There's Politics and there's politics

Who cares about leadership challenges and internal divisions within the Labor Party on the high office of Prime Minister, the re-organisation of the Cabinet?

Who gives a shit about processes and bureaucratic mechanisms?

Who gives a toss about the personalities of Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott?

Who does? The Media does.

In fact what the recent debacle in Canberra has really revealed to us

bystanders (the voting public) is that the Media and Politicians have one thing in common that is at the forefront of their priorities:

politics, not Politics.


 

 Kevin Rudd was stabbed in the back by his own Cabinet team, his own Deputy, and his own political party, and voted out of the Prime Minstership of Australia. His former Deputy, Julia Gillard, then gave him the job of Foreign Minister. 18 months later he resigned from that job (a week ago) and challenged Julia Gillard for the top job of Prime Minister, and lost. However, he was this time supported by almost a third of this own party. Now the Opposition is pointing out to us all the clear division in the Labor Party and what this dissenting third means against Julia.

Now that I know all that, am I better off?

How has this development directly affected you as an Australian citizen?

Both the Media and our democratically elected Politicians have recently had nothing on their minds of more concern than who gets what job, who did what to whom, who's undermining whom, is he/she/it coming back to his old job.

WHO CARES!

Who cares except flacid-minded morons who watch daytime soap operas.

Not a single journalist has ever asked a politician why we have this kind of Government. Why do we have a Prime Minister, a Cabinet of Ministers and Political Parties when none of these are even mentioned in the Australian Constitution (a document that clearly sets out the purpose and composition of the Federal Parliament).

Not a single journalist is asking Politicians how they represent the needs of their electorate when this competes against the priorities of their political party.

No one is talking about how well the act of Government is working in this country. Is the Party system even democratic? Isn't 'representational democracy' an oxymoron? Saddam Hussein claimed to represent his own people. Yes we get to vote them out - but are we getting another one back in?

You could argue there are two dictators ruling Australia in turns: the Labor party and the Liberal-National Coalition.

Let's remember why we're all paying for this shit. Politicians only exist because of us. We vote them in, so that they can represent us, our needs, in Parliament: to consider what we want before they vote on legislation and agree on a policy. Our elected representatives don't actually do that. Instead they represent their own political Party, not us. If an MP's electorate wants a National Curriculum of Education but their Party doesn't, then they vote against it.



Parliament is instead all about representing the Party, then Business, then Lobbyists, and then powerful individuals, and finally, not us.

Does the Media question Politicians on these issues? Do they even discuss the issues amongst themselves? No.

The Media has an agenda, and like a political party, its bottom line is not the same as ours.

Instead of turning the news on and hearing yet another bland boilerplate statement, another string of dead slogans and empty cliches, from Government about how it administrates its boring internal processes, and then the broken record of the Opposition's response "this is just another sign of a failing Government" we should be hearing something completely different.

We should be hearing journalists asking politicians exactly how every single thing they do is only to govern us in order to make our lives better, easier, and safer or whatever the fuck we want them to do and only that. Many of us died for this country, supporting our government to keep our happiness and well-being secure. Politicians should keep this in mind. We don't care which automoton gets into what job. We care about the job being done properly. Just get on and do it.

We should be hearing politicians justify to us why they should stay in Parliament, how they are representing us and no one else.

We should be hearing the Opposition (or preferably any individual opposing voice) not just robotically negating every single thing the Government does, but detailing exactly how they would deal with the issue. Instead of only disagreeing with a policy, offering an alternative. Or explaining why they disagree.

You could argue against me that all this "politics" is exceptionally important, even critical, to good government. My counter-point is that it is not even being discussed.

 

No one is talking about the link between politics and Politics. Not a single freakin' person is talking about the importance to government of "politics". Just like none of the articles in Woman's Day talk about the importance of these articles to Woman's Day readers. It is taken for granted that the articles are strategically good, because people keep buying the damn magazine. But our government doesn't have any such, immediately responsive feedback system. We vote every three years and that's it.

So why the hell do the Media and Politicians report to us with nothing but bland, robotic, vendor machine, soap opera drama, appealing to our ignorance and our childish naivety?

