The original of this mirror site is HERE. My Blogroll; Archives here or here; My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here. Other mirror sites (viewable in China): Greenie Watch, Political Correctness Watch, Education Watch, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Recipes and Australian Politics. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing)
****************************************************************************************



28 February, 2007

A HOLY LIAR

Post excerpted from David Thompson -- exposing the lying propaganda about Islam that emanates from a famous and popular British religious commentator. See the original for links

In my review of Robert Spencer's The Truth About Muhammad, I wrote: "In his book, Islam and the West, the historian Bernard Lewis argued: 'We live in a time when. governments and religious movements are busy rewriting history as they would wish it to have been, as they would like their followers to believe that it was.' This urge to sanitise unflattering facts is nowhere more obvious than in biographies of Muhammad, of which, Karen Armstrong's ubiquitous contributions are perhaps the least reliable." I've since received a number of emails asking me to clarify why Armstrong is unreliable in this regard. To that end, here's a brief catalogue of Ms Armstrong's errors and distortions, a version of which was first published by Butterflies & Wheels. Some of her rhetorical airbrushing is, I think, quite spectacular.

Karen Armstrong has been described as "one of the world's most provocative and inclusive thinkers on the role of religion in the modern world." Armstrong's efforts to be "inclusive" are certainly "provocative", though generally for reasons that are less than edifying. In 1999, the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles gave Armstrong an award for media "fairness." What follows might cast light on how warranted that recognition is, and on how the MPAC chooses to define fairness.

In one of her baffling Guardian columns, Armstrong argues that, "It is important to know who our enemies are. By making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the. problems of our divided world." Yet elsewhere in the same piece, Armstrong maintains that Islamic terrorism must not be referred to as such. "Jihad", we were told, "is a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence."

Well, the word `jihad' has multiple meanings depending on the context, and it's hard to determine the particulars of what "most Muslims" think in this regard. Doubtless countless Muslims would recoil from connotations of violence and coercion. But it's safe to say the Qur'an and Sunnah are of great importance to Muslims generally, and most references to jihad found in the Qur'an and Sunnah occur in a military or paramilitary context. Aggressive conceptions of jihad are found in every major school of Islamic jurisprudence, with fairly minor variations. The notion of jihad as warfare against unbelievers is affirmed by Maliki, Hanbali, Hanafi and Shafi'i traditions, to which the majority of Muslims belong. And Muhammad's own celebration of military jihad and homicidal `martyrdom' makes for interesting reading.....

In another Guardian column, Armstrong insists that, "until the 20th century, anti-Semitism was not part of Islamic culture" and that anti-Semitism is purely a Western invention, spread by Westerners. The sheer wrong-headedness of this assertion is hard to put into words, but one might note how, once again, the evil imperialist West is depicted as boundlessly capable of spreading corruption wherever it goes, while the Islamic world is portrayed as passive, devoid of agency and thereby virtuous by default.

According to Armstrong, Muhammad was, above all, a "peacemaker" who "respected" Jews and other non-Muslims. Yet nowhere in the Qur'an and Sunnah does Muhammad refer to non-Muslims as in any way deserving of respect as equals. Quite the opposite, in fact. Apparently, we are to ignore over 13 centuries of Islamic history contradicting Armstrong's view, and to ignore the contents of the Qur'an and the explicitly anti-Semitic `revelations' of Islam's founder. One therefore wonders whether Armstrong has read Ibn Ishaq's canonical, quasi-sacred biography of Muhammad. Has she not read the Hadith, most notably Bukhari? Does she not know of the massacre of the Banu Qurayza and the opportunist raids against the Bani Quainuqa, Bani Nadir, Bani Isra'il and other Jewish tribes? Does she not know how these events were justified as a divine duty, one which formed the theological basis of the Great Jihad of Abu Bakr, setting in motion one of the most formidable military expansions in Islamic history? Does she really not know how these theological ideas established the subordinate legal status of Jews and Christians throughout much of the Islamic world for hundreds of years?

In her latest offering, Armstrong is again given free rein to mislead Guardian readers and, again, rewrite history. Armstrong asserts that, "until recently, no Muslim thinker had ever claimed [violent jihad] was a central tenet of Islam." In fact, contemporary jihadists pointedly draw upon theological traditions reaching back to Muhammad's own example. The Fifteenth Century historian and philosopher, Ibn Khaldun, summarised the consensus of five centuries of prior Sunni theology regarding jihad in his book, The Muqudimmah: "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the. mission to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations." Shiite jurisprudence concurred with this consensus, as seen in al-Amili's manual of Shia law, Jami-i-Abbasi: "Islamic holy war against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam."

Given that Armstrong is regularly described as a "respected scholar" and an "expert on Islam", she must surely know of Khaldun and his sources, and must surely know how Muhammad conceived jihad primarily as an expansionist military endeavour. Armstrong must also be aware of the jihad campaigns of religious `cleansing' throughout the Arab Peninsula, in accord with Muhammad's purported death bed words. Likewise, the five centuries of jihad campaigns in India, during which tens of millions of Hindus and Buddhists were slaughtered or enslaved, along with similar campaigns in Egypt, Palestine, Armenia, Africa, Spain, etc. These campaigns are thoroughly - often triumphantly - documented by Islamic sources of the period and are available to any serious scholar.

*****************

ELSEWHERE



NYT lies about abortion in El Salvador: "The uproar over the New York Times refusing to correct itself on a story replete with falsehoods over abortion in El Salvador last month, continues. The most recent development is that the Times has refused to publish a corrective op-ed from the Salvadoran group "Yes to Life" which points out that the major newspaper in El Salvador has uncovered numerous additional errors in the New York Times piece on abortion in El Salvador".

Experts dispute Jesus tomb film: "Oscar-winning director James Cameron is attempting to challenge fundamental tenets of Christianity by suggesting that Jesus may have been a father whose body was buried far from the Jerusalem tomb where believers say he rose from the dead. In a documentary set to air in the US on Sunday, Cameron and his team contend that they've produced new evidence that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and fathered a son named Judah. Biblical experts and archaeologists who are familiar with the central evidence instantly discounted the claim, which Discovery Channel has touted as possibly "the greatest archaeological find in history," as an ill-informed, recycled publicity grab. The chances that the findings in "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" are real "are more than remote," Israel Museum curator David Mevorah said. "They are closer to fantasy." [The Anchoress has more. As Donald Sensing notes, how odd it is that Christians are not rioting and beheading people over such an attack on their faith]

United Europe? "A grand statement - the Berlin declaration - is planned next month to commemorate the founding in 1957 of what is now the EU, but the 27 member states are increasingly divided about what to celebrate. Luxembourg is pushing for a prominent mention of the euro as one of Europe's greatest achievements. But this will not go down well in Britain and Denmark, where the single currency was rejected. Poland and Italy want to emphasise Europe's Christian values but are opposed by the French, who prefer to keep religion out of politics. The Czechs and Poles want a strong statement on security, but the French and Germans are worried this will aggravate the Russians. Germany and Spain are keen to look ahead to a revived constitutional treaty, which is upsetting the Dutch and British."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



27 February, 2007

IMMIGRATION WATCH

I don't seem to be able to help myself. I have started yet another blog -- called Immigration Watch. The topic is such a red-hot one that I felt I should do more in that field. I have in the past put up a lot about immigration on PC Watch but it is not really a good fit there. I am not sure as yet whether I will be posting daily to the new blog but I suspect so. I already have a fair bit up.

********************

Absurdity about Israel in "The Economist" magazine

Post lifted from American Thinker. I myself like "The Economist" -- but only on economics. Economics is certainly inevitably bound up with politics but foreign policy is just way outside their field of expertise

We have in the past noted that The Economist magazine has a typically European elitist view toward America (particularly in its ridicule of  Christians). The editors also have a very biased view towards Israel. The current issue has yet another editorial that advocates Israel and the world "break bread" with Hamas and reach a deal with the Hamas-led "government".

The Economist did take note that Hamas has refused to abide by the three major principles of the Road Map that the Palestinians had previously agreed to do, to wit: recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terror and violence, and agree to abide by previous agreements.  Despite these failures, the editorial board writes that the Road Map principles should be ignored and that it is time to soften economic pressure and negotiate statehood for the Palestinians. The last line of the piece  says it all about the philosophy of the magazine:

"It will be hard, but this is a better way to win the argument against Hamas than the past year's vain efforts to make the Palestinians jump through verbal hoops they have come to consider humiliating".

Got that? Recognizing Israel's right to exist, forswearing violence, and abiding by past agreements and promises are considered "humiliating" by the magazine.

**********************

ELSEWHERE

Cuba hasn't changed: "Political and academic soothsayers insist that change (for the better) looms in Cuba. With Fidel Castro's incapacitation, and his "pragmatic" brother, Raul, at the helm the process is ratcheting forward inexorably, we're told... In fact, Raul Castro recently took Cuba's version of Lavrenti Beria out of mothballs and assigned him one of the regime's most powerful positions: minister of Communications and Technology--Cuba's Joseph Goebbels. Ramiro Valdez is the gentleman's name, and he served for decades as head of Cuba's KGB and STASI trained secret police. Everyone conversant with Cuban history knows him as the most repressive and sadistic figure on the island, except for Raul Castro himself. In fact, those who read the samizdats smuggled out of Cuba by her courageous underground reporter Carlos Serpa knows that since the succession in August, forty of Cuba's human Rights activists and reporters (including Serpa himself) have been jailed or severely beaten by mobs of the regime's plainclothes hoodlums and sadists, Raul Castro's version of Hitler's early S.A. More significantly, more such mobs are being trained and deployed throughout Cuba as I write. Cuba is as essentially totalitarian today as ever"

Costly British red tape: "The burden of red tape on British business has hit a record of nearly 56 billion pounds and shows no sign of slowing, according to figures to be published this week. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which compiles its "burdens barometer" on a regular basis, says the cumulative cost of regulation on British business is now 55.6 billion. A year ago that burden was 44.8 billion, revised figures reveal, implying an increase in red tape of more than o10 billion in the past 12 months. The BCC said the increase was particularly disappointing in light of the government's pledge to make 2006 the "year of delivery" on cutting red tape."

British jails waking up to Islamic problem: "The security services are conducting background checks on imams who provide religious and pastoral care in jails. The vetting, part of the effort to prevent inmates from being radicalised, is in addition to the routine counter-terrorism checks conducted by the Prison Service and a further check by the Criminal Records Bureau. A growing number of imams are being appointed to work either full or part time at prisons in England and Wales. The checks are in response to concerns that prisons may be an ideal environment for al-Qaeda operatives to radicalise and recruit young people. Another measure aimed at countering extremism is that all imams working in jails must speak English. In addition, prison authorities are spending thousands of pounds translating all texts from Arabic to English to ensure that they do not contain hidden messages. It is understood that all Arabic books, including the Koran, are subject to this vetting. The shoe bomber Richard Reid, the son of two non-Muslims, converted to violent jihadism after being radicalised at Feltham Young Offender Institution in West London."

Ebay must stop sales of stolen goods: "In fiction his enemies are evil wizards and magical beasts, but Harry Potter's latest adversary is a real corporation with a turnover of more than 2 billion. J. K. Rowling, Harry's creator, is suing the online auction hosting service eBay after unscrupulous sellers used the Indian version of the website to sell unauthorised versions of her books. Rowling is not the first person to sue the website for breach of copyright, but she has won a unique victory by obtaining an injunction that prohibits eBay from listing illegal copies of her work. The court order is a setback for eBay because it is the first time the company has been obliged to police its sellers' auctions for copyrighted material. Ebay, which is also fighting similar complaints by Tiffany in New York and Christian Dior Couture in Paris, denies that it is responsible for the auctions its users conduct on its website, and claims that it is impractical for it to vet every sale. The injunction presents difficulties for eBay, whether it succeeds or fails in policing its users' sales. If the company is able to remove all sales of electronic copies of Harry Potter books then other brands will demand similar treatment when their rights are infringed by sellers. If it fails, it will be in contempt of court."

The Left-voter's craving to be looked after is immature: "It is a basic tenet of maturation to discover that all that glitters is not gold. Every nickel spent for "security" must be taken from one person and chipped away at by each bureaucracy along the way. Not only are bureaucratic means unjustifiable, the end (security) is a pipe dream. Calling something secure (e.g., "Social Security") does not make it so. In fact, it practically ensures the equal and opposite outcome as we now witness with the crumbling and evaporation of social safety nets. When we become completely responsible for ourselves, everything changes. We can no longer identify with other "victims" of life who want to be taken care of with the guns of government pointed at our neighbors. We begin to identify with mature people who take complete responsibility for their experience of life and realize that those guns are being pointed at us too. We begin to see that freedom is essential to the pursuit one's own happiness and the irrational desire for security, even though it once glimmered brightly, becomes too costly when measured up against liberty - the Hope Diamond of human existence - invaluable and only obtainable at the greatest cost, the loss of your illusions.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



26 February, 2007

The Left's identification with murderous aggressors

Post lifted from The American Thinker. I generally put up excerpts here but this post is so spot-on that I am putting up the whole lot

Psychiatry is familiar with an odd syndrome called "identification with the aggressor." It's sometimes called the Stockholm Syndrome, after the behavior of Stockholm bank employees taken hostage by bank robbers, who, when they were rescued,  came out singing the praises of their captors.

Recently we saw the same human oddity when two Fox News reporters were kidnapped in Gaza, and forced to convert to Islam at the point of a gun. After his freedom was bought (at a reported cost of millions of dollars), reporter Steve Centanni told the world that:

"I hope that this never scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover the story because the Palestinian people are very beautiful and kind hearted. The world needs to know more about them. Don't be discouraged."

"Kind-hearted" and "beautiful" are not the first words that come to mind to describe kidnappers who were quite ready to murder Steve Centanni only a day before.  In psychiatric thinking the reporters "identified with the aggressors" --- the terrorist kidnappers --- in a mental flip that allowed them to push away their realistic fear of dying to a distant imaginary cause. They no longer thought of themselves as helpless victims, having adopted the kidnappers' point of view.

The most infamous examples come from World War II Nazi concentration camps, where some prisoners were placed in charge of others. According to witnesses like psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, these "Kapos" would wear discarded pieces of Nazi uniforms and often abuse their fellow victims. Unconsciously they were identifying with the aggressors, to ward off the awful awareness of their own vulnerability. People do things like that in extremis.

Now look at the behavior of the Left since 9/11, both in this country, Europe, and even Israel. Rather than feel righteously angered by the terrorist mass murder of 3,000 innocent people, large parts of the Left have adopted the aggressors' point of view. They keep telling us that the Islamic fascists were right to blow up innocent people who had done them no harm; some of them have taken on conspiracy theories, claiming that Bush or Israel really committed the atrocities.  At the same time they are in deep denial about the danger of future terrorist attacks on American soil, and blindly refuse to see the rising threat of nuclear proliferation by stateless terror groups. Instead, they "displace" their fear and anger on George W. Bush. To the Left, once Bush is gone, the terror problem will simply and magically go away.

Yet we know that small amounts of radioactive materials --- like the Polonium 210 that was used just two months ago to poison Alexander Litvinenko in London --- could be turned into a "dirty bomb" in anybody's garage. It wouldn't take any more technical skill than was used in 1995 to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

Terrorists with dirty bombs are a murderous threat to all of us, but the Left denies it. Twisting reality is the hallmark of mental pathology.

The Left's behavior looks just like identification with the Islamofascist aggressor. Just as the concentration camp Kapos wore pieces of Nazi uniforms to magically assume the power of their killers-to-be, the radical Left adopts the symbols and slogans of Hezbollah and Al Qaida. Strikingly, their intellectual leader Noam Chomsky is the son of a Hebrew scholar --- a man who devoted his life to the study and teaching of Hebrew, and who would therefore be a ready target for today's fascists. Chomsky must have grown up as a child in a most devout household. No doubt many of his family members were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. Yet last year Chomsky flew to Lebanon to be publicly photographed shaking hands with Hassan Nasrallah, who was even then preparing to launch many hundreds of short-range missiles at Jewish civilians in Israel --- including, no doubt, Talmudic scholars. Chomsky has been a radical Leftist all his life, even before he became famous as a linguist.  Identification with the aggressor? It certainly would explain his very odd life course.

In London, during the Hezbollah war in Lebanon, demonstrators from George Galloway's Respect Party (an offshoot of the Socialist Workers' Party) carried signs reading "We are all Hezbollah now." They literally adopted the aggressors' point of view. This has been happening all over Europe, where the Left still reigns supreme, and on American university campuses as well --- probably for the same psychological reason.

The rise of anti-Zionism (and of course anti-Semitism) in Europe can also be seen in this light. If only those six million Jews in Israel were to disappear like magic, goes the wishful thought, all the danger and trouble would go away. Europe's Muslims would become as peaceful as lambs, and Iran's zealots would learn to love us. It is a childlike surrender to fear.

Notice that this is exactly what the Left did during the Cold War. I do not remember a single passionate demonstration against the Soviet Union, which had nuclear-armed missiles aimed directly at Europe and the US. Instead, the most extreme and feverish passions were aimed straight at the United States, the country that led and protected the West from Soviet aggression.

The other side of "identification with the aggressor" is "blaming the victim." In Nazi concentration camps the Kapos would act out sadistically to other victims, blaming them for Nazi crimes. A decade ago the phrase "blaming the victim" was on everybody's lips, when feminists loudly accused all men of blaming rape victims for being raped. That seemed to disappear along with the Bill Clinton saga and his blatant sexual abuse of a young intern, to the deafening silence of the feminist Left. Today we can plainly see "blaming the victim" among Islamic fascists, who often accuse young girls of being sluts if they are gang-raped by men. Islamic radicals always blame their victims. That is what makes them incapable of guilt toward their victims.

The real oddity is that the Left has enthusiastically joined the new fascists. We no longer hear the old trope of "blaming the victim" from feminists. Rather, feminists on the Left have joined Islamofascists in blaming the United States --- for being the fire brigade that is trying to put out the fire. The Left even defends women being pressured to wear the burqa, the ancient sign of women's submission and sexual slavery in the most retrogressive kind of tribal Islam. Shari'a law prescribes exactly how women are to be physically slapped for failing to obey fathers and husbands.  Feminists are silent.

The Left claims to value "peace" above all things; but that means that self-defense ranks nowhere. It's not an option --- at least not when Republicans are in office. If we leave out self-defense against Iranian nukes or El Qaida truck bombs, there is no option except submission. That is what "identification with the aggressor" comes down to. It is a Stockholm Syndrome for millions of people --- most of the readers of the New York Times and the UK Guardian, just for starters.

To make things worse, the Left itself is ruthlessly aggressive against conservatives, democratic individuals who happen to disagree with them. There is a true persecutorial viciousness in the Left's attacks on Republican presidents, from Herbert Hoover to Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush. Emotionally, these people want to destroy those who defy their demands. Almost all the assassins and would-be assassins of American Presidents since JFK have been Leftists, starting with Lee Harvey Oswald. So their rage is not exactly harmless.

Most of the time the Left just aims at destroying conservatives' careers and public reputations - as they have tried to do with ferocious fury in the cases of Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter, Tom Delay, Rush Limbaugh, and numerous others. And it's not just national politics. Harvard University feminists just formed a lynch mob that drove Larry Summer's out of the Presidency and appear to have succeeded in replacing him with one of their own. They have succeeded in placing their own radical leaders in the top power positions at the most prestigious university in the United States.

They are driven by paranoid rage: They are in fact the aggressors.

But when it comes to assaults on their country, the Left blames the victims. The most militant Leftists seem severely damaged psychologically. The recent suicide by the militant lesbian President of UC Santa Cruz may be only the tip of the pathological iceberg.

Many radical Leftists seem to suffer from a basic twist in character. They constantly confuse aggressive and defensive actions by their own country, on whose freedom and protection they depend every hour of the day. They constantly indulge sworn enemies of our freedom and well-being. They constantly push for government actions that seem plausible on the surface, but which inevitably hurt the very people they are supposed to help. It happens over and over again.

When I was young I thought the Left was just confused, but now I'm increasingly drawn to the idea that there is a deep, if unconscious, malevolence at the bottom of the history of disasters inflicted by those people. They are dangerous.

Update:

There were a couple of factual errors regarding the Stockholm syndrome and Noam Chomsky's father (who was in fact a Communist as well as being a Hebrew scholar) in the article above which I have corrected.

