"All of a sudden mass media is interested in the civilian casualties of the war in Iran!"

The media is slowly waking up to the reaction inside Iran to US-Israeli bombing, beginning to report on the perspective of Iranians living inside there who look forward to a regime change.

It's an unusual moment. People being bombed who are welcoming the bombing.

The New York Times spoke to an engineer in Tehran who said many in the city were comfortable with U.S. bombings and that “they are upset if there is a night without bombing, and fear the war might end while the regime remains. You can see this clearly":

The experience of being bombed is even more terrifying because the government is sharing little information and sending few alerts, said Ali, an engineer in Tehran. Ordinary Iranians are cut off from the internet, and Ali said people had resorted to calling friends and relatives in areas where they saw fighter jets headed.

The ferocity of the attacks has divided sentiment among opponents of the government after a brutal crackdown on nationwide protests by security forces last January. Thousands were killed.

"Some people are comfortable with the bombings - I know that may sound strange," said Ali. "They are upset if there is a night without bombing, and fear the war might end while the regime remains. You can see this clearly. People say we have already paid enough of a price and the Islamic republic must go."

Ali said he was sympathetic to that view. "Our lives have no value for the Islamic republic," he said. "We are the government's human shields."

[PS: Click through for the videos and posts.]

'Politicians’ words'

"Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used, not to convey facts or even allegations of facts, but simply to arouse emotions.
    "Undefined words are a big handicap in logic, but they are a big plus in politics, where the goal is not clarity but victory -- and the votes of gullible people count just as much as the votes of people who have common sense."

~ Thomas Sowell from his 2015 column 'Politicians’ words'

What if robots take all the jobs? Hint: They can't.

"People have it all wrong" about AI and robots, says philosopher Harry Binswanger. 

Robots are going to take your job? No doubt.

What if robots take all the jobs?  Hint: They can't.

You may not keep this job. But your next one will pay so much more.  How can we know that?  Because, he argues, "We’re all going to get richer. The more that AI and robots can do for us, the richer we will get."

How so? Because AI and robots makes everyone’s labour far more productive -- and the result will be more goods produced, and hence "more wealth in the whole economy."

More wealth means more savings. More savings means more investment. And "more investment means more goods produced, which means a drop in the cost of living, which means a rise in the standard of living."

But how can he be so sure that if your job is replaced you'll be able to find a new one and "take part in this bonanza?"

The temptation is to answer by finding things robots won’t ever be able to do. “Robots will never be great chefs.” “Robots will never be venture capitalists.” “Robots will never write a first-rate symphony.”

That’s irrelevant. The point is that even if AI and robots could do everything better than any human being, that would enhance, not undermine, the value of human labour.

Why? The explanation comes from applying here an important truth discovered two centuries ago. In 1817, the great English economist David Ricardo identified “The Law of Comparative Advantage.”

Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage explains that no matter how poor you country may be at producing stuff, if both you and others specialise in what they each do best then, at the end of the day, we are all better off. It's best, for example, if Scotland trades whisky with France for claret and burgundy, rather than the other way around. ("It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family,"explained Adam Smith, "never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy.")

Equally, the best way for New Zealanders to get cars and electronics is not to try making cars and electronics ourselves, but to process grass into milk powder, meat and wool so that New Zealanders can trade for those fancy devices. And when we do, we're all better off. ( If you're struggling with the concept, because it is remarkably subtle, PJ O 'Rourke's short explanation is one of the funniest on record, and undoubtedly the only one using Courtney Love to help explain things.)

Recognising that self-same principle of Comparative Advantage applies between people as it does to countries, economist Ludwig Von Mises expanded Ricardo's Law to make it "one of the most beautiful laws of the universe." Calling it the Law of Association he showed that specialisation allows even the less productive to benefit from working with the more productive -- or what his student George Reisman characterises as 'what the productive cleaner gains from the genius inventor.'

Even if the inventor can clean faster than a given cleaner, it still pays him to hire that cleaner because off-loading the cleaning work saves him time. He can then use that saved time in the area of his comparative advantage: inventing and selling more stuff.

Likewise, even if there comes a time when the robots can do everything better and faster than human beings, [even] more wealth will be produced if robots and humans each specialise in what they do best. Super-robots would produce more for us if we save them from having to do things that are less productive [for them].

(Of course we won’t be trading with robots: robots own nothing. Robots are owned by people, and those people will be paid for selling robots or for renting them out, just as you can rent power tools from Home Depot today.)

The Law of Comparative Advantage means humans will never run out of productive work to do. There will always be tasks that you don’t want to waste your rented or owned robots’ time in doing.

If you’ve got a robot building you a swimming pool, you don’t want him to stop to cook you dinner.

A chainsaw is a lot more efficient than a knife at cutting. But you don’t use a chainsaw to slice a loaf of bread. Particularly not if that chainsaw is being used by a robot to clear a place for a tennis court in your backyard.

