“steady encroachment of secularism through the courts to redefine America as a non-religious country.”

and, of course, that he was defending “traditional American values.”

Says the blog Digital Journal

Michael Mukasey [an Attorney-General under GW Bush] said to Fox News that Gingrich’s proposals were “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall, and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle”.

I will re-state: Should the USA suffer a major economic depression or lose control of Middle East Oil, it will quickly descend into Fascism. This danger will be present until significant political actors, such as Gingrich, no longer feel comfortable in voicing proto-Fascist proposals, a precondition for which is that the Tea Party Movement will have ceased to exist.

Now, Newt is not stating that he would immediately imprison Judges with whom he disagrees. He just wants to haul them before a Commission Of Inquiry to explain their treachery thinking i.e. he just wants to intimidate the judges, not imprison them…yet.

Crocodile Tears For Checks And Balances

Newt’s election year manifesto “Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution” presents as the passionate call of a concerned citizen for the US Constitution to be interpereted according to the precepts of ‘Originalism’ and for proper observation of the limits of power of each of the governmental branches of the US (Congress, President, Judiciary).

In my view, however, Gingrich’s call for the proper seperation of powers is a smokescreen for his desire to see an effectively unlimited presidency as stated by his desire to protect threats to Presidential discretionary powers when acting as Commander-In-Chief.

Gingrich concentrates his attention and warnings on what he sees as the creeping aggregation of perogative by the Courts and for them to be put under proper restraint through Congress and the President using their Constitutional rights to question, discipline and/or dismiss activist Judges and Courts.

Gingrich does not, however, caution against the President over-reaching his Constitutional privileges or sound any warning that the Presidency is undermining the proper seperation of powers via the over use of Presidential Executive Orders. In fact, Gingrich is seeking to strengthen the Predidents ability to act unilaterally by recommending that Courts and Judges be disciplined or struck down for ruling on limitations to Presidential power.

In my view, Gingrich, while not a Tea Partyer himself, is opportunistically attempting to leverage the powerful ‘Constitutionalist’ sentiment (see also here) generated by the Tea Party movement in order to expand the unilateral perogatives of the Presidency.

Gingrich’s immediate aim is to entrench in the Presidency the unilateral right to declare war whenever the President so decides. This is why he especially wishes to cordon off the President’s role of Commander-In-Chief from question or review by the Courts, whom he properly recognises as the most likely source of constraint on the President.

In this, Gingrich appears to share common ground with and exceed John McCain who, during the last US Federal Election, when asked what US Policy should be toward Iran simply sang ‘Bomb, Bomb, Bomb / Bomb Bomb Iran’ to the tune of the famous 60′s pop tune ‘Barbara Ann’.

Face Value

Gingrich’s document “Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution” presents well as a case for Originalism and provides two very good examples of judicial activism which would warrant Congressional inquiry. The most topical is the astounding (though legally consistent) assertion by Judge Biery someone that he would order the arrest of any school official who permitted a person to lead a group of persons of mixed or non-belief in prayer during a high school graduation speech or merely say the words “amen” or “prayer” during the ceremony.

From Judge Biery’s injunction

These students, and all other persons scheduled to speak during the graduation ceremony, shall be instructed not to present a prayer, to wit, they shall be instructed that they may not ask audience
members to “stand,” “join in prayer,” or “bow their heads,” they may not end their remarks with “amen” or “in [a deity’s name] we pray,” and they shall not otherwise deliver a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer, nor use the word “prayer” unless it is used in the student’s expression of the student’s personal belief, as opposed to encouraging others who may not believe in the concept of prayer to join in and believe the same concept.

this injunctive order shall be effective immediately and shall be enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of Court if not obeyed by District official and their agents.

Gingrich adduces his document with many supporting statements from the US Founding Fathers (e.g Madison, Hamilton), supplies fair examples of where he feels that the US Supreme Court has exceeded the Constitution and makes a reasoned argument against judicial activism as he sees it. I found it an enjoyable and stimulating read.

But Gingrich is deceiving the electorate. He is not at all concerned with Constitutional balance between the arms of government, merely with aggrandaising the office of President by giving it irrevocable powers when acting as Commander-In-Chief.

While expressing outrage at judicial activism and subversion of the Constitution, Gingrich ignores Presidential activism and subversion of the kind openly acknowledged by aides to President Clinton

Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda cool.”
Paul Begala, former Clinton advisor, The New York Times, July 5, 1998

“We’ve switched the rules of the game. We’re not trying to do anything legislatively.”
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, The Washington Times, June 14, 1999

Presidential Activism

As the website ThisNation.com describes in its article, ‘What Is An Executive Order’ ‘Executive Orders do not require Congressional approval to take effect but they have the same legal weight as laws passed by Congress’ and also notes that the US involvement in the 1999 Balkans war against Serbia under Clinton was authorised by Executive Order.

This attempt by Gingrich to concentrate more unilateral power in the office of President, to legitimize such concentration, protect it from criticism and to limit the most effective brake on that power shows Gingrich as possessing active Fascist impulses. This is unfortunately too well in line with the general and growing Fascist orientation of the Tea Party and Republican Party in general.

The Palingenic content of his stement lies in the call to defend ‘Traditional American Values’. As my linked article above explains, Fascist movements are Palengenic meaning they seek a rebirth from some corrupted or dead state and Reactionary in that they respond to a supposed existentional threat of some kind. Gingrich has here identified the Judiciary as that threat to traditional values.

No Weapons

When John told me that the Flotilla had weapons in its cargo, I assumed he meant guns. There were no guns. The most offensive weapons found in the flotilla were a number of slingshots which were ‘deployed’, if one can say that of a slingshot, against the Israeli UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopters. The Black Hawks successfully withstood the withering barrage of marble-fire and managed to rapelle their elite Naval Commando Unit onto the decks of the flotilla craft with no casulaties.

The official photos taken by the Israeli Defense Forces of the weapons cache of the flotilla were enough to make me laugh out loud. Again there are no guns. There are however clubs, a machete-like knife, about fifteen knives suitable for a ships kitchen, four or five other switchblade- or penknike-type knives and an assortment of ships equipment like wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers and chain.

The IDF also reported that chairs and dinner plates were used as improvised weapons. While I would not like to be struck by a chair or dinner plate, these are hardly the kind of thing which comes to mind when the IDF says that there were Terrorists and Weapons on board the Freedom Flotilla.
There are no guns at all in the official IDF photographs despite their claim they came under ‘live fire / from all directions’ before boarding and while advancing through the ships, which shows such claims to be lies.

As a weapons-smuggling operation the Gaza Flotilla would not successfully enarmour a Palestinian against against a mildly motivated Bronx Greaser Gang of the 1950′s, let alone the Israeli Army, though it would provide shock and awe value against a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer.

The need of the IDF to augment the weapons cache with ordinary ship’s equipment shows them eager to exaggerate their view of the flotilla and its participants. Flotilla participants admit the slingshots and the UN Palmer Report (p.57) confirms the clubs. Everything else is ships equipment or materiel (confirmed here).

No Terrorists

By ‘Terrorists’ I assumed John meant something like ‘trained guerillas’. The flotilla participants included no guerillas or combat operatives, trained or otherwise.

The IDF listed the names of five ‘Specific Flotilla Passengers’ it says are Active Terror Operatives’ . The first name listed is Ken O’Keefe, a former US Marine who renounced his US citizenship in March 2001.

The IDF, adducing no evidence, claims:

O’Keefe attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for [Hamas]

O’Keefe rejects the baseless charge while freely acknowledging he has met the Hamas Party Leader and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in the course of his activism for the residents of Gaza. O’Keefe’s web-site offers a very full explication of his ideology which is based firmly in action and activism but not on armed combat which he eschews.

The IDF charge against O’Keefe is a mere smear utilizing guilt-by-association

The terrorist accusation against Fatima Mohammadi is also, in the absence of evidence, quite simply made up.

Vehemently anti-Palestinian blogs have dug for evidence that Ms. Mohammadi has supported terrorism but have found none. Here’s a typical piece, full of smears but providing no evidence of wrong-doing on Mohammadi’s part.

Mohammadi’s non-existent ‘ties to Hamas’ appear to be similar to that of O’Keefe, in that Mohammadi has participated in a delegation to Gaza as part of her activism, in her case on behalf of Viva Palestina, an NGO of which she is a US national organiser.

