the future ain’t what it used to be – Page 2

A question of balance

Terror tactics are horrifying and repugnant causing us to recoil. They are used when conventional warfare: i.e. soldiers fighting soldiers, is not pragmatic.

The terror tactics used in Rhodesia during the time of its ‘liberation’ war included the murder of unarmed non-combatants in pitiless, gruesome fashion. This included the execution by shooting of headmen and many tribespeople “pour encourager les autres” accompanied by mutilations, abduction and rape. It included the execution of survivors of a passenger aircraft they had shot down; the murder of missionaries including the bayonetting of a 6 month old baby.

Of course, Europe had its own terrorists like the Red Army Faction which engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shoot-outs with police.

Governments also use terrorism. In World War II, the Nazis executed villagers in reprisal for attacks on them by resistance partisans.

The Japanese Army is estimated to have executed millions of Chinese and Korean civilians during the same period.

Let us not omit the ultimate terror tactic deployed by the US on Japan in 1945 – the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed over 200, 000 people.

Neighborhood reduced to rubble by atomic bomb blast, Hiroshima, 1945.

Sadly, terror tactics clearly have some “legitimacy” in societies across the world.

This somewhat shatters our moral high ground when considering the Hamas massacres of Israeli residents and indeed the Israeli retaliation and the US support for it.

There is some distaste for the Hamas tactic of hiding amongst the “innocent” population, but it is a brutally clever tactic. Why should non-combatants not share the fight in a liberation struggle?

Of course, this type of thinking means that the only tactic to stop this type of warfare is eradication and suppression – obliteration will buy a few years until new ideologists fire up the youth of a new generation. Unavoidably, non-combatants will also be obliterated.

We can express our horror and repugnance, but we can not condemn the morality if we too are guilty.

It goes without saying that terrorists should be stopped before they attack.

But, how is this possible?

One answer which many will not like, is universal surveillance: the continuous monitoring of every meeting, conversation and movement of ….. everybody.

Don’t be alarmed, surveillance of communications and movement is commonplace in the military and security industries, including the police. Many private houses and vehicles already have security camera systems which track you whenever you pass by; you are watched in supermarkets, bars and train stations. Internet traffic is monitored and filtered by service providers.

Why do we still need a warrant to monitor criminal activities? AI bots can monitor and notify suspicious behaviour for investigation, in real time as it happens.

It will be far more effective in stopping terrorists and criminals than analysis of historical data, so what is the downside?

After all: “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”!

I wrote this poem for a poetry class some years ago.

Screen

Everyone everywhere should be screened

Let the camera capture

your face, your life, your ups and

downs.

And hers and his and theirs.

All must be screened – t’will

make us feel safer and happier, until

we think about

Who screens

the Screeners.

Look at the screen

be obscene and herd:

you’re on tv!

This is our new morality

I was on tv

did you see me?

The absurdities of our kind

I was thinking of another rant about the Woke Religion and its priests, the Voice and the courtesies we insist are paid to tyrants who we permit to flourish. But I have ranted about most of that already, so I need a change of tack.

We have too much tolerance.

We tolerate teenagers who steal and wreck the most expensive cars for Tik Tok kicks.

We tolerate demonstrators who burn and loot in their righteous displays of outrage.

We tolerate shoplifters because we are too scared to arrest them in case they create a victimisation scene.

We tolerate and compensate governments who suppress freedom, eliminate opponents and yet proclaim democracy.

We allow men claiming they are women to enter womens’ prisons despite convictions for rape of females

We give girls drugs to stop their sexual development and allow them to have their breasts removed, sometimes withhout parental consent.

We tolerate the mass murderers we catch, providing lifetime accommodation in our prisons.

We shoot mad dogs and any dangerous animal.

We also train soldiers in ways to efficiently kill people our governments declare are enemies; often in cold blood.

My recommendation is that we re-institute the death sentence for murderers and serial rapists.

Their places in our prisons can be filled by those who wilfully damage property.

We must also stop meeting tyrants and refuse them entry into our world.

I believe that the deterrent effect of capital punishment for terrible crimes will reverberate and reset the respect for societal values that has disappeared.

Thoughts at Easter

The long Easter weekend was often a lonely one for me as a young man when I lived in Rhodesia, a country at war. My friends were either on call up for military duties or visiting their families; my family was too far away for a long weekend.

So, I often pondered the meaning of life, god and my own trajectory, making myself melancholy by listening to Kristofferson’s “Sunday morning coming down”

Now I listen to old, sad Easter hymns on Good Friday and Handel’s Messiah on Easter Sunday. I am still moved by the memories and emotions of old beliefs.

