Word of the day

Albescent – growing or shading into white; becoming white; whitish; tending towards white; being of the achromatic color of maximum lightness; having little or no hue owing to reflection of almost all incident light.

Sowell says

Judges have made it increasingly difficult for American society to protect itself from anyone or anything, by creating new “rights” out of thin air and by leaning over backward for the benefit of those with anti-social behavior.

In short, judges have taken the law into their…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 31, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day author and classical philologist Marie Delcourt (1891-1979) of Belgium, the first woman lecturer at the University of Liége and a member of La Dame Blanche, the intelligence network created by MI6 to report German troops and arms movements on Belgian railways… pic.twitter.com/LnpJ8CNXW0

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) June 7, 2024

NZ’s roll of shame

Another baby has been added to New Zealand’s roll of shame:

A homicide investigation has been launched after the death of a baby in Waikato this weekend.

Police detective inspector Graham Pitkethley said a 10-month-old boy was brought in an unconscious state to Te Kūiti Hospital on Saturday afternoon, where staff alerted police.

“Tragically, despite the best efforts of medical personnel, he was unable to be resuscitated,” Pitkethley said.

An initial examination showed the child suffered violent, blunt-force trauma.

“We believe these injuries were not accidental,” Pitkethley said. . . 

If the injuries weren’t accidental someone caused them and was responsible for them and this baby is another tragic statistic:

. . . How many children are killed at the hands of those who care for them in New Zealand each year?

Tragically, on average, one child dies every five weeks at the hands of those who have responsibility for their care. Most of these children are under five years old, and the largest group of children killed are less than a year old.

Source: Doolan, M. (2004). Child death by homicide in New Zealand: An examination of incidence and child protection actions. Canterbury University.

How many children are admitted to Starship Hospital each month with serious head injuries?

On average there’s a child in Starship Hospital once a month with a serious head injury from child abuse that almost invariably has caused brain damage.

Source: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/11/starship-doctor-speaks-out-about-child-abuse-in-new-zealand-plea-to-new-government.html . . 

Every time it happens there are calls for action and in spite of that the abuse keeps happening.

 

 

Quotes of the week

The Catholic church has fewer holy days of obligation than the modern LGBTQI+ movement, and is arguably a lot less guilt-tripping. – Kathleen Stock

Dedicated days, crusader pennants, mystical symbols and elaborate robes: isn’t this all sounding a bit… religious? The advocacy group Christian Concern certainly thinks so. It has started a petition against the Regent Street paraphernalia, arguing that the presence of flags “proclaims a secular religious ideology” and “creates division between those people who do not recognise themselves under the umbrella of its myriad causes and those that do”. While evidence for the first point is strong, I’m not sure the second, about societal division, works, but only because there’s practically no one left on the planet who doesn’t technically count as a member of the LGBTQI+ community.

Just as early Christians made conversion easier by mimicking pagan rituals, so the rainbow gang has relaxed its entry criteria to ensure that straight people feel part of things too. – Kathleen Stock

What is true, though, is that some people feel unwelcome at Pride parades. Paradoxically, many are lesbians and gay men, ideologically excluded because of their antiquated beliefs about the importance of biological sex to the definition of sexual orientation. For them, a male person can never be counted as a lesbian, no matter how high the heels or pink the lipstick, and even the most hirsute or muscular of female people could not accurately be called a gay man. They believe that stating they are attracted to people of the same sex, not the same gender identity, matters — particularly on behalf of confused young people coming to terms with their atypical orientation.

Yet the organiser, Pride in London, has made it obvious there’s no place for such heinous views at its events. The code of conduct even goes rogue from official Equality Act wording: “gender” and “gender identity” are listed as protected characteristics that may not, it is stressed, be “targeted” by “signage”. In plain terms: lesbians may not march with placards saying things like “lesbian = female homosexual”.  – Kathleen Stock

And the suffocating presence of transactivism is not the only reason why some are put off. There are also those who don’t enjoy Pride events because, to put it frankly, it’s a sausage fest. Male sexuality runs the show, which is fine if your thing is nudity, drag, bear tents and grown men dressed as puppies, but boring and slightly alienating if it isn’t. While straight women seem to treat the day as a kind of thrillingly exotic safari, lesbians I know, and especially those with children, can get quite jaded by the outrageousness and kink — and it doesn’t make them prudes. God knows how the asexuals feel.

