JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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Millennials haven’t forgotten Mao, Stalin or Lenin. They never knew them.

Millenials are aged 25 – 39. In Australia four out of five are not even “familiar” with Mao. Half have never heard of him, even though he caused the deaths of twice as many people as Adolf Hitler.

Political ideologues control our education system. We teach kids identity politics, and how to control the weather with light globes, but not the most important political lesson of the 20th Century.

We won the cold war, then lost the peace.

Why Millenials are embracing Socialism

Tom Switzer, Sydney Morning Herald

The survey evidence is clear. In a YouGov poll commissioned by the Centre for Independent Studies last year, 58 per cent of Australian millennials have a favourable view of socialism, with only 18 per cent having an unfavourable one. These findings reflect Millennial attitudes in Britain and the US.

What’s going on?

Part of the problem is plain ignorance. Most Millennials were hardly alive when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”.

According to the CIS poll, only 26 per cent of Millennials are familiar with Vladimir Lenin and 34 per cent with Joseph Stalin. Only 21 per cent of those [...]

February 24th, 2019 | Tags: , | Category: Big-Government, Economics, Human Rights, Ideology, Politics | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |

This isn’t Soft Brexit; it is Remain by another name

“Truly heading for the status of colony”

Britain is suddenly very interesting (for the eight hundredth time in the History of Western Civilization). It’s a defining moment. Fans of the establishment didn’t want Brexit,  so they tried a scare campaign, which failed. They tried on a second vote and legal means, and namecalling “xenophobic isolationist” — all the usual. Anything but a polite list of good reasons to stay in (something to counter the brilliant Daniel Hannan’s points, not to mention the happy existence of Switzerland and Norway). Now they wear the cloak and try the Remain By Stealth option (like our Carbon Tax by Stealth). Call it Brexit but make the reality the same. It is an absolute scandal for the working class and poor in the UK. Hence the string of resignations…

The peasants don’t want people in Brussels deciding what kind of hair dryer and vacuum cleaner they may buy.

James Delingpole is in fine form as a spokesperson for the downtrodden:

Brexit, it is now becoming clear, was our Peasants’ Revolt in more ways than one.

It was our Peasants’ Revolt in the sense that it was an uprising [...]

July 11th, 2018 | Tags: | Category: Big-Government, Human Rights, Politics | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |

This is not a tribute

On Candlelit vigils for the people in Nice

What Tim Blair says: Ditto

After so many repetitions, these events are now actually insults. They are not about the victims. They are about the mourners. They are indulgent displays of emotion that serve only to generate soothing feelings of moral comfort and to mask what should be a united and righteous fury.

Tonight’s attendees should consider this. While you see every lit candle as a poignant reminder of life’s tragic fragility, Islamic State sees them as post-game bonus points.

I know people want to talk about the atrocity in France. I wish. But thanks to Section 18C you will have to talk in other nations where offending someone is not an offence.  Or perhaps if you are lucky you might be able to discuss this somewhere in Oz where they have paid staff to moderate and lawyerate. See also Andrew Bolt’s: We cannot keep living in this fear.

Heartfelt thoughts to the victims and their families on a dark day.

July 16th, 2016 | Tags: | Category: Big-Government, Free Speech, Global Warming, Human Rights | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |

Countdown to Brexit — Britain’s Independence Day?

Best wishes to our UK friends on this important day. UPDATE: Polls shut at 10pm on Thursday UK time (7am Friday AEST). Final Tally: “breakfast time” Friday in the UK ( which is  4- 6pm on the East Coast of Australia).

“… it’s the last chance most of us are ever going to get in our lifetime to vote for an outcome which is genuinely in the interest of us the people – the demos – rather than that of the increasingly powerful, ever-more-deeply-entrenched elite.”

– James Delingpole

The British Isles Invented Freedom

“… the people of what is now called Great Britain created something entirely different from the closed and centralized regimes that have been the norm in most of human history. They produced a society where rulers were subject to the law and the law belonged to the people, where collective will did not trump individual right, and where free citizens were permitted to create and keep their own wealth. These principles have transformed the world: “The miracles of the past three and a half centuries—the unprecedented improvements in democracy, in longevity, in freedom, in literacy, in calorie intake, in infant survival rates, [...]

June 23rd, 2016 | Tags: , , | Category: Big-Government, Economics, Free markets, Human Rights, Property Rights | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |

Children win Climate Change legal case: lose future economy

Children Win Another Climate Change Legal Case In Mass Supreme Court

[Forbes] This case is one of several similar cases in federal district courts in Oregon and Washington, and in the state courts of North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Colorado. All of these legal cases are supported by Our Children’s Trust, that seeks the legal right of our youth to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate in the future.

How about the legal right of our youth to live in a sustainable civilization? What if a stable climate costs more than a stable economy can afford?

Other parents might hope their children have the right to inherit a stable currency, and a government without trillions in debt.

Championed by Professor Mary Christina Wood in the Law School at the University of Oregon under the idea of Atmospheric Trust Litigation, these lawsuits claim that a government elected by the people and for the people has a duty to protect the natural systems required for the people’s survival.

So if the government is elected by the people to make these kinds of decisions, why is a court deciding public policy? The children of Massachusetts are free to [...]

May 20th, 2016 | Tags: | Category: Big-Government, Economics, Global Warming, Human Rights | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |

Bolivia gets stoneage legal system

UPDATED: See below

It’s the ultimate in pre-cambrian law. Gaia in the courtroom. Shh. The Statutory Spirits are at work. It’s not just the right to life for amoeba, it’s the right not to have your cellular structure modified.

Looks like salad is off the menu.

So is meat, fruit, tea and coffee, and no you can’t eat moths either. Who will prosecute the next cougar which violates the constitution by chomping on a Flamingo?

Looks like 10 million people might get to subsist on organic free range eggs, and milk from consenting cows. Perhaps they can reach a trade agreement for honey with The Andean Bee Collective. But then it’s not clear the honey doesn’t have a right to exist too.

Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth

Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation

* John Vidal in La Paz * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 April 2011 18.17 BST

John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living with the effects of climate change every day Link to this video

[...]

April 12th, 2011 | Tags: | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming, Human Rights | Print This Post Print This Post | Email This Post Email This Post |