***************************

ELSEWHERE

There is a good comment here on so-called American "arrogance". Excerpt: "Bush has been steadfast in his belief that the safety of American citizens takes precedence over the good opinion of the world's chattering classes. After all, he was not elected by world citizens, but by American citizens. In the end, our president is only accountable to us. Not to the French politician who considers the atrocity of 9/11 to be a mere "incident" in history. Not to the U.N., a bloated bureaucracy that has no problem giving Cuba a seat on its Human Rights Council.... It is amazing how all discussion of American arrogance ceases when some kind of disaster occurs somewhere in the world. Then, instead of berating us, the world entreats us to send money, troops, and other types of humanitarian aid to victims of tsunamis, earthquakes, and so on"

Bloggers raised this matter ages ago -- action at last: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that those found to have been responsible for allowing substandard living conditions for soldier outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center will be "held accountable." However, no one in the Army chain of command has so far offered to resign. Gates spoke to reporters after visiting the medical compound, whose reputation as a premier caregiver for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan has taken a hit following a Washington Post series of reports last weekend that documented problems in soldiers' housing and in the medical bureaucracy at Walter Reed." [An insightful blogger comment here]

What fun!: "I have written previously about the Danish organization SIAD, "Stop the Islamification of Denmark". SIAD's latest tactic against the encroachment of Islam in Denmark is is to demand that parts of the Koran be banned, in accordance with Danish law: "The Danish party, SIAD, demands parts of the Koran be forbidden in Denmark in accordance with the Danish Constitution. SIAD hereby draws attention to the fact that the Koran is in violation of the Danish Constitution's paragraphs 67 and 69. SIAD further claims that mosques should be forbidden in consonance with paragraph 78, clause 2. SIAD also demands that all Koran verses incompatible with Danish customs and traditional values should be banned in accordance with the Danish Constitution's paragraphs 67 and 69, which state that "Citizens have the right to form communities with a view to practising religion in accordance with their faith, but on condition that nothing is taught or done that is at odds with morality or public order"."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



25 February, 2007

LEFTIST PATHOLOGY

Leftists have long accused conservatives of psychopathology but Leftists are heavily projective so, if you want to see what is true of them, see what they say about conservatives

For most of my adult life I have entertained the fantasy that one day I would hear liberals and Democrats, in large numbers, saying, "You know, you were right. The only way to climb the economic ladder in America is through education, hard work, and determination. I thought that, if we could just take some of the money that the rich and the middle class have and give it to the poor, everyone would be happy.

"I thought that, because of more than two centuries of horrific abuse of African Americans - by Democrats and our KKK allies - we could buy the forgiveness and the allegiance of black people by creating a new welfare plantation for them. I was wrong and conservatives were right. Black people are just as capable of prospering in a free society as everyone else.

"I thought that there were no truly evil people in the world. I thought that people of every culture and every political ideology were basically good, and that if we could just sit down with them and talk out our differences, there would never be any reason for war. But now I know.the only road to peace is through strength.invincible military strength in the hands of free nations."

It has always been my fantasy that one day I would hear liberals and Democrats say these things, and much more. It has always been one of my principal reasons for living.one of the things that has gotten me out of bed every morning for the past fifty years. But now, after reading The Pathology of Liberalism, the breathtaking expose of the liberal psyche by New York-based journalist (and psychotherapist), Joan Swirsky, I know that my dream has always been an impossible dream.

It is an impossible dream because, while liberalism is, in fact, a mental illness, it is not a disease that can be treated with psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It can only be treated biologically. As Swirsky tells us, "conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, narcissism, and Tourette's syndrome, while long thought to be psychological in nature, are now known to be "biological" - thanks to PET scans, MRIs, and other diagnostic advances." As Swirsky notes, "The scans.have revealed the specific areas of the brain that give rise to anger, revenge, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, stuttering, pathological lying, cheating, manipulation, obsessive-compulsive behavior, depressive disorders, even craving for chocolate!"

Soon, it is hoped, we'll be able to add liberalism to that impressive list of behavioral disorders. And since medical science has developed exciting new preparations for treating many of these disorders (e.g. Ritalin for attention deficit disorder, Haldol for psychoses, lithium for bipolar disorder, Wellbutrin for chronic depression, Xanax for anxiety), it may not be long before liberalism can be treated by ingesting a small tablet or capsule each morning before breakfast.

So what are the behavioral characteristics that lead Joan Swirsky to conclude as she has? First, it is a suspicion that the core of liberal `thinking' is the same sort of pathology that characterizes other mental disorders, i.e. a "glitch in the brain that produces `feelings' and behavior over which liberals have no control. Liberals are uniformly glum, not only in their grim demeanors and persistent anger, but also in their outlooks.And when their theories are refuted by hard facts they are unable to process the true from the untrue because their `feelings' always trump their reason."

Secondly, Swirski points out that liberals, in almost every instance, react like children, for whom the most cherished value in life is to be "liked" by their peers. As children see things, "to be liked.is not to engage in conflict, not to fight, not to judge. After all, if you fight with anyone, including Islamic terrorists, they won't like you. And if you judge them as savages, murderers, enemies of democracy, they will fight you. So don't judge them and they won't fight you." Does that sound familiar? It is pure Democrat Party orthodoxy.

Swirsky provides us with a simple litmus test. She says, "the next time you're watching or listening to a liberal, observe the symptoms. Note the anger, the pessimism, the negativity, the name-calling, the bursts of rage, the gratuitous insults, the desire to present an image of `goodness,' the transparent attempt to be liked, the willingness to change an opinion if the old one isn't polling well, and the eagerness to placate our enemies."

Now that Democrats have taken control of the Congress, it all boils down to whether or not Pfizer can come up with a pill to cure liberalism before Democrats succeed in bankrupting them and putting them out of business. As for me, I'm putting my money on Pfizer.

Source

********************

THE WAL-MART REVOLUTION

The heading above is the title of a recently-released book that I have just been reading -- a title that rather obviously mocks Leftist talk about revolutions but which is pretty accurate nonetheless. One of the authors is an economist so he brings to the subject the sort of cool rationality that is sadly missing from the standard Leftist boilerplate about Wal-Mart. The book gives you in detail all the facts you need to dismiss every single one of the Leftist criticisms. I liked the following paragraphs:

"We reject the idea that Wal-Mart destroys communities and adds to urban sprawl. Downtowns were declining long before Wal-Mart became an important retailmg force, and the big-box retail revolution is but one additional factor in thc demise of retailing in central business districts where parking is typicaLl relatively scarce. While it is true that some stores go out of business when Wal-Mart enters a community, the opening and closing of stores in response to changing tastes and technology has been part of the retail landscape literally for centuries. Wal-Mart does not force stores out of business. Customers do, by voting with their feet and going to Wal-Mart with its lower prices and greater choices than the local alternatives. People prefer Wal-Mart and, in exercising their preferences, they are enhancing their own welfare, and thus that of the communities the stores serve.

Wal-Mart serves customers at all income levels and walks of life, as do Target, Home Depot, Best Buy and other big-box stores. They appeal to consumers at all income levels -- but Wal-Mart disproportionately serves the poor. Wal-Mart stores are more often located in areas with below-average incomes, and surveys show that a larger proportion of lower-income people shop at Wal-Mart than people from affluent families. So the store's consumer welfare benefits particularly aid the poor -- and consequently, attempts to keep it out of communities hurt the poor far more than the rich....

Wal-Mart has not been particularly adroit in handling criticism. It has mounted a campaign to appease organized labor and environmental groups, tinkering with health care plans and entering the organic fish business, among other things. It strikes us that it may be abandoning its principles of everyday low prices to pander to its opponents, many of whom probably do not represent mainstream American thinking. We wonder whether Wal-Mart is trying to "appease the unappeasable".

I think the authors have hit on the crux of the matter in their phrase "appease the unappeasable". Leftist opposition to Wal-Mart is based on hatred of other people's success and all the PR efforts of Wal-Mart and all the detailed information in the book about it will not quench that hate. Wal-Mart's sin is the same sin that Leftists see in America as a whole and in Israel: Success.

There is more about the book here. Amazon have a discount deal on it.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

There is a site called Zionism On The Web which is devoted to counteracting antisemitic sites such as JewWatch by pushing them down the rankings in Google searches for "Zionism" etc. Anybody reading this who has a web site might like to do as I have just done and link to Zionism On The Web . Every link helps.

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



24 February, 2007

JEWISH TRASH: THE LEFTIST JEWS WHO HATE ISRAEL

Excerpt below from an article by Rachel Neuwirth See also another comment here

The most potent weapon in the arsenal of the Arab and Islamist extremists seeking the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people has always been, not bombs, not guns, not missiles, not aircraft, not even the barbarism of suicide-homicide bombers,--but propaganda. Their massive and unrelenting propaganda campaign over the past sixty years has depicted Israel as a vicious, conspiratorial aggressor against, and oppressor of, the Arab people, and "world Jewry" as parties to and supporters of this conspiracy by "Zionism" and "the Zionist entity."

Most of the world has come to accept this big lie, as well as the thousands of smaller lies that have been used to construct it like the individual stones that form the Great Pyramid of Giza. Unfortunately, many Jews, including Israeli Jews, have come to accept it, too. Anti-Israel propaganda has been given so much credence within Israel itself that it has sapped the will of the Israeli government and sections of Israel's people to resist the incessant, murderous terrorist campaign waged against them. The acceptance of the Arab-Islamist "narrative" by many Israeli politicians, journalists, and scholars has been the principal cause of the endless, suicidal concessions that one Israeli government after another has made to the terrorists since 1993. Israel is dying a slow death by poisoning from this propaganda.

And within this arsenal of Arab-Islamist propaganda, by far the most devastating weapon has been those Jews who participate in manufacturing it. An article posted on the website of the American Jewish Committee for the past year, which has received renewed attention recently, documents the published rhetoric of a number of these Jewish anti-Israel propagandists (only a small fraction, unfortunately, of the total number of them). The language used by these American and Canadian Jewish college professors and other "intellectuals" to describe Israel and Jews, as documented by the author of this study, Professor Alvin F. Rosenfeld of Indiana University, includes the following: "belligerent," "bloody, "brutal," "cataclysmic," "corrupt," "cruel," "dangerous," "deadly," "militaristic," "apocalyptic," "blind," "demonic," "fanatical," "insane, " and "mad." (Jacqueline Rose). Israel is "amoral," "barbaric," "brutal," "destructive," "fascistic," "oppressive," "racist," "sordid," and "uncivilized," (from the volume Radicals, Rabbis and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jewish Critics of Israel, edited by Seth Farber)....

In other words, for these "progressives," no evidence is needed to defame an entire nation and people. But the very fact that such extreme anti-Israel allegations and rhetoric originate with Jews give them a legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of world opinion that they would never have otherwise. Most people, naturally enough, cannot believe that Jews would make up vicious lies about their fellow Jews. Surely many readers of these books and articles by "progressive" Jews must ask themselves," how could any human beings be capable of inventing lies about their own people, their own ethnic group, or their own faith-community, or about the nation formed by their own people or faith-community?"

It is not unnatural for non-Jews to believe that what Jews say about each other or their own institutions must be true. And once these extreme allegations against Israel are accepted as fact, then the constant terrorism and armed aggression directed against Israel over the past sixty years, the suicide-homicide bombings directed at Jewish civilians, and perhaps even the complete annihilation of Israel openly threatened by President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad of Iran, by Hamas, and by so many others in the Arab and Islamic lands, have become morally acceptable to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. Israel's six million Jews (yes, there are now nearly six million of them) have become isolated and extremely vulnerable to those who mean to do them harm.

As a consequence of their endorsing and actively disseminating these monstrous libels against Israel and their fellow Jews, and thereby giving them credibility in the eyes of the world, the "progressive" Zion-hating Jews have already got a lot of blood on their hands. And it is all too likely that in the future they will have dipped their hands in a lot more.

***************************

ELSEWHERE

What Leftists supported under Clinton, they oppose under Bush: "The Iraq debate is starting to resemble the Yugoslavia debate of the early 1990s. Once again we are hearing that crazed foreigners are in the grip of ancient ethnic hatreds and that the U.S. has no cause to get involved in their internecine strife. Ironically, some of those now making this "realist" argument resisted its spurious logic 15 years ago. They were right to do so then, and they would be tragically mistaken were they to succumb to the siren song of nonintervention today"

Spanking ban abandoned: "The California Legislature won't be cracking down on spanking after all. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber has abandoned her plans to push for a legislative prohibition on parents spanking their children under age 4. Lieber, D-Mountain View, will introduce a bill Thursday morning that will target the use of physical force on children, but not spanking, an aide said. The measure proposes a "rebuttable presumption" that certain acts against children under 18 are unjustifiable, including throwing, kicking or hitting them with a cord or other instrument." [The idea died when it was proposed in Australia recently too. New Zealand however seems set to go ahead with the nonsense]

Companies' fair share: Zero percent: "Every freshman economics class teaches companies can't bear taxes, only people can. Companies are just legal fictions that shove off taxes onto customers, employees and shareholders. The firm itself pays nothing. And so the age-old notion that we should hammer rich companies because 'they can afford it' is really based on a simple misunderstanding. Personally, I blame lawmakers for the mix-up. They notoriously preach the gospel of 'tax companies, not people' with campaign promises to shift taxes from families onto businesses. But business taxes are just a tricky way of dumping tax burdens back onto different people. So in the world of corporate taxes, the right measure of ability to pay isn't the profits of the Fortune 500. It's our own pocketbooks."

Government housing projects didn't work in Sweden either: "In the seventies, liberal thinkers poured their scorn and the right-wing press took up the campaign, portraying the areas with disturbing images of social deprivation. The suburbs' reputations declined as a result and residents started packing their boxes.... Nowadays, these places are largely viewed as immigrant ghettos. “What is tragic is they are used as a symbol in the segregation debate in Sweden,” Soderqvist says. Ironically, it seems, the once celebrated housing project, which aimed to integrate the nation, has only served to fuel a divided society. The extent of the decline in these areas became a political embarrassment during the 90s, with employment rates going down and criminality and drug use on the up. [Tao of Defiance has some mocking comments too. The best gloss that the Swedes can now put on the projects concerned is that they are now good museum pieces!]

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



23 February, 2007

The Europeans are back to their old hatred of Jews

Excerpt from Michael Ledeen. I am not quite clear on what Ledeen thinks started at the beginning of C20. European antisemitism goes back many centuries. Both Luther and Marx were great antisemites

Daniel Johnson, writing in the Weekly Standard from London, notes with sadness and alarm that the European elite have now admitted their failure to negotiate an end to the Iranian nuclear program. Not only that, but they let out of the diplomatic bag the dirty little secret that it's always been about nuclear weapons.

So the Europeans know-in all likelihood they've always known-that the Iranians are building atomic bombs, and intend to use them against Israel. Against the Jews. Johnson says that if that happens, he'll pack up and leave Europe, as well he might. I'm tempted to ask him why he needs to wait. British Jews now constitute the largest single group of immigrants to Israel, having seen the graffiti on the walls and in the newspapers of their finlandized country.

The campaign against Israel and the rising tide of antisemitism are two faces of the same medallion. Anybody who has studied the rise of National Socialism recognizes the symptoms, above all the dehumanization of the Jews, accompanied by the big lies about Jewish control of this and that, from the banks to the newspapers.

In retrospect, we can see that Europe set on this course at the turn of the twentieth century, then indulged their antisemitic fantasies until they were defeated in war. We then had a happy interlude, when antisemitism was so discredited by Hitler and rendered taboo as a result of defeat. That interlude is now over, and the Europeans are reverting to form.

***************************

ELSEWHERE

Dr. Sanity has a good post on how and why Leftists use systematic denial as a psychological defence-mechanism. Excerpt: "As the real world presses in on them, their voices have become more shrill and hysterical; their rage is escalating out of control. No longer do most of them even bother to argue their points logically; they simply loudly denounce any idea or person who threatens their ideology; or deliberately and with the ruthless finesse of all tyrants and thugs, simply attempt to suppress all dissenting opinions"

Former Clinton fundraiser condemns Hillary: "Today mogul Geffen spoke out in the New York Times column of Maureen Dowd. He attacked Hillary Clinton as a polarizing figure who cannot bring the country together and praised Obama as a uniting figure. He said Republicans believe Hillary will be easiest to defeat. He said the Clinton political organization will slime Obama, adding: "That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective." And regarding the Clintons themselves he said: "Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease. It's troubling." [Riehl World has more]

About time: "Travellers mistakenly placed on a US no-fly list of people deemed a threat to aviation can file complaints through a new government program, the US Homeland Security Department said yesterday. The no-fly list dramatically expanded following the attacks of September 11, 2001, with tens of thousands of names added, leading to numerous complaints of errors, including high-profile incidents with a US senator and British singer. The Homeland Security Department announced yesterday the launch of the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, accessible via a secure website. "Travellers can now seek redress and resolve possible watch list misidentification issues with any of the department's component agencies at an easy-to-use and easy-to-access online location," the department said in a statement."

British police get real about heroin: "The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, notes with approval the suggestion by Ken Jones, the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), that "heroin should be prescribed to long-term addicts to prevent them from committing crimes to feed their habits" (The Independent). However, the LA suggests that this is a very modest step in the right direction. It calls on ACPO to embrace the full logic of its position and argue that heroin should once again be sold over the counter in pharmacies...."

Arrogant Leftists still want to dictate other people's choices: "Where markets have proved triumphant is in their ability to drive up living standards and personal choice through rising productivity. And yet, as John Maynard Keynes presciently warned in 1930, this solving of "the economic problem" still leaves mankind with his "real [and] permanent problem - how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares . . . which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well". Solving this problem means rethinking the essence of each individual's relationship to the labour market. Capitalism is triumphant but complacent - to reform it, we have to go into the belly of the beast." [That each individual should be free to solve this "problem" in the way that suits his/her particular wishes best is too radical a thought for this Leftist know-all].

Hayek as a fusionist: "'Fusionism' is the attempt to combine libertarianism and conservatism into a unified political philosophy and program. It has been controversial ever since Frank Meyer first defended it half a century ago, and every electoral cycle seems to generate another round of debate over the question of whether fusionism is possible or desirable.... As it happens, Hayek rejected both the "conservative" and "libertarian" labels; he preferred to call himself a "Burkean Whig." But then, Burke was the father of modern conservatism, and the Whigs were the classical liberal ancestors of contemporary libertarians. So while there are certainly versions of conservatism and libertarianism Hayek would not have endorsed, his own self-description seems to indicate a commitment to fusionism of a sort. More substantively, Hayek was the preeminent twentieth-century champion of the free market so beloved by libertarians, and made central to his later work a Burkean defense of tradition as a repository of social and moral wisdom. Nor is this combination accidental, for the two themes are deeply intertwined in his work.

Ways to improve economic growth: "The news of the past year is pretty good. Despite high oil prices and weakness in the housing market, the U.S. economy turned in its fifth consecutive year of growth in 2006. The unemployment rate was only 4.6 percent in 2006 (compared to 6 percent in 2003) and GDP growth clocked in at 3.4 percent over the entire year. Compare those macroeconomic numbers with the 2006 performance in high-tax France, where growth was around 2 percent and the unemployment rate was more than twice that of the U.S. It is very clear that America's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts have been an unmitigated success, and Congress urgently needs to make them permanent. So, if inflation is in check, productivity is increasing, the stock market is rising, and growth is solid, what are the problems facing the United States economy? First, we shouldn't be satisfied with 3.4 percent growth, and we must continue to expand our economy in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. There are many, many policy distortions that drag on the economy and keep America, and her people, from reaching our full potential. Just because we're a little more free than Japan or Europe is no cause for celebration"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



22 February, 2007

Spot the common problem. (Hint: it isn't us)

Post lifted from Australian columnist, Andrew Bolt:

It is a dangerous and self-deluding mistake to focus only on suicide attacks in Israel and Iraq. That makes us forget that the carnage is not so much about us but about a them - a them that is even more dangerous to other Muslims than it is to us in the West.

From Pakistan today:

A SUICIDE bomber in Pakistan killed 16 people, including a judge, in a courtroom in the city of Quetta overnight in the latest attack in a series of suicide blasts to have sent shudders through the country.

Intelligence officials have attributed other attacks to sectarian Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda and groups operating from tribal areas, regarded as hotbeds of support for the Taliban.

