Some interesting reading

An Ezra Klein tweet led me to this review of a monograph about democracy.   Some extracts:

A central principle of the new Biden Administration is the idea that for democracy to survive our globe’s cascading crises and a shifting geopolitical landscape, marked by the rise of China, democracies need to do something quite fundamental: They must deliver for their citizens. Democracies can justify themselves if they can effectively master the multiplying calamities sweeping the globe such as climate change and the COVID epidemic.

In this new monograph, a follow up to his influential 2016 book What is Populism?, Princeton political theorist Jan-Werner Müller probes the potential of such justifications for democracy and finds them important but insufficient. The problem, Müller notes, is that, in democracies, economic growth rates will inevitably falter from time to time. Autocracies may sometimes prove superior at problem-solving, even if only in the short run, delivering peace, health, and stability to their citizens.

If this is so, can democracy still be justified beyond this purely instrumental rationale? Put differently: Why should we value democracy on its own terms?

This book represents an effort to answer these questions. Müller builds on a long line of theorizing on what are sometimes called the “intrinsic,” as opposed to the “instrumental,” qualities of liberal democracy vis-à-vis authoritarianism. Instrumental justifications for democracy emphasize its immediate policy and material benefits for society while intrinsic justifications highlight the values and principles that make it self-justifying. Müller focuses on the latter but does so with an important twist. His focus is post-Trumpian America, Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Rather than weighing the political virtues of the West against Chinese or Singaporean authoritarian models, Müller’s starting point instead is to distinguish what he calls “real democracy” from Trump, Orban & co.’s variants of “fake” democracy. We see here that Trump’s turns of phrase haunt even the most distinguished of political theorists.

Müller’s debate-shaping 2016 book told us what defines “fake democrats,” and this book’s first chapter elaborates this thesis. What ties together the cast of characters—Orbán, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Trump, Narendra Modi, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Benjamin Netanyahu—is that they are all politicians who claim they, and only they, represent the “real people” or the “silent majority.” This basic claim to a “moral monopoly” of the people is pernicious for democracy, Müller powerfully reminds us, because the political opposition can be easily cast as illegitimate and its supporters, even more dangerously, as not part of the “real people.” 

Sounds all very astute.  But I guess I shouldn't cut and paste too much.  But here's another key paragraph: 

The common thread—what we might term the “Müller Insight”—that runs from What is Populism? through to this book is the notion that in a healthy democracy, no group or individual ought to claim to speak exclusively on behalf of “the people.” If politicians or parties do this before an election, they are, in Müller’s view, populists who threaten to poison a democracy. If they do this after an election (the focus of this book), the damage can be even more extensive: A populist who claims to be the only authentic representative of the people also inevitably believes he can lose only if a political system is “corrupt and rotten.” If a populist faces his own demise, he is tempted to demolish the entire system.

The review notes that Muller talks a lot about the key role the internet, and the ease with which it allows politicians (and wannabe demagogues) to communicate directly to their followers, spreading disinformation and partisan lies.   That this has played an incredibly important role in the parties of the Right is obvious.

There is more at the review worth reading.  All good stuff.

Macro woes

I liked Noah Smith's latest free substack piece on macroeconomic theory.   Not that I have any great understanding of economics, but I still get the feeling that we a living through a theoretical crisis within the field that is not widely recognised yet, probably because economists don't like to admit their academic endeavour is built on sand.   

That's my working hypothesis, anyway...

 

China woes

It seems that there is not too much concern that China's property market woes and the collapse of Evergrande can provoke an international financial crisis.  Hope they're right.  

Here's another article's summary:

Many are concerned that losses would force bondholders to sell other investments or shed riskier assets to raise cash, hurting markets that may seem unrelated. The catchphrase being thrown about is “contagion,” with many worried about tightly connected global markets.

Not all analysts agree. Analysts at Barclays called such speculation “far off base” while acknowledging the probable spillover effects with economic implications.

“But a true ‘Lehman moment’ is a crisis of a very different magnitude” and Chinese authorities would need to make a series of policy mistakes in response to the crisis for this to be of the Lehman level, they added.

