We are losing our country, yet only Hanson is saying “No!” By Alexander Downer in The Australian.

The uniparty-aligned commentators won’t mention the big issue:

Commentators will tell you the reason voters have moved from the Coalition in particular to One Nation is because of public concern about the cost of living, the price of electricity, declining real wages and the cost of housing.

These are certainly legitimate issues for public concern. For example the political class has tried to convince voters that building windmills and solar farms will produce much cheaper electricity when obviously the complete reverse has happened. In the past decade, SA electricity prices have increased by about 100 per cent. Yet 85 per cent of the state’s electricity comes from renewables. Go figure.

Wokeness? No, that’s not it:

But talk to people in SA who have moved from voting Liberal to voting One Nation, and it is clear that it is as much non-economic issues that have caused their defection.

Many are saying Australia is changing and they use the phrase “we are losing our country”.

Some of their anger is directed at absurd overreach on symbolic issues. The overuse of welcome to country ceremonies and, in particular, acknowledgment of traditional owners is a good example of woke policies that drive a lot of people nuts. …

Most Australians were born in this country and have no other nationality. They rationalise it this way, for right or for wrong. Progressives think they are not just wrong but downright racist.

A recent poll showed 63 per cent of Australians didn’t want welcome to country ceremonies at sporting events. That’s a big majority and those people think Hanson is the one person who’s prepared to say she doesn’t like these ceremonies.

The big one:

But there’s no doubt immigration is the most potent issue driving up One Nation’s vote. …

Those migrants who don’t integrate and who have been playing out the tensions and hatreds of the parts of the world from which they have come have turned a sizeable proportion of the population against immigration.

Events such as the massacre of the Jews at Bondi Beach last December only inflame private hostility to immigration.

The scene last Friday of Anthony Albanese being heckled and abused at a Lakemba mosque in Sydney plays into this same sentiment.

Hanson may say hurtful and insensitive things, in particular about Muslims, most of whom are perfectly reasonable law-abiding citizens, but her comments play into the private views of many, many people.

These are just examples of how many South Australians and indeed Australians from around the country feel and why they are increasingly flocking to One Nation. It’s not that One Nation has any particular policies that would address housing shortages, the cost of living, electricity prices and so on. It’s that a lot of perfectly patriotic and decent Australians think she stands up for Australia.

Like the nationalists in other Western countries, who have been subjected to replacement and anti-white hostility from our globalist ruling class:

This is the Australian version of a phenomenon that has been under way in Britain and the EU for quite some time. A sizeable percentage of their populations is fed up with the progressive agenda promoted by the centre-left and often supported by the centre-right.

They are upset about illegal immigration and the restructuring of society to accommodate migrants rather than encouraging the integration of migrants. As in Australia, disruptive and aggressive demonstrations over issues such as Middle East wars only exacerbate this sentiment.

South Australian election results. By Caitlan Powell in The Daily Mail:

Of the state’s 47 seats, the ALP had secured 30, the Liberals had 4, with 13 seats still in doubt.

Late on Saturday night, Electoral Commission figures showed statewide Labor had 37.8 per cent of the vote, One Nation had 21.7 per cent, the Liberals slipped to third on 19.1 per cent and the Greens were on 11.6 per cent.

One Nation’s Upper House lead candidate, former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, has secured his seat, with the party on track to claim two or possibly three seats in total.

Conservatives must pluck up the courage to oppose the ruling class. Hanson is showing them how, and the SA election shows many that voters will vote for her policies — despite the social opprobrium and Pauline’s shortcomings as a would-be PM.

Opposing the uniparty: Conservatives want a voice. Why choose a whisper? By Flat White in The Spectator.

State Liberal parties in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and (until recently) Western Australia have prioritised the ‘Ley’ model. That is a ‘nice’ inoffensive centrist woman pitched at the Teal voters and the ‘modern’ electorate.

Some state leaders of the Liberal Party — electoral success eludes them all:

Kellie Sloan in NSW (ex-ABC)

Ashton Hurn in South Australia

Jess Wilson in Victoria

Libby Mettam in Western Australia, until March 2025

 

No one is saying conservatives won’t vote for a woman. After all, the Liberals are being wiped out by Pauline Hanson and still go weak at the knees for the ghost of Margaret Thatcher.

