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31 March, 2007

Truth about the U.N.

Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, spoke truth to the U.N. Human Rights Council last Friday. His speech:

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream? In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal. One might say, in Harry Truman's words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council. But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements-and there will be three more this session-Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world-millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries-continue to go ignored. So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights? Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights-Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard-they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh's troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn't care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights. They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights. You ask: What has become of the founders' dream? With terrible lies, it is being turned into a nightmare.

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LEFTISTS PROTECT VOTER FRAUD>

I wonder why? Post below excerpted from Gateway Pundit

Today the Washington Post brings you another example of scary biased reporting. Today's article by Michael Waldman and Justin Levitt discusses the "alleged" voter fraud problem in this country. The WaPo says, of course, that the country has no problem with voter fraud...

As Congress probes the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, attention is centering on who knew what, and when. It's just as important to focus on "why," such as the reason given for the firing of at least one of the U.S. attorneys, John McKay of Washington state: failure to prosecute the phantom of individual voter fraud.

Allegations of voter fraud -- someone sneaking into the polls to cast an illicit vote -- have been pushed in recent years by partisans seeking to justify proof-of-citizenship and other restrictive ID requirements as a condition of voting. Scare stories abound on the Internet and on editorial pages, and they quickly become accepted wisdom.

But the notion of widespread voter fraud, as these prosecutors found out, is itself a fraud.

Interesting that the authors talk about the close Washington State Gubernatorial Race in 2004 but don't mention the fact that there were more votes counted in King County than voters who live there.

Funny they fly over the St. Louis region where at least 16 democrats were arrested, convicted and sentenced for election crimes (and attempted murder of a federal witness) following the 2004 race alone... Election officials launched an investigation in 2004 after noticing that among the "new" voters registered was longtime Alderman Albert "Red" Villa, who died in 1990. His bust stands in South St. Louis. Local democratic operatives were hoping to revive his career.

In Missouri alone, prior to the 2006 elections, ACORN workers were indicted for turning in 35,000 questionable registration forms! ... despite your biased reporting, there are oodles of Democrats sentenced and convicted for voter crimes! Previously: Busted! The New York Times Bogus Voter Fraud Claims

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ELSEWHERE

Paris rioting puts racial tension on poll agenda: "Rioting at a major Paris train station, triggered by a ticket check, thrust security on to centre stage in France's presidential campaign yesterday. French police were bracing for fresh outbreaks of violence after hundreds of youths rioted over the arrest of an illegal immigrant at the Gare du Nord. Rampaging youths, many apparently of African or North African origin, wielded metal bars, smashed windows, looted stores, set rubbish bins alight and smashed shop windows. The violence erupted on Tuesday, during the evening rush hour, after ticket inspectors stopped a 33-year-old man for jumping over a barrier at the Gare du Nord Metro station. The man, described as an illegal immigrant with 22 convictions, allegedly head-butted an inspector. Witnesses described holidaymakers cowering in fear after stepping off trains from London, Brussels and Amsterdam. The violence was reminiscent of the riots that flared in Paris's poor suburbs in 2005 when Nicolas Sarkozy, now a presidential candidate, was interior minister. Francois Baroin, who succeeded Mr Sarkozy this week, said that the rioters had used "urban guerilla" tactics."

Blogress wins: "An Englishwoman who lost her secretarial job for writing a personal weblog won her case for wrongful dismissal in a Paris labour tribunal yesterday. The court ordered Dixon Wilson, an Anglo-French accountancy firm, to pay 44,000 euros in damages to Catherine Sanderson, 34, and to refund unemployment benefit paid to her since she lost her job at its Paris office in April. News of the dismissal turned Ms Sanderson, a Bath University graduate from York, into a celebrity with her blog, Petite Anglaise, about life in Paris as a working single mother. She is now completing a book under what is said to be a six-figure contract with Penguin. Dixon Wilson was not named in the blog but the firm argued that her unflattering accounts of office life identified the business and were damaging to it. It said that she should not have spent working time on her online journal. "I am delighted. I feel vindicated," Ms Sanderson said. "This shows that an employee who does good work should not be sanctioned in this way."

The hated Wal-Mart again: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. increased its U.S. charitable giving 10 percent last year to $272.9 million, the world's largest retailer said Tuesday, likely defending its position as the country's largest corporate donor of cash. The rate of growth was lower than a year earlier, when Hurricane Katrina relief helped push the annual rise to 19 percent, but it was ahead of Wal-Mart's 7 percent rise in net profit last year. The company's profit for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31 was $12.2 billion.... Wal-Mart was ranked the country's top corporate cash donor in 2005 by The Chronicle of Philanthropy"

Keith Burgess Jackson pulls apart the latest bit of Wal-Mart bashing from the NYT. Leftist elitists really hate the fact that Wal-Mart appeals to ordinary people.

I have just put up another lot of postings from Chris Brand on his usual highly "incorrect" themes.

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

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

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

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

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30 March, 2007

Human evolution radically reappraised

The findings reported below are very politically incorrect stuff. They tend to show that the races of mankind are more different than was thought. Cochran, Lahn and others involved have previously got into big trouble from the Left over it. See here. One of the "more recent evolutionary changes" mentioned below was the comparatively recent emergence of new genes connected with brain size -- genes that seem to give a large intellectual advantage but which are mostly missing among Africans. See here and here for the academic journal abstracts. For the evidence linking brain-size and IQ, see section 6 here. I must say that I see pin-headed East-African refugees in the streets every day where I live. How incorrect of me to report that!

Human evolution has been speeding up exorbitantly, a new study contends; so much, that the latest evolutionary changes seem to largely eclipse earlier ones that accompanied modern man's "origin." The study, alongside other recent research on which it builds, amounts to a sweeping reappraisal of traditional accounts of human evolution. These generally assumed that humans have reached a pinnacle of evolution and stopped there. The findings suggest that not only is our evolution continuing: in a sense our very "origin" can be seen as ongoing, a geneticist not involved in the work said.

Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, a co-author of the latest study, said the research may force a radical rethinking of the story of modern human evolution. "It turns it upside-down, pretty much," he said. The traditional view of humans as a finished product began to erode in recent years, scientists said, with a crop of studies suggesting our evolution indeed goes on. But the newest study goes further. It claims the process has actually accelerated.

It also downplays the importance of a much-scrutinized era around 200,000 years ago, when humans considered "anatomically modern" first appear in the fossil record. In the study, this epoch emerges as just part of a vast arc of accelerating change. "The origin of modern humans was a minor event compared to more recent evolutionary changes," wrote the authors of the research, in a presentation slated for Friday in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The authors are Cochran and anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The findings will also be submitted to one or more scientific journals, Cochran said.

The proposal is "truly fascinating," wrote University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn in an email. He wasn't involved in the work, though he did conduct earlier research finding that evolution may still be ongoing in the brain...

Hawks and Cochran analyzed measurements of skulls from Europe, Jordan, Nubia, South Africa, and China in the past 10,000 years, a period known as the Holocene era. They also studied European and West Asian skulls from the end of the Pleistocene era, which lasted from two million years ago until the Holocene. "A constellation of features" changed across the board, Hawks and Cochran wrote in their conference presentation. "Holocene changes were similar in pattern and... faster than those at the archaic/modern transition," the time when so-called modern humans appeared. But these changes "themselves were rapid compared to earlier hominid evolution." Hominids are a family of primates that includes humans and their upright-walking, more apelike ancestors and relatives, all extinct.

Hawks and Cochran also analyzed past genetic studies to estimate the rate of production of genes that undergo positive selection -- that is, genes that spread because they are beneficial. "The rate of generation of positively selected genes has increased as much as a hundredfold during the past 40,000 years," they wrote.

Among the most notable physical changes have been ones affecting the size of the brain case, according to Hawks and Cochran. A "thing that should probably worry people is that brains have been getting smaller for 20,000 to 30,000 years," said Cochran. But growth in more advanced brain areas might have compensated for this, he added. He speculated that an almost breakneck evolution of higher foreheads in some peoples may reflect this. A study in the Jan. 14 British Dental Journal found such a trend visible in England in just the past millennium, he noted, a mere eyeblink in evolutionary time. Research published in the Sept. 9, 2005 issue of the research journal Science by Lahn and colleagues found that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.

Anthropologist Jeffrey McKee of Ohio State University said the Hawks and Cochran study bears out predictions he made in a 2000 book The Riddled Chain. Based on computer models, he argued that evolution should speed up as a population grows. This is because population growth creates more opportunities for new mutations; also, the expanded population occupies new environmental niches, which would drive evolution in new directions.....

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Full circle: Remember when grocery stores switched from paper bags to plastic bags in order to save trees? Well, now the city of San Francisco is making them switch back. A ban is going into effect that would outlaw the usual plastic grocery sacks. Instead they will be required to only offer alternatives like paper and cloth.

Iceland's Laffer Curve: "The Wall Street Journal notes that corporate tax revenue has jumped dramatically in Iceland, even though the corporate tax rate has been slashed to 18 percent. That sentence actually should say that revenues jumped because of the lower tax rate. Iceland is a clear example of the Laffer Curve. As the rate fell, companies had less reason to avoid taxes. The low rate also encouraged additional economic activity. Iceland's workers are the biggest winners, of course, since they now enjoy higher incomes and more prosperity:

Day care likely to cause disruptive behaviour?: "It is a hot-button issue in the child-care debate: will it be good for my baby? A major US study has found keeping preschoolers in long day care for a year or more increases the likelihood they will become disruptive in class later, persisting into grade 6. But the study tracking more than 1300 American children in a range of care arrangements, also found time spent in high-quality day care centres was linked to gaining higher vocabulary scores in primary school. The negative finding - associating more disruptive behaviour with formal day care irrespective of the centre's quality - was also reportedly "slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children", The New York Times said. But a lead author of the study, Jay Belksy, said it invited a broad social question: "What happens in classrooms, schools, playgrounds and communities when more and more children, at younger and younger ages, spend more and more time in centres, many that are indisputably of limited quality?"