From Iran yesterday:

Police and insurgents clashed after a bombing in southeastern Iran late Friday near the site where an explosion killed 11 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards this week, Iranian news agencies reported…

A Sunni Muslim militant group called Jundallah, or God’s Brigade, which has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops, has claimed responsibility for the Wednesday bombing, AP noted.

From Turkey yesterday:

A Turkish court has sentenced seven suspected Al-Qaeda militants to life in prison for their roles in suicide bomb attacks that killed scores of people in Istanbul in 2003.

From Algeria yesterday:

A deadly and carefully planned series of bomb attacks in Algeria by an al-Qaida affiliate may signal a new escalation in violence that many Algerians hoped had abated, experts say…

Towns across the Kabylie region awoke Tuesday to a series of seven bombings, some car explosions, that largely targeted police stations. Six people were killed and about 30 injured.

From Lebanon on Thursday:

At least three people were killed and 20 injured when bombs packed with metal pellets tore through two buses traveling on a highway Tuesday, February 13, near the Christian mountain town of Bikfaya northeast of Beirut, Lebanese officials said.

From the Philippines today:

Police in the Zamboanga Peninsula in Mindanao are now on alert after receiving an intelligence report that terrorists are planning to bomb buses and attack the transport sector there…

Meanwhile, South Korea has warned its citizens not to travel to Mindanao because of possible bombings by the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist groups.

From Thailand on Friday:

Suspected insurgents shot a village head in a mosque during Friday prayers in Thai southernmost province of Pattani, while eight rangers and police officers were wounded in two bomb blasts in Yala.

From Indonesia on Saturday:

Security forces are on highest alert in Indonesia’s restive Central Sulawesi province following warnings that militants may be planning attacks, the region’s police chief said on Friday…

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, has in recent years been hit by a series of bomb blasts blamed on Islamic militants.

From Eritrea today:

Hundreds of Islamist fighters were flown, with Eritrean assistance, from Somalia to Syria and Libya for military training. Others were taken to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah, the report to the UN security council has revealed.

There is a pattern here, and I mean more than the absence of any wickedness by Westerners.

*************************

ELSEWHERE

HIT MILLIONAIRE! I have never been greatly bothered by how many hits I get on my various blogs. I am accustomed to being proved right in the long run rather than being much acclaimed in the present. So it was only when STACLU announced that they have now had 1 million hits that I looked at my hit record. And I note that this blog too has exceeded a million hits. I guess that must mean something. I am myself one of the STACLU bloggers so I guess that I do get a tiny bit of the credit for what they have achieved as well.

Leading Democrat says ISRAEL is the greatest threat to world peace!: "The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the "I" word -- Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities"

State attorneys general look after lawyers first: "The Nation's Top Ten Worst State Attorneys General," a recent study I authored for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, takes a closer look at how attorneys general use their power to encroach on the authority of other branches of government and enrich their friends at society's expense. Spitzer, who was rated the third-worst state attorney general by the study, claims to be the scourge of wealthy "economic royalists." But when rich trial lawyers demanded a staggering $625 million for bringing New York's copycat lawsuit against the tobacco companies - at a rate of $13,000 an hour - Spitzer supported them, even though they began work only after tobacco companies had already given in to lawsuits brought by two other states. When a New York trial judge issued an order blocking the award on ethical grounds, Spitzer helped them get the order overturned based on a technicality."

EU unity fades. Airbus faces break-up: "Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, faces the possibility of being broken up after German shareholders and executives were understood to have been discussing the feasibility of the group's present structure. The Times understands that there is enormous dissatisfaction on the German side of EADS, the defence company that owns Airbus, and sources close to the company say that the Germans are considering a breakup. Such a move would end an experiment in European co-operation that has built Airbus and EADS into an aerospace giant with more than 110,000 employees, including 17,000 in the UK. The crisis at Airbus was triggered on Sunday by shareholders refusing to back a restructuring plan submitted by Louis Gallois, the co-chief executive of EADS and head of Airbus.... However, sources close to Airbus said last night that the Germans were playing a political game with France. These sources believe that the Germans will agree to Power 8 - and giving France the bulk of A350 work - only if they get all A320 production in return. This would effectively split Airbus, with the smaller aircraft made in Germany and the larger ones in France. A formal divorce between the two countries would then be achieved easily."

British bureaucracy at work again: "The government agency created to seize the assets of criminals is condemned today as a mess, having spent 65 million pounds on collecting only 23 million pounds. The Assets Recovery Agency has received 700 files linked to 274 million. But it has seized money from only 52 of these cases, according to a report by the spending watchdog. Millions of pounds paid in fees to receivers to manage criminal assets are expected in 12 cases to be more than the cash and assets being looked after. The National Audit Office report also found that the agency, which is to be merged with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, has no effective case-management system and had experienced high turnover of staff. A third of the financial investigators trained by the agency either retired or left soon after qualifying. The scale of the agency’s failure is highlighted by the estimated 20 billion annual cost of organised crime in Britain."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



21 February, 2007

RECENT REPORT ON THE "SEXUALIZATION" OF GIRLS

Comment on "Report of the APA task force on the sexualization of girls"

What would you expect of a report -- written by a group of Leftist women -- about the influence of the media on girls? Shriek! Shriek! and Shriek? You would be right.

A recent report issued under the aegis of the American Psychological Association -- but which was apparently not considered good enough for publication in any of their many peer-reviewed journals -- has attracted a fair bit of media attention -- e.g. here. Excerpt:

Inescapable media images of sexed-up girls and women posing as adolescents can cause psychological and even physical harm to adolescents and young women, a study has found.

The pressure of what experts call "sexualisation" can lead to depression, eating disorders, and poor academic performance, said the report, released by the American Psychological Association. "Sexualisation of girls is a broad and increasing problem and is harmful to girls," it said.

Adult women dressed as school girls in music videos, bikini-clad dolls in hot tubs, and sexually-charged advertisements featuring teenagers were among the many examples cited. Such omnipresent images - on television and the internet, in movies and magazines - could also have a negative effect on a young girl's sexual development, the study said.

As one indication of the "kick the media" mentality of the report, roughly the first half of the report is devoted to a big session of finger-pointing at examples in the media of young females being portrayed in attractive ways. That attractiveness and sexual attractiveness are closely linked in females should surprise no-one but it apparently surprised the harpies who wrote this report. No doubt advertisers could portray young girls in dowdy ways if they chose but who would want to look at such images?

The only interesting part of the report therefore is whether or not research has been pointed to which shows harm coming from media portrayals -- and there is indeed a small section in the report devoted to summarizing such research. What that research generally shows however is that females feel bad if they do not see themselves as pretty. We needed a report to tell us that?

There are a few studies mentioned that purport to show a linkage between particular media messages and a decline in female self-esteem but there are large lacunae in what is discussed. There is, for instance, no systematic attempt to separate out findings about young girls and (say) teenage girls. That what is true of pre- and post-adolescent females might differ has apparently not occured to these female authors. Since it must have occurred to them, however, I think we have to conclude that the blurring is deliberate. They want to take findings about troubled teenagers and make them appear much more worrisome by implying that they apply to young girls too.

Furthermore, we are told little about the magnitude or permanence of any adverse effect mentioned nor are we given any assurance that the results reported are in any way representative. In almost any research field worthy of the name, there are contradictory results. From this report one gathers that there are no contradictory results. One has to conclude therefore that this is not an honest research summary. It is just a feminist shriek. No wonder no APA journal would publish it.

*****************

SUPPORT THE TROOPS BY THWARTING THE MISSION?

Just what does it mean to support the troops but oppose the cause they fight for? No loyal Colts fan rooted for Indianapolis to lose the Super Bowl. No investor buys 100 shares of Google in the hope that Google's stock will tank. No one who esteems firefighters for their courage and education wants a four-alarm blaze to burn out of control.

Yet there is no end of Americans who insist they "support" US troops in Iraq but want the war those troops are fighting to end in defeat. The two positions are irreconcilable. You cannot logically or honorably curse the war as an immoral neocon disaster or a Halliburton oil grab or "a fraud . . . cooked up in Texas," yet bless the troops who are waging it.

But logic and honor haven't stopped members of Congress from trying to square that circle. The nonbinding resolution passed by the House last week was a flagrant attempt to have it both ways. One of its two clauses professed to "support and protect" the forces serving "bravely and honorably" in Iraq. The other declared that Congress "disapproves" the surge in troops now underway -- a surge that General David Petraeus, the newly confirmed military commander in Iraq, considers essential to American success.

It was a disgraceful and dishonest resolution, and it must have done wonders for the insurgents' morale. Democrats hardly bothered to disguise that when they say they "support and protect" the troops, what they really intend is to undermine and endanger their mission. The Politico, a Washington news site, reported Thursday that the strategy of "top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups," is to "pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options." If they had the courage of their convictions, Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha would forthrightly defund the war, bring the troops home, and brave the political consequences. Instead they plan an agonizing and drawn-out defeat -- slowly choking off the war by denying reinforcements, eventually leaving no alternative but retreat.

That is how those who oppose the war "support" the troops -- they "slow-bleed" them dry. Or they declare that the lives laid down by those troops were "wasted," as Senator Barack Obama did last Sunday. Obama later weaseled away from that characterization ("Well, as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown"), but the gaffe had been committed. And like most political gaffes, it exposed the speaker's true feelings.

But then, why shouldn't Obama feel that way? If an American serviceman dies in the course of a war that toppled a monstrous dictatorship, opened the door to the possibility of decent Arab governance, and has become the central front in the struggle against radical Islam, then his death is not in vain. It is the sacrifice of an American hero, the last full measure of devotion given in the cause of freedom. But if he dies in the course of a senseless and illegitimate invasion -- the Obama/Murtha/Pelosi view of Iraq -- then his life *was* wasted. If that's what you believe, Senator, why not say so? Obama's is merely the latest in a series of senatorial comments that offer a glimpse of the left's anti-military disdain.

Smart people who work hard become successful, John Kerry "joked" last fall, but uneducated sluggards "get stuck in Iraq." Osama bin Laden is beloved by Muslims for "building schools, building roads, [and] building day-care facilities," Washington Senator Patty Murray explained in 2002, while Americans only show up to "bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan." Obama's Illinois colleague Dick Durbin took to the Senate floor to equate US military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay with genocidal mass-murderers: "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or . . . Pol Pot."

It goes without saying that many Democrats and liberals take a back seat to no one in their admiration and appreciation of the US military. But there is no denying that a notable current of antimilitary hostility runs through the left as well. Examples are endless: ROTC is banned on elite college campuses. San Francisco bars a historic battleship from its port. Signs at antiwar protests exhort troops to "shoot their officers." An Ivy League professor prays for "a million Mogadishus." Michael Moore compares Iraqi insurgents who kill Americans to the Minutemen of Revolutionary New England.

America is a free country, but it is not the Michael Moores or the ROTC-banners or the senatorial loudmouths who keep it free. They merely enjoy the freedom that others are prepared to defend with their lives. It is the men and women who volunteer to wear the uniform to whom we owe our liberty. Surely they deserve better than pious claims of "support" from those who are working for their defeat.

Source

***************************

ELSEWHERE

The irreverent Tim Worstall has a very amusing comment up about local markets -- which the Greenies think are the bees knees, of course.

Dick McDonald has a good article here about the vast robbery that U.S. social security payments represent.

Chris Brand has a new lot of posts up on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.

Kurds send 3 brigades for surge: "Kurdish troops comprise a significant part of the Iraq Army contingent in the joint counter-insurgency mission in Baghdad. Three Iraq Army brigades from the autonomous Kurdistan region in the North have been deployed to Baghdad as part of the counter-insurgency operation being conducted with the United States. Officials said the brigades, with about 7,500 troops, are already in Baghdad, Middle East Newsline reported. Officials said insurgency strikes have dropped by 80 percent since the Baghdad security operation was launched more than a week ago. They said the biggest drop was in operations by the Iranian-sponsored Mahdi Army in the city. "Kurdish brigades are well-trained to fight inside cities and neighborhoods, and they will contribute vigorously in cleansing Baghdad's suburbs of armed men and outlaws," Kurdistan Defense Minister Jaafar Al Barazani said

EU defeatism: "An internal European Union document has concluded that there will be no way to prevent Iran from enriching enough weapons-grade uranium to develop a nuclear bomb, the British newspaper The Financial Times reported Tuesday. According to the report, the document states that the Iranian nuclear program has not been affected by diplomatic pressure, and has only been delayed due to technical limitations. "At some stage we must expect that Iran will acquire the capacity to enrich uranium on the scale required for a weapons program," the Times quoted the document as saying, warning that "the problems with Iran will not be resolved through economic sanctions alone." The document was dated February 7, and was reportedly circulated to the EU's 27 national governments ahead of a foreign ministers meeting Monday."

The usual excuse for black crime crumbles: "The death of the City solicitor Tom ap Rhys Pryce, stabbed for his mobile phone and travelcard as he returned home one night last winter clutching his wedding plans, struck terror into urban professionals. At the time his killers were portrayed as feral youths who grew up without the guiding influence of their fathers. It triggered a debate about the role of fathers in the lives of urban boys. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, wrote of his hope that "the men who left those boys' mothers to bring them up alone are reflecting on their own responsibility". But The Times has discovered that Delano Brown and Donnel Carty had strong father figures whose attempts to play a formative role in their up-bringing were rejected."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody.

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



20 February, 2007

Liberal emotion vs. Conservative logic

It takes a lot more integrity, character, and courage to be a conservative than it does to be a liberal. That's because at its most basic level, liberalism is nothing more than childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues. Going to war is mean, so we shouldn't do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. Somebody wants to have an abortion, have a gay marriage, or wants to come into the U.S. illegally and it would be mean to say, "no," so we should let them. I am nice because I care about global warming! Those people want to kill us? But, don't they know we're nice? If they did, they would like us! Bill has more toys, money than Harry, so take half of Bill's money and give it to Harry.

The only exception to this rule is for people who aren't liberals. They're racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists, etc., etc., etc. They might as well just say that conservatives have "cooties" for disagreeing with them, because there really isn't any more thought or reasoning that goes into it than that.

Now, that's not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But, when you try to deal with complex, real world issues, using little more than simplistic emotionalism that's primarily designed to make the people advocating it feel good rather than to deal with problems, it can, and often has had disastrous consequences. Liberals never seem to learn from this.

Why don't they learn anything from failed liberal policies? Because there is nothing underpinning them other than feelings and so even when they don't work, their good intentions are treated, by other liberals at least, as more important than the results of their actions. Just to name one example of many, look at Vietnam. South Vietnam was policing its own country and holding off aggression from the North with the help of the United States. But, people get hurt in wars, so wars are bad. As a result of thinking that went no deeper than that, liberals in Congress cut off the aid and air support we promised the South Vietnamese.

The result? The conquest of South Vietnam, a holocaust in Cambodia, millions dead and in prison camps, another million boat people, a crisis of confidence in America, and our country's reputation around the world was left in tatters, which led to a revolution in Nicaragua, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a lack of faith in the U.S. military which wasn't truly restored until Operation Desert Storm. So, we're talking about one of the most shameful and damaging mistakes in American history. Yet, the left is pushing to do the same thing in Iraq, despite the fact that catastrophic consequences would surely also follow a U.S. retreat in that country.

But, this isn't just about foreign policy. Look at Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty," which did nothing to reduce the poverty rate despite the trillions that were spent; however, it did help drive the illegitimacy rate among black Americans from 22 percent in 1960 to 70% in 2005. You could go on and on with these sort of examples -- rent control, which causes housing shortages, the minimum wage, which costs poor people jobs, the liberal insistence on putting "making nice at the U.N." above looking out for American interests. That's what happens when you make decisions based on emotion and wanting people to like you, rather than using logic and doing the right thing.

Unlike liberals, conservatives tend to be primarily concerned with pragmatism, not niceties. This is one of the biggest reasons that conservatives have such a healthy respect for the traditions and institutions that have been proven to work over time and such contempt for those that don't, like the United Nations and the federal government. Does that mean conservatives are opposed to change? No, not at all, but there is a great reluctance to tinker with ideas and concepts that have proven successful time and time again throughout history, because the more they're changed, the more likely they are not to work.

Moreover, in Thomas Sowell's immortal words, conservatives believe that, "There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs." Because of this, conservatives regularly do something that liberals seldom do: they consider the long-term consequences of their policies. Sometimes in politics, that's a tough duty. It's always easier to say, "We're going to use someone else's tax money to give you this right now," than it is to say, "We're going to keep government out of your way and let you do this for yourself." But, that's the path conservatives have chosen for themselves. They're willing to be attacked and called, in some form or fashion, "mean" in order to advocate policies that are good for the country.

In the end, that's what liberalism versus conservatism all comes down to: sappy, feel good emotionalism that sounds appealing, but doesn't work versus doing things the right way, even when it's not easy.

Source

***********************

ELSEWHERE



Chirac to appease Iran: "French President Jacques Chirac has announced his support for lessening pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program, for fear Hezbollah will strike at French troops serving in Lebanon, according to information recently received in Jerusalem. According to reports, Chirac proposed sending a special envoy to Tehran to reach understandings that would protect the French soldiers serving in in the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL)."

UK: Muslim bomber has job on trains: "A muslim fanatic who dressed as a suicide bomber at a rally threatening terror attacks has got a job on TRAINS. Sick Omar Khayam cleans carriages unsupervised for rail giant First Group. And he has even got keys to onboard electrical cupboards. Furious train drivers last night claimed the safety of staff and passengers is being put at risk. One driver added: "It's an astonishing security breach. "We cannot believe this man is employed in a job giving him access to locked places on trains where bombs could be hidden and never be found. "He has keys that could be passed on to others for the electrical cupboards in carriages. It is a risk too far." Convicted drugs dealer Khayam, 22, had been filmed dressed as a bomber at the controversial demonstration outside London's Danish Embassy last year. He wore a sinister camouflage outfit with a black vest. Extremists around him - protesting at cartoons of the prophet Mohammed - waved placards supporting the 7/7 London bombings and calling for new UK terror attacks."

French judge warns of terror threat: "The risk of terror attacks in Europe is high and is increasing, France's leading anti-terrorism judge said, warning that a recent alliance between al-Qaida and a North African terrorist group poses a grave threat. The Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French initials GSPC, staged seven nearly simultaneous attacks in Algeria on Tuesday, targeting police in several towns east of Algiers, killing six and injuring around 30, according to officials, police and hospital staff. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, the new name for the GSPC, claimed responsibility for the strikes. "The GSPC wants to carry out attacks in Europe, especially in France, Italy and Spain, and destabilize North Africa," Jean-Louis Bruguiere told The Associated Press on Tuesday night in New York."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



19 February, 2007

Nutty Rules of engagement in Iraq

Now that Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, one of his first jobs will be to clarify what military and defense officials say are vague rules of engagement that govern how U.S. troops can use force to defend themselves. Gen. Petraeus was asked recently about the problem of the vague rules, which have been discussed at length in this column over the past several weeks. He told a former general during a recent meeting that fixing the rules will be one of his most important priorities.

More evidence of the rules problem comes from an e-mail from an Army E-5 sergeant in Iraq who took issue with the recent letter in The Washington Times written by an Army attorney. The lawyer asserted that the current rules for soldiers were adequate and not confusing.

"I can tell you from personal experience that [the current rules of engagement] don't give us very much leeway with self-defense," wrote the sergeant, a member of a combat service support unit. "They tell us in our convoy briefings that we have the right to self-defense, defense for civilians and other coalition forces," the soldier said. "However, I do know that it is hard for soldiers to distinguish when is the proper time to use self-defense and when it is not. Soldiers are scared and they have a right to be. If a higher-up decides what you did was not in self-defense, you could get in major trouble and we feel that it's really not worth it."

In one case, a soldier fired two 5.56 rounds and as a result "had to sit in an office for two days straight and tell his story over and over and fill out a ton of paperwork for doing what he felt was right." The soldier said after the experience that "he would never fire his weapon again because he felt the aftermath wasn't worth it, and that's just not right."

"The military has gone severely soft in its effort over here and that is why more and more [people] are dying," the sergeant concluded. "They're just too scared to let soldiers think for themselves."

Source

************************

ELSEWHERE

Stanley Kurtz makes an important point when he blames the central Islamic custom of cousin marriage for the hostility they have towards Western civilization -- which heavily undermines all such customs.

