International Women's Day in Iran

It was International Women's Day earlier this week.

An appropriate time to be reminded that Iran executed approximately 64 women in 2025. 

Reasons for execution do include murder, but also such outrages as: 

• not wearing the Islamic veil ;
• not wanting to marry their relatives;
• not accepting beatings from their husband;
• having different political beliefs.

"Fortunately," being stoned to death for "crimes" such as adultery has not happened since 2000. Too late for 20-year-old Zoleykhah Kadkhoda, sentenced to be stoned to death in August 1997 after being convicted of "sexual relations outside marriage." But she was one of the "lucky" ones. After a botched execution, Zoleykhah was found alive in a morgue. (And following international pressure, her death sentence was lifted, and Iranian authorities informed Amnesty International she was released on November 26, 1997.)

Reasons for threatened executions today include not singing the regimes' National Anthem in the women's Asian Cup soccer tournament in Australia, following which the whole team of non-vocalisers were branded as “wartime traitors” and threatened with execution -- with their families being held hostage against their return.

Given these multiple and still ongoing horrors, an Iranian-born expat feminist "want[s] to clarify a few things for people in the West about the current war."

1. We don't expect you to be pro-war. There are many reasons to oppose it, and we can discuss them. ... But don't use Iranians' lives and wellbeing as a reason to oppose the war. Inclusion 101: listen to our voices (and amplify them if you truly care). Don't assume you know our lived experiences better than we do. 

2. The general sentiment among Iranians, both inside and outside Iran, is still positive as of now. Of course there’s nuance and many different views on specific aspects. But that doesn't make us "pro-war." 

3. We’ve been calling for humanitarian military intervention because every other method has simply failed over decades, leaving far more casualties than some wars. It’s not an easy choice. We believe it’s the only one left. 

4. We don't blindly or naively support these operations. We support them only to the extent that we believe they serve as the humanitarian intervention we've been calling for. (Sure, some naive people exist, but don't cherry-pick them to paint all of us.) 

5. Iranians generally understand what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria far better than most in the West. They’re our neighbours. Think about whether you may come off as condescending when you “whitesplain” these things to us. 

6. If you oppose the war, you must do so without supporting the Islamic Regime. It may feel easy to just oppose everything, but if you offer no real, effective way to end the oppression, your opposition effectively supports the regime. 

7. If you doubt Iranians support intervention against the Islamic Regime, remember: the regime’s very first response to the war was to shut down the internet. Their propaganda machine still has full access, while only a small fraction of Iranians have unstable, unreliable ways to get online.

PS: Masih Alinejad reports [confirmed by AFP]: 

This is the first reaction from inside Iran to the news that Mojtaba Khamenei has replaced his father as 'Supreme Leader.'
People are standing on their balconies chanting: 'Death to Mojtaba.' A nation is telling the world: we will not accept another inherited dictatorship.

It's still true: "The best anti-poverty programme ever invented wasn’t a benefit, it was a job."

"With the help of all ... we can build a new life for the poor, a life of hope, a life of opportunity. And we can do it by remembering that the best anti-poverty programme is a job."

~ Ronald Reagan in his 1986 Radio Address to the Nation on Welfare Reform

"The best measure of our success is not how many people are on welfare, it’s how many people we help to get off of welfare and into a job. Because the best anti-poverty programme is a job."

~ Barack Obama from his 2014 State of the Union Address

"The best anti-poverty programme ever invented wasn’t a benefit, it was a job. Policies should make work easier to access than welfare — not the other way around."

~ Taxpayers Union 2026

New blog: Brash + Mitchell

There's a 'new' blog in town, and it's called Brash + Mitchell.

It's not entirely new, of course. With the thankful departure of Michael Bassett and Rodney Hide, their old blog of Bassett, Brash + Hide has become Brash + Mitchell -- that's Don Brash and Lindsay Mitchell to you.

I have no idea why Bassett and Hide departed, but I'm glad they've gone. 

Without them we might expect the blog to be both more principled, less self-congratulatory -- and certainly less wet. 

