Just for my intellectual friends that love good
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Edgar J Winter
Jun 11, 2024, 10:52:58 PMJun 11
to Weekly Stars Google Group
Just for my intellectual pals that might want a good read. I do hope the
Western World will pull up its socks one day and see how the rule of law
should be obeyed so that the bad ones are punished and the majority of
normal people can go their ways without fear.
Our kamikaze elites
For the best of the West, head east
Kerry Wakefield <https://www.spectator.com.au/author/kerry-wakefield/>
Getty Images
Kerry Wakefield <https://www.spectator.com.au/author/kerry-wakefield/>
8 June 2024
Sometimes you get a better view of your own society from the outside than
the inside, where the steady, daily drip of declining standards can inure
you to what's going on. A recent trip to Japan demonstrated that there are
still societies where honour and integrity matter, they're just mostly not
in the Anglosphere.
In Japan a school principal, 59, was recently fired for repeatedly helping
himself to larger coffees than he had paid for at a store; he had his
retirement pay of around AUD$180,000 cancelled and his teaching licence
revoked. His offences had cost about $5. A council employee elsewhere also
lost his job for paying for a $1 coffee and serving himself a $2 coffee.
Harsh? Yes. It is a shock to lax Westerners to see honesty and laws taken so
seriously.
In case you think these offences are trivial, here's a serious example. When
former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in July 2022, the
Nara police chief apologised copiously for security failures, head bowed in
shame, in a public press conference the very next day. He admitted fault
both personally and corporately. One month later both he and the national
police chief resigned over the matter.
Contrast this with the infamous Uvalde school massacre in Texas, which
occurred two months before. The disgraced school police chief, whose forces
waited over an hour to engage the shooter, neither apologised nor resigned,
defended his indefensible actions and had to be sacked three months later.
His men had been clustered in the corridor outside the killing field of the
schoolroom, cravenly killing time, checking phones and applying hand
sanitiser as the killer executed 19 victims, most schoolchildren.
Pundit Mark Steyn has taken to commenting that countries become more Western
the further east you go, which is to say, Western in the old sense of
abiding by Judeo-Christian values. I can't vouch for that, but I do remember
when Labor Minister Mick Young stood down from the Hawke ministry over
failing to declare the import of a Paddington Bear, a high bar for a
sackable offence if ever there was one. These days, PM Albanese takes no
responsibility for the failed Voice campaign, although we all know he would
have crowed from the rooftops had it got up. Former UK PM Boris Johnston
partied willy-nilly with staffers during Covid lockdowns and failed to even
show shame at being found out, while in the US Joe Biden doesn't seem to
have ever heard of the notion of accepting blame or responsibility. Did US
heads roll over the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal, where civilians
fell from aeroplanes and terror groups looted an army's worth of abandoned
military hardware? Is anyone responsible for the many millions of invading
illegals at the US border? What about the secret Washington censorship
campaign revealed in the Twitter files, any apologies or sackings? Has Biden
junior or senior apologised for the litany of debauchery emerging from
Hunter's digital devices - images of himself cavorting naked with
prostitutes, weighing drugs with a hooker and far worse. No apologies or
jobs lost over the Russia collusion hoax that the Democrats and the intel
services perpetrated on Trump, and the dirty dealing with Chinese labs that
saw gain-of-function funded by US monies, despite Covid supremo Tony Fauci's
denials. Instead the Biden regime continues the Uvalde police chief's tactic
of deny, dodge and delay.
Japan seemed exceptional in other ways, not only in honesty and integrity.
One day in the Ginza, we ran into some acquaintances who were starry-eyed at
what they had experienced. 'Our first trip but it won't be our last,' they
said, joining the surging throng of Australian tourists to Japan, it now
being our third-most-popular destination. Apart from a plummeting yen and
top ski fields, Japan also offers an exemplary cultural homogeneity, a
society that prioritises beauty, order and politeness, spotless and quiet
streets even in the midst of a 37-million strong city, no graffiti, no
hobos, no litter, the locals trim, relaxed and well-dressed. The Ginza has
been greened, with newly tree-lined streets, walls and balconies; gusts of
jasmine-scented air greeted us in one main street. That's climate action we
could all get behind. Compared with Bourke or Pitt streets, this is an urban
paradise.