It’s the type of woman that matters.

Teals like their women rich and dripping in an environmental saviour complex. Bonus points if they sound like a private school teacher delivering a lecture on political correctness.

Conservatives prefer their women scary as shit. They want them to casually break balls, injure the egos of Labor unionists, and ruthlessly subvert the gender privilege of the Teals. These voters want warriors, not appeasers.

Oppose the globalists, don’t suck up to them — give us an alternative to the blob

 

In Pauline Hanson, they do not see a fish and chip shop owner, they see a woman who routinely throws creatures into hot oil and serves their corpses up to the highest bidder.

Nothing about any of the Liberal women currently standing for state leadership screams dangerous. … They are not going to give answers on Sky News Australia that make the party elite reach for their pearls. These leaders are meticulously controlled by the party machine as if they had been printed alongside the How-To-Vote-Cards. …

The people are voting orange to send a giant F-U to the establishment because they are tired of having nation-changing decisions made without their consent.

Conservatives want a voice. Why would they choose a whisper?

Iran’s surprise: Long range missiles that can hit Berlin and Paris. By Brett McGurk.

Speaks for itself:

Feb. 25, 2026: “We are not developing long-range missiles… we have limited the range below 2,000 kilometers” — Iran’s FM Araghchi (IRNA).

March 20, 2026: Iran fires missiles at Diego Garcia — ranging 4,000 kilometers (WSJ).

Obama sent Iran pallets of cash because it promised to be good.

Trump’s Pearl Harbor Joke Ends the Curse on Japan, now a Laugh Between Equals. By Captain S.O., a Japanese citizen.

Trump’s Pearl Harbor joke wasn’t an insult. It was the key that finally unlocked something buried deep in the Japanese soul.

For 80 long years, we’ve carried apology and guilt like a permanent shadow—haunted by the past, bound by the Constitution America wrote for us, forever in “reflection mode.”

He turned that raw wound into a shared laugh between equals. No more endless atonement. No more vassal shadow.

The curse is broken. Japan is free now.

Thank you, Mr. President.

We’re allowed to stand tall again — as true partners, not subordinates.  The strongest alliance in the world is rising — equals, brothers, ride-or-die.

 

Trump, on why the strike on Iran’s leaders wasn’t signaled to allies an the world first: “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?“

A mature tree increases a home’s value by 7 to 19 percent, worth far more than the savings in costs of removing it when building. By Aakash Gupta, in the US but clearly applicable in Australia.

Let me explain exactly why every new subdivision in America looks like the top photo …

 

A mature tree increases a home’s value by 7 to 19 percent. On a $400,000 house, that’s $28,000 to $76,000.

A single shade tree produces the cooling equivalent of ten room-size air conditioners running 20 hours a day. One tree on the west side of a house cuts energy bills by 12 percent within 15 years. …

Removing those trees saves the builder roughly $5,000 per lot. Concrete trucks need twice the dripline radius of every standing tree. Utility trenches need flat ground. A bulldozer flattens 200 lots in an afternoon. Preserving trees adds weeks and thousands per home.

So the developer pockets $5,000 in savings and the buyer eats $50,000 in lost value for the next two decades. The person making the decision and the person paying for it have never been in the same room. …

Fifty years of data. The trees are worth more than removing them saves.

Developers clear-cut anyway because they sell the house once and leave. You live in it for 30 years.

Example:

[Developer] George Mitchell bought 28,000 acres of Houston timberland in 1974 and preserved 28% as permanent green space. He forced McDonald’s to build behind the tree canopy. That McDonald’s became one of the highest-volume locations in Texas. The first office building, designed to reflect the surrounding forest so you couldn’t see it from the street, leased completely.

The Woodlands median home price today: $615,000. Katy, a comparable Houston suburb that clear-cut: $375,000. Named #1 community to live in America two years running.

We have a couple of large trees, the only ones for several houses in every direction, in Perth. It is noticeably much cooler in summer under our trees than anywhere else up and down the street.

David Archibald:

All of Perth’s new suburbs have been clear-felled, with the new lots not having enough room for trees or on the footpaths.

