The Great War
Published on 1 Oct 2018In this episode of Out of the Ether, we read a few excellent comments about WW1 Trucks and the Palestine Front.
October 2, 2018
Stories From The Palestine Front – More About WW1 Trucks I OUT OF THE ETHER
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August 29, 2018
Out of Context: How to Make Bad History Worse | World War 2
Knowing Better
Published on 5 Mar 2018Churchill was a genocidal maniac. The Japanese were rounded up into concentration camps. FDR let Pearl Harbor happen. When you take history out of context, you can make it say whatever you want – including making bad things worse.
A long list of links to sources is included, but I’m too lazy to re-link ’em all, just go to YouTube to see them. Back in 2009, I did a short fisking of Pat Buchanan’s hit-piece on Churchill’s “reponsibility” for the outbreak of WW2.
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August 26, 2018
Australia’s most recent (as of Saturday) spill
Mark Steyn on the rather different and abrupt Australian method of defenestrating the sitting Prime Minister:
If you saw me on stage for our live show from the Manning Conference in Ottawa last year, you’ll know I was doing a lot of Canadian sesquicentennial gags that day: “It’s a hundred and fifty years since the Tory leadership race began…” and so forth. That was a very slight exaggeration, but it is a fact that the post-Harper Conservative Party decided to have a multi-year campaign to succeed him. In Australia, by contrast, a leadership race in the (supposedly) right-of-center Liberal Party lasts 150 seconds, if you’re lucky. They’re called “spills”, which is not a reference to the blood on the floor but is an Aussie coinage of at least three quarters of a century’s vintage for a suddenly called election: Like many of the Lucky Country’s contributions to the language, it’s very good, conveying the sense not of an ordered poll but of something more spasmodic, capricious and convulsive.
Don’t ask me why the two senior dominions of the Westminster system wound up with diametrically opposed systems of selecting their leaders.
Their chums in the UK Tories have much calmer contests in which all the alternative candidates self-destruct leaving Theresa May to inherit by default. The former Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has just said he doesn’t think increasing the party membership (I believe there are still seven nonagenarian paying subscribers) is the answer because a lot of beastly UKIP types might sign up and there goes the neighborhood. Given the results of these various contests, you might as well shuffle the winners and systems randomly between the three countries and see if you could do any worse.New Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (photo from January 2014).
Via Wikimedia Commons.At any rate, on Friday the latest Canberra spillage broke out and kiboshed the PM, Malcolm Turnbull. Unlike the American three-month “peaceful transfer of power”, under which the Deep State has all the time in the world to set up its plans to subvert the incoming leader, in the Australian system the new bloke has twenty minutes to freshen up in the men’s room before he’s sworn in […]
Malcolm Turnbull is Australia’s most famous republican, so he’ll appreciate Oliver Cromwell’s famous words to the Rump Parliament in 1653:
You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately. Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!
It’s remarkable how long it took Turnbull’s Rump to say as much to him. I wrote yesterday that, just as Tony Abbott had been toppled by Malcolm Turnbull, so Turnbull has now been toppled by Scott Morrison. And immediately a gazillion antipodean members of The Mark Steyn Club wrote to explain that no, no, Turnbull was toppled by Peter Dutton, the conservative who moved against him, but, before he could ascend the drive-thru throne, Dutton was himself toppled by Morrison, who was a so-called compromise candidate put up by frantic Turnbullites as they were being fitted for their lamppost ropes. So, if you’ll forgive the analogy, if Turnbull is Mrs Thatcher, Scott Morrison is the John Major put up to ward off Peter Dutton’s Michael Heseltine. My old pal Julie Bishop, meanwhile, after years of serving as loyal deputy to Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull (first time round), Brendan Nelson, Andrew Peacock, Malcolm Fraser, Sir William McMahon, Harold Holt, Sir Robert Menzies, etc, etc, finally ran for the leadership herself, and came a poor third: She had become the Black Widow of the Liberal Party – she mates, she kills – but this time it all went awry and she shot the venom into her own leg. It’s hard to remember that in some polls of 2015, when she agreed to support Turnbull’s overthrow of Abbott, she was more popular than either man. A mere three years on from what was supposed to be a swift cleansing knife in the back, the entire party is gangrenous and pustulating.