American Indians a distinct race: "A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time. Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in Asia and 18 Native American populations. The study examined samples from roughly 1500 people in total, including 445 Native Americans. The team looked for a series of nine repeating chunks of DNA, known as 9RA, which falls in a non-coding region of chromosome 9. They found the 9RA sequence in at least one member of all the Native American populations tested, such as the Cherokee and Apache people. The two populations in eastern Siberia, where the Bering land bridge once connected Asia to North America, also tested positive for the 9RA sequence. The 9RA sequence did not appear in any of the other Asian populations examined in the study, including those from other parts of Siberia, from Mongolia or Japan."

Obama is the best BS artist since Bill Clinton: "The Illinois Senator is the ultimate modern media creature -- he's a good-looking, youthful, smooth-talking, buttery-warm personality with an aw-shucks demeanor who exudes a seemingly impenetrable air of Harvard-crafted moral neutrality. If Hillary Clinton even dares to open her mouth within a hundred feet of him at any time during the campaign, she's going to come off like a pig digging for truffles. Even Edwards -- the so-called 'slick' candidate from '04 -- sounds like a two-bit suburban Buick dealer next to Obama. You get past the 'issues,' and it's a wipeout. Obama knows this, and so his entire political persona is an ingeniously crafted human cipher, a man without race, ideology, geographic allegiances, or, indeed, sharp edges of any kind. You can't run against him on the issues because you can't even find him on the ideological spectrum."

A nice little gift from Mexico: "Federal researchers say neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by a pork tapeworm, is a "growing public health problem in the United States," especially in states bordering Mexico, where the disease is endemic. Neurocysticercosis is the "most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system," according to a study jointly conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California public health officials, who reported that "international travel and immigration are bringing the disorder to areas where it is not endemic," such as this country. "Neurocysticercosis is the primary cause of epilepsy in endemic areas. This brain worm is very serious," Victor C. Tsang, chief of the immunochemistry laboratory in the Parasitic Disease Division of the CDC said in a telephone interview. "Oral-fecal contamination is the standard route of transmission," he said of the condition.... Carriers tend to be people from rural developing countries with poor hygiene, where pigs are allowed to roam freely and eat human feces. Mr. Tsang said the condition is rife in Mexico and other parts of Latin America"

Brits less generous under socialism: "The Economist follows up Tony Blair's philanthropy speech yesterday with a big feature on the issue headlined BRING BACK THE VICTORIANS. It tells us that the most generous towns in England are Sunderland, Motherwell and Blackpool, and the meanest are Croydon, Ilford and Kingston-upon-Thames. Is it a coindence that the former are all in the North and the latter are all in the South?! The graph also shows that Britain is far more generous than other major European countries when it comes to philanthropy, but way behind the United States. But the right hand graph is possibly even more illuminating. It shows that since Labour came to power the number of people giving to charity has fallen by 12% from 70% to 58%"

Business sticks it to the taxpayer: "Wal-Mart's CEO and his chief nemesis, the head of the Service Employees International Union, have joined forces. They recently appeared together at a news conference to endorse "universal health care," sugar-words for medicine by coercive bureaucracy. No, this is not another article about why a government-based medical system is a terrible idea. This is an article about a business leader looking to the state for a bailout. It is not the first time CEO Lee Scott has endorsed interventionism. In 2005 he called for an increase in the minimum wage. It wasn't hard to figure out why. Wal-Mart pays more than the minimum wage. So why not stick it to your competitors who don't? No one, not even Wal-Mart, is so secure that a little drag on the competition wouldn't be of help. Scott's jumping on the health-care bandwagon is equally transparent. He certainly isn't the only businessman to join this unholy crusade. Big business everywhere is creaking under the weight of their medical benefits, and they see only one way out: the taxpayers. It's the same reason Big Steel would like the government to take over its pension obligations."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



18 February, 2007

LEFTIST DENIAL OF A MORE RECENT HOLOCAUST

There are Vietnamese restaurants all over the Western world providing testimony to the holocaust that followed the Communist takeover of Vietnam but many Leftists pretend that the holocaust concerned did not happen

The Nov. 15 edition of the left-wing radio show "Democracy Now" featured former Sen. George McGovern debating whether we withdraw troops from Iraq or increase them.... He was asked by the host, "You were one of the earliest people speaking out against the U.S. attack and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. What happened? How did the U.S. pull out? What were people saying then?"

McGovern's reply was nothing short of delusional. He said, "... they were saying the same thing they're saying about Iraq. We were told all during those long years when I and others were trying to terminate our military involvement in Vietnam, an intervention that the chief architects now say was a dreadful mistake. ...that if we pulled out - maybe it was a mistake to go in, but if we pulled out, there would be a slaughter of people in Vietnam of indescribable dimensions, that Ho Chi Minh and his people would just slaughter everybody in the country that disagreed with him. We also were told that the countries next door would start toppling into communism, if we left Vietnam. None of that happened."

None of this happened? Maybe he should ask - as I have - the "boat people" who fled Vietnam to escape the holocaust that followed the communist conquest of Vietnam, or talk to the Vietnamese refugees who were sentenced to "re-education" camps for five and 10 years. Maybe he should talk to Vietnam War protester and singer Joan Baez, who in 1976 and 1979 protested the human rights atrocities of the Vietnamese communists (and was denounced as a CIA stooge by Jane Fonda's ex-husband Tom Hayden). Indeed, all Sen. McGovern really needs to do is review his own 1978 speech calling for military intervention in Cambodia to stop the communist holocaust. (Leftist icon Noam Chomsky vehemently criticized McGovern for this.) McGovern wanted to use military force to stop the very same holocaust he now denies occurred. Why would they deny?

The answer may be found in a 1995 essay written by the newly elected Virginia senator, Democrat James Webb. A veteran of Vietnam, Webb wrote an essay titled, "Robert McNamara, the Anti-War Left, and the Triumph of Intellectual Dishonesty," for the Fall 1995 edition of Strategic Review. Webb's essay begins with him describing a presentation he made to some business people about Vietnam when the subject of the war was broached. He mentions the then-recently published book about Vietnam by Robert McNamara, the architect of the war.

He states how the war was distorted by the anti-war left then and now. Webb comments, "... there has been a persistent conspiracy of silence that has lasted for decades, accompanied of late by an attempt to leap over the carcasses and the devastation that followed the communist takeover, to simply pretend it did not happen." Webb continues, "Few, if any, of the old anti-war luminaries, Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, George McGovern, Peter Arnett, 'Tom Harkin, Bill or Hillary Clinton ... could find it in themselves to conjure up an apology, or admit they were wrong in judging a communist apparatus that brought Southeast Asia's strongest and most pro-Western culture back into the dark ages, only to haltingly emerge fifteen years later reeking of torture, prison camps, Stalinism and corruption."

The next paragraph mentions McGovern and the motivation for this denial of the communist holocaust. Webb wrote, "The reason ... was stated most honestly and directly to me by George McGovern ... while taping the "CNN Crossfire' show ... the antiwar candidate who had once promised to go to Hanoi on his knees if he were elected President turned to me and announced in his emotionless monotone, 'What you don't understand is that I didn't want us to win that war."' (Emphasis added)

Webb applies this to the entire anti-war movement, "The people who directed the antiwar movement did not care whether McNamara had a workable strategy ... They did not care whether Nixon's Vietnamization program might have worked. They did not care whether the South Vietnamese should have been given an adequate chance to adjust their strategy after the American withdrawal. ... they did not care whether the communists signed a pledge guaranteeing free elections and a peaceful reunification of the country. Quite simply, they wanted the communists to win. Those who were adults during the Vietnam era know this truth full well. Others, however, particularly our children, have seen it glazed over and even denied as the reality of what happened after 1975 became ever more clear." (Emphasis added)

Webb then makes a salient point, "The failure of the media to show these old luminaries and their younger disciples in this true light is important ... . Only by understanding their deeper motivations can future generations comprehend the making and ultimate failure of American policy during that period, and the subsequent refusal of our media elites to speak and write honestly after South Vietnam's fall ... . Vietnam was the first war where a generation's elite not only excused itself from fighting but often openly supported the side that was killing their own countrymen ..."

Genocide authority Professor R.J. Rummel described what occurred in SE Asia as democide. He wrote, "...after the North's victory ... . Hundreds of thousands were murdered - executed outright, or dying in "re-education camps," and in the "new economic zones." ... over a million Vietnamese that risked an awful death on the ocean to escape the communists enslavement (the Boat People), of which perhaps 500,000 never made land again... . Then there was the communist Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia ... Result: about 2,000,000 murdered."

Why is it that McGovern and others who deny the Indochinese communist holocaust are not considered lunatics as they would be if they were denying the holocaust of the Nazis?

Source

***************************

ELSEWHERE

Secret new US spy base in Australia: "Australia's close military alliance with the United States is to be further entrenched with the building of a high-tech communications base in Western Australia. The Federal Government is about to approve the base after three years of secret negotiations with Washington. The Age has been told the base, which will be built on defence land at Geraldton, will provide a crucial link for a new network of military satellites that will help the US's ability to fight wars in the Middle East and Asia. It will be the first big US military installation to be built in Australia in decades, and follows controversies over other big bases such as Pine Gap and North West Cape."

Fallacious Iraq arguments rife: "Warrior chic --the idea that biography trumps policy, that a person's identity proves the validity of their ideas--now dominates our politics, as anyone who listened to the House of Representatives debate the Iraq war this week can attest. On Tuesday the Democrats began the debate over House Concurrent Resolution 63, which says the House supports American forces serving in Iraq but disagrees with President Bush's decision to send additional troops into combat. The Democrats opened with a series of speeches from congressmen who have served in this war and in others--their status as veterans giving them unique perspective on matters of war and peace, and thus, in Democrats' eyes, lending their opposition to Bush's "escalation" of the war greater weight.... A debate on Bush's policy on its merits, engaging with its plusses and minuses, the possibility that it might work, and the possibility it might not, was nowhere to be found."

Anglicans still waffling: "Conservative Anglican archbishops have suffered a rebuff in their efforts to expel the US Episcopal Church over its liberal stance on homosexuality. A report drawn up for church leaders meeting in Tanzania concludes that the US Church has largely met demands for it to conform with orthodox teaching. The crisis began when the US Church decided to ordain an openly-gay bishop. ... Despite the report finding in the Episcopal Church's favour, there is scope for further division at the Tanzania meeting, our correspondent says. Conservative archbishops were due to put forward their plan for a parallel church in the US, under its own bishop, to cater for traditionalists who have broken away from the Episcopal Church."

Terror suspect in Canada ordered freed: "An Egyptian terror suspect who has been waging a weeks-long hunger strike was ordered released Thursday by a judge who said he posed no threat to national security while his case was under review. Mohammad Mahjoub, 46, has spent nearly seven years in a Canadian prison without any charge against him or access to the evidence against him. He was entering his 84th day of a hunger strike Thursday to protest his treatment."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



17 February, 2007

Falsifying Islamic history as a debating tool

Post lifted from Jihad Watch

Both Hugh Fitzgerald and I have written about Islamic apologist and media darling Reza Aslan, noting some of his innumerable distortions -- for one, he calls Muhammad's community in Medina "a communal, egalitarian society dedicated to pluralism and tolerance." Sure it was -- with the women veiled and the three Jewish tribes ultimately exiled or massacred by the prophet of Islam. Other than that, it was very pluralistic and egalitarian.

But Aslan gets away with this sort of thing because few people are aware of the facts of Muhammad's life as they are recounted in Islamic tradition, and so they have no knowledge of anything they can use to challenge him. And of course he is by no means the only Islamic apologist to capitalize upon this ignorance. All of this underscores the need today for people to be informed about Islam and Muhammad not from material intended for non-Muslims, but from material written by Muslims and intended for other Muslims (which is what I used to write my biography of Muhammad). Only then can non-Muslims get a clear picture of how Muslims really regard the elements of Islam and Muhammad's words and example that jihadists use to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, and thereby get a clear picture of the magnitude of the problem we face today.

Without such a clear picture, public policy will go wrong, remedies will be applied to the problem that are not remedies, and the jihad will continue to advance. Make no mistake: false, whitewashed history is a weapon of the jihad. Don't let yourself become a victim.

Here is another example: in `Reza Aslan's Pogrom Amnesia,' the ever-insightful Ilana Mercer has posted a link to a post by Myles Kantor about a debate between atheist crusader Sam Harris and Aslan. In that debate, Aslan again uses whitewashed history as a debating tool:

About Reza Aslan, the darling of the media on all things Muslim, Myles Kantor observes the following:

"Last night I watched Sam Harris and Reza Aslan's January 25 debate on religion at the Los Angeles Public Library. Toward the end, Harris noted the anti-Semitic character of the Middle East before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Aslan responded in reference to pre-state Israel, `Before 1948, of course, there were tens of thousands of Jews living alongside their Arab neighbors without any problem at all.'

Without any problem at all? How about the Jerusalem pogrom in 1920 and the Jaffa pogrom in 1921? Or Arab massacres of Jews in Hebron and Safad in 1929? Or the Tiberias pogrom in 1938? (There was a reason the Sephardic Jewish sage Maimonides wrote in 1172 regarding Arabs, `Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.')

If Aslan is ignorant of this recurrent savagery, then the Harvard graduate's study of pre-state Israel has been amazingly selective. If not, his misrepresentation of Arab-Jewish life before 1948 is revisionism in the same gutter as Holocaust denial."

Or down at curb level with the New Historians' output.

Aslan's howler here is on par with similar claims that Muslim Spain was a proto-multiculturalist paradise. And innumerable others. Inform yourselves. Don't let the whitewashers of jihad get away with any falsehoods.

************************

ELSEWHERE

Bank of America rolls out credit card requiring no SSN: "Bank of America Corp. has begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers, typically illegal immigrants, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. In recent years, banks across the country have been offering checking accounts and even mortgages to the nation's fast-growing ranks of undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic, the paper said, adding these immigrants generally have not been able to get major credit cards. The new Bank of America card is open to people who lack both a Social Security number and a credit history, as long as they have held a checking account with the bank for three months without an overdraft, the Journal said."

State Farm stops new policies in Mississippi: "State Farm Insurance Cos. is suspending sales of any new commercial or homeowner policies in Mississippi starting Friday, citing in part a wave of litigation it has faced since Hurricane Katrina, a company official said Wednesday. Mike Fernandez, vice president of public affairs for State Farm, said Mississippi's 'current legal and political environment is simply untenable. We're just not in a position to accept any additional risk in this homeowners' market.' Fernandez said the decision does not affect existing policies but the company is still assessing how many of the current policies in Mississippi will be renewed this year. Fernandez said the action was not a direct response to any specific development in the litigation. That litigation has included a recent federal jury's $2.5 million punitive damage award to a couple who sued State Farm for refusing to cover the 2005 hurricane's storm surge damage to their Biloxi home."

Indian truckdrivers coming: "Truckers on American highways will hear a new accent on their two-way radios when India exports its first batch of lorry drivers to the US to meet a severe manpower shortage. For the past four months more than 200 "transportation specialists" have been put through their paces at a training school in the state of Andhra Pradesh where US conditions have been replicated - from the size of the trailers to Yankee truckers' slang.... They are just the latest in a line of exportable skills from India, home to one-sixth of the world's population, as profit-driven enterprises and cash-strapped governments prove only too willing to tap into an English-speaking workforce eager to do the jobs rejected by others, often for a fraction of the salary.... Drivers in the US on average take home $5,000 a month plus good benefits but fewer Americans are interested in long-haul because of the amount of time they spend away from home. Gagan Global, the US company recruiting the drivers, says that there are an estimated 20,000 vacancies that urgently need filling.... Mr Gagan defended his programme, saying that both the US and India would benefit. "They're not taking away jobs [in the US]. There is a shortage. There are companies that have 5,000 trucks and 1,000 of them are sitting idle in their yards without anyone to work them," he said."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



16 February, 2007

Why European economies lag behind the U.S.

Excerpts from recent economics Nobelist Edmund Phelps

As is increasingly admitted, the economic performance in nearly every Continental country is generally poor compared to the U.S. and a few other countries that share the U.S.'s characteristics. Productivity in the Continental Big Three--Germany, France and Italy--stopped gaining ground on the U.S. in the early 1990s, then lost ground as a result of recent slowdowns and the U.S. speed-up. Unemployment rates are generally far higher than those in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland. And labor force participation rates have been lower for decades. Relatedly, the employee engagement and job satisfaction reported in surveys are mostly lower, too....

In my thesis, the Continental economies' root problem is a dearth of economic dynamism--loosely, the rate of commercially successful innovation. A country's dynamism, being slow to change, is not measured by the growth rate over any short- or medium-length span. The level of dynamism is a matter of how fertile the country is in coming up with innovative ideas having prospects of profitability, how adept it is at identifying and nourishing the ideas with the best prospects, and how prepared it is in evaluating and trying out the new products and methods that are launched onto the market.....

There are two dimensions to a country's economic model. One part consists of its economic institutions. These institutions on the Continent do not look to be good for dynamism. They typically exhibit a Balkanized/segmented financial sector favoring insiders, myriad impediments and penalties placed before outsider entrepreneurs, a consumer sector not venturesome about new products or short of the needed education, union voting (not just advice) in management decisions, and state interventionism. Some studies of mine on what attributes determine which of the advanced economies are the least vibrant--or the least responsive to the stimulus of a technological revolution--pointed to the strength in the less vibrant economies of inhibiting institutions such as employment protection legislation and red tape, and to the weakness of enabling institutions, such as a well-functioning stock market and ample liberal-arts education.

The other part of the economic model consists of various elements of the country's economic culture. Some cultural attributes in a country may have direct effects on performance--on top of their indirect effects through the institutions they foster. Values and attitudes are analogous to institutions--some impede, others enable. They are as much a part of the "economy," and possibly as important for how well it functions, as the institutions are. Clearly, any study of the sources of poor performance on the Continent that omits that part of the system can yield results only of unknown reliability....

The values that might impact dynamism are of special interest here. Relatively few in the Big Three report that they want jobs offering opportunities for achievement (42% in France and 54% in Italy, versus an average of 73% in Canada and the U.S.); chances for initiative in the job (38% in France and 47% in Italy, as against an average of 53% in Canada and the U.S.), and even interesting work (59% in France and Italy, versus an average of 71.5% in Canada and the U.K). Relatively few are keen on taking responsibility, or freedom (57% in Germany and 58% in France as against 61% in the U.S. and 65% in Canada), and relatively few are happy about taking orders (Italy 1.03, of a possible 3.0, and Germany 1.13, as against 1.34 in Canada and 1.47 in the U.S.)....

The weakness of these values on the Continent is not the only impediment to a revival of dynamism there. There is the solidarist aim of protecting the "social partners"--communities and regions, business owners, organized labor and the professions--from disruptive market forces. There is also the consensualist aim of blocking business initiatives that lack the consent of the "stakeholders"--those, such as employees, customers and rival companies, thought to have a stake besides the owners. There is an intellectual current elevating community and society over individual engagement and personal growth, which springs from antimaterialist and egalitarian strains in Western culture. There is also the "scientism" that holds that state-directed research is the key to higher productivity. Equally, there is the tradition of hierarchical organization in Continental countries. Lastly, there a strain of anti-commercialism. "A German would rather say he had inherited his fortune than say he made it himself," the economist Hans-Werner Sinn once remarked to me....

It may be that the Continentals finding, over the 19th and early 20th century, that there was little opportunity or reward to exercise freedom and responsibility, learned not to care much about those values. Similarly, it may be that Americans, having assimilated large doses of freedom and initiative for generations, take those things for granted. That appears to be what Tocqueville thought: "The greater involvement of Americans in governing themselves, their relatively broad education and their wider equality of opportunity all encourage the emergence of the 'man of action' with the 'skill' to 'grasp the chance of the moment.'"

The most basic point to carry away is that the empirical results related here lend support to the Enlightenment theme that a nation's culture ultimately makes a difference for the nation's economic performance in all its aspects--productivity, prosperity and personal growth.

************************

PRESIDENT PEANUT

A former Carter loyalist finally sees behind the mask. Excerpts:



Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?

And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School -- Rachael Lea Fish -- showed me the facts They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up - a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son - hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.....

In reading Carter's statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the 1930s, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler's government became clear. Harvard of the 1930s was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the 21st century has become complicit in evil....

It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center's activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center's human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center's website

The Carter Center's mission statement claims that "The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities." How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel's far less serious ones? ....

It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine." By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption....

If money determines political and public views-as Carter insists "Jewish money" does-then Carter's views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter's off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy.

