for merely saying he’d like “a Guinness or two or maybe even three”. Yet not one journalist attacked the Labor prime ministers <span style="color: #073763;">[Rudd and Gillard]</span> who actually accused the Irish of being drunks.<span style="color: #073763;"></span></span></span></span></div>
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