Last night the boys and I watched V for Vendetta. The hero — or antihero if you are a fascist (socailism, fascism? Meh) is guy fawkes — who blows up Parliament after it descends into a tyranny.

Sounds like the EU to me. Regardless, the jackboot is out. To silence dissent. Today’s example are that death cult that is oppressing the Persians.

Tehran’s leadership faces its biggest crisis since it first came to power in 1979, as Iranians at home and abroad attack its legitimacy in the wake of June's allegedly rigged presidential vote. An opposition effort, the “Green Movement,” is gaining a global following of regular Iranians who say they never previously considered themselves activists.

The regime has been cracking down hard at home. And now, a Wall Street Journal investigation shows, it is extending that crackdown to Iranians abroad as well.

In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating members of its diaspora world-wide — not just prominent dissidents — who criticize the regime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite security force, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program.

Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iranians around the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad, these people say.

Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad — college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople — in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them.

via Iranian Crackdown Goes Global – WSJ.com.

This will not work forever. For in the end, the government is the servant of the people. As the old Whigs said, the people are the sovereign. Oh, and in democracies the people can remove those bums who do not do their job. Which does not happen in corrupt republics or autocracies. They have revolutions.

One of the few powers the ruling class has is that they can choose how to be removed: by the ballot or the bullet. My fear is that the EU, the US Congress, and The Mullahs are all choosing the latter.

The very good Cactus Kate has provided a wake up call for NZ. As usual, she is accurate but has not patience with the politeness and political correctness of NZ. One Chris Trotter — who is a leftie, but is usually worth reading responded:

And from where, pray tell dear Kate, are you going to muster the divisions required to implement this vicious little programme? And how, once it has been implemented at the point of their bayonets, do you propose to prevent the soldiers from tossing all you pampered patricians (on whose behalf this counter-revolution has presumably been launched) from the walls of the city, and establishing a brutal military kleptocracy?

Read a little history, Kate. it would do you the world of good.

via Blogger: Cactus Kate – Post a Comment.

What Chris does not realise is that you cannot — as a state — do socail transfers without the cooperation of the well off and the ability of the well off to pay for such transfers.

I suggest he look at two examples. One is California (or New York, or any other liberal run state from the USA). High state taxes lead to people moving to low (in the US read nil) state tax areas. The people who can do this are high net worth. To quote Lenin, they vote with their feet. NZers who do not like a socail welfare net have been able to go — until fairly recently — to most of the Commonwealth and start over. Many have.

Now, if things go bad, peoples incomes reduce. People cannot spend, and people pay less tax. (As an aside, Chris, if you have a progressive tax system you do worse as a state because people with lower income slide down the tax brackets). In many cases the person is on the dole.

Now, if the gummnit does not pull back, they are going to go seriously into overdraft. Banks do not like that unless you have something like a house (or your strong right hand) as security. Banks pull out.

The economy collapses. (If it happened to Argentina, it can happen here). The best example of this is Zimbabwe, where the army does keep the socailist tyrant and his group of nomenkultura in power.

But the narod are fleeing from there. They are starting to flee from NZ.

We all need to worry, Chris, when the Cactus — in her words — no longer gives a shit and gives up on NZ. We will no longer be GodZone but just another Peronistic Hell.

Where is Mark Steyn when you need him?

He said it was an “ironic and cruel twist” that the decline was continuing despite the launch of Maori Television in 2004 and the increasing public use of the language in other media.

The number of Maori in this country who spoke te reo actually increased slightly from 2001 to 2006, from 130,482 to 131,613, but that represented a decline in the proportion of all Maori in this country who could speak the language, from 24.8 per cent to 23.3 per cent – the second successive decline.

Mr Hamer said the proportion of Maori in Australia who could speak te reo might also be declining, because the total Maori population in Australia may have risen by more than 20 per cent in the five years to 2006.

But his 2007 report on Maori in Australia documented a growing phenomenon of kapa haka groups, Maori clubs and even marae in Australia.

“The figures appear to confirm that Maori society has, in part, an increasingly Australian future,” he said.

Meanwhile a draft paper by Wellington researcher James Newell, due to be published next week, has found that Maori 18-year-old Australian Idol winner Stan Walker typifies a Maori working population in Australia that is younger, more male and in less skilled jobs than Maori working in New Zealand.

Again using 2006 census data, Mr Newell found that 28 per cent of Maori workers in Australia were aged 25 to 34, compared to only 23 per cent of Maori in New Zealand.

via Tasman migration hits te reo at home – National – NZ Herald News.

Coldest October in Dunedin for six decades | Otago Daily Times Online News.

All I know is that it was really, really cold

UK climate scientist to temporarily step down  | ajc.com.

Phil Jones…. point 4: making up correction figures is making things up.

Climategate: Penn State Professor Mann under investigation.

The man who invented the hockey stick graph (used by Greenpeace and other forms of devolution such as Al Gore) is now being investigated.

Two notes.

1.  Creative hackers can get anywhere… thus

2.  Keep ideas off computers. Until the idea is ready for grant money and ethical review.

and 3…. NEVER make up data. That is the point where Mann and his mates will be found wanting.