Why?

Because they both think we're all a pack of idiot morons.

Are we?

White Collar Versus Blue Collar Crime

 
The "Occupy X" phenomenon is a long-awaited turn in the tide of how society defines crime.

Society gets much of its knowledge on anything from the Media. And the Media pays far too much attention to Blue Collar Crime, to small-time crooks and the resource disadvantaged, when they should be paying equal or even more attention to White Collar Crime and White Collar Immorality: to persons of supposed upstanding in the community, responsibility and authority who abuse the community's trust and undermine society far more extensively and sustained than shop-lifters, dope smokers and welfare scabs.

Individually, a blue-collar crim will not cause millions of dollars worth of damage or theft. A poor mum stealing some food or clothing for her family should be seen alongside the public servant stealing $16 million to buy sports cars and hookers. But these ill-fated individual decisions are nothing compared to institutional crime, which enjoys a more agreeable fate; it isn't always defined as crime when it appears in court, but described as corporate sector behaviour, or shrewd business practice. These redefined perceptions are not illegal, but account for the vast majority of the unfair distribution of a nation's wealth amongst its citizens.

We used to give our own wealth, our savings and our salaries, to Banks for protection, for security. But now we give our wealth to Banks for convenience and convention: Try living without a bank account. Yet, Banks take a carefully calculated percentage of the combined wealth we've entrusted them with and then spend it quickly before we ask for it back. They spend our money on investments, which reap a financial reward and which they collect and keep. Then, having used our money to make themselves money, they keep every cent and give none back to us. And all this is legal.

Bankers then flash our money in our faces by driving around in luxury cars, building enormous luxury houses and living luxurious lifestyles, all bought and paid for with our money, our earnings. They supplement this wealth by charging us fees for every conceivable and inconceivable banking service. In fact, Banks now make more money from charging us fees than from investing our savings. Furthermore, the credit card was invented as a response to a Bank wanting to find a way to extract more fees.

Governments take our earnings before we've seen them and remove a percentage and call it Tax. Did we give them permission? No. Not directly, anyway. And I find it quite a stretch to admit that since I voted, for or not for, a particular candidate at a recent election that this translates into me giving some unknown people a third of my earnings forever without any discussion or explanation.

Corporate criminals go to extraordinary lengths, resulting in the creation of whole industries of service providers (Marketing, Risk Management, Advertising, Public Relations...) all geared to the same ultimate goal of taking as much money from as many people as quickly as possible in exchange for offering a good or service to people who didn't need it, but now believe they do and then trying their best not to give them that good or service unless it is at the lowest affordable quality and quantity. How on earth can you get someone to pay for something they won't get, I hear you ask? Well, they use the culmination of skill and knowledge available to human beings handed down through 200,000 years of human society: they lie, they cheat, they con, they trick, the decieve, the confuse, they complicate, they hide, they collude, they conspire and when this all fails they run to the Government for help and the Government uses our Taxes to buy them out of their troubles - without our permission. Wow. How proud must their Mummies be?

Judges and legislators make laws, policies and set standards that they will never be subject to themselves. Being privileged and protected from other humans by their wealth and power, their profession is to decide how everybody else should live and within what parameters. How can someone who has always lived the life of an Aristocrat ever command how all the peasants should live?

So who's worse? The starving impoverished, the needy, the vulnerable, the destitute who didn't choose their parents well enough and have to survive within the low socio-economic brackets? Or the middle and upper class yuppies who's parent-funded education and contacts bought them opportunities and skills that were used to deceive and steal, where it's illegal, and charge a premium to the vulnerable, where it's not?

It's easy to target Blue Collar Crime, because they look like criminals. They dress, talk and behave in a manner that is not as sophisticated as those who dress in suits, drive nice cars, have the latest hair-cuts and speak with the latest vocabulary. How could someone who looks like the President be a criminal? Also, Blue Collar Crime is easy to see, it's very visible. Money is just numbers on a computer screen. No blood, no broken glass, no burnt-out cars. A TV show can show you pictures of Blue Collar Crime that will make you gasp and cringe. It's much harder to portray the theft of millions by a boring city trader, public servant or dime-a-dozen walking Suit.