Of course, Japan has its problems, such as its plunging fertility rate, and
a hyper-ageing society where 29 per cent are already aged over 65. The Ginza
is an upmarket area and hardly typical. But on the question of values, it is
clear that Japan's leaders still believe in and uphold the Japan project.
In his book 1984, George Orwell listed ways in which societies could
collapse; one was when elites lost faith in their own society's core
principles. Christianity, the rule of law, our British-derived institutions,
equality not equity, a justice system blind to special pleading, even the
idea of men and women, few of these are defended by our current crop of
politicians.
Free speech is now our latest casualty, with eSafety Karen, Julie Inman
Grant, demanding Twitter/X censor a video of a Muslim youth stabbing a
bishop, and Australian media incomprehensibly piling on to attack the hated
billionaire, Elon Musk and by extension, free speech. That the offending
video was pulled down in Australia, that an infinite number of other violent
videos such as the George Floyd incident can be seen everywhere at will,
that other platforms such as YouTube were not prevented from showing it, and
that the video itself showed little that was graphic, seemed not to matter.
In an essay, Orwell talked about generations of Western intellectual
'destroyers' who fought to overturn religious belief. 'For two hundred years
we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in
the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were
rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little
mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a
cesspool full of barbed wire.'
Australia's elites, following the US and UK lead, seem to have lost faith in
their nation's values.
Japan shows us what we have squandered.
The Wizard of Woombye.
www.astroclairvoyant.com <http://www.astroclairvoyant.com>
Hoping you are enjoying your kaleidoscope of Stars and general information
this week...from: - "E. D. G. A. R"....
EDGAR, the Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system,
performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance,
and forwarding of submissions by all good souls and spirits, including
astrologers physically incarnated currently on planet earth that are
required by "universal law to relocate earth souls to a higher calling."
Western World will pull up its socks one day and see how the rule of law
should be obeyed so that the bad ones are punished and the majority of
normal people can go their ways without fear.
Our kamikaze elites
For the best of the West, head east
Kerry Wakefield <https://www.spectator.com.au/author/kerry-wakefield/>
Getty Images
Kerry Wakefield <https://www.spectator.com.au/author/kerry-wakefield/>
8 June 2024
Sometimes you get a better view of your own society from the outside than
the inside, where the steady, daily drip of declining standards can inure
you to what's going on. A recent trip to Japan demonstrated that there are
still societies where honour and integrity matter, they're just mostly not
in the Anglosphere.
In Japan a school principal, 59, was recently fired for repeatedly helping
himself to larger coffees than he had paid for at a store; he had his
retirement pay of around AUD$180,000 cancelled and his teaching licence
revoked. His offences had cost about $5. A council employee elsewhere also
lost his job for paying for a $1 coffee and serving himself a $2 coffee.
Harsh? Yes. It is a shock to lax Westerners to see honesty and laws taken so
seriously.
In case you think these offences are trivial, here's a serious example. When
former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in July 2022, the
Nara police chief apologised copiously for security failures, head bowed in
shame, in a public press conference the very next day. He admitted fault
both personally and corporately. One month later both he and the national
police chief resigned over the matter.
Contrast this with the infamous Uvalde school massacre in Texas, which
occurred two months before. The disgraced school police chief, whose forces
waited over an hour to engage the shooter, neither apologised nor resigned,
defended his indefensible actions and had to be sacked three months later.
His men had been clustered in the corridor outside the killing field of the
schoolroom, cravenly killing time, checking phones and applying hand
sanitiser as the killer executed 19 victims, most schoolchildren.