More here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



15 February, 2007

THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE

The phrase "The sick man of Europe" was originally applied to 19th century Turkey and later to mid-20th century Britain (Before Mrs Thatcher). Pub Philosopher offers reasons for seeing the term as applicable to Germany today. In response to the attempt by Germany to introduce a Europe-wide ban on the denial of genocide, he writes:

To think of Germany as a patient in therapy is a useful analogy. No other nation in history has had to deal with such a burden of collective guilt. After the war, Germany was cast as a criminal and the post-war generation which is now running the country took the criticism to their hearts. Forced to confront the horror of their country's crimes, they wanted to make sure that Germany would never inflict war and genocide on Europe again. But, to prevent the resurgence of racism and dictatorship, the Germans used some familiar methods.

In their rush to break from their past, Germany's new rulers restricted free speech, banned political parties and imprisoned those who dissented from the government-approved line. In an attempt to atone for the sins of dictatorship, Germany resorted to authoritarian measures.

With its proposal to ban Holocaust denial across Europe, it is taking this authoritarianism a stage further. The irony of Germany trying to make amends for its crimes in the 1940s by attempting to browbeat the rest of Europe into introducing repressive legislation is probably lost on most members of the German government.

At this point, a therapist would politely suggest that the patient might be lapsing into old behaviour patterns and should consider doing something radically different. This would be good advice for Germany. Instead of preventing people from discussing the dark issues in its past it should confront them openly and deal with them. Allowing the Holocaust deniers to speak freely would bring their ideas out into the open where they could be easily debunked by real historians. It would show the world that the Germans are no longer afraid of their Jew-haters and, in all probability, demonstrate that Germany has no more Holocaust deniers than anywhere else in the world.

The time has come for Germany to bring its demons out into the open and to have an honest debate with those who deny the Nazi genocide. This would be a better form of therapy for Germany's psychosis than forcing its neighbours to collude in its suppression of its past.

***********************

ASSOCIATED PRESS - A CASE STUDY IN BIAS

Post lifted from Dan Mandel

The answer to my last blog - Are Palestinians planning violence in Jerusalem? - was not long in coming. The next day, following prayers at Al-Aqsa, Muslims rioted and commenced throwing rocks at Jews praying at the Western Wall.

Associated Press (AP) provides a classic instance of cussedly biased reportage with the classic ingredients of distortion, tendentious expression and obscuration of salient facts. In a report entitled 'Israeli police storm temple', the AP report commences:

Hundreds of Israeli police stormed one of Islam's holiest shrines last night, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse hundreds of Muslim worshipers who threw stones, bottles and refuse in outrage over Israeli renovation work at a disputed Jerusalem temple. The clash came after days of tensions over the work and raised concern that protests at the site could spread to the West Bank and Gaza, as they did at the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000 after a visit from then opposition leader Ariel Sharon. About 200 police stormed the hilltop compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, to try to quell the protests, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The situation grew violent after about 150 protesters barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque at the complex. But police did not enter the mosque, and about 90 minutes after the protesters entered, they began to leave, following negotiations between officers and Muslim representatives. At that point, police pronounced themselves in control of the situation. Israeli authorities promised that the plan to replace a centuries-old bridge leading to the compound, damaged in a 2004 snowstorm, would not harm the holy site, about 60m away. But as work began this week, it drew fierce protests in the Arab world, where many leaders accused Israel of plotting to harm Muslim holy sites.

Four points:

1. Note that the Temple Mount, the name used throughout the English-speaking world for centuries, now appears only second after reference to it by a translation of its Muslim appellation, the Noble Sanctuary, which is then described as Islam's third holiest site; that it is Judaism's holiest site is simply omitted.

2. Israeli police are alleged to have "stormed one of Islam's holiest shrines" which, it emerges later in the report, they did not in fact enter.

3. The report's opening sentence is formulated in such a way as to obscure the fact that the Israeli police intervened to stop the violence of the rioters, thereby creating the impression that the Israelis resorted to the use force against peaceful "worshipers."

4. The report omits to mention that the "stones, bottles and refuse" thrown by the "worshipers" were aimed at Jews praying at the Western Wall. Only later in the report is it mentioned that "Jewish worshipers were evacuated from the Western Wall at the foot of the compound," without explaining that this was necessitated by the violence to which they had been exposed.

*************************

ELSEWHERE

UK: Archbishop battles final Anglican split: "The Archbishop of Canterbury's hopes this week of preventing the 78 million-strong worldwide Anglican communion from finally sliding into schism over the issue of homosexuality appeared slim yesterday as he prepared to fly to Tanzania for a meeting of the church's primates. Conservative archbishops, mainly from the developing world, have gathered in Dar es Salaam for a separate two-day conference in advance of a formal meeting on Wednesday to plot tactics and agree a strategy before Rowan Williams arrives tomorrow. ... Archbishops from the developing world have told Dr Williams privately that they are opposed to his invitation to Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, to attend the meeting because she supported its election of the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, in 2003. Presiding Bishop Schori is the first female primate of a leading Christian denomination in church history and some Africans have threatened that they will not sit down in the same room with her or recognise her authority."

UK: Woman goes to court in historic euthanasia case: "A 30-year-old woman who is terminally ill has launched a campaign to overturn Britain's euthanasia laws by compelling her doctors to increase her dose of morphine and let her die. Kelly Taylor lives in constant pain with a congenital heart defect and a spinal disorder. She says she has struggled with her condition all her life and wants release. She has been told she has a year to live but doctors have been unable to control her pain. 'Enough is enough,' she said yesterday. 'I don't want to suffer any more. I'm not depressed -- I've never been depressed. I am a happy person. But my illness is now at the point where I don't want to deal with it any more.' Her case is believed to be unique in launching a double-pronged challenge to the law that forbids doctors from helping patients to end their lives. She wants the court to rule that doctors may sedate her and then withdraw tube feeding so that she dies."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



14 February, 2007

HAS HOWARD COOKED OBAMA'S GOOSE?

The big publicity Australian P.M. Howard got in the USA for his comments about Obama must, if nothing else, have drawn attention to Obama's "cut and run" ideas about American foreign policy. I think that a "weak on terrorism" reputation will sink Obama and now people know about it. Below is an excerpt about the controversy from an Australian newspaper:

The White House has given muted support to Prime Minister John Howard's claim that al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq would be hoping for US Senator Barack Obama to be elected president.

Mr Howard refused to back down yesterday despite a storm of protest from both sides of the Pacific as his attack on Senator Obama's plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq by March 2008 triggered accusations he had endangered the US alliance.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has said Mr Howard, a staunch ally of President George W. Bush, was merely exercising his right to free speech when he made the comments. Mr Snow said: "The Prime Minister spoke his mind. It is what it is." But at the same time, Mr Snow underscored that US President George W Bush "hasn't talked to Prime Minister Howard since January 9th".

Labor leader Kevin Rudd accused his opponent of "gross insensitivity" after Mr Howard suggested Islamic terrorists would be barracking for a Democratic victory in next year's US presidential campaign. "If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats," Mr Howard said on the Nine Network's Sunday.

Mr Howard won support from George W. Bush's most senior military adviser, General Peter Pace, who warned that a premature withdrawal of US troops would be a "humanitarian disaster" and lead to terrorists "following us home" to Australia and the US. But Senator Obama, who suggested the March timeline for withdrawing US troops as he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination on Saturday, accused Mr Howard of "empty rhetoric". In a pointed reference to Australia's modest contingent of 1400 troops in Iraq and around the Persian Gulf, the Democratic star said: "So, if he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them up to Iraq."

Seeking to clarify his earlier remarks, Mr Howard said he was not speaking "generically" about the Democrats but was focused on Senator Obama, who is seeking his party's presidential nomination. "I don't apologise for criticising Senator Obama's observation because I thought what he said was wrong," he said, accusing the Labor leader of "double standards". "Apparently it is in order for any number of people in the Labor Party to regularly attack George Bush, to regularly attack the American administration," Mr Howard said. "That is OK, but dare anybody criticise somebody who might agree with them on Iraq and then somehow or other I am interfering in the domestic politics of the United States."

More here

************************

ELSEWHERE

Arrogant EU attempts to dictate a secular morality to another country: Representatives from the European Union are increasing pressure on the government of Nicaragua to reverse its recent law which unilaterally forbids abortion under any circumstances. According to a report from the Catholic News Agency, the EU representation has threatened to withdraw economic assistance to the country if the abortion law is not reversed. Nicaragua's new abortion law was unanimously voted in by the Nicaraguan Legislature in October, 2006 and signed into law by then President Enrique Bolanos the following month. Nicaragua's new president, Daniel Ortega voiced his support of the pro-life law in his election campaign. Marc Litvine, the EU representative to Nicaragua, said that the EU regards legalized abortion as "linked to aid programs against poverty and to the rights of women". He expressed hope that "the new government will be capable of opening the debate and discussing it outside the passion of the electoral season."

Well w.t.f. IS Islam associated with? Helping little old ladies across the road, maybe? "The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has called on the international community to open a global dialogue to combat the defamation of religions, citing specifically the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities after the terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001. In a resolution adopted yesterday by 31 votes in favour, 16 against and five abstentions, the Commission expressed deep concern at negative stereotyping of religions and manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in matters of religion or belief still in evidence parts of the world. Specifically, it voiced deep concern that Islam was frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

British housing wisdom goes full-circle: "Britain's cul-de-sacs, long the butt of metropolitan snobbery, are now being targeted by the Prince of Wales as an environmental menace that foster crime, car dependence and obesity. Prince Charles has persuaded Britain's biggest housebuilders, including Barratt, George Wimpey and Bovis Homes, to halt the postwar spread of suburban closes, a boom reflected by the Channel 4 soap Brookside. Under new guidelines, they will bring back higher density housing in Victorian-style grids, to encourage people to exercise by placing shops and amenities within walking distance. Charles's adviser, Hank Dittmar, director of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, which is drawing up the code, said the sprawling and looping design of cul-de-sacs forces people into their cars. Dittmar claimed that many people routinely burn a litre of petrol on a shopping trip for a pint of milk. The new code states that every home should be within a five-minute walk of a shop selling basic foodstuffs."

Weak German court: "A terrorist once regarded as the most evil and dangerous woman in Germany will be released from prison after 24 years behind bars, a court ruled yesterday. The decision to free Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, a leading figure in the Baader-Mein-hof Group - later known as the Red Army Faction - provoked outrage from the families of her victims and fierce hostility from conservative politicians. Mohnhaupt became a cult figure in the student protest generation in the 1970s when her group carried out a series of assassinations of the political and business elite. She was jailed for her involvement in the killing of a top banker, a state prosecutor and Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the head of the West German Employers' Federation. Families of the victims are angry that Mohnhaupt is to be released early even though she has shown no remorse for the killings"

Weak Spanish court: "The Spanish Supreme Court sparked uproar yesterday after it slashed a sentence against a Basque separatist killer on hunger strike from 12 years to three. Inaki de Juana Chaos, who was sentenced to 3,000 years in jail in 1987 for 25 murders, could now go free in less than a year because of the time he has served on remand. Groups representing Eta's 800 victims were outraged by the decision and were planning to mount large street protests. The powerful Association of Victims of Terrorism, which had wanted the Supreme Court to raise de Juana's sentence to 96 years, blamed the Government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for its decision."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



13 February, 2007

Investigating Links Between Personality and Politics

The NYT has just put out an article on the above topic that is surprisingly balanced. All the ridicule heaped on the usual Leftist nonsense by conservative bloggers and columnists must finally have hit home. Indeed the article admits that previous views on the subject have been subjected to a lot of criticism for Leftist bias. I thought, however, that I might do a quick fisking of the article:

For a start: The idea that psychology underlies political orientation is not only strongly supported by genetics research but it is also a traditional conservative claim. Conservative thinkers (such as Burke (1790), Hayek (1944) and Oakeshott (1975)) have been claiming for centuries that conservatives have a cautious disposition rather than an ideology. The amusing thing is that Left-leaning psychologists in their writings seem to be totally oblivious of the fact that conservative thinkers were talking about the psychology of politics long before psychologists were.

John Jost, George Lakoff and Arie Kruglanski get an honourable mention in the NYT article. All three are essentially charlatans. See here and here and here. And any new comment on the egregious Frank Sulloway would be superfluous. Sulloway is a proven ENEMY of science. And the finding by Dana R. Carney, to the effect that Leftists live in untidier rooms, I have not even dared to look at in case I find something wrong with it. How can I object to a finding that shows Leftists to be more juvenile?

A generally rather sensible psychologist quoted was Jonathan Haidt. He does however gild the lily enormously when he says that most liberals think about morality in terms of two categories: how someone's welfare is affected, and whether it is fair. What utter rubbish! Leftist/"liberal" thinkers habitually reject ALL morality (except when it suits them). Who has not heard the great Leftist mantra: "There is no such thing as Right and Wrong"? It's part of their beloved "postmodernism".

Another claim that the NYT makes much of is that Leftists are more "open". Putting aside for the moment the thought that "vacant" is a near synonym for "open", this is a very strained interpretation of the data -- as my critiques of the research by Kruglanski and Van Hiel show in some detail. I note with some amusement, however, that, in the unusually careful research of Van Hiel, Kossowska & Mervielde (2000), people with a definite conservative orientation were shown to be just as likely as Leftists to be open to experience. Even more awkwardly, however, the subscale measuring openness to ideas in particular showed a positive correlation with conservatism among the politically aware respondents. Among politically-aware people it was LEFTISTS who were closed-minded!

I did however rather like the closing comment in the NYT article:

What is important, said Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Princeton University, is how psychological tendencies are translated into views about specific political issues: "In 2000, George W. Bush ridiculed nation-building; now he seems pretty committed," he wrote in an e-mail message. "Which of those positions (if either) represents rigidity, resistance to change, or discipline? On the other hand, how many flexible, curious, open-to-experience liberals do you know who want to experiment with restructuring the Social Security system?"

***********************

MUSLIM REALITY IN BRITAIN

The dragon that has scared everybody else into terrified passivity is Muslim extremism. But Ms Khan, an ordinary Birmingham-born mother of two, has dared to speak out about the radicalism that has permeated her community. She refuses to be passive; she has summoned up the moral courage, at great risk to herself, to face down the jihadists who are giving Muslims a bad name.

With great frankness and fearlessness, she laments the capture of her area of Birmingham by jihadist radicals. She describes how mosques and madrassas have sprung up like mushrooms on almost every street corner, dedicated not to helping the community but to spreading the message of jihad; how preachers are indoctrinating the young to hate Christians and Jews; how her community is in denial about the radicals in its ranks; and how the mullahs collude in sanctioning forced marriages and polygamy. "Open your eyes" is her message to non-Muslim Britain. "It's all happening on your doorstep and Britain is still blind to the real threat that is embedded here now."

The Government, she complains, has listened too much to the Muslim Council of Britain, which does not represent ordinary Muslims' views, let alone the views of Muslim women. And even David Cameron, who came up to Birmingham this week to talk about empowering Muslim women, focuses too much on their education, when he should instead - she thinks - be promising to ban the arranged/forced marriages of teenage girls that take them away from school and often condemn them to a life of misery and submission.

Ms Khan's views are so refreshing. She was born here, of Pakistani parents, and says that she loves this country and is proud to be British. She has embraced this nation's values, is grateful for the protection and opportunities it has offered her and has no problem reconciling her race or religion with her nationality. She would be happy if her son joined the police or the British Army.

It seems odd that such views should even be contentious. Generations of immigrants before her have felt the same, and have often been more patriotic and appreciative of British values than native-born citizens who take their country for granted. Yet what the radicals teach - and what many Muslim youths now believe - is that their host country is to be distrusted and that religion must come before, or even instead of, their national allegiance. So Ms Khan is right to argue that more should be done to teach Britishness in schools, in order to combat the messages that young Muslims are often imbued with in their mosques.

But the most striking point she makes is that Britain is a particularly good place for Muslim women to live in, offering far more equality and opportunity than any Muslim country. Not only are girls encouraged to stay on at school, go to university and have careers. They are treated equally under the law and are not blamed for or expected to put up with domestic violence or rape.

More here

***********************

ELSEWHERE



Sego lurches back to the Left: "[French] Socialist candidate Segolene Royal will try to reverse her dramatic slide in the polls by presenting herself as the natural heir to Francois Mitterrand at a much-hyped presidential policy launch today. After a series of foreign and domestic policy gaffes by Ms Royal, 8000 party faithful and celebrity supporters, including veteran French actor Jeanne Moreau, are expected to fill a convention centre outside Paris to hear Ms Royal answer critics who say she is all style and little substance. Under pressure to counter her more experienced centre-right rival, frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy, France's first mainstream female presidential candidate will finally unveil a traditional leftist platform for this year's elections.... Le Monde said the policies would include a 5 per cent increase in pensions - despite France's spiralling public debt due largely to generous retirement entitlements - the creation of neighbourhood police and a promise for selective regularisation of illegal immigrants".

Australian Prime Minister attacks Obama: "John Howard has risked a rift with a future US government after attacking frontrunning presidential candidate Barack Obama's policy to pull US troops out of Iraq by March next year. Labelling a victory for the high-profile Democratic Party senator in next year's US presidential election a triumph for terrorists, the Prime Minister said the strategy to pull troops from Iraq would embolden Southeast Asian terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiah. "If I were running al-Qa'ida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats," Mr Howard said."

British Labour government defies the people over road tax: "The Government is to press ahead with preparations for nationwide congestion charging despite the millionth signature on a petition opposing the idea. An experiment in internet democracy, in which people were invited to place petitions on the No 10 website and vote for them by e-mail, has embarrassed ministers. The petition calling on the Government "to scrap the vehicle tracking and road-pricing policy" was due to gain its millionth signature last night, less than three months after it was posted on the website. It received 92,000 signatures on Wednesday alone, thought to be a record for a single day. Douglas Alexander, the Transport Secretary, said last night that the signatures showed the strength of feeling among motorists but would not deter him from commissioning large-scale road-pricing trials. In an interview with The Times, he said that many of the claims made by those promoting the petition were "falsehoods"."

The gold of the Americas: "Mexicans living abroad sent home a record $23 billion last year, raising new questions about whether the government of President Felipe Calderon can afford to slow migration. In just one year, the amount of money migrants wired their families jumped 15 percent, according to Mexico's central bank, overtaking tourism to become the nation's second-biggest source of foreign income after oil. "This is a river of gold that flows into Latin America and Mexico. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. It never stops," said Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen & Associates, a public opinion research firm in Coral Gables, Fla., that surveyed Mexicans on both sides of the border for the Inter-American Development Bank."

Putting security back on track: A lesson from history: "The railroads, like the airlines [of today], might have turned to government for protection. Instead, they assumed the responsibility for safety themselves. That left them free to protect their passengers and their equipment in ways prohibited to the airlines. First, rather than relying on bureaucrats and hacks for security, the railroads hired the best companies available."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



12 February, 2007

SOME CLOSE-UP OBSERVATIONS OF THE MILITARY AS IT REALLY IS

I am a former Australian Army Sergeant and the excerpt below from Michael Ledeen about the current American military coincides with my observations of military men

I think the most impressive thing about this generation of fighters is their humanity, a point made to me by a senior official who has fought in many wars, and will soon retire. He points to the nature of the military community, which in many ways is the closest thing we've got to a classless society. If there is any group of Americans who truly believe in "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," it's our soldiers. The officer corps brings some of our most talented and most fortunate sons and daughters into intimate contact with their less fortunate cohorts. Officers from wealthy families and elite universities live alongside kids from farms, bayous, and backwoods, and the sons and daughters of the rich and famous sleep, work, fight, and die with the children of the ghettos, slums and unemployed. It isn't always that way, to be sure; the underclass kids fight their way to high rank, and some of the rich and famous leave the Ivy League and enlist, but the basic point remains: There's little room for snobbery based on who's your daddy, or where'd you go to school.

It works quite well, from all accounts. Our officers - this is holy writ for the Marines, but it is pretty much canonical in the other services as well - lead from the front. And the basic rule of the community of warriors is that you don't want to let down the guy next to you. Everyone knows that, and so everyone works as hard as he can, not only to make himself worthy, but to be damn sure the guy next to him is up to the challenge. You don't want the guy next to you to come back to base and expose your failures, and you sure as hell don't want him to fail when you need him to save you.