And since Lindsay Mitchell's solo blog is so criminally under-read, here's hoping her writing will attract a much wider audience.

I commend it to your attention:

"The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason"

"The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes; to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking of their excesses; and to learn how to recognise and so to destroy, by force of reason, the first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they ever dare to reappear amongst us."

~ French philosopher & mathematician Marquis de Condorcet, from his 1794 book Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind [hat tip Matthew H]

Focus

“If we look at history, it always will speed up. So that’s why I think the skill of focus, being able to know how to focus when it's necessary, I think is a very, very valuable skill to have nowadays.”

~ Oscar de Bos, co-author of a new book Focus On-Off

"He came up behind him like a librarian": Vale Dennis Cometti (1949-2026)

In the front rank of sporting commentators anywhere was West Australia's Dennis Cometti, who passed away this week.

These were some of his best commentary moments ...

State of the Nation address on behalf of the Honesty Party

"My fellow New Zealanders, whether citizens, residents or those just passing through en route to Australian pastures, it gives me little pleasure to deliver this State of the Nation address on behalf of the Honesty Party because the State of the Nation is, to use a variety of technical terms, knackered, stuffed, buggered.

"While I am sure many of you use far more less technical terms, we can all agree, in the spirit of total honesty that this great party proudly stands for and embraces, that the country is not what it was nor indeed what it claims to be – and hasn’t been for decades.

"The Honesty Party recognises that our problems and issues as a country predate Rogernomics and Ruthenasia. Muldoonism was a failed experiment in populist authoritarianism and economics that failed to adjust to a rapidly changing world. What was once the (if briefly) wealthiest country in the world had already begun its decline and fall. The long snooze of the Holyoake years had set the tone of a ‘steady as she goes’ mentality, one that too often has meant the ship of state has steadily gone aground on the rocks of despair and desperation.

"The basis of our economy is one that no other first world nation has decided upon. A primary-production exporting economy to which we have added tourism, an overinflated housing market and high levels of immigration sets us apart, for a reason. New Zealand used to be the social laboratory of the word; today in all honesty we could say New Zealand is the economic laboratory in how to over promise and under deliver."

~ Mike Grimshaw from his post 'State of the Nation Address: The Honesty Party (An exercise in political honesty)'

One member of every couple works just to pay the tax bill.

There was a time not that long ago when only one member of a family needed to go out to work. 

But that was several moons and many tax increases ago.

Now, one member of every couple goes out to work just to pay the tax bill.

Yet we still have the Sole Parent Support (SPS) benefit, known for decades as the DPB, aka the Domestic Purposes Benefit -- introduced in November 1973 for "sole parents, carers of the sick, and people living alone." 

In 1971, there were about 19,000 sole parent households with children under 15[1]. By the middle of 1974, 12,000 of them were receiving the DPB. There were 110,000 when it was replaced in 2013 with a suite of new benefits. (Politicians love to change a name instead of the reality; and a name-change always makes a thing easier to hide.) 

In today's world the DPB is, says Lindsay Mitchell, "an anachronism. It has lost context in modern society."

Why?

Because most mothers work. 

They take paid parental leave, which has a maximum entitlement of 6 months, and return to their jobs. Whether they want to would vary, but most would say they have to. Mortgages or rent need to be paid, power, groceries, childcare, etc....

22 percent of the mothers were supported by a benefit. For the vast majority, that would be Sole Parent Support. ... So the mothers returning to work - like it or not - will be paying taxes to enable other mothers to stay reliant for most of their newborn's childhood.

Fair?

...

Currently 234,000 children rely on welfare, with over two thirds on SPS.

If those children had a parent on a Jobseeker benefit, the expectation and effort to get their parent into employment would be far greater.

That's not just hot air. The reason Bennett got rid of the Sickness Benefit (in favour of Jobseeker/Health or Disability Condition) was to make sure 'expectation and effort' also went into getting temporarily unemployed unwell people back to work.

Societal expectations matter. And benefits should reflect them.