So pay up for aircon or swelter.

One Nation has not changed; rather, the times have swung in the party’s favour. By Chris Kenny in The Australian.

Hanson is being mobbed in the streets.

I saw it with my own eyes this week, joining her and One Nation state leader Cory Bernardi for a street walk in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall, a CBD location far removed from One Nation’s heartland. Aside from a group of SA Socialists protesters who materialised at the end and one student egged on by friends to timidly tackle Hanson on immigration issues, every person who approached Hanson was friendly and encouraging.

Many lined up for photographs with Hanson and Bernardi, and many said they had voted for One Nation already (pre-poll booths have been open all week) or were intending to do so on Saturday. People of all ages and ethnic backgrounds characterised Hanson and Bernardi as patriots, fighting for mainstream voters.

Now, I have covered campaigning as a reporter for four decades and have been involved from the inside, state and federal, through the years, and this reaction is out of the ordinary. This is a legitimate political phenomenon — a shift is afoot in our political landscape. …

It’s not personalities, so it’s policies — stop mass immigration, end net zero, and, above all, lower the cost of housing.

Asked why he was voting One Nation, a security guard sporting an Australian flag on his vest said, “How they’re standing up for Australia and Australian values.” He urged Hanson and Bernardi to “keep up the good fight” after noting “all the grief” they copped. …

Bernardi basks in the same glory. At a suburban shopping centre recently, security objected to the One Nation candidate mingling with shoppers and called the police. Two officers turned up, confirmed Bernardi was quite within his rights, then requested a photo with him. …

The reaction is more substantial than mere fame. Hanson is seen by many as a warrior and people’s advocate — a saviour. The issues favour her. Record immigration has fuelled a housing crisis and cost-of-living pressures have been driven by escalating electricity prices thanks to governments pursuing UN-inspired net-zero goals.

Hanson has been consistent on these issues for three decades, demanding lower and more selective immigration, and shunning net zero in favour of energy affordability. One Nation has not changed; rather, the times have swung in the party’s favour.

 

 

Hanson has never faltered. In the face of aggressive protests, virulent criticism and even jail time on electoral fraud charges (eventually overturned), this one-person political juggernaut has powered on. …

“Trust,” said Hanson, “people trust me because they know I have never lied to them about what I believe, I stick by it.”

It is a powerful point. In the face of changeable major party politics, shaped more by focus groups than firm policy convictions, Hanson stands apart as the ultimate conviction politician. Love or hate her, we all know where she stands. And that she does not back down.

South Australian state election today. Labor will win, but which party will come second?

Allahu Akbar, Mr Albanese. By Craig Kelly.

The stunned, terrified expression you make when you finally realise Churchill was absolutely right.

• Albanese has repeatedly grovelled and tried to appease radical Islam, desperately chasing their bloc votes.
• He’s funnelled tens of millions of hardworking taxpayers’ dollars into mosques and Islamic schools — effectively subsidising separatist ideologies.
• He opened the floodgates, allowing thousands of unvetted migrants straight from war-torn Gaza to pour into Australia with zero proper screening.
• He’s worked behind the scenes — in secret — to facilitate the return of ISIS brides and their offspring, bringing battle-hardened jihadist sympathisers back to our shores.
• He cheered on senior Labor figures shamelessly marching arm-in-arm with supporters of the fanatical Khomeini regime and Iran’s extremist theocracy.
• He’s shovelled millions more in taxpayer “foreign aid” straight to Hamas-controlled groups — effectively bankrolling terrorists.
• In the midst of the Israel-Gaza war, he cynically rewarded Hamas’s barbaric atrocities by recognising “Palestine” — a blatant signal of weakness and surrender.
• He stonewalled and resisted calls for a Royal Commission into the Bondi jihadist massacre, refusing to confront the rising tide of Islamic extremism while smearing “the far right” as the real villains dividing Australia.
• He’s ignored urgent US requests to help secure the Straits of Hormuz and even ordered Australian navy personnel serving alongside Americans to cower in their bunks — all to avoid offending supporters of Iran’s murderous regime.

And after all that grovelling, all that betrayal of Australian values, all that craven appeasement — they still turned on him. They still wanted to lynch him.

