The global conspiracy

I come back from a trip in Scotland and find this:

• The Darnton vs. Clark court case is accused by Helen Clark of being funded by the National Party through Libertarianz (complete utter nonsense);
• Don Brash is accused of having had an affair by Trevor Mallard and goes to patch up his marriage as a result - Clark denies Labour is into dishing dirt and after the public doesn't smile at Mallard's antics, she quickly tells him off;
• Ian "twilight zone" Wishart digs dirt on Helen Clark's husband, accusing him of being (wait for it) gay - you know those evil despicable family destroying, children eating, perverts who want to corrupt you and your children, with bestiality, drugs and unbridled hedonism (yep that's Peter Davis all right);
• Clark claims this is all part of the rightwing conspiracy led by National (rubbish).

and now I read that Pete Hodgson, a rather intelligent man, is getting all upset about the global exclusive Brethren conspiracy to fund and campaign to support conservative oriented political parties (after all the trade union movement around the world would never get involved in politics on the left, spending members' money on campaigns).

One word for it - DESPERATION.

Seriously Helen, Pete etc, you have become quite unhinged. Bernard Darnton and Libertarianz are not funded by the National Party - I know that for a fact.

Whether or not Don Brash had an affair or Peter Davis is gay is irrelevant to me - either way. It is their personal lives, it affects their respective marriages and families, and whatever is true or not in those respects is not a political matter. It is true that there are far more secrets and allegations around Parliament, several I know of, and they cut on both sides. MPs know about this - they know the closet gay MPs, the MPs who are having affairs - and that is simply because it is a fact of life.

Ian Wishart's Investigate is a third rate substitute for the Sun. At least the Sun doesn't pretend to be anything other than scandal and tits - Ian Wishart wouldn't offend his readership by showing tits.

There is no right wing conspiracy operating worldwide. Libertarianz for starters is critical of ACT and National on many fronts, and has no time for any of the Christian conservative agenda. There is no more a right wing conspiracy than a left wing one - the Greens, Labour and the Maori Party have as much as common as National, ACT and Libertarianz.

Helen - the public believes that since Labour broke the law, and used taxpayer funds to buy electoral advertising (as did some other parties), that it is wrong. Wrong. You know wrong? Immoral, unjust, inequitable.

The problem is Helen, you're arrogant. You think you have the right to be PM for as long as you want, you believe you are a victim of your success as a popular and competent PM - and the public doesn't like this self serving attitude. You have bought votes with other people's money through electoral advertising and through subsidies, pay increases and other handouts to those you think are deserving. There are a lot of people who pay those taxes to sustain you and your minions, and those whose votes you have bought who are fed up with it all. A lot support National - and I know you hate the National Party with every bone in your body - because you think National is sexist, racist and homophobic. Many in National are more liberal than some in Labour - the Labour Maori division is no bastion of liberalism.

So a few words of advice Helen - stop being so desperate - the public smells it, you're no longer in control and no longer believable. You have two years left at best, as long as Peter Dunne and Winston Peter continue to line their pockets as Ministers supporting your regime - which smells every single day that you and your Ministers lie, muckrack and find conspiracies.

The clock is ticking.

Socialist PM lies in Hungary

Lying to win an election. Sounds familiar? Well it happened in Hungary earlier this year - Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, Leader of the Socialist Party has been caught. He lied to the public about the state of the economy before the general election in April. A recording has emerged from a closed meeting in May – a translation of what he said is:
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“There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up. Not a little, a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have. Evidently, we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true. You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say”
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If only Helen Clark could admit the same - though she is proud of taxing, spending and regulating NZ - and she wont admit to lying - she hates the National Party so much that she is now hysterically raving on about some great right wing conspiracy which seems to be the National Party steering Ian Wishart, Libertarianz, lawyers, accountants and the exclusive Brethren.

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The Hungarian PM has admitted he lied, but wont resign. Many Hungarians have been protesting in Budapest. Like many politicians in the former Eastern Bloc, Ferenc Gyurcsany was a communist, having joined the Organisation of Young Communists in 1984 and working his way through the ranks before joining the successor party. So he would have been used to lying.
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His Socialist Party narrowly won the election – sounds familiar? - it had just under 1.2% more votes than the opposition Fidesz/Christian Democratic People’s Party.