So a community is created, and it's a caring meritocracy far more than you'd imagine, certainly far more than I'd imagined before our kids headed off for Afghanistan and Iraq and we started to spend time with people in uniform, or with the parents of people in uniform. It's totally counterintuitive, but I think it's largely true. And it turns my stomach when the no-nothings start calling them "mercenaries," as if they were in it for the money, and as if they were dehumanized killing machines.

Somewhere on the net I read an exchange between Milton Friedman and some general. They were arguing about the value of a volunteer Army, rather than the draft, which existed at the time. The general said he didn't want an army of mercenaries, and Friedman hit the roof. He pointed out that, on that line of reasoning, we bought our meat from mercenary butchers, went for treatment to mercenary doctors, and so forth. There's a big difference between volunteers and mercenaries. Our fighters are where they are because, by and large, they believe in something bigger than themselves, they have learned that you can live in a community where virtue does not equal narcissism, and they know that they are far more than a nuisance. They're in it for all of us, and if they lose it's going to be bad for all of us.

Machiavelli, the smartest of all of us, knew that true virtue is military virtue, because it enables virtuous people to work for the common good instead of self-indulgence.

****************************

ELSEWHERE

GA: Atlanta drops land theft battle: "It didn't take long for outrage over Mark and Regina Meeks' story to take root all across Georgia. After officials in the suburban Atlanta city of Stockbridge tried to condemn the Meeks' tiny flower shop and supplant it with a town center, the couple spent two years and more than $200,000 fighting the move in court. Their battle became a symbol of Georgia's budding movement to rein in the government's power to seize property. And this week, the owners could finally claim victory: The city said it is dropping its battle to condemn Stockbridge Florist and Gifts."

MD: Court nixes expedited land theft: "In a decision likely to force Baltimore to rethink its economic development strategy, Maryland's highest court ruled Thursday that the city cannot continue using eminent domain to 'run roughshod over the owners of private property.' The state Court of Appeals, in a blunt opinion that harshly criticized the city's favored property seizure technique, found Baltimore had no good reason to take a Charles North bar called The Magnet last year with a sped-up version of eminent domain called 'quick take.' ... Quick take, the state court pointed out, requires an agency to prove that it needs property urgently and for the public good. In this case, wrote Judge Dale R. Cathell, the BDC demonstrated neither."

UK: MPs seek special exemption from freedom of information laws: "MPs are pressing for a special exemption from new powers that they brought in seven years ago in a popular attempt to open up government to public scrutiny. A private members' Bill introduced by a former Tory whip and considered by a Commons committee today will stop the public from using the Freedom of Information Act to find out how their MPs run their private offices. David Maclean's Bill, believed to have the support of prominent Labour ministers as well as the Leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, is the latest attempt to neuter Labour's much-trumpeted right-to-know legislation. It is the second attack on the new powers in four months. In October, ministers proposed new measures that would dramatically curb the access-to-information powers. They include proposals to restrict the number of requests made by the media and make it easier to refuse requests on grounds of cost."

How embarrassing for the Europeans (1): "The United States has extended its lead as the most attractive location in which to invest in renewable energy projects. The country's increasing desirability is directly linked to a conviction among investors that politicians are now firmly in support of renewable energy. The findings by Ernst & Young come just two weeks after President Bush used his annual State of the Union address to call on Americans to cut fuel consumption by 20 per cent over the next decade, giving warning that the country had been dependent on foreign oil for too long. Jonathan Johns, author of the E&Y report, said that the country's commitment to renewable energy was reinforced by the recent renewal of tax credits for large-scale projects until at least next year. "

How embarrassing for the Europeans (2): "The White House said on Wednesday the United States had done better at reducing carbon emissions than Europe, where U.S. President George W. Bush's stance on global warming has been sharply criticized. The Bush administration has taken steps that "demonstrate real seriousness, not simply giving the speeches, but walking the walk," White House spokesman Tony Snow said, adding that "We are doing a better job of reducing emissions" than Europe. "So the idea that ... we don't understand the arguments, or we're not contemplating or taking seriously the arguments about carbon caps, of course we are," he said. While many environmentalists have urged mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions, as imposed in Europe, Bush opposes the idea and advocates the development of new technologies to reduce dependence on oil. "I would point out that ... there is a carbon cap system in place in Europe, we are doing a better job of reducing emissions here," Snow said. The White House said Snow was referring to figures from the International Energy Agency that from 2000 to 2004, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion grew by 1.7 percent, while in the European Union such emissions grew by 5 percent."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



11 February, 2007

America's Pravda: The New York Times Smears Hannity

The New York Times is trying to destroy the reputation of Sean Hannity. Last week, the country's leading liberal newspaper attacked the popular conservative radio and TV host. A Times reporter, Alessandra Stanley, criticized Mr. Hannity's new Sunday program on FOX News, "Hannity's America." According to The Times, Mr. Hannity erred while he exposed the dangerous and degrading nature of the world's oldest profession. In a recent show, he visited the Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada, in which he interviewed several prostitutes. He even had the temerity to suggest that they find a safer and more respectable line of work. For feminist libertines like Ms. Stanley, this is heretical.

"While Mr. Hannity, who attended Roman Catholic parochial school, interviews scantily clad prostitutes, ostensibly urging them to quit and go to law school, the camera slowly moves from prostitute to prostitute, lasciviously lingering over the one with the largest, most exposed breasts," Ms. Stanley writes. Mr. Hannity is therefore being faulted for showing semi-nude women during his investigation of a Nevada brothel. What was his crew supposed to film--nuns praying the rosary? The story was about the sex trade in America, which means it must inevitably contain sexually explicit images. Ms. Stanley's criticism was puerile, baseless and detached from reality.

Ms. Stanley's article is a perfect example of the seminal problem plaguing The New York Times. The Times has long ceased to be a credible, objective news organization; rather, it is the ideological print vehicle for America's transnational liberal elites. For decades, The Times has not engaged in serious investigative reporting but in political propaganda.

In the 1960's, The Times led the charge for U.S. troops to withdraw from Vietnam; its writers promised there would be no real strategic and moral consequences. Instead, the declension of American power from Southeast Asia led to a regional holocaust. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese and Hmong tribal people were murdered and ethnically cleansed by Vietnam's victorious communists; over one million boat people fled Vietnam in make-shift rafts, risking their lives to escape the new totalitarian regime. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge exterminated over 2 million people. As this was happening, The New York Times' columnist, Anthony Lewis, for example, denied that atrocities were even taking place in Vietnam or Cambodia. He couldn't admit it, for to do so would eviscerate the liberal myth constructed by The Times' editors....

Since the fall of communism, The Times has consistently done the bidding of the New York liberal intelligentsia--it propped up Bill and Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that they presided over the most corrupt and scandal-ridden administration in U.S. history; it has turned a blind eye to the growing threat of Islamic fascism; it has sought to undermine the Bush administration's war on terrorism; it has led the chorus demanding the U.S. withdraw from Iraq (again promising that there will be no long-term strategic and moral consequences); it has promoted the radical social agenda of gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion on demand; and it has served as the mouthpiece for environmental extremists who decry the evils of man-made "global warming."

The Times likes to present itself as America's "paper of record." Sadly, it is only the "paper of record" for our liberal elite. Just as Pravda was the official organ for Russia's communist elite, The New York Times is now America's Pravda--full of lies, inaccuracies and ideologically driven news coverage, but essential reading to find out what the next marching orders are for leftist internationalists. Pravda, however, was never considered to be a serious, honest newspaper; and neither should The Times be viewed as credible.....

More here

****************************

ELSEWHERE

Iranian bomb must be stopped: "Israeli leaders rarely invoke the Holocaust in the face of enemies. The Jewish homeland founded after Adolf Hitler's genocide has, for the last generation, felt secure enough to fight its many battles with little or no help. But the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran has rattled Israel's self-confidence. Its politicians and generals warn of a "second Holocaust" if, as in the 1930s, the world stands by while a heavily armed nation declares war against the Jews. Spelling out that scenario, Israeli officials have begun an unusually open campaign to muster international political and economic pressures against Iran. They warn that time is growing short and hint that they will resort to force if those pressures fail to prevent Iran's development of an atomic weapon. Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe. Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years."

Insulated By Criticism, Iran Is Killing Americans ...And Everybody Knows It: "Some in the US Intelligence Community seem to operate in another realm and in a world with significantly different realities, dangers and potential outcomes. How else can it be explained that United States political leadership has been persuaded to withhold releasing intelligence regarding Iranian actions in Iraq, including arming, funding and training both Sunni and Shi'a groups killing US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, let alone the mind-boggling toll upon Iraq's civilian population? In question is the same Iran that even Hassan Nasrallah openly ceded feeds the Hizballah terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese through its terrorist attacks, "And the help is funneled through Syria, and everybody knows it." "Everybody knows" a lot of things. One of them is an American fear of international and internal criticism that prevents her from doing what is necessary - or anything much beyond rhetoric, for that matter - to openly confront the Iranian regime that has been at war with the United States since its 1979 Islamic revolution."

Muslims converting to Christianity by the thousands in France: "Muslims are converting to Christianity in their thousands in France but face exclusion from their families and even death threats. Most Muslims hide their conversion and Protestant ministers do their utmost to protect new converts. It is estimated that every year in the world some six million Muslims convert to Christianity. The Muezzin call to prayer. But here in France it is no longer reaching all Muslim ears. Around 15,000 Muslims each year are converting to Christianity - around 10,000 to Catholicism and 5,000 to Protestantism....

BNP becoming the conservative alternative in Britain? "In a council by-election in Nuneaton & Bedworth yesterday, the "extreme right wing" BNP came in second with 31.15 percent of the vote, only narrowly beaten by the incumbent Labour, which took the seat with 37.54 percent. One should never draw conclusions from one set of results - especially from local by-elections. But this was a hard-fought contest, where the turnout was 36.08 percent despite the heavy snow, compared with the 20 percent that might have been expected. The Conservatives managed a mere 17.17 percent, the Lib-Dems 6.79 percent and UKIP a pathetic 0.45 percent, accounting for exactly eight votes. They were even beaten by the English Democrats, who pulled 75 votes. BNP's vote compares favourably with its share of the vote in Bradford during last May's local authority elections, when it achieved 27.5 percent of the vote in the wards which they contested." More here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



10 February, 2007

Leftist Group tries to use ‘God Talk’ To Lure Christians To Democrat Party

Don't touch even a slice of Vanderslice

A two-year-old public relations firm called “Common Good Strategies” is working behind the scenes to help Democrats convince Christians that they should vote for Democrats of “faith.” The PR firm is headed by Mara Vanderslice, a 1997 graduate of Earlham College. Vanderslice formerly worked as an intern for Jim Wallis’ Sojourners organization, a far-leftist "Christian" group that is attempting to convince moderate or conservative Christians that Democrat policies are best for achieving “social justice.”

Jim Wallis has been consulting with Democrat strategists for years to lure Christians away from the Republican Party. TVC’s special report on Wallis reveals the consistent far left policies of the group – which have been more in line with the old Soviet Union than with America.

While at Earlham, Vanderslice was a member of the Earlham Socialist Alliance, a group that supports the release of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and embraces Marxist-Leninist political views.

In a feature on Vanderslice in the Earlham College Alumni Bulletin, Vanderslice notes she grew up in a spiritual but not religious and politically progressive home in Boulder, Colorado. She arrived at Earlham distrustful of Christianity but after taking Peace and Global Studies class and spending time in Bogota, Columbia, she became more committed to “strands” of Christianity that she found appealing....

“Mara Vanderslice’s attempt to convince Christians to vote for pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Democrats (who hide their real goals behind claims of ‘faith’) is working – and the Republican Party should take note,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “Tragically, Vanderslice’s brand of ‘progressive’ Christianity has more in common with Marxist-Leninist ideals than with orthodox Christianity.

More here

*************************

THE DANGERS OF THE LEFTIST U.S. BUREAUCRACY

An excerpt from Powerline below

During the halcyon early years of the Bush administration, it still seemed possible that the President and his appointees could prevail over the inertia and, often, outright hostility of the almost-entirely-Democratic federal bureaucracy. One instance of the administration's effort to get beyond the bureaucracy's stale thinking was the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans, which was overseen by Douglas Feith, who was then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

Feith's group became known for challenging the CIA's dogmatic belief that Iraq's "secular" dictatorship couldn't possibly collaborate with radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda. The Office of Special Plans argued that the CIA consistently played down its own raw evidence of relationships between Iraq and al Qaeda because such evidence didn't fit the agency's theoretical framework. That act of lese majesty must naturally be punished.

So tomorrow, the Pentagon's own Inspector General will present a report to the Senate Armed Services Committee on whether--I'm not kidding--it was illegal for the Defense Department to independently analyze the data gathered by the intelligence agencies. You can breathe a sigh of relief, though; the Inspector General concluded that disagreeing with the CIA is not a crime:

What will be lost in news accounts of the IG report and Levin's fulminations is that Feith's group was right. We know now that there were many connections between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda, and that Islamic groups of various stripes, including those labeled "secular" by the CIA, are entirely capable of collaborating against their common enemies.

******************

ELSEWHERE



Material goods and "The Pursuit of Happyness": "Will Smith's latest movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, stands as an extended argument underscoring the truth of conservative values. This may sound like an improbable anomaly given the traditional political, ethical, and social allegiances of Hollywood, but the power of the story lies in its basis in fact, and this in turn prevents it from being appropriated as a tool for liberal political ideology. The narrative is inspired by the true life experiences of Christopher Gardner, a struggling and homeless single father turned successful stockbroker and CEO.... Absent from the movie are traditional hallmarks of liberal criticism of the market economy: Gardner's story is one that occurs within an America conceived as a meritocracy rather than one defined by racism or class struggle. All of the rich white characters in the film, with one possible exception, treat Gardner with respect, fairness, and dignity, even compassion. And Gardner does in fact fight against poverty, but he does so within a context that ultimately rewards his hard work and intelligence. While there are striking images that display the contrast between rich and poor, Gardner's financial success as a stockbroker is actually dependent upon the creation of wealth through entrepreneurship and enterprise in the stock market...."

Speaker Of The House Pelosi Has Expensive Traveling Tastes: "Nancy Pelosi has requested that the Defense Department supply her with an Air Force C-32 for traveling back and forth from San Francisco. The C-32 costs approximately $15,000 an hour to operate. Funds to pay for this travel will be from the Defense Department, which means the American taxpayer. The DC Examiner has reported that the C-32 would cost American taxpayers approximately $300,000 for her round trip to San Francisco. Commercial fares start at $233. The C-32 has 42 business class seats, a fully-enclosed state room, private bed room and a crew of 16. Stewards serve meals and tend an open bar, according to the Washington Times. A Defense Department source who wished to remain anonymous, said of Pelosi's request, "she wanted a plane that could carry an entourage just like President Bush, who flies on Air Force One, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who also always flies on military planes." Another source said the Defense Department will likely cave into Pelosi's request because of her and John Murtha's control over defense spending."

NYT protects Leftist mythology: "Abu Omar al-Baghdadi made his grand entrance onto the jihadist stage on October 12, 2006, and since then he's delivered two very important speeches - the more recent one came out last week - and has taken credit for much of the spectacular outbreaks of violence in Iraq of late, yet he still can't get his name in print on the pages of the New York Times. Why are the editors and reporters of that paper not telling their readers anything about Iraq's top terrorist? Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is Al Qaeda's guy in Iraq, and nowadays, the Sunni insurgency is being whittled down to Al Qaeda's activity in Iraq. It's that simple, and he's that important. So why isn't the Times writing that? I think the answer has something to do with what seems, to my eyes, to be a determined campaign to keep the American people from knowing the nature of the enemy in Iraq because identifying this enemy as Al Qaeda casts the debate about the war in a whole different light."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



9 February, 2007

Ten Myths About the Bush Tax Cuts

The Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives must decide whether to write a budget extending, expiring, or repealing the Bush tax cuts. These tax cuts have provided a convenient scapegoat for the nation's budget and economic challenges. Despite a 42 percent spending increase in 2001, critics charge that the tax cuts have starved popular pro-grams. Despite surging economic growth and 5 million new jobs since 2003, critics also charge that the tax cuts have not helped the economy. Finally, despite making the income tax code more progressive, critics charge that the tax cuts have widened inequality.

Nearly all of the conventional wisdom about the Bush tax cuts is wrong. In reality:

* The tax cuts have not substantially reduced cur-rent tax revenues, which were in fact not far from the 2000 pre-tax cut baseline and over the 2003 pre-tax cut baseline in 2006;
* The increased child tax credit, 10 percent tax bracket, and fix of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) reduced tax revenues much more than most of the "tax cuts for the rich";
* Economic growth rates have more than doubled since the 2003 tax cuts; and
* The tax cuts shifted even more of the income tax burden toward the rich.

Setting optimal tax policy requires governing with facts rather than popular mythology, which is why it is important to set the record straight by debunking 10 myths about the Bush tax cuts.

Much more here

**************************

ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS

The Left is onside with hate
Different sheiks shake the culture
ABC must put national values first
Fight for global Islamic state, conference told
Statement by Dr Salam Fayad
Islam and Western liberal democracy are incompatible
Combating Islamic Extremism
Nuclear program legitimises Iran's threat
Fairfax boss was troubled by left-leaning editorial culture
Islamic Prejudice, Islamic Denial
Islamic ticket sends all the wrong messages
Instinctive bias not among ABC's virtues
Concern about growing Muslim antisemitism
Muslim Womens rights
Ideology must not be allowed to trump reality in Iraq
Expert Search to combat antisemitism and racism
Hilali ridicules nation of convicts
Local push for Islamic state
Radical Islam & British universities
A sovereign Palestine? No chance
Free rein for media monitor

*********************

ELSEWHERE

Interesting article by the British National Party here. The so-called "Fascists" have embraced libertarianism -- the diametric opposite of Fascism! Liberty is a great British tradition so there is no contradiction in them doing so.

So whom was this harming? "Inspectors will begin annual checks of anatomy laboratories after health authorities were forced to act over a body parts scandal involving claims that dead women were sexually fondled by a staff member. The University of NSW has apologised to the families of people who donated their bodies to its medical faculty, as it came under fire for claiming three months ago that the concerns were related only to body parts being mislabelled. In fact the university had by then already passed on to police details of "salacious" allegations by two staff members that a colleague, who has since left, had fondled breasts and vaginas."

U.S. economy booming under Bush: "Know what's really impressive about today's boffo 3.5 percent GDP growth number for the fourth quarter? It wasn't so long ago that Wall Street economists were wondering if the number would be a "one-handle"-meaning growth between 1.0 and 1.9 percent. And instead of a "hard or "soft" landing, investment pros are now talking about a "growth scare" where a surprisingly robust economy would push the Federal Reserve into raising interest rates. In any event, I am starting to lend more personal credence to the theory that a combination of strong growth, fat corporate profits, and already tight labor market might push the unemployment rate to lows we have not seen since the 1960s."

Australia doing well too: "The unemployment rate has fallen to a fresh thirty-year low as the resources booms and a strong services sector drive economic growth. The unemployment rate in January fell to a seasonally adjusted 4.5 per cent, the lowest since May 1976, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said today. January employment fell by overall a seasonally adjusted 3600, but full-time employment rose by a 3200, helping to push the unemployment rate down to a fresh low. The data reflects strong economic growth through 2006 and anaysts expect jobs growth will acelerate in 2007, which is likely to push the jobless rate down even further."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



8 February, 2007

LEFTISM AS ROMANTICISM

Romanticism has found a cozy home on the Left. Toss in a soupcon of “sympathetic vibration with the anger of the suicide/homicide bomber,” and disaster follows. It’s all part of a long tradition whose end is in sight.

[Romantics] believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body .they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for.. — Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism

When we think of Romanticism, we rarely think of rage and nihilism. Perhaps that's because, for most people, the word "romantic" has come to stand for a particular subset of the genre known as "romantic love."

But that's not what the word "Romantic" indicates in the philosophical and/or historical sense—a movement we may have learned about long ago in the classroom, when the concept didn't mean much to us except as something to memorize, be tested on, and then promptly forgotten.

But Romanticism (here's a good summary of the concept) is far more significant than that. It informs our lives in many ways, including-surprisingly enough—our political lives: [The Romantics] sought regeneration — a regeneration we can liken to that of the medieval heretic or saint. They favored selfless enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which was an expression of faith and not as the product of utilitarian calculation. Emotion — unbridled emotion — was celebrated irrespective of its consequences.

