Thursday, February 26, 2015

The Protocols Of The Elders Of The Academic Left

geoffff

Stuart Rees (of the War and Jew Affairs Department of Sydney University)  has attacked Malcolm Turnbull for not being Abbott or Prime Minister or something and absolutely committed to the Green/Far Left agenda like Stuart. 

Turnbull has no vision, you understand. Unlike Stuart Rees who is stuffed full of vision. He has vision coming out of every orifice.  

You have to make allowances for Stuart. He's a "left" wing academic. He has written off Tony Abbott but he  knows a fresh enemy on the horizon from the scent alone. Turnbull once worked for Goldman Sachs. Enough said. For Johan Galtung, guru of Rees' creed,  Malcolm may as well be a Jew. He's already an instrument of the Protocols.  

This is the academic "left". What dark and scary places the inside of their heads must be. Full of cobwebs, cockroaches and conspiracies. 

Here is the article:
  

Myths About Malcolm Being In The Middle: The Q&A Test

By Stuart Rees
Keywords: 
The rise and rise of Malcolm Turnbull risks being punctuated by a realisation of what he actually stands for, writes Stuart Rees.
ABC Television’s Monday night Q&A program provides a stage for politicians, plus other, usually more erudite commentators, to give headline-worthy opinions on current economic and social issues.
When appearing on ABC’s Q&A programme on February 16t, and given the turmoil surrounding Prime Minister Abbott, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull must have known that he would have to pretend that he did not want to displace his leader.
That dilemma is not entirely his fault. Numerous pollsters and journalists have created a myth that Malcolm is obviously leadership material, but his performance on that Q&A program suggests the supposed leadership qualities are, at best, exaggerated.
Following the last question from a member of that Q&A audience - concerning the panel members’ visions for Australia’s future – presenter Tony Jones did not immediately turn to Malcolm, so he had more than enough time to craft his answer.
When his time came, Malcolm’s vision amounted to a hoary old set of platitudes plus the familiar jousting about the budget with the representative of the Labor Party. Vision ? We waited.
If he had given a thought about a more socially just Australia, Malcolm would have removed his Goldman Sachs glasses and talked about raising revenue through economic re-distribution. ‘I’d abolish negative gearing, I’d stop taxing Trusts as companies, I’d reduce the discount on capital gains and I might even consider broadening the base of the GST. Despite my advancing age,’- self deprecating humour always at hand in the Malcolm lexicon – ‘I’d reduce the over-generous tax concessions on superannuation, currently estimated to cost over $50 billion by 2016-2017.’ [ my emphasis ]
.....................................................................................................
Goldman Sachs glasses? What a very odd way of describing a political outlook. Very odd. Who would think of it?
I suggest someone with a long memory for names of a certain type and a taste for Nordic conspiracy. There must be hundreds of investment/merchant banks in the world. Many of them are huge.  But only one has a name like Goldman Sachs. 
Geez
The stuff you see when you haven't got a can of spray paint.
A long wail about why a professional politician has to tread carefully about "vision" (read "policy") when he hasn't yet got the job and then an even longer wail about why he didn't take the opportunity to parrot the policies of the academic green far left. 
Malcolm Turnbull  had a brilliant and varied career before politics. . Barrister, journalist, media corporate lawyer, founded a law firm,  founded an investment bank (with Nicholas  Whitlam and Neville Wran) and ... and 
Here's a hint.
If he had given a thought about a more socially just Australia, Malcolm would have removed his Goldman Sachs glasses and talked about raising revenue through economic re-distribution.
Goldman Sachs? 
Yep.  Over fifteen years ago, Turnbull was a partner and director of the local unit of Goldman Sachs. The things that stick in the mind 
What the hell has Goldman Sachs got to do with the price of carbon and human rights?
Nothing at all of course in the real world. But this is not the real world. This is a world where academics are capable of saying muck like this.
 I wonder how many of the people who have such strong opinions about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, actually have read it? It is impossible to do it today without thinking of Goldman-Sachs. And here I am in line with Erik Rudström  [a well known conspirationalist)]: it’s hard to believe that the Russian secret police were able to write such an analysis. But that proves nothing, either for or against, moving to the details,
I have not “recommend” the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I have recommended to read it, so you know what you are talking about.
It is extraordinary what sticks in the minds of some people. 
I've read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is impossible to do it today without thinking of Johan Galtung. 

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Murdering Words


geoffff
An article at New Matilda from an Australian academic on something he proves to be very much outside his field. How often do you see that?
In this case the something is freedom of speech. Also geopolitics and the notion of racism.
As a consequence the professor has flung one of the laziest smears of racism that you will see anywhere.The logic will astound you. 
He does not leave it at that. He makes this reflex allegation in a piece in which he contends that freedom of speech is stunted for some by the Prime Minister because Abbott is exercising his right to respond in full force to critiques. Doing his job, anyone else would say. Just as every other PM has since time immemorial. This is called liberal democracy. Fortunately there is still quite a lot of it around.
This is a complaint that the principle of free speech in Australia is warped and restricted by prejudice in an article where the writer smears the PM as a racist. With respect, the professor has had an irony bypass. So many of them have.The very presence of his piece disproves his point. How often do you see that?
How else to explain a phenomenon like Noam Chomsky, for instance. His malign influence in the West is confined to the universities, wider elsewhere, but no one can deny he flourishes under the political culture he has spent a long and prolific career denouncing. His very presence disproves everything he says. There is some kind of dead hand over the minds of the intellectual and academic left that blinds out entirely the main points. 
Part of the problem with the academic left has to be that they have breathed in the freedoms and virtues of our political culture so deep into their bones for so long and for so many generations they have long forgotten the meaning of powerful ideas such as freedom of speech. The abundance and fortune of fresh air freedom has gone to the head. The free air is invisible so it is completely out of mind.  
They need to get out more or something. 
A reply, slightly edited, follows. Here is the  article.