Get rid of the sole parent benefit. Lift aspirations for those mothers, and better outcomes for their children will follow.

Even better: get rid of all the costs from government that make it necessary for one partner to seek full-time employment just to pay the government's bills!

Famously, mobster Al Capone was not laid low by other gangsters nor by criminal law -- but by the tax code.

He was strangled by bureaucratese. 

Tom Hunter suggests a Japanese-inspired idea to do the same for our local gangsters. And it starts with a humble McDonald's burger, for which a low-level thug wouldn't pay. Turns out something dramatic happened when McDonalds sued the Yakuza gang to which the thug belonged.

'That idea is captured in the dry phrase “employer liability.” In a normal company, if an employee injures someone while doing their job, the victim can often sue not only the individual, but the company and its representative director. The logic is simple: those who profit from dangerous activity should bear the risk of it. Japanese lawyers and police began asking: why should a crime syndicate be any different?'

Death by bureaucracy! Brilliant. What this meant was that all you had to prove was that the guy who had stolen, beaten or murdered someone worked for a Yakuza ..., which is exactly what McDonalds did with the thug.

Simple.

It started with a cheap burger. And is now at the point where the "boss of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang is losing his house (in a flash Tokyo district) because he lost a 270 million yen lawsuit against a firm that was damaged by one of his 'employees'.'

And here's Tom's thought:

Why couldn’t New Zealand copy these Japanese laws, or at least the conceptual principle of them, and apply them to the likes of the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, Head Hunters, and the rest?

Makes sense?

"As for leaders..."

"As for leaders,

"The worst, the people hate,

"The next best, the people fear,

"The next best the people honour and praise.

"But for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.

"When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'"

~ Laotzu [hat tip the late Paul Callaghan & Colinxy]

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one."

"There are moments in history when a civilisation must choose its future.

"We have been told that the State is our protector; that bureaucrats are our saviour, and that politicians know more than the free man. That we must obey, that we must depend. 

"But the truth is different. 

"The world only has two types of people: those who live off what others produce, and those who produce everything that makes modern life possible. 

"The former draft regulations, the latter create wealth. The former promise [to equalise everyone], the latter generate prosperity. The former spread poverty, the latter multiply abundance. 

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one. 

"That's why we chose the system that lifted millions out of extreme poverty: free-market capitalism. 

"Because you don’t negotiate freedom, you defend freedom." 

~ Argentine President Javier Milei from his inauguration speech 'Moral Values as State Policy'

Not so sunny solar

I've been reading an 

RNZ investigation [that] has found that [Luxon's] ministers were presented with clear evidence [sic] that rooftop solar is now among the cheapest sources of electricity households can access; that upfront cost is the primary barrier to uptake; and that Australia's rapid expansion was driven by more than $11 billion in state subsidies. But [that] the coalition government [here] chose not to follow the same path. ...  

[The investigation says that] one in three Australian homes now ... [have solar panels installed] saving those families an average 40 percent on their electricity bills each year ...

As part of their work, officials prepared detailed material comparing New Zealand's approach with overseas subsidy regimes, particularly Australia's small-scale solar and battery incentives.

[Documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act ] noted Australia's "solar revolution" was aided by $11.5 billion AUD in government grants, which reduced upfront costs by 30% and allowed the industry to achieve massive economies of scale.

Total cost to Australians then, if subsidy covers only 30% of the cost of installing rooftop solar, is $38.3B billion AUD (a subsidy to wealthy home-owning Australians of almost $1000 per Australian taxpater).  Which the "investigation" says has reduced prices for those 1 in 3 subsidised Australian families by an average of 40%. Not a great return for all those billions, I would have said. 

Note that Australia's entire peak demand is roughly 35,000 MW. So at a typical capital cost of ~$1.5–2M per MW, if one were to spend that $38.3B on, say, a system of Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plants, then Australians could theoretically have built enough extra gas capacity to supply the whole country!