My mind seems to be stimulated by the four quiet days of the long weekend – in fact it is in a whirl, tormented by the mess the world seems to be in.

We are in need of a Messiah in our world today, or several Messiahs….

Peter Turchin is a complexity scientist who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics.

He has done extensive analysis of historical societal collapses and writes:

…. data indicated that we were well along the road to political disintegration. The structural factors undermining social stability in past societies—popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and state fragility—were all trending in negative directions in the early twenty first century America.*

I would extend his analysis to the the whole western world, at least, if not the whole world. We do not need another world war in less than a century since the last one…. or do we? Maybe we deserve the pain and horrors of holocausts and brutality in order to get our world straight?

Back to what I see as a global mess: Russia /Ukraine, China, Africa in general, some of the South Americas, the whole of the Middle East, all in the grip of corrupt autocrats who have little regard for the worth of individuals other than themselves. (Dare I add the US to that list?)

The bickering over climate and the lack of common environmental purpose. The iconoclasm of the Woke erosion of free expression and re-ordering of morality, the inertia of the worlds’ middle orders, the universal reverence of mammon.

The total disintegration of morality apparent in the Trump phenomenon can not and is not being denied. A huge number of US citizens are rallying around a man being pilloried for lying about paying off women with whom he committed adultery. He denies the adultery … so why did he pay them? Duhh!

Mind you it seems that almost as many US Presidents were philanderers as were not!

But it is so serious, the very fabric of politics in that country is being tattered. Couple it with the whole Woke wave demanding and receiving remuneration for injustices perpetrated on long dead people by long dead people – history is going to become expensive. That is state fragility and popular immiseration.

Elite over-production describes the condition of a society which is producing too many potential elite-members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure. This means too many people with too much education accompanied by higher expectations than can be accommodated.

Just look at the issues with student loans in welfare societies – it is too easy to get a degree on borrowed money. Attempts to cut off that flow is a suicidal political move which will generate radical reaction from the most volatile segment of the demographic. Collecting the debt is risky enough for government!

A Marxist would probably call this bourgeois overproduction; these days we would call them wannabe elites.

That encapsulates the root illness of modern western democracies: too much entitlement and not enough individual responsibility – anything is ok if it is NIMBY (not in my back yard).

It takes catstrophic societal upheaval to get citizens to recalibrate their expectations.

Well, looks like we may be headed there…

*https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/an-intermediate-retrospective-on-ages-of-discord/

My new windmill

Remember Don Quixote who charged a windmill as he believed it was an evil giant?

I identify with the old gentleman. I too am a bit bewildered by the modern world: hasty but easily confused, I take umbrage swiftly when faced with blind zealots cloaked in do-good deeds.

The new windmill we all must face is an evil giant, so big, we cannot see all of it – I beg you to believe this.

You will need great courage to defeat it because it is well entrenched and has many powerful and erudite supporters who believe that they are right.

I feel like someone in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s when the politcal system was perverted and Storm troopers set the moral tone, burning books and bullying, looting, then eventually exterminating Jews, Gypsies, Communists, the insane and mentally handicapped en masse: their own people. The silent majority let it happen then – will you let it happen now?

We have a greater threat than Storm troopers facing us now. We have a culture of do-gooders, armoured in virtue so as to be apparently unassailable. They are taking our values and history and perverting them, persuading us to join the lynch mobs to do the job.

No Church nor brave politician has yet been strong enough to withstand these insidious forces who quell dissent with floods of populist rage, causing timid buraucrats to act according to the mob’s demands to suppress, notwithstanding their own codes and commitments to freedoms and fairness.

Their rationale is that all must enjoy equal freedoms in today’s society and recompense for their struggles of the past. Redress must be instantaneous on mere request. Only victims’ views and claims are considered. It is disrepectful to oppose these views.

This You Tube video on the transgender phenomenon clearly manifests one of the workings of this evil modern day windmill – it horrified and enraged me. If you are not similarly affected, go away and revel in your ostrich ways!

Teachers and doctors and administrators and politicians permit practices because they cannot stand up to unsubstantiated claims, they go with the flow. The media who trumpet the virtue signals which mask the atrocious demands are the agitators who see profit in the flames of chaos in society.

We have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” take a stand and be active; challenging threats in our communities, protecting freedoms from erosion by allegation and mob support.