His face said it all: the classic, wide-eyed panic of an appeaser who fed the crocodile… only to discover it’s now lunging for him.

Ruksan Fernando:

Despite all this and more, they still tried to lynch Albanese at the mosque while screaming Allahu Akbar and calling him a dog. There is a lesson in that somewhere about radical Islam but sadly it won’t be learnt.

Elon Musk:

He is a simple man

Bob Hawke (in the 1980s):

(That’s Albanese to Hawke’s left.)

The West’s moral operating system is being overthrown by a woke, Manichaean moral framework. By Claire Lehmann in The Australian.

Earlier this week, … Grace Tame – who was awarded Australian of the Year in 2021 for her advocacy for survivors of sexual abuse – described the sexual violence of October 7 as “debunked propaganda”.  … Tame’s denialism, while abhorrent, is not aberrant.

A Crossroads25/YouGov poll conducted last year found only 48 per cent of Australians agreed it was “broadly true” that Hamas killed about 1200 Israelis on October 7, with 44 per cent saying they were not sure.

Ignorance alone does not explain why people are motivated to deny atrocities. And many of those who minimise or reject what happened that day are not disengaged at all. On the contrary, they believe they are informed, engaged and are certain of their views.

The Manichaean framework:

The more honest explanation is that a moral framework shared by many in our country forecloses the conclusion that those who are “oppressed” can also be guilty. When the world is divided into a binary of the oppressors and the oppressed, guilt and innocence are assigned without any reference to conduct. And these categories remain unchanged even after an atrocity.

The framework is Manichaean. The Manichaean religion of the third-century in Persia divided all existence into dualistic cosmology. The world consisted of the struggle between forces of light and dark. Today, this cosmic struggle is between the oppressors and the oppressed.

“I stand with the oppressed,” Tame repeatedly insisted to the ABC. Within this framework, the women of the Nova festival are, by virtue of being Israeli, classified as oppressors. And oppressors cannot be victims. So the evidence of their suffering — the photographs, the witness testimony, the coroners’ reports — must be denied.

The traditional Western framework:

Most Australians have grown up with a different set of moral instincts entirely. The most familiar is the deontological tradition, rooted in our Judeo-Christian heritage. In this framework, murder is wrong and rape is wrong — regardless of who commits them and regardless of the political identity of the victim. The act itself is what carries the moral weight. From this perspective, October 7 was an atrocity because of what was done to innocent civilians: the elderly, women, children. There is no other interpretation.

The utilitarian framework:

The other framework most of us recognise intuitively is the utilitarian: what is good is what benefits the greatest number; what is bad is what causes suffering and harm. From this perspective, October 7 was a catastrophe — for Palestinians above all. Hamas invaded a country it had no hope of defeating, triggering a war that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans and leaving their own territory in ruins. On purely practical terms, October 7 was the worst strategic miscalculation Hamas has ever made.

The left’s new moral operating system:

The Manichaean framework, however, escapes both verdicts. It is not interested in acts or consequences. It is interested only in identity. In this moral universe, evil is not defined by what you do but by what you are: your skin colour, your ancestry, your position in an economic order. Guilt and innocence are collective, inherited and fixed. Author Adam Kirsch calls it a “political theory of original sin”.

In the contemporary theory of settler colonialism — the framework that has come to define progressive politics across the Western world since 2023 –- any people deemed to have arrived in a land already inhabited are classified as oppressors, guilty by definition, regardless of individual conduct. As one American academic wrote: Palestinians are “a non-white, non-European people struggling for liberation and freedom against a settler colonial oppressor”.

From this perspective, whatever Palestinians do – even if it consists of terrorism, rape and murder – is freedom fighting. Whatever Israelis do is colonial oppression. The rape victims at the Nova festival are conveniently ignored. …

This is not a fringe way of thinking, but a system of thought that has been running in academia for 50 years now and is now being taught to the young:

That moral system now has escaped the academy entirely, travelling through activist culture, non-government organisations and social media until it presents itself not as ideology but the correct way to pursue social justice. Tame did not need to read either book [two core texts, by Fanon and by Friere] to absorb their conclusions. She needed only to inhabit the world those books helped create. …

The backlash to Tame may give some a false sense of security that her views are not tolerated in wider society. But in many places they are; in much of the academy, the arts and our broader literary culture, her views are not only permissible, they are the status quo. The world view that absolves the oppressed of any responsibility for their actions is growing in popularity. Young people are seduced by its simplicity. Older people embrace it — without ever reading its core texts — to appear as if they are keeping up with the times.

