The original of this mirror site is HERE. My Blogroll; The archive; 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)
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30 June, 2006

Race and Australia's immigration policy

Regardless of what may be true of the group, we cannot assume the same for every individual in that group. So when I comment about things in Jews as a whole that I like (such as high IQ and high drive) and when I point to things in blacks as a group that I dislike (such as low IQ and high propensity to criminality) that does not at all imply that I advocate treating all the individuals in that group in the same way. Otherwise how would it be that the person I quote most often in my blogging is an American black -- Thomas Sowell? I clearly don't condemn him in any way.

And when it comes to immigration, the Australian government has long embraced a policy which recognizes the importance of the individual. It abandoned the White Australia policy in the 1960s and instituted a selective immigration policy that chose people on largely educational and occupational criteria. People with a good education or useful trade skills were the ones principally selected as immigrants, regardless of whether they were black, white or brindle. And that is exactly the policy that I support. Pretty mainstream, Huh?

The Australian government, however, also has a refugee intake as well as a selective immigration intake. Most people who have entered Australia in the refugee category have been East Asians, who, as a group, have generally sterling qualities and who have hence added to Australian society rather than detracted from it. The low level of selectivity in admitting such people has done no harm overall. Unfortunately, two generally trouble-prone groups (Lebanese Muslims and East Africans) have also entered Australia in considerable numbers in the (minimally selective) "refugee" category. And they have certainly become a burden rather than an asset.

Official references to this are very guarded, however. It is therefore interesting to note an official reference to it by the Premier of NSW in the Hansard of the NSW Legislative Assembly (8 March 2006, Pages 43 -, article 11). He does of course blame the Federal government for the crime-rate rather than those who perpetrate it but he is a Leftist after all. Excerpt below:

"Despite the Commonwealth's failure, the State government will continue to provide a high-quality, targeted ESL program as part of its equity provision in New South Wales government schools-our commitment to equity. Low English ability is a direct contributor to high unemployment rates and is a massive barrier to becoming part of the Australian community. The situation is further exacerbated by the Commonwealth exiting the field of providing interpreter services. On 1 July 2005 the Commonwealth completely abandoned its commitment to providing interpreter services for those accessing community services. This has had a massive impact on those trying to access community services in New South Wales. All this results in social alienation and, inevitably, increased crime rates.

I am advised by NSW Police that a number of local area commands have expressed concern in recent months about the increasing number of recent arrivals from African countries. The concern is not about the African refugees per se; it is about refugees not being adequately supported during their settlement period and thus beginning to feature in crime statistics-both as victims and as offenders. The police are responding to this at the individual local area command level and have recently begun workshops with the Sudanese community as part of a crime prevention and education strategy. About half of the recent 5,000 arrivals have settled in Blacktown. A further 1,500 live in Newcastle and Coffs Harbour. I am advised that local area commanders have to divert police resources to deal with problems associated with these refugees. There are also reports of more serious crime associated with gangs of young men from African communities. It is not the core business of the New South Wales health system for the New South Wales police force to spend time and resources picking up the ball dropped by Canberra.

So what is my view of that? It is starkly simple. I think there should be much the same individual selectivity in admitting refugees as there is in admitting other immigrants. Highly educated East Africans (for instance) should be admitted and illiterate East Africans should not be admitted.

In that respect I am not mainstream. Australians are generally kind-hearted people who approve of giving refuge to people in dire circumstances overseas and the media coverup about the result of doing that in a largely non-selective way lulls most Australians into thinking that the intake concerned poses no threat to their lives and welfare. So for that reason, I do all I can to publicize what a problem group Africans generally are -- so that the need for selectivity in admitting them will come to be recognized. But Africans who are held to the same standards as other people I have no problem with.

I appreciate my fellow Anglo-Australians as being one of the world's most peacable and pleasant populations but that does not imply much about how I respond to individual Australians. Some Australians are not peacable and pleasant and I respond to them unfavourably. Most Indians ARE peacable and pleasant and I respond to them favourably. It is peacableness and pleasantness (for instance) that I respond favourably to -- regardless of whether the person concerned is black, white or brindle.

And I might note that the only two Jews who appear in my personal life from time to time are both great gentlemen. So any adverse treatment of them just because they are Jews I would resist with might and main.

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ELSEWHERE

Fabulous!: "Just days before University President Lawrence H. Summers steps down after losing the confidence of professors, Oracle CEO Lawrence J. Ellison announced that he has lost trust in Harvard University and will not carry through on a pledge made one year ago to donate $115 million dollars to create an institute to study global health initiatives. The donation would have been the largest in Harvard's history, but Ellison said Tuesday that with Summers gone, he has lost faith in the University to properly administer the funds. "The reason I didn't finish my gift to Harvard was because of the way Larry Summers suddenly left Harvard. I lost confidence that that money would be well spent," Ellison said"

A traitorous press: "T.F. Boggs is a 24-year-old sergeant in the Army Reserves serving his second tour of duty in Iraq, where he helps to provide security for a military base in Mosul. He is also an occasional blogger, venting his views at www.boredsoldier.blogspot.com. On Sunday, those views took the form of a letter to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. Two days earlier, the Times (along with The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times) had exposed the existence of a top-secret government effort to monitor the international movement of funds between Al Qaeda and its financial collaborators. "Your recent decision to publish information about a classified program intended to track the banking transactions of possible terrorists is not only detrimental to America but also to its fighting men and women overseas," Boggs wrote. "Terrorism happens here every day because there are rich men out there willing to support the . . . terrorist who plants bombs and shoots soldiers. . . . Without money, terrorism in Iraq would die because there would no longer be supplies for IED's, no mortars . . . and no motivation for people to abandon regular work in hopes of striking it rich after killing a soldier. Thank you for continually contributing to the deaths of my fellow soldiers."

Anti-Wal-Mart dummies: "Anyway, Slate is currently hosting a discussion about the retail giant that's illustrative of the anti-Wal-Mart left's absolute disregard for all economic reality when Wal-Mart is concerned. On one side is Jason Furman, a self-described progressive who labels Wal-Mart a "Progressive Success Story" (no kidding!), and believes that the cost savings to lower-income people more than make up for any alleged income disparity in Wal-Mart employees (a disparity about which he isn't sure is even really all that problematic). On the other side is Barbara Ehrenreich, an anti-Wal-Mart crusader who worked at Wal-Mart for a few weeks as part of a bit of anti-corporate journalism and now has joined the leagues of haters. It's amusing to see how willfully and flagrantly she ignores the logic of what he says.... "

Pension Crash Landing: "Delta Airlines announced last week that it will terminate its pilot pension plan, becoming the latest airline company to flip liabilities to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). Congratulations, taxpayers. You'd think this might upset Congress, or at least inspire some reforms. But no such luck. In fact, House and Senate conferees are busy negotiating another pension fix that would give airlines one more reprieve and make taxpayers even more vulnerable to airline mismanagement down the road. Since 2002, far too many airline, steel, auto and other companies have dumped their pension plans on the PBGC, the quasi-government agency that "insures" private pension plans. That body has gone from a $10 billion surplus in 2000 to more than a $23 billion deficit last year"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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29 June, 2006

Saddam's WMD: Why is the U.S. intelligence community holding back?

Excerpt from here. One of the writers is the chairman of the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence! Even he is getting the mushroom treatment (kept in the dark and fed bulls**t)

On Wednesday, at our request, the director of national intelligence declassified six "key points" from a National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) report on the recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq. The summary was only a small snapshot of the entire report, but even so, it brings new information to the American people. "Since 2003," the summary states, "Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," which remains "hazardous and potentially lethal." So there are WMDs in Iraq, and they could kill Americans there or all over the world.

This latest information should not be new. It should have been brought to public attention by officials in the intelligence community. Instead, it had to be pried out of them. Mr. Santorum wrote to John DeFreitas, commanding general, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, on April 12, asking to see the report. He wrote, "I am informed that there may well be many more stores of WMDs throughout Iraq," and added, "the people of Pennsylvania and Members of Congress would benefit from reviewing this report." He asked that the "NGIC work with the appropriate entities" to declassify as much of the information as possible. The senator received no response.

In practice, then, the intelligence community decides what the American public and its elected officials can know and when they will learn it. Sometimes those decisions are made by top officials, while on other occasions they are made by unnamed bureaucrats with friends in the media. People who leak the existence of sensitive intelligence programs like the terrorist surveillance program or financial tracking programs to either damage the administration or help al Qaeda, or perhaps both, are using the release or withholding of documents to advance their political desires, even as they accuse others of manipulating intelligence. We believe that the decisions of when and what Americans can know about issues of national security should not be made by unelected, unnamed and unaccountable people.

Some officials in the intelligence community withheld the document we requested on WMDs, and somebody is resisting our request to declassify the entire document while briefing journalists in a tendentious manner. We will continue to ask for declassification of this document and the hundreds of thousands of other Saddam-produced documents, and we will also insist on periodic updates on discoveries in Iraq.

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ELSEWHERE

I pointed out many years ago that Leftist leaders are narcissistic (in love with themselves). It is interesting, therefore that a recent psychological study has shown that narcissists are much more likely to start wars. It fits therefore that Hitler and the Soviets were both Leftists and that The American Presidents of the 20th century who dragged the USA into extensive foreign wars (TR, Wilson, FDR and Kennedy) were all Democrats or "Progressives". American isolationism means that the American people are reluctant to support a war unless America is attacked -- which is why GWB moved only after the 9/11 attack and why FDR had to provoke a Japanese attack by way of cutting off their oil supply.

There is an article in Human Events that says Buffett should NOT have given his fortune to charity: "Our country is full of people that have been ruined by charity -- the mandated charity of government welfare".

Muslim hostility: "Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations. But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme. The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression."

Foolish judgments: "Several years ago, when Jesse Jackson was running for president, I heard someone say that if he weren't black, he wouldn't be criticized so harshly. The irreverent reply was that if he weren't black, he wouldn't be taken seriously as a candidate. If Noam Chomsky were not a famous linguist, nobody would care a whit about his moral or political opinions. That people do care shows only that they are committing a fallacy -- that of transferring authority from a realm in which he is expert (linguistics) to one in which he is not (political morality)."

Prosecute the NYT: "Citing national security concerns, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday to begin a criminal investigation of The New York Times for publishing a report on a secret government program begun after Sept. 11 to monitor banking transactions for terrorist links. The Seaford Republican, who last year said members of the news media should "be shot" for their coverage after government sources exposed the identity of a covert CIA agent, said the newspaper likely violated the Espionage Act of 1917 and at least one other federal law that regulates the disclosure of classified information."



Archbishop puts the Bible first: "The Archbishop of Canterbury has signalled the break-up of the worldwide Anglican Church by threatening to exclude the liberal wing. Anglican Churches in the United States and Canada are at the greatest risk of schism but there is speculation that those in Scotland, New Zealand and other liberal provinces could also be involved in a dispute over gay ordinations. Dr Rowan Williams said yesterday that all Churches would be asked to sign a covenant stating that they believed in the defining biblical standards of Anglican doctrine. The move will be welcomed by the rapidly growing conservative Churches in Africa and Asia but opposed by many of those in the West."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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28 June, 2006

Defending Christians

Excerpts from an interview with Patrick Hynes, author of "In Defense of the Religious Right"

Q: Quite a few people and even some bestselling books are saying the GOP is the party of theocracy. Any truth in this?

Hynes: None at all. Conservative Christians within the GOP don't agree on their theology, so to say they are trying to establish a theocracy is an ignorant smear.

Q: During your research, did you come across genuine American theocrats equivalent to the Iranian mullahs?

Hynes: No. The claim that conservative Christians in America are akin to the Iranian mullahs is an update to a similar smear that surfaced after September 11th - back then, the Religious Right was likened almost daily to the Taliban. This much is true: no matter the point in history, liberal pundits and extremist politicians will compare conservative Christians in America to whichever Islamo-fascist regime threatens to kill innocent Americans.

Q: How much impact will the Religious Right have in this November's midterm election? How much in '08?

Hynes: It is too soon to tell whether the Religious Right will engage the 2006 election with the same fervor it engaged the 2004 election or if conservative Christians-demoralized by the ineffectiveness of the Republican majority in Washington-will say home. Social issues or, if you prefer, "moral values" issues generally play a greater role in our public dialogue during a campaign than during the congressional session. They will so again this year and that fact will motivate many Christians to vote. If it motivates them as powerfully as in the past, their voice will dominate the public dialogue again this election year. If not, Republicans will probably lose their majority.

Q: Some media conservatives seem actually uncomfortable with the Religious Right. Why?

Hynes: Conservatives have their elites, too. And, of course, there are different kinds of conservatives. But those who dismiss the Religious Right do so out of ignorance, I believe. These folks generally operate under old, worn out stereotypes and believe polite society would be embarrassed if Christians were to represent the public face of conservatism. This mind set is the mirror image of the "conservative Christians = Iranian mullahs" strain of liberalism. There is this idea, held by elites on both sides, that conservative Christians hurt the GOP as much as they help it. This is demonstrably untrue, as my book shows.

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More Leftist projection. One of Australia's leading Leftist whiners, Phillip Adams, has just accused Prime Minister Howard of being a "hater". Such an accusation aimed at the mild-mannered and humble John Howard is implausible on the face of it and Adams produces not a shred of proof for his accusation: not even one published word that Howard has uttered. The only "evidence" Adams seems to have for his accusation is that Howard does not usually appoint political opponents to top government jobs -- hardly a practice exclusive to Howard or to conservatives generally. By contrast, Mark Latham, Howard's Leftist opponent in the last election admitted openly what a hater he is. In the usual Leftist way, Adams is just seeing in conservatives what is in fact characteristic of the Left.

Chris Brand has just put up a new lot of posts and among them was a piece of news that rather pleased me. It was about the Flynn Effect -- the fact that average IQ scores rose throughout most of the 20th century. I speculated previously that the improvement has probably approached an asymptote (limit) by now and Chris draws our attention to a confirmation of that.

Canada buys gunless "warships": "Canada's defence minister Gordon O'Connor announced plans Monday to buy three new warships, the first in a series of military expenditures expected to top $15 billion ($18.2 billion). The three military supply ships will help "Canadian forces to fulfil their domestic maritime security priorities and to support Canada's foreign policy objectives," O'Connor said. "It is an important step in implementing the government's Canada first defence strategy ... at home and on the world stage," he said."

Cuba's bad medicine: "A scathing report on the health care system in Cuba has been smuggled out of the country and published on a Norwegian website. The report was written by distinguished Dr. Hilda Molina, formerly of the Cuban National Assembly, and it describes a system of apartheid where foreign medical tourists receive quality care that is denied to Cubans... Even with high priority, though, foreigners may actually have their health jeopardized by the system. They are frequently pressured to have unnecessary treatments or operations, often by doctors without prerequisite qualifications. Foreign patients are also forced into paying for overpriced and frequently unnecessary Cuban-made pharmaceuticals, many of indeterminate, sometimes even hazardous, value."

First homosexual divorce turns ugly: "A year after legalising gay marriage, Spain is now seeing its first gay divorce, complete with a custody fight over the couple's dogs. The claimant is asking for the right to stay in the marital home and to take custody of their pets. The suit added that his ex-partner would be granted visiting rights to see the animals, a report on the website of newspaper El Mundo said. Council officials said divorce proceedings were private and would only confirm that the unnamed men were married in a Madrid suburb last October, three months after Spain became the fourth country to legalise same-sex marriages. The claimant said in a petition that he had dedicated his life to the relationship, giving up a modelling career and abandoning his dog hairdressing business to follow his partner who had found work in France".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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27 June, 2006

AUSTRALIA'S "NOBLE SAVAGES"

In their hatred of their own society, a persistent Leftist theme has been the myth of the "Noble savage" (Rousseau's term). Reality would have made "warlike" or "murderous" a better adjective than "noble" for most primitive people but Leftists are driven by their fantasies, not by reality.

Australia has a bunch of just the sort of folk Leftists idealize -- stone-age black people rudely wrenched into the wider world by the arrival of the British in 1788. And modern Australia has plenty of fantasy-driven Leftists too. So the fantasists concerned (notable among them being the late "Nugget" Coombes) managed some decades ago to reverse Australia's long-standing policy of assimilating the aborigines concerned into white society. The do-gooders managed to send about half of the blacks off to isolated and undeveloped places near their ancestral homelands where they could live in communal splendour according to their own ways and value systems. They were also of course given unconditional welfare so were not obliged to work. Big god Gubmint would look after them and supply all their needs. Nugget and all the other do-gooders went to bed every night after that basking in the warm glow of what a wonderfully kind and enlightened thing they had done.

But what did they expect the blacks to do? There was virtually nothing they could do in their isolated camps. They could certainly not get jobs there and with no need to hunt or plant they could not even gain the self-respect of supporting themselves and their families by their own efforts.

So they drank -- and any substance that could be abused they abused. They sank into a life not too different from some conceptions of hell. When they were not too stoned out of their brains for it, fistfights became a daily occurrence among them, black women were savagely beaten as a matter of routine and sexual abuse of children became so rife that you now have black toddlers with sexually transmitted diseases.

All that has now at long last gained the attention of the Australian media and there have been numerous articles about it in all the papers. And none of it was news to me or to the lady in my life. I grew up with a black's camp just down the other end of the street and the lady in my life has spent years working in isolated Aboriginal communities as a child-health nurse and general medical carer. Recently, however, I did put up on Australian Politics three articles from the papers about the situation in the aboriginal communities and in response to that I received an interesting email which I reproduce below.

"I'm following your posts concerning Aboriginal sexual abuse with interest. We lived and worked in a number of Aboriginal communities for years. As an RN working in remote clinics I found it endlessly frustrating to be surrounded by evidence of abuse yet unable to do any more than treat the effects. There was enormous pressure to not "make waves" or become involved in any way and it was made very plain that any RN who did so would be promptly removed from the community.

Evidence of STDs (or any other evidence of abuse) in young children was passed on to the Sexual Health Team (in the NT) and they were supposed to deal with it. To the best of my knowledge this information was never passed on the the police for follow-up action. I was never asked for further information but instead given repeated warnings not to become involved.

There's no discernible effort to bring the perpetrators of sexual abuse to justice, not at any level. The communities --through fear or complicity--maintain a wall of silence, the police have little or no information to enable them to act (even if they were prepared to, which I strongly doubt) and the Health Department had no effective program in place to identify at-risk kids and remove them from the community.

Interestingly, the lower the standard of accommodation for visiting health teams, the less likely we were to see them. The problem isn't fixable.

Sadly, I have to agree with the lady. I don't think the problem is fixable either. And I think most people who know the situation well would be inclined to agree. Paternalism would help alleviate the situation but the outraged screams of the Left at any such idea will probably make the political cost too high for the Australian government to do much in that direction. The "equality" mythology of the Left has effectively consigned the Aborigines to hell and that is where they will stay.