Egyptian blogger puts the blame where it belongs: "Where does the government, the corrupt ministers, the ruthless SS officers and their soldiers come from? Aren't they egyptians? Don't they come from egyptian families and households? Aren't they born and raised here like the rest of us? Well, what does that exactly say about us? Whether we like it or not, the government is a reflection of the people. So if the government is ruthless, corrupt and dictatorial, what does that say about the people? What does it say about the parents of the police officers that order their soldiers to beat up and sexually assault women? What does it say about the families of those corrupt government officials who sign away our future and that of our children for a bunch of dirty money? What does it say about a nation that produces such a government, and accepts it, even as it plunders the country and enslaves its people? Maybe the government is right: Maybe we don't deserve Democracy."

More French ethics: "French oil giant Total SA is being investigated for illicit dealings with a rogue regime in the Middle East. This time it's Iran, but maybe you recall its experience with another dictator and something called Oil for Food. A French judge is investigating bribes that Total executives allegedly paid Iranian officials to secure business in the Islamic Republic. Last week, the judge issued preliminary charges of abuse of company funds and corruption of foreign agents against Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie. The company and Mr. de Margerie deny any wrongdoing, but the Total experience is all too typical of the way European firms cut deals with dictators while their own governments provide political cover. Meanwhile, the same French prosecutor continues to investigate Total for alleged kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein in return for Iraqi oil."

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

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

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

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

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29 March, 2007

New evil preventing victory in Iraq

Some more wise words below from Dennis Prager

I never thought we could see a new form of evil. After the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the tens of millions murdered in the Gulag, the forced starvation in the Ukraine, the hideous medical experiments on people by the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, the torture chambers in all police states, I had actually believed that no new forms of evil existed. I was wrong.

Of course, for sheer cruelty, one cannot outdo the Nazis; no depiction of hell ever matched the reality of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. But while Islamists and Baathists in Iraq have not devised new forms of torture - there probably are no new ways left - they have devised a new form of evil: murdering, maiming and torturing as many innocents among their own people as possible.

I do not know of an analogous form of evil. When the Allies conquered Nazi Germany, disaffected Nazis did not go around murdering and cutting off the heads of fellow Germans in order to make the Allies leave. Nor did disaffected Japanese blow up Japanese students so as to make the American occupation of Japan untenable.

Here is the latest example of this new form of evil as reported by the Associated Press: "Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, said . . . the vehicle used in the attack [on Iraqi civilians] was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat. He said this was the first reported use of children in a car bombing in Baghdad. 'Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back,' Barbero told reporters in Washington."

These same "insurgents" routinely blow up children who line up to receive candy from U.S. troops. Likewise, college students are targeted for death, as are men lining up to apply for civilian jobs, men and women attending mosques, physicians in hospitals, and so on. The more innocent the Iraqi, the more likely he or she is to be targeted for murder.

I submit that there was no way to anticipate this. And no one did. This includes all those who predicted a civil war in Iraq between Shiites and Sunnis. I include myself among those who predicted savagery in Iraq. On a number of occasions prior to our invasion of Iraq, I recounted to my radio listeners this chilling story:

As a young man, in 1974, I was riding on a bus traveling from Beirut to Damascus. The man I sat next to was an English-speaking Iraqi whom I asked at one point in our conversation, "Can you describe your nation in a sentence?" "No problem," he immediately answered. "We Iraqis are the most barbaric people in the world." I obviously never forgot that man's words, and therefore anticipated great cruelties in Iraq. But neither I nor anyone who predicted a civil war had so much as a premonition of this unprecedented mass murder of the men, women and children among one's own people as a military tactic to defeat an external enemy.

It is, therefore, unfair to blame the Bush administration for not anticipating such a determined "insurgency." Without the mass murder of fellow Iraqis, there would hardly be any "insurgency." The combination of suicide terrorists and a theology of death has created an unprecedented form of "resistance" to an occupier: "We will murder as many men, women and children as we can until you leave." Nor is this a matter of Sunnis murdering Shiites and vice versa: college students, women shopping at a Baghdad market and hospital workers all belong to both groups. Truck bombs cannot distinguish among tribes or religious affiliations. If America had to fight an insurgency directed solely against us and coalition forces - even including suicide bombers - we would surely have succeeded. No one, right, left or center, could imagine a group of people so evil, so devoid of the most elementary and universal concepts of morality, that they would target their own people, especially the most vulnerable, for murder.

That is why we have not yet prevailed in Iraq. Even without all the mistakes made by the Bush administration - and what political or military leadership has not made many errors in prosecuting a war? - it could not have foreseen this new form of evil we are witnessing in Iraq. That is why we have not won. There are respectable arguments to be made against America's initially going into Iraq. But intellectually honest opponents of the war have to acknowledge that no one could anticipate an "insurgency" that included people leaving children in a car and then blowing them up.

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Fallout fear puts deadline on nuclear sites attack

IRAN is several years away from nuclear capability but any plan for a pre-emptive attack on its nuclear sites may have to be implemented before the end of the year to avoid the danger of serious radiation fallout. Sources cited by The Jerusalem Post say a US or Israeli strike on the Iranian facilities would probably be carried out before Iran had enriched weapons-grade material in sufficient amounts to trigger a nuclear catastrophe if hit. Iran is believed to be attempting to produce a critical mass of enriched uranium before the end of the year. Any attack after that would risk triggering fallout that could kill civilians over large distances and make parts of Iran uninhabitable.

The same consideration figured in the timing of Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. The Israeli cabinet decided then to approve the attack when it learned that a shipment of enriched uranium fuel rods was due to arrive at the new reactor south of Baghdad. An attack on the reactor once it became "live" would release massive radiation, experts had warned. It would turn the bombing into a nuclear attack, despite the use of conventional armaments. Israeli warplanes demolished the Iraqi reactor before the rods could be installed.

In view of the possibility of an early strike against the Iranian facilities, several foreign embassies in Tehran are reportedly updating their emergency evacuation plans, including choosing alternate land routes out of the country. Israeli officials welcomed Sunday's decision by the UN Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on Iran in an effort to persuade Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The officials said earlier sanctions by the Security Council, though relatively mild, were already having an effect. They said influential voices were being heard in Tehran calling on the Government to avoid escalating the confrontation with the international community....

More here

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Brookes News Update

The US economy: the coming recession and what to look for: Every credit boom ends with a bust. Although it is impossible to predict the precise timing of an impending recession, one can look out for certain danger signals. Let us begin with the fallacy that consumer spending drives economic growth
The Iraq surge: why it's working: Early signs are positive; early indicators say that we're winning. As General Petraeus cautiously concluded, 'We'll be able to evaluate the situation for sure by late summer'
Turning the tide against terrorism and the Democrat Party: In 1973 the Democrats callously cut off all aid to South Vietnam so that it could not defend itself against communist aggression. Today the Democrat Party is trying to do the very same thing to the Iraqi people. Once again the Democrats have revealed their total indifference of the suffering and pain of others. This party is without remorse, pity, integrity and
patriotism
President Bush versus the Democrats' phony attorneys scandal: At the heart of the latest dust-up in Washington is the news that the Bush administration, through Gonzales' Justice Department, fired eight federal prosecutors
US economy: will a housing bust cause a recession?: Terry McCrann of the Herald Sun unwittingly revealed the truly dismal state of economic 'debate' in Australia. According to him inflation is 'the absolute foundation of sustained growth in the economy and of living standards"

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

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

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

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

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28 March, 2007

IRRELEVANT EXPERTISE: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CONSULT A ZOOLOGIST ABOUT STATISTICS

We read:

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt. Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet. But the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust".

The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October. It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair's official spokesperson said the Lancet's figure was not anywhere near accurate. He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

But a memo by the MoD's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson [A zoologist], on 13 October, states: "The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to "best practice" in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq."

To see what statisticians experienced in the research method concerned say, see here and here. I am myself a much published user of that research method and I made the following comments last year:

None of the comments I saw appeared to be by people who are experienced users of cluster sampling -- the method used for the Lancet study. I am a VERY experienced user of cluster sampling -- with many of my academic publications based on it. And the glaring error which rather explains why the study appeared in a medical journal rather than a more statistically sophisticated journal is that there was NO VALIDATION of the survey results. That your survey-takers might just sit down under a tree and "make up" their "interview" results is a routine peril and it is routine to take precautions against it -- usually by going back on a later occasion and checking with the alleged respondents a proportion of all interviews handed in. Just the awareness that a sample of the respondents will be re-interviewed tends to keep the interviewers honest -- though not always so, regrettably. So the results reported in the Lancet study have no credibility at all and must be regarded as garbage.

It is astounding that the authors of the study were so naive. Perhaps they WANTED their interviewers to "fudge" the results -- making clear what the desired results would be, of course.

Another oddity in the Lancet article that suggests something peculiar about the authors is the claim that their interviewers were all DOCTORS -- and not just any doctors but doctors bilingual in Arabic and English. I have never seen the like of that before. Experienced interviewers of some kind were what was needed and that is what is usually used, not doctors. Can we really believe that a whole corps of these rare doctors abandoned their medical duties for so long in order to do something outside their normal expertise? If true it certainly suggests a heavy political committment on the part of the doctors concerned -- exactly what one would NOT want in a study claiming to be objective. To me the whole claim seems like the sort of "gilding the lily" that con-men engage in.