So, rather than panic over “the rise of the machines,” let’s bear in mind the Law of Comparative Advantage ....

And let's recognise that "even with science-fictional super-robots, there will still be money changing hands and a price-system, just as now. You will still be paid for working in the field of your own comparative advantage.

New kinds of jobs will appear, as they always have when technology advances. Ironically, most of the jobs people are afraid of losing -- such as programming jobs or truck-driving jobs -- were themselves created by technological advances. There used to be an American saying: “Adapt or die.” Having the same kind of job as your father and grandfather did is not the American dream.

What new types of job will be created? I can no more project that than a man in 1956 could have projected that today there would be jobs in something called “social media”; or that money can be made by driving for Uber and by renting out living space through AirBnB.

The robots will make work much easier, more interesting, and much better paid.

Prepare to be enriched.

Thank you Adam Smith

It's a busy week. This week also marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the first in-depth exploration and explanation of (in PJ O'Rourke's words) why some nations are prosperous and wealthy and other places just suck.In honour of the anniversary, here are several of Adam Smith’s most insightful observations:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter II]

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter I]

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. [Lecture in 1755, quoted in Dugald Stewart, Account Of The Life And Writings Of Adam Smith LLD, Section IV, 25]

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter I]

By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution... It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI]

It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book II, Chapter III]

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book V Chapter II Part II] 

Every individual... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
    Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII]

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. [From his 1759 work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments]

The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. [The Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section II, Chapter II]

Roderick Mulgan: The Medical Council Has Gone Too Far -" We're Saying No!"

This email from the Free Speech Union seeks your support:

Hi Peter, The Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ) has proposed that treating patients well is no longer enough.   Your doctor must also hold the correct views. This is a substantial change – and as a GP with nearly 40 years’ experience in medicine – let me tell you, Peter, it sends shivers down my spine. Doctors are being told they must now accept that colonisation - present tense, ongoing - is why Māori can't access healthcare, and that it is their professional duty to challenge the "systemic bias within the system”. If they don't? Their practising certificate could be on the line. I'm Dr Roderick Mulgan - GP, barrister, and International Director of the Free Speech Union. I've read these draft standards with both hats on. As a doctor, I know what good patient care looks like. As a barrister, I know what the law requires. These standards go beyond both. The consultation closes 24 March. The Medical Council needs to hear from you. Make a submission to MCNZ today It takes minutes. We've made it easy. More on that below. What doctors must now believe The draft standards on "cultural competence, cultural safety, and hauora Māori" read less like a regulatory document and more like a postgraduate ideology course. Doctors must accept that: the health system is built on oppressive "settler traditions"; colonisation is the reason Māori can't access health resources; patients are entitled to equitable outcomes across identity groups (somehow); doctors must use their professional influence to actively "dismantle unfair systems;" that doctors should challenge colleagues who do not embrace this approach. Which are all funny things to put in a medical standards document. You might agree with some of this. You might agree with all of it. That's beside the point. The question is whether a medical regulator can turn highly contested political opinions into compulsory professional doctrine - backed by the threat of deregistration. What the law actually says - and what happens in a consultation room As a barrister: the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act requires doctors to demonstrate cultural competence, including respectful interaction with Māori. That's it. No ideological extremism. No activist roles. No dismantling.  This is yet another clear-cut case of a regulator trying to impose powers beyond what the legislation allows them. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects not only the right to speak freely, but the right not to be compelled to say things you don't believe. What the Council is proposing is compelled belief, dressed up as professional development. As a doctor what matters when a patient walks through my door is whether: I'm listening carefully, examining competently, diagnosing accurately, treating effectively. Whether I hold the Council's approved position on colonisation has precisely nothing to do with any of that. On Friday, I was on The Platform talking about the MCNZ.   The chilling effect nobody's talking about Free Speech Union Council Member Ani O'Brien made a sharp observation earlier in the week: once disagreement with a framework is treated as evidence of the very problem it describes, recertification stops being about clinical skill. It becomes a test of whether you've learned to say the right things. The real danger isn't dramatic purges. It's quieter. Doctors will learn the language. They'll stop saying what they actually think - not because they've been persuaded, but because they have mortgages and families. A culture of inquiry becomes a culture of compliance. Good medicine depends on doctors who think critically, question assumptions, and follow the evidence. These standards would replace that with ideological conformity. What you can do The Free Speech Union is conducting a full legal analysis and will submit before the deadline. But this consultation is open to everyone - and the Council needs to hear from more than just the institutions already nodding along. If you think doctors should be judged on the quality of their care - not the orthodoxy of their politics - make a submission. Make a submission to MCNZ today Consultation documents are available here.  The deadline is 24 March. That's soon. The Medical Council's job is to ensure clinical competence and patient safety. Not to run a political education programme for the medical profession. Let's remind them of that. Best wishes,

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 ...