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August 3, 2018
Australian women and the military
Like many other western nations, the Australian government has mandated higher quotas for women in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), and it’s the military’s job to make it work:
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is comprised of the three military services: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force, all of which have been subject to increasing criticism in recent years for being dominated by straight white men. This, it is alleged, makes them, ipso facto, a petri dish for ‘toxic masculinity.’ That allegation has been lent apparent weight by the reporting of multiple gender-related scandals including the ADFA sex scandal, Jedi Council, various hazing rituals, death symbols, and HMAS Success, to name a few.
Some of this criticism has been so strident that past and present military leaders have had no choice but to commission reports and inquiries into standards and practices within the ADF, and to implement various culture change initiatives including Pathway to Change, New Generation Navy, Adaptive Army, and New Horizon. All of these initiatives place significant emphasis on greater integration of women into the respective services but offer limited reasoning other than catch-phrases like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘modernising.’
All three services are now working toward a target of female representation by 2023. The Navy and Air Force are working toward 25 percent, and the Army is working toward 15 percent. The progress toward these targets, among other commentary on gender issues in the ADF, is detailed in the annual “Women in the ADF” report.
[…]
Concerns with preferential treatment do not end at the recruitment process. Fitness standards for service personnel also differ according to gender, as well as service and age. This means equally-aged men and women in each service are expected to attain different standards of fitness. This, in itself, represents a challenge since both genders complete fitness tests together and are therefore directly exposed to this double-standard from their first day of service. In spite of this policy, many servicewomen elect to continue their fitness assessment to the same level as their male colleagues which is one small contribution to reducing the cultural divide.
The rejection of preferential treatment in the ADF is not just isolated to annual fitness tests. In fact, the 2012 “Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Force” led by then-Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick includes the following passage:
ADF women strongly believe that when they are singled out, it makes it harder for them to fit in. Highly resistant to any initiative being directed solely at them, ADF women view identical—not differential—treatment as the path to delivering equality. This is most likely in part to avoid the backlash that inevitably trails any treatment perceived as ‘preferential’…
Despite acknowledging this, many of Broderick’s recommendations included gender-specific initiatives that risk being perceived as further preferential treatment, driving a greater wedge between male and female ADF personnel. Perhaps the most troubling recommendation is the targeted recruitment and transfer of women to male-dominated professions that have less female uptake. In practise, this risks techniques akin to coaxing in the recruitment process if these roles are not the preferred choice of female candidates.
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July 29, 2018
A poor tank, a useless tank, and the worst tank in the world
Lindybeige
Published on 10 Jul 2018Tigers? Why talk about Tigers when one can talk about tanks that were even worse? More tank banter with The Chieftain.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LindybeigeA low-tech tank with fragile armour, a tank that never saw the enemy, and the tank used to teach how not to build tanks. Thanks to Nicholas Moran (AKA The Chieftain) and Matt Sampson, the cameraman at Bovington Tank Museum.
The third of these three segments was shot with my new camera, and it really shows.
Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.
▼ Follow me…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindybeige I may have some drivel to contribute to the Twittersphere, plus you get notice of uploads.
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July 18, 2018
QotD: Understanding how company profits can be used
In its fight against company tax cuts, [the Australian] Labor [Party] peddles the myth that company tax cuts are a windfall for big businesses and their shareholders, this week even launching ads suggesting [Australian PM] Malcolm Turnbull supports company tax cuts because he’ll personally benefit as an investor.
It’s a myth easily debunked. Think about it. What exactly can a company do with the extra money retained from paying less tax? It can only spend profits in two ways: paying dividends to shareholders or spending more on its operations.
Dividends are subject to tax, including withholding tax for foreign shareholders. Suggesting Turnbull or any other investor will get a windfall is a blatant lie.
In fact, many shareholders will pay more tax to make up the greater difference between the company tax rate and their own tax rate. That’s how dividend imputation works, as Labor well knows.