The kind of crime committed by the lower socio-economic classes is completely different in character from that committed by the rich and powerful. The News of the World used private investigators to illegally gain access to hundreds of mobile phone voicemail accounts held by a variety of people of interest to the newspaper, to make a profit. They published the private affairs of grieving and vulnerable people so that they could buy that house in the Bahamas, that private finishing school education for Mindy and Mandy, the latest Ferrari, more shoes, more struggling businesses, more sweat shops, etc. The cause of the wealthy thief is shallow and decadent. The cause of the poor is just, is understandable, is necessity, is the very result of unfair wealth distribution in society.

Wealth and power buy immunity from the Law, Taxes and even Guilt, thanks to society's acceptance that the worst criminals are Blue Collar not White Collar workers. We need to focus on the real criminals.

Optimists and Pessimists

Are you an Optimist or a Pessimist?

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Some believe that you are one or the other.

Some will describe you as one or the other; but is their opinion of you itself optimisitic or pessimistic?

Some will sneakily call themselves Realists, but are in fact optimists or pessimists in disguise, so there is no 'third way'. Realism is not even relevant to the issue, because the issue is about how things should or shouldn't be, not how they are or aren't.

The people who describe you as an optimist or a pessimist may themselves be one or the other, thus affecting their opinion of which one you are.

This smacks of relativity, doesn't it. Perhaps you're an optimist if you talk to him, but a pessimist if you talk to her. In which case, what point is there in knowing which one you are?

Is there anything at all to be gained from considering this arguable dichotomy?



Optimism and Pessimism are argued to predict how you will approach all opportunities, set-backs and upheavals in life. In fact, people who raise the OP thesis are largely optimists themselves. They raise the issue in order to impart to you their self-declared wisdom that everyone should be optimists like them, because it is a superior state of being and approach to life. Pessimists are sad, lonely people, optimists say, who drag themselves down and are their own problem. It's not the world's fault, it's your fault - it's your attitude.

 
So, how do we describe a struggling African family, should they flee their village after several raids by rival tribes. Are the fleeing survivors being pessimistic about their situation and should be a bit more optimistic?

However, the conclusion that you are one or other is based on past experience, so the whole thesis is logically entwined with holding the argument that you can never change - your future is your past (just like a Bank when you go for a loan). But we all know that only severely dumb boring people (like Bankers) are so dull and risk averse. Not all of us are like that. It is a conclusion derived by inductive reasoning - the same argument that concludes the sun will rise tomorrow, because it has always done it before. The OP argument is deterministic: if you were pessimistic in the past, then you will be pessimistic in the future, it is your destiny.

As someone once said, "An optimist is someone who insists that everything is alright when it is not."

We think the OP thesis is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is just stupid.

Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants and other Tradies

Universities were never intended to be apprenticeship schools, but they are. Nowadays, you can't get a job in a whole range of intellectual industries unless you've been to university and completed a related or general university degree. In effect, the university is the same for the lawyer, doctor, public servant, as the technical training school is for the plumber, builder, electrician. Universities pump out suit monkeys with degrees in exactly the same way that technical schools pump out tradies with trade certificates. On average, they even earn the same range of salary. The average public servant even earns slightly less than your average tradie.

Universities were intended to extend the wealth of collective human knowledge and wisdom. The great philosopher Plato opened his Academy, the world's first university, in ancient Athens to give adults the opportunity to learn a universal breadth of knowledge, to broaden their minds and contribute to the current body of things known and understood in the world, and beyond the world. In the Gardens of Academus, Plato taught the philosophical subjects of Logic, Ethics, Economics, Aesthetics, Epistemology, Politics and Natural Philosophy (now known as Science).

Plato's star pupil was Aristotle who went on to teach a young Alexander the Great and formed his own university the Lyceum. From Plato's Academy, we derive all our 'academic' words and language. More importantly, we also derive all of our institutes of higher learning, some of which offer a 'universal' understanding of the world and award their most accomplished students the title Doctor of Philosophy or PhD.