The left’s new moral operating system is just an excuse to be anti-white and anti-male. It’s woke (by PyschoMath):

“Woke” has always meant nothing but “anti-white.” …

From the beginning of its middle-class, college-educated popular adoption in the 2010s, the word “woke” has always referred to a discrete set of values. These values are well-known and unambiguous.

Slavery bad. White man do slavery. White man too rich. White man steal from brown man. Man bad. Man steal from woman. Man hurt woman! White man hurt brown man! Borders not real. Everything for free! Paid for by white man! Too rich anyway! Christianity bad! Islam good! Marriage and family bad! Polyamory good!

All of these values without exception are degrading, specifically to White Western civilization. Blame is placed specifically on the categories of straight, white, rich, Christian, high-status, and male.

Woke is a grab for power without merit or hard work.

Australia could end up an unexpected but major victim of the Iran conflict. By Greg Sheridan in The Australian.

A limited war:

Until now, both sides have been fighting within certain limits. The US has not targeted Iran’s energy infrastructure. Trump was furious that Israel attacked Iran’s biggest gas field, leading to Iran attacking Qatar’s gas and other regional energy infrastructure. US and Israeli purpose diverged sharply.

Washington hasn’t hit Iran’s energy infrastructure for three reasons. It wants a post-ayatollah regime to be able to rebuild. It doesn’t want to take energy capacity out of the global system. But most importantly, Iran has desperate, perhaps devastating, things it hasn’t yet done but could do.

If you offer Tehran Armageddon, it might give you Armageddon in return. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is relatively straightforward for Iran but causes huge global disruption. However, if Iran systematically hits Gulf Arab energy infrastructure this could create energy chaos on a far bigger scale. Worse, if it systematically strikes the region’s desalination plants it could cause a fantastic humanitarian crisis.

It has also threatened to set fire to oil reserves. Iraqi forces retreating from Kuwait in 1991 set fire to 600 oil wells. This took months to bring under control. The Iranians could do much, much worse. The Iranians have no incentive to surrender. They don’t mind death through martyrdom, but not through surrender. That makes them particularly dangerous. …

Albanese’s empty promises:

Before he was first elected Prime Minister in 2022, Anthony Albanese promised in speeches (and incidentally in an interview with me) to establish a “strategic fleet” — namely a merchant fleet. But according to Peter Court, an authoritative maritime consultant, there are now zero international trading vessels under an Australian flag.

This is a critical capability gap because a government can requisition in an emergency — for example, to transport oil — only ships that travel under its flag. There are only nine such Australian vessels. These are mainly passenger ships operating between the mainland and Tasmania or odd specialist vessels supplying Antarctic missions and the like.

This is a model for everything else the Albanese government has conspicuously failed to do in national security. It identified the problem, talked big, delivered nothing. Union power means Australian-flagged ships must have entirely Australian crews. That’s uneconomic so there are no such ships. …

Remember Albanese’s earnest pledge before the last election to take back ownership of the Port of Darwin? Zilch. Almost nothing the Albanese government says about national security is believable or consequential.

Australian car industry? It matters now:

Many failures have been bipartisan. It was a catastrophic mistake to get rid of the car industry. We have almost no advanced manufacturing, nor can this be resurrected through a few Dreamtime defence projects alone.

We lazily run a trade surplus on commodities and overspend the revenue. As a nation we’re fat, lazy and dumb.

Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie wants to rebuild advanced manufacturing. He says: “A key input for manufacturing is energy. But Labor’s Future Made in Australia is all about net zero and decarbonisation. As long as we’re bound by the net-zero straitjacket we won’t revive manufacturing. (It) relies on cheap baseload power, advanced robotics, AI and cutting-edge processes.”

