ZEG

In his latest offering, conservative Australian cartoonist ZEG has some choice words about the global warming scam




Fat and neurotic feminist needs a dash of Pauline wisdom

Overweight and chronically angry feminist Clementine Ford had a disabling neurotic crisis recently but seems to have learned nothing from it.  The Pauline wisdom she needs is in Acts 26:14, where Jesus advised Paul not to kick against the pricks -- i.e. not to resist the inevitable.

The inevitable is inborn male/female differences.  In our evolutionary past we have evolved to be sexual specialists. At it simplest men did the hunting and women looked after the babies. And evolution is slow to change. We are still born with those old cavemen specialisms.  That is who we are and how we instinctively feel

That all that specialization has become of little importance to survival in the last half century will have had no impact on our genetic propensities whatever. We will still be most comfortable in traditional roles. But Clem believes that such roles are now WRONG and resists them

And that can only result in discomfort and dissatisfaction for all concerned. Expectations will continuously be at odds with natural inclinations. Human beings are very flexible so some degree of accommodation to modern reality is possible but all flexibility has its limits

And Clemmie is one of those who kick against the pricks of her inborn feminine instincts.  She describes a lot of that below.  And it is obviously stressful for her.  No wonder she had a serious anxiety breakdown recently. 

And against all probability, it appears that she has a partner, probably male. He must be a Trojan.  So her hormones are in good order even if her mind is troubled.  And the account she gives of her life with him makes it clear that therein lies another source of stress.

She would be a much happier lady if she went right along with her female instincts instead of obeying her feminist ideology.  But is it ideology?  She has an impeccably conservative father so she would not have got it from him. So she probably just is chronically angry, in the typical Leftist style. There appears to be no cure for that. 


I recently spent the afternoon in a park with a friend and our kids. It was a lusciously sunny and warm day, the first in a long time after such a cold winter. It was the kind of day that you want to prolong, so we decided to do exactly that and headed back to her house to drink wine and watch the sun set.

While the kids set about destroying the house on arrival, I asked my friend if I could use her bathroom. "Sure," she replied. "Just give me a second to make sure it looks okay."

I waited while she dashed in to make sure there were no suspicious marks in the bowl (or on the seat) or a forgotten flush. She came out a minute later and gave me the all-clear.

I knew this was what she was doing, because it's exactly what I do when guests ask to use my bathroom. I also apologise automatically for the general mess of the house, for any dishes that might be left dirty in the sink or food crumbs strewn across the counter. I do all that despite the fact that not only do I not care about the state of any of my friends' houses, I also loathe the gendered expectation that these are things women should care about, along with making sure everyone in the house has healthy food to eat and the kids' clothes are neatly ironed and stain-free.

Like many women – and feminist women in particular – I'm interested in what perpetuates this sense of obligation even in households populated by people who are arguably aware of the existence of these pressures and the essential inequality of them. Why do we feel that a dirty toilet will reflect badly on us alone, and not also on the people we live with (particularly if those other people happen to be men, whether partners or housemates)? I suspect there is a residual fear of being perceived as filthy ourselves or inattentive to the filth of those men, whose domestic harmony we're expected to take responsibility for.

Still, I'm far from the first woman to write about the gendered division of labour. By now, only the most obstinate and wilfully ignorant of people are in denial of the fact that women perform the bulk of the world's unpaid labour, even in the countries these same people love to believe are matriarchal dictatorships. Just recently, Gemma Hartley wrote about women's emotional labour in the domestic sphere for Harper's Bazaar. In reflecting on the example she and her husband were setting for their children (one girl and two boys), Hartley wrote: "I find myself worrying about how the mental load bore [sic] almost exclusively by women translates into a deep gender inequality that is hard to shake on the personal level. It is difficult to model an egalitarian household for my children when it is clear that I am the household manager, tasked with delegating any and all household responsibilities, or taking on the full load myself. I can feel my sons and daughter watching our dynamic all the time, gleaning the roles for themselves as they grow older."