Other critics have noticed other vast implausibilities in the results reported -- the amazingly high (98%) success-rate at getting people to consent to an interview, for instance --- garbage, garbage garbage. And the lie about the death certificates actually shows how bogus the results were.

"Those guys were not even trying to do real research. It was just a propaganda circus. I strongly support Moore's point about the survey's lack of demographic information. That is so unthinkable in survey research that the article would never have been published in an academic journal that knew anything about survey research. The Lancet should stick to medicine.

And as Iraq Body Count note:

"Between January and June 2006, there were 91 violent deaths recorded by the Lancet survey. This would correspond to over 180,000 deaths in the first 6 months of 2006, and an average rate of 1,000 per day. The daily death rate over the same period based on UN reports (which sum Baghdad morgue and Ministry of Health data) is 80 violent deaths per day. Cumulated media reports provide a somewhat lower figure. If the Lancet extrapolation is sound, this would imply a further 920 violent deaths every day (1000 minus 80) which have been recorded by neither officials nor the media. As these are averages, some days would see many more deaths, and others substantially fewer, but in either case, all of them would remain unnoticed."

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ELSEWHERE

Democrat corruption coverup?: "Democrats promised reform and instituted "a moratorium" on all earmarks until the system was cleaned up. Now the appropriations committees are privately accepting pork-barrel requests again. But curiously, the scorekeeper on earmarks, the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS)--a publicly funded, nonpartisan federal agency--has suddenly announced it will no longer respond to requests from members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks. "They claim it'll be transparent, but they're taking away the very data that lets us know what's really happening," says Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. "I'm convinced the appropriations committees are flexing their muscles with CRS."

America's coming tax disaster: "Earlier today, I wrote a post discussing the Democrats proposed budget for next year. I briefly mentioned that this proposal is a sham to the American taxpayer. Having now listened throughout the day to their acrobatic attempts to justify it, I wanted to specifically tell you why it is so bad. Here we go... Their budget proposes the largest tax increase in American history - The Democrat's budget calls for a tax increase of every tax bracket, slashes the child tax credit, raises the death tax, and reinstates the marriage penalty. And this is just a sampling, there is more. In all, the Democrat's plan will cost taxpayers over $390 billion in the next 5 years. What is particularly frustrating about this ill-advised action is that the Democrats are blatantly ignoring the economic consequences and fiscal benefits that lower taxes have brought to the treasury the past few years. Revenue has increased in double digits the last two years alone because of the economic expansion encouraged by reduced taxation. This revenue growth has been crucial in reducing the deficit. The Democrats refuse to recognize this, though, and instead they just want to tax us to death. This is a recipe for disaster."

The media don't have a clue: "Noemie Emery has a great column in The Weekly Standard that rips Time magazine for its assessment of the current Administration and conservatism. In "How the Right Went Wrong", the writers at Time seem to have conveniently forgotten how, in a similar analysis done toward the end of the Reagan's Presidency (1987), they unanimously dismissed his legacy; while in the new article, they wax nostalgic about what a great man Reagan was; a beacon of purpose and clarity, a statesman of genuine vision and character, dwarfing the pygmies who have frittered away his inheritance."

No Leftist "liberation" campaign for Zimbabwe?: "This puzzle of the heartless Left came into focus tonight when I watched Abdel Bari Atwan of Al Quds newspaper claim on another BBC show that the problems of Zimbabwe stem solely from the sanctions imposed by Britain and America. America, apparently, was to blame for the Mugabe regime's policy of burning farms and the replacing white farmers with incompetent cronies that has sowed famine and economic catastrophe in a once-fertile land. This is a sorry state of affairs. The same Left that rails against Israel and the United States and organizes marches for the "liberation" of Palestine will not acknowledge the political crisis in Zimbabwe because it would mean siding with America."

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

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

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

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

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27 March, 2007

WARNING ABOUT VIRUS CHECKER

I recently installed the virus detection system from PC Security Shield. I found it to be crap. It progressively disabled my access to all sorts of sites and applications. The first sign of trouble was when I could no longer access YouTube videos. I put up with that for a few days but when it got to the point that I could no longer create a new document I deleted the whole thing. And, hey presto! Everything is working again. I emailed the firm concerned but received unhelpful form-letters in reply only. They promise a refund to dissatisfied customers but my request for one was met with a crashing silence.

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Islam Expert: Netherlands Tolerates Muslim Excesses

Dutch politicians and media are downplaying excesses of multicultural society and thereby increasing these, in the view of Islam expert Hans Janssen. "The Netherlands should resist, using non-peaceful means", he argues in weekly magazine Opinio.

Jansen, Professor of Modern Islamic Ideology at Utrecht University, characterizes the Dutch as inhabitants of "a peaceful enclave" who have, however, "forgotten that peace sometimes needs to be defended through violence". A peaceful society that wishes to remain existent and stay peaceful "will have to find a way to defend itself through non-peaceful means from people who are not peaceful", as the Arabist writes. "It will be hard to explaining this convincingly to all those respectable and friendly people in the (Christian coalition parties) CDA and ChristenUnie. And to the rest."

As Jansen sees it, the Netherlands is too indulgent to violence of fundamentalist Muslims. But he also suggests that moderate Muslims, too, strive after an Islamic society in the Netherlands. They intentionally make use of the radicals to enforce their wishes, according to the Arabist.

According to Jansen, Muslim fundamentalists frequently make threats, but the Dutch media remain silent about them. He is pleading for a central reporting station for all Dutch people who are being threatened.

Source

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Articles recently up on ICJS

BGU President Disses Overseas Donors
Zionism in the Age of Dictators
Liberalism a luxury during war
Concert
Jews against Zion
Liberty fades as rights talk grows
University accused of censoring anti-Semitic Islam lecture
Et tu, BBC?
Islamicization of Antwerp

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ELSEWHERE



I rarely post to my Leftists as Elitists blog these days but I have just posted there a story I could not pass up.

The pathetic EU anniversary: "Equally mysterious is why the European Union is so pleased with itself. The fiftieth anniversary bash held in Germany at the weekend has been an odious spectacle. It was a politically correct modern version of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. That one of the exhibits on display was a collection of cakes from the 27 member states was accidentally appropriate, since this is an organisation sharing Marie Antoinette's attitude towards its "citizens". It was bizarre to witness political leaders acting as if they were attending a celebrity birthday party. Though the occasion symbolised a collective detachment from reality, it contained a message within the pious "Declaration of Berlin" that was formally launched yesterday. The heirs to Thomas Jefferson will have no reason to fear the competition from this. The text is turgid and it is contains near-comic double-talk"

More media deception: "On March 17, I noticed that Bud Cummins, one of the fired U.S. Attorneys, had directly contradicted the major premise of an L.A. Times article published about him. It's now been over a week, and the paper has done nothing to correct the record. It appears clear to me that they aren't going to tell their readers that the subject of an article has publicly claimed that the central premise of the article was wrong. If you're looking for an L.A. Times scandal, you've found it. This nonsense about Andres Martinez isn't a scandal. Hiding the truth from your readers is. On March 16, the L.A. Times published a story titled Cummins fears corruption investigation led to his firing. The article said that Cummins had looked into allegations relating to potential corruption by Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt. It quoted Cummins as speculating that this investigation may have had something to do with his being fired: "Now I keep asking myself: `What about the Blunt deal?'" In an e-mail to TPM Muckraker, Cummins said that The Times got it wrong: "Unfortunately, that isn't what I said, or at least what I intended to say, and it is not the case."

Reality dawns in Quebec: "With three days left in one of the most tightly contested elections in decades, Quebec's electoral officer yesterday reversed his decision to allow Muslim women to vote without having to lift their face veils to identify themselves. Chief Electoral Officer Marcel Blanchet invoked emergency powers to change his mind on one of the controversial minority-rights issues that have roiled the campaign and led to death threats, public outrage and repeated criticism by Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair. Mr. Blanchet said his office had been inundated with calls and emails about his decision to allow women to wear the niqab when they voted. His staff was worried and he was assigned two bodyguards. He feared some angry voters would turn out "in the craziest disguises you can imagine" and disrupt Monday's election."

No brakes on Soros spending: "The following is a statement by Mark Fitzgibbons and GrassrootsFreedom.com, regarding grassroots legislation currently being considered by Congress as part of lobbying reform: “George Soros-financed Open Society Institute, a 501(c)(3) ‘private operating foundation,’ spent nearly $65 million financing mostly left-leaning 501(c)(3)s that engage in lobbying and/or public policy advocacy in just 2005 alone according to its tax return, IRS Form 990 available at Guidestar.com. “The attached partial list of recipients of this ‘largesse’ shows the distinct political, lobbying and public policy purposes of these expenditures, including (1) influencing judicial nominations, (2) advocating for gay marriage, looser immigration and social security legislation, (3) taxpayer-financed elections and (4) gaining more ideological control of the news media. “None of these lobbying and grassroots expenditures would be disclosed under the grassroots legislation written by lobbyists and being considered by Congress, even though the organizations that receive Soros’ financing clearly ‘influence’ the general public and Congress to take action on policy, legislation and judicial nominations. Yet other citizen-supported grassroots causes communicating on the same issues would be required to track their expenditures, report them quarterly to Congress, and would be subject to civil and potential criminal penalties based simply on the exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as the right of citizens to petition the government."

