Utopia, you are standing in it!

After a long wait, the Federal government has released the text of the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 which is about to be introduced into the Parliament. There has been no general Federal law dealing with detrimental treatment of Australians on the basis of their religious faith and activities, and this is a welcome development, implementing a recommendation of the Ruddock Review which reported in 2018.

The government previously released two “Exposure Drafts” of the Bill (see some comments on those in previous posts, here, and here.) Having promised prior to the last election that he would advance this law, Prime Minister Morrison will now introduce it into the House of Representatives. If passed by the House, the Bill will then need to approved by the Senate, where it seems likely to be referred to (yet another) committee before being voted on there, probably sometime in the New Year.

Meredith’s big book (770 pages) does what it says on the tin and tells the history of every African country from the run-up to independence, i.e. starting in the mid-1950s, to the time of writing, i.e. about 2004, covering half a century of tumultuous history. It’s a vast subject but Meredith’s book is an easy and pleasurable read. He writes a wonderfully clear, expressive prose which effortlessly conveys a huge amount of information and profiles countries, leaders and events with deceptive ease.

The narrative is chock-a-block with facts and dates, central figures and key events, but a handful of general principles emerge all too clearly.

Imperialism’s mistakenly long-term view

The colonial powers thought they were in it for the very long haul. As the Second World War ended, most thought the colonies they ruled wouldn’t be ready for independence for centuries, certainly not till the end of the twentieth century…

Juan Carlos I (Spanish: Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, born January 5, 1938) is a member of the Spanish royal family who reigned as King of Spain from November 22, 1975 until his abdication on June 19, 2014. In Spain, since his abdication, Juan Carlos has usually been referred to as the Rey Emérito (“King Emeritus”).

Juan Carlos is the grandson of Alfonso XIII, the last king of Spain before the abolition of the monarchy in 1931 and the subsequent declaration of the Second Spanish Republic. Juan Carlos was born in Rome during his family’s exile. Francisco Franco took over the government of Spain after his victory in the Spanish Civil War in 1939, yet in 1947 Spain’s status as a monarchy was affirmed and a law was passed allowing Franco to choose his successor.

Juan Carlos’s father, Juan, was the third son of King…

“War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed
and are damn glad it wasn’t them.”

Just as important as exploring the particular qualities that constitute a successful leader, Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece The Caine Mutiny examines the situations that inspire men to commit grave revolutionary acts –like the act of mutiny. Often compared to 1932’s Mutiny on the Bounty, The Caine Mutiny is a truly wonderful novel. Thus far in my quest to read the Pulitzer Prize-winners, I have been stuck in a string of novels offering mostly plotless portraits of struggling rural farmers, and so it was a delight for me to shift into a bit more levity with 1951’s The Caine Mutiny, a rare bestseller on top of being a Pulitzer Prize-winner. The tone is light, playful, almost satirical a la Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, even though…

You would think that after the recent election losses in Virginia and the fright they got in New Jersey, not to mention the underwater polling of “President” Biden and the Democrat Party across the nation and across seemingly all issues, that they would be learning from their mistakes and trimming their sails as Bill Clinton did after the 1994 mid-terms elections booted his Democrats from power in both the Senate and, for the first time in forty years, from the House.

Admittedly he and his party didn’t trim until after that catastrophe so perhaps we’re looking at the same thing here.

But I suspect it’s worse than that. Back in those days representatives from Deep Blue districts were not extreme in their approach, despite having majorities the GOP couldn’t touch. Now we’ve got the likes of AOC, who feels she can push the edge of the envelope on policy and…

Wind power has no economic value simply because it cannot be delivered as and when power consumers need it. Hence the massive and seemingly endless subsidies to a power source which is meaningless and, accordingly, worthless. In the absence of subsidies, there would be no wind industry, at all.

But worthless does not mean ‘cheap’ – pointless ‘virtue’ signalling comes with a staggering price tag.

Now that Jo Biden has got the cash to implement the Green New Deal (at its heart a self-destructive energy policy heavily promoted by Bernie Sanders and the Squad) the prospects for renewable energy rent-seekers have improved.

Which, is as good as time as any, to calculate the true costs of what’s coming.

Thomas Stacy does just that below.

Virginia’s Blackout Energy Plan (‘bloody expensive,’ says E&E News)
Master Resource
Thomas Stacy II
2 November 2021

“Get ready, blackouts and brownouts are coming,” [Glenn] Youngkin…