The other three are baselessly accused by the IDF of providing finacial support to Islamic terror organisations and/or being terror operatives themselves. German newspaper Der Spiegel investigated these accusations and could find no evidence to support them.

IDF Retracts Terrorist Claim

Soon after the impounding of the flotilla, the IDF issued a press release stating that 40 Al-Quaida operatives were amongst the flotilla members. After some simple questions were asked of the IDF in relation to this, the IDF reissued the notice to merely state 40 persons without identification papers were on the flotilla. The IDF was thus caught out in a direct propaganda lie.

As it happens, those 40 were not innocent humanitarian activists, but nor were they terrorists either. Of them, more below.

If the flotilla was truly a gun-running Jihadist-ferrying Trojan Horse the IDF would need only to present the straightforward evidence. Its need to resort to lies about weaponry and flotilla participants shows that the flotilla was not what the IDF portrayed it to be. Such propaganda is then digested uncritically by anti-Palestinian and anti-Islamic commentators and enters the public consciousness as a true record.

If the IDF wishes to be respected, let it communicate truthfully.

To summarize: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla was not running weapons to Gaza and there were no terrorists aboard.

In the next sections I will investigate various other accusations made against the flotilla participants.

Islamic War Cry

An anti-flotilla article on the blog ‘Peace With Realism’ entitled ‘Orwell In Gaza’ documents the disturbing truth that flotilla participants chanted an islamic Battle Cry before sailing for Gaza.

The true intentions of this supposed mission of “peace” became evident as the participants shouted this chilling battle cry, on footage taken aboard the flotilla just before its departure:

“Remember Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” Khaybar is the name of the last Jewish village destroyed by Muhammad in 628, marking the beginning of the end of any Jewish presence in Arabia. It has become a rallying cry for Islamic extremists, threatening death to Jews throughout history. You probably did not see this footage if you live in the West, but it was broadcast on Al-Jazeera.

The accusation that the ‘Khaybar War Cry’ was sung on the Mavi Marmara is true, but Peace With Realism makes the error, following Israeli propaganda, of ascribing the militant Islamist sentiment of the singers to every person on the flotilla. In fact, of the 594 flotilla participants only a sub-group of 42 who embarked seperately to the main flotilla sang this chant.

It was this group of 40 that violently resisted the Israeli Commandos, attacking them with metal bars fashioned from the ship’s railing, knives from the ship’s kitchen, chain and anything else at their disposal. At least one, perhaps as many as seven, expressed a wish to become a martyr.

Serious investigations into the flotilla incident, such as the UN Palmer Report, the BBC Panorama documentary ‘Death In The Med’ and the Israelis themselves when they are being honest (Palmer Report p.30)are consistent in differentiating between the 40 ‘hard-core’ Islamic activists and the majority other 550 or so flotilla participants. Anti-Palestinian, anti-flotilla blogs and Israeli propaganda lazily impugn the entire flotilla membership as Islamists or haters of Israel.

IHH: Not Really A Charity

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla was co-organised by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish NGO İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri Vakfı (Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief) (IHH). The IHH does indeed perform charitable works, but its true purpose is to support Islamist and Jihadist activities.

This article ‘The Gaza Flotilla: Facts and Official Reactions’, by Max Gerstenfeldt of the Jerusalem Centre For Public Affairs contains a detailed analysis of the Islamist/Jihadist motivation of the IHH and its President.

Some extracts:

According to a 2006 report by the Danish Institute for International Studies, the IHH had links to Al-Qaeda and global Islamist networks during the 1990s.

The IHH was the subject of a Turkish criminal investigation in 1997, when sources revealed that senior IHH activists were purchasing automatic weapons from other Islamist groups. When they searched the IHH offices, Turkish security services found weapons, explosives, instructions for manufacturing IEDs (improvised explosive devices), and documents indicating that IHH members were planning to participate in terror activities in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Chechnya.

The report also notes that the current president of the IHH and organizer of the “Freedom Flotilla,” Bulent Yildrim, had galvanized anti-American sentiment, and incitement against U.S. troops, in these areas during the Iraq War.

A report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy notes that “in the mid-1990s, Yildrim was directly involved in ‘recruit[ing] veteran soldiers in anticipation of the coming holy war [jihad]. In particular, some men were sent to war zones in Muslim countries in order to acquire combat experience.’”

In July 2010, a group of Italian lawmakers under the lead of legislator Fiamma Nirenstein proposed that IHH be included in the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. “The Islamic fundamentalist nature of IHH has been documented by numerous declarations praising martyrdom and Israel’s destruction,” said Nirenstein.

In Germany, the Coordinating Council of German Nongovernmental Organizations against Anti-Semitism likewise called on the government to place the IHH on the EU list of terrorist organizations, because “like Hamas the IHH is an anti-Semitic organization that promotes terrorism.”

Former French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who investigated the IHH in the late 1990s, said the group was connected to a 1999 plot by Al-Qaeda to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. He described the IHH as having “clear, long-standing ties to terrorism,” and stated that the group was “basically helping Al-Qaeda when Bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil.”

It is plain, in my opinion, that IHH intended to engineer a confrontation with Israel using humanitarian activists as pawns. No firearms were bought on to the Flotilla, but the hard-core IHH sub-group premeditated to use dangerous ships materiel as improvised weapons against the Israeli Commandos. The IHH members fully expected they would be killed in the operation, but hoped to kill some Commandos in the process. This intention was kept secret to the wider Flotilla community which numbered 718 at the outset of the voyage, reducing to 594 due to mechanical problems in one or two flotilla craft.

Flotilla Jihadist

In view the above it is true to say that the Gaza Flotilla was organized with a Jihadist purpose. That purpose was only known to a small minority (42/718) of the flotilla participants. The vast majority were humanitarian activists.

The Jihadist purpose was to apply pressure to Israel to end the Gaza blockade so that rockets and other weapons could once again freely enter Gaza. That pressure was intended to come by provoking Israel into a violent conflict which would disgrace Israel in the eyes of the international community. The 40 IHH Jihadis chose to enter the confrontation with virtually no arms beyond found items on the ship augmented by some wooden clubs and metal poles which they cut from the ships railing. By this they hoped to disgace Israel which they calculated would use deadly force to overcome opponents with approximations of Bronze Age armaments.

IHH Deceit

The IHH has made some headway towards its goals, acheiving this by deceitfully tricking sincere humanitarians into participation into an operation IHH calculates as helping to bring about increased Rocket attacks on the Israeli civilian populations with a view to the ultimate destruction of the state of Israel.

Neither the IHH, nor its co-coordinator, the Free Gaza Movement have been honest about the Islamist and Jihadist nature of the IHH. The statements of FGM and IHH to the effect that they are motivated purely by humanitarianism are shameless lies and propaganda.

IHH Success

The Israeli naval blockade of Gaza was directed at preventing Rockets and other weaponry entering Gaza. The Palmer Report (pp. 39-40) succintly describes how militants in Gaza fired approx. 5,000 rockets between 2005 and Jan 2009 into an area heavily populated by Israeli citizens. The naval blockade, which was a response to this, has contributed to a reduction in attacks.

The IHH did not achieve an annulment of the naval blockade, but considerable criticism has been levied against Israel and both the naval blockade and restricted land crossings into Gaza are viewed with jaundice by a significant sector of educated opinion as well as centrist and left-leaning political parties in the Western Hemisphere.

As a consequence of the impoundment of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the publicity surrounding its actions and the killing of nine flotilla participants (and wounding of fifty-three) by the IDF the Palmer Report notes (p. 69)

• The Government of Israel has taken significant steps to ease the restrictions on goods entering Gaza
• On 5 July 2010, in a step which was welcomed by the Secretary-General, the Government of Israel switched from a positive list of goods allowed into Gaza to a negative list of goods whose entry is prohibited or restricted.
• On 8 December 2010, Israel decided to allow exports from Gaza, consistent with security conditions.

Gaza Humanitarian Crisis

The allieviation of economic conditions in Gaza as a consequence of relaxation of import controls via land is a temporary impediment to the US-Israel objective of removing Hamas by economic immiseration of the Gazan civilian population.

The Israeli policy, endorsed by the US is to keep Gaza on the verge of humanitarian crisis in order to make Hamas unpopular and engineer a change of government.

According to Reuters, via Wikileaks, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv says Israeli officials have confirmed on multiple occasions that they want Gaza’s economy

‘functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.’