I have put up more reports on the topic today on Australian Politics

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ELSEWHERE

An Update from the Minuteman Fence Project Manager (excerpt) : "Chris Simcox has kept his promise and volunteers have begun building the Minuteman Border Fence. Chris has asked me (Peter Kunz) to give you a quick update on the activities and planning for the current fence project and our next site that starts in July... First, let me say thanks to the brave ranchers who are stepping up to put their lives on the line to stop the illegal invasion. They live and work within spitting distance of the Mexican border every day. These brave men and women are working side by side with Minutemen in this war zone they call home, allowing us to secure America. Second, let's be clear. Not every single mile of the border or every ranch or rancher is the same. The full-on Israeli-style Security Fence is our primary design and first choice for construction. However, when circumstances dictate adjustment to a Border Fence with barbed wire and a vehicle barrier or another design to meet local requirements, we will make the necessary adaptations-and keep building. Our plan: Do the job until our government does its duty"

African aid fails again: "There is a huge gap between the declarations of the Gleneagles summiteers, the pleas of "Make Poverty History" demonstrators, and reality, according to a survey by The Times. While the awareness of the problem is greater, the aid flow has gone into reverse in some countries because donor nations have been "double-counting" the debt relief agreed. "What they did at Gleneagles was long on political symbolism and short on practical help," said Professor William Easterly, an expert on aid at New York University and the author of the forthcoming book, The White Man's Burden.... While the West must shoulder some responsibility for Africa's dire plight, last year's commitments to help the continent were based on a pledge from African leaders for good governance and transparency. Over the past year several African leaders have increased dictatorial powers while fresh allegations of huge corruption have emerged. Of the world's top ten failed states in the world in 2006, six are African."

Christians still 'swine' and Jews 'apes' in Saudi schools: "Saudi Arabia has been accused of continuing to foster religious hatred in its schools, despite its repeated assurances since the September 11 attacks that it would rewrite textbooks that refer to Jews as "apes" and Christians as "swine". The charges come after Freedom House, a non-partisan American research group which monitors civil rights worldwide, examined textbooks that it smuggled out of Saudi Arabia. The group found that despite promises of change from leading Saudi officials, including Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, and Turki al-Faisal, the ambassador to America, schoolbooks in the kingdom still promote hatred of those who do not practise its strict form of Wahhabi Islam."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites 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)

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.

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26 June, 2006

Time for St. Andrew's Comeuppance?

Post excerpted from Ankle-biting Pundits

R. Andrew Newman has a piece in today's American Spectator that I hope will only be the first in a long series of indignant swipes at "excitable Andrew" Sullivan for his truly disgusting "Christianist" smear. "If you fail to subscribe sincerely and personally to the faith as interpreted by Andrew Sullivan, you’re a Christianist and you have no business in the public square," writes Newman. He is, of course, right

Let me be clear: The one time I met Andrew and the man he calls "his better half," I found them to be utterly pleasant guys; smart, convivial, and in the traditional sense of the term, gay. But his recently over-the-top rants about faith in public life are beyond the pale.

If you have not yet done so, I urge you to purchase a copy of In Defense of the Religious Right and consider well the eighth chapter, titled "I Scream, You Scream, but We Are the Mainstream." In it I lay out in painstaking detail how, "The Religious Right is very much in the middle of mainstream American opinion. While the culture wars in America often find talking heads from opposing points of view screaming at one another on cable talk shows, conservative Christians are increasingly speaking for Middle America, defending shared American values against extremism from the political Left."

And in the next chapter, titled "Onward, Secular Soldiers," I point out how every major battle in our culture wars has been launched by secular liberals, not by religious conservatives seeking to "impose their values on everyone else."

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You too can do it

Below are some of the abstracts from the academic journal Intelligence. Although the articles concerned do of course assume a considerable academic background in the subject, I am optimistic that many readers here would be able to get the drift of the articles concerned. If you find the few papers I have grabbed below to be interesting, log on and read the rest.

Exponential correlation of IQ and the wealth of nations: "Plots of mean IQ and per capita real Gross Domestic Product for groups of 81 and 185 nations, as collected by Lynn and Vanhanen, are best fitted by an exponential function of the form: GDP = a * 10b*(IQ), where a and b are empirical constants. Exponential fitting yields markedly higher correlation coefficients than either linear or quadratic. The implication of exponential fitting is that a given increment in IQ, anywhere along the IQ scale, results in a given percentage in GDP, rather than a given dollar increase as linear fitting would predict. As a rough rule of thumb, an increase of 10 points in mean IQ results in a doubling of the per capita GDP."

Testing the cross-racial generality of Spearman's hypothesis in two samples : "Spearman's hypothesis states that racial differences in IQ between Blacks (B) and Whites (W) are due primarily to differences in the g factor. This hypothesis is often confirmed, but it is less certain whether it generalizes to other races. We therefore tested its cross-racial generality by comparing American subjects of European descent (W) to American Hispanics (H) in two different databases. The first [Centers for Disease Control (1988). Health status of Vietnam veterans. Journal of the American Medical Association 259, 2701-2719; Centers for Disease Control (1989). Health status of Vietnam veterans: Vol IV. Psychological and neuropsychological evaluation. Atlanta, Georgia: Center for Environmental Health and Injury Control] contains 4462 middle-aged Armed Services Veterans males, and the second database (NLSY1979) holds 11,625 young male and female adults. Both samples are fairly representative of the general American population. Race differences in general intelligence g were calculated and vectors of test scores were correlated with the vectors of the tests' g loadings, following Jensen [Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger]. W scored about 0.8 S.D. above H. The racial difference on the tests correlated significantly with the g-loadings of the tests in the VES database, but less so in the NLSY database. We therefore conclude that the present study supports, but does not unequivocally verify, the cross-racial generality of the Spearman's hypothesis."

g and the measurement of Multiple Intelligences: A response to Gardner : "Specifically, Gardner questioned the construct validity of g, and suggested that the measures we used to test his theory were contaminated with verbal and logical demands. In this reply, we explain that the construct validity of g is well established, pointing out (a) that g is expressed in a wide variety of tasks (not all of which are "school-like" tasks), (b) that g predicts many important criterion variables (not only academic achievement), and (c) that g has a well-established biological basis. With regard to the measures used in our study, we point out that the verbal content of those tasks is unlikely to contribute to individual differences in task performance, and that the logical content of those tasks is consistent with Gardner's description of his intelligence domains.

On the high intelligence and cognitive achievements of Jews in Britain: "A number of studies in the United States have found that Jews obtain higher average IQs than white gentiles. This paper examines whether this is also the case in Britain. Three early studies are summarized that found that Jews in Britain have mean IQs in the range of 110-113. New data are presented for two nationally representative samples of 7-16 year olds in which Jews had mean IQs of 108.5 and 107.7. Taking all five studies into account, it is proposed that the best reading of the IQ of Jews in Britain is 110. It is proposed that the best reading of the IQ of Jews in the United States is 109.5. Data are presented for the numbers of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society in relation to their proportion in the population. It is found that Jews were over-represented by a factor of 3.7 in the years 1901 through 1940 and by a factor of 7.6 in the years 1950 through 2003. Data are also presented for the numbers Jewish Nobel prize-winners in Britain and the United States for 1901 through 2003. It is shown that Jews are over-represented among Nobel prize-winners by a factor of 8.0 in Britain and 12.3 in the United States. It is proposed that the over-representation of Jews among Nobel prize-winners can be partly explained by the higher average Jewish IQ.

For slightly easier reading, Chris Brand has just done another installment of his news about IQ

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Illegal Immigrants Free To Go: "Local police said they intercepted 20 illegal Mexican immigrants, but were ordered by immigration officials to let them go free. Belmont County Sheriff Fred Thompson said his officers were instructed by federal immigration services to let all 20 illegal immigrants go free, and said his department has no choice but to follow the orders from immigration officials. Thompson said officers stopped a van at 3 a.m. Tuesday which was traveling the wrong direction on Interstate 470 in St. Clairsville. The officer discovered 20 illegal Mexican immigrants inside the van, including three who were previously deported. The officer immediately contacted immigration officials, who told him to let all 20 immigrants go".

Homosexual couple could not resist boys: "A gay foster couple were jailed yesterday for sexually abusing boys in their care. Ian Wathey, 41, was sentenced to five years and Craig Faunch, 32, to six years at Leeds Crown Court. They have been in a civil partnership for five weeks. The couple, from West Yorkshire, had denied the allegations at an earlier trial. Wakefield Metropolitan District Council approved Wathey and Faunch as foster carers three years ago but within months they were assaulting boys from troubled homes, the court was told. The two were found guilty of abusing four boys aged between 8 and 14".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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25 June, 2006

CAR REPORT

I have been doing this blog since July 2002 and in all that time I cannot remember saying anything about the cars I drive -- which makes me a rather unusual male blogger, I think. So just to show that I am not totally weird, I think I will say a bit about that now as a Sunday reflection.

I have always been a demon driver. People who get into my car often emerge shaking. So I buy very small cars -- which enable me to flash through traffic down lanes that are not supposed to be there. I remember one occasion when I upset some guy in a big Ford without being aware of it and he decided to chase me to remonstrate with me. I was just driving in my normal way but it still stretched him to chase me. By the time he caught up with me he was too exhausted to say much to me. If I had been aware of him chasing me, he would never have caught up.

But the cars I drive are not powerful ones. Not at all ones that rev-heads like The Good Blair would approve of. My first car was a VW and those since have always been small and humble too. Though I did at one stage have a Mini K -- which was an Australian version of the Morris Mini Minor but with an 1100cc motor in it -- and did that thing go! There is NO car that is as much fun to drive as a Mini.

At the beginning of 2005, I had two cars -- a 1991 Ford Festiva (really a Korean-made Kia) and a 1995 Daihatsu Charade. The Festiva was as near as I had come to a Mini in terms of fun to drive. It was a real Go-Kart. But my son Joe was just starting university so I gave him the choice of which car he wanted to drive and he chose the Festiva. It was a VERY old car as small cars go, however, so at the beginning of this year the motor blew up and I reluctantly gave it away and gave Joe the Daihatsu instead.

I then bought a one-year-old ex-hire Toyota Echo off Hertz for myself. I had always thought that my Daihatsu was the easiest car to drive ever made but the Echo was even easier. If you see them being driven around the place they are almost always flying and that is because they are such a Swiss-watch of a car. They feel like a single thing to drive rather than a mechanical device.

But that was not enough. I have always wanted a really old car as well, and now that age has slowed me down I thought it was time. Vintage cars are of course wonderful but you virtually need to be a mechanic to keep them going so I have compromised on a veteran car -- and not such a veteran one at that. I have just bought a 1963 Humber Super Snipe off a family who had been driving it since new. It is a big old English car and, as such, bound to need lots of work to keep it going but I have a mechanic friend living just over the road so I think I can afford it! I remember that when they were new the Humbers were being advertised as being able to cruise on the open road at 100 mph but I am not going to try that. I am sure it would blow up if I tried it at this stage in its life.

The difference in handling of the two cars is of course enormous but I used to be a cab-driver many years ago so I am not bothered by big clumsy cars. The style of the Humber makes up for all else, in my view, particularly as the car has been very well-maintained and looks immaculate.

Collecting the Humber yesterday morning was rather fun. Everybody who heard about the impending purchase was enthusiastic and none more than an old friend who was born and bred in Coventry, England, where the Humber was built. The first car he ever drove was a Humber so he couldn't wait to see my Humber and came along with me to collect it. And my stepson Paul was equally enthusiastic. He and his wife drove us out to collect it and both were delighted by the car.

When we got the car home, we all had steak pies, teacake and tea on my verandah to celebrate.



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Wow! Mike Adams really socks it to his employers in his latest column: "North Carolina's most notorious bigots, racists and segregationists are no longer found within the leadership of the KKK. They are found within the leadership of the UNC system.... In fact, as of now, I am abolishing the requirement that my students conduct themselves in an honest and truthful manner. I want each one to have the character and integrity of a UNC administrator."

The movies misrepresent business: "Fundamentally these film-makers and lobbyists are anti-capitalist. They equate business activity with greed. They would probably be happier in a world where everyone worked in the public sector, and no one made any profits. We have seen this world, those of us who remember it. It was called communism and it reduced the human condition to squalor and servitude. The business corporation, by contrast, is one of the most benign institutions ever created by humankind. Men and women have banded together and risked some of their wealth to create new wealth. In the process they have generated employment, trade and opportunity. They have not usually done this by theft and trickery, but by offering people goods and services they will freely pay for. In doing so many of them have made themselves richer, but they have made humankind richer still. At the heart of this dislike of business is a complete misunderstanding of how it works. There is a primitive and naive view that one person can only get rich at someone else's expense, and that if a business is making money, someone else must be losing it. This "zero sum game" fallacy completely misses the point, which is that business activity creates wealth instead of just redistributing it."

Mohammed was a capitalist: "Is Islam compatible with modernity? This has become a hotly debated question in the past few decades... Most Islamists would reply to this question with a resounding "no!" Since they perceive Islam as an all-encompassing socio-political system, they regard capitalism as a rival and an enemy... However such radical rejections of the capitalist economy don't seem well-suited to the theological attitude and the historical experience of Islam towards business and profit-making. As a religion founded by a businessman -- Prophet Muhammad was a successful merchant for the greater part of his life -- and one that has cherished trade from its very beginning, Islam can in fact be very compatible with a capitalist economy supplemented by a set of moral values that emphasize the care for the poor and the needy. This interesting compatibility between Islam and capitalism has been studied extensively. A classic work on this theme is Maxime Rodinson's famed book, Islam and Capitalism (1966)."

Bipartisan effort to expose P.A. treatment of Christians: " Two congressional representatives are seeking their colleagues' support for a resolution condemning the alleged persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority. The "Dear Colleague" letter sent this week by Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) said Christians around the world are at risk of losing access to the most ancient and holy Christian sites. "It's time for Congress, the president and the international community to address the systematic destruction of the oldest Christian community in the world," they wrote. "Since the Palestinian Authority gained control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the political, social and economic status of the Christian community has declined precipitously."

Pennsylvania city to crack down on illegal immigration: "With tensions rising and the Police Department and municipal budget stretched thin, Hazleton is about to embark on one of the toughest crackdowns on undocumented immigrants anywhere in the United States. Last week, the mayor of this former coal town introduced, and the City Council tentatively approved, a measure that would revoke the business licenses of companies that employ undocumented immigrants; impose $1,000 fines on landlords who rent to such immigrants; and make English the official language of the city. "Illegal immigrants are destroying the city," said Mayor Lou Barletta, a Republican. "I don't want them here, period." Barletta said he had no choice but to act after two undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic were charged last month with shooting and killing a 29-year-old man. Other recent incidents involving undocumented immigrants have rattled this city 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia, including the arrest of a 14-year-old boy for firing a gun at a playground"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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24 June, 2006

Turning the Tables on Abusive Tort Lawyers

At long last, there's good news in the fight against "jackpot justice" tort claims and the nefarious law firms that file them. In courts and legislatures across the country, fraudulent lawsuits are being exposed, and the abusive tort lawyers that file them are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Most notable is the recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the nation's most notorious class-action law firm. For four decades, Milberg Weiss has filed hundreds of dubious class-action lawsuits and wrung billions of dollars from terrified companies.

Now, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted Milberg Weiss and individual partners on multiple counts of conspiracy, racketeering, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. For over twenty years, according to the U.S. Attorney, the firm brazenly paid kickbacks to repeat plaintiffs in order to serve as lead counsel in class-action lawsuits. Worse, according to prosecutors, the firm continued to do so while aware that it was under investigation.

Long-known for overzealously employing "professional plaintiffs" to extort settlements and jury awards from companies (for example, individual defendant Seymour Lazar served as plaintiff in no fewer than seventy lawsuits), Milberg Weiss stands accused of the very type of misconduct that it wantonly alleged against companies and even entire industries. An even greater irony is that Milberg Weiss faces the same "death sentence" suffered by companies like Arthur Andersen, one of its frequent past targets.

Those of us who have witnessed Milberg Weiss's abusive tactics through the years can be forgiven for taking delight in seeing the chickens finally coming home to roost. As former Milberg Weiss mastermind Bill Lerach once said, "the whole industry was a fraud," and, "so much fraud, so little time." In the case of abusive class-action law firms like Milberg Weiss, we couldn't agree more.

In similar fashion, rail company and frequent asbestos-lawsuit target CSX has turned the tables against the law firm of Peirce, Raimond & Coulter, which had filed literally thousands of asbestos claims against CSX and other companies. CSX discovered that plaintiffs in one of Peirce's lawsuits fraudulently substituted each other's x-rays in order to duplicate advantageous diagnoses. Accordingly, CSX sued the employees, who confessed and testified that they asked Peirce attorneys to dismiss the lawsuit, but that Peirce nevertheless proceeded with the case. On that basis, CSX sued the Peirce firm for fraud, misrepresentation, and negligence, the very types of claims that Peirce had alleged in thousands of lawsuits. CSX further claims that Peirce maintained the x-rays and knew about the false diagnoses, and that it repeatedly retained a physician whom a federal court accused of manufacturing false silicosis diagnoses.

More here

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Top banker condemns British legal system: "The Governor of the Bank of England last night delivered a ferocious attack on Britain's civil legal system, condemning it as a monopoly run mainly for lawyers' benefit and urging the Government to reform it. Mervyn King told City leaders at the Mansion House in London that the Bank's painful experience of the 13-year case brought against it over the collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) showed that the system of civil commercial law was gravely flawed. Denouncing the case and its 100 million pounds in legal costs as "the most expensive fishing expedition in history," Mr King said: "It matters that there are simple, clear and timely ways of resolving disputes. What the BCCI case revealed was a legal system incapable of guaranteeing that." ... He noted that the action against the Bank of England over its role in BCCI's 1991 collapse had set new trial records. "How can a case described by the trial judge himself as built `not even on sand but on air' take 13 years and over 100 million pounds in costs to come to a conclusion?" he asked".

Some job aptitudes inborn: "The researchers are finding that vocational interests are primarily the products of genetics and unique, or nonshared, environmental factors, with shared family experiences holding less sway. The research may indicate why some individuals are predisposed to careers in engineering. It might also explain the high occurrence of autism in the families of engineers. Wendy Johnson, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota, is in the vanguard of the research. She and her colleagues are using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to reveal the relative placement and volume of gray matter in the brain. They are also using the technique to determine to what degree the brain is influenced by genetic vs. environmental factors."

Fireworks Over Fireworks: "As we approach July 4 each year, the bureaucratic busybodies kick into high gear, warning us against a hallowed tradition and its immense fun. "Fireworks are a wonderful way to celebrate Independence Day," New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted on June 8, "but it's critical that we leave it to the professionals. . . . In the hands of an untrained individual, fireworks can have deadly consequences." Apparently, John Adams's famous exhortation that untrained individuals celebrate the country's birthday with "Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other" cuts no ice with the mayor and his ilk. On this, as on so many matters, poor John's advice is far too radical for our safety-cap-and-security-camera age."