SocGen economists said investors seem to be “differentiating between safe and risky borrowers,” which at the moment would limit the spillover to the wider financial market. On the whole, the sector’s investment-grade index also remained largely stable, they added.

They agreed largely that China’s situation is “very different” as the property sector’s links to the financial system are “not on the same scale” and noted that the capital markets are not the primary means of funding. The message is that as long as the regulators step in, the situation is manageable.

“The lesson from Lehman was that moral hazard needs to take a back seat to systemic risk,” Barclays analysts wrote.

Update:  a very unspecific explainer in Washington Post notes this:

Another concern is credit markets. Evergrande has done so much borrowing, and so many lenders are at risk of getting burned, would its potential default have a ripple effect for other borrowers? On both of these questions, experts say, it’s still too soon to tell.

But troubling signs already are emerging: Remember, hundreds of millions of Chinese homeowners who could see their property values drop, meaning there’s a good chance they’ll rein in spending. Global consumer markets — on everything from clothes to electronics to food — rely on the prolific buying power of the Chinese middle class. If China is poised to spend much less on consumer goods, there will be economic ramifications around the world.

That bit in italics:  is that right?   I didn't really realise it was so significant on a global scale, seeing I always think of China as more the country getting rich by making stuff the West wants (and therefore driven by our consumers' demands, not their's) 

Update 2:   I have been waiting for a while for a review article about the incredible and sudden degree of Chinese government intervention into industry and society, and how it very much feels a bit like a Cultural Revolution (Lite, perhaps.)

I think this is the article I was looking for, from a couple of weeks ago in the Washington Post:

Xi Jinping’s crackdown on everything is remaking Chinese society

It starts:

The orders have been sudden, dramatic and often baffling. Last week, “American Idol”-style competitions and shows featuring men deemed too effeminate were banned by Chinese authorities. Days earlier, one of China’s wealthiest actresses, Zhao Wei, had her movies, television series and news mentions scrubbed from the Internet as if she had never existed.

Over the summer, China’s multibillion-dollar private education industry was decimated overnight by a ban on for-profit tutoring, while new regulations wiped more than $1 trillion from Chinese tech stocks since a peak in February. As China’s tech moguls compete to donate more to President Xi Jinping’s campaign against inequality, “Xi Jinping Thought” is taught in elementary schools, and foreign games and apps like Animal Crossing and Duolingo have been pulled from stores.

A dizzying regulatory crackdown unleashed by China’s government has spared almost no sector over the past few months. This sprawling “rectification” campaign — with such disparate targets as ride-hailing services, insurance, education and even the amount of time children can spend playing video games — is redrawing the boundaries of business and society in China as Xi prepares to take on a controversial third term in 2022.

 And further down:

The scope and velocity of the society-wide rectification has some worried China may be at the beginning of the kind of cultural and ideological upheaval that has brought the country to a standstill before.

Last week, an essay by a retired newspaper editor and blogger described the changes as a response to threats from the United States. “What these events tell us is that a monumental change is taking place in China, and that the economic, financial, cultural, and political spheres are undergoing a profound transformation — or, one could say, a profound revolution,” wrote Li Guangman.

The essay, picked up by China’s state media outlets, prompted comparisons with a 1965 article that launched China’s chaotic decade-long Cultural Revolution, and left even some in the party establishment worried.

Hu Xijin, the outspoken editor of the state-run Global Times, criticized the article as misleading and an “extreme interpretation” of the recent rush of regulatory orders that could trigger “confusion and panic.”  

Differences over the article may be a sign of deeper dispute within the party, according to Yawei Liu, a senior adviser focusing on China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, who wrote that such disagreement indicates “raging debate inside the CCP on the merits of reform and opening up, on where China is today . . . and about what kind of nation China wants to become.”

Update 3:   oh, another good piece in the Washington Post has dropped:

Anyone who has visited China over the past several decades has heard anguished stories from Chinese friends about the results of Mao Zedong’s social engineering in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. China spent 40 years recovering from those disasters to become a great, modern nation.

So, I can almost hear the gasps inside China, from the generation that lived through the nightmare years, as President Xi Jinping has moved down a Maoist path this year toward tighter state control of the economy — including “self-criticism” sessions for Chinese business and political leaders whose crime, it seems, was being too successful.