Notes the blog ‘Moral Low Ground’

The blockade of Gaza banned, at one time or another, all of the following items– and this is just a partial list: canned goods; plastic sheeting; toys; books; electric appliances; auto parts; fabrics; threads; needles; light bulbs; candles; matches; books; musical instruments; crayons; clothing; shoes; mattresses; sheets; blankets; cutlery; crockery; cups; glasses; animals; pasta; tea; coffee; sausages; chocolate; sesame seeds; nuts; margarine; salt; artificial sweetener; legumes; yeast; diapers; sanitary napkins and toilet paper.

The situation in Gaza is awful. In Gaza City, many houses have running water only once a week. Sanitation services are inadequate for the population such that untreated sewage was entering the water processing system and food chain at points likely to compromise health.

From the Palmer Report (p. 69)

Furthermore, socio-economic conditions in Gaza have deteriorated badly in the aftermath
of [...] the Israeli-imposed restrictions on goods entering Gaza via the land crossings. Since these restrictions began in 2007, most private businesses have closed. The functioning of hospitals has been severely affected. The provision of electricity has been reduced and is intermittent. There has been a deterioration of water supply and sanitation services. Israel’s report admits Israel’s land crossings policies [...]were designed to weaken the economy [...]

Given that Israel has created the shocking living conditions in Gaza as a matter of deliberate policy, it can hardly be surprised that humanitarian activists may wish to participate in actions designed to change that policy of deliberate immiseration of local populations; nor should it complain or cry foul when the inhuman consequences of that policy are loudly and publicly pointed out.

Illegitimate And/Or Stupid

The strangulation of Gaza in order to delegitimize Hamas takes many forms including coercing Banks to deny services to Hamas members.

Hamas, lest we forget, is the democratically elected administration within Gaza. The people of Gaza voted for Hamas to be their government. For many ardent pro-Israelis and anti-Palestinians, the decision of Gazans to elect Hamas was an act of collective stupidity, proving that Palestinians are not responsible enough or too much in the grip of irrational hatred to know how to vote properly. Thus whatever Israel or the USA should decide to do to Gaza and Gazans is justified.

There is no justification for electing Jihadist government, so the deprivations visited upon Gaza by Israel are the fault of Gazans themselves. For this reason they shall be denied adequate sanitation, water and electricity. They shall endure sewage in their food and water; be deprived of sanitary napkins, vegetables and shoes; they shall be denied adequate medical supplies and otherwise flogged until they learn better.

Of course the mirrored Islamic view that the governments of Israel and the USA are illegitimate because they are non-Islamic or have committed war crimes against Muslim non-combatants is not regarded as sane. Osama Bin Laden may be assasinated by a crack Commando team and his body dumped in the ocean, but GW Bush may not be kidnapped, beheaded then incinerated. That would merely prove the blood-lust of Islam.

Who’s To Blame ?

There’s more than enough blame to share around. The IHH engineered a violent confrontation. The Israelis, for public-relations purposes, prefer the effects and intention of their blockade of Gaza not to be publicized and hence would have preferred no confrontation. But when it came they did not resile from shooting dead a few of its enemies. The pattern of gunshot wounds indicates that IHH Jihadists were shot from speedboats, helicopters, from behind, when wounded and defenceless and in general mercilessly executed.

In addition, the treatment of flotilla passengers by the IDF on the boats and in Israel was disgusting. It is apparent from reading the IDF submissions to the Palmer Report that the Israelis had exact knowledge of where the 40 dangerous IHH activists were, and while they disciminated their use of deadly force on this basis, they did not much differentiate in degrading, beating and robbing the remainder of the flotilla participants. (See Palmer Report pp.51-66).

The non-Jihadist flotillans, on the other hand, provided protection and first aid for the Israeli Commandos, eschewed the use of firearms confiscated from them and otherwise conducted themselves in a manner superior to that which they received from the IDF.

What To Do ?

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla incident is a manifestation of the wider issue of the intractable Israel/Muslim State animosity, a problem which appears truly unsolvable, but…

• Israel is entitled to defend itself. The number of rocket attacks on Israel increased dramatically after Hamas assumed control of Gaza. These attacks are timed to coincide with Israeli school start times, so Hamas are obviously targeting children. The land crossing and naval blockades should continue.

and;

• Import restrictions on Gaza should be lifted in toto except for non-police weapons

As to future ‘Freedom Flotillas’, I don’t think the IDF will kill you if you’re not Islamist, but they will probably taser, beat, and degrade you. Go with a Western charity and not one that’s associated with Islamism like the IHH.

And if you do decide to go on a little boat trip with the IHH or another Islamic ‘Charity’ be aware that Islamic humanitarianism includes the concept of beating Jews with metal poles and promoting activities calculated to contribute to the demise of the State Of Israel.

A senior relative (SR) of mine, an unquestioning supporter of the Murdochcracy, recently told me that Governments across the world have influenced the CSIRO, and NASA (for example) to write pro-AGW papers in order to expand their control of the economy and society.

Any other climate deniers also believe this ?

I thought this was a novel extension of the CSIRO/NASA/Worldwide Climate Reserach Unit conspiracy theory as it expanded the scope of the conspiracy to include now not only all Climate Research Units and all Universities but also now all national governments.

An unintended corollary of this theory is that John Howard is the sinister architect of Climate Change Alarmism in Australia because it was under his governments that AGW came to the attention of the Australian general public. Can’t remember anything about AGW in mainstream reporting under Keating.

So SR challenged me to confront the statements of the noted diver and Reef personage, Ben Cropp, who dives on the Great Barrier Reef nearly every day, that the Reef was in magnificent condition….which contradicted Bob Brown’s deranged assertions that the reef was in danger of destruction through Climate Change. On researching I found that Ben Cropp had actually said he had seen no heat damage on the reef at all.

So, summarizing what I found out about the Great Barrier Reef:

Bob Brown is, as usual, correct. The Great Barrier Reef has recently suffered serious bleaching events due to Global Warming. Ben Cropp is kind of correct. The Reef is still currently in pretty good condition, though he may be interested in the photograph of reef bleaching taken at Great Keppel Island in 2006 contained in this document.

In short, Coral Reefs can recover from bleaching events. So far the Great Barrier Reef has largely been able to recover from bleaching events which it has experienced. It will not be able to do so indefinitely as sea temperatures continue to rise and ocean acidification destroys the ability of the reef to re-create itself.

According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, from whom I have plagiarized most of the text below, the Great Barrier Reef suffered significant bleaching events in various places in 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 with 1998 and 2002 being the most serious.

In 1998 67% of the Great Barrier Reef inshore reefs suffered bleaching

Prior to 1980 no significant bleaching event had been observed on the Great Barrier Reef. Ever. In fact at no time in Human History has mass coral reef bleaching been observed until the early 1980’s. Fortunately, damage to the Great Barrier Reef corals has been relatively low because the conditions have not been as severe as in other parts of Australia and the world.

For example, in 1998 Scott Reef in the northwest waters of Australia, a very warm core of water persisted above Scott Reef for several months. It was almost wiped out.

But Coral Reefs can recover from bleaching events if temperatures drop back beyond extremes. This has been the case for the Great Barrier Reef up to this point.

At present sea temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef are 0.4 degrees warmer than they were in 1871.

Based on how corals respond to increased temperatures today, an increase of 2°C in the average sea temperature in tropical and subtropical Australia will lead to annual bleaching with up to 97 percent of the Great Barrier Reef affected. This will totally ruin it as Bob Brown has correctly stated.

They are also designed to delberately misinform his readers.

It takes an especially perverse mind to devote a career to concealing truth. In this short post I will offer an explanation as to why Mr. Bolt is so dedicated to misinforming his readership.

In my view there are three motivating forces behind Bolt’s systematic and deliberate dedication to obscuring truth:

1) His dedication to a higher cause, namely the protection
of decent society from the Green movement, which Bolt believes wishes to enact a totalitarian Communist anti-human One World Government

2) His assimilation and adoption of systematic deception and
propagandist techniques learnt while an employee of Graham Richardson
in the infamous ANiMaLs section of the ALP.

3) His personal emotional and psychological history as a victim
of bullying.

Bolt The Animal.

As is now more widely known, Bolt had two periods of employment working for the ALP including the infamous aNiMalS or National Media Liason Unit, sometimes described as the ALP’s ‘fearsome attack machine’.