If Romanticism glories powerful emotion "irrespective of its consequences," it becomes easy to see why rage and nihilism are no strangers to the movement. And Jean Jacques Rousseau, sometimes thought of as the father of political Romanticism, was no slouch himself in the department of anger and paranoia.

In the realm of human emotions, there are few that are more powerful-and more commonplace-than anger. I'm no Freudian, but the much-maligned Freud introduced many useful concepts, and his term "Id" is one if them. The word "Id" covers forces that include the impulse behind anger, and is defined as the "part of the psyche associated with instinctual, repressed, or antisocial desires, usually sexual or aggressive." Its counterpoint, Freud's "Ego," refers to "a set of psychic functions such as reality-testing, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory." .......

A longer version of the Isaiah Berlin quote that began this article can be found in Armed Liberal Marc Danziger's discussion of some of these issues. The lengthier excerpt includes Berlin's assertion that the Romantics glorified those perceived as downtrodden: the failures and the minorities. Romantics didn't just express empathy or sympathy for them, but actually elevated them to a place more worthy and more noble than the successes and the majorities.

So, who are the Romantics of today? From the foregoing discussion, it should be clear: Romanticism has found a cozy home on the Left. Romanticism (and Leftism) dictates not just sympathy for the Third World, but near-veneration of those there who combine a sense of victimhood (real or imagined) with what the poet Yeats called passionate intensity, which is the essence of Romanticism.

Anger is part of that passionate intensity, and it's often a dominant part. Anger is not only a strong emotion, it's a protean one, a shape-shifter. It can originate for one reason and towards one object and then its energy can be displaced and/or projected towards something or someone else. In its most intense form, it can result in suicide when it's directed at the self, and homicide when directed at another.

These two-suicide and homicide-are not at all mutually exclusive, of course. Although most suicides do not murder and most murderers do not commit suicide, there's a subset that does exactly both. The murder-suicide, traditionally occurring in Western culture mostly in the romantic (and Romantic) form of the spurned lover, finds its political expression in certain Arab countries in the form of the suicide/homicide bomber, who acquires extra motivation for his/her acts through the glorification of such deeds by that culture.

Political anger is not often severe enough to lead to suicide or homicide, at least not in this country. But the lesser and the greater forms of political anger have a similar etiology: in many cases, an individual who has a pre-existing higher-than-average level of anger (overt or repressed) for personal reasons—whether because of life experiences, or because of a somatic tendency towards anger—latches onto a political philosophy that further justifies that anger, fans it, and channels it in a particular direction......

There's an interesting socioeconomic trend to Romanticism: it's a philosophy that seems to attract a surprising number of the more well-to-do and well-educated. In Arab countries terrorists are at least as likely to come from the ranks of the relatively affluent as they are to be poverty-stricken. And in the West it seems to be the relatively well-to-do these days who are influenced most strongly by Romanticism.

Perhaps `twas ever thus. Romanticism-here and elsewhere—is not only fueled by the guilt sometimes felt by people who have relative plenty when others are suffering, but it's also fostered by an educational system that teaches and glorifies Romanticism in ways both subtle and overt.

So guilt and education are part of it. But there are other ways in which affluence-at least, relative affluence-feeds into Romanticism, especially in this country. Romanticism is idealistic (I would say, naively so). Belief in Romanticism in its purest and most philosophical form requires a certain remove from the struggles of day-to-day existence only available to those not on a subsistence level (see here for a more in-depth discussion of how this might work).

The affluent may also be attracted to the intensity of feeling and experience of the terrorist and the suicide bomber for another reason. Many human beings are probably hard-wired to seek excitement. Those who are no longer engaged in an obvious struggle for existence-no lion hunts, for example—can sometimes feel a sense of ennui and a lack of thrills. Filling this need can take the form of seeking out extreme sports such as skydiving or auto racing, or by high-risk behavior such as gambling or taking drugs. But for some people the quest takes the form of an urge towards nihilism.

More here

************************

ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a review of a Greenie book that aims to put use of the Great Lakes under Greenie control.

Another "Thank you" to the UAW: "DaimlerChrysler is planning to make as many as 10,000 workers redundant and close up to three North American factories in a round of job cuts dubbed the "Valentine's Day Massacre" by union bosses. The carmaker's latest round of cuts, part of a wider strategic review called Project X by management, is to be announced on February 14, when workers might expect a more loving gesture than a redundancy notice. Investors are unlikely to be sending DaimlerChrsyler any love letters, either, as the plans will accompany the company's fourth-quarter and full-year financial results for 2006, which are likely to disappoint. The German-American carmaker surprised Wall Street in the third quarter with a $1.5 billion loss at its Chrysler division. Analysts expect the arm to show a loss of about $1 billion for the full year, with DaimlerChrysler as a whole remaining profitable."

'Heroism' of marriage praised: "The Archbishop of Canterbury has attacked the "commentating classes" for damaging marriage and destroying the "moral geography" of society. Dr Rowan Williams, speaking at the House of Commons at the start of National Marriage Week, criticised opponents of marriage for failing to recognise the "prosaic heroism" of people in long, successful unions and said that they were blinkered by their own familiarity with fluid, transient relationships. He said: "What we're up against at the moment is a society that has painfully and disastrously low expectations of relationships." The latest statistics show that the message of the churches on the importance of marriage might be getting through. The number of marriages in England and Wales that ended in divorce fell by eight per cent in 2005 to 141,750, the lowest annual total for five years."

Maoism? Church of England to have its own disruptive "cultural revolution": "A century or more ago, the Church of England sent missionaries to Africa with instructions to convert the heathen. Now, with attendance figures in sharp decline and the Anglican Church in turmoil over homosexuality, bishops are to be told that they must start converting the heathen closer to home. New mission orders are being drawn up to rebuild British faith, and in an ironic reversal of history, some of the missionaries could be from Africa and Asia. The orders form part of a new church law that will create a more flexible parish and diocesan structure. Under the new rules, bishops would be able to fly in a new priest to turn around a flagging parish while the incumbent is still there. The measure would allow evangelical bishops to assert their beliefs over liberal clergy by sending in like-minded evangelicals. Similarly, liberal bishops could defy parishes that were hostile to gays in the Church. Missionaries would also be sent to thriving parishes to offer a fresh perspective. Each mission would be assigned a monitor who would report on its activities to the bishop".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



7 February, 2007

LEFTIST IRRATIONALITY ABOUT ISLAM

An excerpt from Dr Sanity

An alternative strategy adopted by those desperate to deny reality is to insist that merely by responding to terror attacks, we are creating more terrorists. In other words, if we just close our eyes and pretend it doesn't exist, it will all magically go away and everything will be hunky-dory. Oh, and by the way, it isn't historically significant anyway.

Those who profess this irrational perspective never seem to contemplate the reality that since the first WTC bombing--and even before then-- the U.S. followed that course and did very little to comprehensively respond to the rising terrorist threat in the world. And yet, 9/11 still happened. The Balinese did nothing, and yet, the Bali bombings still happened. The Spanish were opposed to the war, and yet, the Madrid bombings still happened. The British, the French, and the Dutch welcomed immigrants from Islam, and yet.... you get the point.

Terrorism has been on the rise since the first time the West appeased its violence and gave into its unreasonable demands, all the while pretending that the blackmail was reasonable and that the violence was only a problem confined to a few backward areas of the world (remember the Iran hostage taking in '79? Remember the Somalia debacle?). But those "few backward areas of the world" keep on expanding into the civilized one. As do the demands of the blackmailers.

The West closed its eyes and resolutely kept them shut for a quarter century. And still the terrorist threat continued to rise and their demands grew ever shriller and more insistent. The madrassas they set up both in their own lands and in the West had been teaching hate for more than a decade before 9/11. The nations of the Middle East were trying to wipe Israel off the map long before 9/11; the Palestinians under the Nobel Peace Prize winner Arafat were still enthusiastically blowing up innocents; but still, both they and their enablers on the left would have you believe that America brought 9/11 on itself; that America (or Israel) is the cause behind all their violence and deathl; and that America acting against Islam's documented desire for peace is only making it worse.

We hear issuing forth from the peaceful adherents of Islam, "Death to America!"; "Death to Israel"; "Death to those who insult Islam"; death, death and more death; always death. But the clear thinkers of the MSM and the left keep telling us that we are the ones who want to kill them. They want peace and brotherhood. Yeah, right.

***********************

ELSEWHERE

Those pesky genes again: "Scientists have found an answer to one of the most intractable squabbles in family life - argumentative and disruptive children are born, not made. A study by American scientists has found that antisocial traits such as being argumentative, bullying and lying, are often inherited. The new research challenges the scientific consensus that difficult children are the product of disruptive homes and are copying parents' behaviour. The implication of the research, conducted by the University of Virginia, is that children with "antisocial" genes would behave badly even if they had been adopted and brought up in a happy family. The effect appears to pass down the generations. It means that couples who fight a lot may be driven by their genes and pass them on to their children, who tend to behave in the same way. The finding emerged from a study of 2,000 children born of 1,000 twins. Half of the twins were identical, meaning they shared all their genes, while the rest were fraternal and so shared only half their genes. The study of behaviour in twins and their children is a standard means of finding out which traits are inherited. Research has also found links between genes and other aspects of bad behaviour."

PETA extremism just alienates: "A few years ago, I worked with a woman that spent a large portion of her time as an activist for PETA. She spent her days off standing in front of furriers protesting the sale of animal pelts and was once arrested for standing outside an upper class department store spray-painting anyone that entered or left the store wearing a fur. Anyone she caught eating a hamburger, wearing leather shoes, or using a product that had been tested on animals, received her standard 10-minute dissertation on the horrors animals endured so that we could enjoy that particular product. She was of course a radical vegetarian and assured me that if I learned to like tofu I would never miss meat. The only reason I can think of for being a vegetarian is if you enjoy having gas 24 hours a day. We are omnivores. Vegetables are meant to accompany that nice thick steak or fish. For me, living in a world without bacon is too horrible to contemplate... Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that activism is best in moderation. Any movement, philosophy, or political group can suffer irreparable damage at the hands of extremists because they talk the loudest. Your ideals are suddenly associated with radicals that are more intent on drawing attention to themselves than working on a solution"

South Africa's descent into African normality: The murder of David Rattray - gunned down in front of his wife - has caught the attention of the world and traumatised South Africa... Just over a week ago six young Africans carrying guns, one with his face hidden by a balaclava, entered Rattray's famous lodge at Fugitives' Drift (several survivors of the battle of Isandlwana fled there, two of them receiving posthumous Victoria Crosses) and demanded money. When the receptionist refused they asked for Rattray by name. The man in the balaclava entered the house, where he came upon Rattray's wife Nicky. She screamed and when Rattray came running he pleaded briefly with the gunman not to harm his wife or children. Then the man shot him. Rattray's friends abroad are mystified and horrified that someone known as a great philanthropist for the Zulu people could be murdered by members of that community. But within South Africa the killing has brought to a head public opinion that is already in a state of near hysteria over a crime rate which is 6.5 times worse than America's and sees more than 50 murders a day. There is a sense that Rattray's death is a symptom of a far deeper malaise. It has inevitably been an enormous blow to South Africa's tourist industry"

"Our friends, the Saudis": "A Saudi Arabian court has convicted and sentenced 20 foreigners to receive lashes and spend several months in prison for attending a party where alcoholic drinks were served and men and women danced, a Saudi newspaper has reported. The kingdom's religious police arrested 433 foreigners, including more than 240 women, for attending the "impudent" party in Jeddah, the state-guided newspaper Okaz reported. It did not identify the foreigners, give their nationalities or say when the party took place. Judge Saud al-Boushi sentenced the 20 to three to four month in prison and ordered them to receive an unspecified number of lashes.

Australian department store sues Leftists: "In what is believed to be a world first, David Jones begins a legal case tomorrow in which it is suing the left-leaning think tank the Australia Institute and its executive director, Clive Hamilton, over claims the giant retailer's advertising eroticised and sexually exploited children. The case, in the Federal Court in Sydney, is thought to be the first time a court will consider the sexualisation of children in advertising. The retailer is suing under the Trade Practices Act, claiming the institute engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. The avenue of suing for defamation was closed to big companies after the introduction of uniform defamation laws in January 2006. The case stems from a media release in October titled "Corporate paedophilia - sexualising children by advertising and marketing", which announced the launching of a discussion paper. The release named retail chains such as David Jones and Myer as having "jumped on the bandwagon" in eroticising children in the interests of the bottom line."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



6 February, 2007

A DAY TO REMEMBER

Today is the birthday of Ronald Reagan. There is nothing anyone can say about Ronald Reagan that goes anywhere near the words of Ronald Reagan himself so I simply reproduce below a quote that I think encapsulates the man:

“When I attended the commencement ceremonies at the Air Force Academy, I was surprised at how many of the graduating cadets came up to me, hand extended—930 in all—and told me they were praying for me. When I mentioned this to the commanding general, he told me that every morning you could find several hundred cadets in the chapel beginning their day with prayer. Hardly a day goes by that I’m not told—sometimes in letters and sometimes by people I meet—that they’re praying for me. It’s a warm but humbling feeling. Sometimes I answer when someone says that; I feel I have to say something. And I tell them that if they ever get a busy signal, it’s because I’m in there ahead of them. I grew up in a home where I was taught to believe in intercessory prayer. I know it’s those prayers, and millions like them, that are building high and strong this cathedral of freedom that we call America; those prayers, and millions like them, that will always keep our country secure and make her a force for good in these too troubled times. And that’s why as a nation we must embrace our faith, for as long as we endeavor to do good—and we must believe that will be always—we will find our strength, our hope, and our true happiness in prayer and in the Lord’s will.”

The Danger of Fantasy in International Affairs: Palestine

Excerpt from a post by Shrink Wrapped

On occasion I have written about the danger that arises when international affairs are governed more by fantasy than reality.  My first post on the subject looked at the way in which the National fantasies (myths) in the West and within the Islamic world dovetailed in such a way as to guarantee misunderstanding and make the feared Clash of Civilizations more likely.  In my second post on the subject, I discussed the UN, a paean to fantasy in international affairs, and suggested that the anxiety that would ensue for people once they recognized the reality of the disaster that the UN has become, was sufficient cause for them to cling to the fantasy that the UN offered a way to minimize the danger of a break down in the international order.

Related to both of these posts is the idea that the source of much of the Arab and Muslim discontent with the West relates to the Palestinian and Arab conflict with Israel.  The fantasy structure includes the idea that there is a pool of support among the Palestinians and among Arabs in general that would support a two state solution with Israel, if only the Israelis would remove the terrible weight of oppressive occupation from the backs of the poor, benighted, essentially innocent Palestinians.  In one form or another, this fantasy animates much of the international community's approach to the situation; it also animates much of the media coverage of the Middle East.

The front page of the New York Times today contains no stories about the Palestinians and a search of the Times site reveals no mention of Hamas or Fatah.  A search on Google news for "Hamas" and "Fatah" brings up a front page with a number of stories from several days ago, but no stories linked from major Western news organizations today.  The top story is from Ha'aretz two days ago: Despite violations, Hamas-Fatah cease-fire holds. 

We have become inured to stories proclaiming the maintenance of Palestinian truces punctuated by attacks against Israelis several times a day, attacks typically ignored by the Western press, but here we see the template applied to inter-Palestinian clashes.  In fact, last night and this morning, the fighting in Palestine has been particularly vicious....

At this moment the Palestinians are engaged in a civil war; the goal of the war is to control all of the largess that the world continues to heap upon the Palestinians and maintain the dream, fantasy, and desire to destroy Israel.  Nothing out of Gaza or the West Bank gives any reason to question the goals of Fatah or Hamas (or Hezbollah for that matter) yet the International Community behaves as if their fantasy reflects reality.  Many more Israelis will die, and the Palestinians will continue to live in squalor amid a sea of violence and corruption, in order to satisfy everyone's fantasies.  Ultimately, only the Palestinians can decide who represents them, a question that will be resolved via the gun, and then, and only then, can questions of war and peace be addressed. 

*****************************

ELSEWHERE



The clenched fist is of course the traditional symbol of Communism -- for good reason: Leftists are full of anger and hate. Marx himself hated just about everybody -- including the workers and including his own mother.

Amazing Israeli tolerance: "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has given permission for Jordan to build a large minaret adjacent to a mosque on the Temple Mount to call Muslims to prayer at the holy site, WND has learned. The minaret will stand at a site on the Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue. A minaret is a tower usually attached to a mosque from which Muslims are called to the five Islamic daily prayers."

ACLU as traitors: "Discussing the arrest warrants a German court had issued that day for 13 CIA agents in connection with the kidnapping of German citizen Khaled El-Masri and his lawsuit against former CIA Director George Tenet and others, filed with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Bill O'Reilly asked CBS News terrorism analyst Michael Scheuer on the January 31 edition of Fox News' The O'Reillly Factor: "Do you think these people are traitors, the ACLU? Are they putting us all in danger?" Scheuer replied that "they have a right to their opinion" but asserted, "[T]hey're very lucky that most Americans are willing to fight to protect their ability to denigrate America." O'Reilly then stated that the ACLU "go[es] beyond that" and that, actually, "they put us in danger." Scheuer agreed, saying: "Oh, I think they do. I think that's certainly true, sir." Scheuer, a former CIA analyst, was head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit during the Clinton administration."

Let's hope this is true: "A prize-winning Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran. An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service. Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons."



Obnoxious Soros says America needs to be "De-Nazified": "Senator Barack Obama might want to tell George Soros to shut up, now that the Hungarian-born billionaire has equated the George W. Bush administration with the Third Reich. Soros, who spent $26 million trying to beat Bush two years ago, is a key supporter of the media-darling Illinois Democrat's presidential campaign. But last week at Davos, Soros made folks like Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Penn look downright patriotic. After asserting that the United States is recognizing the error it made in Iraq, Soros said, "To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future." He went on to say that Turkey and Japan are still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany's rejection of its Nazi-era past. "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany," Soros said. "We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process."

National Guard forced to run: "A recent standoff between National Guardsmen and heavily armed outlaws along the Mexican border has rattled some troops and raised questions about the rules of engagement for soldiers who were sent to the border in what was supposed to be a backup role. Six to eight gunmen -- possibly heading for Mexico with drug money -- approached a group of Tennessee National Guard troops at an overnight observation post Jan. 3 on the U.S. side of the Arizona-Mexico border. No one fired a shot, and the confrontation ended when American troops retreated to contact the Border Patrol."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



5 February, 2007

CHRISTIANS UNDER MUSLIM RULE: BETHLEHEM & BEYOND

Post lifted from Daniel Mandel

The situation of Christians in the Muslim Middle East, as I have outlined earlier, continues to deteriorate, not least within the Palestinian Authority. To Khaled Abu Toameh's earlier account of the depopulating of Bethlehem's Christian community can be added his more recent piece describing their ongoing plight as a minority of 15% in a city in which they were once a majority. As Toameh reports, incidents include fire-bombing of Christian homes, theft of lands, and physical violence and intimidation of those Christians brave enough to complain or seek redress. Further bleak details also emerge in Elizabeth Day's account.

More general analysis of the Christian predicament in the region comes from the Spiegel Online and Zlatica Hoke, the latter including some little-known details regarding Israeli Christians, a rare exception to the trend of Middle Eastern Christian demographic collapse, demoralization and emigration.

********************

Obnoxious Penance "Scoop" Outrages Catholics

Post below excerpted from Newsbusters

How far will reporters go to get a juicy story: How low will they go? How many rules will they break? How many sacred cows will they make into hamburger? Reporter Riccardo Bocca of L'Espresso is attracting worldwide attention from Catholic media outlets and bloggers. Bocca stealthily visited confessionals at 24 Catholic churches in Rome, Turin, Naples, Milan and Palermo, and lied to each priest he visited, manufacturing false confessions for various sins. He said he wanted to show the disparity between what the church teaches and what priests do. Would they conform to Catholic teaching or slip out of orthodoxy to show sympathy? Bocca found priests who would step away from orthodoxy, although not on abortion.

Fox News explained that the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, was furious: "Shame! There is no other word to express our distress toward an operation that was disgusting, worthless, disrespectful and particularly offensive," the Vatican's paper said in an editorial headlined "Fake confessions in search of a shameful scoop." (Philip Pullella at Reuters also had a story.) I can't imagine even many "secular progressive" reporters finding it ethical to lie your face off in a supposedly sacred ritual.