Xi’s leftward turn represents a major change in the management of the Chinese economy, in the view of a half-dozen experts I’ve consulted over the past week. It has the idealistic goal of “common prosperity” and a fairer distribution of China’s new wealth. But Xi will drive these changes using the ruthless instrument of an authoritarian, one-party state — and you can already see the purges and figurative “dunce caps” for those he views as obstacles.

How much is driven by Xi's own inflated views of himself?  Maybe a lot?:

Xi is a cunning and ruthlessly successful politician; since taking power in 2013, he has purged a generation of leaders in the Communist Party, the military, and the intelligence and security services to gain absolute control. His hubris is that, like Mao, he now seeks to become a man-God, whose thoughts are holy writ.

Xi’s unabated hunger for power is evident in his drive for a third term as party leader. That would break the two-term rule that has prevailed in China’s modern history and provided the checks and balances of group leadership. “China had solved the major problem of a one-party state — succession. Now they are un-solving it,” argues a former top-level U.S. national security official.

 

 

 

Funny earthquake tweet

 Gawd, some people are quick witted with the witty tweets:

 Update:  this also made me laugh:

Better than certain countries talking rank hypocrisy about human rights, I guess?

In what might a sign of the Apocalypse:

K-pop stars BTS dip into global diplomacy at UN gathering

I looked at the first couple of minutes of their talk, and I gotta say, they certainly "de-androgenised" their appearance for this event:

That is all...

Whatever happened to water cannon?

I have been too busy today to see much on line about the Melbourne coalescence of (at least some) stupid union members with stupid anti vaccination thugs out for a street fight.   (I checked in and can report, though, that it's been like Viagra to the ageing wingnut cranks in the new, smaller Catallaxy blog offshoots.   Prime idiot Tailgunner - a drug taking tradie who disclosed at old Catallaxy that he blew around $40,000 on betting on a Trump re-election - has been commenting that he was in the fray and took some form of police projectile, apparently.  Oh diddums, is pretty much my reaction.)

Anyway, this sort of pointless, massively disrupting protest seems to me well suited to the old water cannon dispersal technique, but we don't seem to see them used much these days.   I wonder why.   

Gone to meet his Maker...or not

I see the super liberal Episcopal bishop John Spong has died.   

It would be very cool if some evidential message from him to his family would turn up via a medium in the next year or so - but mediumship seems to have fallen out of favour in the last few years, with high profile mediums like that John Edward fading into the background.   And besides, if Houdini didn't get a message to us from the other side, why should I expect a liberal bishop to do any better?   

I remain leery of the non-realist gospel (so to speak) as the way forward for the Christian churches:  I don't really see much reason to change what I wrote about this topic (Spong got a mention) in 2007, in my early blogging days.  

 

Once upon a time...there was a very bad movie made

I had never seen the 1980's gangster film Once Upon a Time in America before, although I had a vague feeling (confirmed by looking at Rottentomatoes) that it was reasonably well regarded at the time.   Directed by Sergio Leone, whose spaghetti Western oeuvre is definitely not my cup of tea, but it has De Niro and some other big names, most notably James Woods.  (More about him at the end.)

So, there was at least a chance I would like it, and it has turned up on Aussie Netflix.   At least, one version of it, as I haven't bothered looking into where (if anywhere) the even longer version of it was released. 

But:  the movie is shockingly bad, from every almost aspect, and I am completely puzzled as to how anyone, at the time of release or later, ever gave it credit as a good movie.   

There is exactly one thing that I thought it noteworthy for in a sort of positive way - it seemed that whoever was put in charge of set design and decoration (and putting extras in shots) was given half of the movie budget.  I mean, especially in the first hour or two, every single scene seems to be stuffed to the gills with - stuff.  And people.   In fact, restaurants, nightclubs, the opium den (yes, it features a New York Chinese opium den - something I was not aware of as being a thing back then) and streets are so massively cluttered and busy I started to feel it was over the top, but admittedly in an eye-catching, "jeez they spent a lot of money on the look of this film", way. 