It was during those engagements Bolt was first exposed to – and soon intoxicated by – the journalistic dirty tricks, disinformation and propaganga tactics employed by professional political parties.

Bolt immensely enjoyed these jobs working inside the soulless ‘whatever it takes’ political machine created by Graham Richardson and has ever since dedicated his own efforts as Richardson did, to the achievement of political goals irrespective of truth.

Revealingly, Bolt describes an emotional satisfaction and moral justification in defeating one’s enemies through lies and distortion.

Says Bolt:

“It was just really intoxicating and it was the first time I got that real buzz you get from politics which is really dangerous.

You know, that space where you’re so convinced that your side is right and
in those conditions the other side is immoral and therefore you’re excused
all sorts of things.

You start thinking:
“they’re immoral so why should you be nice to them? Why should you follow all the rules?’’’

Spin

Because Bolt has a personal and moral commitment to distortion, because Bolt’s primary mode of opertion is to distort the arguments of his opponents, then naturally he sees distortion (a.k.a. ‘spin’ in the propaganda/marketing
speak of the well trained aNiMaL) in all the utterances of his opponents.

A search for the word ‘spin’ on Bolt’s own Herald-Sun Blog finds many hits, not merely in the copy of his Blog posts but in the very titles. Spin is constantly uppermost in Bolt’s mind; he therefore decorates his Blog journalism with the name of his god.

Ergo:

Calculating ABC spin May 22, 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/calculating_abc_spin

How the Age drowned its readers in spin
blogs.news.com.au/…/index…/how_the_age_drowned_its_readers_in_spin/

G20 spin unspun 31 Mar 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/g20_spin_unspun/

Big boat comes in to spoil Gillard’s spin 20 Jul 2010 …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/big_boat_comes_in_to_spoil_gillards_spin/

Spin overboard 21 Oct 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/spin_overboard1/

How will Garrett spin this? 4 May 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/…/how_will_garrett_spin_this/

The lie in Gillard’s population spin 23 Jul 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/…/column3/

Smith demands better spin doctors to hide the kind of damage he’s …17 Apr 2011 blogs.news.com.au/…/smith_demands_more_spin_merchants_to_clean_up_his_mess

Tanner unleashes on Gillard and Rudd’s spin .24 Apr 2011
blogs.news.com.au/…php/…/tanner_unleashes_on_gillard_and_rudds_spin/

The essence of spin 30 May 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/the_essence_of_spin/

Tanner spins Labor’s obsession with spin May 2011
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/tanner_spins_labors_obsession_with_spin

Rudd gets 1000 to help him spin Feb 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/rudd_gets_1000_to_help_him_spin/

Rudd’s spin unspun
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/rudds_spin_unspun/

Another leak exposes Gillard’s spin 2 Aug 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/another_leak_exposes_gillards_spin/

So much spin 21 Mar 2011 .
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/so_much_spin

Rudd spin makes Ferguson ill
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/rudd_spin_makes_ferguson_throw_up/

Ellis on Gillard’s cold spin 19 Dec 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/index…/ellis_on_gillards_cold_spin/

How Rudd’s spiders spin 17 May 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/how_rudds_spiders_spin/

Rudd can’t say “billion”, Oakes can’t say “spin” 30 May 2009
blogs.news.com.au/…/index…/rudd_cant_say_billion_oakes_cant_say_spin/

New spin needed
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/new_spin_needed/

Let the part tell the whole. Spin is an instrinsic and instinctive part of Bolt’s thinking and modus operandi; He is continuously producing it, continuously ascribing it to his opponents and continuously genuflecting to it in his Blog Post titles. Spin simply pours out of Bolt.

As a wise man once said “From the overflow of his heart, so a man speaks”;
or more prosiacally “The fox detects his own stink first”.

Bolt’s treasure is spin. His mind and heart therefore continually attend it.

Higher Truth

Bolt is a moral man. His dedication to distortion is justified because it serves a higher truth; namely the salavation of Australia from TEH LEFT and most particularly The Greens.

Bolt is an Independent Advisor to the hilariously misnamed “Galileo Movement”, an AGW denialist group whose patron is the spittle-flecked Alan Jones.

The Galileo Movement’s semi-rational manifesto has five planks of which four (by discarding ‘protect the environment’) can be taken seriously and two of which reveal the slightly nutty character of the typical One World Government conspiracist.

These latter two are:

- Protect freedom – personal choice and national sovereignty;
- Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities.

The reference to ‘national sovereignty’ is a dog-whistle for ‘escape the clutches of the evil United Nations and IPCC’ while the second is the polemical paranoic utterance of persons too much acquainted with Ayn Rand and Frederick Hayek, where dwell the modern under-read Libertarians, Cold War dinosaurs and careerist, knee-jerk reactionary anti-Leftists (Bolt is in this category) for which revilement of TEH LEFT and GREENS is as merely automatic and as reasoned as the tribal hatreds bedevilling suburban football fans.

A quick Google for ‘Fear Guilt Left’ on Bolt’s Blog easily shows how Bolt shares with the Galileo Movement the nuttiest fifth plank of its manifesto, while reading his posts on The Greens (e.g the Hamilton one below) soon show that he considers them innately totalitarian in agreement with the polemic associated with the Galileo Movement’s first plank.

The posts also contain elucidations of various other anti-left/Green memes including

- How the Left (surely typified by the Greens) encourage disprespect for
institutions and engender societal sickness and therefore violence and thus are
seeking its ultimate collapse (in order to institute a totalitarian
Communist Green dictatorship);
- Are rampantly hypocritical and morally sick.
- Are Anti-Human
- Poison the minds of children

Here’s “Fear Guilt Left” from Bolt’s Blog

Hamilton stands for Greens – and for fear and less democracy …23 Oct 2009 .
blogs.news.com.au/…/hamilton_stands_for_the_grees_and_for_fear_and_less_democracy/

Attacking what they no longer respect or fear 14 Feb 2011
blogs.news.com.au/…/attacking_what_they_no_longer_respect_or_fear

The Left vs Israel 9 Aug 2006 ..
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/the_left_vs_israel

The ABC of spreading baseless fear 4 Aug 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…of…fear/…/P20/

Better left unsaid | 12 Aug 2009 .
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…better_left…/P20/

This “good” racism of the Left is killing black children .9 Nov 2010

Bullies of the Left 3 Sep 2007
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…of…left/asc/P20/

Save the planet! Hurt people! 14 Mar 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/…/save_the_planet_hurt_people

Earth Hour bores 28 Mar 2010 … Messing with children’s minds
by installing a sense of guilt and fear over …. From
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/earth_hour_bores

This is the real Australia 1 Jul 2011 … As someone so aptly said today,
‘white guilt is heroin for the left’.
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/this_is_the_real_australia

Why David Marr dances 9 Nov 2010 …
Guilt and fear were instilled in young people from an early age. … Marr is an act, this ultra left, ultra permissive, contrarian view on every …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/why_david_marr_dances/

Arnie gases on about “sexy” greens 13 Apr 2007 …
You know the kind of guilt I’m talking about: Smokestacks belching pollution and …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/arnie_gases_on_about_sexy_greens/

This is why Bolt has no compunction about misrepresenting his enemies. Bolt’s enemies are evil. They do not deserve truth or fair play. They deserve only defeat and preferably destruction.

To reprise Bolt’s own words about his experience as a political apparatchik:

“You know that space where you’re so convinced that your side is right and
in those conditions the other side is immoral and therefore you’re excused
all sorts of things.”

Bolt joyously inhabits that dangerous space. In fact, the article in which he made those statements is, in my view, a confessional. Bolt is telling the world that truth is irrelevant to him because his enemies do not deserve it.

Revenge Of The Nerd.

Bolt has an extremely poor self image and was an outsider at school,
an experience he did not enjoy.

This explains his constant projection of victimhood, his hurt at people
apparently trying to victimize or silence him for no good reason apart from their innate bullying or their own farcical self-confidence at being part of the
brainless clique/mob of conformists/insiders.

Maybe at times Bolt was derided or the victim of name-calling or other anti-social acts directed at he, Bolt, the quiet, shy Dutch boy not fiting in.

Bolt’s first published piece was a poem he wrote at 13 years of age about
his abhorrence at bullies and at becoming a bully himself in order to fit in.