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

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

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

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

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26 March, 2007

BBC pays 200,000 pounds to 'cover up report on anti-Israel bias'

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend 200,000 pounds blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East. The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.

BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public. The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias. The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent. Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".

Source

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Brookes News Update

US economy: will a housing bust cause a recession?: Last month the Fed reported that factory production and the output of mines and utilities leapt by 1.0 per cent. This is a big figure - and an important one. If the higher stages of production are still expanding then the country is not yet on the verge of a recession
Tony Abbot and the Liberal Party screw up again on labour market reform: The Liberal Party, including Tony Abbot, was provided with the necessary information to defeat the critics of reform. For some reason the Liberals refused to use it. The result is that opponents of reform have been given more opportunities to try and discredit it
Another Murdoch journalist slimes the Iraq War while giving leftwing thugs a pass: Matt Price - a columnist with The Australian - smeared Libby, Cheney and Prime Minister Howard. But when it came to Vietnam's murderous regime and sadistic terrorists the heroic Mr Price had nothing to say
Castro loves hippie software: Software guru Richard Stallman founded Free SoftWare Foundation. Was a recent guest of honor of Castro's Stalinist regime. True to form, Stallman embraced the regime that jails the most journalist per capita on planet earth. So while people were being tortured in Castro's gulag Stallman was praising the torturers while ignoring the plight of their victims
The US and Australia: are their foreign debts a problem?: Our economic commentariat refuses to even consider the role monetary policy plays in distorting the pattern of production, destabilising exchange rates and creating balance of payments crises. It's as if they would rather the economy sank than admit they were wrong

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ELSEWHERE



As Al Capone said: "Vote early and vote often": "Muslim women wearing the niqab or burka - veils that hide the face entirely - will be allowed to vote in the Quebec elections, without showing their face. That's the directive from the Director general of elections, despite the fact it goes against the electoral law. Typically a voter is to present photo-I.D. But women wearing a full-face veil will have to either swear that they are who they say they are - or have an adult with them verifying their identity."

Anti-semitism rules come in at British universities: "Measures to tackle antisemitism in British universities will be unveiled this week amid concern about rising discrimination. The government will warn vice-chancellors they must not ignore antiJewish activity on campuses and must prevent prejudiced lecturers, guest speakers and extremist political organisations stirring up hatred against Israel. A recent Commons report highlighted attacks on undergraduates, a lack of respect by lecturers and tutors for the needs of observant Jewish students and a growing tolerance of extreme language against Israel during student debates on the Middle East. There is particular concern about so-called "Islamic" antisemitism, with radical Muslim clerics, or their followers, being allowed to preach antiJewish hatred in universities".

The dreaded Wal-Mart has now opened a store just outside Washington, D.C.: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. opened its first store inside the Capital Beltway yesterday. The Landover Hills store, the closest to the District, is the chain's latest store in an urban setting. Nationwide, Wal-Mart is focusing on urban locations such as the District, Chicago and Atlanta for new customers as it saturates rural and suburban areas... The store will have an expansive selection of Hispanic groceries -- such as Goya beans and rice -- and a broader collection of Latin, gospel and R&B music. The store also carries Wal-Mart's urban clothing line, Exsto, in addition to its Metro 7 and George private clothing lines.... The store will have 330 employees, and it received more than 11,000 applications, Mr. Restivo said. He said he didn't have information on how many employees are from Prince George's County. Wal-Mart said last month that the Landover Hills store will be one of 10 urban areas it planned to help revitalize with jobs and small-business assistance."

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

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

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

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

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25 March, 2007

DRAT!

Yet another one of my websites has gone out of existence. Background: I have always had a website in webspace provided by my ISP but one does of course lose that if one changes to another ISP. And some ISP websites I have known have had big glitches that make them of only limited use. So I have always had "backup" websites with my writings on them. But the backup sites nearly all seem to be run by arrogant nerds who feel free to delete a customer's account any time they like. And they do like. I have never tried to keep track of it all but there must be about 10 addresses where my writings once appeared but which now just give an error message. The latest such is here.

I have enquired why the site just mentioned was deleted but got only a form-letter reply that gave me no clue about what my sin was in their eyes. The fact that I occasionally mention the most obscene four letter word of the modern age -- "r*ce" -- probably accounts for a lot of the cancellations I have had. Using that word makes me guilty of "hate speech" of course and webspace providers usually seem to have a "policy" about that. That I use the word in a scholarly way is obviously too deep a distinction for a lot of nerds.

The most reliable hosting service for me has in fact been blogspot -- though they go offline for a short while every now and then. Anyway, I cope with the unreliability of it all by putting up multiple copies of everything I write in different places on the net. So if my writings cease to be available in one place they will still be available somewhere else. The three "home pages" I list at the bottom of all postings here are all to sites that DO currently work most of the time and that do have most of my writings on them. So if at first you don't succeed, don't keep trying: try another one!

If blogspot ever bans me that will be pretty pesky (they DO delete blogs on "hate speech" grounds. See e.g. here) so keep handy a link to my only Wordpress blog -- IMMIGRATION WATCH -- in case that happens. I will use the Wordpress site to redirect readers to new non-blogspot sites in case that should ever be needed. The owners of blogspot are of course G*ogle -- which is why I generally mention their name in modified form only. I want to be as far below their radar as possible. They DO run searches to see what people are saying about them. There are around 1500 other blogs that link to Dissecting Leftism alone so all those links would become dead if blogspot got nasty with me.

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BEND OVER ATLANTA

Post below lifted from Boortz

OK .. here's the way it works:

1. Steve learns to weld.
2. Steve would rather be an artist than working in a machine shop
3. Steve obtains some scrap metal and starts welding it together in odd shapes which he declares to be art.
4. Steve can't find anyone who will voluntarily pay for the piles of scrap metal he has welded together.
5. Steve changes his name to Stephano and drops his last name.
6. Still nobody will buy Stephano's art, though there is one Buckhead matron who has taken a rather prurient interest in some of Stephan's other talents.
7. The Buckhead matron allows Stephano to place a pile of scrap metal in her garden and begins to refer to it as a sculpture.
8. Buckhead socialites, after encountering Stephano's "sculpture", and desiring to pander to the matron's artistic tastes, decide that Stephan is being greatly wronged because nobody will pay him for his artistic efforts.
9. The buzz among the Buckhead social set is heard in the halls of the Atlanta City Council and the arts community.
10. A sense of anger builds that we have yet another artist in our midst who simply cannot manage to find a willing buyer in a free market environment.
11. Stephano and his backers become increasingly frustrated with the lack of respect the great unwashed have for his artistic talents.
12. The arts community -- which, by the way, won't buy any of Stephano's art either -- tells Atlanta's political leaders that Atlanta simply cannot survive or be considered a world class international city unless Stephano's "art" is displayed citywide.
13. A plan is hatched to use the police power of the Atlanta city government to fun the purchase of Stephano's piles of junk.
14. The city seizes money from residents and writes some fat checks to Stephano for more artwork.
15. Stephano, no longer needing to service the needs of the Buckhead matron, tells her to find another cabana boy.
16. Atlanta residents wake up one morning wondering when someone is going to come along and remove those piles of scrap metal someone left in their neighborhood overnight.

This scenario, or something very close to it, is playing out in Atlanta right now. A task force appointed by the Mayor has determined that Atlanta needs a cultural investment fund in the amount of at least $10 million that will provide money to artists, arts organizations and what it refers to as "cultural organizations." The suggestion is that there should be a tax on businesses operating in Atlanta to provide the funds. The story in this morning's Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that "Many of those who work in the arts in Atlanta said they hope to see some progress on arts funding soon."

At this point you shouldn't need a translation of that quote from the AJC. But then again, many of you went to government schools, so I'll provide that translation for you. Many of the people in the arts community in Atlanta remain frustrated by the fact that Atlanta residents will not voluntarily pay for their art. So, of the Atlanta residents won't voluntarily buy their art, the government should step in and make them buy the art by seizing their money and transferring that money to artists and arts organizations.

And what about this idea of placing a special tax on Atlanta businesses? What we have here is the arts community taking advantage of the ignorance of our government-educated residents. They know that many people think that if the tax is placed on the businesses this means that the rank and file Atlantans won't be paying for the art. Sadly, they're possibly right. Our education is so pathetic that most people can't noodle out the fact that all taxes paid by businesses are passed on to the consumers of whatever service or goods they sell.

When I was driving from the Charlottesville, Virginia airport into downtown Charlottesville yesterday I noticed many piles of scrap metal scattered around the local highways and biways. No ... seriously. I did! I learned later that this is all from a taxpayer-funded program called "Arts In Place." You should have heard the shouts of approval from the audience at the Charlottesville Omni ballroom last night when I made a less-than-complimentary comment about this "art." Then I wake up this morning to see that the welfare artists in Atlanta are after even more of our money.

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ELSEWHERE



I have just put up another lot of postings from Chris Brand on his usual highly "incorrect" themes.

German decay?: "Germany – A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a request for a speedy divorce from a Muslim woman who said her husband beat her. In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran sanctions such physical abuse, she wrote in her decision. News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts and Muslim leaders in Germany, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence. The court in Frankfurt abruptly removed Datz-Winter from the case Wednesday, saying it could not justify her reasoning."