French wine going down the drain: "At least one in ten of Europe's vineyards must be dug up under radical European Commission proposals to help the embattled wine industry to fight back against increasingly tough competition from New World growers. The survival plan is designed to drain the infamous wine lake, to remove restrictive winemaking and labelling practices and to encourage the production and marketing of quality wines for which there is growing demand.... Currently, EU funds are used to store and distil the wine, turning it into ethanol for cars and factories."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 2004 Voter Theft Theory Debunked: "Cleveland's leading newspaper has checked out a new article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claiming that Republicans "stole" the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, and concluded that Kennedy's story is "nonsense." ... But the Cleveland Plain Dealer - regarded as anything but a conservative newspaper - headlines a June 18 article: "Rest assured, we checked out Election 2004 thoroughly," and states: "There was no shortage of mistakes made in vote counting. There were voters who should have been registered but weren't, polling places with lines that were too long and without enough voting machines, and decisions from [Secretary of State Ken] Blackwell that appeared to be partisan. "All these mistakes and misjudgments took votes from both candidates, but probably more from Kerry. But they didn't add up to nearly enough votes to swing Ohio from Bush to Kerry. "The mistakes were bipartisan in nature and not a result of Republican chicanery." The Plain Dealer article by Ted Diadiun points to several instances when Kennedy "ignored" the facts"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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23 June, 2006

Brookes News Update

The US economy: past and present: Although President Bush's capital gains taxes contributed significantly to the current boom the economic consequences of the Fed's loose monetary policies have still let loose economic forces whose gloomy outcome is as inevitable as night and day
Socialist economist screws up on free trade and Keynesian policies: John Quiggin, a socialist and a professor of economics is at it again. Once again he is presenting Keynesian fallacies as undisputed economic truths that governments need to implement as economic policy. In support of this view he gave a thoroughly distorted interpretation of nineteenth century booms. It's time he went back to school
The ABC is so ideologically depraved that it is beyond salvation: If Windschuttle, Albrechtsen, Gallagher, Skala, Brunton and the rest of the crowd think they can somehow successfully challenge the ABC's foul political ethos they need look no further than Koval whose mephitic presence is proof positive that the organisation is beyond salvation
Google's thought police censor exposes of Islamofascists: While Google's thought police cooperate with the Beijing regime and Islamofascist sympathizers the Baltimore County Muslim Council revealed the true face of Muslim tolerance by demanding that the Baltimore County school system remove the Jewish holidays from the 2006-07 school calendar
Why Islam is in a shambles: Islam is in a shambles, long past fixing itself, much less ruling the rest of the world. Muslims who consider themselves peaceful should take the fateful step and join the free and emancipated family of humanity. There is no going back. Barbarism is in our past
Democrats hypocritical on marriage: Traditional marriage is, in fact, America's best hope for keeping our society secure, our neighborhoods at peace, and our children safe from harm. Without marriage, we might as well put away the American flag and replace it with the white flag of surrender
Israel says "Never Again!": Jews were deported from Gaza. Thousands of Jews were uprooted. Again! All communities were destroyed, again! Viable and successful businesses were ruined

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ELSEWHERE

Reliapundit has been pointing out for years that the Fannie Mae scandal is similar to but bigger than Enron -- a point that is now being taken up elsewhere. How come the Fannie Mae scandal is hardly ever condemned and that none of the fraudsters have gone to jail? The fact that they were all prominent Democrats would not be relevant would it?

More lies from the Communist News Network: They claim that repeal of a compulsory helment law for motorcycle riders in Florida caused a big leap in deaths among riders. David Friedman points out that their own figures show the exact opposite.

The 16th century megadeaths among the Aztecs and other central Americans have always been blamed on diseases such as smallpox brought with them to the Americas by the white conquistadores. It now seems, however, that the deaths were caused by a native virus such as a hantavirus -- a virus that became more virulent because of a severe drought. Don't expect to read that in the media, though. White men must be blamed for everything.



Rather finally gets the boot: "The American broadcaster Dan Rather has left CBS News in a bitter departure after his 44 years as reporter, anchor and the face of the network was clouded by a reporting scandal over President George Bush's military record... Rather said his departure on Tuesday came after "a protracted struggle" with CBS executives who, he said, had "not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there" since he stepped down as anchor in March last year... Some said the departure of Rather, whose reputation was tarnished in 2004 by a subsequently discredited report on Mr Bush's military record, was an unceremonious end. "You never expect someone who's been the face of the network for so long to just be given an office which is essentially a closet, and then not to be given air time and then to have it leaked to the press that he's being booted," the New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta said. "It's jarring.""

The lying NYT again: "In Wednesday's "Israeli Attack Kills 3 Gaza Children," filed from Jerusalem, reporter Ian Fisher makes the now-discredited claim that an Israeli airstrike killed a family of seven Palestinians on a Gaza beach.... Perhaps Fisher should have picked up a copy of Monday's Jerusalem Post, which discussed how those vaunted "human rights officials" (from no less a body than Human Rights Watch itself) are backtracking from their initial assertions of Israeli blame: "On Monday, the Human Rights Watch, while sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the [Israeli Defense Force's] exonerating findings."

Disgusting self-publicist: "A descendant of England's first slave trader knelt in chains in front of a crowd of 25,000 Africans this month and asked forgiveness for his ancestor's actions. Andrew Hawkins, 37, a youth worker from Liskeard, Cornwall, offered his apologies during an ethnic festival in the former West African British colony of The Gambia, as a gesture of reconciliation between Europeans and Africans. He was forgiven by Isatou Njie Saidy, Vice-President of the country, which remains a Commonwealth member and is now a popular tourist destination."

More confirmation of a very old finding: "There is clear evidence that men perform better at spatial tasks and women outpace men on tests of verbal usage and perceptual speed, according to research conducted by Wendy Johnson, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota, and Thomas Bouchard, director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research. The findings, which will be published in the journal Intelligence, indicate that there is little difference in how the genders fare as far as general intelligence, however. But since engineering positions are overwhelmingly filled by men, this further supports the theory that spatial abilities are key to success in the field".

Different laws for Democrat politicians: "Mayor John M. Fabrizi admitted Tuesday he had abused cocaine while in office and said he wanted to apologize "to all the people of the city" but had no plans to resign. The admission followed the inadvertent release of an FBI document in which an alleged drug dealer claimed an associate had a videotape of the mayor using cocaine. In a tearful speech to about 200 city employees and residents in City Council chambers Tuesday, Fabrizi said he had not used drugs in 18 months and had sought help for a drug addiction that he had hoped to handle privately".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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22 June, 2006

BELGIAN STATE GUILTY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

It is attacking the "Brussels Journal" editor via his children

In a Report published today by the Libertarian Alliance, the Belgian Government is accused of systematic human rights abuses similar in nature and extent to those in a post-Soviet republic. Journalists and homeschoolers are not safe in Belgium. The Report - The Belgian State versus Home Schooling: The Persecution of Dr Alexandra Colen and Dr Paul Belien - by Professor John Kersey, is published by The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute based in London. Professor Kersey finds:

* That Dr Paul Belien, Editor of The Brussels Journal, has faced official and semi-official intimidation over an article he published in favour of the right to self-defence;

* That Dr Belien and his wife, Dr Alexandra Colen (who is a Member of the Belgian Parliament), face a systematic attack on their right to educate their children at home.

Commenting on the Report, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, says: "For a journalist, there can be few rights more fundamental than to freedom of speech. For parents, there can be no right more fundamental than of being able to bring up their children in what they consider the right values. We should all be shocked that these rights have been systematically violated in a country that is a member state of the European Union and of the Council of Europe - and that not long ago passed laws allowing citizens of other Western countries such as Israel to be put on trial for alleged offences committed outside Belgium.

"In other European Union member states, we should be particularly concerned. If homeschooling can be made illegal in Belgium, it can be made illegal in any other state. In Britain at the moment, parents have an absolute right to homseschool their children. The precedents set in the Belien and other cases may be applied here.

"As Director of the Libertarian Alliance, I have today written to the Belgian Prime Minister and to the Human Rights Commissioners of the European Union and of the Council of Europe. We require an assurance that the persecution of the Belien family will be at once ended. "We encourage all others people who may be concerned about this denial of fundamental human rights to use the names and addresses supplied in the Report and to write letters of their own.

[Two email addresses: Frank Vandenbroucke Minister of Education in the Flemish Government: here and the inspector-general at the ministry, Kristien Arnouts: here (I think the latter is female)]

Source

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ELSEWHERE

The Gaza beach explosion of over a week ago in which members of an Arab family died was widely attributed to Israeli shelling. There is an investigative report from a German newspaper here which suggests that the whole story is another "Pallywood" episode -- a Palestinian fake.

Nutty Episcopalians forget that the Bible was entirely written by Jews: "The 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church today passed a resolution essentially condemning the Bible as an "anti-Jewish" document. Not only does the resolution aim to address perceptions of anti-Jewish prejudice in the Bible and Episcopal liturgy, but it suggests that such prejudice is actually "expressed in...Christian Scriptures and liturgical texts." Originated in the Committee on Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music, Resolution C001 directs the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to "collect and develop materials to assist members of the Church to address anti-Jewish prejudice expressed in and stirred by portions of Christian scriptures and liturgical texts, with suggestions for preaching, congregational education, and lectionary use, and to report to the 76th General Convention." Both houses of the Episcopal Church Convention passed the resolution, including a 68 percent approval in the House of Deputies on Thursday.

Presbyterians have second thoughts about anti-Israel bias: "The 2004 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly mandate to "initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel" is poised to be erased, following the action of a committee of General Assembly on June 17. The plan will not become official until the whole General Assembly considers it later this week, but the news from the committee is good. It seems unlikely that divestment would occur-unless the situation in the Middle East or in the denomination were to change radically".

The Lords come to the rescue again: "The House of Lords yesterday defied the Commons by insisting that, to combat election fraud, everybody should sign their name and give their date of birth before they are given a vote. For the second time in a fortnight, ministers failed to persuade peers to drop demands for tough new measures designed to defeat vote rigging. The Government has agreed to force everyone seeking a postal vote to provide their signature and date of birth. Peers want the reform extended to voting in person".

The genetics of aggression: "Some men are predisposed to more belligerent and macho behaviour than others because of the presence of an aggression gene, researchers in America suggest. A study of more than 500 European men has shown that a tendency to be intemperate and confrontational may be linked to the presence of one of two genes involved in the activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin. The research, by a team at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that people who had a "low-activity" MAOA (monoamine oxidase A) gene were more prone to violence."



How awful for the arrogant French elite! "But even as protesters sought to cast McDonald's as the embodiment of all that is wrong with fast food and American culture, the French never stopped eating its hamburgers. Indeed, for all the attacks on the company, McDonald's operating profit in France last year was second only to that of McDonald's in the United States."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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21 June, 2006

MORE ON THE U.N.

United Nations deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown has a singular view of what constitutes international diplomacy. He said in a speech recently that the American public is ignorant of the importance and effectiveness of the UN because of the U.S. government's tolerance of "too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping." .... In fact, during its six decades, the overall record of the United Nations has been so rife with failure, corruption and incompetence -- to say nothing of poor judgment, rudeness and condescension, as exemplified by Mr. Malloch Brown -- that it deserves to be disdained.

The organization's best known interventions -- attempts to attain and maintain peace -- too often have been exercises in lowest-common-denominator diplomacy that progresses at a glacial pace; and its essays into public health and environmental protection are frequently disastrous failures. The UN's leaders and programs consistently lack an appreciation for the relationship between wealth creation and public and environmental health. Mr. Malloch Brown's boss, Secretary General Kofi Annan, has expressed the hope that concern for "intellectual property" will not "get into the way" of producing and distributing drugs for a potential avian-flu pandemic. In other words, companies that make drugs and vaccines should abandon their intellectual property at Mr. Annan's whim.

Even if the recent incidents of corruption, dishonesty and profiteering -- exemplified by the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal and its coverup, sexual abuse of refugees by UN officials and peacekeepers, the botched investigation of the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri, and procurement scams -- are anomalies, it is hard to explain away the anti-social outcomes of business as usual.

Nothing the UN has inflicted on innovation is worse than its record on biotechnology applied to agriculture and food production. At the UN's Task Force on Biotech Foods (which operates under the auspices of something called the Codex Alimentarius Commission, itself a creature of the World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization), only gene-spliced products are addressed, a scope that has been condemned by experts repeatedly as unscientific and indefensible. The work of the task force prevents the wider diffusion of a superior technology for agriculture and food production and is directly detrimental to farmers, consumers, academic researchers and industry worldwide. It will exacerbate malnutrition and starvation in the developing world....

The UN's assault on innovation and wealth creation demands a counter-attack. The United States and other like-minded nations can provide the firepower by withholding funds and participation from UN agencies and programs that are corrupt or incompetent. Better still, they should cease paying any dues at all until the entire organization undergoes fundamental and genuine reform.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing article here pointing out how anti-American New Zealanders are. The article really has no explanation for the phenomenon. But the explanation is simple. New Zealanders hate Australians too. Because of their past and present socialism, New Zealand is much poorer than Australia and their more capable young people often migrate to Australia for the higher wages. New Zealanders hate that. It has given them a national inferiority complex -- manifested by hating anyone who is more successful than they are. And as the world's most powerful nation, America is hated most of all. New Zealanders as a whole -- with honourable individual exceptions -- are just infantile, that's all.

Stupid politically correct British police again: "A man with an IQ of just 69 is believed to be the trigger behind the bungled terror raid in Forest Gate, East London. Ex-waiter Mohammed Abu Bakr Mansha, 22, was a childhood pal of the two brothers arrested in the dawn swoop by police two weeks ago. In January he was jailed for six years for terror offences - and even described in court as an "utter incompetent". Soon afterwards, friends of brothers Abul Kahar, 23, and Abul Koyair, 20, visited him at top-security Belmarsh, South-East London. And, the Sunday Mirror has learned, that meeting sparked a surveillance operation on the men by the security services. (HT Spy blog)

British borders wide open: "Ministers were accused yesterday of leaving Britain's borders wide open to drug smugglers, criminal gangs and terrorists because too few customs officers operate at ports and airports. The Government's anti- terror watchdog criticised a new method of border control that has left some of the busiest airports unmanned in a switch to mobile patrols. Lord Carlile of Berriew, QC, said that customs officers were "too thinly spread" and was supported by police chiefs voicing private concerns that ports of entry were left unprotected."

Leftist Episcopalians too queer for some: "The Anglican Church descended into "ecclesiastical anarchy" last night as American traditionalists refused to accept the authority of a woman and asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead them instead. Liberals celebrated the election of Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church while the traditionalist Fort Worth Diocese appealed to Dr Rowan Williams for "alternative primatial oversight". The appeal, being mulled over at Lambeth Palace, is expected to be the first of several. It represents the first formal step towards a schism that evangelicals say began with the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003."

Woman Slain Because She Was White: "The trial of a man accused of murder as a hate crime continues Tuesday in White Plains, N.Y. Phillip Grant, who is black, is charged with murdering a woman in the Galleria shopping mall because she was white. Concetta Russo-Carriero, 56, was stabbed to death at lunchtime June 29 in the parking garage of the mall as she walked to her car, just a block from the courthouse. In opening arguments Monday, Assistant District Attorney Timothy Ward said the victim was targeted by Grant, who was planning a murder motivated by "hatred of white people." Defense attorney Eugene Traynor said in his opening statement that police had arrested the wrong man. He told jurors that Grant, a convicted rapist, was never positively identified by a witness.... The murder charge against Grant became a hate-crime charge after he told police he killed the woman because she was white. "All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die," he said in a videotaped statement that was played at a pretrial hearing. "If I'd have had a gun today, there'd be a lot of dead white people on the streets of White Plains."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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20 June, 2006

The Utter Dysfunction of the United Nations

A report written by "a concerned group of current and former UN employees" and emailed from IO Watch.

Recently Mark Malloch Brown, deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, said that "Middle America" did not know how the US is constructively engaged with the UN because of UN detractors and too much unchecked UN-bashing and stereotyping over too many years. Friends, the UN deserves to be bashed and bashed hard. Please allow us to give you a glimpse into how the United Nations is run:

Hirings and promotions routinely violate UN rules (and are illegal under most national laws) and revolve around patronage and whom one knows rather than professional qualifications. Poorly performing managers are simply moved into different management slots while others are placed in senior positions solely because of their nationality, or because of favors owed to them by their supervisors or colleagues.

Salaries for UN employees are free of taxes and come with six weeks vacation, 11 holidays, 10 sick days that are often used as vacation, plus 4 weeks of "home leave", rental and housing grants to supplement an already generous salary (we all make an average of $7,000-$10,000 a month tax free), a pension at 8% of salary times years of service that can be cashed out tax free at any time, and educational subsidies for children of UN employees. Many also participate in an "alternative work schedule" in which they get every other Friday off. But don't even try to apply. Your application will not be acknowledged nor will you ever get invited for a job interview. You must know someone to work at the UN (or worse, sleep with them).

Several of us have advanced degrees in management and have been trained to manage large public organizations, yet we are blocked from advancing by bureaucrats in their 50s with no management training, education, or experience - only sitting in their chairs because they are friends with someone in a higher position. We threaten them because they know they are there based only on their connections.

And there is a profound lack of accountability within the UN regarding budget and resource allocation, resulting in loss of millions upon millions each year through skimming, graft and corruption. Simple procurement that would normally take five minutes using modern technology systems takes 2-3 months in the UN. And many United Nations Development Program country offices pay "local experts" outrageously high sums of money for products of dubious quality. Such contracts would never be made by other international aid agencies such as USAID that have much stronger internal controls and oversight.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Seeing I am a monarchist, I am delighted by the following



LONDON: British soldiers in bearskin hats marched before Queen Elizabeth II and military jets saluted her with a flypast over Buckingham Palace on Saturday during a second round of 80th birthday celebrations. And for the first time in the Queen's reign, troops assembled in the palace forecourt gave the feu de joie (fire of joy), a traditional military salute consisting of a series of volleys of shots interspersed with snatches of the national anthem. Thousands of well-wishers -- many waving small Union Jack flags -- yelled "happy birthday" to the Queen, who waved back with a white-gloved hand. Elizabeth, wearing a deep purple coat and hat, rode down the Mall near the palace in an ivory carriage, built for Queen Victoria in 1842, for a morning of pageantry at the Horseguards Parade ground in central London. Mounted members of the Household Cavalry wearing golden armour rode before her. Later, 49 aircraft -- led by Spitfires, Hurricanes and a Lancaster bomber commemorating the World War II Battle of Britain -- flew by as she and her family watched from a balcony at the palace. The Trooping of the Colour parade marks the Queen's official birthday every June. She was born on April 21, but the official, outdoor celebration comes two months later, when the chance of warm weather is better."

There have been a lot of comments on the net about the vast waste of taxpayer funds that were handed out by FEMA for disaster relief in the wake of hurricane Katrina. The L.A. Times commented that "FEMA did mismanage Katrina relief, but it's wrong to blame victims for spending -- the usual Leftist idea that "victims" are a privileged class above all criticism. Jeff Jacoby, however, has a more responsible view and argues that government charity is intrinsically wasteful and that such charity should always be funnelled through private organizations if it is to be given at all.

The Iranian danger: "New evidence is emerging that Iran has built several secret uranium enrichment plants in defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its nuclear inspection efforts. The evidence comes to NewsMax from Western diplomats and a former Iranian intelligence officer. One of the secret plants, located some 20 kilometers to the northeast of Tehran near the Lashgarak dam, houses a clandestine centrifuge uranium enrichment plant, where Iran is making nuclear weapons material, according to an Iranian intelligence officer who has defected to the West."

Postmodern Canada: "Leger Marketing conducted a telephone poll of 1,508 Canadian adults between April 17 and April 23. The poll results, with a margin of error of ~2.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, have found that an alarming 11% of Canadians do not consider pedophilia immoral. The question was in no way slanted. Respondents were asked: "Do you consider the following behaviour as immoral?" and to "pedophilia" 81% responded 'yes', 11% 'no', and 8% did not know or refused to respond.

Legal ethics: "Before I went to law school I thought of law in the United States as a concrete, reliable source of rules derived from the Constitution and based on principles of right and wrong. To get at the law, all you had to do was blow back the atmospheric heavens and there it sat in all of its glory. Law school changed all of that; especially when it came to ethics".