But don't get me wrong - it's still a really bad movie, and let me count the ways:

1.    the overall story:    it's stupid and made no emotional sense to me at all.  And I mean, if you are finding it a bit odd before intermission, just wait 'til the second "half".  (Actually, it's only about a third to go after intermission.)  If this is meant to be some grand picture of corruption running through US 20th century history or something, it's a complete failure.

2.    the dialogue:   never sounded very natural.  It had 5 or 6 writers, which is usually a sign of trying to fix problems, isn't it?   They were never solved.  And by they way, did Sergio make every film with dubbed dialogue, even if the actor spoke in English, or is this just a fault with the print Netflix is showing?   The sound consistently did not quite match the mouth, although I guess I sort of got used to that, eventually.

3.    the acting:   some pretty hammy kid actors; some unconvincing adult acting too.  De Niro is ok-ish, I suppose, in a thankless role.  But really, I wasn't convinced by anyone else.

4.    the characters:   no one is really sympathetic, although you keep getting the feeling that we are meant to feel for De Niro's character.  But he's a murderer (for base motives, not just from a sense of self protection) and rapist - see next paragraph.    

5.    the sexual politics:   come on, I know the 1980's had some terribly sexist treatment of women in movies, but I find it hard to believe that the awful and ridiculous sexual politics of the film wasn't noticed even at that time.    As my son said (he gave up on it by intermission, which was a wise judgement in retrospect) - "this film is really rape-y".   There are two prominent rape scenes, one of which results later in the victim falling for her rapist (happens all the time!);   the other doesn't, but when she meets him again 30 years later, it doesn't get a mention.   And the De Niro rape scene is really protracted and unpleasant.   Yet within a minute of it, we get "Noodles" (the silly nickname the film gives the De Niro character) looking sad beside the beach while the music swells - see next paragraph.

6.    the score!   It's like a romantic score from the 1960's that ended up in the wrong movie.  (Well, at least when it isn't featuring pan flute, which seems, at best, incongruous.)   There's a constant swelling up of strings in places where it just doesn't seem warranted.   I mean, it seemed to signalling sympathy for De Niro after his big rape scene.  It's artistically weird:  the whole movie is!

There are so many things wrong with the movie I feel I have forgotten one of them.   

But I have just remembered one amusing thing about it - James Woods's character keeps getting upset when De Niro calls him "crazy".   Yet Woods did end up a real life pro-Trump wingnut.   De Niro must laugh at the irony of that.

Update:  I remembered one other, minor but noticeable, thing:  the fake blood used in some scenes, but not others, looked exceptionally fake.   This is a movie from 1984 - fake blood didn't have to look so bad by that time.  Did the set decorator blow the budget so badly that they had to go to the paint shop and ask for any left over tins of red for the blood?   

Update 2:   OK, I have read more about the film, including the [SPOILER ALERT] 

fairly well know theory that the ending means that about 1/3 of the film is an opium dream of the future where things are made (sort of) right.  This explains things like the wild improbability of the story, and his childhood sweetheart barely ageing. 

Clever, huh?  Well, no - it might be interesting if the confrontations in the future carried some emotional weight, as dreams can, but they don't.   It makes the movie more of a waste of time than ever, if you ask me.   And it's also a definite cheat, if that was the actual intention, to prominently use a song written in the 1960's on the soundtrack.  Opium doesn't make you dream future songs, does it?   But, the theory does make quite a bit of sense.  Just doesn't make it worthwhile.

 

Unusual local dealer

From Crux:

ROME – On Tuesday police in the Tuscan city of Prato announced that they had placed Italian Father Francesco Spagnesi under house arrest for the sale and import of drugs, including cocaine and GBL, a date rape drug.

Spagnesi, 40, until Sept. 1 was pastor of Annunciation parish in Prato. He was relieved of his duties as pastor and ordered to take a year sabbatical by his bishop, Giovanni Nerbini, who claims to have been partially aware of Spagnesi’s struggles but did not know the full extent of the situation. 

Investigations into him began in August after the arrest of another Prato citizen named Alessio Regina, who is also under house arrest and who was found to be in possession of GBL, also called “liquid esctacy”, which is often used consensually to enhance sexual performance, but which has also garnered a more nefarious reputation as a preferred drug in date rapes.