Universities were never intended to be factories for manufacturing lawyers, doctors, accountants and public servants. So, what the hell happened? A lawyer is just a tradie. A lawyer's trade is the Law. A lawyer is an expert in the Law, which they can prove to you by showing you their trade certificate (an undergraduate degree in law from a university). Like a brickie, a lawyer practices his trade by providing his learned services and skills to a paying client. So what's the difference between those smarmy, self-congratualting professionals with degrees and the average Joe tradie? Not a damn thing.

But Our cause is the conservation of the University. Its protection against being reduced from an institute of universal understanding, knowledge growth and the pursuit of wisdom to becoming nothing more than a suit factory, pouring out an endless stream of boring, pathetic, prententious, elitist mummies' boys clutching their trade certificates in law, accounting, IT and other tripe as they saunter into the money sector having left nothing behind, but debt and giving nothing back to society except another annoying service we all have to pay for when something goes wrong.




























Our suggestion is that we keep our once esteemed universities sanctified and preserved as institutes not of learning, not in the manner of a library or news agent where people come in and take things away for themselves, but to return universities back into institutes of contribution to the sum of all human knowledge and understanding. People come in and give to the university. They research, they propose their thesis, it is accepted or rejected, then they leave.

The only reason trades are taught at university is money. Trades in law, medicine and accounting are expensive, which is why only the rich can afford to pay for such learning. Years ago, universities  stooped beneath themselves and prostituted their knowledge to the rich in exchange for training their spoilt brats to be elitist tradesmen. This practice must end.

Lawyers, accountants, doctors, nurses, IT workers, plumbers, brickies, sparkies and other tradesmen should piss off out of universities and go learn your trade in a technical school or trade college, do your apprenticeship and get lost. Neither lawyer, nor sawyer, neither surgeon nor plumber, contributes to the collective wisdom of our world. They just learn enough to practice what the world already knows and then they leave. They give nothing back, so they have no business even looking at a university. Get over yourselves! Admit that you are what you are - a bunch of tradies -  and piss off.

Leave the practice of philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom to the thinkers. Doers should just do.

Science is the New Religion

Science has replaced God as a religion for many people.

Where people no longer believe in God, they believe in Science.

They direct their faith away from one belief system to another.

The long-abandoned belief systems of converts to Agnsoticism and Atheism cannot avoid their adherence to a new Religion.

Agnostics and Atheists may think that they have stopped believing. They have not.

Yes. They have stopped believing in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Boogey Man, Mother Mary, Jesus Christ the Messiah, and God, but their thirst to seek certainty and understanding of the world and life has simply found satisfaction elsewhere. Faith and belief in Science.

Before being convinced of this argument, we first need to agree that religion is largely about having Faith. We need to agree that Faith, a blind belief in something without any verifiable evidence, is key to Religion. Religion requires Faith before developing further into a spiritual relationship with an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent creator and abiding by his/her/its rules in order to live well in this life and guarantee immortality.

Before all of this lovely stuff, you first need to develop your ability to believe, your ability to replace understanding, knowledge, evidence, validity and contingent and necessary truth with Faith. You need to oppose all reason and instinct that would otherwise warn you before deciding on whether something is true or real. You need to abandon yourself to a blind guess.

This behaviour, of guessing, of believing, of having faith, is exactly what describes the activity of adherents to Science (adherents who don't understand the science, but believe in its authority).

What do people in general do when they approach science? They either understand it or they don't. If they don't understand it, they have a choice whether to accept what the scientists say or reject them. When they accept what the scientists say, they are having Faith in Science, just as the Catholic Christian has Faith in God.

Let's look at how most of us believe, have faith, in Science:


Who of us actually knows that the Earth is a globe? How many of us have seen it from space? Then you have faith that it is a globe. You don't actually know, so you believe it is, based on what experts have told you.

Who actually knows that they have a pituitary gland in the middle of their brain and that it secretes a number of hormones that travel to different organs and through complex chemical reactions, make them perform certain functions? Who knows this happens? But you believe it anyway.

