Utopia, you are standing in it!

Although John McWhorter, a professor of English and linguistics at Columbia University, is also a contributing editor at The Atlantic, his new essay on police violence was not published there. Rather, it’s in Quillette. Given that in length, style, and quality (it’s very well written and makes cogent points) it would be suitable for The Atlantic, I’m guessing that he didn’t even try to publish it there. That’s because it makes an argument that is politically uncongenial to The Atlantic and to much of the Left:  that perhaps the claim that black men get shot by police at a rate higher than their frequency in the population  is not a function of police racism, but of a greater frequency of interactions between blacks and police due to a higher crime rate in black communities.

This idea is heterodox, contrarian, and is suitable for Quillette. But no mainstream…

When in Cambridge in 1961 I saw a current British Prime Minister portrayed on stage for the first time in “Beyond the Fringe” I’m not sure that I was aware of the significance of the moment. Later I bought the early copies of “Private Eye” in the streets of the City. And before I left school Ned Sherrin and David Frost had launched the groundbreaking “That Was The Week That Was”. What was happening was Satire.

The world is absurd, and people lie and cheat. Politicians parody themselves daily and people have prejudices out of ignorance or venality. What satire did was to hold a mirror up to all this – sometimes the mirror enlarged and sometimes it distorted but it always reflected and allowed the viewer or the reader to judge.

Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, David Frost, Barry Humphries, Richard Ingrams and…

Parliamentary arguments over Brexit may now feel far behind us, but the bitterness of those arguments has left scars on our politics. Meg Russell examines four factors which contributed to the parliamentary ‘perfect storm’ over Brexit, concluding that ‘parliament’ largely got the blame for divisions inside the Conservative Party. This was fuelled by the referendum, minority government and the inability of parliamentary rules to accommodate a minority situation. The populist anti-parliamentary rhetoric which resulted was potentially damaging, with implications for the current Covid-19 crisis, when public trust in political decision-making is essential.

Amidst the current Covid-19 crisis, last year’s Brexit clashes already feel a long time ago. But at the time, they pushed Britain’s politics and constitution to their limits. Parliament was frequently at the heart of these conflicts – with angry headlines suggesting that parliamentarians were seeking to ‘block Brexit’, and branding them ‘wreckers’ or ‘saboteurs

There’s been some discussion about what the demand for “defunding the police” really means. To some it means cutting police budgets in ways to minimize their brutality, and the example often used is their acquisition of discarded equipment from the U.S. military, or more training in social work by cops. To others it means deeply slashing police budgets, although where the cuts are to go isn’t often specified. Often the slashed funds are to be diverted to social programs whose existence, they claim, will severely reduce crime.

And to others in the “disband the police” camp, it means, as adherent Mariame Kaba says in the New York Times op-ed below, the literal abolition of police departments. And that’s what she argues (click screenshot to read). There was a lot of criticism about what Tom Cotton said in his NYT editorial, because his call for putting the military in U.S…

Avinor’s electric plane [image credit: inhabitat.com]
More ‘net zero’ tomfoolery. Batteries are heavy and unlike fuel don’t allow the plane to lose weight during flight, meaning harder landings or lower carrying capacity. Meanwhile biofuel still emits carbon dioxide, which is supposed to be what the climate obsession is about.
– – –
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has today announced a dual boost to the UK’s nascent low carbon aviation sector, confirming the formation of a new ‘Jet Zero Council’ and the award of fresh funding for green fuel specialist Velocsys, reports BusinessGreen.

Shapps used his appearance at the daily coronavirus press conference to announce the moves, which he said would support the government’s vision of a “greener transport future”.

Building on the recent confirmation the government is to invest £2bn in new active transport infrastructure, Shapps said the challenge was “to make transport – currently our biggest emitter of…

The images of Minnesota policeman Derek Chauvin kneeling on a dying African-American man’s neck have ricocheted around the world.  From Auckland to London, Christchurch to cities across the US, tens of thousands have marched in opposition to what is perceived as systemic police violence against one race.

Chauvin’s charges have now been ramped up to 2^nd degree murder and the others in his squad have now been charged, too.

On the left of US politics, from former President Barack Obama to 2020 candidate Joe Biden, there’s a claim that for millions of black Americans being treated differently by the criminal justice system is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly normal” (to quote the former president).

But is this really the case? Are police forces across the US riddled with officers whose primary targets are African-Americans and Hispanics?

Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union came into World War II with an extensive tank industry-one the Soviets had unashamedly based on American-style mass production. This made sense, since many Soviet factories had been designed and built by Americans during the 1920s and 30s, when the Communists, working to improve the Soviet industrial base, aspired to the American production model. Indeed, Albert Kahn himself had designed the tractor factory at Stalingrad. And the Soviets weren’t just hiring American architects, but also American production engineers and tool manufacturers.

But by mid-1941, the German invasion had badly disrupted Soviet industry. During that disastrous summer, the invaders had captured, besieged, or threatened the Soviet Union’s western industrial cities. In six months, the U. S. S. R. effectively lost 40 percent of its gross domestic product and population, and 60 percent of its coal and steel production. In the face of this disaster…

(The approach to Auschwitz)

The horrors of the Holocaust are well known and the figure of 6,000,000 is imbedded in our memory.  However, another figure that emerges that is just as repugnant to human consciousness is 1.5-1.6 million.  This is the figure associated with the number of children who perished in the Holocaust.  The Nazis had no compunction about killing children be it for ideological reasons that made them a danger to the 1000-year Reich or the fact they were unwanted.  Some were killed in retaliation for partisan attacks or others were part of the Action T4, the eradication of children with disabilities.  No matter the cause of death; Joseph Mengele’s medical experiments, clearing ghettos, the Nazis deemed that children needed to be eliminated.  Of the 6,000,000 that perished over 1,000,000 lost their lives at Auschwitz-Birkenau, of that figure it is hard to determine exactly how many were children. …

First it was Black Lives Matter. Now Defund the Police is sweeping much of the US.