Alternatively, the company can spend more on things like technology, plant and equipment, funding research and development, expanding its sales force or opening new shopfronts or branches. In other words, more money paid in wages to workers and buying goods and services from suppliers.
All of that spending is also taxed. Workers pay income tax. GST [Goods and Services Tax] is collected on goods and services. Suppliers pay company tax or income tax themselves.
Lower company tax simply allows a business to use more of its money on something productive before the money is collected by government.
Nyunggai Warren Mundine, “Bill Shorten’s Labor would kill the reforms of Hawke and Keating”, Financial Review, 2018-06-26.
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July 17, 2018
Australian General John Monash I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1
The Great War
Published on 16 Jul 2018John Monash was one of the most capable commanders of World War 1 but his rise to fame didn’t come unopposed.
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July 6, 2018
The First Modern Battle – The Battle of Hamel I THE GREAT WAR Week 206
The Great War
Published on 5 Jul 2018Meet us at the Tank Museum: http://bit.ly/TankMuseumFanMeeting
The Battle of Hamel is considered as the first modern battle. Masterminded by Australian general John Monash, it included meticulous planning and integrated tanks, artillery, airplanes and infantry into one cohesive strategy.
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June 21, 2018
Extra Scenes! James May Explains Boomerangs | Earth Lab
BBC Earth Lab
Published on 23 Aug 2013James May discusses wings and propellers in these extra scenes from why boomerangs always come back.
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June 16, 2018
Who will think of the children Australian civil servants???
A tale from Catallaxy Files that’s sure to tug on your heartstrings:
In Canberra today, the Australian Greens announced a new tax fairness policy to remedy a design fault in the current system.
According to the Greens, it seems that it is only Australian public servants (local, state and Federal) who have been able to negotiate salary increases. As a consequence, because of their increased salaries, public servants are constantly pushed into higher tax brackets with the result that impost of bracket creep disproportionately falls on them.
Independent economic research has confirmed this phenomena. The Australia Institute economists have models showing that up to 80% of Commonwealth bracket creep tax receipts are paid by Australian public servants.
The Australian Greens believe that just because public servants earn more than private sector workers, they should not be required to pay more tax. Australian Greens’ Treasury spokesperson Adam Bandt said:
Australian public servants should not be forced to carry the brunt of government spending, including spending on other public sector salaries. This is a role for the private sector. It is manifestly unfair that just because public servants have been able to extract additional salaries that they should be forced into higher tax brackets.
In response, the Australia Greens have announced the Tax Equalisation and Redistribution Designation (TERD). Under the TERD, full-time, part-time and casual public sector workers will be subject to a separate tax schedule with a flat 15% rate for income above $500,000. Public servant income below $500,000 will be tax free.
Of course, it would be even simpler for accounting purposes just to exempt the civil service from paying tax at all — we might expect that to be a Green Party policy plank in a year or two (or even our own NDP, who have a lot of support from our unionized civil service).
Reminder: Catallaxy Files is not a parody site … although this particular story is a parody. Not following Australian politics closely, I only twigged when they got to the acronym for the program…
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June 5, 2018
The Landings At ANZAC Cove And Suvla Bay 1915 I THE GREAT WAR On The Road
The Great War
Published on 4 Jun 2018With thanks to Mr. Ali Serim for making this episode possible.
Indy and our guide Can Balcioglu explore the northern landings sites of Gallipoli where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed in 1915.
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June 3, 2018
“[Libertarians] are the great optimists of the world”
At Catallaxy Files, Australian senator David Leyonhjelm has a guest post, covering the contents of his maiden speech:
When I became the first overt libertarian to be elected to the Australian Senate in 2013, I thought I would use my maiden speech to try and sum up my world view. In this speech, I outlined why I believe the role of governments should be limited to the protection of life, liberty and private property. I tried to highlight the importance of personal responsibility, the dangers of creeping government interference, and the fundamental right to be left alone so long as we’re not harming anyone else.
If I were to give an elevator spiel to someone who wanted to know more about libertarianism, I’d simply tell them that “a libertarian believes you should be able to keep more of your stuff and be left the hell alone”. It sounds too simple to work, but it does, and that’s what is truly great about it.