Who actually knows that their bodies are composed of atoms, themselves composed of protons, neutrons and electrons, the latter carrying a negative electric charge, which generates a magnetic field under motion. Who doubts this, yet who knows themselves?

Who knew that the moon's gravitational field was the cause of the ocean tides going in and out before science told them? Who doubts it? Who believes it?

Most people who visit their GP will have faith in what the GP tells them is wrong with them. Most parents vaccinate their children with pure faith in mainstream medical advice. GPs are not scientists, but are still the implementors, the practitioners, of science: that is, of scientific knowledge discovered by scientific method. We believe in them to help us when we are ill or when we're trying to get our bodies to do stuff, because they have an access to science that we don't. We need to have faith in their expertise.

Anything a GP tells you is derived from two lists. One is a list of symptoms. The other is a list of corresponding treatments. Experience tells the GP which treatment works with which symptom, but Science tells the GP why and what caused the symptoms, and why the treatment works or doesn't. We non-medically trained patients put our trust, our faith, our belief in them.

The patient may seek second opinions, but so do the religious when they seek counsel from other Priests/Pastors/Imams/Rabbis on a serious matter.

Science and Religion both have similar command structures that provide different levels of authority by which to provide the faithful with further comfort in holding their faith. If you don't like what your science teacher/Pastor says, you can refer to the latest peer-reviewed literature and periodicals: both Science and Religion have these publications.

Religion has a hierarchy of clergy, with experts, panels, counsellors and authoritative bodies at the top who decide on matters unresolved below them. Science also has a hierarchy of scientists, with experts, panels and authoritative bodies at the top. The faithful can appeal to each level for more certainty in holding a particular subject in their faith.

Religions and Sciences both refer to authoritative books written by their founders and added to with further writings by their most expert successors. 

Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John... and later Joseph Smith and Sayyid Qutb...

Aristotle, Ptolemy, Isaac, Galileo and Copernicus... and later Darwin and Hawkings...

All of them wrote the founding and then developing literature of their systems of understanding the world.

All of them have their own majority group of blind followers who believe, accept, have faith in, all that they read and yet don't understand. The difference is, Religion had had more followers. Until recently.

Three hundred years ago, the Enlightenment, with all its amazing discoveries and applications, started a movement, a following, that became so popular that most kids today think Easter is about bunny rabbits laying chocolate eggs and Christmas is when you get presents from under a tree.

Belief in God-based religion gets knocked down after every scientific break-through or discovery. There just isn't enough physical reality. It's all spiritual and invisible. Science-based religion can show its believers some powerfully real tricks. As Bertrand Russell once said, "We were told that Faith could move mountains, but nobody believed it; we are now told that the atomic bomb can move mountains, and everybody believes it."

To continue, believers in science over God are still believers and should recognise that they are just as religious.

When scientists tell us that the stars are distant suns, who doubts them? When scientists tell us the function of all our internal organs, who questions them? When scientists show us how to bring people back to life and stop people dying with medical science, who does not believe them? When scientists show us how everything in the world we see works, and how we can use the planet and the sun to make our lives better, who believes they do not really know? Yet, how do we know they are telling the truth? How do we know they are right? Unless we are scientists ourselves or we have an equal understanding explained to us through science, we must only believe them, we must only have faith in what they say to be true.

So, believers in Science are Religous. Science is their God. Agnostics are really Gnostic. Atheists are really Theists.

They think they don't believe in God, but they believe in Science. Anyone who has come to believe in Science shares a lot of with those who have what it means to be religious. There's not a lot of difference between them and any Christian, Ba'hai, Muslim or Hindu.

Whether people believe in God or in Science, they are all people of Faith.

George Negus is Dumb

George Negus is a charletain. A fraud. A trickster. A phoney.

George promised us that he would not only report the news, but explain the news. He promised us that his new TV show, "6:30 with George Negus", would tell us not just what was happening, but why. Yet, he adds no more value to news reporting or analysis, no further awareness nor deeper understanding of the world, than your average teleprompt-reading news-reader.