The pressure began with the death of African American George Floyd and the  decision by the Minneapolis City Council to remove funding from the city’s police force.

There is no agreed definition of “defunding” and the issue is political dynamite for the Democrat Party, whose supporters generally back the idea.  In the run-up to the November elections President Donald Trump can scarcely believe his good fortune in scoring a law-and-order issue when his main campaign programme, a strong economy, is tanking.

There seems general agreement that, by and large, Black Americans (and to a lesser extent American Indians and Hispanics) don’t fare well at the hands of the police. There are scores of examples.

According to an August 2019 study by the National Academy of Sciences based on police-shooting databases, between 2013 and…

(Witold Pilecki, inmate at Auschwitz)

In 2003 my wife and I visited Krakow, Poland as part of a trip to locate where my father’s family lived before immigrating to the United States in the 1930s to escape the dark clouds that were descending upon Europe.  During our visit I hired a driver and spent hours visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau the resting place for many relatives that I never was fortunate enough to meet.  Seventy-five years after the conclusion of World War II, numerous questions abound concerning the then then “crown jewel” of Hitler’s extermination machine.  Books continue to proliferate, but what sets Jack Fairweather’s new book, THE VOLUNTEER: ONE MAN, AN UNDERGROUND ARMY, AND THE SECRET MISSION TO DESTROY AUSCHWITZ apart is his discovery of the role of Witold Pilecki, who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to organize  an underground resistance that would be part of a…

(Rudolf Hoss)

After World War II a small coterie of individuals morphed into Nazi hunters.  From Simon Wiesenthal to agents of the Israeli Mossad their mission was to capture and bring the Nazi perpetrators to justice.  This has produced numerous books about their exploits in the form of memoirs, narratives about the role of governments, and certain individuals.  Of these individuals many remain unknown and little has been written.  Thomas Harding introduces us to Hanns Alexander, a German refugee and British serving officer who should be considered part of the pantheon of Nazi Hunters in his book HANNS AND RUDOLF: THE TRUE STORY OF THE GERMAN JEW WHO TRACKED DOWN AND CAUGHT THE KOMMANDANT OF AUSCHWITZ.

The format chosen by the author is a series of alternating chapters telling the life stories of the two men, at times in detail, and at times in a more cursory manner.  Beginning with…

Intelligence officials are discounting Helen Clark’s pronouncement that NZ has lost its “independence” through its participation in the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement that links NZ with Australia, Canada, the UK and the US. Her enthusiasm as prime minister for the flood of intelligence is well remembered by the intelligence community.

Rather, they say, in an increasingly troubled world, the arrangement is extending the flow of information and provides Wellington with a stronger voice. It has become a useful tool for promoting shared values and it remains an international forum in which NZ can play a significant role in shaping policy

Earlier this month, as China announced its final assumption of power in Hong Kong, the group issued a rebuke as Washington, London, Ottawa and Canberra criticised China for undermining the “one country, two systems” framework that was meant to determine Hong Kong’s future for 50 years…

New Zealand’s 2020 general election, experts  are telling  us, will be like no other in  history.  And,  if opinion polls  are  to  be  believed,  Labour  is so far  ahead,  its  strategists  only  need to   keep  Jacinda Ardern front and centre of the campaign  for the  party to break out the  champagne  on the night of September  19.

Jack Vowles, a  professor of  political science at Wellington’s  Victoria University, says the election comes in the wake of a remarkable government-led act of building collective solidarity that has sacrificed businesses and livelihoods in the cause of protecting those who would have been most vulnerable to Covid-19.

 “By a combination of luck and good crisis management, the elimination policy has worked. NZ is among the first Covid-hit countries to return to near normality.In the process, the popularity of Jacinda Ardern and her government has soared. The initial response to a crisis…

J. K. Rowling has got herself in trouble again by implying, in the following tweet, that trans women—biological men who take on the gender identity of a woman—aren’t identical to biological women.

Because of this, she’s been called a “transphobe” and a “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). She’s been excoriated all over Twitter, people are calling for her books to go unread, a school in England has dropped plans to name a house after her, and some people are saying it’s time for her to stop publishing completely, as in this specimen from The Washington Post (click on screenshot), which argues that it’s time for her to relinquish control of…

Adding wind power generating capacity is one occasion when ‘more’, truly means ‘less’. No matter how much of other people’s money gets spent spearing wind turbines all over the countryside, the result is the same: whether it’s 10,000 or 100,000 MW of available wind power capacity, when calm weather sets in, the combined output adds up to nothing.

Like pushing on string, eventually there is absolutely no return on the effort expended.

The simplest way to demonstrate why no economy has ever powered itself using wind power (and why no economy ever will) is to run the numbers. Paul Homewood does just that, with the aid of a new website that collects the pathetic performance of wind farms across Europe and the UK.

New Website For Wind Farm Data
Not a lot of people know that
Paul Homewood
17 May 2020

Someone tipped me off about this website, which has…