Ask your MP, school principal, class teacher, doctor the following questions:

do you believe that gender is a choice and has nothing to do with biology
are kids who haven’t even gone through puberty capable of making the decision to change their sex
should children under 18 be permitted abortions, puberty blockers and hormonal treatments without court order or parental permission

If the answer is yes, make sure everyone knows that fact.

Now is the time for them to nail their colours to the mast and take sides. Post the questions on websites, ask their associations what their positions are and publish their answers, silence or evasions.

Get the answers now before they are passed into law because there is no opposition. We are fighting for our values and our children.

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

The debate over the referendum to grant a “Voice” to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia sparks many thoughts in my mind, most of them cynical.

Now I don’t have a vote in Australia, but I have paid taxes here for nigh on 10 years so should have one; thus I figured I am entitled to speak my mind.

My first thought is that these people do have a voice and representation by their own elected representatives. (Does this mean that democracy has failed them?)

My second thought is that the concept of a “Voice” for this poor benighted sector of the population is quite a funky meme-ish idea, likely to appeal to the shortspanofattention current generation. It is a crisp, simple virtuous PR vehicle, ideal for politicians.

My third thought is that the referendum is likely to be quite divisive, because of the modern propensity to factionise and label for easy meme-ing. The ‘aye-sayers‘ are inclusive, woke progressives and the ‘nay- sayers‘ are racist Tories.

Wait, it gets even more … rough-edged?

There are about 500 different Aboriginal tribes in Australia, each with their own language and territory and usually made up of a large number of separate clans. more than 250 languages and about 800 dialectal varieties

Which language will be used by the Voice? And will all agree on the words that are spoken? In New Zealand, there are still big money debates going on about the meaning of the Te Reo Maori version of the Treaty of Waitangi, thought to be clearly written in English.

The Indigenous population in Australia declined to a low of 74,000 in 1933 from an estimated 314 000 when the First Fleet arrived. About 12 000 were killed by colonists, the rest likely succumbed to the ravages of disease and by products of western civilization such as alcohol and despair.

A Voice will give 3.2% of the population additional power in Parliament – a 25% increase in that population since last census! It seems that aboriginal heritage is gaining flavour.

This portion of the population is the most poorly educated, unhealthy, socially destitute and criminal of all Australians. It is also diverse and disparate. It has a history of subjugation and some abuse, some of which may have been well meaning by the perpetrators but devastating for the victims.

Can we expect clarity, foresight and community interest from the speakers of the Voice? Will they be united and informed and representative of their electorate? Is that likely? Or will there be Boards and Committees and advisors and bureaucrats to give the Voice a neck and a head…? Lots and lots of money…!

It’s not a new political trick. In 1967 a referendum relating to Indigenous Australians, was called by the Liberal-Country Party Holt Government. Voters were asked whether to give the Federal Government the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians.

Acts of Parliament have appointed Protectors of Aborigines and Aboriginal Protection Boards in the past, with little apparent success.

The persuasion for this campaign is founded on the wave of Woke thinking which is sweeping the old, democratic Western societies, which recently saw off ScoMo and the LNP.

The fact that the Aboriginal population suffers significantly less advantage in society is regarded as a consequence of a racist hegemony, enriched by its historical suppression and racism: massacres, dispossessions and stolen generations.

The guilty must now pay a penance which will (maybe) absolve them of this horrible taint of the past and make everything okay …. yeah, right!

My last thought is related to my antipathy to Woke-ism, which you may have detected.

Once the benighted Aboriginals have a Voice, will we not be bound by precedent to enshrine more power for the exclusive use of women, then the homosexuals, lesbians, transexuals, pansexuals, one knee cappers and sheep lovers, etcetera?

I will leave the allocation of body parts to a new age biologist!

While I am here I was wondering why there is no rainbow flag in Parliament and why no-one took a knee at the opening of that august body, soon to be given a new voice.

Mid year Morass

Australia has survived an election and is somewhat refreshed by the efforts of the new regime … so far.

New Zealand is drowning its recent history and elevating first nation culture and hegemony …

I hesitate to allow my mind to dwell on the general state of civilization in Africa. The extent of corruption of the elites and the neglect of the populace is apparent.

What is infuriating is the charade of following democratic principles and the lofty debates in Parliaments and the imitated pomp and ceremony of Westminster parliaments. But the civil service has become totally inept, corrupt and unable to perform its functions.

In South Africa, the legacy of apartheid led largely to the exclusion of white managers and supervisors from government departments and the rapid promotion of inexperienced and frequently unqualified individuals, often deployed by the ruling party in some sort of reward for activism. As the Zondo report revealed, all too many of these cadres deployed by the party have used the opportunity to plunder and extort the community at large …aaarrgh , it is too sickening to think about.