So far, George has simply repeated history: on his show he simply tells us what happened, and in a very simple-minded way. He basically just introduces the news item in two sentences and then a pre-recorded clip is played with the "facts" and some footage. After that, George summarises the issue in one simple sentence, usually relating the event to an old adage, cliche or generalisation.

Bottom line: If you want to know why the Middle East is on fire, why it seems to be experiencing a sweeping democratic and political reformation, George is not your man. He doesn't know. All he knows is that something's happening and it's "pretty big".

So what's the go, George? Where's the "why" you promised?

George Negus obviously has no idea what's going on in the world behind the news, or why, just like the Bogans and simple-minded footballers watching him. Perhaps that's the success of his show, which pulls in over 400,000 dumb-arse viewers every night. He appeals to morons because morons can relate to him. Channel Ten is aiming to corner the huge simpleton market, which is why all of its programming is childish, naive and hedonistic.

I can handle that. What I can't abide is being promised something and not getting it.

George Negus is an idiot bogan masquerading as a wise, old true-dinkum Aussie. He offers as much insight to the world as a lost thumb-tack.

Here's our summary of George Negus in the manner that he finishes off his indepth news analysis:

"Well... Seems some people should just stick to what they know."

The Middle East - Full of Twits

Twit (noun) - a) someone a bit stupid, but not a moron, b) someone who uses Twitter, Facebook and other social networking media because everyone else does.


"سنخرج بمسيرات في كل مساجد وكنائس مصر الكبرى متجهين ناحية الميادين العامة ومعتصمين حتى ننال حقوقنا المسلوبة. مصر ستخرج مسلميها ومسيحييها من أجل محاربة الفساد والبطالة والظلم وغياب الحرية. سيتم تحديد المساجد والكنائس ليلة الخميس."

"We will go out and rally in all the main mosques and churches of Egypt, heading to the public squares, and sit until we receive our rights, which have been usurped. Egypt's Muslims and Christians alike will emerge to fight corruption and unemployment, injustice and lack of freedom. We will choose mosques and churches on Thursday night."

- Facebook page for the Egyptian "Organisation of the Angry Revolution", 28 January 2011.

90,000 Egyptians signed up to attend.

Sometimes being as individualistic as a sheep can be an inadvertant boon for the spread of "democracy", or should we say the spread of toppling dictators, or should we say the spread of creating political power vacuums.

Such has been the case in that sizzling dust bowl romantically referred to as The Middle East.

A young Tunisan man, banned, fined and spat on by the police for trying to make enough money to feed his family of eight by selling veges in the street, sets himself on fire to protest a final desperate act of freedom under oppression.

A few hundred thousand tweets later and the Middle East is minus two dictators (others pending) and protesting spreads from Morrocco to Iran. Power to the People?

Let's not celebrate until these power vacuums are filled, and with what...

The Mexican-wave of tweeting revolutionaries seems only to have just begun. And what a shock to the world's Middle East, Islamic and Arab speacialist analysts and subject-matter experts, as they are hauled into the offices of their superiors to explain why this massively significant geo-political phenomenon was not foreshadowed.

And like the astrologer, yelled at for not predicting the death of a customer by her sister at last weeks session, yet predicting she would experience a romance and good fortune, all the smart analysts will be chanting "strategic shock?" recalling the same embarrassing response to 9/11.

- a little lesson for "experts": hospitals seem to cope well with strategic shocks (not knowing what's gonna come through their emergency room doors), so why can't the national security community?

Dictators across the planet must be watching the incoming tide with concern directly proportional to their distance from where it all began - the Middle Tweets.

But don't trust appearances. We are not witnessing an Iranian, Russian or French Revolution, the rise of the workers, the poor, the powerless and oppressed masses against overtly heinous dictatorships. We are witnessing a new outcome of an old phenomenon: herd psychology. Viva La Tweetolucion!

The effect: Accidental Revolution.

Through fast, cheap social networking tools, any social movement can now be greatly exaggerated and run out of control, as massive groups of young networked strangers converge in the cyber-world to promote one thing they have in common, thus empowering them with the objective truth that is "lots of people agree with me".

