Utopia, you are standing in it!

Below is my column in The Hill on the exposure of the Biden family and its long-standing business of influence peddling. Newly released evidence from the House Committee on Ways and Means reveals over $20 million coming from 23 separate countries on four continents to at least nine Biden family members. Not only are the […]

The Biden Family Tree: How Investigations are Exposing the Bidens’ Influence-Peddling Dynasty

Claudia Goldin wins the Nobel! Goldin is an economic historian, she was inspired to go into economics by Alfred Kahn (later the architect of airline deregulation) and later became a student of Robert Fogel at the University of Chicago. Goldin pioneered the historical analysis of the labor market and gender. If you want to read […]

Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel

‘Why are we always fighting Arabs?’ (One of Danny Mills’s platoon on a visit to the ruins of Al Amarah’s Commonwealth War cemetery, Sniper One, page 93) ‘Fucking get some, you wankers!’ (Attitude of the British squaddie to his Shia Muslim militia opponents, p.142) Americans need no encouragement to start shooting at things. (Astute cultural commentary, […]

Sniper One: The Blistering True Story of a British Battle Group Under Siege by Sergeant Dan Mills (2007)

The election campaign is in its final, frenzied stage. I suspect most people have already made up their minds. Many have already voted. But our left-leaning media are increasingly frantic. The result looks like it is moving out of their reach and they are determined to make one last effort to get Chris Hipkins’ lamentable…

MICHAEL BASSETT: BEWARE OF THE MEDIA IN THE HOME-STRETCH

The Palestinian Arabs got a raw deal from their leaders in 1948 when their neighbours decided the right response to the UK decolonising the Palestinian mandate by enabling the creation of Israel and a parallel Arab state was to oppose it.  You may or may not agree with the creation of the state of Israel,…

The Islamofascist death cult of Hamas

The PM took time out from campaigning to express his “grave concern at the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza”. This wording was similar to the wording in the opening sentence of  a statement from Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta, who expressed New Zealand’s “grave concern at the escalation of violence in Israel, the […]

NZ had been quiet about Israel-Palestine tensions for two years – but Hamas attack prompted our PM to express grave concern

(I believe you pronounce his surname Si-, to rhyme with sky, and -eed; Edward Si-eed.) Orientalism created a big splash when it was published way back in 1978, nearly 50 years ago. It opened doorways into radical new ways of thinking about imperialist history and culture. It has gone on to be translated into more […]

Orientalism by Edward Said (1978) part 1

We have been following the gradual elimination of common terms deemed offensive or microaggressive. The latest is the word “picnic.” After the University of Nevada Las Vegas law school’s Environmental Law Society announced a picnic, it was renamed “Lunch by the Lake” due to “diversity and inclusion” concerns. The ELS was able to avoid a […]

Law School is No Picnic: Environmental Law Society Pulls References to a Picnic as Offensive

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has caused another stir by suggesting that the millions of Trump supporters may require a “formal deprogramming” in a CNN interview. It was a moment clearly enjoyed by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who previously suggested that the FBI should have stopped Trump from making certain campaign statements.  Even former FBI […]

Deprogramming “Deplorables”: Clinton Raises Need for “Formal Deprogramming” of Trump Supporters

This is an object lesson not only in the pollution of science by ideology, but also in how to make a fool of yourself by not learning about other areas of science before you pronounce on them. A reader affiliated with a UK earth-sciences department sent me a letter circulated around that department, but it’s […]

Group of “science-savvy” UK liberals urge denial of the sex binary

“All armies get it wrong at the beginning; the question is who adapts fastest.” (British military historian Michael Howard quoted by Elliot Cohen, page 100) ‘All Americans make promises but nothing ever happens.’ Iraqi housewife complaining why there was still sewage in the street outside her house 5 years after the Americans invaded and promised […]

The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 to 2008 (2009)