Utopia, you are standing in it!

This is the first of a series of posts designed to bust the myths created by the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry — myths shamelessly presented as truths by your government. 

If you think it rude of me to expose these facts, tough. If conmen are going to tell lies about my forefathers, I’m going to tell the truth about theirs.

Much of what you see below is distilled from New Zealand in Crisis by Ross Baker of the One New Zealand Foundation. 

In the plainest English I could muster, here is the boiled-down background to the drafting and signing of the Treaty:

c.1350 — Maori meet the tangata whenua

• Maori history tells of seven canoes arriving from Hawaiki in around 1350AD.

• They find New Zealand already inhabited by people they call the tangata whenua.

• Maori historian Dr Ranginui Walker confirms: “The traditions are quite clear: wherever crew disembarked there were already tangata whenua (prior inhabitants).”

• These first…

Well, I don’t know what you’re reading, and whether you like it, but that’s what this post is for. In fact, a lot of the books I’ve read, and a few I’m reading now, have come from readers’ comments on posts like this.

I usually read only one book at a time, and have been reading only nonfiction, but now I’m reading multiple books at once. The one I’m concentrating on—as it’s big and I need to finish it before I go to Antarctica—is this biography of Churchill (click on all books for the Amazon link). It was published in November of last year and was highly rated.

I’m reading it because I finally grew tired of not knowing all about Churchill’s life. I’d read the first two volumes of William Manchester’s The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, which was fabulous—along with Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson and…

This is T.L. Buick’s account of the petition from 13 Ngapuhi chiefs that the King responded to in my earlier post.

For ease of reading, I’ll spread out the words below.

Then I’ll show you some blow-ups of relevant parts of the original English and Maori documents.

You will notice some words which have a bearing on what Maori are claiming today.

First, the words:

TO KING WILLIAM, THE GRACIOUS CHIEF OF ENGLAND

KING WILLIAM — We, the chiefs of New Zealand assembled at this place, called the Kerikeri, write to thee, for we hear that thou art the great chief of the other side of the water, since the many ships which come to our land are from thee.

We are a people without possessions.

We have nothing but timber, flax, pork and potatoes, we sell these things, however, to your people, and then we see property of the Europeans.

It is…

Here’s a simple quiz to determine whether you should support a candidate like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren: Would you embrace a policy that increased income for poor Americans by 10 percent if it also happened to increase income for rich Americans by 15 percent?

Normal people automatically say yes. After all, they don’t resent rich people and they want lower-income people to enjoy better living standards.

Some of our left-leaning friends (including at the IMF!), however, are so fixated on inequality that they are willing to deprive the poor so long as higher-income people have even larger losses (Margaret Thatcher nailed them on this issue).

Let’s look at some analysis of this issue.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that starts by highlighting some good economic news.

…low- and middle-income folks are reaping more economic benefits than during the Obama years. …Worker earnings increased…

The Israel Security Agency’s report on terror attacks (Hebrew) during August 2019 shows that throughout the month a total of 149 incidents took place including 97 in Judea & Samaria, 25 in Jerusalem and inside the ‘green line’ and 26 in the Gaza Strip sector.

In Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem the agency recorded 95 attacks with petrol bombs, 14 attacks using pipe bombs, five arson attacks, two shooting attacks, two stabbing attacks, one attack using a grenade and one vehicular attack.

Incidents recorded in the Gaza Strip sector included nine attacks with petrol bombs, three attacks using pipe bombs, one attack using a grenade, three shooting attacks and seven incidents of rocket fire.

Two people were murdered and eight wounded in attacks during the month of August.

The BBC News website reported the August 7^th murder of Dvir Sorek the following day but no follow-up reporting was seen…

Richard Tol posted at Climate Economics: How much energy do building code save?

Not nearly as much as expected, according to this paper by Arik Levinsohn. California has had building codes for energy since 1978, and they are tightened every so often. Levinsohn compares the energy use of buildings build before and after a code change, compares Californian houses to houses elsewhere in the USA, and compares the weather sensitivity of houses with different building codes. He finds that codes save energy, but the ex post estimates are lower than the ex ante ones on which the regulation was based.