When you look at nations that slash government red tape, protect private property rights and safeguard civil liberties, you see societies where opportunity abounds, people escape from poverty, and civil society flourishes.
In fact, these policies have done more to lift people out of poverty than any government program anywhere. Free markets and free trade are responsible for one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: from 35% of the world’s population living on US$1.90 or less in 1990 to 10.7% in 2013, according to the World Bank.
As I see it, those who believe in a limited role for governments and the promotion of personal freedom, aka libertarians, are the great optimists of the world. An optimist would never dream of dictating how and when someone else should do something unless it was to prevent harm to another person. An optimist would never look at someone more successful and seek to grab some of their income or wealth. An optimist would never want to see more restrictions on our everyday lives.
Conversely, people who seek to control others, to take more of their earnings, and to redistribute it according to their values, tend to have a pessimistic view. Only a pessimist could look at society and think, we need more control over the daily lives of others. Only a pessimist would think their better off neighbours should be taxed more heavily or that their hard earned should be used on even more government programs.
A lot of the people who fall on the left side of Australian politics will probably decry the fact that I think they’re pessimists. They’ll say they’re the ones with a true and caring heart, and that redistributing wealth is a lofty goal because it helps those in need. This is demonstrably false, as all the evidence shows, but I will happily admit that such people have a heart, if not brains. The old saying, “if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, but if you’re still a socialist at 40 you have no brains”, still explains a lot.
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June 1, 2018
Pushing back the beginnings of life on Earth
In Wired, Rebecca Boyle discusses the fossil record of life and how recent discoveries keep moving the date further and further back in Earth’s history:
In the arid, sun-soaked northwest corner of Australia, along the Tropic of Capricorn, the oldest face of Earth is exposed to the sky. Drive through the northern outback for a while, south of Port Hedlund on the coast, and you will come upon hills softened by time. They are part of a region called the Pilbara Craton, which formed about 3.5 billion years ago, when Earth was in its youth.
Look closer. From a seam in one of these hills, a jumble of ancient, orange-Creamsicle rock spills forth: a deposit called the Apex Chert. Within this rock, viewable only through a microscope, there are tiny tubes. Some look like petroglyphs depicting a tornado; others resemble flattened worms. They are among the most controversial rock samples ever collected on this planet, and they might represent some of the oldest forms of life ever found.
Last month, researchers lobbed another salvo in the decades-long debate about the nature of these forms. They are indeed fossil life, and they date to 3.465 billion years ago, according to John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin. If Valley and his team are right, the fossils imply that life diversified remarkably early in the planet’s tumultuous youth.
The fossils add to a wave of discoveries that point to a new story of ancient Earth. In the past year, separate teams of researchers have dug up, pulverized and laser-blasted pieces of rock that may contain life dating to 3.7, 3.95 and maybe even 4.28 billion years ago. All of these microfossils — or the chemical evidence associated with them — are hotly debated. But they all cast doubt on the traditional tale.
As that story goes, in the half-billion years after it formed, Earth was hellish and hot. The infant world would have been rent by volcanism and bombarded by other planetary crumbs, making for an environment so horrible, and so inhospitable to life, that the geologic era is named the Hadean, for the Greek underworld. Not until a particularly violent asteroid barrage ended some 3.8 billion years ago could life have evolved.
But this story is increasingly under fire. Many geologists now think Earth may have been tepid and watery from the outset. The oldest rocks in the record suggest parts of the planet’s crust had cooled and solidified by 4.4 billion years ago. Oxygen in those ancient rocks suggest the planet had water as far back as 4.3 billion years ago. And instead of an epochal, final bombardment, meteorite strikes might have slowly tapered off as the solar system settled into its current configuration.
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April 30, 2018
When “more recycling” is not the answer
Tim Worstall responds to the Australian environment minister on recycling:
Those with a modicum of economic training will be hard put to understand this story out of Australia. Recycling plastics has just got more expensive. So, therefore, the Federal environment minister, Josh Frydenburg, is insisting that everyone must recycle plastics more.
What? Even, whut?