In the course of their investigation into Regina, Prato police discovered ties to Spagnesi, who was placed under house arrest Tuesday as a precautionary measure while officers continue their inquiry.

According to police investigations, the GBL was ordered online and imported from the Netherlands, and an undisclosed amount of cocaine was obtained through local suppliers. The drugs were then sold to guests invited to a specific house in Prato for parties involving sex and drugs.

"Partially aware"?   

Further to that tweet that lauched a million jokes

Update:

Night noises

I am reliably told, and have been told for some years, that I snore - a lot.   

Curious as to the extent to which I do, and how often it might involve sleep apnea style snoring, in which there are the long and unhealthy pauses in breathing, I decided to look up snore monitoring apps for my smart phone, and there are several to choose from.

But before I first used it, I was slightly worried about what would happen if I found out I mutter wildly inappropriate things in my sleep, or more worryingly, hear something completely spooky, like an unrecognised voice saying my name in the middle of the night?     Surely some writer has used a scenario like that in a scary story?  My daughter thought it very weird that I should even think of this, but I thought it would be something that would occur to most people with an imagination.   Who is right?

Anyway, I now know directly that, yes, I do snore, and almost continuously it seems.  Not always at a high volume, but absolutely silent sleep seems a pretty small proportion of my night.   I also know that I can cough in the middle of the night and not remember it the next day.  I have not yet heard any muttering, or disembodied voices, yet. 

Now, to investigate some snore reduction devices.  I don't think I have serious sleep apnea, but I would like to have clearer sounding night breathing...

Taking "never retire" to extremes

At NPR:

 

Can't we just rent some nuclear submarines and return them when due for servicing?

I haven't had time to read much about what today's defence announcement really means, but I thought nuclear subs didn't need much re-fuelling, and boy, I was right:

The Navy hopes to have the first replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine on duty by 2031. When that vessel is launched, the onboard nuclear power plant is expected to last its entire 40-year service life.

That is seven years longer than the current reactors aboard U.S. submarines.

“Our goal for the new submarines is to have a life-of-the-ship reactor,” said Frank G. Klotz, National Nuclear Security Administration administrator and the Department of Energy’s undersecretary of nuclear security. NNSA is responsible for developing government-owned nuclear power plants...

There are two primary reasons the NNSA is undertaking the new core design, he told reporters in November.

“It is extraordinarily important on cost because one of the largest elements of the total operational cost of a submarine over its life has been replacing the core when that has come due. It is very expensive,” he said.

“The other aspect is that when you go into the deep overhaul that is necessary to replace the core, you’re taking a submarine out of service for a long time. So if you have a life of the sub or a life of the ship core, then you avoid both cost, and you avoid both extensive downtime as you refuel the reactor,” Klotz said.

The savings could be substantial.

Olivia Volkoff, a spokeswoman for the program, said: “Eliminating the refueling through insertion of a life-of-the-ship core allows the Navy to meet the strategic deterrent mission with two fewer SSBNs and saves about $40 billion in ship acquisition and lifecycle costs over the life of the program.”

The Virginia-class attack submarines were the first to have a core reactor designed to last the life of the vessel, which for it, is about 33 years.

So, it's surely not an issue that we need to have a nuclear fuel processing facilities here.   Just pick up a second hand attack sub (or 10) from "Subs R Us" at San Diego, or wherever, tootle around the Pacific for 20 years, and return for every major service.   Routine minor services (the equivalent of a grease and oil change) could, I presume, be done here.

I am not entirely sure how we are meant to find enough people to crew these, though.  Don't we struggle crewing the 2 or 3 that are operational at any one time?

But then again - there's a hell of a lot of Filipino seamen (and ship's stewards) out of work at the moment, due to COVID devastating the cruise line industry.    Just contract them out for 5 years at a time, and problem solved.

Defence problems all solved...

What the General said to who, and when

Well, the General Milley calling up the Chinese and telling them his President was nuts and they shouldn't worry about being attacked by surprise is an entertaining story sending the wingnut Right nuts.