Or, maybe, spent those billions on something else. (For that money, going to those already wealthy enough to afford the cost of installation, you could have around 300 new schools, or 30 new hospitals, or one hell of a tax cut ... )

Meanwhile, in New South Wales, this morning, here is where power is coming from ...

What does this mean? It means that to have reliable power, Australians need to build duplicate capacity anyway for when the sun is not delivering. That's the main problem with unreliables.

So much for that "clear evidence."

"Death to America" is now a categorical imperative, apparently

 

According to The New York Times, Ali Larijani has effectively 

been running Iran since January 2026. He was in “charge of

 crushing, with lethal force, the recent protests demanding the 

end of Islamic rule.” He is now the key power broker in Iran’s transition.

Larijani is a Ph.D. in Western Philosophy and a specialist

on Immanuel Kant. He wrote his dissertation on Kant and 

three published books [on the German Philosopher].

"Religious fanaticism and radical subjectivism are two sides of the same false coin. One enables another: 

    "Radical subjectivism annihilates metaphysics.
    "The religious fanatic fills his 'void of reality' with his arbitrary assertions (God, miracles, angels, devils, afterlife, etc)."

~ Paulius Lebedevic [hat tip Stephen Hicks, Quote-Unquote Marrk-Goldblatt]

"Ideas have consequences - and in today's volatile world (March 2026), with US-Israel strikes escalating against Iran, regime continuity under power broker Ali Larijani, Russia's enduring war footing in Ukraine, and multipolar fractures everywhere, the intellectual foundations rejecting liberal democracy in favour of "higher duty" and civilisational destiny stand out starkly.
    "In Russia, Alexander Dugin supplies the metaphysical fireworks: a heady mix of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and traditionalism remixed into Eurasianism and his "Fourth Political Theory." ... Duty isn't optional-it's ontological, an existential imperative justifying sacrifice, expansion, and absolute obedience to the state as civilisational guardian. ...
    "[And so] with Iran, where Ali Larijani -- the current top power broker effectively steering the regime ... -- is a genuine Kant scholar .... 

    "Operating within Shia theocratic-revolutionary Islamism, Larijani's Kantian toolkit emphasises deontology: i.e., absolute duty over personal happiness or utility, and reason's limits that 'make room for faith.' This lends philosophical rigour to prioritising collective obligation to the Islamic Republic-categorical imperatives of regime preservation, anti-hegemonic destiny, and order -- over Lockean individual liberties or empirical critique. 

    "Lethal force against dissent or external threats? Not mere power grab, but duty-bound necessity to sustain the higher moral-political order.
    "The parallel is striking: Both reject the British Enlightenment path (Locke, Smith, Mill) that grounds secular democracy in individual rights, free markets, and a limited state that serves citizens. 

    Dugin does it with apocalyptic, anti-modern mysticism and civilisational clash. Larijani does it with measured, pragmatic deontological reasoning adapted to clerical-authoritarian stability.
    "Russia gets the wild-eyed prophetic theorist; Iran gets the calculating insider philosopher. Yet both scaffold regimes where the individual is subordinated to a transcendent collective fate - whether empire or revolutionary faith—precisely when global power shifts demand such justifications.
    "Philosophical coincidence? Or a deeper pattern in how anti-liberal thought sustains authority amid crisis?"

~ Paul Steeper from his comment 'In Our Current Geopolitical Moment - A Contrast of Anti-Liberal Scaffolds: Dugin's Eurasian Destiny in Russia vs. Larijani's Kantian Duty in Iran' [hat tip Stephen Hicks]

Publisher's Response

The publisher of the book above has sent me a response to my review of his book, in which I considered it so bad it should be withdrawn. The full reply is posted below the review itself so you may judge it all for yourself, should you wish to ...