No, no, demand curves slope downwards, when things become more expensive we do less of them, not more. It’s only in religion that we are urged to do even more of the more difficult things. Maybe that is it, we waste more money on plastics therefore we’re worshipping Gaia harder or something. Otherwise this is simply mad:
Plastic packaging on fresh food, groceries and a range of other items will be banned within seven years to cope with Chinese restrictions on Australian recyclables.
State and federal environment ministers held crisis talks in Melbourne yesterday and agreed to prioritise the development of a larger domestic recycling market, with Queensland councils alone expected to face a combined bill of more than $50 million in the face of the new Chinese restrictions.
China has decided, rightly or wrongly – I think wrongly but there it is – that they’ll not take plastic waste from outside the country. That means that everywhere else needs to work out what to do with the stuff they collected and used to send to China. OK, obviously, some sort of response is necessary. But more recycling isn’t it:
We need a national accounting system in which the cradle to the grave costs of waste are borne by the generators of it. We would do well to emulate Germany’s system. Producers and distributors are obliged to take back used packaging. This has resulted in a large reduction of packaging, and the development of a waste management industry which employs about 200,000 people. Municipal solid waste landfill has been reduced to virtually zero.
There’s the make work fallacy at play. Having 200,000 people handling waste is a cost, not a benefit, for that’s the labour of 199,997 more people being used than simply tipping it all into a furnace or a hole in the ground would require. And therefore we’re poorer by the loss of what those 199,997 people would produce if it weren’t for their worshipping Gaia for us.
[…]
As above the only reason I can think of to increase recycling as the costs of it also increase is because people are in the grip of a religious mania. Which isn’t, as much of history shows us, a great way to run a country really, religious mania.
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April 22, 2018
How to begin solving the common problems of big cities
Vladimir “Zeev” Vinokurov is writing about Australian cities in particular, but the same general analysis applies to many Canadian, American, and British urban areas as well:
… our economy and population are growing, and the resulting congestion is costing us thousands of dollars per year individually, and billions to the economy. It isolates us from family, friends and work. But cities can still grow without getting us stuck in traffic, missing increasingly overcrowded and delayed trains, or left unable to afford property. All this is happening because workplaces are too far from residents living in the suburbs, which effectively funnels residents into the inner city for work. It must change.
First, we must unwind planning laws that prevent offices, homes and apartments from being constructed alongside each other and throughout the city. These laws also raise housing prices by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Second, instead of banning cars, charge commuters for using congested roads and trains. Third, stop supporting taxpayer funded ‘road to nowhere’ infrastructure projects. These reforms will cut congestion, grow the economy, cut living costs and reconnect us to family, friends and local communities.
Planning laws cause congestion and social isolation by preventing people from building apartments and commercial offices throughout our city. As a result, rents and property prices become dearer because not enough housing is built to accommodate demand from population growth. Indeed, Reserve Bank economists estimate that planning laws increase average property prices by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This drives residents into the outer suburbs to look for cheaper housing, even as they commute into the inner city for work. If more people lived close-by to their workplaces, commutes would be shorter.
We need multiple CBDs, not just one. Unwinding planning laws that prevent commercial growth outside the CBD will cut housing costs and rents, cut congestion and promote tightly knit, thriving urban communities.
Congestion also occurs because we pay for using roads and public transport with thousands of dollars of time every year, rather than money. Congested public roads or trains cost us no more money to use in peak times, and busier routes cost no more to use than empty ones. As a result, the Grattan Institute think tank estimates that the average Melbournian’s commute to the city is twice as long in peak time. By contrast, Sydney’s trains are less congested, but are used more widely compared to Melbourne’s because its tickets are dearer in rush hour. Congestion charges that reflect market demand for infrastructure will also encourage businesses to open in commercial districts outside the CBD. Reconnecting local commuters with local workplaces will save us time and money overall.
Congestion charges are also a fairer and cheaper way of funding infrastructure projects compared to taxes like fuel tax or stamp duty. Scrapping these two taxes could save property purchasers tens of thousands of dollars or more, and reduce petrol bills by at least a third. If we pay for congested roads and trains with money rather than time and taxes, we may end up paying less.
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