A big part of the problem of knowing what to make of it, though, is the question of whether the reporting of the details of the call is accurate.  In that regard, I thought this post by Allahpundit, considering the possible variations on a theme, covered it well.

One thing seems clear:   there were lots of people listening to the call, and therefore, if there was anything really damaging to the General's credibility, we will eventually know about it.   I strongly suspect that it will turn out that the Woodward account is eventually shown to be an exaggeration in some details. 

Nonetheless, it is a sign of the extraordinary times that such calls were being made.  

Update:  and, I should add, that the real concern should be that Trump was presenting as unstable enough to make another superpower suspect a surprise nuclear attack.   But no, Republicans have become so stupid and tribal as to excuse an unstable nutjob because he was their unstable nutjob. 

 

Suddenly, the vaccines flow...

This was a bit of a Queensland surprise yesterday:   from Saturday, over 60's can get Pfizer if they want.  My wife, who has been a longer hold out for Pfizer than me, is pleased.   She (aged 60) actually asked for it at a hub two weekends ago, and they said "no, we need a doctor's letter saying they recommend it for you, otherwise we'll get into trouble."   We were given the impression, though, that some GPs were happy to write a letter for anyone who was AZ hesitant, without even an appointment!  My wife had an appointment to see her GP this week anyway, but now she doesn't have to test her doctor's attitude towards the AZ resistant.  

My daughter has also been told that there are a lot of "walk in" openings at the South Brisbane vaccination hub in recent days.   She had made an appointment in a couple of weeks time, but now she is just going to try her luck at an earlier walk in.

All of this would indicate that Queensland has a sudden increase in our supply of Pfizer, and it hasn't been all pilfered by those southern cities which aren't as good at controlling outbreaks as dumb old Queenslanders.   I hope Morrison is not getting any credit for this, though.   He deserves none.

 

 

Historian stories

This is interesting, although it's a pity there isn't a detailed explanation of every item:

I asked historians what find made them go ‘wait, wut?’ Here’s a taste of the hundreds of replies

The first part of the "quirky" sounds interesting enough:

Many of those who responded told stories of bizarre (and sometimes amusing) finds in the archives. Some were actual objects, such as Robert Cribb finding “17 tubes of processed opium, ready for smoking, in the Dutch archives from 1946 Indonesia”, Daniel McKay coming across “negatives of an early Australian prime minister naked on holiday”, and “300 love letters from woman to woman around 1760, partly written in blood”, located by Susanne Wosnitzka. 

Come on, we need more details about the nude PM on holidays.  

The Catallaxy diaspora

The end of the Sinclair Davidson Catallaxy blog, and the break up of people who used to regularly comment or contribute there into 3 or 4 separate online spaces (depending on how and what you count) has had the salutary effect of really highlighting what a sad sack of culture war losers and conspiracists the blog had long become home to.

One new incarnation is run by a guy who has little time for moderation of comments, meaning it has been regularly overrun by Graeme Bird, with the usual consequences of it likely becoming of interest to the Human Rights Commission for his ratbag and obsessive brand of anti-Semitism.  No one wants him there, but the blog controller takes days (so it seems - I am not following it closely) to ban him and delete comments, making many (I think) inclined to abandon participation.

The other main competitor (as monty's alternative - the only one I have linked to in the blog roll - already seems to have given up any hope of becoming the heir apparent) is the one run by conservative Catholic dover beach, who I attacked strongly at monty's blog for being a terrible ambassador for the Church, and who promptly moderated me for insulting his depressive contributor Arky, while still letting regulars post comments about "faggots", as all good conservative Catholics are wont to do.  Anyway,  it has become a hive of anti COVID vax sentiment, and conspiracy mongering about e-vil government control of people, as well as general culture war complaint.  It also welcomes contribution by Trump cultist Steve Kates.   The number of people commenting regularly seems a pretty small pool, though.   And it's dull.

Currency Lad, meanwhile (you can link via monty's blog) has started blogging again.   His themes now seem so tired and repetitive, though; and again, resistance to taking COVID seriously is a common subject.  I have said elsewhere that his style of writing has deteriorated over the years;  it's now overworked to such an extent that I can't always see clearly the point trying to be made.  He's become too performative - like a slightly softer version in blog form of that incredibly annoying Paul Joseph Watson.  He needs new ideas and material. 