All religions have their heretics and apostates. My main objection to Pride is that, like some impenetrable sacred ritual left over from an earlier era, I don’t know what it’s for. I know the official answer: to give sexual minorities positive representation in a largely straight world. But why do they (we) still need this in modern Britain? Thanks to earlier battles, gay men and lesbians have achieved full legal recognition, trans people are recognised under two laws, and violence and discrimination is thankfully low in a mostly tolerant society — and even if it wasn’t, it would be a stretch to say that Pride parades, in particular, were somehow helping hold back the tide. On the contrary, it’s my impression that the constant nagging and flagging from activists is making some onlookers, otherwise well-disposed to LGBT groups, feel distinctly resentful. –

Defenders of Pride Month act as if in criticising it, you must secretly want to bring in head-shaving in the public square instead. Personally, though, I’m not going to take lessons about the nature of gay or lesbian pride from the sort of organisation that has a fit of the vapours when anyone mentions the word “homosexual”. Of course we should feel proud, wherever it’s appropriate, but we don’t need a special month of our own to get permission. Chant it with me now: “Two, four, six, eight, Pride events are out of date.” – Kathleen Stock

It [politics] is about principles and ideals, but it’s also about telling a compelling story and understanding what makes people tick. 

At its heart, politics is just sales. 

You can’t succeed if you see anyone not immediately over-awed by your argument as either a monster or an idiot. People who think like this inevitably fail… except Richard Nixon (there’s always a few outliers).  – Haimona Gray

Good people, real people, ones who treat others with class and dignity, are worth having in your life regardless of what others might think about it.

Because of seeing the best, and worst, in people involved in politics I have come to appreciate people others think I shouldn’t.

Yes, politics matters, but it is not an excuse to be awful or to lose your humanity.  – Haimona Gray

 I’ve covered this turf before and will sadly have to do so again, but I’m comforted anytime I get to talk to X, Y, or Z about it. Not because they confirm my prejudices or agree with me, but because we can disagree without it becoming toxic. 

They, by virtue of understanding that being mad alone changes nothing, can acknowledge there are multiple sides to each issue and that success only comes from crafting a compelling pitch. 

It’s a competition, but it doesn’t need to be a divisive or hateful one. We may be on different teams, for now, but we’re all in the same game and share the same passion for said game. 

Some things in politics are complicated, but one thing isn’t – either you understand it is a contest of ideas and strategies, not a battle for souls, or a literal war, and you come to terms with that, or you don’t. 

If you don’t you’ll always be outside, pissing in the wind and wondering why it’s only raining on you.  – Haimona Gray

The image of the unalloyed perfection of American and British democracy, created in some people’s minds by Normandy, is wide of the mark.

That, however, cannot diminish the victory won 80 years ago – and its crucial importance to banishing Nazism from Europe. Eighty years on, D-Day reminds us that democracy always has to be fought for. – James Woudhuysen

DEI is when you give people who aren’t qualified opportunities they don’t deserve and then silence anyone who notices. – Konstantin Kisin

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, said Juliet, but the legislature of Illinois does not agree. It believes that the word “offender” should now be replaced by the term “justice-impacted individual.” Among other things, this is typical of the verbal inflation so beloved of apparatchiks and other political timeservers to disguise what they do or fail to do. –  Theodore Dalrymple 

In order further to obfuscate and divorce official from normal usage, the justice-impacted individual will soon no doubt become the J.-I. I., thus placing a further barrier to comprehensibility in official pronouncements about crime and criminality. –

What is behind these bizarreries? I think one can trace it back to a whole conception of what it is to be a human being and ultimately to philosophical determinism—about others, of course, never about oneself.

In the first place, there is the belief that the criminals, poor lambs, cannot do otherwise than they do. They are the Luthers of crime: “Here I steal, I can do no other.” And, of course, since the great majority of them are poor, or relatively poor, it is only compassionate (so the argument runs) to extend maximal understanding toward them.

So firmly is the eye attached to one end of the telescope that it is almost always forgotten that the great majority of criminals’ victims are also poor, and since most criminals commit considerably more than one crime, it follows that victims greatly outnumber perpetrators. Being poor is not in itself evidence of criminality, and extenuating crime away that is committed by the relatively impoverished, to such an extent that crime is regarded, even by the law, as only natural, in the sense that eating is a natural response to hunger, is to do the poor no favours. In fact, it is both condescending about their possibilities, indeed their very humanity, and creative of more victims. – Theodore Dalrymple 

The root cause of crime, its condition both necessary and sufficient, is the decision to commit it. Without such a decision there is no crime, for no one can be held responsible for what he did not decide to do, the consequences of which he could not reasonably have foreseen. – Theodore Dalrymple 

One cannot think of oneself in a deterministic fashion, only of others, and this is illogical, unless one believes oneself uniquely in the universe to be possessed of free will—not a modest philosophical position to take. The liberal (in the penological sense) takes an intermediate position: People like himself, or those whom he thinks ought to be like himself, are possessed of free will, but everyone else, particularly the criminal, is the pure product of his circumstances. Such a liberal divides humanity into two, the real humans like him, and the rest, the automata, or what used by snobs to be called the hoi polloi.

That the criminal justice system is highly imperfect is true; that circumstances may be extenuating, from slightly to greatly, is true; but that criminals are “justice-impacted individuals” is an implicit lie based on a false philosophy. – Theodore Dalrymple 

The government is always going to win a showdown between order and anarchy.

Not every government is lucky enough to be gifted a parliamentary opponent who effortlessly makes its leaders look sagacious and principled. Someone who immediately makes them look competent and sane in comparison, and very much the adults in the room.