Pundit Mark Steyn has taken to commenting that countries become more Western
the further east you go, which is to say, Western in the old sense of
abiding by Judeo-Christian values. I can't vouch for that, but I do remember
when Labor Minister Mick Young stood down from the Hawke ministry over
failing to declare the import of a Paddington Bear, a high bar for a
sackable offence if ever there was one. These days, PM Albanese takes no
responsibility for the failed Voice campaign, although we all know he would
have crowed from the rooftops had it got up. Former UK PM Boris Johnston
partied willy-nilly with staffers during Covid lockdowns and failed to even
show shame at being found out, while in the US Joe Biden doesn't seem to
have ever heard of the notion of accepting blame or responsibility. Did US
heads roll over the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal, where civilians
fell from aeroplanes and terror groups looted an army's worth of abandoned
military hardware? Is anyone responsible for the many millions of invading
illegals at the US border? What about the secret Washington censorship
campaign revealed in the Twitter files, any apologies or sackings? Has Biden
junior or senior apologised for the litany of debauchery emerging from
Hunter's digital devices - images of himself cavorting naked with
prostitutes, weighing drugs with a hooker and far worse. No apologies or
jobs lost over the Russia collusion hoax that the Democrats and the intel
services perpetrated on Trump, and the dirty dealing with Chinese labs that
saw gain-of-function funded by US monies, despite Covid supremo Tony Fauci's
denials. Instead the Biden regime continues the Uvalde police chief's tactic
of deny, dodge and delay.
Japan seemed exceptional in other ways, not only in honesty and integrity.
One day in the Ginza, we ran into some acquaintances who were starry-eyed at
what they had experienced. 'Our first trip but it won't be our last,' they
said, joining the surging throng of Australian tourists to Japan, it now
being our third-most-popular destination. Apart from a plummeting yen and
top ski fields, Japan also offers an exemplary cultural homogeneity, a
society that prioritises beauty, order and politeness, spotless and quiet
streets even in the midst of a 37-million strong city, no graffiti, no
hobos, no litter, the locals trim, relaxed and well-dressed. The Ginza has
been greened, with newly tree-lined streets, walls and balconies; gusts of
jasmine-scented air greeted us in one main street. That's climate action we
could all get behind. Compared with Bourke or Pitt streets, this is an urban
paradise.
Of course, Japan has its problems, such as its plunging fertility rate, and
a hyper-ageing society where 29 per cent are already aged over 65. The Ginza
is an upmarket area and hardly typical. But on the question of values, it is
clear that Japan's leaders still believe in and uphold the Japan project.
In his book 1984, George Orwell listed ways in which societies could
collapse; one was when elites lost faith in their own society's core
principles. Christianity, the rule of law, our British-derived institutions,
equality not equity, a justice system blind to special pleading, even the
idea of men and women, few of these are defended by our current crop of
politicians.
Free speech is now our latest casualty, with eSafety Karen, Julie Inman
Grant, demanding Twitter/X censor a video of a Muslim youth stabbing a
bishop, and Australian media incomprehensibly piling on to attack the hated
billionaire, Elon Musk and by extension, free speech. That the offending
video was pulled down in Australia, that an infinite number of other violent
videos such as the George Floyd incident can be seen everywhere at will,
that other platforms such as YouTube were not prevented from showing it, and
that the video itself showed little that was graphic, seemed not to matter.
In an essay, Orwell talked about generations of Western intellectual
'destroyers' who fought to overturn religious belief. 'For two hundred years
we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in
the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were
rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little
mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all, it was a
cesspool full of barbed wire.'
Australia's elites, following the US and UK lead, seem to have lost faith in
their nation's values.
Japan shows us what we have squandered.
The Wizard of Woombye.
www.astroclairvoyant.com <http://www.astroclairvoyant.com>
Hoping you are enjoying your kaleidoscope of Stars and general information
this week...from: - "E. D. G. A. R"....
EDGAR, the Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system,
performs automated collection, validation, indexing, acceptance,
and forwarding of submissions by all good souls and spirits, including
astrologers physically incarnated currently on planet earth that are
required by "universal law to relocate earth souls to a higher calling."
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