THE SMEAR OF "ANTI-SEMITISM" 

When Tross Publishing published its latest book, Who was behind the Bolshevik Revolution?, we expected criticism from the highly organised lobby that seeks to intimidate into silence any publication that shows any group of Jewish people in a bad light no matter how accurate such description might be. And, of course, the more powerful the book (and this is a very powerful and convincing book), the more intense the criticism and the mindless cries of "anti-Semitism". What Tross Publishing did not expect was how unnecessarily nasty and utterly pathetic such criticism would be - and here we are talking of Peter Cresswell's review of the book, which is more a diatribe of smear tactics than a review. [Continue here.] 

National is a party for business. For *specific* businesses.

"[S]ince we begin this week’s column at this beautiful [convention centre] let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how it was paid for...

"John Key wanted a convention centre. Since he couldn’t get a flag he needed something to show for his eight years in power. To induce SkyCity to build him a legacy, his government increased the number of permitted slot machines, extended their license, and gave the listed operator a regional monopoly until 2048.

"This is how National believe economics is done. Deals. Haggling. Concessions. Foreign visits and handshakes with oligarchs. National is not a party of free enterprise, it is the party of business."

~ Damien Grant from his column 'ACT is in a death match with NZ First, and the stakes couldn’t be higher'

Iranians: Yearning to breathe free!

In Auckland yesterday we woke to news that Iran's theocratic rulers were dead and dying. 

Within hours, Iranians in Auckland had gathered to celebrate. (Yes, those are Israeli and US flags being waved below, and pictures of a dead Ayatollah being celebrated). 

This was in complete contrast to the hand wringing going on in the homes of (to pick just two people) Helen Clark and Antōnio Guterres, who were quick to bemoan attacks on the regime that had slaughtered at least 35, 000 Iranian innocents -- which they'd ignored.

So too had Iranians in many other parts of the world. Not least in Iran. (Click through for posts and videos.)

It seems the only place these murdering bastards are mourned are in the homes and offices of people with Pro-Palestinian t-shirts in the cupboard and keffiyeh on their hat rack. These people "have no shame," observes Brendan O'Neill. "They said nothing when thousands of Iranians were slaughtered by the theocratic regime. Yet now they’re crying because some regime goons were killed in airstrikes. These people are just apologists for tyranny."

Given the Iranian regime's role in supporting world terrorism, Islamofascism and in trying to destroy western life (in every way possible) -- on raining death and destruction on the world for 47 years -- then if regime change is successful in Iran -- if! -- then it would be the single most momentous geopolitical change for the better since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But as with Bush II's Iraq War, the question to come is: do they know what the hell they're going to do next. With this administration, that's unlikely (it hasn't even bothered to seek Congressional approval, which is constitutionally required). So it will need every circumstance to go the way of those Iranians celebrating above people. As Eliot Cohen says,  "Something of an exercise in ambivalence here. I would like to see the Iranian regime go down hard -- and am not confident Trump knows what he is doing."

Let's hope with crossed fingers for a lion of freedom to arise from the attacks.

It's more like an RMA 2.0

"The Resource Management Act has been amended virtually every year since 1991 and reviewed several times during that period. Yet reform has consistently failed. [See here for reams of examples]

"The RMA ... [has] delivered a housing crisis, $1.3 billion a year in infrastructure consenting costs, 1,175 different zoning categories, and declines in freshwater quality and indigenous biodiversity – the environmental outcomes most directly within the planning system’s control.

"So when the Government set out its ten principles for replacing the RMA in late 2024, there was genuine reason [among some people] for optimism. The Cabinet paper was clear: the new system’s starting point would be the enjoyment of property rights and respect for the rule of law. The scope of what could be regulated would be narrowed. Nationally standardised zones would replace the bewildering patchwork of local rules. Environmental limits would be based on quantitative data and not be overly prescriptive. Consenting would be drastically reduced. ...

"But legislation lives in its detail. And in the detail, something has gone wrong. ...

"Consider property rights. The 2024 Cabinet paper said respect for property rights should be the default position under the new system. But neither Bill mentions property rights as a purpose or among its goals. They are only alluded to in limited circumstances. .... Without safeguards in the legislation, property rights are little more than a pious aspiration.