Consequently, the infrastructure of the country is collapsing. The government at every level is unable to prevent revenue from being looted, so cannot provide adequate social services. Power, sanitation and transport systems are failing. Already the new age colonists have come offering support in return for access to resources and the government will be bought off.

So there will be new masters who will control the governments who will be paid off … and the people will suffer and society will breakdown into armed camps, each protecting their own.

That’s Africa. Pretty crude and basic, unlike Europe and America with ‘democratic’ institutions stretching back for many centuries (I have tongue in cheek). The World Wars and Spanish and Irish Civil wars laid the foundation for their current state of civilisation. Continental wars on two fronts in Europe and Asia are only a presidential whim away (let’s hope the lion sleeps tonight!)

While I am on the sad state of the world I may as well note the revived anxiety about Covid 4 or 5 or whatever and the renewed call to get vaccinated to reduce the demand for ICU beds… Scepticism has set in: we ‘oldies’ are advised to get vaccinated now and probably will need another before Xmas…. nah!

I won’t start up about the Cancel Culture which is eroding our remaining democratic principles like floods in New South Wales.

Oh well – I have six rugby tests to watch this weekend!

Birds are courting and mimosa is beginning to bloom, so the icicles must be melting and another new year begins…

Call me cantankerous

The statue of Edward Colston was toppled in a Black Lives Matter protest and tossed into a river in Bristol. He had been a merchant who amongst many other activities was involved in the Royal African Company which traded in slaves. It had been founded at the instigation of King Charles II in the 1600’s.

The slave trade was outlawed in 1807 in Britain and slaves were emancipated by in 1833.

Colston also supported and endowed schools, houses for the poor, almshouses, hospitals and Anglican churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. He died at age 84 in 1721. A statue was erected in his honour.

A jury recently found 4 people clearly identified as perpetrators to be not guilty – they argued that the presence of the statue was a hate crime and it was therefore not an offence to remove it.

Perhaps statues of King Charles II should also be tossed? Perhaps it’s time to give the Queen and Royalty the heave-ho ? After all, their ancestor founded the Royal African Company.

If society does not allow the discussion of ideas and issues, people descend to shouting. Shouting is offensive and leads to confrontation. Those people who deny platforms to those who express opposing opinions and topple statues rely on the civilised reticence of the majority who will withdraw and avoid confrontation.

We have seen how demonstrators attack the police, deface buildings and defy regulations.

How far should they be allowed to go? What is peaceful demonstration?

Not so long ago – in my lifetime, unruly demonstrators were orderered to disperse. If they defied these orders, shots were fired over their heads, if they persisted, ringleaders were shot by marksmen. That always did the trick.

Can’t say I fault the process.

How do you do, 2022?

It is the time of year one reviews and previews.

The highlight of 2021? – Undoubtedly watching the Boks beat the All Blacks.

From the anthems to the seething happy crowd, to the joy and exhilaration – all amidst a plague! Who would believe it?

I cannot overlook the joy of meeting my grandson! I have already worked out that I will only be 92 when he will be playing in the Rugby World Cup!! Now there is an objective in life! Hope some of my mates will still be around to join me.

Just a mention of the plague, now entering its third year: will it fizzle out once we have all contracted it ? Does not seem likely, with another variant in France being mentioned …

With a growing groundswell of feeling against mandates and restrictions, the politics become decidely difficult for those in office.

But if we keep getting new variants and requiring more jabs and hospital beds and ventilators for the sickest run out… some hard decisions on who gets admitted will arise. I bet the politicos will leave that to the doctors.

Looking ahead my predictions for the near future are:

I think the Coalition will survive the Australia election.
A Trump will run for President
We will have a new King
China and Russia will become more menacing
EV’s will begin to proliferate
Cash will disappear
The All Blacks will rise again

Finally, I urge you all to consider carefully before you condemn, do not blindly follow the media mob, hear what the other side has to say.

That is freedom and it is being trampled by the populist views of identity politics. Do not discard institutions to accommodate extreme views.

Become a freedom fighter

Happy new year and may the Covid die!

The spectre of Spring 2021

Foreboding lurks at the back of my mind, almost continuously. It’s not so much the plague, but how people are behaving. Society is being strained at its seams and frayed edges begin to appear.