With his inflammatory slogans, theatrics and intimidating posturing, Rawiri Waititi ably and enthusiastically fulfils that role in New Zealand’s 54th Parliament (albeit with stiff competition from others in Te Pāti Māori, including his co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer). – Graham Adams 

Not least, it looks as if he may become a thorn in the side of Labour and the Greens, who are on notice for their refusal to call out his overt racism. And he presents a problem too for the legacy media and their friends in the “disinformation” industry over their reluctance to condemn his language as “racist hate speech” in the way they regularly do to others — particularly those characterised as “far-right”. Apparently the “far-left” is automatically exempt from such criticism. – Graham Adams 

Listening to Waititi, who would guess that only one in six enrolled Māori gave Te Pāti Māori their party vote at October’s election (or that it gained only 3.08 per cent of the national vote)? His assumption that he can speak on behalf of Māori generally is risible. – Graham Adams 

Waititi, of course, talks freely about revolution outside Parliament as well as within it, and his wife, Kiri, added to the volatile mix last week with an expletive-laden rant on TikTok alleging the government was determined to “get rid” of Māori and boasting that a unified Māori movement would have the ability to “overthrow any government”. They are, of course, playing to the gallery but they are also playing straight into the hands of Peters, Seymour and Luxon. You don’t have to be an experienced political analyst to know just how attractive an ordered democracy is to voters presented with the spectre of anarchy.

Unfortunately for Chris Hipkins and Labour, the party’s views about democracy and Māori nationalism have not been dissimilar to those of Te Pāti Māori. During Labour’s six-year rule between 2017 and 2023, senior ministers — including Willie Jackson and Grant Robertson — endorsed the radical idea that “democracy has changed”, while promoting co-governance with iwi across a range of policies from Three Waters and the Māori Health Authority to the RMA reforms and the Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Act. – Graham Adams 

Sooner or later, Labour is going to have to either publicly repudiate Te Pāti Māori’s push to turbo-charge Māori separatism or endorse it. If the party doesn’t publicly distance itself from that agenda, it will be unelectable in 2026, and beyond. –

Māori leaders outside the party are already stepping away from Waititi’s revolutionary push. Asked at the national hui held at Hastings on Friday what he thought about the proposal for a Māori Parliament, Kiingi Tūheitia said: “Actually, it frightens me.”

The proposal, and any other similarly radical ideas Waititi espouses, will just as surely alarm most voters in the run-up to the next election. Chris Hipkins — or whoever is leading his party by then — is going to have a very tough job convincing a majority of New Zealanders that a coalition between Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori will be an appealing and stable alliance that has the best interests of all New Zealanders at its heart.

What ridiculous climate fearmongering from UN

‘We’re the meteor causing earth’s extinction’
‘We’re on a climate highway to hell’

The reality?

Climate is a problem, but development is much more important: we live longer, better educated, and climate disasters kill ever fewer https://t.co/UMYDkY342q

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) June 6, 2024

So, I notice that those who are against everything, basically anything that comes out of the coalition government, they’re against, but in this particular case, those who are against said, oh, it means they’re not going to get as much sick leave as the full-time worker. That sick leave will be reduced under this bill. Well, yes, if you’re working two days a week, should you get the same amount of sick leave as somebody who works full-time? In some cases, right now, the government of unintended consequences saw somebody getting 20 days when they should have only had ten. That seems fair, doesn’t it? – Kerre Woodham

The point I’ve always made is: hang on, Maori are much more likely to be the victims of crimes and so will benefit most from these changes.

The statistics that show Māori are a highly victimised group “just reinforced what I’ve always thought. – Paul Goldsmith

The reality is that New Zealand was isolated from the rest of the world for centuries and at some point it had to reconnect with the rest of the world – and that happened in the 19th century. That was always going to be a very traumatic experience,” Goldsmith told Newshub Nation at the time.

With it came all sorts of wonderful things such as literacy, such as the freedom and democracy that have come through. So yep, there’s good and bad. – Paul Goldsmith

There’s no question that the process of colonisation and history very much impact on today’s lives and individuals and communities. I don’t think anybody would deny that. – Paul Goldsmith

In politics, you are constantly meeting people and constantly having your views challenged, and I think it’s one of the great privileges of being a minister of the Crown and and a member of Parliament.

And so there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t have somebody challenging my views but I think it is important to be consistent and coherent. – Paul Goldsmith

I suppose I come from a more practical lens,” he tells Newsroom. “You know, I don’t know what decolonisation of the justice system means in practical terms. – Paul Goldsmith

The whole point of politics is that we should be responsive to the concerns of the community,” Goldsmith says.

We live in relative safety and we want to preserve that. – Paul Goldsmith

That is all I want to be known as – Mother to Erik, Lisa and Jacob. But kids – they walk all over your heart and leave you. I have my photography as compensation for what – life, living, itself? – Ans Westra