Australian baby bonus working: "When Courtney Fox entered the world just after midnight on July 1, 2004, the last thing on her mother's mind was that she had just qualified for $3000. Born at 12.01am, after a natural labour lasting about 24 hours, Courtney probably made her parents, Amanda Fox and James Laker, the first to qualify for the Government's baby bonus. But many other parents appeared to have an eye on the money. It has now emerged that there were more births on July 1, 2004, than on any other day in the past 30 years. And with the baby bonus slated to rise a further $1000, to $4000, from this July 1, experts are tipping another birth bonanza. Professors Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, who have been analysing birth figures, believe the introduction of the last baby bonus changed behaviour and the same thing is likely this time. "An additional $1000 is not the same as the first $3000, but it is still not trivial," Professor Gans said yesterday. "The hospitals weren't prepared for it last time. In three weeks' time it will be occurring again."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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19 June, 2006

9.9 Million Illegals to Get Amnesty. 1 in 4 Would Be Fraudulent Under Senate Bill

Press release from CIS

Based on the experience of the 1986 amnesty, we expect that nearly 9.9 million illegal aliens will receive amnesty under the recently passed Senate Hagel-Martinez bill. That is, they will legalize and can apply for permanent residence and citizenship. As in 1986, we also expect that one-fourth, or 2.6 million, will receive amnesty fraudulently. The bill will also allow an estimated 4.5 million family members of illegal aliens currently living abroad to join their legalized relatives for a total of 14.4 million beneficiaries.

The new report, "Amnesty Under Hagel-Martinez: An Estimate of How Many Will Legalize if S.2611 Becomes Law," by the Center's Director of Research, Steven A. Camarota, is on line here. Among the findings:

* Based on the 1986 amnesty, we estimate that slightly over 70 percent, or 7.4 million, of the 10.2 million illegals eligible for the three amnesties in Hagel-Martinez will come forward and receive amnesty legitimately. That is, they will gain legal status allowing them to live and work in the United States and eventually apply for permanent residence and citizenship.

* We also estimate that, as in 1986, there will be one fraudulent amnesty for every three legitimate ones (2.6 million) for a total of 9.9 million amnesty beneficiaries.

* In addition to the amnesty beneficiaries, the bill will allow an estimated 4.5 million family members currently living abroad to join their newly legalized relatives for a total of 14.4 million people who will benefit from the bill's amnesty provisions.

* Our assumption that 70 percent of illegals who will come forward, as in 1986, is conservative because, unlike the last legalization, illegals now know that amnesties are real and not a ruse by the government to deport them. Moreover, increased border enforcement has made illegal crossing more difficult, making legalization a more attractive option.

* Our estimate of 2.6 million fraudulent amnesties, based on 1986, is also conservative because the false document industry is now more developed. Moreover, the immigration bureaucracy already has a severe fraud problem, according to the Government Accountability Office. As its workload mushrooms with amnesty, fraud will become even more difficult to detect.

* Of the 14.4 million illegals and their family members who will receive amnesty, we estimate that 13.5 million will eventually become permanent residents, which means they can stay as long as they wish and apply for citizenship. Deaths and out-migration account for the balance of the 14. 4 million.

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ELSEWHERE

Exposing the myth of Third World aid: "The United Nations' Millennium Project to fight poverty argues strenuously that corrupt government in the Third World is not a major cause of poverty. Whether this is true is a growing debate in the aid industry. Drawing on the Polity IV research project on democracy, Easterly says there is actually a significant correlation between democracy and long-term growth, and that "poor countries grow faster than rich countries if they have good government". Why then do Planners deny this? Because their big plans rely on the co-operation of Third World governments, and would not be feasible if those governments are dysfunctional.

Australian killer doctor: "A doctor will stand trial next month for manslaughter after she allegedly induced an abortion on a woman who was 22 weeks pregnant. In a landmark case, Sydney doctor Suman Sood, 56, is charged with the manslaughter of a male fetus who died about four hours after he was born... Her 20-year-old patient was about 22 weeks pregnant at the time of the incident in May 2002. Dr Sood, a former owner of the private abortion clinic Australian Women's Health at Fairfield in Sydney's west, allegedly gave the woman a pre-abortion pill and sent her home. The mother gave birth to the baby boy on a toilet the following day. Ambulance officers retrieved the baby and later realised it was alive and struggling to breathe. It died a few hours later."

Dalrymple on Islam: "In his new book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, Professor Efraim Karsh does not mince words about Mohammed's early and (to all those who do not accept the divinity of his inspiration) unscrupulous resort to robbery and violence, or about Islam's militaristic aspects, or about the link between Islamic tradition and the current wave of fundamentalist violence in the world. The originality of Karsh's interpretation is its underlying assumption that Islam was, from the very beginning, a pretext for personal and dynastic political ambition, from the razzias against the Meccan caravans and the expulsion of Jewish tribes from Medina, to the siege of Vienna a millennium later in 1529, and Hamas today. Contrary to its universalistic pretensions, Karsh argues, Islam has never succeeded in eliminating political power struggles within the Muslim world, where, on the contrary, such struggles have always been murderous."

Dr. Babu Suseelan, a Professor of Clinical Psychology in Pennsylvania, on Islam: "Jihadi terrorism is as old as Islam. Jihad war, death and destruction have followed in the wake of Islam for hundreds of years. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain, Persia, India and several societies have experienced the deadly Islamic conquest. Now Jihadi terrorism has propelled to dangerous proportions and is a major threat to public health and world peace. Jihadi terrorists are said to have the unique ability to perpetuate their deadly terrorism wreaking havoc in every city in the world. It's destructive impact on the economy, public health and public safety is widespread, and on the increase.

U.K.: Secret report brands Muslim police corrupt : "A secret high-level Metropolitan police report has concluded that Muslim officers are more likely to become corrupt than white officers because of their cultural and family backgrounds. The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, has caused outrage among ethnic minorities within the force, who have labelled it racist and proof that there is a gulf in understanding between the police force and the wider Muslim community. The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues. The main conclusions of the study, commissioned by the Directorate of Professional Standards and written by an Asian detective chief inspector, stated: "Asian officers and in particular Pakistani Muslim officers are under greater pressure from the family, the extended family ... and their community against that of their white colleagues to engage in activity that might lead to misconduct or criminality."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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18 June, 2006

THE LATEST UP ON ICJS

Summary report on Human Rights Watch
The seductive beat of the militant, Islamic drum
Summary of IDF investigation of incident on the Gaza beach
About the ABC's "expert" on Israeli munitions
Uncertainty shrouds Gaza beach tragedy
As Islamists Grow Confident, It's Time for the West To Stand
Come to Londonistan, our refuge for poor misunderstood Islam
Press Releases re ABC on Terror
Memo to EU by Nick Cohen
Islam and Western Democracies by Cardinal George Pell
Gaza journalists get threats over Hamas coverage
Why war comes when no one wants it
Euston, you don't have lift-off
At last our lefties see the light, by Christopher Hitchens
Hamas can't even fake moderation
Euston Manifesto
Ex-Spanish premier calls on NATO to add Israel as member
Harper urged to block UN appointment
Wolves in sheep's clothing on extremist Islam mission
Hamas in charge
Visa row on links to terror
B'nai Brith Press Release

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ELSEWHERE

Great! Two rogue unions to be busted: "Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn. Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman's Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation?s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new 'SENTRI' system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City. As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Texas Corridor segment of the NAFTA Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year".

Illegal immigrant sweep nabs criminals: "San Diego County led the nation in arrests during a recent series of sweeps of illegal immigrants designed to pick up criminals, fugitives and gang members. But most of those arrested weren't original targets of the operation. During the two-week effort - dubbed "Operation Return to Sender" - agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police arrested 2,179 people in more than 30 states. Of those, 402 were arrested in San Diego County, including 164 with criminal backgrounds, officials said."

Crooked black congressman whines: "The following is a statement made by Congressman William Jefferson responding to the House Democratic vote to suspend him from the House Ways and Means committee: "Tonight, a motion to suspend me, temporarily, from my position on the House Ways and Means Committee passed in the Democratic Caucus. I stand firm in my position that this move is unprecedented, unfair in process and most importantly, it unjustly punishes my constituents."

Feds were accomplices to Enron crooks: "Federal prosecutors have successfully prosecuted Enron CEOs Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay for what the grand jury's indictment described as 'a wide-ranging scheme to deceive the investing public . about the true performance of Enron's businesses.' While Skilling, Lay, Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, and other Enron 'conspirators' have also been found guilty of fraud charges, one key accomplice has gotten a pass: federal and state government."

Hang on to your printed books: "It is safe to surmise that, once most books -- particularly the out of print and difficult to find ones -- have been digitized, most libraries, under the pressure of lack of space and low personnel budgets, will end up by getting rid of most printed books of which digitized versions are available. As I mentioned before, Google's goal is to eventually digitize all books. Given Google's passion for censorship, and ALA's irregular application of its policies (ALA is only against censors they don't like), book censorship may become a common thing."

Brazilians rejecting "liberation" Catholicism: "About 3 million evangelical Protestants staged a huge rally Thursday in the heart of Brazil's biggest city, demonstrating their growing influence in the world's largest Roman Catholic country. Crowding next to sound trucks blasting religious music, marchers wore T-shirts in the green and yellow colors of Brazil's flag advertising their annual "March for Jesus." The hymn-singing evangelicals walked to skyscraper-lined Agenda Palest, Brazil's version of Wall Street"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites 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)

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 June, 2006

"WHY I LEFT THE LEFT"

Excerpt from an article by Seth Swirsky

What made me leave the Left for good and embrace the Right were their respective reactions to 9/11. While The New York Times doubted that we could succeed in Afghanistan because the Soviets in the '80s hadn't, George W. Bush went directly after the Taliban and Al Qaeda and crushed them in short order. Although many on the Left claim to have backed the President's actions, the self-doubt leading up to it, crystallized my view of the Left as weak and terminally lacking in confidence.

I supported President Bush's hard line against the father of modern terrorism, Yasir Arafat, remembering that Bush's predecessor hosted Arafat at the White House 13 times, more often than any other world leader. I applauded Bush's unequivocal support for Israel, which every day faced (and faces) suicide attacks against its people. But I was most disappointed with liberal Jews who don't understand that their very existence is rooted in Israel's existence and that George W. Bush has been the best friend that Israel has ever had. But because they are less Jewish than they are liberal, they didn't reward Bush with their vote in 2004.

Finally, I supported President Bush's decision to oust Saddam and make possible the only democracy (other than Israel) in this crucial region of the Middle East. Post 9/11, we had to figure out a way to lessen the chances of more 9/11s. Democracy is a weapon in that war. If people are free to build businesses, buy homes, send their children to schools, pursue upward mobility, live their lives without fear, read newspapers of every opinion, vote for their leaders, resolve differences with debate and not bombs, they will have no reason to want to harm us.

In response, the Left offered bumper-sticker-type arguments like, Bush lied and thousands died. But Bush never lied. He, like Clinton and Gore and Kerry and the U.N. and the British and French and Israeli intelligence services affirmed that Saddam's WMD were a vital threat - a threat, that post- 9/11, could not stand. An overwhelming number of Democrats voted for the war - but now the Left says they were "scared" into their votes by Bush. What does it say about Democrats if the "dummy" they think Bush is can scare them so easily?......

And so, as any reader of this article can well understand, it became impossible for me to relate to the modern Democrat Party which has tacked way too far to the left and is dominated by elites that don't like or trust the real people that make up most of the country.

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Brookes News Update

Australian economy: Is falling unemployment signalling recession?: Paradoxical as this might sound our falling rate of unemployment could be a symptom of an emerging recession. Although this phenomenon directly challenges orthodox economic teachings it does have empirical support and an economic theory to explain it
Why rising oil prices will not fuel US inflation: It is a commonly held among the public and economists that rising oil prices are inflationary. They are not. That the man in the street believes this is to be expected - that professional economists adhere to it is an intellectual disgrace
Greg Combet attacks labour market reform while Liberal Party officials do nothing: Greg Combet is Secretary of the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions) and the curse of the unemployed. Fortunately for Liberal Party's incompetent hacks there are those among us who are able and willing to undertake the necessary task of dealing with union propaganda
Is the US military returning to Vietnam?: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with Vietnam's Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in Hanoi. It was noted that a US Navy ship will soon be visiting a Vietnamese port for the fourth time in four years
Taxes for dummies: The first lesson of capitalism is that the more capital available to support growing the economy the better; the better off everyone is, both rich and poor and everybody in between. The more money that is available the more economic activity will be generated
The world according to Dean: or Howard Dean backs Democracy for America: The tendentiously named Democracy for America is being supported by Howard Dean. The last thing this self-righteous organization believes in is those fundamental values that form the building blocks of American democracy

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Is It Low Prices or High Prices that Are Bad for Us?: "It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that opinion makers were obsessing about Wal-Mart's negative impact on the United States. Wal-Mart's offense? Low prices! Then the drum-beat stopped. This coincided with concern about rising gasoline prices. Low prices, high prices -- its all the same, and it's all bad, as far as our pundits, professors, and preachers are concerned."

Hurricane Aid: The usual vast government waste and inefficiency: ""Of about $6 billion in emergency aid intended for Gulf hurricane victims -- including those infamous $2,000 debit cards, as well as emergency housing and other payments -- an estimated $1 billion was lost to fraud, according to a devastating audit released yesterday by the U.S. General Accounting Office."

Government "security" again: "The Department of Homeland Security allowed a man to enter its headquarters last week using a fake Matricula Consular card as identification, despite federal rules that say the Mexican-issued card is not valid ID at government buildings. Bruce DeCell, a retired New York City police officer, used his phony card -- which lists his place of birth as "Tijuana, B.C." and his address as "123 Fraud Blvd." on an incorrectly spelled "Staton Island, N.Y." -- to enter the building Wednesday for a meeting with DHS officials. Mr. DeCell said he has had the card for four years and has used it again and again to board airliners and enter government buildings, without being turned down once. But he said he was surprised that DHS, the agency in charge of determining secure IDs, accepted it. "Obviously, it's not working," Mr. DeCell said."

Chris Brand has been blogging up a storm again. Excerpt: " The Health section of the New York Times (15 vi, Amy Harmon) carried for its NYTwit readers a virtual admission that America’s version of Pravda had been duping them for a generation. Apparently, labs all over the USA (e.g. at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle) were finding and believing in substantial genetic control of risk-taking, obesity, cigarette smoking, dieting, aggression, accident-proneness, life expectancy, dancing ability, sex drive, attention deficit disorder, Nobel laureateship and alcoholism – though the dread topic of intelligence was not directly mentioned."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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16 June, 2006

Liberalism on the Couch: In search of root causes

(Excerpt from Mark Goldblatt)

The first factor I'd suggest in the causal chain that leads liberals to their politics is abject failure. People who are frustrated by their lot in life are often drawn to liberal ideas because modern liberalism's contempt for the free market jibes with their efforts to rationalize their disappointments. This thought was driven home for me last year at the Small Press Book Fair in Manhattan. As you climb the stairwell at the Small Press Center on West 44th Street, moving from small presses on the first floor, to even smaller presses on the balcony level, and then to presses-that-exist-only-to-publish-the-press-founder's-screed upstairs, you move progressively leftwards. Talk to any author on the upper floors, and he'll swear that he's been driven to self-publish because he refused to sell out. He wouldn't compromise his message for the sake of wealth and success, unlike fill-in-the-name-of-a-popular-writer. Corporate capitalism beats down the true visionary, he'll tell you, and he's no company hack. What greater proof of his bona fides than the fact that no mainstream publisher was interested in his work?

But of course the majority of liberals are not abject failures. On the contrary, many have attained a considerable measure of social status and financial clout, which calls to mind another reason liberals become liberals-guilt. Guilt-induced liberalism is most common among the more successful members of historically marginalized and currently struggling groups like blacks and Hispanics, or among members of historically marginalized and currently prospering groups like women and Jews. The trappings of achievement-prestigious job titles, comfortable homes, swollen bank accounts-are a kind of inverse torment for such people, an ongoing crisis of authenticity, a sign of the dissolution of their identity within the marginalized group. They feel compelled, therefore, to demonstrate that their sympathies still reside with the underclass. The cartoonish version of this response is found in hip hop-where ostentatiously thuggish rappers ride around in stretch limos, dripping jewelry and sipping champagne, all the while swearing their allegiance to "the street." The more insidious version is found in humanities classrooms-where ostentatiously underdressed professors browbeat their students with the message that good fortune in America carries with it the perpetuation of injustice and the tacit acceptance of oppression.

After failure and guilt, a third obvious cause of the liberal worldview is sin. There is, of course, nothing inherently sinful about the politics of liberalism. But in its modern incarnation, liberalism not only takes to heart the Enlightenment values of tolerance and skepticism, it hoists them aloft as intellectual torches and bears them forward in search of the dreaded Frankenstein Monster of moral judgment. Modern liberals deplore moral judgment-except in their collective outrage at conservatives-because they've decided, in their own lives, to abandon the doctrinal elements of Judeo-Christian morality in favor of an ethic whose guiding principle is, in the words of noted Shakespearean dunderhead Polonius, "To thine own self be true." Hence, the liberal mantra, I'm not religious, but I consider myself a spiritual person. Roughly, this translates into: I don't want to give up on an afterlife, but I don't want to be judged by the stuff I'm doing. Liberals, therefore, seethe with resentment towards public displays of traditional faith out of fear such faith carries with it an implicit condemnation of their personal choices....

Which leads to the final, and perhaps overriding, cause of modern liberalism-genuine compassion.... Intelligent people are often drawn to dumb ideas because the dumb ideas speak to their hearts rather than to their heads. The roster of world-class intellectuals who failed to recognize the evils of Communism in the last century is a testament to human frailty, not human imbecility. Tyranny, like charity, begins with compassion; this lesson is utterly lost on liberals, for whom compassion is an absolute good. So it's important to remember that the prime justification of liberalism, at least in the minds of liberals, is almost always fairness. They feel unfairness in their bones. It upsets them. That's how they know they're compassionate. It is the misguided pursuit of fairness that, in the final analysis, drives the majority of liberals to liberalism. It's a pursuit at which they cannot fail, since it's never-ending; it's a pursuit that alleviates their guilt, since it re-connects them with their roots; it's a pursuit that cleanses their individual sins, since its goal is the common weal. The pursuit of fairness is itself a kind of therapy. Liberals are entitled to it, however ill conceived the enterprise.

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The man with the hat: It has become something of a matter for hilarity in the blogosphere that John Kerry has a hat. In case you missed the reason why, there is a succinct account of the matter here

Death tax: "If you've followed the death tax debate, you know that few issues raise liberal blood pressure more. Liberal journalists in particular are around the bend: How in the world can the public support repealing a tax that most Americans will never pay? Good question, so let us try to answer. Americans favor repealing the death tax not because they think it will help them directly. They're more principled than that. Two-thirds of the public wants to repeal it because they think taxing a lifetime of thrift due to the accident of death is unfair, and even immoral. They also understand that the really rich won't pay the tax anyway because they hire lawyers to avoid it. For proof that they're right, they need only watch the current debate. The superrich or their kin-such as Bill Gates Sr. and Warren Buffett-are some of the loudest voices opposing repeal. Yet they are able to shelter their own vast wealth by creating foundations or via other crafty estate planning. Edward McCaffery, an estate tax expert at USC Law School, argues that 'if breaking up large concentrations of wealth is the intention of the death tax, then it is a miserable failure.' Do the Kennedys or Rockefellers look any poorer from the existence of a tax first created in 1917? The real people who pay the levy are the thrifty middle class and entrepreneurs who've built up a modest nest egg or business and are hit by a 46% tax rate when they die. Americans want family businesses, ranches, farms and other assets to be passed from one generation to the next. Yet the U.S. has one of the highest death tax rates in the world."