Arik Levinsohn wrote at American Economic Review  How Much Energy Do Building Energy Codes Save? Evidence from California Houses 

Abstract

Regulations governing the energy efficiency of new buildings have become a cornerstone of US environmental policy. California enacted the first such codes in 1978 and has tightened them every…

This, sent by reader Michael, is a video of Bill Maher’s show last night, featuring Andrew Sullivan and Sarah Haider, as well as Samantha Power, Timothy Naftali and Heather McGhee Watch it while you can, because these things are taken down soon. I haven’t even watched it in my rush to make it available here.

Haider is the special guest, and appears at 31:32.

I’ve now watched it. It’s a good show overall: there’s discussion of Justin Trudeau’s blackface, NZ prime minister Jacinda Arden’s unwise donning of a hijab after the Christchurch mosque massacre, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and much more.

Feldheim village near Berlin, Germany.
H/T The GWPF

Consider the uproar that greets most kinds of environment-related proposals that even might have a negative impact on any sort of wildlife. Then wonder at what the wind industry has so far been allowed to get away with. Does the pushback stand a chance in the face of current climate change mythology?

The ban on killing endangered species is turning into an ‘absolute obstacle to planning’ new wind farms in Germany, says Die Welt.

Now, the wind lobby wants to water down conservation laws protecting endangered species. The wind power industry can hardly erect any new turbines because of a flood of complaints.
– – –
The ban on killing endangered wildlife is turning into an ‘absolute obstacle to planning’ – extrapolated death figures show that tens of thousands of birds are affected.

When the wind power industry presented its interim results…

Sexual reproduction, the generation of offspring by fusion of genetic material from two different individuals, evolved over 1 billion years ago. It is the reproductive strategy of all higher animals and plants, including the mammalian class to which humans belong.

Humans can be differentiated into two categories by their reproductive roles. Females make eggs and gestate live young. Males generate sperm to fertilise the female egg. In accordance with their respective roles, females and males have different reproductive anatomies (“biological sex”).

No other reproductive mechanism exists in humans.

In contradiction of evolutionary history and millennia of human observations, highly-esteemed scientific periodicals are running articles undermining the observable reality of biological sex.

“Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male.”

                Scientific American, Oct 22 2018

“The research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female.”

                Nature, Oct 30…

Our MP of the Month is John Stuart Mill (1806-73), who sat as Liberal MP for Westminster, 1865-8.

One hundred and fifty years ago this week, the House of Commons voted for the first time on the question of granting the parliamentary franchise to women. In this landmark division, an amendment to the Conservative ministry’s 1867 reform bill put forward by the Liberal MP for Westminster, John Stuart Mill, 75 MPs backed women’s suffrage. However, 196 MPs, including the Liberal party leader, William Gladstone, entered the opposite lobby.

In his autobiography, Mill, who sat in the Commons from 1865 until his defeat at the 1868 general election, described his amendment of 20 May 1867 as

by far the most important, perhaps the only really important public service I performed in the capacity of a Member of Parliament: a motion to strike out the words which were understood to limit…

We wonder if Sparkling Strawberry Ltd – and other businesses which provide fancy dress costumes – have been obliged to review the range of garments they offer.

We mention SparklingStrawberry, based in Cheshire in the UK, after stumbling upon its website and running through its list of Fancy Dress Party Ideas

Here’s a few fancy dress ideas to inspire you when planning your Birthday, Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s Eve or Hogmanay fancy dress costume party. If you need any more excuses to throw a fancy dress party then you’ll find 52 reasons towards the bottom of this page.

An Alice in Wonderland party is one idea, but some of the suggestions in connection with this seem problematic.  The Mad Hatter, for example.  This is bound to give offence to the mentally enfeebled and/or their families.

The White Rabbit and White Queen raise racism issues.

But then we come to the…