"Some will say, ‘so what’? The international evidence on institutional foundations of prosperity, recognised by the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics, is unambiguous: secure property rights and constrained state discretion are preconditions for sustained economic development. As for the environment, the Soviet Union had no respect for property rights. Its environmental record was quite literally disastrous. ...

"The Bills confer far too much power on ministers. They will set national policy directions, national standards, standardised zones, and environmental limits. It might be 2029 before all this is in place. Parliament does not know what those decisions will be. It is being asked to build the frame of a house without knowing its floor plan....

"Clarity is further undermined by undefined terms like “inappropriate development” and “not unreasonably affect others”. These terms sit at the top of the hierarchy. Litigation over their meaning under a new framework is likely here too.

"The Bills are currently before the Environment select committee. It can recommend some principled amendments to align the Bills more with Cabinet’s intentions. One could incorporate Cabinet’s explicit and central instruction to protect people’s ability to enjoy their property. ... clearly defined terms should replace the subjective language in their goals.

"The select committee has an important opportunity to put this right [or at least try to make a pork chop out of a pig's ear - Ed.]. It should take it."

~ Nick Clark from his op-ed 'The RMA reform we were promised is not the reform we got' [Emphasis mine.]

BOOK REVIEW: 'Who Was Behind the Bolshevik Revolution?' by Ron Asher [updated with reply by publisher]

I have in front of me a new book by Tross Publishing, which I have been invited to review. Having written a chapter or two for the publisher, it is my unpleasant job not just to recommend you not buy it, but that the publisher withdraw it. (Recommending withdrawal is not a matter of "free speech" -- the right to speak includes the right to take the consequences, including criticism -- simply a recommendation for good editorial hygiene.) Withdraw, because it sits poorly with his other titles, because it sits badly with genuine scholarship on any subject. ...

... and because it's not even a good read.

In 1917 in the midst of a war for survival on the First World War's eastern front, Bolshevists seized power from a provisional Russian government fighting the war, and proceeded to enact terror on the population and thereafter on the world. Far from a revolution, it was a squalid little coup, and what came of it was disaster, starvation, death, and mass-murder. 

There had been a revolution that swept away the Tsar -- swept away him and his autocratic regime -- what Ayn Rand was to call "the good revolution." But it wasn't the Bolsheviks who revolted against the Tsar's regime; they came to power instead in a squalid little backdoor coup eight months later -- orchestrated in part by the Imperial German High Command, who had sent Lenin into Russia to kill the war on their terms -- a backroom revolt that stabbed in the back the Provisional Government and squashed like a bug Russia's first stumbling chance at real freedom. 

The Bolsheviks didn't sweep away oppression; they brought it back.

And our friend Mr Asher has now written 93 pages (and 5 pages of notes) to tell us who really did it. And oddly, the important wartime context is never mentioned ...

The wartime context of the coup. (From Louis Fischer's

 The Life of Lenin (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 109

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT WAS SUPPOSED TO have said that "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

This short book claims to reveal who was really behind the Bolshevik Revolution. Really and truly. And it will do so, we are promised, "with meticulous care and references" [p. 5; all uncredited page notes will refer to Mr Asher (2026)]. Take careful note: This is not a book about the ideas that caused the event in question. It is about the people. And, spoiler alert, our author says it was the Jews wot dunnit. They were driven to it, says the author, because they were Jews. 

That's it. That really is it.

And note the argument: it wasn't that those who driven to it because they happened to be Jews. They were driven to it because they were Jews. It was "vengeance," says our author, for earlier Russian pogroms against Jews. Or just because their religion was weird. Or ... something.

A remarkable claim, not least because head Bolshevik and the revolution's driving force was one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was not at all Jewish. (He was raised in a Russian Orthodox Christian family, baptised as an infant, and identified culturally and ethnically as Russian; historians who have examined distant links, such as the author of Lenin's Jewish Question, emphasise any link was irrelevant to his identity, ideology, or actions: he critiqued all religion, including Judaism, and saw ethnicity as secondary to class struggle). Nor was Lenin's successor known as Stalin any more Jewish (he was, famously, an ethnic Georgian christened as Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), and nor was the head of Lenin's feared secret police, the Cheka (the brutal Feliz Dzerzhinsky, who was a Pole). 