Bolt’s sense of victimhood is eternally fresh. Always present, it has been
conspicuosuly on display somewhat pathetically twice. Once when Bolt asserted
that he was in physical danger of mob violence agitated by an obscure (but brilliant) political blog, and most recently when whinging and moaning at his finding of guilt by the Federal Court of Australia for Racial Discrimination.

David Marr succintly skewers Bolt’s nonsense here. detailing how Bolt simply ignored inconvenient facts while penning the articles which led to his conviction

Robert Manne here notes the side-splitting insanity of Bolt who has a newspaper column and a blog in a wide-circulation national newspaper, his own TV program and a regular Melbourne radio slot claiming that his views are muzzled and that being held accountablee for untrue and racially-based slurs is an unfair prohibition on his free speech.

David Penderbethy here describes the embarrassment his colleague, Bolt, embodies to serious journalists and journalism ans also notes the imbecility of Bolt’s claims to be silenced or otherwise victimized.

I see Bolt’s articles and certainly his persona as strongly informed
by those boyhood experiences. The ‘mob’ is transmuted into his poltical enemies, The left/Greens, but now the power relationships are inverted.
Bolt has freedom to excoriate ‘the mob’ protected by the financial resources
of his attack dog newspaper, and as his boyhood poem prophetically stated,
Bolt has become the attack dog and bully himself.

The well-spring of Bolt’s rage, as all emotional hurts are, is inexhaustible.
As an adult Bolt is now able to channel that rage into excoriating the left/Greens dressing it in the fig leaf of moral justification since the Greens themselves are irredeemably evil and therefore deserve it.

Bolt’s articles are the revenge of the hurt boy.

Bolt’s Fundamental Motivation

So, in the end, what motivates Bolt ? To answer to this question I believe one must look to where Bolt expends most energy: Aboriginal Affairs and Climate Change.

Bolt came to prominence as a Poison Pen for the Right on the back of the ‘Stolen Generations’ issue which was the centrepiece of the ‘History Wars’ in Australian Politics from 1996-2007.

Bolt engaged in an extended public debate with one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals, Robert Manne, over the Stolen Generations. The question is why would Bolt bother to expend such energy on this particular issue ? That question has added salience now that Bolt has been found guilty of Racial Discrimination by accusing nine prominent part-Aboriginal Australians of falsely claiming or duplicitously emphasizing their Aboriginal heritage merely for financial benefit. What is it about Aboriginal issues that engages Bolt to such a degree ? Why does this issue in particular motivate him to write with such passion ?

Bolt gave a significant clue in an article of his ‘Why I Wont Change’ which appeared in the Herald-Sun in Feb. 2004.

In the article Bolt cites a plea for help from a Year 12 student seeking accurate information about the Stolen Generations. The student sent Bolt a Stolen Generations ‘Fact Sheet’ supplied by the school which Bolt typifies as full of ‘luxurious falsehoods’ and says:

I admire that girl for already knowing that what matters is that she first be told the truth, before she’s taught what to feel about it. I admire her for demanding the right to exercise her own conscience, rather than mimic her teacher’s. How can we tell lies to such a young woman — however noble our motives — and have such contempt for her perception, her reasoning and her moral sense?

So Bolt claims his motivation is the defence of the minds of Australia’s youth from the fear/guilt propaganda inflicted on them by TEH LEFT via the education system. i.e. Bolt is standing up for the fifth plank of the Galileo Movement manifesto:

Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities

.

For Bolt, the Stolen Generations history is a myth invented by the Left to poison the minds of children, presumably to engender mistrust in our institutions in order to foment leftist revolution.

Ironically, of course, the Stolen Generations is a true history; but like former Prime Minister John Howard, Bolt prefers the received myth of Australia’s white settlement, that it was concluded largely without violence and without racism expect for some limited and unfortunate mistakes made only in the best interests of Aboriginal persons by those trying their best at the time.

Bolt styles himself as a truth crusader. On Aboriginal issues, however, he is in reality a myth crusader. His recent conviction for Racial Discrimination has bought out that Bolt ignored facts inconvenient to him when compiling his dossier on prominent Australian ‘false Aboriginals’. His previous conviction, for Defamation in 2002 also showed that Bolt ignored facts known to him when writing an article containing defamatory untruths regarding Magistrate Jelena Popovic. Simply, Bolt prefers myth to fact and falsehood to truth as he serves his Higher Truth.

As Emile Durkheim noted, the function of myth is to validate, explain and preserve an established belief or authority system.

The question then becomes ‘what Higher Truth is Bolt serving’.

I submit that Bolt’s Higher Truth is the salvation of Australia from Leftists and Greens. The battle is fought on ideas. Therefore no Leftist idea, Stolen Generations or otherwise, must be allowed to survive. Leftists ideas must be defeated and, as Bolt learned as an aNiMaL, truth is the first casualty of this war. Lies must be mobilized to preserve truth. The minds of Australian youth must be fortified with good Right-wing lies in order that evil left-wing lies be defeated.

In short Bolt has adapted a Vietnam War dictum: The minds of Australians must be destroyed in order to save them.

The Utility Of Andrew Bolt

Bolt is allowed his privileged safe haven at the Herald-Sun because he serves the interests of power. His strident and duplicitous vocalisation of anti-Left, anti-Green propaganda buttressed by his sneakily adduced statistics provides a superficially authoritative denunciation of the Left/Green perspective.

Bolt’s passionate advocacy provides a pseudo-intellectual justification for the rejection of progressive reforms and entrenchment of the privileged status quo.

Bolt is a useful tool for entrenched privilege. So the Herald-Sun is prepared to pay well to keep Bolt’s megaphone open. Which is why the Herald-Sun is gritting its wallet to pay Bolt’s legal fees and keep Bolt’s misogynistic, homophobic, counter-factual and anti-scientific diatribe page open…for business.

“Pigs are the fourth most intelligent species on the planet after humans, apes, dolphins and whales”.

Noting the counting error in the above information I suspect the signage might have been prepared by a less intelligent differently intelligented species than those listed; or maybe an ungulate outside the Top 4 with a trotter axe to grind about not cracking the elite. That would be a P retty I nsightful G uess

As to the actual information contained in the signage, uproar descended on the show as Octopi demanded a recount and inclusion in the prestigious Top 5.

Which has led to Simon Cowell producing “IQ Idol” to determine the species most popularly considered “most intelligent”. Its five weeks before Grand Final and the remaining contestants ar: Xyloryctes Jamaicensis (Beetle), Paigene Englosaxen ALP Focus Group Member from Lindsay in Western Sydney (Human), Enteroctopus Dofleini (Octopus), Sus Scrofa Domesticus (Pig) and Balaenoptera Musculus (Whale); Dolphin having been controversially eliminated as Beetles flooded the voting lines to get their representative over the line. Over to you Simon:

Simon: Species: Who or what is the Prime Minister Of Australia ?
Paigene: As if I care. I’m goin’ home to feed me Pit Bulls and collect me Centrelink.
Balaenoptera: Crrrooooo-aaaaaaaaa-wheeee-sss-WHARK WHARK WHARK oooooo WOO CLICK CLICK srrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaaaaaaa WHARK etc etc…
(17 mins later)….
…. CLICK CLICK WHARK WHARK
Scrofa: He always say that. As to the PM can I eat its intestines?
Dofleini: Please do not bother me with inane questions. I am plotting world domination and don’t have the time.
Paigene: Aargh! What’s that horrid thingy! SQELCH!!!
Simon. And so Beetle cannot contest the semi-finals due to a sudden unforeseen illness. We’ll give that one to Octopus.
Audience: Boo!
Simon: Species: What is the most efficient way to catch and consume krill ?
Paigene: Flamin’ rigged mate. Spewin.
Scrofa: Do they have intestines ?
Dofleini: Krill? So dull. With a nicely chilled Sauvignon Blanc it could be palatable.
Baleanopetra: (Vey excited) WHARK WHARK WHARK oooooo WOO CLICK CLICK srrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaaaaaaa WHARK etc
(2 Hours Later)…
CLICK whoooo whooo whooo WHARK AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRKKKKK CLICK!!!!!!
Simon: The question specifically said ‘efficient’. That’s two for Octopus.

Come back after the break for more IQ Idol.