Hastie’s right. But his side of politics is also responsible for today’s mess, with 99 per cent of our trade carried by sea, a pitiful few weeks’ fuel reserve, no merchant fleet and a vacuum in most areas of critical capability.

We could end up an unexpected but major victim of the Iran conflict and its fallout.

How to defeat the US Military. By Cynical Publius.

In every hot war the United States has become involved in since the Korean War, we have enjoyed absolute tactical and operational dominance over our enemies. We win every tactical engagement, overwhelmingly. Operationally we can and do dominate any theater of our choosing. No one — and I mean NO ONE — can stand toe to toe with the US military. …

Our military power is unsurpassed. We are masters of diplomacy. We have the world’s strongest economy. …

So how come the US keeps losing wars?

Our military opponents, from Ho Chi Minh to Osama bin Ladin, knew that the only way to defeat the USA is to demoralize the American populace such that it demands withdrawal and throws the then current Commander-in-Chief out of office.

The ONLY way to defeat America militarily is to convince the American people that a war is unwinnable.

Examples:

The slow dribble of IED [Improvised explosive devices, e.g. roadside bombs] deaths in OIF [Iraq War] was not actually targeting soldiers and Marines — it was targeting YOU, the American people. And CNN eagerly complied with death counts running across the bottom of the screen.

The Tet Offensive? It was a decisive US victory that could have ended the Vietnam War in our favor. But Walter Cronkite instead declared the war lost, protests erupted nationwide, and the war was lost.

The Highway of Death in Kuwait? We could have taken out Saddam Hussein in 1991 and never needed to go back in 2003, but international media made the attack on retreating Iraqis look “too cruel,” so we halted just short of the finish line.

It requires the help of the American media:

The strategic imperative of every one of America’s military enemies is to break the will of the American people with skewed information, propaganda, and extreme emphasis on America’s minor losses amidst overwhelming military victory.

But the Ho Chi Minhs and Osama bin Ladins can’t do that by themselves. They need willing partners in the American media and government.

And for Operation Epic Fury, boy oh boy do the Iranian mullahs have an over abundance of American morale killers to draw from in order to defeat America through the informational instrument of national power.

Tucker Carlson. Senator Mark Kelly and the rest of the Seditious Six. CNN. ABC. NBC. CBS. NYT, WaPo. Pakistani bot armies on social media. X “influencers” like Cerno, Candace, MartyrMade and Ian Carroll. Every idiot claiming we are fighting “Israel’s war.”

There is an entire Army of American politicians and media figures who are willingly fighting Iran’s informational war …

America is DECISIVELY WINNING the war on Iran in every measurable respect. Yet there are so many influential Americans who are desperately determined to make you believe otherwise.

The US is winning the Iran war handsomely, points out Military historian Victor Davis Hanson:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹. A-10 Warthogs and Apache helicopter gunships are now flying strike missions in Iranian airspace at will. VDH’s point: you only deploy those aircraft when there is effectively no air defense left to threaten them. They are slow, low-flying, close-support platforms. Their presence confirms what the Pentagon has been claiming — Iran has no meaningful air defense remaining. …

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝘂𝗹𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗼-𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris — these governments have survived for generations by reading the regional climate with precision. When they expel Iranian military attachés, when they intercept Iranian missiles over their own capitals and say nothing about American strikes, when the UAE reaffirms its $1.4 trillion investment commitment to the United States mid-war — they are not making ideological statements. They are placing bets. And they are betting on the United States.

𝗔𝗹 𝗝𝗮𝘇𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗮. … Al Jazeera — the Qatari state media network, historically critical of American military action, the network Tucker Carlson and the anti-war right love to cite against Israel — is now calling the U.S. bombing campaign brilliant and effective, and saying it has been underestimated. When the media outlet of a nation that hosts both the largest American air base in the Middle East and a Hamas political office starts praising American military effectiveness, the message is unmistakable: 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘯.

Iran’s strategy now:

Iran’s strategy now is rope-a-dope. Run out the clock. Wait for American public opinion to shift. Hope the midterms create political pressure on Trump to stop. It is the only play they have left.

District 9 and the Story of “Race”. By the Feral Historian.

Not really news or politics, but interesting if you’ve seen the movie. An insightful commentary on immigration, race, colonization and — above all — tribalism.