As you may recall, my world context retains strong ties to Southern Africa and I am a child raised during the Cold War, when the spectre of the time was Communism driven by totalitarians. Then, as now, simple maxims were used to sway the masses. Freedom and equality for all!

Isn’t it ironic that these are the underpinnings of the woke movement, demanding representation and retribution for any cadre with some identifiable characteristic, practice or habit.

The process of promotion of the interests of minority groups has attacked current institutions, individuals and laws on the premise that their existence has been achieved to the disadvantage of minorities who were discriminated against in history.

At the same time, the prevalence of conspiracies and their adherents is challenging democracies’ability to govern and is widely being used as a political tool to fuel fire in followers. The old name for conspiracies was propaganda. Its purpose was to galvanise popular belief, without challenge.

An alarming feature of recent campaigns of identity movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter is that mere allegations are accepted as facts. Now that’s okay when allegations are admitted, but when they are disputed, there has always been a process to ascertain the most accurate version of the truth.

Corroboration is essential. But nowadays, every accused person is deemed a liar unless they admit their guilt.

Capitalism has created a huge disparity in earnings with the super rich becoming the aristocracy of old.

Marketing and Kardocumentatries, scripted reality shows and social media exaggerate and glorify lifestyles impossible for all but the rich. Tension, envy and outrage brew amongst those who can never indulge in champagne cruises, drive Porsches, wear silk shirts and eat caviar.

Attributions for the London rioters’ behaviour in 2011 included social factors such as racial tension, class tension, economic decline, and the unemployment that decline had brought. Well that is also an accurate picture of what happened in South Africa and eSwatini. Put a lid on a boiling pot and eruptions are certain!

I am trying to say that world wide we are at a stage that reasonable judgment has been suspended and gut feeling is carrying the day. This means that democracy is dead, it cannot be sustained in the face of ever-increasing individual demands for unique treatment. Capitalism in its present form has also failed. The poor are increasing and want more.

The task is to find new inviolate principles by which all agree they can be governed.

Tragically, all we need to do is look at organised religion to see that so many prophets arise to lead that there is continuous alienation and conflict.

I hoped that the plague would give rise to strong, credible leadership but fear there are too many critics, not enough followers.

So, sadly it seems that fragmentation will continue until another global catastrophe arises to force us together, maybe a world war – any bets on how soon and who will oppose the Chicomms?

Retirement – permission to misbehave?

Suggested by Debra Hall Thursday 18 March

It’s not so much what you can do, when you retire, but how much you can’t do before you do.

From before memory what we hear is: “No” “you can’t have that” ”do what I say” “this is the way we do things here” with sub text “and if you don’t then we are not for you”.

So one would think that retirement would be like letting go of a wound up elastic band: Twwwaaangggg!!! Don’t stop me now…!

Thinking about what you’re going to do when you are free to do it is quite fun. No-one said it better than Jenny Joseph in her “Warning”.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

….and learn to spit

But she didn’t really know, she was only 29 when she wrote the poem.

It isn’t like that, immediately anyway. Stopping the engine from continuing to run at working speed takes time. You can’t just start sleeping in because you are retired. The dog still wakes you at five, your eyes open and your heart starts fast and you leap up to get the day on the go because you know if you don’t you’ll be late for work…. Oh, Duh!.

Retirees struggle to fill their day. Retirement is a new job; you have to start from scratch again. Finding things to do when you’re used to trying to find time to do things is the world upside down. Getting things done when there is no structure and deadlines is difficult.

Learning to sit and relax and read or do nothing without guilt only comes after years of practice. When you can have cake everyday, it doesn’t taste so good.

You don’t have to shave, but you do. I wear my comfortablest (and tattiest) old clothes quite often.

I say things which I expect to provoke, but they don’t! Somehow it seems to be expected from the older generation. Anyway what we oldies think is provocative or challenging is not seen as so.

As we grow older and age, so do the values and attitudes we held. So being provocative is not easy. Its not easy to find that you have not moved with the times and whilst you might have been progressive or even radical when you were young, you find that you are far more conserv ative now.

I mean I wasn’t quite a Trotskyite but I was threatened with deportation once. (Mind you that was South Africa in apartheid heyday, so the bar was not very high…) Bit like Australia: if you are naughty we’ll deport you …plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose?

So I am not going to dye my hair (haven’t got enough left) or get a tattoo (so common these days and they look ghastly on flabby old bodies)

But I do have a floppy tatty hat which I love and a canary yellow waistcoat and salmon pink trousers and blue vellies!

I am such a rebel!

Orson Welles suggested: I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

That sounds good to me.