Duke case ending: "It seems that the trumped-up charges against three young men who played for the la crosse team at Duke University will be dismissed either today or sometime next week. That will mostly end their ordeal, though they'll still have to deal with millions of dollars in legal fees (which, in the end, the city of Durham, N.C., will probably have to pick up). The same can't be said of their false accuser - who is in a world of trouble, since you're not supposed to make false accusations to the authorities. But her dire fate will seem positively sunny compared to that of Durham DA Mike Nifong - who is certain to be sued for defamation, likely to be disbarred and very possibly charged with an open-and-shut case of perjury that could land him in jail for a long time. Yet some of the most disgraceful actors in this case will go unpunished. I'm referring to a huge cohort of the professors at the top-flight university attended by the three unjustly accused men. Some 88 of them - more than 10 percent of the entire Duke professoriat - engaged in a shocking rush to judgment in the weeks following the party where the accuser falsely alleged she had been raped... Since the academic work of those who organized the ad centers around the notion that the white male power structure subjugates and violates all those who are neither white nor male, the case was actually a dream come true for them." [Dr Sanity has some good comments]

Baby bottles now a terror weapon: "Fanatical terror suspect Abdula Ahmed Ali, 25, and his wife, Cossor, 23, are among those being interrogated by police as suspects in the massive plot to attack trans-Atlantic flights in midair. What the outwardly normal couple had secretly plotted is almost too horrifying to consider, cops said. The Alis planned to use 6-month-old son Zain's baby bottle as a liquid bomb, blowing themselves and their child up, along with hundreds of others aboard the flight... The baby was later turned over to her grandparents."

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

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

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

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

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24 March, 2007

IRAQI ANTI-WAR FABLES DEBUNKED

Post below lifted from Dan Mandel

When war against Saddam's Iraq was proposed in 2002, a key component of the opponents’ case was to assert that dismantling Saddam’s regime would bring more death and destabilization than leaving him in place. When the anticipated disaster failed to materialise, critics spoke of Iraqis loathing the uncertainties of life and death today to the certitudes of life and death under Saddam. With the on-going terrorist insurgency producing death in Iraq and disenchantment in America, both claims came back in vogue. Critics now spoke of greater humanitarian disaster, citing the figure 650,000 Iraqi dead since Saddam’s ouster on 20 March 2003 published by the Lancet journal last October and polls showing Iraqis believing themselves worse off today than under Saddam.

Facts however have again intruded. The Times (London) recently showed that the Lancet estimate was tenfold in excess of all other surveys; was produced by partisan figures using dubious extrapolations rather than body counting; included unexplained anomalies (such as an admitted two-thirds drop in the number of child deaths since Saddam’s overthrow) and was also found to be wanting by an array of experts on methodological grounds. The debunking is important, as the Lancet figure’s significance lies in the fact that, if believed, a key element in the case for removing Saddam – the humanitarian imperative – would be seen to have collapsed.

As to the views of Iraqis, questioned four years later as to whether they preferred life under Saddam to the present, a poll published on 18 March by Britain’s Opinion Research Business found that 49% of those questioned did not, while only 26% did. Also, Baghdadis’ sense of security has risen in tandem with the troop surge, according to the 400 interviewers who spoke to 5019 adult Iraqis – an index of the importance of American efforts via the troop surge to end the sense of rigidity and drift that had been increasingly characterizing the Bush Administration policy to date. Whether the surge and its attendant new strategies are adequate to the task remains to be seen.

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A great anniversary

Post below lifted from Elder of Ziyon. I do incidentally like that blog title: "Elder of Ziyon". It is of course a mockery of that stupid old antisemitic tract "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". The blog title probably freaks a few of the crazies. To them it would PROVE the reality of their fears

For some reason, when PalArab terrorists are not as successful as they like to be at killing Jews, the world tends to ascribe peaceful motives to them. There is a good reason for this: to say that Israeli defensive actions are saving Israeli lives would justify them, and no one wants Israel to have any justification for any defensive moves.

In fact, every single Israeli action designed to save Israeli lives is roundly criticized: building a fence, pro-actively targeting terrorists, disrupting terror infrastructures, stopping tax payments to terrorists - all have come under withering condemnation.

Which brings us to today. Today is the third anniversary of Israel's wiping out Hamas uber-terrorist, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Only a week before, there was a suicide bombing at an Ashdod chemical plant that killed 10 and that was intended to blow up the plant and kill untold hundreds of Israelis. Yassin taunted Israel at the time, saying that their reaction to that attack was weak and that Hamas was gaining strength.

Those who complain about Israeli actions always say that Israel is acting in ways that cannot be justified. Here are some of the reactions to Yassin's assassination:

The killing provoked widespread condemnation from the international community. Kofi Annan, UN General secretary, strongly condemned the killing and also called on Israel to halt its policy of assassination. The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution condemning the killing supported by votes from 31 countries including the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa with 2 votes against and 18 abstentions. The Arab League council also expressed condemnation, as did the African Union.

Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said: "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself - and it is fully entitled to do that - against the terrorism which affects it, within international law. But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing and we condemn it. It is unacceptable, it is unjustified and it is very unlikely to achieve its objectives."

The White House equivocally condemned the action. Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, said, "We are deeply troubled by this morning's incident," but he added, "Israel had the right to defend itself" and stressed that Yassin had been "personally involved in terrorism". A State Department spokesman said: "This does not help efforts to resume progress towards peace."

Well, here's your justification: In the three years prior to Yassin's death, approximately 800 Israelis were killed in terror actions. In the three years since, that number has plummeted to about 110.

The way to eliminate terror is to go after it. Israel's assassination of Yassin was part of a series of actions that reduced the threat to Israelis and caused the terrorists to spend more time hiding and less time attacking. In hindsight, it is clear that the condemnations of Israel were wrong and that, then and now, Israel's actions to defend her citizens are not only justified, but obligatory.

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ELSEWHERE

The Congressional Democrats are making a big fuss at the moment about the firing of 8 U.S. prosecutors by Attorney General Gonzales. They say they smell a rat in it. I have been covering the matter mainly on my Immigration Watch blog and it now seems clear that I was right to do so. The firing was apparently part of a generally stepped-up recent effort by the Bush administration to enforce the immigration laws. The crackdown has never been publicly announced because to do so would be to admit that enforcement had been neglected up to that point. To follow the matter on my Immigration Watch blog go here, here and here in that order. So the Democrats are just defending part of their criminal clientele -- as usual.

INSA Pressuring the FBI to Cancel Meeting with Robert Spencer : "The Muslim Brotherhood front group, The Islamic Society of North America (INSA) is pressuring the FBI to cancel having Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org from speaking to their agents. Unfortunately it may be working. Mr. Spencer is one of the most qualified individuals to inform FBI agents on the threat of Muslim terrorists. Obviously, the INSA and other groups such as CAIR are aware of this, and will put pressure on the FBI to cancel under the guise of Islamophobia."

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

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

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

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

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23 March, 2007

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO

Your morality is what guides you in your choices between right and wrong, good and evil. If you believe it's wrong to enjoy life in a successful capitalist society, you'll feel guilty about your high living standard and a disproportionate consumption of world's resources. By extension, you wouldn't want to miss the once-in-a-year opportunity to redeem your sins by supporting such a highly moral cause as an anti-war protest.

But what is the source of a morality that forbids to fight terrorism and views the United States as the enemy? Clearly it isn't rooted in the American tradition. Such a morality manifested itself on a massive scale for the first time in the 1960s. Many of today's protesters admittedly crave to recapture the spirit of those days. Many will be singing John Lennon's "Imagine."

My research has led me to the excerpts from Yoko Ono and John Lennon's articles published in the 1972 editions of Sundance magazine. Although attributed to John and Yoko jointly, they were written mostly by Yoko who clearly was the one wearing the pants. It should be a required read for everyone who would like to know where their otherwise lazy and cynical leftist opponents get their passionate idealistic convictions from. Here is a condensed list:

1. A collective hallucination can create objective reality.
2. "The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come." Obviously it's a good thing.
3. Middle America is stupid and "afraid of youth and the future."
4. People work not because they're glad to have a job but because they're being bullied into working by the "tyranny and suppression of the capitalists." (Karl Marx called and left a message).
5. Immature youth are "the aware ones"; traditional education and thought discipline is the enemy.
6. Material reality is evil.
7. "Come together rather than claim independence."
8. "Feel rather than think."
9. Immature and irresponsible behavior is a virtue.
10. Possessions are immoral. "Any possession that is more than what you need belongs to someone who needs it."
11. A worldwide revolution ("progress") is inevitable, and such a future "cannot be anything but brightness."
12. To resist the revolution is immoral because it prolongs people's suffering.
13. A society based on competitiveness and logic produces "hypocrisy, violence, and chaos."
14. A society based on love rather than reasoning will produce "balance, peace, and contentment."
15. To remove evil from this world men must be feminized (if you liked this one you will also like "The DaVinci Code" which is a 500-pages-long regurgitation of this very doctrine).

Absurdities may be a good material for rock lyrics, but presented as a life philosophy they are, well, absurd. Nonetheless, in the absence of logic and reason whose use had been abolished by liberal education, this psychobabble has become Holy Scripture of the new "progressive" religion. John's fame and his unfortunate martyrdom have turned these mind games into unquestionable prophecies. They might as well be called the Gospel of John and Yoko, from which generations of protesters have been religiously drawing their strength and moral fortitude. Can you say, "Imagine no religion?"

While Yoko may not be the original creator of these inanities, she certainly succeeded in presenting them as the original "Instant Flower Garden" combination package. Planted into the heads of faithful innocents, the seeds have grown into the bizarre efflorescence covering the left side of America's brain that we are dealing with today.