Moronic attack on Gitmo: "The Times runs an op-ed headlined "Detainees in Despair" written by someone who has been released from Gitmo. It contains this line: "I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation." Somehow, he acknowledges, he ended up in an al-Qaeda training camp. Don't you hate when that happens? You consult your travel agent, you read your Fodor's and the Times travel section and you think you're on your way to Club Med Kandahar but instead of playing tennis and windsurfing you end up firing Kalashnikovs and assembling I.E.D.s. It could happen to anyone."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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15 June, 2006

THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL JUST PASSED:

The media have reported on the sections that grant illegal residents amnesty (aka path to legalization or earned citizenship). But the media have censored out of their news reports the sections that are 10 to 20 times more costly and far more dishonest than playing games with the word amnesty. In large print, the 795-page bill announces its "temporary guest worker" plan. Those words are lies because the fine print in the bill converts these workers, who are given H-2C visas, into permanent residents with the right to become citizens after five years.

The plan will start by importing 200,000 H-2C workers in the first year. The H-2Cers can immediately bring in their family members on H-4 visas, without any numeric limits and without being required to have a physical, and they will also get permanent legal residence and citizenship. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would import 7.8 million immigrants, and convert another 11 million current immigrants, legal and illegal, into U.S. citizens over the next decade. The Heritage Foundation estimates that 66 million new citizens will be added to the current population over the next 20 years. The number would accelerate as the racket called family chain migration allows more new residents to bring in more and more relatives.

The bill gives these temporary workers some preferential rights that U.S. workers do not have. These new temporary workers can't be fired from their jobs except for "just cause," they must be paid the prevailing wage, and they can't be arrested for other civil immigration offenses if they are stopped for traffic violations.

The bill assures the preference of in-state college tuition (something that is denied to U.S. citizens in 49 states), and certain types of college financial assistance will be available to illegals at the state's option. As minorities, they might even get affirmative action preferences in jobs, government contracts, and college admissions. After the so-called temporary workers and their spouses become citizens, they can bring in their parents as permanent residents on the path to citizenship. Although the parents have never paid into Social Security, they will be eligible for Supplemental Security Income benefits, and in 46 states they will be eligible for full Medicaid benefits after five years. Siblings and adult children (and their families) will be given preference in future admissions.

The demographics of the so-called temporary workers are expected to be similar to those of the illegal immigrants already in our country. More than half will be high school dropouts, they will work low-paid jobs that require payment of little or no income tax, they are 50 percent more likely to receive taxpayer-funded government benefits than natural-born households, and they have a 42 percent rate of out-of-wedlock births (all of whom, of course, will be granted automatic U.S. citizenship).

Estimates of the cost to the taxpayers of this gargantuan expansion of the welfare state are at least $50 billion a year over the long term. U.S. taxpayers will pay for entitlements to these tens of millions of low-income families, including Medicaid, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Earned Income Tax Credit (cash handouts of up to $4,400 a year to low-wage households), public schooling and lunches, the WIC program, food stamps, public housing, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

More here

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University Committee Recommends Firing Ward Churchill for Repeated Misconduct: "A University of Colorado committee recommended on Tuesday firing a professor who called some of the World Trade Center victims "little Eichmanns," citing repeated research misconduct. The panel's recommendation now goes to university officials for a final decision. Ward Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, denied the allegations. He has vowed to fight his dismissal with a lawsuit."

Multiculti breeds Jihadism: "multiculturalism in many ways breeds Islamic radicalism among deracinated "born-again" Muslims in the West. It foments the climate of grievance and honors the quest for radical authenticity. Indeed, jihadism imports any number of Marxist and anti-colonial bugaboos into its worldview and then spits them back out at the West. "This militant evolution is happening, in situ, on our territory. It partakes henceforth of the internal history of the West," Roy observed. The 9/11 hijackers were Westernized, educated and cosmopolitan. Nearly all of the alleged Canadian plotters were raised in Canada and attended Canadian public schools. They were indeed homegrown."

Another "security" bungle: "Federal air marshals say their guns are loaded with bullets capable of running through more than one person, metal doors and thick glass -- too much firepower for an airplane. "Not only is the person getting shot in danger, but everyone on the plane is because of the distance it travels," said one air marshal who testified in a recently completed House Judiciary Committee investigation of policies marshals deemed dangerous."

More heritability: "Children inherit their taste for meat and fish but when it comes to vegetables and desserts it is more nurture than nature, a study shows. Scientists who compared the food preferences of identical and fraternal twins found that some tastes are inherited while others are acquired. "This is the first study to include significant numbers of protein foods and the first to show a high heritability for these," Professor Jane Wardle of the charity Cancer Research UK said. Mothers of 103 pairs of four and five-year-old identical twins and 111 pairs of non-identical twins were given lists of 77 foods in different categories and told to rate how much their children liked them."

Socialist wisdom from 1936: "Assuming that the increase in wealth production and population continue at the present compound rates, it seems likely that in the course of two or three decades, the U.S.S.R. will have become the wealthiest country in the world, and at the same time the community enjoying the greatest aggregate of individual freedom."



Airbus in trouble: "European aircraft maker Airbus has delayed its A380 super jumbo program another seven months, throwing the fleet plans of Qantas and 12 other airlines in disarray."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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14 June, 2006

HAPPINESS

I have been thinking and reading about happiness ever since I came across the work of Michael Argyle on the subject in the 1970s. And I think I can finally summarize the facts about it very simply.

It seems that happiness is to a quite extraordinary degree a trait rather than a state. In other words, we are born happy, unhappy or somewhere in-between. There are a lot of people who are always miserable (most Leftists, for instance) and some who are always sunny in mood no matter what. Even when we find that some classes of people (e.g. married people) are happier than others, it seems likely that it is more a case of happier people tending to marry rather than marriage making you happy.

That is of course rather counter-intuitive. We can all think of events that have made us happy or unhappy so we assume that it is events (or at least external things) that are responsible for our degree of happiness. But it is not so. The events only ever have a transitory effect. We soon settle back to how we were before. The most striking evidence of that is that people who have accidents that leave them paraplegic or quadriplegic (i.e. with very limited use of their limbs) do not sink into irretrievable depths of despair but in fact report after a year or so that they are roughly as happy after their accident as they were before their accident.

So policies aimed at making people happy are pissing into the wind. They are trying to alter what basically cannot be much altered. So in a democracy, political policies have to be aimed at what people WANT, not at what will make them happy -- because nothing can do that.

Which is very pesky for the Left. They have recently discovered the happiness research literature and it has perked them up greatly. "If money will not make you happy, then there's no problem with us taking it off you", has been their hopeful cry. By the same reasoning one might argue that if losing your legs does not make you lastingly unhappy, then there is no harm cutting everybody's legs off either.

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Hamas Murders Children in Palestine, Blames Israel: "An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives. "Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets. The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time." Hamas terrorists fired rockets and mortar bombs from a crowded Gaza beach at southern Israel. Some of the rockets fell near the Israel city of Ashkelon. Some 17 rockets were fired between Saturday and Sunday morning. A man at a school in the Israel town of Sderot was wounded, Israel officials said. Israel Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant said today that the Israel Defense Forces has additional evidence that it wasn't Israel artillery that hit the beach in Gaza. Galant, who commands Israel's southern command, said Israel stopped firing 15 minutes before the explosion. It's all on secure videotape from both sides of the conflict". (*HT Jihad Watch)

Lots of sarcasm from Larry Kudlow: "So the estate tax cut went down in the Senate, to the cheers of class warriors everywhere.... Our rich people don't need another tax break. No, they need higher taxes. And they should be vilified, too. That's right: America should attack rich people. In fact, we must abolish wealth, which is a tremendous drag on our economy. It's high time that we made the rich poor. As for all the xenophobes who want to deport the illegal immigrants who toil in this economy, may I respectfully suggest that their generals (i.e., Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Tom Tancredo) consider expanding their dragnet? Let's deport rich people, too! These rich people are bad for America. We don't need their ingenuity, their entrepreneurship, or their capital investment. In the name of egalitarian socialism, the only thing we need from them is more tax dollars. We now tax their incomes as salary, corporate profits, dividends, capital gains, and at death. But we must do better. Perhaps we can tax them when they contribute to charities, or the building of a new church or synagogue, or a symphony orchestra, or a small-town cultural center; or when they create another college; or when they finance private scholarships for inner-city educations. But we can't stop there. Let's criminalize the entire class of successful American entrepreneurs."

Ban the falafel?: "Recent news reports from the Iraqi capital indicate radical Islamists are launching a campaign to prohibit the sale of ... falafel. Yes, you heard right, falafel. While this is the sort of news you might expect to hear from a late-night stand-up comedian on television, sadly, this is not a joke, and a number of falafel vendors who failed to heed the warnings have paid with their lives. Several vendors of the popular deep-fried chickpea sandwich were told they had just two weeks to change their profession or face death. And indeed, several vendors where shot and killed simply for selling falafel sandwiches. The logic offered by the religious zealots -- if there is any -- in imposing this inane diktat on the people is that there were no falafels in the time of the Prophet Muhammad."

The answer to panic about America's debt: "The second mistake was pointed out, as best I recall from my high school researches, by Daniel Webster c. 1832. Then as now, there were vocal worries about foreigners owning too much of America. Webster pointed out that foreign investment meant, not that they had our stuff, but that we had their money. If push came to shove, if foreign governments tried to pressure the U.S. by threatening to withdraw their citizens' investments, we could keep it-refuse to pay back the debt. Their capital, after all, in the form of canals and the first railroads, was immovably located under our jurisidiction."

MSM: Terrorists now "security forces": "Palestinian security forces were on high alert Monday after Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces clashed in Rafah, resulting in two deaths. Hamas forces also fired shots at a government building in Rafah. In response, Fatah supporters set fire to a building used by the Hamas-led government in Ramallah" (*HT Reliapundit)

Leftist Rabbi wants libertarian marriage for homosexuals: "Marriage ought to be taken out of the state's hands entirely. Let people be wed in the private realm with no official legal sanction. Then, religious communities that oppose gay marriage will not sanction them, and those like mine that sanction the practice will conduct it. Rather than issuing marriage certificates or divorces, the state would simply enforce civil unions as contracts between consenting adults and enforce laws imposing obligations on people who bring children into the world." (*HT Liberty & Power)

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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13 June, 2006

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND PREFERS POLITICS TO RELIGION

Peter Hitchens responds to episcopal pronouncements on poverty and the Leftist solutions the bishops put forward

"Here's what we should really be worrying about: the dismal conditions of the British 'poor' are often the result of their moral and educational deprivation, and of the collapse of order - not lack of money. Teenage single mothers, with no real experience of child rearing or housekeeping, struggle to provide for their children because they do not know how, not because they do not have enough money. Their lives are often made worse by the moral squalor resulting from the collapse of stable family life.

The moral conditions on the worst housing estates, conditions which lead to women being battered and children being abused, also create a tyranny of crime and drugs. These circumstances make it incredibly hard to raise a happy and well-behaved next generation. Appalling schools, where illiteracy is normal and chaos tolerated, reinforce the dismal message. Some of the worst-placed are old people, who have worked hard all their lives, who hate debt, and now find that their tiny pensions barely stretch to pay for food and heating - and who have been abandoned by their families to a chilly solitude.

So, if you were a Bishop, what would you be worried about? Would you get involved in an essentially political argument about income gaps and taxation? Would you make headline-catching criticisms of vulgar wealth? Would you put your name to yet another dreary politically correct tract, to join all the other standard-issue, half-baked leftist whingeing that has got us more or less where we are?

Or would you address the moral collapse of our society which is so very much more important, and which is actually so much more your business?"

More here

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The task at hand: "Americans see the Republican Party's leadership as untrustworthy, which is a reputation it has earned. The challenge for conservatives is to convince American voters that Republican and conservative are not synonyms. Conservatives have to remind the country that the principles Republicans claimed to uphold but abandoned once in office still offer the best approach to governing the country. Conservatives need an aggressive campaign to hold Republicans accountable for their apostasy and remind America that conservatism's Jeffersonian [sic] principles remain an untried and viable alternative to the programs the two main parties are offering."

Tax cuts as government curb: "Sitting in a pleasant cafe on a sunny spring day, my Italian friend arrives and says, 'Richard we have had a wonderful month here in Italy because we have had no government.' He referred to the fact that between the defeat of the last government at the polls and formation of the new government, no new initiative to tax, misspend the taxpayers' money or new major regulation had been possible. People intuitively know that when governments are capable of activity, most often the citizens' pocketbooks and liberties are at risk."

Model hypocrites: "You can bet that almost anytime a politician attempts to raise your taxes or pushes for a big, new government spending program, the justification is at least partially based on the results of some mathematical model. Al Gore, and many others endorsing the global warming rage, tell us the climate models show government must do something about global warming before we are all cooked (or at least lightly tanned). Having spent three decades around model builders and reading their studies, I have concluded it is infinitely easier to obtain government funding to build a mathematical model likely to show the need for more government activity and spending rather than less."

The Swedish "success": "Almost a quarter of the population of working age does not have a job to go to in the morning, and polls show a dramatic lack of trust in the welfare system and its rules.... Our ancestors worked even when they were sick. Today, we are "off sick" even when we feel fine"

Windfall profits tax on oil companies a loser for citizens and the economy: "Congress may prove unable to resist passing a windfall profits tax before voters go to the polls this fall. If so, we'll experience the full meaning of H.L. Mencken's adage that democracy is that form of government in which the people get exactly what they want, good and hard. What they won't get, however, is nearly as much money out of such a tax as they probably think. A windfall profits tax targeted at earnings far beyond the U.S. industrial average would return zero revenue to the Treasury because windfall profits in the oil sector are figments of the imagination. While the raw earnings figures sound big, they are unexceptional when we take into account the size of those companies. Divide profits by sales, for instance, and you'll find that in the fourth quarter of 2005 (the last quarter for which data are available), profit margins were 6.8 percent at British Petroleum, 7 percent at ConocoPhilips, 7.1 percent at Shell, 7.7 percent at Chevron, and 10.7 percent at ExxonMobil. The 20 largest investor-owned oil companies earned a collective 8.8 cents on every dollar of sales for that quarter."

The annual foreign aid rip-off: "This week, Congress will vote to send more than 20 billion of your hard-earned dollars overseas, when it passes the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for 2007. Our annual foreign aid bill is one of the most egregious abuses of the taxpayer I can imagine. Not only is it an unconstitutional burden on America's working families, but this yearly attempt to buy friends and influence foreign governments is counterproductive and actually results in less goodwill toward the United States overseas. Why is foreign aid so bad? Isn't it our obligation to help those less fortunate? What is not mentioned by proponents of foreign aid is that it very seldom gets to those who need it most. Foreign aid is the transfer of US dollars from the treasury of the United States to the governments of foreign countries. It is money that goes to help foreign elites, who in turn spend much of it on contracts with US corporations. This means US tax dollars ultimately go to well-connected US corporations operating overseas.



There is an amusing cartoon video here in the form of a "Mexican Tourism" advertisement.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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 June, 2006

WHAT THE MEDIA WILL NEVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE USA

Excerpt:

Social Indicators: We are witnessing a remarkable cultural renewal in America. Violent crime rates remain at the lowest levels in the history of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' survey (which started in 1973). We are experiencing the sharpest decline in teen crime in modern history. Property crimes are near the lowest levels in the history of the federal survey. Welfare caseloads have declined almost 60 percent since 1996. Both the abortion rate and ratio are at the lowest levels we have seen in the 30-year period these data have been tracked. African American and Hispanic fourth-graders posted the highest reading and math scores in the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. The use of illegal drugs by teens has dropped 19 percent since 2001, while the use of hallucinogens such as LSD and ecstasy has declined by more than half. The teen birth rate has fallen for a dozen consecutive years. The percentage of high school students who reported having had sex is significantly lower than in the early 1990s. The divorce rate has fallen steadily for over a decade. And teen smoking has dropped by almost 50 percent since the late '90s....

The Economy : The American economy is the strongest in the world and growing faster than that of any other major industrialized country. It grew at an annual rate of 5.3 percent in the first quarter -- the fastest growth in 2 1/2 years. It has added more than 5.3 million jobs since the summer of 2003, and employment is near an all-time high. The unemployment rate (4.6 percent) is well below the average for each of the past four decades. Mortgage rates remain near historical lows, homeownership remains near a record high, and sales of new and existing homes reached record levels in 2005. Real disposable personal income has risen almost 13 percent since President Bush took office; and core inflation rose just 2.3 percent over the past 12 months. The Dow Jones industrial average has risen from under 7300 in 2002 to above 11,000 for most of this year. Tax revenues are at an all-time high -- and so is total household net worth.

National Security : Perhaps no nation has ever been as dominant as the United States is today -- and we are using our military power to promote great purposes. As a reference point, it's worth recalling that the 1930s and early-'40s were regarded by many as the twilight of freedom. Democratic societies were threatened both internally (by a depression) and externally (by Nazism and fascism). There were only a dozen or so democracies on the planet.

Today we are witnessing one of the swiftest advances of freedom in history. In the past four years more than 110 million people have joined the ranks of the free -- and for the first time freedom is taking root in the Middle East. Once ruled by cruel dictatorships, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are now governed by constitutions and are participating in national elections. The governments of the two countries once provided safe haven to terrorists; now they are engaged in a mortal struggle against them. This struggle is longer and harder than any of us would wish, but by any standard or precedent of history, Afghanistan and Iraq have made remarkable political progress. Kuwait's parliament has granted full political rights to women. Arab intellectuals are pushing for a rapid acceleration of democratic reform. After almost 30 years, Syrian troops left Lebanon in response to the Cedar Revolution. And Libya has abandoned its program of weapons of mass destruction. The biggest nuclear-smuggling ring in history, run by Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, is being rolled up. The government of Pakistan has cast its lot with us against al-Qaeda.

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ELSEWHERE

PBS paying a price for bias: "House Republicans yesterday revived their efforts to slash funding for public broadcasting, as a key committee approved a $115 million reduction in the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that could force the elimination of some popular PBS and NPR programs. On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation's budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending. The reduction, which would come in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, must be approved by the full Appropriations Committee, and then the full House and Senate, before it could take effect. Democrats and public broadcasting advocates began planning efforts to reverse the cut."

The Dutch decay: "The full-throttle and state-sanctioned hedonism of 21st century Holland finds no inspiration or legitimacy in the intellectual attitudes of any of the centuries preceding the Twentieth. In short, Dutch society used to have--dare I say it?--a more religious foundation on which the values of humanism, intellectual openness and tolerance were based. I think it can be convincingly argued that the departure from this past--and the virtual erasure of Holland's rich Christian humanism--has contributed directly to the rise of the culturally confused, politically cowed, self-negating and guilt-ridden Dutch of today. One might even say that the modern history of Holland is the history of Europe, writ small".