Catholic blogger Mark Shea headlined his post From our "Take Off 50 IQ Points Whenever the Press Talks about Religion" File. His take is just as sharp as the headline:

So some jackass reporter goes around to different churches, lies about various sins and ethical conundrums in the confessional, gets 24 different pieces of advice from 24 priests and then compares them to what he calls the "official teaching" of the Church. Then he writes a "Gotcha" article which proves that priests are not computers dispensing dogmatic formulae, but shepherds who, within their varying abilities and limits, try to mercifully help struggling people do the best they can in living up the admittedly hard ideals of the Faith. Of course, he doesn't realize that's what he proves. He *thinks* he's proving that the Catholic Faith is crap, which shows what a jackass he is.

He also proves that he is a liar and a jerk, not to mention a blasphemer. I generally think it unwise to try to learn the truth about plumbing from liars, much less the truth about something weighty like a religion. I also think it unwise to try to learn the Catholic faith from people who neither understand nor believe it.

****************************

ELSEWHERE

Judge rejects bid to make Simpson return book money: "A US judge has dismissed a lawsuit against O.J. Simpson over an advance the ex-football star and actor was paid for his scrapped, hypothetical book about the murders of his ex-wife and her friend. But the father of murder victim Ron Goldman intends to pursue his case in state court. US District Judge Manuel Real ruled yesterday that he had no jurisdiction in the dispute between Fred Goldman and Simpson over the reported $US1 million ($1.3 million) advance he was paid for the controversial book If I Did It.... Simpson was acquitted of the June 12, 1994, murders. A civil jury found him liable for the deaths in 1997 and ordered him to pay $US33.5 million in damages to the murder victims' families. Little of that judgment has been collected and Simpson has vowed never to pay voluntarily."

Brits flocking to the anti-immigration British National Party: "Success breeds success and we have enjoyed a great deal of success over the last 12 months! Election triumphs and legal victories have helped raise our profile and brought many new members into our ranks and this deluge of new blood combined with the most impressive renewal rates we have ever had, has caused a bottleneck in membership processing. The workload of the membership team has increased due to the changeover to the fairer rolling membership system and the introduction of a 2 month lapsed membership deadline, which caused an increase in the volume of enquiries to the department checking on the progress of applications, well before the 4 week grace period requested, in last months' BN. This has now pushed the processing time back even further."

U.S. Communists say terrorism doesn't kill enough people: "The Fox Television Network series "24" is an incredibly brazen example of the ultra-right-wing's use of that medium to spread fear to win support for its political agenda and for President Bush.... MSNBC commentator Keith Oberman rightly described "24" as "naked brainwashing." All people of good will, of course, oppose terrorism. The Communist Party USA has often pointed out that terrorism substitutes individual acts of violence for the mass action essential for real progressive change... Terrorism is a political tactic that should indeed cause all of us great concern. Unfortunately, "24" is an attempt to use fear, propaganda and lies to conceal the real perpetrators of terror, the ultra-right and George W. Bush."

Air strike targets senior al Qaida leaders in Iraq: "Coalition Forces targeted the leadership of an al-Qaida in Iraq related vehicle-borne improvised explosives devices network Friday during an airstrike operation near Arab Jabour. Intelligence reports indicated that this network is responsible for a large and devastating number of VBIED attacks in the Baghdad area. They are also responsible for IED and sniper attacks conducted against the Iraqi people and Iraqi and Coalition Forces. Coalition Forces believe that key terrorist leaders were killed during the airstrike. Results are still being assessed at this time. It is believed that several members of the VBIED cell, in addition to the targeted leadership, were present at the meeting place immediately prior to the airstrike"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



4 February, 2007

SOME STRAIGHT THINKING FROM A U.S. SOLDIER IN IRAQ

A few excerpts from Sgt Jeffers for those who have not seen it already:

It is absolutely sickening to me to think our country has come to this. Why are we so obsessed with the bad news? Why will people stop at nothing to be against this war, no matter how much evidence of the good we've done is thrown in their face? When is the last time CNN or MSNBC or CBS reported the opening of schools and hospitals in Iraq? Or the leaders of terror cells being detained or killed? It's all happening, but people will not let up their hatred of President Bush. They will ignore the good news, because it just might show people that Bush was right.

America has lost its will to fight. It has lost its will to defend what is right and just in the world. The crazy thing of it all is that the American people have not even been asked to sacrifice a single thing. It's not like World War II, where people rationed food and turned in cars to be made into metal for tanks. The American people have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Unless you are in the military or the family member of a servicemember, its life as usual...the war doesn't affect you.

But it affects us. And when it is over and the troops come home and they try to piece together what's left of them after their service...where will the detractors be then? Where will the Cindy Sheehans be to comfort and talk to soldiers and help them sort out the last couple years of their lives, most of which have been spent dodging death and wading through the deaths of their friends? They will be where they always are, somewhere far away, where the horrors of the world can't touch them. Somewhere where they can complain about things they will never experience in their lifetime; things that the young men and women of America have willingly taken upon their shoulders.

We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children in. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped and murdered if they do not comply with the terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause and see it to its end. But the country must unite in this endeavor...we cannot place the burden on our military alone. We must all stand up and fight, whether in uniform or not. And supporting us is more than sticking yellow ribbon stickers on your cars. It's supporting our President, our troops and our cause.

********************

NO WONDER THE FRENCH HATE AMERICA

An excerpt below from Jon Hall

Why do the French still celebrate Bastille Day? How can they even remember it without shame? It's not as though the French Revolution ushered in anything lasting, or that there weren't other French revolutions to follow.

Since the U.S. installed its first government, the French have had a monarchy, 5 republics, 2 empires, 3 restorations of the monarchy (including a Bourbon and an Orleanist), the Reign of Terror, various periods of anarchy, the Nazi-collaborationist puppet state of Vichy, and now the E.U., which the French feel that with their wealth of experience they are entitled to lead. A mere 10 years after the storming of the Bastille and 7 years after the founding of the First Republic, the French were back to dictatorship with Napoleon I. (If only the French Revolution had "swept across" France.)

Compare this sorry history to that of America: We've had one continuous government under the same constitution since 1789. We even held elections during the Civil War. Yet, many in the American elite think we should look to Europe, and in particular France, for guidance on how to run our affairs. This is mind-blowing, considering that the most cataclysmic events of the last century started in Europe.

Of all the major nations of Europe, France is the least deserving of emulation. France has been in decline since Waterloo, and has not been a great nation since 1871, when they lost the Franco-Prussian War and had to cede the Alsace-Lorraine over to the Germans. Wasn't it Walker Percy who said that Pascal (1623-62) was the last sane French intellectual? The frogs have not been well-led since Charles Martel repelled the invading Muslim hordes at the Battle of Tours in 732. The U.S. bailed out France repeatedly in the 20th century and they have never forgiven us for it.

************************

ELSEWHERE



New priorities, not new prosecutors: "Buchanan took office six days before the attacks of Sept., 11, 2001 ... United flight 93 actually crashed to the ground in her district. One would think that might motivate a law enforcement official to devote all of her time and resources to protecting the country from future terrorist attacks. Instead, Buchanan has gone after bong sellers, pornographers, Dr. Rottschaefer, and, if you need another example, a couple of retired veterans who exaggerated their military experience. With that kind of record, you might guess that Mary Beth Buchanan was among those U.S. attorneys let go last week. You'd be wrong. In fact, late last year, she was promoted."

NYT in trouble: "Why do I feel so happy? The New York Times is writing off $814.4 million of the value of its New England newspapers. This catastrophic meltdown was presaged by a dreadful drop in quality. Need evidence? Try a search over at the Times site for the phrase "disastrous war." That's one of the Times' pathetic and oft-used catch-phrases that demonstrates a distinct lack of quality and creativity. The Times' mission of derailing the war effort relies upon a monotonic drumbeat of defeat. Reusing the same anti-American phrases for months and years on end has turned out to be a wonderful predictor of the paper's business results."

Paul Krugman On Useless U.S. Ethanol Subsidies: "Paul Krugman may be a left-liberal and so I very often disagree with him, but he is right on the mark when pointing out the irrationality of U.S. ethanol policy, which will do little or nothing to reduce oil consumption, while costing the U.S. economy far more than alternative policies to reduce oil consumption. The source of this irrational policy is the parasitical U.S. farm lobby which both the Republican and Democratic establishment panders to. What could be added to Krugman's piece is that the reason Brazilian ethanol isn't used instead of the far more costly U.S. ethanol, is the fact that the U.S. congress, led by Senatar Barack Obama has slapped punitive tariffs on it."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



3 February, 2007

LEFTIST HATRED OF THE TROOPS COMING OUT

There has been a lot of outrage about a prominent Leftist columnist calling the U.S. armed forces "mercenaries". The reaction below is lifted from the NRO Blog. In a twisted sort of a way, though, maybe the columnist was right, at least from his point of view. Leftists don't see themselves as part of America so the U.S. troops are in fact fighting for another country from their point of view -- which is the definition of a mercenary.

I think we're witnessing a very public meltdown over on WashingtonPost.com. Earlier today William Arkin published a new post responding to those who took issue with his characterization of U.S. troops as bloodthirsty and ignorant mercenaries. But while the post can still be found by following the direct link, it has vanished from Arkin's home page. Did someone at the Post direct him to take it down? Or did he himself have second thoughts about certain passages, like this one:

These men and women [in the military] are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

The best reaction so far is John's from OpFor: "If there is a war that's unwinnable, it's the war on this type of horrid ignorance."

Ace has a good question too: "Since Arkin asserts that the troops should not be allowed to influence the public's opinion on the war, and since the entire left demands that anyone supporting the war become a troop himself — has the left pretty much created a Catch-22 by which any and all support for the war is illegitimate?"

Allah has some related audio that you've got to hear to believe. Arkin's piece represents a turning point — "baby killer" coming back into vogue. How tragic.

***********************

ELSEWHERE

It's a start: "The Bush administration yesterday proposed ending farm subsidies for an estimated 80,000 wealthy individuals as part of a broad plan that would close loopholes and cut traditional farm programs by $4.5 billion over the next 10 years. The proposal unveiled by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns was the administration's opening move in what will be a lengthy tug of war with Congress over a new multi-year farm bill. The current bill, one of the most generous to farmers in history, expires Sept. 30. Debate on the new legislation comes at a time of major changes in agriculture. Booming demand from new ethanol plants has pushed corn prices to near-record levels. At the same time, U.S. trade partners are threatening retaliation unless the United States curbs crop subsidies that are said to promote overproduction here and low prices for farmers abroad."

The writing's on the wall for Iran: "The Bush administration rejected any reports that it planned to attack Saddam Hussein as 'urban legends.' The same language is now being used over the possibility of US action against Iran. But when the US is joined by the Saudis and the Israelis and their powerful supporters in Washington, it spells danger -- as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the Iranians in their war with Iraq."

Bush "spoiling for a fight" with Iran: "US officials in Baghdad and Washington are expected to unveil a secret intelligence 'dossier' this week detailing evidence of Iran's alleged complicity in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The move, uncomfortably echoing Downing Street's dossier debacle in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, is one more sign that the Bush administration is building a case for war."

"Price gouging" is essential and humane: ""Recently, Anderson Cooper and one of his correspondents, Gary Tuchman, condemned price gouging in New Orleans as if they were reporting an inherently unjust practice that no reasonable person would accept. So, once again, it needs explaining why price gouging is not only not bad, but is essential to the welfare of everyone involved. Without it, people don't get the essential goods they need after disasters. Free markets here are humane and necessary."

CA: Bid to outlaw spanking stirs emotions: "Leigh Bailey will never forget the day her daughter, then 2, pulled her small hand away and darted into a busy street. Brakes screeched. Bailey ran to her. Then came the consequence. 'I got her back to the sidewalk, I took her over my knee and spanked her and said, 'Don't ever, ever do that again!'' The Berkeley mother of two said that was one of very few times she has spanked her children. 'To keep my daughter safe,' she explained, 'I had to make sure she knew it was wrong and dangerous.' But was what Bailey did equally wrong? The emotional debate over spanking reignited in California when Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, said she plans to introduce a bill this week outlawing anyone from swatting children age 3 and younger. Violators could face up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine."

Another setup for Wendy's? "A Nashville man is suing Wendy's Restaurant, saying there was human blood on a straw he used from the company's store at 719 Thompson Lane. William Hoover is seeking unspecified damages in a Jan. 24 lawsuit that was filed in Davidson County Circuit Court by his attorney, Harry W. Miller III. A call has been placed to the company's headquarters in Dublin, Ohio seeking comment. According to the lawsuit, Hoover noticed a red substance on the end of the straw after he drank a Frosty shake-style beverage from the restaurant. ... Hoover had the substance tested, and it turned out to be human blood, the lawsuit states."

It's not the yen, it's the mileage : "Ford Motor Co.'s announcement last week that it lost a record $12.75 billion in 2006 will tempt the new Democratic Congress to come to the rescue of Detroit's Big Three automakers. General Motors and DaimlerChrysler are also expected to announce SUV-sized losses for 2006, further revving the engine for congressional action. Momentum is already building to make Japanese and other foreign-owned automakers the scapegoats for what ails Detroit. Just after the November elections, Big Three executives met with President Bush to complain about 'unfair' competition from Japan. ... Despite its pleas, Detroit's woes are homegrown, not created abroad."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



2 February, 2007

IRAN WOBBLING?

Is the Khomeinist leadership preparing to retreat from confrontation over Tehran's nuclear ambitions? Until recently, the answer was an emphatic "No." According to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, such retreat would limit Islamic sovereignty by giving the United Nations a veto on Iran's energy policy. But now Tehran is trying to forestall the passage of a second, and presumably tougher, resolution by the Security Council in March.

Several versions of the presumed Iranian initiative are in circulation. Former President Muhammad Khatami presented one to American and European personalities on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. In this scheme, Tehran is prepared to comply with the Security Council demand to suspend uranium enrichment - as part of a diplomatic package. In this plan, an arbitration group would inspect and assess Iran's nuclear program, reporting back after six months. The group would include the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, and India on behalf of the nonaligned movement. During the six months in question, the Islamic Republic would suspend enrichment of uranium. In exchange, the Security Council would postpone its March session on the issue and would suspend the sanctions it already approved. Tehran would also insist on an undertaking from the United States not to take military action against Iran. There are other signs that Tehran is trying to cool things down:

* It has not carried out its threat of suspending relations with countries that voted for sanctions, nor has it organized demonstrations by the usual suspects around the embassies of those nations.

* The regime has shown uncharacteristic timidity on the issue of its senior Revolutionary Guard commanders and intelligence officers who were arrested and are being interrogated by U.S. forces in Iraq.

* The Islamic Republic did not vote against a resolution passed by the U.N. General Assembly last week condemning the denial of the Holocaust. (This was an indirect correction for Ahmadinejad, who re-launched the Holocaust-denial debate last year.)

"We hear a moderate message from Tehran," says a senior British official. "And that in a tone we had not heard since Ahmadinejad [became president]." That at least part of the Khomeinist leadership might want ways to defuse the situation is not surprising. The sanctions, though nothing more than a gentle rap on the knuckles, have already started to bite - with a disproportionate psychological impact on some players in the Iranian economy. Iranian businessmen see the measures as a kind of aperitif for a deadlier main course to be served later.

The Iranian currency, the rial, is showing the jitters as never before. Thousands of contracts remain frozen, pending the outcome of the crisis. If current trends continue, hundreds of thousands of Iranian workers may be thrown out of work within months.

The plummeting of oil prices has also done its bit. Over the past year, the Islamic Republic has seen oil revenues decline by almost 20 percent - even as Ahmadinejad's largesse, designed to bribe his constituency, has pushed public expenditure to an all-time high. In recent months, the government has been unable to pay the salaries and bonuses of some employees, including teachers, on time.

The perception that the Bush administration may be preparing military action has sent shivers down the spines of many mullahs and Revolutionary Guard commanders who account for a good part of the wealthy elite.

More here

**************************

ELSEWHERE

Why they are smashing online gambling: ""Government taxes your winnings at the casino and it taxes the profits of the casino. If you win the governments gets some. If the casino wins the government gets some. They are the protection racket of the Mafia writ large with one difference -- the Mafia took less. But online gambling is another matter entirely. The damn casino doesn't physically exist anywhere. It is an online entity. It may be a company registered in some primitive place with low taxes like Switzerland. The people who provide the service of gambling are being allowed to keep most of what they earn. And that is what drives greedy politicians into such a frenzy."

Wealth and economic freedom go hand in hand: ""Why are some countries rich and others poor? For more than a decade, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have carefully examined the evidence. Every year, for the Index of Economic Freedom, they sift through data on everything from inflation to imports, from tariffs to trade -- and they do it for every country. And one big-picture message about poverty and wealth consistently shines through, year after year: Wealth and economic freedom go hand in hand, says Rebecca Hagelin, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation."

Moscow: Mayor calls gay parade "Satanic": "Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov said Monday he would never allow a gay parade to take place in Moscow despite pressure from the West. 'Last year, Moscow came under unprecedented pressure to sanction the gay parade, which can be described in no other way than as Satanic,' Luzhkov said at the 15th Christmas educational readings in the Kremlin Palace 'We did not let the parade take place then, and we are not going to allow it in the future,' said Luzhkov who has been in office since 1992. The conservative 70-year-old mayor of the Russian capital also banned Portuguese bullfights in Moscow in 2001 for their violence and did not let the St. Petersburg-based rock group Leningrad perform in the city because of their explicit lyrics."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************



1 February, 2007

THERE IS NOW AN INDEPENDENT STATE OF PALESTINE. CELEBRATE!

Most Arab States are pretty nasty places and the new Palestine is certainly no exception

In the world of international diplomacy few issues receive more wall-to-wall support than the notion that it is essential to establish a Palestinian state. Leaders worldwide are so busy speaking of how essential it is for a State of Palestine to be founded that none of them seems to have noticed that it already exists. This state was officially founded in the summer of 2005, when Israel removed its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip and so established the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history. Israel's destruction of four Israeli communities in Northern Samaria and curtailment of its military operations in the area set the conditions for statehood in that area as well.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare. In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines. In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.

Much more here

*************************

Hamas: 'Attack is legitimate resistance'

This story refers to a jihad martyrdom attack in an Israeli bakery. And of course this response is predictable. Everything Hamas does is legitimate. Every step Israel takes in response is illegitimate. Once you grasp that simple rule, you're ready for prime time, or a job at Reuters.

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A Hamas spokesman defended Monday's suicide bombing in Eilat as legitimate "resistance" against Israel.

Fawzi Barhoum called the attack a "natural response" to IDF policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as its ongoing boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government. "So long as there is occupation, resistance is legitimate," he said.

More here

*************************

"Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God's orders"

Fjordman sends us this item, along with this comment: "These Taliban people must suffer from Islamophobia or something, since they believe there are numerous calls for violent Jihad in the Koran." Indeed. Note Baitullah Mehsud's words: "Then we will attack them in the US and Britain until they either accept Islam or agree to pay jazia (a tax in Islam for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state)."

But try asking a self-proclaimed moderate leader in America about whether or not the Qur'an really calls on Muslims to wage war against non-Muslims and subjugate them, imposing a tax upon them. He will either not give you a straight answer or call you an "Islamophobe," or both.

More here

**************************

Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism

Excerpt from a post by Democracy Project

As if to prove the point of the essay by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism” published by the American Jewish Committee, that favorite cage liner The New York Times looses its theater critic, Patricia Cohen, to poop on it.

She exposes her colors in her first sentence.

The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.

Only a left-winged bird of a feather like Patricia Cohen can call the American Jewish Committee “conservative.” And, only the self-deluded can call leftist extremists "liberal." ....

So, what does Patricia Cohen bring to her review of Alvin Rosenfeld’s essay? She devotes most of her report to leftist extremists' self-justifications for attacking Israel. She doesn’t, however, quote Israel critic Tony Judt's inane, “Israel today is bad for the Jews.” She doesn’t reflect on the use by these critics of words like “apartheid,” “racism,” “colonialism,” and “ethnic cleansing” to describe Israel. As Rosenfeld shows:

These descriptors have become part of the standard discourse among “progressive” American Jews, who seem to take for granted that the historical record shows Israel to be an aggressor state guilty of sins comparable to those of Hendrik Verwoerd’s South Africa and Hitler’s Germany.

As Rosenfeld points out:

The true end point of these views is not just to force the Israelis out of the territories they have occupied since 1967, but to force an end to the Jewish state itself.

***************************

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason -- Details here and here

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************