So many of these uncontested absurdities have been inserted as moral messages in popular novels, TV shows, and Hollywood movies, that one can only wonder how come they haven't yet become the country's official ideology. One might even suspect there's some ominous dark force in this society that is preventing a total compliance with the "progressive" morality. A conservative might identify the culprit as the good old common sense. But if you are a frustrated "progressive," you will either blame it on the American stupidity, or claim a criminal conspiracy. Either way you may become convinced that the culprit had better be eliminated with prejudice for the sake of the Greater Good.

If you believe the Gospel of John and Yoko represents a higher morality, you will naturally begin to resent such obstacles in the way of "progress" as reason, the rule of law, common sense, the need to be a master of your own life, and the responsibility for your own well-being. And since the United States of America was built on such values and remains their most dedicated proponent, any honest and consistent "progressive" is bound to develop a seething hatred towards this country.

In the "progressive" book of virtues, American values are the quintessence of evil. So if you are a "progressive" and you aren't mad at this country, that just means you're neither honest nor consistent. But then again, because living by this dead-end moral code is logically impossible, one has to resort to hypocrisy and seek compromises, forever balancing on the edge of madness.

Such mad morality is exactly what drives people into crowds at anti-war rallies. The fate of Iraq is not their biggest concern. Protesting the war is more of an excuse to take revenge for the daily torture of maddening hypocrisy and compromises with the "system." Believers in the Gospel of John and Yoko use these rallies to claim high moral ground, work out anxieties, seek reassurance - and some of the die-hards may even still harbor hope that a collective hallucination will somehow change the objective reality - just as the prophecy predicted.

As for the Iraqis - to hell with them! Let them all kill each other. "Progressives" have more pressing issues, struggling to maintain and expand their high moral ground. They have never cared about the lives of the people they claimed to protect. They didn't care about the Soviets, Cubans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, or Palestinians. It was always about them and their maddening inner struggles.

Granted, this mad dead-end morality has always existed in various forms around the world. But it was in the 1960s that it gained such massive proportions in this country - and has been growing ever since, affecting schools, culture, politics, and even science - occasionally winning the official status. So even if America had swallowed and digested a refutation of itself then, it has suffered such a severe poisoning that many toxins have reached as far as the Capitol Hill and settled there, resulting in Congress's erratic and self-destructive behavior.

Attempts to confront the lure of "progressive" ideology with facts and logic have failed and will continue to fail because the "progressive" faith is not based on facts and logic. It is based on morality and this is the ground on which it must be fought.

Conservatives who support their positions with economic and political data but give away high moral ground to the "progressives" are thereby admitting that their economic and political achievements are immoral - and thus have no right to exist. Those seeking middle ground and a moral compromise are thereby proposing that hypocrisy and absence of moral standards be made the law of the land. Guess what fish will grow most rapidly in those murky waters!

The only way to fight absurdity is by exposing it for what it is - an absurdity. The "progressive" morality based on logical fallacies and wishful thinking cannot sustain the life of a society or even one individual. It lures people with seemingly easy solutions to life's problems, but results in breeding hateful wrecks wallowing in their own madness, trapped in their communal moral dead end, longing for self-destruction and trying to drag the rest of us down with them.

Because the spreading of the "progressive" morality has always brought suffering and misery to real-life humans, it should be exposed as inhuman and condemned. It should be opposed with the true human morality that is based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - the one that has proven to spread happiness, prosperity, and real progress without any quotation marks.

More here

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

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

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

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

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22 March, 2007

More media bias: ABC’s strange and questionable Iraq poll

Post below lifted from Dinocrat

ABC has a poll of Iraqis that it positions as highly negative, and of course that is partially true. However, the story is more complicated, and far better than ABC represents, if you are not a Sunni. Here’s the ABC spin from its story, “Voices from Iraq 2007: Ebbing Hope in a Landscape of Loss” — a heck of an objective title for a news article by the way:

A new national survey paints a devastating portrait of life in Iraq: widespread violence, torn lives, displaced families, emotional damage, collapsing services, an ever starker sectarian chasm - and a draining away of the underlying optimism that once prevailed…the sharpest deterioration is in Baghdad, where the number of Iraqis who say their own lives are going well has dropped by 51 points. But it’s also down by 26 points in the rest of Iraq. And even outside of Baghdad, just 32 percent of Iraqis feel “very safe” where they live, compared with 60 percent a year and a half ago.

The poll is quite bizarre in some respects. For example, it features touchy-feely data like this chart below, showing that the poor Iraqis feel “stress” in their transition away from decades of cruel, totalitarian rule towards, perhaps, something better:

We look at the chart above and we wonder how the Western world, the United States of America, and our attendant freedoms, blessings, and wealth were ever created. Did the American Revolution or Civil War, or maybe World War I or World War II, or even Desert Storm, cause “trouble sleeping” among Americans, we wonder? Should we have canceled our own Civil War or opted out of World War II to prevent “feelings of anger” or “difficulty concentrating”? Indeed, is “stress” in the pursuit of freedom a vice?

Leaving aside the fatuousness of the chart above, let’s get down to the real nitty-gritty: do Iraqis feel safe in their environs and are they happy that we liberated them? The way ABC spins the poll, you would say no, since in many cases ABC averages the results of Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, and the purported nearly 100% negativity of Sunnis weighs down the averages. So you can’t believe the story; you have to look to the poll’s internals to find some truth. Powerline summarized these findings, which show a high level of satisfaction among Shiites and Kurds on these issues:

when asked to rate “today's conditions in the village/neighborhood where you live” with respect to security, by a 61% to 39% margin, Shia respondents rated their local security “good” rather than “bad,” and by an even wider 89% to 11% margin, Kurds rated their local situation “good.” The average is dragged down by the Sunnis, who said 7% “good,” 93% “bad.”…When asked whether it was right for the coalition to invade Iraq and depose Saddam, 70% of Shia and 83% of Kurds say Yes. On the other hand, Sunni responses were 2% Yes, 98% No…

So Kurds and Shiites rate their local security good by wide margins, and they are darned happy that the Americans decided to free them from their torment and bondage. Sunnis, on the other hand, are understandably upset by their loss of power, and the subsequent acts of reprisal against them.

But — and this is our point about the methodological problems with this poll — is it possible or plausible that 98% of Sunnis are virtually unanimous in their disapproval of the deposing of Saddam Hussein? Is is possible that only 2% of Sunnis (a result that could go below zero, since the margin of error is 2.5%) are happy that the US deposed Saddam? Are there no Sunnis in Iraqi government or getting US government contracts or largesse? Are there zero freedom-loving Sunnis in Iraq? Do 98% of any group ever agree on anything at all? Furthermore, as we said, the 2% of Sunnis who are reported to think that liberating Iraq was a good idea is even below the margin of error of the poll:

The survey had a contact rate of 90 percent and a cooperation rate of 62 percent for a net response rate of 56 percent. Including an estimated design effect of 1.51, the results have a margin of sampling error of 2.5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

We wonder if the poll’s methodological problems come from the difference between the “contact rate” of 90% and the “cooperation rate” of 62%. What tests did ABC’s pollsters perform to determine that there were no systematic biases among the Sunnis who did and did not cooperate, for example? Might we find an answer to ABC’s counter-intuitive findings of unanimity there?

The ABC poll and story flunk the tests of common sense in at least a few ways: (a) ABC’s relentlessly negative story on its poll, which ignores the regional and confessional differences in results, itself calls into question the objectivity of the poll; (b) the touchy-feely nature of some poll questions are such that any war whatsoever, including the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II would give the same negative results on certain issues; (c) it is highly suspect that only 2% of Sunnis approve of the US’s removal of Saddam Hussein; and (d) any poll about any issue that results in statistical unanimity among a large group of those polled ought to question the validity of its own methodology. In summary, it’s hard not to conclude that there was an agenda behind both the poll and the reporting of the poll.

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ELSEWHERE

The latest Leftist hero going down the same old path of economic destruction: "While Barbara Walters is busy sucking up to Hugo Chavez, I wonder if her inquiring mind is even aware of the damage this wonderful and passionate guy is doing to Venezuela's economy? Venezuela is knocking three zeros off the bolivar, its currency, and renaming it the "bolivar fuerte" (strong bolivar). This is an effort to cope with rising inflation. Inflation has spiked in recent months due to Mr Chavez's very expansive fiscal policy, and capital flight following recent nationalisations. Ahhh. The wonders of socialism! You would think that this "charming", "passionate", and "intelligent" man might have learned from the economic debacles that socialism wrought in the 20th century. You would think he could look around the world and grasp that a country's embrace of socialist and communist principles is directly proportional to its level of poverty and misery. And that even in the so-called "advanced" and "enlightened" European Union (socialism lite), life is deteriorating."

The rich already pay most of the tax: "The IRS just released some data. One of the most interesting reported facts is this: "For tax year 2004.... Taxpayers with an AGI [adjusted gross income] of at least $328,049, the top 1 percent of taxpayers, accounted for 19 percent of total AGI, representing an increase in income share of 2.2 percentage points from the previous year. These taxpayers accounted for 36.9 percent of the total income tax reported, an increase from 34.3 percent in 2003"

Another charming Muslim: "A man who ripped out his wife's eyes in a fit of rage was sentenced by a French court to 30 years behind bars today. Mohamed Hadfi, 31, tore out his 23-year-old wife Samira Bari's eyes following a heated argument in their apartment in the southern French city of Nimes in July 2003 after she refused to have sex with him. Ms Bari, who had demanded a divorce before the attack, was permanently blinded. Hadfi, a Moroccan, initially fled to Germany. He was finally arrested and sent back to France, where he was indicted for "acts of torture and barbarity leading to a permanent disability". Prosecutor Dominique Tourette demanded that Hadfi be sentenced to 30 years in prison, two thirds of which must be served in full, calling the defendant a "diabolic torturer". Once his sentence is served, Hadfi will be deported and barred from ever returning to France."