The threat of ‘neo-idiocy’. By Henry Ergas in The Australian.

A fundamental conviction of Liberal democracy is that reason and politics could work together. Today, that has crumbled.

What was:

Its core was simple. Democracy does not just need its formal structures; it needs citizens who know how to argue.

Not shout, not posture, but submit their views to the judgment of others and even change their minds. [Jurgen Habermas] … called this “the force of the better argument” and considered it the only legitimate basis of political power.

This was Western modernity’s great achievement: that when it is asked “why?”, authority must answer — with answers that withstand scrutiny. Authority could no longer rest on God or tradition. It could only rest on consent: reasoned, revisable, formed through public argument.

Old media, for all its faults, filtered. Editors decided what mattered. Reporters had to justify claims. Stories passed through people whose credibility depended on not being wrong.

What is:

Then the internet created an enormous space in which those protections were absent.

Anonymity compounded the damage. It gave voice to those the gatekeepers had shut out. But it also dissolved the oldest constraint on public speech: the knowledge that you would be held to account. Mask the speaker’s identity and every inhibition against bad faith, abuse and sheer fantasy goes with it. Even free speech’s staunchest defenders — Milton, Defoe and Mill — feared it rendered freedom of expression unsustainable: but the internet made it ubiquitous. …

The shared world that democratic discourse requires shatters into hermetic fragments. This, Habermas suggested, is not solely, or even mainly, a failure of technology. It is a failure of character. …

Democratic citizenship requires psychological maturity: citizens strong enough in ego to renounce the fantasy of omnipotence, to tolerate uncertainty, to engage with genuine otherness without falling into projection or rage — or turning to violence.

The culture of the 1960s set out to overthrow the disciplines that sustained that maturity ethic. What replaced them was not liberation. … What the 1960s unleashed was a reversion to the permanently adolescent self, craving recognition rather than truth, for whom life is a theatre and to live is to be applauded.

Social media’s echo chamber universalised that condition and gave it political form. Surrounded only by reflections of itself, the self no longer encounters the otherness that alone can discipline its demands, train its impulses and instil what Tocqueville called democracy’s “habits of the heart”. …

The result is what we see on our streets, in universities and cultural institutions: the “neo-idiocy” of the highly instructed but semi-educated…

Legislation doesn’t begin to address the problem:

You cannot pass a law restoring people’s willingness to be wrong. Nor can you fine your way to intellectual seriousness. And regulation cannot recreate what has been lost: the patience to follow a complex argument, the basic trust that the other side is not simply your enemy. …

The greatest curse, Mill warned, is stupid opponents: ones who never force you to sharpen your wits.

Islam and its echo chamber of mosque culture and the Koran are the same anti-democratic phenomenon on steroids. Ironically, our leftists import Muslims for their votes! But the Islamists are incompatible with Western culture, and seek only to destroy it and replace it with their own.

Clueless, spineless Albanese chased out of a mosque by a mob of Muslims calling him a putrid dog and “Alba-tizi” (buttocks), but he says it was “incredibly positive”.  By Mostafa Rachwani at the SMH.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was surrounded by protesters yelling “shame” and “disgrace” during Eid prayers at Lakemba Mosque on Friday morning, forcing him into a rushed escape.

Albanese was attending the prayers, held to mark the end of the month of Ramadan, alongside Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

One source of anger was Albanese’s support for Israel, with those in the crowds mentioning the wars in Gaza and Lebanon as key to their frustrations.

Others mentioned the police actions at the protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog, where Muslims were forcibly removed while they were praying at Town Hall in February.

 

 

While neither the prime minister nor Burke spoke to the incensed crowd, attendees shouted down a speech being made by Gamel Kheir, the secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, which owns and runs the mosque.

Kheir was giving one of the speeches traditionally delivered after the prayer, with Albanese and Burke seated just ahead of him. A crowd formed a circle around the official party, shouting Kheir down and demanding to know why the prime minister was invited.

“Why is he here? Get him out of here! It’s a disgrace,” one man shouted, as the mosque event descended in chaos. …

“We have the right to be angry” another shouted as the crowd pushed and shoved to get closer to the Albanese, who was also being called a “putrid dog”. …

A stand-off then ensued, with protesters waiting outside the mosque’s office for Albanese, while organisers attempted to find a way around them.