Freedom In Abbott's Australia: Did Someone Say Racism?








By Carl Rhodes

It seems freedom of speech is a pretty subjective thing in Team Australia, suggests Professor Carl Rhodes.
There has a lot been said in 2015 about freedom of speech. In the wake of the Hedbo massacre in Paris pundits and politicians have been hailing it as a central value of democracy.
Never one to pass up on the opportunity to breathe life into his faltering ratings in the opinion polls, Tony Abbott stepped up with vigour. Condemned were the ‘Islamists’ for their hatred of democratic freedom.
Even more recently, after bullets were showered over a Copenhagen café hosting satirical cartoonist Lars Vilks, Abbott was on the front foot proclaiming that “the Copenhagen attack is an affront to one of our most fundamental values - freedom of speech”.
Abbot is clearly making a distinction between who he sees as the ‘us’ and the ‘them’. When he speaks of ‘our’ values it is quite clear who is included and excluded by this possessive pronoun.
When Stephen Hicks shot and killed three Muslim students in the United States earlier this month, Abbott was not rushing to the press gallery to condemn terrorism. He was silent.
The freedom Abbott speaks of appears only to be one that is to be directed against terrorists who he can associate with Islam. Terrorism in Africa and Pakistan is off Abbott’s radar. So is the Islamic condemnation of what he refers to with rhetorical flourish as the ‘Islamic State death cult’.
Did someone say racism? Abbott stands up proud and righteous when condemning Islamic terrorists, but there is no comment when it comes to white terrorists. It seems that the freedom of speech that Abbott himself exercises is most selective. It is reserved for defending Western victims against non-western terrorists.
Continues here.










geoffff
Posted Friday, February 20, 2015 - 17:49



This is the most sustained, confused piece on the idea of freedom of speech in recent memory..
Nothing in it makes any sense at all. It is striking how often you can say that about an article written by an academic on something even marginally outside their field. It is even more striking that so many attempt it. That alone inspires ungenerous speculation. Why do they do that?  
Let us be clear about this. Freedom of speech does not imply some sort of right to be indulged. Speak up by all means. By doing so you may be confirming only that you are an idiot. Others have the right and freedom to say so and why. That is not a curtailment of your freedom. What you appear to be suggesting is that your freedom of speech depends on somebody else's being suppressed.  
What is this? Freedom of speech for you and those you agree with but not for any critics? Otherwise your freedoms are impinged? Your critiques are good.The PM's, doing his job, and calling it as sees it, are bad?  
Freedom of speech does not infer an obligation on others to take you seriously or even to listen. Speak out if you want. Whether anyone takes any notice of you is their business and theirs alone. If they and the government choose to ignore you, outside of some formal process, then that is entirely their prerogative.
Freedom of speech does not create an obligation to speak.  Perhaps you think Abbott should have said something about that terrible crime in North Carolina but the fact he did not hardly has anything to do with freedom of speech. How on earth do you figure it has? Whose? His? Yours?
Once you raise the North Carolina crime then you have lost the argument. You have merely confirmed you have nothing on the subject worth hearing; and this is an exercise of the freedom to say so. Suck it up or ignore it. The choice is entirely yours. No offence but no one else cares. This is known as freedom. .
The crime in the US, as shocking as it was, was committed by some hateful gun nut against people he knew. Neighbours. What exactly motivated this known nutter may emerge in the trial but it isn't difficult to imagine some form of hatred played a role. But what  truly distinguishes it from the crimes of political Islam is that the monster was immediately grabbed by the state, taken out of circulation and will be subjected to the full force of due process that, this  being North Carolina, will likely mean that  the killer will be on trial for his life.
No one is speaking up in his defence. No one is trying to explain, understand, excuse or justify this crime. Of course he will have a lawyer at trial who will do her important job. However this is a man who has seen his last sun. He is buried forever in one way or another. 
To pick out this single event from abroad and present it as some kind of counterweight to the daily dump of atrocities committed in the sweep of political Islam across the globe has to be some kind of fresh genus of delusion. Maybe an old delusion driven to a new height. Abbott ignored this horrible crime because it is irrelevant to what he was talking about.
Terrorism in Afghanistan and Africa are not under anybody's radar.  On the contrary.There too, terrorism is savage and rampant, also driven by Islamist ideology that inspire gangs and insurgencies that have put Australian service personnel  in harm's way for years. Whose radar is that under? 
The suggestion that Abbott is a racist because the killer in North Carolina was a "white man", and his victims Muslims, is actually disgraceful. This lazy, unthinking smear is the turd icing on a cockroach cake. Loose allegations of racism, like loose allegations of antisemitism, are contemptible.
This is a loose allegation of racism if there ever was one. 
An unhelpful contribution at a bad time. There is something very unpleasant going down in our universities. It's about time it was called. 

cross post  Israel Thrives
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Saturday, February 7, 2015

Tuesday, February 3, 2015