On New Year’s Day, just under 600 million people across the world will still live in extreme poverty. That figure was 930 million in 2010 and by 2030, it is expected to fall to about 430 million:
As the Cato
Institute’s Marian L Tupy explained last year, Africa too will
experience prosperity once its governments embrace free markets, the rule of
law and private property rights. Listen to James and Pete discuss economic
freedom in Africa with Linda Kavuka from African Students for Liberty in last week’s edition of The Young IPA Podcast.
Your support of the IPA and our research ensures a freer and more prosperous
Australia for future generations. If you’d like to make a donation to the IPA
Christmas Appeal 2018, please click here.
We’ve just released Episode 10, the last of the IPA’s The Great
Books of Literature Podcast with Andrew Bolt and John Roskam. In this
episode they discuss The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor
Dostoevsky, one of the most influential books ever written. We’ve also released a special bonus episode where John and
Andrew talk about what they learned after reading ten of the great books of
Western Civilisation.
Where would Hey be without the New York Times? Last week, the NYT published an interview with writer Alice Walker which included an unqualified recommendation of
an anti-Semitic book by renowned reptilian-alarmist David Icke. Then
on Monday, the NYT published an opinion article with the headline “Would human extinction be a
tragedy?”
This is the final edition of Hey for 2018. We send Hey out
to over 10,000 people each week, and these are the links that really caught
your attention this year:
- 1,013 watched the best moments of former IPA policy director Simon Breheny’s appearance on Q&A in February – including the moment that Simon actually got a clap from the audience!
- 886 watched Jordan Peterson leave Channel 4’s Cathy Newman speechless during an interview about gender and postmodernism in January (which has been watched only 13 million or so people).
- Another 670 read Douglas Murray’s reaction to the same interview in The Spectator.
- 642 read this piece from 2 ecomodernists who argued people should chill out about global warming.
- And 583 watched Professor Robert Tombs speak about “Why Western Civilisation is our future” from his visit to Australia with the IPA back in March.
But this week has been a wake up call for my fellow Hey writer James Bolt, who contributed 2 of the 3 most unpopular links in Hey in 2018:
- Nike’s Dream Crazy ad with ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was clicked only 6 times.
- This Time article about Turkish basketballer and critic of the Turkish government Enes Kanter only received 8 clicks.
- And the news about the US jobless rate falling to an 18 year low back in June was only clicked 10 times.
Each member of the Hey team also had their highlights of the year:
Peter Gregory
All the kids dodging school to demand urgent “action” on climate change should be made to read Bjorn Lomborg’s ‘How the war on climate change slams the world’s poor‘ in the New York Post in August. Lomborg explained how the proposed global carbon tax would put 78 million people at risk of hunger and how the biofuels craze a few years ago pushed 30 million people into poverty. Perfect ammunition for your smug climate alarmist relative this Christmas.
James Bolt
Even though I stand by my apparently unpopular links, they weren’t as good as this: 2018 was a tough year for free speech in Europe, but it was almost a whole lot worse. In October, French politician Laetitia Avia, along with other members of Emmanuel Macron’s party, pushed a Bill to outlaw the mockery of accents. I said it then and I’ll say it now: this is terrible news for Mayor Quimby’s nephew.
Morgan Begg
In April rap musician Kanye “ripped a hole in reality” (according to Scott Adams) by starting his day tweeting an endorsement of conservative YouTuber Candace Owens and ending the day by criticising Obama , showing off photos of his MAGA hat, and describing President Trump as having the same “dragon energy” as him.
Hey will be returning in the new year. Until then, from the Hey team and everyone at the IPA, please have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.
Featuring Linda Kavuka, African Students for Liberty, and Matthew Lesh, IPA
| “That brainwashing that we (Africans) have gone through to believe that we are socialist, and that socialism and Marxism and communism is what we need is one of the major issues we are trying to tackle by teaching people about classical liberal ideas, teaching people their rights, what capitalism should be and not what they think it is.” – Linda Kavuka, African Students for Liberty |
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- John Roskam, When politicians desert their voters – The Australian Financial Review
- Daniel Wild, Businesses and workers pay a high price for zero emissions targets – The Daily Telegraph
- Morgan Begg, Integrity body has limited power now but just watch this space – The Australian
- Dr Bella d’Abrera, Tyranny of the T-bone – The Spectator Australia
- Matthew Lesh, Universities want to have their cake – and censor it – The Spectator Australia