Ethical Or Merely Rational

The article which introduced the thread alluded to The Problem Of Evil; which got me thinking as to whether or not evil or moral wrong could ever exists under atheism. Googling atheist ethics I came across sites like this one that described atheist ethics of kindness and compassion having supposedly arisen from an evolutionary survival technique of mutual help, so I posed this question:

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that atheists don’t have a system of ethics based on morality, but rather on rational survival strategies ?

To which my atheist responsent (AR) replied:

Atheists can observe that certain ethical behaviours have been empirically shown to result in the one life we have to live being longer, healthier, safer and generally more pleasant for the group as a whole than if those ethical behaviours are not followed.

AR’s use of empirical methods to determine ethics confirmed to me that the fundamental atheist ethic is rationality determined by notions of the common good, which would make sociopathic acts merely irrational as opposed to actually wrong or evil. AR didn’t address this directly. She merely said:

It makes them [sociopathic acts] an unacceptable danger to others.

.. which evades the question I was driving at which is what is the ground or basis of the atheist ethic.

Can Amoral Systems Give Rise To A Satisfactory Human Ethic ?

I pointed out this evasion to AR and underlined the amoral concept of rationality at the heart of her atheist ethic by providing a specific example: If ethics arise from rational self-interest in avoiding anti-social behaviours directed back at oneself then if some bloke should kill a child her atheist response would be ‘That’s irrational. Doesn’t he know that someone could kill his children ?’

AR responded;

I make no value judgements about someone’s behaviour when I describe it as dangerous… Your [child murder] scenario is a community presented with a person of proven dangerous-to-others behaviour. The community’s interest in their mutual safety will lead them to develop guidelines about protecting themselves from dangerous people.

I was stunned to read AR describing child murder in her atheist ethic as merely dangerous as opposed to immoral, evil or wrong and that the label of dangerous was sufficient to cover sociopathic acts considered in general and specifically child murder.

I sought clarification by summarizing AR’s ethical propositions to date: I make no value judgements about someone’s behaviour and observed Perhaps I misunderstand you. The murder of a child is immoral, right [not merely dangerous]?

AR was outraged and told me I was engaging in dishonest cherry-picking,. From that point, being a Moderator on Lavartus Prodeo, she simply banned me from the thread.

Evading Truth

AR showed a strong inclination to evade examination of her atheist ethic. She wanted her statements about how she derived her atheist ethic to stand without examination. When her ethic was critiqued she engaged in a superficial and somewhat deflective conversation and then banned any further inquiry.

Even given the opportunity to clarify or resile from an astoundingly weak ethical judgement on child murder as merely dangerous she would not.

I believe that this is because the discussion had shown in a few short exchanges what is obvious, namely that there is no objective basis for atheist ethics and hence nothing that is recognisable as a grounded morality.

The Limits And Impoverishment Of Atheist Ethics

All that atheists can do in place of an objective morality is appeal to subjective notions such as rational self-interets or the common good, both concepts which are necessarly subjective and can be replaced by any arbitrary statement of value or worth.

An ethic submitted to AR’s atheist committee for approval would need to demonstrate an empirical rational basis for acceptance. Rationality is the basis. The actual ethics are subject to revision at any time.

So unethical behaviour is defined in terms of its irrationality not its intrinsic characteristics. Should killing certain segments of the population improve the common good e.g. by removing defective genes leading to better overall health outcomes, then such killings are ethical.

AR said:

Empathy and compassion arise from rational self-interest

I say that the reduction of empathy and compassion to the impoverished formulation of Classical Economics robs them of their very humanity.

Empathy and compassion are not subject to a Business Case and ethics are not in thrall to Key Performance Indicators.

Suppressing Truth

The Bible says that fallen humanity suppresses moral truth.

Romans 1:18-20

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

AR suppressed truth in the Blog thread under discussion by moderating posts of mine which described a Biblical approach to universal ethics and its rejection of karma or works-based systems of salvation; but AR permitted other posters describing ‘what the Bible says’ incorrectly and by permitting a clearly off-topic post rejecting Jesus’s Ddvinity.

Hilariously inventing the concept of an on-topic thread derail AR moderated and eventually banned my posts to prevent critique of atheist ethics and thereby protect the atheist ethic from a Biblical challenge.

Problems Justifying An Atheist Ethic

While there are many ways of justifying an atheist ethic, it is difficult for atheists to avoid subjective and hence ungrounded ethics, or alternatively a universal ethic based merely on survial or rational self-interest which logically lead to horrific propositions such as Eugenics being morally acceptable.

The Biblical alternative is that morality is grounded in God who alone is Holy and Wise and who thus is uniquely qualified to state what is moral and what is not.

God then graciously communicates those moral truths to us in His Scripture, in creation and in the person of Jesus; more than that, implanted those truths in humanity by creating them in His moral image. The Image Of God in Humanity is now marred and distorted by Original Sin, hence mankind is no longer perfectly able to determine moral outcomes. Nevertheless the residual Image Of God in mankind explains how Universal or near-Universal moral truths can exist.

Answer: $664,285 per asylum-seeker.

Here’s The Figuring

Numbers
2009: 2750 asylum seekers by boat
2010: 6800 asylum seekers by boat
2011: trending towards 2800 asylum seekers by boat.

Costs:
Offshore Asylum Seeker Management $1.06 billion
Onshore Immigration Detention $800 million
Total $1.86 bn

Acceptance Rate: 85%

So at 2800 asylum seekers this year it costs $664,285 per asylum seeker to pick through all the pieces to discover that they are in fact legally entitled to be here.

Put another way to detect one non-entitled asylum seeker costs about $4.4 million.

Is that really an effective cost-benefit ratio ?

I’d sooner be spending that loot an something else like funding the CSIRO or Health or anything else worthwhile.

Based on the above figures I have come around to the Greens thinking of abandoning Mandatory Detention and instead setting up a policing system similar to what we use for those on parole.

Safe

Despite the Coalition nutcasery about criminal asylum seekers there are almost NO criminals amongst those seeking asylum in Australia. In 2000, 13,000 people sought asylum in Australia. Just 11 failed the Character Test i.e 0.08%. (see the link to ‘Debinking The Myths’ from the Edmund Rice Centre at the bottom of the linked page)

Applying that percentage to the projected 2800 boat arrivals expected in 2011, gives a grand total of 3 “criminals” (rounded up) at a cost of $620 million per criminal.

Its not worth it.

But since this issue is opposed merely on emotional and xenophobic grounds, mostly fear of having our standard of living reduced and fear of cultural hijack then many of those opposing would pay any price for the defence of their emotional security. $620 million per criminal, for those, is money well spent.

My short answer, following Chomsky: The West must periodically dump its favourite dictators when their crimes become obvious to the the general population of Western democracies.

Marcos, described by GH Bush as ‘pledged to democracy’ adding that ‘[the US] love[s] your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic processes’ was dumped for Aquino due to mass public protest. Others, including Mubarrak, have met the same fate. Now its Gaddaffi’s turn.

The average Western voter, unaware of Gaddaffi’s general working relationship with the US thinks of Gaddaffi as an anti-Western psycho-tyrant. This is a left-over from his ‘official enemy of civilisation’ status earnt around the time of the Lockerbie bombing. For the westerner in the street, Gaddaffi’s ‘official enemy’ status has never been revised or rescinded despite his aforesaid working relationship with the US and the West. The eruption of civil war in Libya including air-force strikes on civilians and rebels rightly disgusts Norm and Noreen Everage who expect the innocent to be protected. So there is domestic political expectation in the West, grounded in basic decency, that our governments will enact a NFZ.

But governments, naturally, approach the situation based on realpolitik and self-interest.

The crucial political factor which allowed the NFZ proposal to succeed is the alliance of common interest between Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations with the US.

While significant chunks of the grass roots Arab citizenry may hate the US, their governments rather enjoy selling the US oil and receiving Megatons of military equipment as part of various perverse aid and friendship packages. The Americans base the bulk of their Persian Gulf fleet in Bahrain , to name just one important aspect of this relationship.

The Arab League does not wish to succour the highly energetic and successful protest movements swelling under their feet, so to provide a precedent of supporting a rebel movement in Libya must have stuck in their craw and contributed to a great deal of hesitation in their agreement with the UN/NATO.

The Arab League is a Sunni organisation. Iran is not a member. This makes the Arab League easier to deal with for the US/West than the Organisation Of The Islamic Conference, of which Iran, a trenchant opponent if the USA is a member. I think this is why the US/NATO sought agreement with the Arab League rather than the OIC. Iran would have it harder for the Saudis to make a deal which was predicated partly on the basis of Shiites being massacred in Bahrain.