I said for years that the problem with old Catallaxy was that it gave the regulars a false sense of the extent of like minded support for their increasingly Right wing/wingnutty views - and Sinclair Davidson devoted just enough time in things like weeding out Bird strikes (and those who needed a break for their mental health) to stop it collapsing completely into madness.    It was still extremely disreputable, but having a known public figure performing some gatekeeping role still gave the participants some false sheen of credibility.  

But now, by being cast amongst these smaller enterprises, that has been dissolved, and they just look like somewhat sad but angry (always angry) conspiracy minded losers, complaining in their small groups about lack of influence.

This is a Very Good Thing.  

Monkey problem

In a short NPR article about a book about when animals cause trouble, this anecdote is noteworthy:

Macaques have been known to sneak into swimming pools, courts and even the halls of India's Parliament. One attorney told Roach about a macaque that infiltrated a medical institute and began pulling out patient IVs.

"If somebody was getting, you know, a glucose drip, [the monkey would] suck on the needle like it was a Popsicle," she says.

Eek.

Bernard goes off (and rightly so)

Writing in Crikey today, Bernard Keane goes off:

That Christian Porter thinks it’s appropriate to remain a cabinet minister in the absence of an independent inquiry into much-denied allegations of sexual assault is bad enough, but there can be no doubt he has now spat in the face of any Australian who thinks there should be basic level of transparency and integrity in government.

His declaration of being the beneficiary of an anonymous windfall for his legal costs in his withdrawn legal action against the ABC — where the story revealing allegations of rape by a cabinet minister remains up, intact — is an act of gross contempt for political integrity.

In a way, such arrogant behaviour by this privileged man-child has done us a favour in revealing just how piss weak federal standards of accountability are — standards fit for a tinpot dictatorship rather than a country that feels entitled to lecture others about democracy.

 Pretty much what Malcolm Turnbull said on Radio National, too.

I am curious as to what old Porter pal and (semi?) defender Peter van Onselen thinks about it.  Oh, his tweets are "protected".

The Nazi search for the lost Aryans

I'm pretty sure I have heard of this before, but here's a short account at the BBC about it:

In 1938, Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of Germany's Nazi party and a key architect of the Holocaust, sent a five-member team to Tibet to search for the origins of the supposed Aryan race. Author Vaibhav Purandare recounts the fascinating story of this expedition, which passed through India.

...

Adolf Hitler believed that "Aryan" Nordic people had entered India from the north some 1,500 years earlier, and that the Aryans had committed the "crime" of mixing with the local "un-Aryan" people, losing the attributes that had made them racially superior to all other people on earth.

Hitler regularly expressed deep antipathy for the Indian people and their struggle for freedom, articulating his sentiments in his speeches, writings and debates. 

Yet, according to Himmler, one of Hitler's top lieutenants and the head of the SS, the Indian subcontinent was still worth a close look.  

This is where Tibet came into the picture.

Those who swore by the idea of a white Nordic superior race were believers in the tale of the imagined lost city of Atlantis, where people of "the purest blood" had apparently once lived. Believed to have been situated somewhere between England and Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean, this mythical island allegedly sunk after being struck by a divine thunderbolt. 

All the Aryans who survived had supposedly moved on to more secure places. The Himalayan region was believed to be one such refuge, Tibet in particular because it was famous for being "the roof of the world".

In 1935, Himmler set up a unit within the SS called the Ahnenerbe - or Bureau of Ancestral Heritage - to find out where people from Atlantis had gone after the bolt from the blue and the deluge, and where traces of the great race still remained and could be discovered.

In 1938, he sent a team of five Germans to Tibet on this "search operation".

 You can read more at the link above.

Update:  I thought it worth showing the photo in the article of the 5 guys on the hunt for Aryan roots in Tibet (so to speak):

 The pants are a bit baggy, but still:  pretty snappy dressers for Nazi scientists.   (And you really do expect Indiana Jones to be lurking somewhere in the background.)