None of the heads of the snake were Jewish.

Indeed, of the 21 members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in August 1917, there were at most just six who could be categorised that way. Such niceties however do not disturb our author. (Indeed, he adds three more, without any reference for doing so.) 

And in any case.a similar ethnic make-up can be found for many other Russian movements of the time, including the Russian Orthodox priesthood, the rival Menshevik party (whose founders were both Jewish, and which actually had double the proportion of ethnic Jews to the Bolshies), and of course the Jewish Bund (a secular Jewish socialist party active between 1897 and 1920). A similar make-up can be found because any intellectual movement attracts intellectuals -- and Jewish Russians were among the most educated of the time, and were barred by the Tsar's regime from other political involvement.

So the claim is not just remarkable for being bold, but also (as we will see) for lacking the kind of "meticulous care and references" the boldness demands. It's true that historians of the various Russian revolutions and coups d'etat have generally recognised that Jews were represented in early Bolshevik leadership, but so were many other educated ethnic minorities who all faced persecution under the Tsar. (Most of whom were excluded by being non-Russian from advancement in Russian culture or in the vast Russian bureaucracy.) And of course the vast majority of Jews were not Bolsheviks, and Jews as a community suffered enormously under Soviet rule.

This is especially important today to understand. The book comes at a time when ethnic Russian fascism and anti-Semitism has escalated dramatically following Putin's insane aspirations for empire, and Hamas's murderous October 7 attack followed by Israel's bloody response. It's said that Hamas's “Sinwar placed his money on the 2,000-year belief that Jews were inherently vengeful, greedy, and lustful for the blood of innocents and children [and] in betting on Jew-hatred, Sinwar hit the jackpot."  

The irrational hatred continues even here in New Zealand, once considered a relatively safe environment for Jewish folk, and yet the NZ Jewish Council recorded 227 antisemitic incidents in the 12 months following October 7 -- more than the 166 recorded across the entire eight-and-a-half years prior.

So things are ramping up, and you might well ask yourself about such a book's publication: "Why now?" 

And about the thesis, even if proven: "So what?"

WHILE YOU PONDER THOSE QUESTIONS, consider again what such a proof might look like -- proof that it was the Jews wot dunnit -- and about that promise of "meticulous care and references." 

Let's begin by looking at some contemporary (or near-contemporary) quotes adduced by Mr Asher to describe the Bolshevik coup and the Jews' alleged responsibility for it: some examples drawn from a diplomat's alarmed despatch, a gossip columnist's interview, a White Russian general's memoir, and a State Department intelligence file drawing on a known forgery -- all of which are treated as equivalent historical evidence ...

Hitchen's Razor

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

~ Christopher Hitchens, from his 2007 book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Your library is like a wine cellar ...

“It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones. “There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion. 

“If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice! 

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.”

~ attrib. Umberto Eco from discussion in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 book The Black Swan

"So welcome to the lovely new economy where being human actually matters."

 

"This is the new secret strategy in the arts, and it’s built on the simplest thing you can imagine -- namely, existing as a human being. ...

"You see the same thing in media right now, where livestreaming is taking off. ...

"This return to human contact is happening everywhere, not just media and the arts. ... I see it myself in store after store. People will wait in line for flesh-and-blood clerks, instead of checking out faster at the do-it-yourself counter.

"But this isn’t happenstance -- it’s a sign of the times....

"As AI customer service becomes more pervasive, the luxury brands will survive by offering this human touch. ...

"Even tech companies [like Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, and QoBuz] are figuring this out. ...

"Welcome to the new world of flesh-and-blood concierges and curators. That’s now the ultimate status symbol. ... In fact, the Silicon Valley elites forcing tech down our throats will only make us hate cold, sterile tech more than ever. And they won’t fix that problem by training AI to pretend to be human. That just adds insult to injury.