Dutch defeat: "The removal of an immigrant raising awkward political questions is a warning sign over the future of the tradition of free speech and tolerance in Holland. There are times when a small event raises an issue of enormous importance. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born politician and women's rights activist, is leaving Holland for good. It's a strange irony that a country which has for centuries welcomed all those fleeing persecution should find it impossible to continue to provide Hirsi Ali with a refuge".

Blowing up a "damnable tax": "During his 2006 State of the County address, Oakland County (Michigan) Executive L. Brooks Patterson called for a petition drive and ballot initiative to eliminate the state's economically destructive Single Business Tax. Patterson called the SBT a 'damnable tax' and correctly cited it as an important factor in holding down Michigan's ailing economy. Michigan has been in a 'one-state recession' for several years, while every other state except those slammed by hurricanes has experienced impressive growth. The causes of Michigan's recession are complex, but they largely come down to the fact the state is burdened with destructive business taxes, excessive regulations, and bad labor laws that give the state one of the least-competitive business climates in the United States."

Far Left most intolerant: "In 1998, 48 percent of people saying they were "extremely liberal" gave conservatives a score of 20 or under. By 2004, this had risen to 65 percent of this group. And about one in three of these people gave conservatives the lowest possible score: zero. (Note that in 2002, even Saddam Hussein received an average score of eight.) In contrast, the percentage of "extreme conservatives" giving an under 20 score to liberals inched up only slightly over this period, from 45 to 48 percent. Remember, thermometer scores are ratings of people, not ideas: An ice-cold score is equivalent to saying, "I don't like certain people simply because of the views they hold." It is the essence of intolerance, and it describes two-thirds of America's far left today (and nearly half of America's far right, which is not a whole lot better)."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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11 June, 2006

FOR THE RECORD

There's hope yet. I posted a comment on the site of the academic journal (Pediatrics) in which the "Parenting Styles and Overweight Status in First Grade" article (by Rhee, Julie C. Lumeng, Danielle P. Appugliese, Niko Kaciroti, and Robert H. Bradley) appeared. The comment has been passed and now appears there. Being a cautious soul, however, I am reposting the comment below -- in case it gets deleted.

"As I have had a great deal published on psychological rigidity and authoritarianism, I found this article interesting but lacking in background in those fields. My take on what the research shows is that a general trait of psychological rigidity exists only insofar as it is a byproduct of low IQ -- and psychological rigidity is clearly at work in what the authors studied.

Further: Low IQ people are more likely to get fat and low IQ people tend to be more rigid and have more simplistic approaches to things.

It's IQ that we see at work in the above study. You need to look at WHY some parents treat their children less flexibly.

So: Fat parents tend to have fat children -- mainly for genetic reasons, though not entirely so. So low IQ, fat, rigid parents will tend to have fat children -- which can arise solely from the genetics for fatness that are passed on, not anything at all that the parents do."

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Brookes News Update

The US economy: when will there be another recession?: When looking for signs of an impending recession keep a close eye on manufacturing conditions. No matter what most economists and media pundits say, business spending is several times greater than consumer spending. It's all a question of arithmetic
The Australian economy is looking sick: Statistics reveal that Australian manufacturing is contracting and shedding jobs. The downturn is concentrated in the higher stages of production. This suggests that Australia has left the final phase of the boom and entered the first phase of a recession
The Brotherhood of St Laurence crashes on labour market reform: The striking thing about organisations like the Brotherhood of St Laurence is their complete ignorance of economics and the lessons of economic history. This fact reveals itself in their opposition to labour market reform
Australian economy: Protectionists are on the march - again, part I: Victoria saddled Australia with tariffs, the consequences of which were compounded by Justice Higgins' wage-fixing stupidity which helped keep unemployment high, even during the Great War, and above 7 per cent during the 1920s
Why my marriage with Israel is nearly over: Israel needs to remember that she once had guts and did not consider herself impotent or act like a banana republic. This would be the time to conduct mass protests against the Chamberlain appeasement now in progress
Loving Mexico and Che Guevara: Once again the mainstream media lied to the American public. This time it was about demonstrations by illegal immigrants, revanchists and their leftwing cheerleaders and enablers
The mainstream media is lying about the US economy: Nowhere in the civilized world can an institution or a government so blind their population to the truth like the mainstream media in America
Dean Smith: Politics is just not his game: Dean Smith is a great basketball icon who is very liberal in his politics. He has a winning record on the basketball court but his political support is definitely the political kiss of death

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ELSEWHERE



The above pic is from the NY Post. Are they risking a fatwa?

There is a great story here of the 1980 destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor by Israel.

Bolton assails supercilious British Leftist: "America's bitter dispute with the United Nations escalated last night when John Bolton, the US envoy to the UN, threatened to withhold funding to the organisation unless it apologised for the remarks of a senior British official. Speaking at the Centre for Policy Studies in London, Mr Bolton assailed Mark Malloch Brown, the British Deputy UN Secretary-General, for the disparaging remarks he made about the American public this week. "Mark Malloch Brown has a sentence in his speech where he says the role of the UN is a mystery in Middle America," he said. "Maybe it is fashionable in some circles to look down on Middle America, to say they don't get the complexities of the world and they don't have the benefit of continental education and they are deficient in so many ways," Mr Bolton added. "It is illegitimate for an international civil servant to criticise what he thinks are the inadequacies of citizens of a member government."

House OKs Bill To Speed Permits For New Refineries: "The House passed legislation Wednesday aimed at streamlining permits for new refineries, a step Republican leaders stung by public anger over high gas prices said could expand energy supplies and eventually cut prices. The Republicans, fighting to keep control of the House in November's elections, used the debate to attack minority Democrats who they say have been obstructionists, opposing any step that would increase gas supplies."

Race based State stopped in US Senate: "The Senate on Thursday dashed efforts to give indigenous Hawaiians some of the same powers of self-governance granted to American Indians, with critics warning that could lead to race-based privileges in a state known for its diversity.A procedural vote fell four short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill on the Senate floor."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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10 June, 2006

THE DEEP IRRATIONALITY OF THE LEFT

The lack of interest in rational argument that pervades the Left is one of the most striking things about them. As Jeff Jacoby points out, even such senior Leftist figures as Ted Kennedy seem to think that a constant spew of hate-speech suffices as an argument. And, as Jeff Jacoby also points out, the hate speech usually has no rational basis either. If I were to refer to Ted Kennedy as "The fat man from Chappaquiddick", that would be similar abuse to what the Left dish out but everything in such a description would have a factual basis. He IS fat and his conduct at Chappaquiddick IS notorious. But factual underpinning is usually too much to ask of Leftist abuse. Let me illustrate by giving a recent example of Leftist abuse and by then pointing out a few things about it. The following comment is from a review of an "antiwar" film of the Michael Moore genre:

"This film illustrates in crystal clear detail why the U.S. military needs to recruit very dumb, totally uneducated, and mostly southern cracker soldiers who are already racist bastards who have never left their hometowns and believe all the garbage they are taught in school about how we are the good guys, and everything we do is just and right. The Army can then brainwash them to treat other human beings in such a grotesque and inhuman manner. Anyone who had any previous education, intelligence or just plain decency, would never consent to treat people in the unbelievably harsh manner in which these prisoners, most of which were just swept up in raids and had nothing to do with the Taliban, were treated.

I would normally not waste any time on such a spew of hate but for once I will make a few notes. Note for a start that the derogatory term "cracker" implies that the soldiers are white. He skates over the fact that a large part of the U.S. army is comprised of minorities. And would he refer contemptuously to black soldiers as "niggers". Hopefully not. But why is it OK to use a term of contempt for white soldiers? And Southerners are "racist bastards"? I guess they may have been in North/South war days but even Abraham Lincoln wanted to send the blacks back to Africa so was he a racist too? Or were racial views simply universal at that time? And what of today? I constantly hear that black/white relations are in fact more cordial in the South than they are in the North. Has our Leftist ever looked into that possibility? He offers no basis for his assertion at all.

And the idea that the army recruits dumb and totally uneducated soldiers is simply and demonstrably false. Our Leftist author can have no basis for that careless assertion. As a former army psychologist, I can vouch for the fact that no modern Western army does that. Dumb and totally uneducated would-be soldiers are simply knocked back. No modern Western army wants them. The army does careful psychological assessment of each volunteer, using psychological tests, biography etc., to ensure that all recruits measure up in terms of education, intelligence and emotional stability. Putting deadly weapons into the hands of anyone other than that would make him more of a danger to his buddies than to the enemy.

And as for the idea that the army wants its men to treat anybody in a "grotesque and inhuman manner", has our Leftist ever heard of publicity? The army comes under sustained attack on the home front if ever its men lapse from the most ideal behaviour so to say that the army wants brutal behaviour of its men is not to credit them even with pursuit of their own self-interest.

And the idea that preventive detention of terrorists captured in the field would not be consented to by anyone with education or intelligence is again counterfactual. The officer corps is even more highly educated and intelligent than the foot soldier. To get into officer school, you have to be a very high quality person on almost any criterion and officers graduate with at least the equivalent of a university degree. And it is the officer corps that runs the prisons.

So even disregarding the hatred and abuse in the extract above, there is nothing in it that even resembles the truth. That the author is contorted by hate is all that one can reliably conclude from it.

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ELSEWHERE

Sowell on Leftist indifference to the facts: "Despite the warm glow of self-satisfaction that the liberal vision confers on liberals, ugly facts keep intruding to undermine that vision.... Research dealing with innate biological differences are of course anathema to those with the liberal-left vision. Even research that turns up cultural or other behavioral differences between groups is almost as great a danger. Both kinds of research undermine the notion that there are "solutions" that government can impose to eliminate differences, gaps, disparities or "inequities" that liberalism claims to be able to eliminate. Scientific research into differences in the way male and female brains function is denounced by radical feminists, who are calling for a ban on such research. No matter what the MRIs say, the radical feminists say all differences are due to "society." ... That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example. Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing this and other social pathology in today's ghettos to "a legacy of slavery" -- even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today. Blacks only a generation or two out of slavery also had higher rates of employment and lower rates of crime than today."

The British are whitewashing Che Guevara. London's famous Victoria and Albert museum is having an exhibition about him which describes him as "young, handsome, charismatic". No mention that he was a murderous totalitarian thug. (HT Astute Blogger).



French wine junked: "The unquenchable desire of Britons for New World wines has forced Brussels to order nearly a billion bottles of French and Italian wine to be turned into fuel and disinfectant. The European Commission will then spend 2.4 billion euros digging up vineyards across the continent. The drastic measures to drain Europe's swelling wine lake come as winemakers across the Continent face a seemingly unstoppable invasion of cheaper and more consistent wines from Australia, Chile, the US and South Africa. Wine critics say it is an inevitable result of French wine producers not adapting to demand".

NYC Squandered Billions in 9/11 Aid: "New York politicians allowed up to one-third of the $20 billion in federal aid awarded to the city in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to be squandered right under their noses, an analysis by the New York Daily News found last December. But that hasn't stopped some of the same politicians from complaining all weekend about a mere $80 million cut in New York City's federal anti-terrorism budget. Senators Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer and Rep. Peter King say they're outraged over the new cuts, with Clinton and King teaming up to launch a post-card writing campaign against the Department of Homeland Security. The bipartisan duo sounded a lot less angry six months ago, when the News uncovered evidence that billions in 9/11 cash had been misspent, gone unaccounted for and, in at least one case, was awarded to the Mafia."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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9 June, 2006

LEFTIST NARCISSISM

Excerpts from Dennis Prager

Virtually every news report about President George W. Bush's support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman describes it as "pandering" to the "far Right," the "radical Right" or, less pejoratively, "social conservatives" of the Republican Party. Democrats regularly describe the amendment as enshrining "discrimination in the Constitution." In the words of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., "A vote for the amendment is a vote for bigotry -- pure and simple."

This is another example of how the news media present news. First, Democrats are rarely, if ever, described as "pandering" to the Left, let alone "radical Left." Why not? For one thing, the news media do not believe there is a "radical Left," only a "radical Right." Second, liberalism regards positions held by Democrats to be sincere and noble, therefore, Democratic positions can never pander to anyone.

This is part of the larger liberal view of Republicans and conservatives: They are not merely wrong; they are either phonies or bad. It is inconceivable to most liberals that a Republican politician can sincerely oppose redefining the most important social structure of society. And if that Republican's opposition to redefining marriage is deemed sincere, it is inconceivable to most liberals that the person is anything but a bigot.

That most liberals cannot understand conservatives' views about marriage as anything but bigotry and/or pandering is part of a narcissism that characterizes much of the Left. The very definition of narcissism is an inability to see the world through the eyes of another. Whatever conservatives' flaws, far more conservatives understand liberals' views on same-sex marriage. Most opponents of same-sex marriage appreciate that liberals feel bad about gays' inability to marry a person of the same sex. In fact, as a proponent of a marriage amendment, I not only understand the liberal desire to enable people to marry someone of the same sex, I feel genuine compassion for gays on this matter. But such empathy for ideological foes is all but absent from the narcissistic world of the Left. To virtually every liberal writer and spokesman, only liberals mean well, only they are sincere, only they are compassionate, and only they are intellectual, rational and tolerant.

Liberals' use of the word "radical" to describe opponents of same-sex marriage illustrates this self-aggrandizing mindset. To describe as "radical" those who wish to preserve the man-woman-based definition of marriage known to every civilization is to stand the word on its head. It is beyond intellectually dishonest -- it is mendacity -- to describe those who favor preserving the definition of marriage as "radical" rather than to so describe those who wish to change the gender-based definition of marriage for the first time in history. Even if you support same-sex marriage, you should at least have the honesty to admit that it is you who favors something radical.

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ELSEWHERE

Good to see that Taranto reproduced a point I made on Majority Rights about political correctness. It gives my thinking a much wider readership than usual.

Serious lawbreakers escape U.S. law: "You may have heard about the shooting in Milwaukee over the Memorial Day weekend. Even in America's volatile, crime-infested urban areas, it's not every day that a guy goes on a firearms rampage, killing two and injuring three others. The suspect's name is Octaviano Juarez-Corro. Yes, he was in the U.S. illegally when he spilled all this blood and created all this mayhem. Yes, he is one of those Mexican illegal immigrants we're told will do the work Americans wouldn't do. And, yes, like so many other violent and wanted fugitives in the U.S., he is believed to be back in Mexico - safe from extradition to barbaric America where he could, of course, face the death penalty... Because of a 1978 treaty and a 2001 court ruling, Mexico generally has refused to return suspects to the United States if they face the death penalty or a life-without-parole sentence, paving the way for thousands of suspected drug kingpins and killers to flee to Mexico to avoid U.S. prosecution"

French Jews facing Nazis again: "On the last Sunday of May, 30 angry black men stormed into the heart of the old Jewish quarter, terrorizing residents, shopkeepers, and Sunday strollers. The self-styled militia of the Ka Tribe, a black separatist group originally connected to the no-longer funny black comic Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, embodied the worst fears of a Jewish community exposed, since January 2006, to a new rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Three months after the torture-murder of Ilan Halimi, the intimidating incursion of the Ka militia into the narrow "Jewish" street of the Marais looks like an ominous sign of worse to come... Eyewitnesses concur about the incursion: 30 men in paramilitary formation stormed into rue des Rosiers, shouting threats and insults against Jews. Some wore boxer's mouthpieces and leather gloves with brass knuckles. They burned with anger and itched for a fight. Frantic calls to the police met with laconic replies: "Yes, we have been informed." ... Outside the ORT school, where the minister met with residents, a dapper gray-haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, "It's over for Jews in France." And added, "The police told me . . . they said it's over for us . . . they can't handle this problem. . . . It's too late."

Boycotts of Israel: "Anti-Semitic or not, the movement to boycott Israel is hypocritical, sanctimonious, and quite simply wrong. It is a shocking example of selective outrage. Yes, Israeli policies are a legitimate target for criticism, and even most of Israel's supporters will admit there has been ill-treatment of Palestinians. Yet no one is demanding a boycott of Russian academics over Russia's occupation of Chechnya, and the accompanying atrocities (which dwarf Israel's human rights abuses in the occupied territories). No one wants to boycott China because of the occupation of Tibet, the persecution of religious minorities, and other abuses by the Chinese regime. No one wants to boycott Saudi Arabia because of its misogyny and religious intolerance."

Genetics for entrepreneurship: "Scientists believe entrepreneurship could largely be a genetic trait after a study found that almost half an individual's propensity to become self-employed was due to genetic factors. Contrary to popular belief, family environment and upbringing had little bearing on a person's desire to go it alone. Researchers from Britain and the USA studied 609 pairs of identical twins and 657 pairs of same-sex non-identical twins in the UK. Identical twins have the same genes whereas non-identical twins share only half. Comparing the two can therefore highlight genetic traits. The scientists looked at whether entrepreneurship was more common among identical twins, suggesting a genetic influence. They found that if a pair of twins were identical, they were significantly more likely to both be self-employed than if they were non-identical. Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Unit at St Thomas's Hospital, London, who took part in the study, said: "This relatively high heritability suggests the importance of considering genetic factors to explain why some people are entrepreneurial, while others are not..." (HT Chris Brand)

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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8 June, 2006

ANOTHER SHONKY "STUDY"

"Shonky" is a very useful word much used in Australia which is ROUGHLY translatable as "fraudulent", "misleading" or "a confidence trick". In academe, political correctness is a great source of shonky research reports. An article in "The Times" of London drew my attention to this study. The basic claim of the article is that student motivation is the main determinant of success at school. Ability is given short shrift. As soon as I read the report in "The Times", I thought it looked like the authors were spinning like a top. And so I found it to be when I looked at the research report itself.

The authors start out under their heading Explanations with: "there is no evidence that genetic factors such as systematic differences in innate ability play a significant role in ethnic test score gaps". NO evidence? A very bold claim -- particularly in the light of around 100 years of psychometric research showing LARGE interracial differences in IQ and in view of the undoubted correlation between IQ scores and educational attainment. If the authors had said that there was "some controvesy" about the importance of innate differences in ability, they would have made a properly cautious academic statement. What they DID say is a straight-out lie.

And in their own data analysis they make sure that ability will not be shown to have any effect. They "match" (control) for the neighbourhoods from which the students are drawn by using the official "Index of Multiple Deprivation" (IMD) for the neighbourhoods concerned. No prizes for guessing that deprived neighbourhoods tend to be inhabited by lower IQ people. Smart people are not often "deprived".

Not satisfied with that, they also matched students on their "Mosaic" postcode classification -- a classification which again picks out poor versus affluent neighbourhoods. They were determined that nothing in their study would reveal anything about ability. They used proxies of ability to remove its influence on their results.

So in the end they conclude that some ethnic groups outperform whites in educational attainment. That may well be true. As far as Indians are concerned, I have little doubt of it. But that is not what their research showed. What it showed is that blacks outperformed POOR whites only, not whites as a whole.

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A MOST UNUSUAL FRENCH LEFTIST

Segolene Royal, the leftwing favourite for the next French presidency, outraged fellow Socialists for the second time in a week yesterday by attacking the 35-hour working week, the main legacy of the party's last term in office. The 35-hour week had the "unintended consequence of worsening the situation for the most vulnerable workers, notably for women with few qualifications" who now had less time to spend with their families, she said. Mme Royal's criticism of the sacrosanct 1999 working time law followed her call last week for military training for delinquent teenagers from the housing estates and boot camps for their parents.