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The budget deficit, you see, is 10.1% of GDP -which is enormous, with over 50% of the state budget on welfare. The Socialists campaigned on taxcuts (all very well), but refuse to cut spending, so campaigned on bankrupting the country in effect, without saying so. Inflation is at 6% and economic growth grinding down to 2% next year, compared to the far healthier Czech Republic, expected to grow at 5.5% next year. The Socialists have been borrowing and spending money to boost incomes - in other words, it is a little bit like NZ in the early 80s.
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So it will be interesting to see what happens. He has said he will crackdown on further violent protests – as some ruckus was caused on Monday night. This is understandable, and the local elections in 2 weeks will likely see the ruling Socialists losing significantly.

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Whether Hungarians tolerate this is unclear, but they will face some tough changes in coming years to revive their dying economy - which means spending cuts to get the size of the state under control, and reduce inflation.

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You'd think Hungarians might have learnt to not let politicians run their lives, especially ex.communist ones!

Islam and terror

I've returned from Scotland, with a pile to do at work and my home ADSL modem has packed up, and my girlfriend's laptop has as well, so I am restricted to dialup at home on my laptop.

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I will write later about Scotland, Britain and many other things on my mind (such as the UK's mindless obsession with being control freaks, how friendlier the Scots are), but for now I wanted to post a link to an ARI Op-Ed about Islam and terrorism, given I was on holiday for 9/11.

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The real reason behind the terrorist threat that besets the USA, UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Egypt et al, is the promotion of Islam and a refusal by the West to openly and proudly assert the values of the Enlightenment of reason, freedom and individual rights.

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As Edwin A. Locke and Alex Epstein state:

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if we are to identify the fundamental cause of the terrorists' actions, we mustunderstand at least two fundamental premises of the religion they kill for.

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First, Islam, like all religions, rejects reason as a means of gaining knowledge and guiding action; it holds that all important truths aregrasped by faith in supernatural beings and sacred texts. The Koran explicitly states that knowledge comes from revelation, not thinking.(Christianity in pure form entails a similar rejection of reason, but it has been heavily diluted and secularized since the Renaissance.) Islam advocates the subordination of every sphere of life to religiousdogma, including the legal system, politics, economics, and family life; the word "Islam" means literally: submission. The individual is not supposed to think independently but to selflessly subordinate himself to the dictates of his religion and its theocratic representatives.

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We have seen this before in the West--it was called the Dark Ages.

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Second, as with any religion that seeks converts, a derivative tenet of Islam is that it should be imposed by force (you cannot convince someone of the non-rational).

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That is it - they continue in stating that many Muslims reject fanaticism and are law-abiding and peaceful people but this is because "they have accepted some Westernvalues, including respect for reason, a belief in individual rights,and the need for a separation between church and state. It is only to the extent that they depart from their religion--and from a society that imposes it--that they achieve prosperity, freedom, and peace."

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Literal Islam, like literal Christianity (that is taking what is in the Koran and the Bible as being "truth" and "morality") is evil - it results in government and people that engage in evil practices. Take the battle in Pakistan to reform the rape laws that currently require FOUR witnesses to observe a rape before a women can even charge a man of rape, otherwise she faces a charge of adultery - for which SHE will be punished - so a woman gets punished for being a rape victim by the state! You have to wonder how feminist the feminist leftist moral equivocators in the West really are?

Away for two weeks

My parents are visiting and we are off to tour Scotland.

So I wont be saying very much till I am back.

Joyless pricks of the week award

UK media regulation body OFTA Censoring Tom and Jerry episodes where they smoke.

Let's wrap children in cotton wool - that's the philosophy of the safety nazis. The same safety nazis who were probably horrified last night when on a Channel 4 documentary about kids at school, there was a funny segment where 3 little kids were jokingly holding their arms way apart saying "my dad's willy is this big" competing like fishermen. No it wasn't notorious, it was just kids being silly - but we know what people would have taken them away from their families and arrested the parents by now - "to protect them". The teacher sensibly said "we know when it is just kids enjoying toilet humour and when a child shows some serious signs of abuse - they are quite different".