"This might even be the hot new career path -- readymade for curators, concierges, caregivers, conversationalists, and other people who love people. As the old pop song anticipated, they might just end up being the happiest people of them all.

"So welcome to the lovely new economy where being human actually matters. Go ahead, try it out. Be cool -- be a human. All the bots in botdom will never be able to take that away from you."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'The New Cool Thing: Being Human'

"...unhinged bragging about a booming economy, which isn’t; wars he has settled, which he didn’t; falling gas prices & inflation rates that were none of his doing; winning so much that imaginary people are begging for less; & touting an utterly delusional golden age future that is not even remotely on the horizon."

"Well, if there was ever any doubt, now we know. Donald J. Trump is a very badly deformed personality, who is a walking grievance machine. And he has turned his own demons into a toxic form of Rightwing Statism, which threatens to ruin what is left of free market prosperity and constitutional liberty in America.

"Having apparently accumulated 79 years worth of wrongs, slights, rebukes, disses and disappointments, the Donald is now, and for most of his adult life has been, all about getting even. He pursues his revenges via a combination of self-glorifying braggadocio and pugilistic verbal aggression against any and all designated enemies who come to top of mind at any given moment.

"That was on full display Tuesday night in the form of his unhinged bragging about a booming economy, which isn’t; wars he has settled, which he didn’t; falling gas prices and inflation rates that were none of his doing; winning so much that imaginary people are begging for less; and touting an utterly delusional golden age future that is not even remotely on the horizon. ...

"We have had the privilege of viewing every State of the Union address for the last 56 years, including 13 of them from the very floor of the House of Representatives that the Donald defiled Tuesday night.

"Over that span we have heard them all: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, Obama, Trump 1.0 and Biden. But no US president before him has even remotely approached the level of vitriol, rancour, bombast, rudeness, raw partisanship and bully-boy acrimony that flooded the Chamber in ill-tempered bursts for the better part of the Donald’s two hours at the podium.

"At the end of the day, therefore, Trump finally did it. Not only is he a loud-mouth egomaniac who sports no compass except his own fame, fortune and glory, as we have long understood. But now he has made himself a National Disgrace like no other leader in the very 250 years that he claimed to be celebrating last night."

~ former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman on 'Trump's State of the Union: Two Hours Of Demons Unbound And Rightwing Statism On The Boil'

"Don't get mad..."

"'Don't get mad,' Mr. James had told him. 'State your case --your facts and your reasons -- and don't raise your voice. You aren't going to win every time, that's just the way it'll be, but you should win more than you lose'."

~ Robert Gore from his 2013 novel The Golden Pinnacle

Congratulations to Cuba, the world's first Net Zero country

New Zealand, as you will all know by now, has been set by our government with at "target" to be Net Zero of greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., fossil fuels) by 20250.

But you don't need a time machine to see that future for a small island nation like ours..  You can just travel to the small island nation of Cuba,  where "the Trump administration is helping Cuba to achieve Net Zero by preventing oil tankers from landing there."

Only, in the New York Times article about this, it describes it as a bad thing. It has, says the Times, brought Cuba “to its knees.”

In Cuba, people are struggling with frequent blackouts, shortages of gasoline and cooking gas and dwindling supplies of diesel that power the nation’s water pumps. Trash is piling up, food prices are soaring, schools are cancelling classes and hospitals are suspending surgeries...

Wasn't the end of fossil fuels supposed to be a boon to this small island nation? 

Can't they use the "renewable," i.e., unreliable energy, with which Cuba is blessed to replace the fossil fuels so kindly withheld from them by theUS? After all, Cuba already has a bunch of wind farms. So as the Manhattan Contrarian asks, "Why doesn’t it just crank them up to provide the power formerly supplied by the fossil fuels?"

Could it be that a small island nation's power plants, water pumps, transport, food, families, schools and hospitals -- not to mention basic rubbish collection -- all actually depend on the reliable energy of fossil fuels?

Take a closer look at Cuba if you don't want that to be our future.