Why is this a bad thing? Because it's fake. Without Facebook and texting there would be no revolt in the Arab world that we are seeing today.

Here's the real issue:

All the protestors are young men, under 25; the two qualities you need to be unemployed in the Middle East and also the target market for fundamentalist groups and anti-government movements.

The trouble is that all 22 Middle East nation-states have arrived at a population distribution causing a "youth bulge". In Iran, 60% of people are under 30! Most Middle Easterners are under 25.

Why is this a problem? Because 25% of 60% of the Middle East are young men with savvy access to cheap portable social networking and communications technology. Most of them have access to e-social networks.

These protests are not a religious phenomenon. It is the insurgency of the Middle East's youth. It is a Mosh Pit.

It so happens that dictators constantly live in fear of a mass rebellion of the people. They each have an exit strategy in place, ready to deploy at a moment's notice: grab the country's money and run to Switzerland.

So, bored and angry young men mass against a paranoid, ready-to-bolt dictator who knows he shouldn't really be there.

Result: another shit political system will ensure nothing much changes after the dust settles.

The important thing for us Westies to watch out for is the replacements. Will they be better or worse for us?

Egypts main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in 1928. Thanks to the writings and teaching of its leaders, it has inspired the creation of most of the region's Islamist, jihadist anti-West groups around today: including Al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

 Sayyid Qutb in prison: the Egyptian government accused him of plotting to overthrow the state and he was executed in 1966.

The Brotherhood's key thinker was Sayyid Qutb, who's doctrine was instrumental to the Islamist movement in the Middle East and the anti-Western Jihad we've been witnessing since before 9/11.

Qutb's Milestones inspired the young Osama bin Laden and countless other jihadists across the globe.

The Muslim Brotherhood has also inspired the most powerful Islamist groups within Tunisia, Libya and Bahrain.

The advent of cheap and accessible Internet, cell phones and social networking tools were all essential to the current upsurge in mass anti-governmental activity across the Middle East. However, past revolutions did not require such.

The herd mentality was low-tech.

Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, Jordan, Palestine, ... within all countries inspired by the recent "successes" of hoi polloi, waiting quietly in the wings are a legion of malevolent and stupid political groups, rubbing their hands together and preparing to rule.


The reward for revolution isn't always good. It may turn out worse for them and worser for us.

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Anthony Pratt (AUS $4.3 billion)

Inherited Richard Pratt, his father’s, wealth, businesses and related opportunities.

Anthony Pratt is Chairman and CEO of Pratt Industries and Group Deputy Chairman of Visy Industries, the world’s largest privately-owned paper and packaging company.

Anthony's two sisters and their husbands work in the family business in Australia.

Visy Industries was founded in 1948 by Pratt's grandfather.

In an interview with Business Review Weekly, Pratt described the move to the US as an attempt to establish himself outside the shadow of his successful father. If this were a genuine attempt, he would have established himself without his inherited billions and inherited business contacts, starting from scratch like the rest of us. 

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Andrew Forrest (6.7 billion)

Andrew Forrest is the great-great nephew of former Premier John Forrest.

After graduating from WA University with a double-major in economics and politics, he worked as a stock broker. He then became founding CEO of a mining company, Fortescue, in his early 30s.

On 18 February 2011, the Federal Court ruled Forrest had breached the Corporations Law. The Court found he had misled and deceived investors by claiming in 2004 and 2005 that Fortescue had signed "binding" contracts with Chinese entities to build a railway, port and mine in the Pilbara. This announcement resulted in a sharp increase in his company’s share price, with Forrest's own shareholding soaring by more than $200 million.

This was the second time a Federal Court had ruled on the same breach. Back in 2009, Forrest was cleared. ASIC appealed the 2009 decision, before paying the multi-million-dollar legal bill, which was  picked up by taxpayers. For my money, it was worth wiping that fat smile off his face. 