Hartley is just one of many women in heterosexual partnerships who feels obliged to "manage" not just the workload of the home she shares with at least one other adult, but also the way her home is perceived by other people. I'm speaking generally here (and before I go further, let it be known that I acknowledge there are always outliers to every situation, which means of course there are house-proud men out there), but I've rarely, if ever, encountered the same level of domestic embarrassment in my male friends in hetero partnerships as I have in my female ones. They don't give the toilet a quick once over to check for rogue floaters, nor do they offer apology for presiding over a living room that actually looks lived-in.

And it isn't just that men who partner with women suddenly give up on doing the domestic workload they performed rigidly before. Let's just say that of all the men I slept with in my 20s, not a single one of them ever apologised for the fact that they were clearly sleeping on sheets that had never been washed and definitely smelled like it. Meanwhile, the majority of western women are conditioned to apologise to potential paramours for egregious crimes like having unshaven legs. (And if you don't think that's true, think of the Swedish model who recently posted a photograph of herself with hairy legs and received a slew of rape threats.)

Emily Shire nails it here when she writes that women are judged more for having messy houses and unkempt children than men are. In fact, I would wager the average person wouldn't even think to implicate husbands and fathers in either of these things, because the cultural stereotypes around both still hinges on a woman's worth or lack thereof.

So what's the solution?

In my own home, having open lines of communication has been hugely rewarding. My partner and I have ongoing conversations about how we can model equality to our son, from having set weekdays in which we both act as primary parent to making sure he sees both of us doing things like vacuuming, washing clothes and cleaning the kitchen. We each do our own laundry and often cook or organise our own dinner, both of which stop these jobs from being naturally assumed to be my responsibility. I'm not afraid to have endless discussions about our domestic dynamic, even though I find it boring and frustrating most of the time. Because this seems to be largely why women in hetero partnerships just throw their hands up and conform to gendered domestic expectations – it's too tiring and dull to keep having the same conversations over and over, so we just end up giving up and doing it. 

I'm not saying we should stop doing the toilet once-over when guests arrive. But start questioning your partners if you notice they never do it. And for goodness sake, stop washing men's clothes for them.

SOURCE





Is 62 per cent turnout enough to carry the same-sex marriage vote?

I would argue that the amount of bullying, coercion and vote faking from the "Yes" side invalidates the result

AS THE closing date for the same-sex marriage postal survey nears, thoughts are turning to the final result and what percentage needs to be achieved for it to be accepted.

More than 16 million survey forms have been posted to eligible Australians and an estimated 10 million survey forms had been returned as at Friday, October 6.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the turnout represents 62.5 per cent of Australians.

But is this enough? It’s hard to tell.

ABC election analyst Antony Green told news.com.au that turnout for the Brexit vote in the UK was 72.2 per cent and just 51.9 per cent voted to leave.

“No one has questioned that result even though it was relatively close,” Mr Green said.

He said the Brexit vote was a good comparison because it was a yes/no vote and people were also voting for a principle, not a piece of legislation.

“No one knew what Brexit actually meant and they still don’t,” he said.

In comparison the Irish referendum to approve same-sex marriage was also carried with 60.52 per cent turnout and 62.07 of the vote.

Mr Green said he expected the turnout for Australia’s postal survey to be similar to the Brexit vote, judging from the numbers that had already returned their surveys.

He said how much of a turnout was required to make the vote “legitimate” depended on how people measured these things.

However, he was confident Yes was likely to win. “Yes is still 20 per cent ahead (according to recent polls), no turnout (figure) is going to turn that into a No vote,” he said.

While polls ahead of Brexit were wrong, Mr Green said they were only off by about 2 to 3 per cent — although in that case it was enough to turn the result. “They weren’t wrong by 15 per cent,” he said.

But one expert is unsure that achieving a good turnout and a “simple majority” will be enough to silence critics in Australia.

It is not compulsory to vote in the postal survey which means people not happy with the result could still argue it doesn’t represent all of Australia’s views.

Political scientist Sarah Maddison of the University of Melbourne said it would require leadership from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to legitimise the vote.

