Vile "ancient virtues"

The Briefing Room is the blog of Investigate Magazine, the magazine that would prefer digging up dirt about Helen Clark's sexuality than investigating the real truth behind the Urewera 17, or the scaremongering nonsense politics of Jeanette Fitzsimons, or the promoters of violence within the Maori Party is - no. It has a Christian bent, and my attention was brought to this post - digging up the old vacuous claim that atheism isn't enough, and the reason why reason evading dictators kill millions.

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It has a point. It is why I am an objectivist. Nobody can credibly claim atheism is a comprehensive philosophy, it simply is the denial of the supernatural. The post is full of absolute nonsense, implying that atheists are devoid of morality, and that somehow Nietzsche and hedonism are the alternative to ghost worshipping. The truth is that there are umpteen ideologies that have nothing to do with ghost worshipping, much like there are umpteen that include ghost worshipping. It is tired and ludicrous to claim atheists share one set of views, anymore than damning all religions for all the trouble in the world.

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However, the post continues saying "The ancient virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience are universally despised".

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I'm so disgusted beyond words. Poverty is a virtue. The same repulsive ideology propagated by Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who received succour from the murderous Duvalier's in Haiti and the Hoxha atheist communist dictatorship in Albania. The suffering of the poor is glorious, the sick sadistic life-destroying face of Christianity. Sacrificing people to poverty as a virtue. Of course nobody who actually IS in true poverty believes that.

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Chastity is the least offensive. At least it is a choice if you wish to deny sexuality from your life. However a virtue? A virtue to deny from your life the pleasure of touching and enjoying touch from someone you feel intimately close with? The implication that it is filthy and disgusting, like your body, like the "original sin" that conceives children. The ideology that sex is tolerated only to breed within marriage, but the most virtuous are priests and nuns - and we all know the universally virtuous record they all have.

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Obedience is a virtue? Yes just blindly follow what others tell you do. "I was only following orders" says the concentration camp commandante, says the Khmer Rouge cadre, says the Red Guard, says the inquisitor in the Middle Ages, says the slave owner, says the husband whose wife swore to "love honour and obey", says the Police who hounded Alan Turing to suicide by enforcing the hideous criminal laws on homosexuality.

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This post continues thinking Christianity is "the great Faith that set Europe free from the superstitious fear of pagan deities, that converted Rome and Byzantium, that today brings hope and joy to millions in Asia and Africa". What were the Dark Ages but a time of superstitious fear? In fact what is most of Western history before the Enlightenment and the rebirth of reason? It was superstition, fear, murder and destruction.

Anderton is right

No I haven't gone mad, Jim's learnt something.

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He once would have been a part of the lunatic left, now he's damning the Green Party's silly call for Fonterra to charge people less than the international market price for milk according to the NZ Herald.

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Check this quote "It might make the handwringing Greens feel good to say this sort of banal statement but what are they really asking for?" ..."The only sustainable way to price goods is by international markets. Anything less and you are on a slippery and unsustainable slope."

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Bloody hell. How can you disagree with that? That was Jim Anderton, the man who fought Rogernomics, who set up the New Labour Party and the Alliance.

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Then he says "The only sustainable and sensible way to help Kiwi households meet their food bills is to grow the economy and provide better pay, more jobs and tax relief such as Working for Families."

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Besides Working for Families (which isn't tax relief, it's middle class welfare), he's right again, a growing economy and tax relief is the best way to help Kiwi households. We'd disagree on the government's role in that obviously, but it shows how distant the Greens are from mainstream politics and reason.

UN Secretary General demands free trade in food

According to the NZ Herald UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon has come out at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation conference on the right side of the argument about world trade in food.

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He has argued forcefully for:

- An end to export restrictions (so that producers can sell freely to willing buyers, incentivising them to produce more);

- An end to import tariffs and restrictions on food imports (so that consumers in importing countries do not have their prices inflated by protectionism);

- An end to subsidies for biofuels, so that agricultural production for food isn't disadvantaged relative to biofuels;

- Eliminations of taxes that discriminate against farming.

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It's not everything (subsidies for agriculture should go too), but it would go a long way towards easing the problems in world food trade. Even solidly leftwing Brazilian President Lula da Silva has called for the end to agricultural subsidies he said the world would not be facing the food crisis "if developing countries had been stimulated in a free-market context". "The solution - Lula went on - is not protectionism which would slow down demand. The solution is to increase food supply, open up markets and wipe out subsidies in order to meet increasing demand. And for this a radical change in ways of thinking and acting is required".

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He's quite right.

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Far better than the ravings of Sue Kedgley who has gone to argue the opposite at the same conference. Will the mainstream NZ media question her as to why she went to an international conference to argue for policies that hurt the NZ economy and which developing country governments oppose? What credibility does this raving lunatic have?

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Meanwhile Mugabe has gone to spread lies, and has been snubbed by the Italian government and the US (but will NZ do it?). Iranian President and homophobic Islamist nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used the FAO meeting to say Israel will disappear and claimed some conspiracy on food and oil prices. I continue to wonder if Jim Anderton, leading the NZ delegation and Sue Kedgley will speak out against these two tyrants.

Maori Party wants more welfare

It's supporting taxpayers funding both sides in the Child Poverty Inaction Group case.

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Pita Sharples has the audacity to say "Of course, I believe every taxpayer in this land would prefer that this case hadn’t needed to come to court, to involve the international experts and the expenses that no doubt the Crown will incur in presenting their defence". Indeed, had the taxpayer not funded the socialist CPAG, it wouldn't. Furthermore if Working for Families is abolished (as Lindsay Mitchell rightfully advocates) and the proceeds used to cut taxes, then there wouldn't be any case, and then there would be no discrimination - except of course the tax system.

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You see for some reason (if I was in NZ, but it applies also in the UK), when I earn an extra dollar I lose 39c of it, but when most people do, they lose only 15c or 19.5c, some lose 33c. It's quite discriminatory, and I don't impose any greater cost on taxpayers, I don't live an unhealthy lifestyle, I don't have children, I don't interact with the criminal justice system, I don't own share in any businesses that receive subsidies. Yet I would pay a lot more than those who DO have a lot of children, who are beneficiaries, who interact with the criminal justice system (or whose kids do), and who live unhealthy lifestyles, and depend on others to pay for their housing.

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That's discriminatory.

Subsidised music swapping, youtube, gaming

Don't have high speed internet access? You fool - you are being made to pay grants to help subsidise the business of those supplying it.

You could just like books, but tough because the government wont make other people pay for those. You might like foreign films, but again, tough. You might like painting, but no, the state wont pay for that. This is a special bribe.

It's just another part of the advance auction of stolen goods. Your taxes being taken to pay for something Labour thinks you'll like. Well many of you will. Grants to broadband providers will make it a bit cheaper for you to download music for your ipod, watch youtube, listen to internet radio, download porn videos, engage in internet gaming. Yes of course it also will enable some businesses, but cheaper broadband benefits all such users - except it's only cheaper to the user. The taxpayer is screwed, and David Cuntliffe gets the credit, for his great plan to spend your money.

See he produces nothing. He didn't invent the internet, use his own money to set up a business to supply it, he just advocated to take more of your money and spend it on this little bribe. He says "his model provides better value for taxpayers, encourages more service providers into the market and drives competition.” Of course taxpayers never had a say did they David? You couldn't convince them to fund it voluntarily could you? Wasn't your money to spend was it?

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Oh and of course, National promises even more.