He was educated at the Christ Church Grammar School and Hale School in Perth, along with a legion of wealthy power-brokers:

Christ Church Grammar School alumni include:

• Rod Eddington - former CEO of Cathay Pacific, Ansett Australia and British Airways
• Wayne Martin - Chief Justice of Western Australia since 2006
• Craig Williams - Major General and Commander of 2nd Division (Army Reserves)

Hale School alumni include:

Premiers:

• Rt. Hon. Sir John Forrest, first Premier of Western Australia and a Cabinet Minister in Australia's first Federal Government, sometimes referred to by courtesy as Baron Forrest of Bunbury
• George Leake CMG QC, Premier of Western Australia, and at other times Attorney-General, Crown Solicitor and Director of Public Prosecutions for Western Australia
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Premier of Western Australia, and at other times Attorney-General for Western Australia, Agent-General for Western Australia in London
• Sir Duncan Ross McLarty, Premier of Western Australia
• Sir Charles Court AK KCMG OBE, Premier of Western Australia
• Peter Dowding SC, Premier of Western Australia (also attended Caulfield Grammar School and The Scots College)
• Richard Court, Premier of Western Australia

Business Leaders:

• Langley Hancock, businessman, discover of the Pilbara iron ore deposits, founder of the separatist WA First Party
• Sir Anthony Langlois Lefroy, businessman, Chairman of the Board, Western Australian Newspapers Ltd
• Sir Edward Lefroy, businessman, Chairman of the Dominion League
• Sir Roderick Proctor, businessman, prominent financier
• Brian Thorley Loton AC, chairman of the board of BHP Billiton (then BHP).
• Richard Goyder, CEO of Westfarmers Pty Ltd.
• Alexander Forrest, landowner, one of the developers of Peppermint Grove, explorer
• Jeff Chatfield, chairman of Skywest Airlines Ltd.
  
  

Judges and Judicial Officers:

• Sir Stephen Henry Parker, Chief Justice of Western Australia
• Septimus Burt QC, Attorney General, 1st Agent General (Acting) of Western Australia, prominent landholder of 4,000,000 acres (16,000 km2) on the Gascoyne and Ashburton Rivers
• George Leake CMG QC, at different times, Attorney-General, Crown Solicitor and Director of Public Prosecutions for Western Australia
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Attorney General of Western Australia
• Thomas Davy KC, Rhodes Scholar, Attorney-General of Western Australia
• Justice Robert Nicholson AO, Judge of the Federal Court of Australia
• Peter Panegyres AM, Crown Solicitor for Western Australia
• Christian Porter, current Attorney General of Western Australia
• Judge Stephen Scott, Judge of the District Court of Western Australia

Others:

• His Royal Highness The Sultan of Selangor, Sultan of the Malaysian state of Selangor
• David Irvine AO, Director General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service
• Tony Nutt, Director of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, past Chief of Staff to Prime Minister John Howard
• Sir Ransley Victor Garland, Former Australian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Former Australian Minister for Business and Consumer Affairs
• Sir Edward Wittenoom, French Consul General for Western Australia, President of the Western Australian Legislative Counsel.
• Sir Walter Hartwell James KCMG KC, Agent-General for Western Australia in London
• William Hassell AM, Agent General for Western Australia in London, Counsel General for Germany in Western Australia

Lesson for the rest of us poor suckers:

It's Not What You Know, It's What School You Went To

 

Australia’s Richest and Most Powerful: How they got there

Gina Rinehart (personal wealth, AUS $9 billion)

As the sole heir, Gina Rinehart inherited her mining magnate father, Lang Hancock's, wealth, businesses and related opportunities.

When she was 29, she married Frank Rinehart, a 57 year old American corporate lawyer. He died in about 1990.

Following the death of her father in March 1992, Mrs Rinehart became Executive Chairman of the Hancock Group of companies.

She commenced an acrimonious legal fight in 1992 with her stepmother, Rose Porteous, over the circumstances of her father's death and control of the Hancock assets. The court cases and negotiations ultimately took 14 years to settle.

In 1999, her proposal to name a mountain range after her family was approved. The Hancock Range is north-west of the town of Newman.

As of 2010, her daughter Bianca Rinehart was a member of the executive management team and a director of several Hancock companies.

It would take you 9,000 years of earning 1 million dollars per year to save Gina's personal wealth. It would take the average Australian 160,000 years.