Eventually, Albanese was able to escape via a back door, but was chased by the crowd. Some yelled “Alba-tizi” after him, a play on his name, combining it with the colloquial Arabic word for buttocks.

James Dowling in The Australian.

The protest against Mr Albanese and Mr Burke was organised by controversial activist cohort Stand4Palestine. …

Stand4Palestine is linked with fundamentalist Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, though denies any formal connection. Hizb ut-Tahrir was listed as a prohibited hate group on March 5 under new legislation passed after the Bondi attack.

Thomas Henry in The Australian:

Anthony Albanese says the response to his visit to a mosque in Sydney’s south-west was “incredibly positive.” …

The Prime Minister said the crowd of 30,000 people who gathered at Lakemba mosque were respectful during his visit and thanked the Lebanese Muslim Association for their invitation.

What a clueless, spineless weakling our leader is! He is literally chased out by a mob of Muslims calling him a putrid dog and “Alba-tizi” (buttocks), and he says it was “incredibly positive”.

Sure, most of the Muslims were well behaved, but the radical Islamists got away with very bad behavior and Albanese was successfully intimidated and made to look like a fool — a beta male, as they say. The radical Islamists are the strong horse here, obviously, and everyone knows it.

 

The Australian PM did loser-face:

The look coming to every leftist, when they wake up and realise that Pauline Hanson might just be right. — Craig Kelly

The Islamists are winning, because our elites are afraid of their violence and aggression. By Michael Deacon in The Telegraph.

On the evening of July 7, 2005, Tony Blair sought to reassure a shattered nation with the following promise. The terrorists, he vowed, would never win. “When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated,” declared the then prime minister. “When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed.”

Stirring words. Sadly, however, they proved to be flatly untrue.

Two decades later, it’s becoming ever clearer that the terrorists are indeed winning, that we are indeed intimidated, and that they have indeed succeeded in changing our country and our way of life. …

Example:

Let me point out that we are about to pass the fifth anniversary of one of the most contemptible episodes in modern British history: the driving from public life of the Batley schoolteacher.

In March 2021, a Religious Studies teacher in West Yorkshire was said to have shown his pupils a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad during a class discussion. After furious protests and death threats, the teacher and his family were forced into hiding — where they remain to this day. Five whole years later.

What the teacher did may have been unwise. But it wasn’t illegal. So why was an innocent man deprived of both his livelihood and his liberty?

The answer is as simple as it is shameful. No, it’s not – or not primarily – to do with political correctness. It’s to do, above all, with fear. Whatever they may claim, the truth is that our elites, from politics to policing, are pursuing a policy of spineless appeasement towards Islamist extremists — because they’re utterly petrified of what will happen if they don’t.

A strong country — like the one Tony Blair tried to depict in his 7/7 statement — would have stood by the Batley teacher from the start. To anyone who so much as protested against what he’d done, let alone threatened him, it would have said: “In Britain, we believe in something called freedom of expression. If you don’t, then this sadly isn’t the country for you. Which is why we’ll be kindly escorting you on to the first plane out of here, to a country that better suits your taste for theocratic barbarity.”

But of course, no one in authority dared say or do anything of the sort. So much for defending our “values” (as Mr Blair proclaimed we would). The lesson, for the people of Britain, is that we must obey the rules of a foreign religion, or else.

Which is why I say the terrorists are winning. The aim of terrorism is not just to kill. It’s to gain and exert power – through fear of further terrorism. And it’s working.

Our elites, it seems, will do almost anything to avoid arousing the ire of Islamist fanatics — because they remember not only 7/7, but also the murder of Lee Rigby, the Manchester Arena bombing, the 2017 Parsons Green train bombing, the 2017 Westminster attack, the London Bridge attacks of both 2017 and 2019, the murder of Sir David Amess, the attack on the Manchester synagogue…

Feminists, Islamists, and several groups on the left, have learned to bully their way to winning. The Islamists are cultural masters at it — there are now 2 billion Muslims.

Can Anthony Albanese stand up to bullying? Not if they might vote against him.