Scientist "Silenced" By Bush Gave 1,500 On-The-Job Media Interviews In Recent Years: "A NASA scientist who said the Bush administration muzzled him because of his belief in global warming yesterday acknowledged to Congress that he'd done more than 1,400 on-the-job interviews in recent years. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who argues global warming could be catastrophic, said NASA staffers denied his request to do a National Public Radio interview because they didn't want his message to get out. But Republicans told him the hundreds of other interviews he did belie his broad claim he was being silenced. "We have over 1,400 opportunities that you've availed yourself to, and yet you call it, you know, being stifled," said Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican."

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

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

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

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

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21 March, 2007

MUSLIM HATRED IN AMERICA

Spc. Craig Perkins' uniform made him a target in Baghdad - and, he believes, again in an apartment complex near Clarkston. Perkins, who returned last summer after almost a year's duty in Iraq, shot a man outside his apartment March 9 in what he says was the culmination of months of insults by some of his neighbors from the Middle East. Perkins, 34, said some residents in the ethnically diverse Kristopher Woods Apartments taunted him and made spitting sounds when they saw him in uniform heading to or from National Guard duty. Now Perkins is moving. He said he did not want more conflicts.

Perkins said he shot 26-year-old Tareq Ali Bualsafared in self-defense after Bualsafared and another man threatened him. He said the two men rushed toward his front door even after he fired a warning shot. Bualsafared, a college student from the United Arab Emirates, said Perkins was the aggressor. He said Perkins cursed them. Bualsafared, who was shot in the leg, said neither he nor his friend, Saleh Ali, a 17-year-old refugee from Iraq, knew anything about Perkins before he confronted them as they walked by his apartment. In interviews Friday, the accounts of Perkins and Bualsafared agreed on one detail: There were angry words about Iraq before shots were fired.

He said he had no animosity for his Middle Eastern neighbors in Clarkston. "I've never been a prejudiced person," he said. He noted he is a black man with a white girlfriend. He said he has white and American Indian ancestors. But he said he could feel the animosity when he walked by his Middle Eastern neighbors in his Guard uniform. Women and older men tended to be polite, but the younger men were hostile, he said. On many occasions, he said, he received signs of disrespect he knew from Iraq. Men made exaggerated spitting noises, and "they would raise their shoe at me to show me the bottom of their feet, or they would take off their shoe and wave it at me."

Perkins said that before last week's shooting, he had never seen Bualsafared or Ali, neither of whom lived in the apartment complex. But he believes others helped prod the men to come to his apartment looking for a fight....

Perkins said Ali said something about being an Iraqi and said he wasn't afraid of Perkins' .45 caliber automatic pistol. Bualsafared said Perkins then fired. Perkins said he warned the men to stop and fired a warning shot, but they ran toward him until he fired several shots. He said Bualsafared made it to his front steps, a few feet from his door. Bualsafared said the men were in the parking lot when Perkins shot him. DeKalb police spokesman Michael Payne said a detective's report showed blood was found "just outside" Perkins' door. Police at the scene arrested Perkins and charged him with aggravated assault. But after about 15 hours in jail, he was released when a magistrate's judge declined to sign a criminal warrant. Perkins is not now charged with a crime, Payne said.

On Thursday night, Ali was arrested by DeKalb police for criminal trespass, DeKalb jail records show. The arrest was apparently based on a complaint that he should not have been in Perkins' apartment complex at the time of the incident.

More here

There is a lot of discussion of this case among conservative bloggers. See, e.g. here and here. We seem bound to hear more of it. The fact that the soldier was black might protect him somewhat from the Muslim-lovers, though

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ELSEWHERE

The Durham bully: "Michael Nifong may be about to get his just desserts. His abuse of the legal process has been so outrageous that the government will have to do something, if only to save face. Nifong will be the one exception that proves the rule but, overwhelmingly, government never attacks its own. He's a wounded shark and will be thrown to the others as a sacrifice. Watch him scream as he is slowly consumed."

After constant Arab agreement-breaking: "Since Oslo's degeneration into the murderous intifada and the ongoing Palestinian infatuation with suicide/murder, the vast majority of Israelis have become convinced that their only option for even a modicum of peace is to fully separate from the bulk of the Arabs who surround them. Considering the skewed press coverage by the international media, as documented by sites such as MEMRI, Camera, and the Augean Stables, it takes a great deal of desperation and courage for the Israelis to accept that they have few friends and no choices but to do whatever necessary to protect themselves. Learning that there is nothing you can do to satisfy, or appease, your enemies is a hard lesson to learn. Many Americans are having profound difficulty grasping the lesson"

Textbooks of hate: "At the end of 2006, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Higher Education introduced new 12th grade schoolbooks, written by the Center for Developing the Palestinian Curricula. The center is comprised of Palestinian educators appointed by the Fatah governments of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, and directed by Dr. Naim Abu Al-Humos, former PA Minister of Higher Education, appointed in 2002. The center is backed by foreign funding, with special thanks to Belgium noted in the new schoolbooks.... PMW has found that the new 12th grade Palestinian schoolbooks make no attempt to educate for peace and coexistence with Israel. Indeed, the opposite is true: The teachings repeatedly reject Israel's right to exist, present the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teach Israel's founding as imperialism, and actively portray a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all."

The bad loan panic: "More and more mortgage borrowers can't keep up with their monthly house payments, and Congress wants to rescue them. "I'm determined to do everything we can to allow people to stay in their homes," Democratic senator Chris Dodd, head of the banking committee, said on Wednesday. But congressional meddling is not the way out of subprime-mortgage woes; in fact, government action will prolong the crisis.... Investors in mortgage loans, including investment banks, pension funds, and international bondholders, jumped into risky subprime mortgages because they were paid for that risk, getting higher interest rates than they would have received for investing in, say, Treasury bonds. The reason that the risky mortgages paid more, of course, was that there was a very real possibility that lots of borrowers would default. If the government, or its proxy, now steps in and purchases those mortgages, or otherwise systematically bails out borrowers, it will create a hazard for the future. The next generation of mortgage lenders won't take the high risk of subprime home loans seriously, because they'll expect that, in the event of another crisis, the government will step in and bail them out again. So they'll be even more eager to approve the risky subprime mortgages that are getting so many borrowers into trouble in the first place."

Globalization does not lead to inequality: "Another investigation -- this one by Fernando Borraz and Jose Ernesto Lopez-Cordova -- of some of the economic consequences of freer trade finds that freer trade has not increased income inequality in Mexico: "Our findings strongly indicate that globalization has not raised income inequality in Mexico. On the contrary, we present compelling evidence showing that income distribution is more equitable in states that are more closely linked to the world economy and that those states exhibit larger declines in inequality. We also find some statistical evidence suggesting that deepening globalization results in reduced inequality"

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

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

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

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

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20 March, 2007

THE SELF-ABUSING DREAMERS WE HAVE TO COPE WITH

An excerpt from Vanderleun below

Four years in to the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at Shiloh. Walk the Western Front. Speak to the smoke of Dresden. Kneel down and peek into the ovens of Auschwitz. Sit on the stones near ground zero at Hiroshima and converse with the shadows singed into the wall. Listen to those ghost whisperers of war.

Four years in and the people of the Perfect World ramble through the avenues of Washington, stamping their feet and holding their breath, having their tantrums, and telling all who cannot avoid listening that "War is bad for children and other living things." They have flowers painted on their cheeks. For emphasis. Just in case you thought that war was good for children and other living things.

There were children and other living things on the planes that flew into the towers. They all went into the fire and the ash just the same. But they, now, are not important. Nor is the message their deaths still send us when we listen. That message is to be silenced. The rising brand new message is "All we are say-ing is give...." And it is always off-key. Four years in and they are upset that their party of the 90s has been so long interrupted; that their raves are foreshortened; that their sleep is persistently shaken by car bombs beyond the far horizon; that their time at the mall can not be entirely, completely, and utterly without guilt.

Four years in and the clear and present danger to the nation must be closeted in favor of the unclear and distant end of the world if we insist on exuding, as all life does, carbon dioxide. Send the nation and its armies and its wards and protectorates to the block, but keep the polar bears cold. "Can't you see that worldwide wall of water sweeping in to inundate all life in 30, 50, 100, 500 years?"

"No. I cannot see it from here." "Ah well, you are a warmonger, an evil person, a vile Christian, a shameless, shameless American. "You must have shame. Shame is what we have when we look around us. We are ashamed. You must join us, share in our shame at being Americans, at being the last best hope of earth. "Join us and join the rising despair of people who, believing in nothing, believe only in the self, the life of the senses, the mollifying of guilt, of 'the expense of reason in a waste of shame.'" Four years in and the fools in the streets multiply. They are tired of the war, but full of themselves.

It is taking too long. | It will be with you, blowing hot and cold, for decades yet to come.

It is costing too much. | How much will it cost to rebuild a burned and irradiated Los Angeles?

Too many soldiers have died. Even one soldier's death is too much. | What is the nature and duty of a soldier? Is a soldier there only to come in and sandbag a flooded New Orleans? Bring you a Red Cross sandwich and a cup of weak coffee after a tidal wave?

We shall overcome. | Overcome who? Your fellow citizens? Certainly not the enemy. You'll not get over on this one with your Ghandiesque platitudes, unless you are ready to all go like lemmings over the cliff and onto the spikes. You don't strike me as the kind of people with that level of commitment. You strike me as the kind of people who like to prance, rant, and chant, and then go home for a nice chilled Chardonnay and a slab of grilled tofu. Then you spend an hour bitching about Bush before taking a bong hit and sucking up some MTV. I know you well. I was you.