“I think there is very little question the Yes vote will be in the majority but the size of the majority is going to count in terms of the silencing the conservatives,” she said.

“I think this has been one of the problems with the survey from the outset: there has been no clear guidance from the government about what could constitute a legitimate response.”

Even if the turnout reached 70 per cent as Mr Green predicts, Prof Maddison was sceptical a simple 51 per cent majority would decide the issue.

“It is very hard to imagine (prominent No voter) Lyle Shelton accepting graciously that he and his colleagues in the No camp are in the minority,” she said.

“No campaigners and radical conservatives will keep pushing to have their reactionary position maintained in policy decisions.”

Prof Maddison wasn’t sure what percentage the Yes vote would have to reach in order to silence critics, and said she would be “picking a number out of the air”.

“Certainly 51 per cent won’t do it. I don’t think anyone involved in the campaign for marriage equality thinks that a simple majority will end the matter.

“Maybe it’s 60 per cent, maybe it’s 70 per cent, I don’t know. We’ve lacked clear leadership from the Prime Minister on that question,” she said.

In past statements, Mr Turnbull has said he believes the result would be respected in parliament.

“If the postal vote is carried, the legalisation of same-sex marriage will sail through the Parliament, believe me,” he told 2DayFM.

But Prof Maddison said it would still require leadership.  “This has to be the end of the matter but this has to come from our political leaders,” she said.

She urged people who had not yet voted not to be complacent. “We need as many Australians as possible (to vote) to have as much validity as possible to make sure this question is answered once and for all.”

SOURCE






Time for climate scientists to produce evidence that carbon dioxide emissions affect climate

By Rowan Dean, a prominent Australian advertising man and an energetic conservative commentator much seen in TV discussions

IT’S time for so-called climate scientists to either cough up one single, solitary shred of genuine scientific evidence that proves that the climate is being changed by mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions, or ‘fess up and admit that the whole thing is a gigantic hoax.

That’s the bottom line.

Asked at the beginning of this year for one of those “predictions for 2017”, I claimed that this would be the year the Australian public wakes up and realises they are being hoodwinked by the whole climate change/renewables scam.

Data that “climate experts” fail to provide is that Earth has frequently warmed up, cooled down, and warmed up again.
I told Paul Murray’s lively late night TV show on Sky News that 2017 would be the year the climate con comes to an end. So how is my prediction going?

Well, so far this year two extraordinary books have come out, and one insightful film, that support my argument that the public is indeed waking up to the tricks of the climate change/renewables fraud.

Climate Change: The Facts 2017, a series of essays published by the Institute of Public Affairs, not only debunks the entire scare campaign about the Great Barrier Reef, but in a piece of superb investigative work Dr Jennifer Marohasy exposes the Bureau of Meteorology’s embarrassing manipulation of temperature data.

The book has sold out three print runs and gained serious attention overseas. Then came the surprise hit film Climate Hustle by sceptic Marc Morano, which was, ironically, more popular than the scaremongering Al Gore film it challenged.

And this week a new book is coming out by Australia’s Ian Plimer, one of our greatest geologists.

Called Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Rip-off it’s a must-read for anyone who still believes they’re saving the planet by paying through the nose for electricity.

Because you’re not. The planet is doing just fine with or without your financial impoverishment, and whatever changes may or may not be occurring to our planet’s climate, it almost certainly has nothing to do with your gas bill.

As Plimer points out, Australia is blessed with an abundance of the cheapest and cleanest energy on the planet, yet we are paying the highest electricity prices on earth.

Put simply, that doesn’t add up. And when something smells fishy, it’s because it is.

Australian taxpayers are being ripped off by deluded luvvies (Turnbull is one of the worst) pandering to the voracious leeches of the renewables industry and their greedy investors gorging on a bloated smorgasbord of your cash which they siphon up via subsidies, targets and bills.

Yet, as Plimer points out, it’s all in vain. With rigorous scientific and geological data, Plimer provides evidence that the climate “experts” fail to provide. He shows that Earth has frequently warmed up, cooled down, and warmed up again, but this process has never had anything to do with CO2.