The unorthodox positions are part of a campaign by Mme Royal, 52, who is far ahead of other contenders, to cast herself as a tough-minded reformist who is in touch with the people rather than just the Socialist party. Among the rivals whom Mme Royal is unsettling is Francois Hollande, who is party leader as well as her partner and father of her four children. So far the self-described "gazelle" of French politics, is succeeding in her strategy of winning so much public support that the party will have to nominate her for the spring 2007 elections, despite what traditionalists see as her heresy over cherished doctrines....

Laurent Fabius, one of the other would-be nominees for next April's election, demanded that Mme Royal, an admirer of Tony Blair in a party which abhors the British Prime Minister, be reprimanded for promoting ideas contrary to Socialist tradition. Yesterday, however, an Ipsos poll by Le Monde showed that Mme Royal had struck a nerve. Some 69 per cent of the public said that they agreed with her ideas for imposing discipline.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



We were evil, Google founder admits: "Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the dominant internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course. Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill in Washington, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country."



Australian PM firmly against homosexual marriage: "Prime Minister John Howard said today he had scuttled the ACT's homosexual unions law because it challenged a major characteristic of Australian society. "The Bill is plainly an attempt to mimic marriage under the misleading title of civil unions," Mr Howard told ABC radio. "We are not anti-homosexual people or gay and lesbian people, it is not a question of discriminating against them, it is a question of preserving as an institution in our society marriage as having a special character."

The egregiously destructive war on drugs: "I personally find all currently illegal drugs loathsome; they stunt the mind, inhibit the body, and curtail productivity. I would never consume such substances myself, and I would advise others against doing so. Yet, compared to the adverse effects of their illegalization, the harm of drugs themselves is small indeed. Drug-taking is extremely unhealthy for the persons engaging in it, but not for anybody who abstains from it. The 'War on Drugs,' by contrast, harms everybody subject to a government that undertakes it. I have no sympathy for drug addicts; I wish to argue the case of the innocent, moral, productive people who have never used such substances in their lives but are nonetheless harmed by the coercive illegalization of drugs."

The pitfalls of government "wars": "We have heard that "war is hell," "all's fair in love and war," and "war is politics by other means" (any combination of which illustrates the risks of compounding imperfect analogies). We heard that the 1970s oil crisis was the moral equivalent of war (although government price controls did far more damage than OPEC, making one wonder who declared war on Americans). Government has declared war on every conceivable problem, from drugs and crime to poverty and illiteracy. But the imagery of urgency, resolve, and "giving it all we've got" for the good of the country doesn't match the policies or their effects on the taxpayers' pockets and liberties. Rather, declarations of such "wars" are often just dramatic rhetoric used to promote politicians' pet programs, which frequently do more harm than good, such as the vast invasions of property and privacy, and the increases in violence and corruption, triggered by the War on Drugs.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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7 June, 2006

Dubious link between strict parenting and overweight kids

Those who did the study excerpted below admit that they left out a couple of important factors but they fail to mention the factor that REALLY explains their results

"Clean your plate or else!" and other authoritarian approaches to parenting can lead to overweight children, a new study finds. Strict mothers were nearly five times more likely to raise tubby first-graders than mothers who treated their children with flexibility and respect while also setting clear rules. But while the children of flexible rule-setting moms avoided obesity, the children of neglectful mothers and permissive mothers were twice as likely to get fat.

"The difference between the different parenting groups is pretty striking," said the study co-author, Dr. Kay Rhee of Boston University School of Medicine. The study of 872 families appears in the June issue of Pediatrics, released Monday. Rhee speculated that parents who show respect and warmth within a framework of rules may help their children learn to make good decisions about food and exercise. Or it could be that strict parents create a stressful household where overeating becomes a comfort and escape, she said...

Not enough fathers participated in the study to measure their effects on children's weight, Rhee said. And since more than 80 percent of the study participants were white, the findings may not be applicable to other racial groups, she said. The study also did not take into account the weight status of the mothers, so the researchers couldn't rule out that a mother's weight might influence both her parenting and her children's weight. However, a previous study showed that parenting style is not linked to weight status, Rhee said.

To determine parenting style for the new study, researchers surveyed the mothers and observed them interacting with their children when the kids were 4 years old. The children's body mass indexes were measured later when the children were in first grade..."

Sorry to mention it, but dumb people are more likely to get fat and dumb people tend to be more rigid and have more simplistic approaches to things. It's that nasty old IQ that we see at work again in the above study. You need to look at WHY some parents treat their children less flexibly. Too much to ask of many academics, sadly

Update:

I did not think it necessary to state the obvious above but perhaps I should: Fat parents tend to have fat children -- mainly for genetic reasons, though not entirely so. So dumb, fat, rigid parents will tend to have fat children -- which can arise solely from the genetics for fatness that are passed on, not anything at all that the parents do.

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ELSEWHERE

Taranto has another excellent takedown of the contemptible Andrew Sullivan. I like Taranto's sarcasm about the would-be bombers recently arrested in Canada too.

Wicked Thoughts has a good coverage -- or should I say uncoverage? -- of the naughty Mrs McCartney affair. Australian Politics is a bit colourful today too.

German bias again: "Members of the German media have tried and convicted American soldiers of alleged war crimes before they ever go to trial. The latest case involves an article featured on the homepage of ARD tagesschau, a large, state-sponsored news program... Ironically, the same ARD journalists who can't seem to stop screaming about the denial of judicial due process to Guantanamo inmates are not even willing to afford the same privilege to American soldiers, despite the fact that American soldiers stood guard for decades and guaranteed their freedom of speech during the Cold War. In the ARD world, Guantanamo terrorists are innocent until proven guilty, American soldiers guilty until proven innocent."

Good if it happens: "Immigrants to Britain who have refused to learn the English language should be required to do so, Gordon Brown said yesterday. The Chancellor said that immigrants should also gain an understanding of British history to learn the values of freedom, liberty and tolerance. "People who come into this country, who are part of our community, should play by the rules," he told the Today programme on Radio 4. "I think learning English is part of that. I think that understanding British history is part of that. That is why I want to see changes in the curriculum. "I would insist on large numbers of people who have refused to learn our language that they must do so. If someone is unemployed, who does not speak English, they should have to learn English to make themselves employable. "If you take preachers coming into this country, they should be speaking the English language and not refusing to speak the English language." Mr Brown was expressing an opinion that goes farther than present Home Office legislation. Since last year immigrants have had to show a Standard 3 level of competence in English to acquire citizenship and, if they do not, they must take a course to reach the requisite level."

How the welfare state corrupted Sweden: "Old people in Sweden say that to be Swedish means to supply for your own, to take care of your self, and never be a burden on anyone else's shoulders. Independence and hard work was the common perception of a decent life, and the common perception of morality. That was less than one hundred years ago. My late grandmother used to say something had gone wrong with the world. She was proud to never have asked for help, to have always been able to rely on herself and her husband, proud that they could throughout their lives care for their family. I'm happy that when she passed away at the respectable age of 85, she did so with that dignity still intact. She was never a burden."

Lying is Acceptable for Some: "Wednesday's Washington Times ran a column on global warming by Cato's Patrick Michaels in which he quoted Al Gore as saying, "I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience." As a public service I will now translate this politically obtuse statement into English; It is alright to lie to people in order to scare them into doing something that is against their own interest. I feel qualified to present this rendition, as I am very familiar with the concept expressed by Gore, because the main focus of my studies has been the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs".

NYC: Tammany Hall lives on: "Clients big and small spent a whopping $36.1 million last year to hire an army of lobbyists to push their varied causes and financial interests with city officials. The ever-rising lobbying tab jumped by more than 7% over the $33.6 million spent in 2004. And it's 21/2 times the $14.5 million spent only five years ago in 2000. The top 10 earning lobbying firms alone were paid more than $16 million, according to the annual report issued yesterday by the City Clerk's office. The No. 1 slot went to Kasirer Consulting, with $2.4 million in fees. It's headed by Suri Kasirer, a fund-raiser for city Controller Bill Thompson and the wife of former Rudy Giuliani political lieutenant Bruce Teitelbaum. Her clients include Cemusa Inc., the Spain-based firm that recently won the city's huge franchise for bus shelters, newsstands and pay toilets. Cemusa paid Kasirer $96,000. Gene Russianoff, a lawyer with the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization, called the rising lobby tab "disturbing" because "more and more people seem to think government is so complicated they have to grease the skids to get anywhere."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites 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)

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.

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6 June, 2006

THE DILEMMA OF THE POST-SOVIET LEFT

After the collapse of the Soviets, the Left have no alternative to capitalism so they deny reality instead. Some excerpts below from an article by George Watson on their sad state:

The commonest form of subjectivism in our times, moral or cultural, is to deny that any value judgment counts as knowledge. Moral scepticism in that familiar style is most commonly multiculturalist, and holds that all judgments are born of circumstance and conditioning. In departments of literature, by now, it is difficult to hear any other view. Gender studies and black studies are its children, not to mention gay studies, and by now the children have grown middle-aged. Such are the views of many who once assured the world, and with enormous certainty, that capitalism was wicked-which certainly sounds like a value judgment-or that America was wrong to be in Vietnam or Iraq, which sounds like another. It is a cosy place the Left has retreated to, as to a Masada, in the hope of finding it impregnable. Subjectivism is the last bunker of the intellectual Left.

Consider this counter-instance to subjectivism. A mindless murder occurred a few years ago in Dunblane, in Scotland, when sixteen schoolchildren were shot dead by a maniac who then committed suicide. Worldwide condemnation was instant and universal. Did anyone, at that moment of anguish, stop to consider what the theoretical basis for that judgment might be? Did those who insist that there is no moral agreement in the world ever admit that they might have been mistaken? To be a subjectivist, at least for long, you have to shut your mind, and keep it shut. It is like being a solipsist, or believing that nothing exists but yourself.

Years ago, in Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell told how he once had a letter from an eminent American logician, Mrs Christina Dadd Franklin, explaining that she was a solipsist: why were there so few of them? But if she had noticed there were so few, she must have noticed, or thought she had noticed, something that was not herself. Russell was content to tell his little story ungarnished, leaving the point to sink in, and you could do the same with moral and cultural subjectivism. Just think about it. If you cannot judge anything, then you cannot judge that you cannot judge. As a great philosopher once said centuries ago-he was called Pascal-it is not certain that nothing is certain.

Subjectivism, it is widely believed, means tolerance and openness. Nobody can say you are wrong: it all depends on where you are coming from. It is a cosy place to be-until, that is, somebody points out that belief in social justice is a judgment; so if all judgments are merely personal, so is that.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up here a small correspondence for and against Rush Limbaugh.

Official chemophobia: "The first startling thing Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door with an M16. White's husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. 'Come out with your hands up immediately, Miss White!' one of them yelled through a megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear ... The target of this operation, which involved more than two dozen police officers and federal agents, was not an international terrorist ring but the couple's home business, United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, a mail-order outfit that serves amateur scientists, students, teachers and law enforcement professionals."

Book Review: "Sociologists, anthropologists, and television commentators tell us that race is biologically meaningless, that the physical differences between Danes and Pygmies are insignificant evolutionary accidents. Race, we are told, is an artificial concept white people invented only a few hundred years ago to justify colonization and slavery. If we free ourselves from this delusion, we can all march hand in hand into a future free of "racism." Everything about this view of race is obviously wrong, but since so few of the people who know better are willing to say so, this nonsense is beginning to tighten its grip on the popular mind. Now a book has finally appeared that blows to bits every one of these tendentious arguments. Race is a long overdue corrective that deserves wide circulation".

Blacking out speech -- Comment by Newt Gingrich: "In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson became president and swept his party into power due, in part, to the country's overwhelming opposition to the Sedition Act of 1798. This act was a deliberate attempt by the Federalists in power to silence their political opponents. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law enacted in 2002 is an equally dangerous modern-day assault on the First Amendment. It could more accurately be called the McCain-Feingold censorship law because it stifles political speech, protects incumbent politicians and consolidates power in Washington. This law is of the Congress, by the Congress, and for the Congress, because it protects members of Congress by silencing opposing points of view."

Beware of oil pundits: "Those who espouse clever government-led solutions to high oil prices should bear in mind that new discoveries have outpaced consumption for a number of years, but too much bureaucratic interference has hampered supply. Restrictions on building new refineries and pipelines in the U.S. have kept prices up and increased America's dependence on foreign energy. Half of Europe's motorists already use diesel fuel, but the lack of refining capacity to turn heavy crude into diesel has made the rest of the world rely a lot more on light crude, pushing up its price. And, of course, supply would be higher if almost 80 percent of oil reserves did not belong to incompetent government-owned companies around the world, such as in Russia, Sudan and Nigeria. Not to mention that huge tariffs on imports of Brazilian sugar cane have hampered the development of ethanol in the U.S. (Brazil's use of ethanol as an energy source has been a huge success.) Why make matters worse by meddling further?"

Will the Senate impose race-based government on Hawaii?: "America's motto is "E pluribus unum," Latin for "Out of many, one." Some U.S. senators seem to be reading it backward. This week the Senate will consider legislation that would create an independent, race-based government for Native Hawaiians. If the bill becomes law, it would create a racial spoils system that would hand special privileges to up to one-fifth of the state's population--including many with only a trace of Hawaiian blood. It could inspire mainland groups such as Hispanic separatists to seek similar spoils, should they ever gain enough political leverage. The notion is the obsession of Sen. Daniel Akaka, an 81-year-old Democrat whose 16-year Senate record has been so undistinguished that Time magazine listed him in April as one of the five worst senators"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites 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)

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 June, 2006

HOW SIMPLE IT IS!

In the debate over immigration reform in the United States, some citizens have called for a halt to illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border, while others contend it is impossible to completely stop the flow of poor migrants across the 3,000-km. (1,864-mile) line. But a new Border Patrol pilot program is showing that strict enforcement of existing U.S. immigration laws can have a dramatic effect.

The Del Rio sector of the U.S.-Mexico border runs for 288 kilometers (179 miles) along the Rio Grande River, which forms the boundary between Texas and Mexico. Since December of last year, the U.S. Border Patrol has tried a new program here that has curtailed both immigrant crossings and drug trafficking. With the cooperation of local law enforcement and U.S. attorneys in the area, the Border Patrol has sent hundreds of illegal entrants to be prosecuted for their crimes.

Under existing U.S. law, a person who enters the United States at any point other than an official port of entry is guilty of a misdemeanor and can be sentenced to up to six months in prison. In an interview, Del Rio Border Patrol spokesman Randy Clark said the threat of punishment has discouraged people from crossing here. "In our busiest station, where we once apprehended the most aliens, we are now close to 70 percent down for the month of May, when we compare it to 2005," he said. "For the period of the operation, which is December 2005 to present, we have noticed a 50 percent decline in the station, overall, for those six months."

Clark says the secret to the program's success is the application of existing law and the use of penalties spelled out in the statutes. In the Del Rio sector, agents have ended the so-called "revolving door" practice, whereby captured illegal immigrants were simply processed and sent back into Mexico, where they could then make another attempt at crossing. It has been common for Border Patrol agents to apprehend the same individual two or three times in the same day because of this practice.

More here. (Scroll down. Worth reading the lot)

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ELSEWHERE

Only whites can commit hate-crimes: "The pack of thugs who mugged and fatally beat a New Jersey man outside a Chelsea nightclub had robbed before, police sources said yesterday. "Get that white m----------r!" one of the attackers shouted before three of them surrounded Thomas Whitney Jr., 24, and threw the first punch, according to two women who saw the beating. Najib Noor, 19, punched Whitney in the head while Daryush Omar, 20, and Walliullah Hashimi, 22, kicked him as he lay bleeding on W. 19th St., not far from the Spy Club, where Whitney had been partying, prosecutors said. The trio then flipped the financial analyst over so they could rummage through his pockets and steal his wallet and cell phone, authorities said... Police said they didn't charge the three with a hate crime because the comment was seen as a way to identify a drunken mark, rather than a racial slur, police sources said. Omar and Noor are natives of Pakistan and Hashimi of Afghanistan".

French Protestants saved Jews in WW2: "The French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon played an extraordinarily courageous role in the second world war, providing sanctuary for thousands of Jews.... In an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, the area's inhabitants were predominantly Protestant. The first Protestants in France had long suffered murder at the hands of their countrymen. Many fled the country. But here they clung tenaciously to their rocky territory - and their equally unshakable beliefs. The area became a sanctuary for the dispossessed. At the turn of the century they welcomed the impoverished children of newly industrialised France. In the 1930s it was refugees from the Spanish civil war - and then the Jews. "The key to their extraordinary behaviour during the war is their collective memory of their own persecuted past," says Sauvage. One pastor told him: "The Jews felt close to us, because we believed in the Old Testament and they were the people of the Old Testament.""

Lefty media declining: "About 70 reporters, editors, photographers and newsroom administrators have taken early retirement offers from The Washington Post Co. amid declining circulation at its flagship newspaper. About 100 employees outside the newsroom, such as those in The Washington Post's pressrooms or on the advertising staff, also took the offer, The Post announced in Thursday's editions. Circulation at The Washington Post and most daily newspapers has decreased in recent years as readers turn to television and the Internet for news. Daily circulation at The Post peaked at 832,232 in 1993. The Post's daily circulation for the first three months of this year averaged 690,700, the company reported last month... Several other newspapers are using buyouts or layoffs to cut costs. The New York Times Co. is cutting 700 company-wide jobs. Tribune Co., which publishes 11 newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, said last week that it would use layoffs to cut costs. Last year, Tribune newspapers eliminated 185 positions through buyouts and layoffs. This is The Post's second round of buyouts in the past three years, the newspaper reported."

Leftist ethics crumble: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has dropped her demand that Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., resign from the powerful House Way & Means Committee - in exchange for a promise from the Congressional Black Caucus that they won't campaign against her in advance of this fall's critical mid-term elections.... Pelosi had ordered Jefferson to step down last week after he was caught hiding $90,000 in alleged bribe money in his freezer, saying his resignation would be "in the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus."

Responsible lending to high-risk groups: "Black and Hispanic home buyers are more likely to pay high mortgage rates than white borrowers with similar credit ratings and income levels, an advocacy group found... The study, released Wednesday, found that blacks were 29 percent more likely to pay a high interest rate on a fixed-rate home purchase loan. A Hispanic borrower also was more likely to pay a high rate, it found.... "African Americans and Latinos are paying a premium for home loans because of the color of their skin," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau.... The center's data did not include all the factors used by lenders, such as a borrower's total debts, making the study's conclusions incomplete, said Doug Duncan of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He also questioned the ability of any national study to prove discrimination, which would require an analysis of specific lenders".

Surprise! African graft stings donors: "Uganda -- a small, poor country still best known for its infamous former dictator, Idi Amin -- isn't used to being first in much. But in the 1990s, it became the first African country to substantially bring down its AIDS rate. It has since become a darling of international donors, especially in the health sector. So no one was surprised when, in 2003, Uganda became one of the first countries to receive a multimillion-dollar grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But three years later, the phrase 'Global Fund' has become synonymous with graft in Uganda. A government inquiry recently revealed that tens of millions of dollars of the country's Global Fund grants have gone missing, much of it plundered by high-ranking public officials."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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 June, 2006

FRENCH LEFTIST GETS IT RIGHT

The Socialist frontrunner to succeed French President Jacques Chirac, Segolene Royal, has broken ranks with her party by calling for a crackdown on youth crime - challenging the conservatives on their home turf. "We need a return to the heavy hand," Ms Royal said in a speech delivered in the north Paris suburbs, where an outbreak of street violence has raised fears of a repeat of last year's riots.