As to why Saudi planes (or the Arab League generally) are not doing the bombing runs, well, they have to save face with their own population. Its not great internal press to openly bomb other Muslims. If the Brits do it then that may just distract the rebel movements a little into an anti-Western lacuna.

But the Saudis wlll happily massacre as many Shiite Bahranis as they have bullets, or Apache helicopters.

The typical Western voter, unaware of the basic alliance between Arab and Western governments, and with no pre-existing mental image of Bahraini royalty except a vague negative Arab/Muslim sterotype will consider the Bahraini massacres an internal Arab matter and will not expect Western intervention. Besides which, war with Saudi Arabia is beyond the comfort level of most of the sane.

But in regard to Libya, the West needed the NFZ deal to save face with its own populace – particularly the British, whose royalty are friends with Gaddaffi’s son and whose famous London School Of Economics received bequests from the psycho-tyrant himself.

So I would guess the essence of the deal with the Arab League would be “Let us do a NFZ in Libya and we’ll look the other way while you massacre as many as you want elsewhere, starting with Bahrain and Yemen’

How China and Russia were talked into abstaining, I don’t know, but it would have cost the West a barrel of favours that would make even a FIFA junket look trivial.

So, the NFZ is not a specific imperialialist gambit or lunge for Libyan oil, but rather an unfortunate turn of events where popular protest has forced the West to abandon one of its murderous clients.

This happens regularly and is very distressing because revolution is more unpredicatable than Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates and who the West gets to deal with next will have to be cultivated/managed/bombed or bribed into compliance which is costly, time-consuming and has no guarantee of success.

The essay is called Rush, Newspeak and Fascism, written by Daniel Neiwert in the midst of the G W Bush era. Neiwert’s special interest is the conspiracist US Patriot/Militia movements, their involvement in domestic terrorism and the way they admire and are accommodated by the Republican Party.

Neiwert canvasses some important essays on Fascism including Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-Fascism before settling on Oxford University’s Roger Griffin’s definition of ‘Palingenetic Ultranationalist Populism’ as the animating principles of Fascism. Palingenetic means ‘rising from the ashes, as the Phoenix’

Neiwert then notes some important additional factors: the hand-in-glove relationship of Fascism to Big Business (what he terms ‘Corporatism’), the valourisation of violence and the need of Fascist’s to regard themselves as reacting against Victimisation, persecution or repression (what I classify as the reactionary element of Fascism).

The purpose of Neiwert’s essay is to clearly define Fascism so that it may be recognised in nascent forms as well as its full-blown ‘mature’ form.

As Neiwert notes, the term ‘Fascist’ is grossly abused, mostly by the Left, and is usually delivered as an insult meaning nothing more than ‘authoritarian’. The destructive power and disease of Fascism is too deadly to allowed to obscured by lazy usage. Like ‘Genocide’, the appellation of ‘Fascism’ is too important to be misused. It’s a definition that needs to be kept sharp to remain useful.

Having defined Fascism and castigated the Left for misuse of the term Neiwert then spends the remainder of the essay discussing to what extent right-wing extremist groups in the USA have been accommodated by the Repunlican Party and to what extent the rhetoric and beliefs of the extreme right find everyday expression in Republican mainstream discourse. Its an interesting exploration.

That’s Enough About Him

I see Fascism as an opportunistic movement arising from crisis or flux. The pre-conditions have to be right for Fascism to erupt in the public imagination. A charismatic/redemptive leader is crucial.

The United States, in my opinion, has a greater potential to slide into Fascism than Australia, for a number of reasons:

• Their national image as a ‘nation of destiny’
• Their national image as an example to all nations, a leader of the world community,
a youthful, vigorous, vanguard, revolutionary nation free of the corrupting
accretions of senile cynical European leadership. (Old Europe v. New Europe)
• Highly patriotic and jingoistic
Great love of patriotic symbols such as the National Flag.
My country right or wrong. American pride: America must ‘walk tall’ cannot be in second place, cannot lower the flag (e.g at Olympics)
• Their belief in a transcendent American spirit and American values –
Values worth rediscovering/recovering/fighting )literally) for.
• Their national birth through revolution; hence national rebirth obtainable by revolution on the same principles.
• Unilateral. – Rejects United Nations, International Criminal Court
• Approves of Torture as a means of achieving national goals.

• A Martial nation – Highly militaristic and militarized: which nation has military bases in 150 nations
around the world ?
• Presidential system with propensity to degenerate into a personality cult. Round the clock PR machine polishing/aggrandaisin the image.
• Significant racist undercurrent including White Supremacist groups
– a hangover from the Slave Trade and The South
• Big Business and Political classes are the same people (Corporatist) and integrated
to an extent far more openly than other Western nations.
• Highly inflammatory/irresponsible political rhetoric typified by Sarah Palin
• Domestic terrorist groups (Militias)

In a wry twist, the term ‘Palingenetic’ perfectly describes the overt aims of the GOP-derived ‘Tea Party’ movement, now identified with Sarah Palin, whose website and speech making contain highly distasteful and culpable affirmations of violent and forceful action against a corrupt political culture, perfectly synchronous with a Fasist template.

But, as Neiwert says, the GOP/Big Business are more interested in Money and Power than racism and fascism and neither the GOP nor Sarah Palin is not Fascist.

The accommodation of racist and/or extremist thinking, like the accommodation of Christian fundamentalist thinking in the GOP is a means to an end, not and end in itself. When/if Racism/warped Christian Fundmentalism (really pseudo-Christian white totalitarianism) becomes the end in itself, then the United States would have taken a stride toward Fascism.

So, in my view, many of the necessary elements for Fascism are present above mere trace levels in the USA.

They sorely need to regain a civilised political rhetoric in order to rein in some of the factors noted above.

Rhetoric vs. Reality

A colleague of mine made a very valid point about distinguishing between rhetoric and action. Even if the GOP is willing to trade in some of the rhetoric of the outer right it does not mean that the GOP is actually going to implement the policies of the outer right.

For example, Christian Fundamentalists began to desert the Republicans in the Obama election because they felt betrayed by the GOP. The GOP despite their rhetoric were not delivering on their (implicit) undertakings.

John Cain never talked about faith and seemed to be spiritually apathetic. Obama, OTOH seemed to be a real believer. So the Fundies began to drift toward the Democrats.

That was one reason why Palin was drafted in as Vice-Presidential nominee: she’s a bona-fide Christian Fundamentalist. She was bought in to stop that drift.

So, the question is, has there really been a rightward shift in American Politics even if one should happen to agree that there has been a rightward shift in rhetoric.

Well can a person clutch fire to their chest and not be burned ?

The Southern Strategy

The first rightward lunge by the GOP occurred under the Southern Strategy, of the 1960′s, developed by Nixon to appeal to white racists. That strategy resulted in a number of policies designed to appeal to racist sentiment; for example, ‘Forced Busing’ (to achieve racial desegregation) was dropped, ‘Law And Order’(meaning oppose Civil Rights Protest), and anti-welfare (meaning stop whites having to pay for Black welfare) policies were implemented.

The electioneering phrase for these programs taken together was ‘States Rights’ which harked back to the 1948 formation of the States Rights Democratic Party, formed by Southern Democrats to oppose the Civil Rights movement. Reagan resurrected ‘States Rights’ rhetoric in 1980, announcing his support for ‘States Rights’ in a township famous for the murder of three Civil Rights activists in 1964.

The success of The Southern Strategy inverted the racial orientation of American politics making the GOP, formerly the ‘Party Of Lincoln’ (i.e. racial emancipation) the racist-friendly party, forcing the formerly racist Democrats to a non-racist stance since they needed some Black Vote.

Reagan regenerated the Sothern Strategy, introducing a range of anti-welfare and taxation policies which he knew would be perceived as anti-black in the South. Here’s how his campaign advisor Lee Atwater,
later chairman of the Republican National Committee described it

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to [...]the racist side of the Wallace [i.e. Southern] voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. [...]We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger

Reagan also gave racist private Universities access to certain tax exemptions which had been previously denied to them on the basis of discriminatory behaviour and opposed affirmative action and quotas. TV adverts showed a white hand crumpling a job rejection notice talking about quotas. In short, anti-welfare equals anti-Black to a Southern audience. Its a dogwhistle. The inclusion of States Rights delivers the code words infallibly.