Indeed, the geological evidence is that Earth’s coldest periods often had far higher atmospheric CO2 levels than we do now. What’s more, the mild warming we may currently be experiencing (we are, geologically speaking, still in an Ice Age and moving slowly out of it) has always been associated in human history with increased health, wealth, fertility and prosperity.

Mankind’s most successful times have been in periods such as the Roman era or medieval warming when the Earth was warmer than it is now.

Indeed, we are currently seeing flora around the globe getting greener and more fertile as CO2 levels increase.

Meanwhile, desperately trying to reinvigorate the whole tiresome climate change alarmist nonsense, this year we got Al Gore’s latest horror flick-cum-ad for his own renewables investments An Inconvenient Sequel (what an unoriginal title).

Showing suitably terrifying footage of storms, floods and hurricanes, the film was a box-office flop that received lacklustre reviews at best. Oh, and the other day an ANU “climate scientist” made the hysterical (and unprovable) claim that Sydney and Melbourne “could” roast in 50 degree summers by the end of the century.

That’s it. And still no proof that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet. Still no proof that a warmer planet can be avoided, or would actually be a bad thing. Still no proof that removing civilisation’s reliance on coal is even remotely feasible. Still no proof that even if we did do all the things climate fanatics want us to do and destroy our economies and lifestyles, it would make the slightest difference to global temperatures. And still no proof that we even need to.

The biggest con of all is that Australian voters are denied any political leadership courageous enough to call out this scaremongering for what it is, cancel all our subsidies, targets and the Paris Agreement, which only enrich renewables carpetbaggers, and return us to a land blessed with cheap, abundant energy.

SOURCE






Why is Satyajit Das so angry about Australia’s economic growth?

As Australia closes in on the world record for recession-free economic growth, expect a few contrarian pieces attacking us. “26 Recession-Free Years Hide a Darker Picture for Australia” was one Bloomberg piece this week.

But in an early bid to dominate the field, our own Satyajit Das has let rip with a cracking piece about how we’re basically a bunch of lazy racist frauds. In a piece in the Financial Review today with the sinister title “Australia’s luck is running out”, Das — a former banker turned author and commentator, manages to combine that staple of Fairfax, the property bubble/We’re All Rooned piece with a broader critique of the Australian economy. Das says we rely too much on mining, we have a huge property bubble, too much debt, we pay ourselves too much and our productivity growth is too low, we depend too much on foreign capital.

Rather than pointing out evidence about wages growth, productivity and our superannuation pool that contradicts Das’ economic critique, or noting the strange job snobbery that regards mining and construction as an inferior source of growth, it’s more exciting to move onto his moral critique. Australia, you see, are a bunch of racists and busybodies.

“the widespread view that it is a European Christian nation, complicate its trading relationship to Asia… Australian criticism of regional governments over human rights and capital punishment is seen as interference in domestic affairs… Australia’s “Whites Only” immigration policy ended only in the early 1970s.”

You can just see Chinese steel manufacturers rubbing their chins. “Hmmm… this Australian iron ore — it’s from a European Christian nation that only ended a racist immigration policy fifty years ago. I don’t think we can use it.” It’s also amusing that Das wants to have it both ways — he argues Australia’s (for him, inconvenient) economic growth of recent years has been heavily reliant on immigration. But we’re also racists and xenophobes at the same time.

Why would Das be so angry about Australia’s growth? It wouldn’t have something to do with the fact that our economy, along with the rest of the world, has stubbornly refused to follow his predictions, would it? After all, Das is, in the words of one economic commentator in 2015, “one of the gloomiest financial commentators I know… [who] has succeeded at taking his economic pessimism to a new level.” Das, to be found opining at the ABC, or in various online outlets, has regularly warned of another financial crisis that will lead to a depression worse than the 1930s, of falling international growth, of “another great recession”.  It must be infuriating for Das that the global economy has been picking up momentum all year and the Australian economy, too, is accelerating and delivering very strong jobs growth.

It’s OK, Satyajit — keep on with the perma-bear act, you’re bound to be right one of these years.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here