Unveiling a crime and security platform that is a break with the Socialists' normal emphasis on tolerance and funding for education, Ms Royal said the tough anti-crime policies of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy - the top conservative contender in next year's election - had failed to prevent an explosion of violence in poor French suburbs.

But in a break with the Socialists, who brand Mr Sarkozy as a hardliner, the mother of four called for "a much firmer approach" to young offenders. "The Left has long underestimated" the crime problem, she said. "Now is the time to tackle it head-on." Military-style academies could be set up for young offenders aged 16 or over, she suggested, steering troubled youths into aid work or apprenticeships, and teaching them "how to behave ascitizens".

For younger offenders, parents would be enrolled in compulsory courses at the first sign of trouble, with social benefits scrapped for those who failed to bring their children into line. Troublemakers under 16 should be removed from school and put in special boarding schools under close supervision by teachers, sports workers and volunteers.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The big powers united on Iran: "World powers stood shoulder to shoulder yesterday in the clearest sign yet of unity on how to deal with Iran's determination to master nuclear technology. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, just 24 hours after announcing the US would consider direct talks with Tehran for the first time in more than 25 years, joined her counterparts in Vienna to strike the most significant deal yet to try to force Iran's hand. The US, with five other world powers and the European Union, agreed to offer Tehran incentives if it halted its drive for nuclear enrichment, but also threatened unspecified "further steps in the Security Council" if Iran refused. But after months of tortuous diplomacy, perhaps more telling than the communique from the US, Britain, Germany, France, China and Russia was the image of representatives of the world's most powerful nations standing together to deliver it.

Illegals and sex crimes: "Based on a one-year in-depth study, a researcher estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. She found that while the offenders were located in 36 states, most were in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California had the most offenders, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida. Schurman-Kauflin concluded that, based on a figure of 12 million illegal immigrants and the fact that more of this population is male than average, sex offenders among illegals make up a higher percentage than offenders in the general population. She arrives at the figure of 240,000 offenders - a conservative estimate, she says - through public records showing about 2 percent of illegals apprehended are sex offenders".



Why Japanese don't like "Americans" (See picture) in their country: "A court has convicted an American sailor of killing a Japanese woman during a robbery near Tokyo and sentenced him to life in prison. A court in the port city of Yokohama convicted Seaman William Reese, 22, who had been based aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, of robbing Yoshie Sato and beating her to death on January 3. Reese pleaded guilty but said he had not intended to kill the woman. Nearly 50,000 US military personnel are stationed in Japan under a bilateral security treaty, and issues of crime, pollution and noise associated with the US bases make them highly unpopular with locals. Concerns boiled over into large protests after three US servicemen raped a schoolgirl on the southern island of Okinawa in 1995, but tensions have cooled in recent years."

Homeland "security": "The [British] Halle Orchestra recently cancelled a tour to America after being told that all 120 members would have to report in person to the American Embassy in London, at an allotted time early one morning, and pay 63 pounds for the privilege. No, said embassy officials regretfully, it would not be possible for one member of the orchestra to visit in person, presenting everyone's passport. Given that the orchestra is based in Manchester, this would have meant hiring two coaches and finding overnight accommodation for all 120 players. Bewildered by the rules, the orchestra cancelled the American visit".

Agonizing over raid on corrupt black: "It's been amusing to watch Congress fret over the FBI's decision to raid the office of their colleague, Rep. William Jefferson. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert called it 'the wrong path,' and has demanded a return of the documents seized. An unnamed member told the Washington Post that the tactics was 'unduly aggressive.' Rep. John Conyers called the raid 'an act of tremendous violence.' On Tuesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner held hearings titled, 'Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?' At those hearings, Sensenbrenner announced his intention to introduce legislation protecting Congress from future, similar police searches. Funny. Congress -- especially GOP leaders like Hastert and Sensenbrenner -- don't seem nearly as concerned when much more violent, confrontational raids happen to their own constituents."

Fat liar sued: "By the time Iraq war veteran Sergeant Peter J. Damon learned he was an unwitting star in Michael Moore's 2004 movie 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' he already had a lot of explaining to do. Relatives wanted to know why the 33-year-old Damon, a staunch supporter of the war effort and President Bush, agreed to be in a movie that was harshly critical of both, his lawyer said yesterday. Friends wanted to know why Damon, who lost both his arms in a helicopter repair accident, was portrayed as a veteran who had been left behind when, in fact, military medical personnel had helped him learn to use his artificial arms and veterans groups had helped build his family a new house in Middleborough, the lawyer said. This week, Damon sued Moore and several film production companies for $85 million and plans to tell a jury exactly what he told his friends and relatives: that Moore included him in the movie without his permission and misrepresented his stand on the war, said his lawyer, Dennis Lynch."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites 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)

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 June, 2006

BEATING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH A FEATHER

Ann Coulter explains. Excerpt:

The "path to citizenship" that Bush and the Senate are trying to pawn off on Americans requires that illegals pay huge fines and back taxes, with "huge" being defined as a $2,000 fine and taxes for three of the last five years. Even with the special "Two Years Tax-Free" package for illegals, this is about as likely as me paying my dad back the money I "borrowed" from him when I was in college.

We're told illegal immigrants are dying to pay taxes if only they can become citizens. Oh, by the way, they also will have a panoply of government benefits available to them if they become citizens - in fact, even if they get green cards. They're probably unaware of this and are just dying to send half their paychecks to the government just like us shiftless, lazy Americans.

Inasmuch as most of these low-skilled immigrant workers are in the 0 percent tax bracket, this should be a real boon for the U.S. Treasury. Indeed, the government may end up paying the illegals money: "Let's see, Juan. According to our records, you owe us 0 percent for the past three years, and because you qualify for the earned-income tax credit, we actually owe you! Are 20s OK?"

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ELSEWHERE

General Motors is in financial difficulties at the moment as a result of past bad decisions so the NYT has seized the opportunity to promote their anti-business agenda by attacking GM. GM have however given a very sane and factual reply here

Chinese and Vietnamese ballots for Boston: "State and city election officials urged lawmakers yesterday to quickly back a bill that would permit Boston to print ballots for state and federal elections in Chinese and Vietnamese. Secretary of State William F. Galvin and Boston Election Department chairwoman Geraldine Cuddyer asked members of the Legislature's Election Laws Committee to recommend the legislation to the full House. The bill stems from a September settlement between the city of Boston and the US Department of Justice requiring the state and city to provide ballots in those languages for non-English speaking voters."

Ben Shapiro on the MSM: "The mainstream press is worried about what it has always been worried about: maintaining its own status. Mainstream media breathlessly await reports of atrocities by Americans because media outlets gain authority by attacking governmental authority. It wasn't enough for Time magazine to turn over its information on the alleged massacre to the military; it had to "alert the public." This story isn't about alleged misconduct -- it's about the press feting its own bravery for exposing what should have remained private. This is what the press has done for decades. Since the advent of television, media outlets have been engaged in a systematic attempt to tear down the credibility of the United States government in order to bolster their own authority. "You can't trust the government," the media says, "but you can trust us." The Vietnam War became more about journalists (Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite) than about a war for the survival of liberal democracy in Southeast Asia. The welfare of the troops took a back seat to the press' sense of its own importance. It is a happy accident of history that this ongoing ego trip began after the rise of Hitler, or Nazism might well remain the dominant ideology on the European continent."

British government won't use its own mail service: "Government departments are being told to stop sending letters via the Royal Mail because it does not offer the same value for money as its rivals, despite its huge subsidies. The Government wants to cut 30 million pounds from the cost of delivering post and is urging departments and councils to consider using one of the eight private-sector suppliers. The news comes two weeks after the Royal Mail said the Government had given it 1.75 billion pounds in emergency help to plug its pension fund deficit and pay for modernisation."

"Diversity" not good for happiness: "It is an uncomfortable conclusion from happiness research data perhaps - but multicultural communities tend to be less trusting and less happy. Research by the Home Office suggests that the more ethnically diverse an area is, the less people are likely to trust each other. The Commission for Racial Equality has also done work looking at the effect of diversity on well-being. Interviewed on The Happiness Formula, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips accepts that people are happier if they are with people like themselves. "We've done work here which shows that people, frankly, when there aren't other pressures, like to live within a comfort zone which is defined by racial sameness. "People feel happier if they're with people who are like themselves"

Interesting point: "This column has not been kind to the Da Vinci Code, but it strikes me that there is a useful lesson to be derived from Dan Brown's fiction. His idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children, a line of descent ending up with gorgeous Parisian police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), shows the wisdom of the Catholic Church in insisting on priestly celibacy. Where families and power meet, dynasties are created; and where dynasties are created, rivalries abound; and where rivalries abound, killing and war ensue. The history of Christianity has been bloody enough as it is; imagine what it would be like if Christ really had had children. Actually, you don't need to imagine it - you can simply study the history of Islam. Because Mohammed had many wives and many children (though no surviving son), there was, almost from the beginning, a dispute about who was rightful successor (caliph). That is why Sunnis and Shias fight one another to this day. For his next novel, Brown should "uncover" an amazing Muslim conspiracy to conceal the fact that Mohammed had no children and that the early caliphs made it up. That should do a roaring trade at airport bookstalls."

Christians Under Siege in Kosovo: "While the U.S. fights Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations are helping allies of Muslim terrorists come to power in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. This is a foreign policy disaster in the making that you should hope and pray gets some immediate attention from the media. To illustrate the dimensions of the problem, Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International has testified that Albanian Muslims in Kosovo have been systematically destroying Christian churches and other sites in Kosovo and the Serbian Christian population in the province is being "squeezed down to oblivion."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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2 June, 2006

THE CRUMBLING GOP BASE

Some words of warning from Jeff Jacoby. Excerpts:

How disgruntled is the party's base? In recent polls, fewer than 70 percent of registered Republicans said they approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, a sharp drop from the 90 percent support on which he once could count. Among self-identified conservatives, Bush's standing is even lower: Just 51 percent rate his performance favorably, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. At a time when the president's support among Democrats has shrunk to single digits, and when only 1 independent in 4 gives him a positive job rating, the last thing he can afford to lose is the goodwill of his core supporters. But he is losing it.

And Congress is doing even worse. According to the most recent CBS News poll, while 59 percent of the public disapproves of the way the House and Senate are functioning, the figure among Republicans is 62 percent. Read that again: Republicans dislike the Republican-controlled Congress even more than Democrats and independents do....

Many on the right are no less acid in describing Bush. One conservative commentator described him recently as a "dime-store Democrat" and "something of an embarrassment" and wrote that "a Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc." It says something about Bush's willingness to listen to such criticism that the author of those words -- Tony Snow -- has just become the White House spokesman.

Reaganite conservatives have been the mainstay of the GOP for more than 20 years, and many of them are disgusted with the abandonment of Reaganite principles at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. If they had wanted skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security, they say, they would have voted for Democrats. Instead they voted for Republicans -- and what did they get? Skyrocketing budgets, new federal bureaucracies, more regulation of political speech, and stalemates on immigration, energy, and Social Security...

For the party's Reaganite core, the list of outrages is a long one, everything from steel tariffs to McCain-Feingold to gasoline demagoguery. Most troubling of all has been the explosive growth in the size and cost of government. On Bush's watch, the federal budget has grown twice as fast as during the Clinton years. Expenditures this year will come to nearly $24,000 per household -- the most, in real terms, since World War II. Not since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House has spending soared so recklessly.

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ELSEWHERE

Anything to shock: "Dutch pedophiles are launching a political party to push for a cut in the legal age for sexual relations from 16 to 12 and the legalisation of child pornography and sex with animals, sparking widespread outrage. The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party said on its web site it would be officially registered tomorrow, proclaiming: "We are going to shake The Hague awake!" The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether. "A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper. "We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighbouring Belgium. "We want to get into Parliament so we have a voice. Other politicians only talk about us in a negative sense, as if we were criminals," Van den Berg said... The party also said everybody should be allowed to go naked in public and promotes legalising all soft and hard drugs and free train travel for all."

Immigration cowardice: ""The Senate isn't serious about enforcing the nation's immigration laws. It is bad enough that the bill that 39 Democrats and 23 Republicans just voted to pass provides an amnesty to illegal immigrants already here. There might be an argument for doing that if there were any evidence of a commitment to enforce the immigration laws in the future. But the bill actually prohibits local police from enforcing civil violations of immigration laws-which in practice, given the byzantine rules distinguishing between civil and criminal violations of those laws, will get local police out of the enforcement business altogether. No serious effort is being made to make the bureaucracy capable of the enforcement tasks that will now be asked of them, such as performing background checks on the illegal population. The bill forbids the federal government to use any information included in an application for amnesty in national-security or criminal investigations. Any federal agent who does use that information would be fined $10,000-which is five times more than an illegal alien would have to pay to get the amnesty... The Senate should stand down in favor of the House's enforcement-first approach, not the other way around. But it would be much better to enact no bill than to enact the Senate bill."

Bloated and overpaid U.S. Federal bureaucracy: "Compensation for the federal government's 1.9 million civilian workers in the executive branch costs almost $200 billion annually. Federal wages and benefits have been rising quickly, and by 2004 the average compensation of federal workers was almost twice the average in the private sector.... The average federal worker earned $100,178 in wages and benefits in 2004, which compared to $51,876 for the average private-sector worker, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Looking just at wages, federal workers earned an average $66,558, 56 percent more than the $42,635 earned by the average private worker."

More of Britain's very selective law-enforcement: "Thousands of illegal immigrants are being issued with national insurance numbers every year even though officials know that they have suspect immigration documents. Staff in Jobcentres have been told that they have a duty to issue an NI number even if they realise that the applicant has forged documents and no legal right to work, official papers seen by The Times reveal. The NI number, which employers regard as a prerequisite to work, can also be used to claim various benefits."

A notorious British failure to die at last: "The Child Support Agency will be scrapped this summer and replaced with a pared-down operation to collect cash from the most hardened absent fathers who refuse to pay maintenance. The Times has learnt that, in future, separating parents will be told to sort out their own financial arrangements with the help of national guidelines on appropriate levels of child maintenance. Cash incentives may even be offered to couples for staying away from the new, slimmed-down agency. The decision to abolish the CSA, which has been plagued with problems since it was set up in 1993, is an admission by the Government that it is unable to deal with the scale of the problem of maintenance payments after family break-up."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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1 June, 2006

Sunday Night with "Don Giovanni"

A small memoir of a pleasant evening last Sunday (28th. May):

Even in quiet little old Brisbane, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart is a big deal -- with many concerts in celebration being put on. The latest one that I attended -- last Sunday -- was a concert performance of the famous opera "Don Giovanni".

Anne and I went with another couple, Jill and Lewis. Jill is actually an ex-girlfriend of mine but in my usual way I have kept in touch with her. We have a very similar love of music -- which is a very significant bond. Both Anne and Lewis put up with that past with good grace as they understand the nature of the bond.

Before the concert I made a simple dinner of sandwiches for us all -- thick-cut Gypsy ham with American mustard, lettuce and tomato -- on fresh grain bread. Being a sandwich-lover, I know how to make a good sandwich -- though that is about the limit of my culinary talents. We had planned to have the sandwiches in the park adjoining the concert venue but the weather looked a bit overcast so we had them on my verandah

As a concert performance, the sets for the opera were minimal but the costumes were reasonable and the singing was good. As always, I particularly liked the bass singer (Don Pedro), who was very competent.

It did however have the casting problem that plagues all opera: Singers wildly out of character but chosen for their voices -- as it has to be, of course. On this occasion, Don Giovanni was a quite insignificant guy and not at all convincing as a great lover -- but he had an excellent baritone. And in an amusing reversal, instead of large and aging ladies being cast as young girls, we had a young girl cast as an older woman!

The concert was in one of Brisbane's old powerhouses, converted some years ago into a performing arts centre now that Brisbane gets its electricity from vast generators situated alongside equally vast central Queensland coalfields. The conversion into an arts centre deliberately retained a fair bit of the original powerhouse interior. The idea of that was undoubtedly "arty" but it works well enough and I of course am very much in favour of retaining reminders of how we all got to where we are today.

The most surprising thing about the night was the audience. Far from being geriatric, there were people there of all ages, with a good representation of young people. I like to think that we have the universal appeal of Mozart to thank for that.

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BRITISH ACADEMICS' VOTE OF SHAME

(Post lifted from Norm Geras)

NATFHE has today voted to blacklist Israeli academics:

The largest university and college lecturers' union in Britain on Monday voted in favor of a motion recommending that its members boycott Israeli academics and institutions that do not publicly declare their opposition to Israeli policy in the territories. The motion passed with 106 in favor and 71 against. There were 21 abstentions. The 69,000-member National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) debated the proposal for the boycott at its annual conference in the northern English city of Blackpool. Two parts of the motion passed with a show of hands while a third went to a vote. Under the boycott, union members also will not submit articles to Israeli research papers.

The report in Haaretz goes on to quote Paul Mackney, NAFTHE general secretary, as saying:

Criticizing the Israeli government does not make me anti-Semitic...

Fancy footwork there, Paul, but not good enough. A blacklist of individuals isn't 'criticism' of their government; and the issue isn't whether you, personally, are an anti-Semite, but whether a policy of targeting the academics of one and only one country - Israel - is anti-Semitic. There's also the small matter of an academic union requiring of people a political declaration as a precondition of their being extended the usual courtesies and advantages of scholarly cooperation. What a disgrace to the profession the NATFHE decision is.

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Brookes News Update

Are dark clouds forming over the US economy?: How has the US economy roared ahead while undergoing a monetary slowdown? I think the answer lies in President Bush's cut to capital gains taxes. Nevertheless, though a recession can be delayed it cannot be avoided
Savings, jobs and Professor Quiggin's bad economics: The absurd and long-ago discredited economic fallacy that taxation can expand the demand for labour by putting the unemployed on the public payroll is reemerging
Liberal Party trips up on labour market reform: Who the hell is advising the Liberal Party on labour markets? It seems that not a single Liberal Party official has a clue about how these markets function
Google censors critic of Islamofascism: The well-known columnist Arlene Peck has been censored by Google for "hate speech". And what did this speech consist of? Criticizing ACLU and the US-based Muslim organization CAIR that is allegedly the `legal arm' of HAMAS, an Islamofascist terrorist organisation
Lefty journalist bashes Republicans as "reactionary" over illegal immigration: Stephen Ellis, US correspondent for Murdoch's `Australian' seems to think that the debate about illegal immigration that is now raging in the US is a handy weapon to bash Republicans with by referring to the so-called "reactionary wing of the party" that opposes open borders
Leftwing journalist slimes US conservatives on civil rights: According to Elliott the Democrats has always been the `traditional supporters of minorities `. This is pretty rich as well as being lousy history when one considers that the Republican Party was the Party of abolition and the Dems were the slave Party
Journalists smear President Bush over NSA spying program: It's reached the point where no reasonably informed person can take the media seriously any more, at least as a source for news. Anyone who values honest reporting can only be appalled at the bigotry and out right dishonesty of leftwing journalists
The latest dangers in cyberworld: The problem is mySpace.com, a supposedly innocuous Internet website where people can post their pictures, chat, and post their musings about the universe. The trouble is, mySpace attracts individuals who want to sexually exploit teenagers

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"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)

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.

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