As Atwater put it, The GOP is happy to be viewed as implementing economic measures to hurt blacks to appeal to whites.

The confluence of Reagan’s ideological anti-welfare leanings with his desire to appeal to white racists provides fig leaf cover for an argument that the appeal to racism is merely fortunate, a mere by-product of good economics. Though the disproportional effect on Blacks is recognised it is not intentional, in fact it is good or them, breaking the welfare cycle (and there is some truth in that).

In a similar vein one might say that the location of the ‘States Rights’ speech was merely fortunate, even planned, but not driven by any particular racist motivation.

Maybe so.

But Atwater admits to fostering the racist sentiment by choosing ‘States Rights’ as the vehicle by which to deliver these policies, which means that the GOP is happy to trade in racism in order to win office. They’re happy for racism to be associated with political leadership.

Which is reprehensible.

And dangerous.

I wish people would spend as much time reading my scientific papers as they do reading my e-mails. – Professor Phil Jones, CRU, University Of East Anglia, ‘BBC Q&A’, 13 Feb 2010

Over Christmas I had a frank discussion with two older relatives, both over 60, about Climate Change. They believe or pretend to believe that Climate Change is a crock for a number of spurious reasons typical of the anti-AGW denialist crowd. I see them as willing victims of popular media and popular political parties.

Heresy
What makes them willing victims is their lifelong antipathy to the Green movement which has become an inaliable part of their identity. It is virtually impossible for these particular over-60′s to admit the Green’s might be correct about anything because to do so would force them to admit that they (the said over-60′s) were incorrect – which would be a massive affront to their pride, let alone their semi-religious belief in the superlative brilliance of the Capitalist economic system – which defeated the heretical Communist movement in the heroic good vs. evil struggle of the Cold War.

Admitting the Greens might be right is tantamount to admitting that their over-60′s Capitalist religion might be wrong. Which is unthinkable and undoable.

Existential Death
As I brilliantly summarized in another post, AGW is a death threat to Capitalism as a doctrinal system.

For those who have fully invested themselves into the belief that Capitalism is the best of all political systems, the possibility that it might be invalidated by any consideration is deeply emotionally and psychologically unsettling. That a Green cause, Climate Change, might be the proximate cause of the invalidation of Capitalism is, for the true believers, literally unthinkable, because Green Parties have always been regarded by them as hypocritical, irrational and unrealistic.

The death of Capitalism for so many represents a death of self, because of the intensity of their belief in the Capitalist system.

No-one wants to die.

So AGW must be denied

Proof
Both of my rels bought up the so-called East Anglia ClimateGate emails as proof of the unreliability of Climate Science. I cobbled together a short email of my own to refute their prejudices about the CRU which I now reproduce here.

My rebuttal material is fundamentally an extended plagiarism from the brilliant pro-AGW hypothesis web site Skeptical Science.

The East Anglia ‘ClimateGate’ emails were a beat up, pure and simple.

Quite simply there was nothing in the emails that contradicted or undermined the AGW hypothesis.

The emails and associated hysterical commentary were released to the public a few weeks before Copenhagen with the intention of derailing those talks. The emails were released publicly in conjunction with a coordinated media strategy on approx 20 November 2009. The Copenhagen Climate Conference commenced 6 December 2009.

The strategy of the Climategate/Anti-AGW crowd was to throw mud at the reputations of the climatologists associated with University of East Anglia’s (UEA) Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and thus run an argument against AGW/IPCC based on guilt-by-association of the entire climatological community.

The specific accusations against the climatologists located the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) are confected from quotes in the emails which are divorced of their context and then loaded with meanings not intended by the email authors.

Where The Heck Is Global Warming?

The Blog “New American” is typical of the tone.

For example, ‘New American’ quotes climatoligist Kevin Trenberth as writing

“I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder… The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” 


And goes on to claim that that Trenberth’s comments constitute an admission that Climatoligists know that AGW is not real.

In fact, Trenberth was commenting on the inability of the Climate Models to predict exactly how heat is transferred through the Earth’s major systems (Land, Sea and Atmosphere) i.e. the mechanism by which the Earth’s total heat energy is distributed.

Trenberth was NOT saying that AGW is not real, that the average global temperature of the Earth was declining, that the Climate Models don’t accurately predict global warming, that C02 does not produce long-term warming or anything else that would contradict the AGW hypothesis.

Hide The Decline

Another infamous assertion of the ClimateGate crew was that Climatologist Phillip Jones admitted to falsifying temperature trends.

In an email dated 16/11/1999, Jones wrote:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Jones was not hiding anything.

In this email Jones is referring to a temperature proxy record known as Maximum Latewood Density (MXD) in which Earth’s historic temperature is derived by examination of tree-rings. Up until 1961 MXD accurately trends to actual temperatures as measured by instrumental data (weather stations). After that it diverges (declines) from the instrumental record. This ‘decline’, known as ‘The Divergence Problem’ has been discussed openly in the Scientific Literature since at least 1998.

In 1999 Jones produced a graph for the World Meteorological Organisation in which he spliced post 1961 instrumental data onto the tree-ring proxy data up until 1961 to produce a composite graph which ‘hides the decline’. His audience of professional climatologists who read the graph knew exactly what he was doing, which Jones openly stated anyway.

‘New American’, Fox News, The Australian and others of their ilk did not even try to understand what Jones’s graph was for, who it was intended for or what it meant. Even though Jones 1999 graph was never used by the IPCC (it was for the WMO), they just reported ‘IPCC Scientist Hides Declining Temperature Data’ and that therefore IPCC findings are falsified and unreliable.

The blog ‘American Thinker’ offers a relatively sophisticated critique of ‘Hide The Decline’ from an anti-AGW perspective but uses the word ‘Gotcha’ over and over again, not realising the decline or divergence has been known all across the Climatology field for decades.

Noting the divergence post-1961 American Thinker says the MXD series should be completely abandoned as a proxy temperature series but may not realise that from 1980 Solar Output levels also decline or diverge from instrumental record data.

To be consistent American Thinker should also advocate that the IPCC abandon Solar Output as a predictor or proxy record of Earth temperature. Of course no-one in their right mind would do so. Plainly both series become bad predictors of temperature at different points for different reasons. For MXD it is probably air pollution, for Solar Output the most likely thing ( > 95% according to the IPCC) is that human-generated C02 is causing a greenhouse effect.

Perverting Peer Review.

A serious allegation of the anti=AGW crowd was that CRU and the IPCC generally pressure journals to drop anti-AGW articles so that only pro-AGW articles get printed in the scientific literature.

The oft-quoted example is the journal Climate Research which published a very weak paper in 2003 by Soon and Baliunas. Jones wrote:

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor, a well-known skeptic in NZ.”

So, say the anti-AGW crowd, this proves that anti-AGW views are silenced. What the anti-AGW crew do not say is that a number of Climate Research’s own editors resigned over the publication of the paper, that the journal’s publisher admitted that the journal should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication and that the Editor in Chief resigned on being refused permission by the publisher to write an editorial about what he regarded as a failure of the peer review system in place at the journal.

The anti-AGW paper by Soon and Baliunas was substandard. It should never have been published.

Destroying Data

A common charge against the IPCC and the CRU is that it destroyed or falsified temperature data. In fact this is impossible to do since the CRU does not own the temperature data. It collects its data from publicly available sources and anyone can get hold of it.

And as it turns out, the CRU temperature series, HadCRUT indicates one of the lowest global warming trends of any temperature series. Why falsify temperature data to make a lower than average assessment of climate change yet still argure Climate Change is a globally critical phenonemon demanding immediate action ?

We Could Continue

On a case-by-case basis every one of the attacks on the CRU can be shown to be absurd hyperbole. You can find a full rebuttal here

Unfortunately, the popular press is not very interested in Science, only controversy, and some papers such The Australian and some news outlets like Fox News are deliberately setting out to derail a sensible response to the problem of Climate Change. For ecample The Australian published no less than 85 stories about Climategate, but not one about the Muir Russell inquiry which cleared the CRU of any wrong doing.

So, Climategate is a beat up or, as Skeptical Science puts it, a ‘fake scandal’. Any reasonable consideration of the evidence shows that the CRU emails do not in any way undermine the AGW hypothesis.