We shall take our no balls and go home. | You will return when your children are slaughtered in their schools. You will return when one of our cities burns. You will return when your cities freeze in the winter, your beer warms without ice in the summer, your iPods go flat as you walk streets with few lights, and the shelves of your store are bare when the crops fail and the trucks cannot run.

Look around you. Everything you have, everything, is there because of oil. The brute fact of the planet right now and into the next few decades is that without oil, the machine that enables you to be you runs on oil. If that oil runs out, your nation, any nation, will do all that it can to get it back. And you will be back not "with peace, but with a sword" of a terrible fire. In your name. In all our names.

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ELSEWHERE

That great mathematical whizz, La Griffe du Lion has recently put up another of his rare but extremely erudite articles on intelligence measurement. He looks at the recent contention that men are on average slightly more intelligent than women. He trialled his analytical methods on the well-known black/white gap and got a difference of 16 IQ points -- which agrees well with the 15 points usually found. When he applied the same methods to the male/female difference he confirmed that too -- finding a difference of 2.4 points -- not too far off estimates by others of a 3 to 5 point difference. Don't criticize his conclusions unless you can find a hole in his analysis. He gives that in detail but you might need to be a mathematician to follow it.

BBC "impartiality" at work: "At this year's conference, I was stopped by a BBC radio reporter who was soliciting opinions on the scandal involving Israel's president. "Should he resign?" asked the reporter. "I'm not sure," I replied. "I don't know the facts." "Nice to be able to sit on the fence," the BBC's seeker of truth responded. "Sorry," I added, "but in my country, someone is innocent until proven guilty." He was obviously disappointed by my wanting to examine the evidence before voicing an opinion. That's apparently not a requirement for the BBC in its coverage of accusations of Israelis' transgressions."

German support for the Ayatollahs: "Only Europe could force Teheran to change course by non-military means. While the USA don't trade with Iran, China, Japan, and Russia are expendable for Teheran. Europe isn't: Most technologically sophisticated imports originate from the European Union. "Two thirds of the Iranian industry is equipped mostly with machines of German origin", reports the former president of the German-Iranian chamber of commerce, Michael Tockuss."The Iranians depend on German replacement parts and suppliers." A study of the Iranian parliament confirms: Without European replacement parts and industrial products the Iranian economy would be paralysed within months. Instead of using this last available leverage to force a change of course by non-military means, Berlin in particular rejects an efficient regime of sanctions"

Another killer Kennedy: "For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario. Bobby Kennedy's affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of - and perhaps even a participant in - a plan "to induce" her suicide....The report was in effect buried for decades as a classified document, and even the released version contains censored sections. Never before mentioned despite thousands of articles, books and documentaries about her death, it details aspects of Kennedy's on-and-off affair with the movie star, including sex parties and a lesbian dalliance... The document gives no precise reason why she would be killed but hints it may be linked to her threats to make public her affair with Kennedy" [You can see one of the documents concerned here]

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

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

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

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

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19 March, 2007

The SDAs

I rather like a slogan I saw up today on the signboard of my local Seventh-day Adventist church: There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going to.

I must say that I respect the way the SDAs keep the Sabbath. That most Christians regard the Day of the Sun as sacred is paganism, with no warrant in the Bible. But, as I have pointed out on my scripture blog, so much of modern Christianity is pagan with no warrant in the Bible -- the celebration of Christmas and Easter included, of course. The only day that Christ instructed his followers to commemorate was the Passover (1 Corinthians 11:25).

I imagine that all my readers are aware of Christmas as a development of the pagan winter solstice festival but some may be less familiar with the history of Easter. The name comes ultimately from the Babylonian goddess Astarte, who was a fertility goddess -- and to this day the symbols universally associated with Easter are pagan fertility symbols -- eggs and rabbits.

And the day of the sun (the first day of the week) was the day sacred to almost all pagans of course. It was presumably because it was so pagan that those pesky Hebrews decided to celebrate the last day of the week instead. For pagans, however, the last day of the week remained the day of Saturn. I wonder how many of my readers know why we have seven days in the week? The answer is on my scripture blog and it's not what you most probably think.

Update:

There is a site here which lists how the days are named in different languages. It is interesting to see that where we name Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday after Norse gods, the Italians, Spanish and French still use names that are derivatives of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus.

One or two readers seemed to think that I was proselytizing for the Seventh Day Adventist church in what I wrote. So I guess I should mention that I have never been inside an SDA church nor have I ever read an SDA book. Does that cover it?

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ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS

Professor Israeli public lecture
Without a great fuss
Group hugs can be dangerous
Why the peaceful majority is irrelevant
In fear for the future of Britain
Melanie Phillips speaks to a Melbourne audience
Do not appease hatred
Melanie Phillips
Moderates must not become apologists for radical Islam
A man of the people
Raphael Israeli: Muslim apologist, thy name is coward
Let people say when to give in to minorities
Jimmy Carter's Bonfire of the Vanities
The Rape of Europe
Braving the wrath of latte man
Liberals are now the appeasers of hate
Gagged - or just challenged?
Protector of the free world deserves better
No wisdom mollycoddling Muslims
Beyond burger imperialism
Israeli police storm temple
Intimidation tactics
Modern Israel is a far cry from old South Africa

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ELSEWHERE

Muslims seem determined to make themselves unpopular: "Six Muslim imams who were forcibily removed from a US Airways flight last year and are now suing the airline for discrimination may also be suing some passengers who were aboard the flight. In the lawsuit filed last week, the imams say that unnamed "John Doe" passengers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport reported that they engaged in "suspicious" behavior — praying in the terminal — before they boarded the plane on Nov. 20. Omar Mohammedi, the imams' New York-based lawyer, said that the imams have not yet decided whether to pursue this complaint, but if they do it would affect only those passengers who were prejudiced in their suspicions."

Nothing to Fear? "Suspected terrorists sign up to drive school buses. I don't know about your kids, but my kids ride on school buses. FBI says nothing to fear. OK. Same agency that missed the boat on 9/11. My kids' driver doesn't look like al-Qaeda, but what does al-Qaeda look like, anyway? Same agency that can't figure out where Whitey Bulger is, either, although same agency was up to its eyeballs in Bulger murder and helped him escape. Same agency that couldn't read the rules on the Patriot Act, while we're at it".

Your government will protect you: "The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action."

WMDs used in Iraq: "At least 350 Iraqi civilians needed hospital treatment after insurgents detonated three trucks filled with toxic chlorine gas, killing two policemen. The gas attack yesterday was the seventh this year in which insurgents have used chemical gas bombs on civilians and security forces in what appears to be a new terror tactic for al-Qaeda militants. The attacks were carried out between 4.11pm (12.11am AEDT Saturday) and 7.13pm on Friday, two of them just south of the town of Fallujah and one northeast of the nearby city of Ramadi, both hotbeds of al-Qaeda militants. "Approximately 350 Iraqi civilians and six coalition force members were treated for chlorine gas exposure," Lieutenant Roger Hollenbeck of the US-led Multinational Division West said.

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

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

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

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

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



18 March, 2007

JEWISH LEFTISM

I am a great admirer of the Jewish people and, as far back as I can remember I have always been a cast-iron supporter of the State of Israel. What I find hard to understand, however, is how a people who are in general so smart, can overwhelmingly be simpletons in politics. At least since the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century right up until today, Jews have been overwhelmingly Leftist. From memory, about 80% of Jews voted Democrat in the 2004 Presidential election. Jewish alienation is probably the explanation. Dissatisfaction with the world around you IS Leftism and Jews do have reasons to be very dissatisfied with the world in which they find themselves.

As I mentioned, even Zionism was originally very Leftist -- which is why the kibbutzim were the longest-running experiment in Communism -- an experiment that has only recently been abandoned. That Zionism could have been far-Leftist might seem surprising to some today but Leftists were commonly very nationalist up until WW2 -- though you would never believe it from listening to today's Leftists. And to this day, leading Leftist intellectuals -- such as Noam Chomsky -- are Jewish and the many Jews in the U.S. Congress are also almost all Democrats. So I want to say a few words now about one particular achievement of that subset of Jews who are Leftist.

Leftism is usually destructive (to tear down is, after all, its first aim) in one way or another and Jewish Leftism is no exception. It is most incorrect to mention it, but, at risk of being "insensitive", I am now going to mention it: It was Marxist Jews who antagonized Hitler. Hitler started out with the view that antisemitism was ignorant so there is a need to explain what changed his mind. What he says in Mein Kampf is that in Linz -- where he grew up -- there were few Jews and he saw them at that time as no different from other Germans. So when he moved to Vienna he was horrified at the antisemitism of much of the Viennese press. As he says:

"For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation".

The conventional explanation is that it was rejection by the Jewish-led Vienna Art Academy that changed his mind. But I know of no good justification for that explanation. It is an explanation of convenience only. Mein Kampf may be unreliable as objective history but there is no reason to doubt that it is good subjective history -- i.e. it records how Hitler saw things. And in Mein Kampf he does not even mention the word "Jew" in connection with the Academy. He says that the Rector rejected him from the painting school because his main talent and interest was in architecture -- a judgement with which Hitler himself emphatically agreed! So what DID antagonize him?

Long before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Hitler had despised the destructive and divisive side of Marxism and when he found that practically every preacher of Marxist class-emnity that he encountered in Vienna was a Jew, he began to see Jews as bent on the destruction of the German people he loved. In other words, for him it was the strong association of Jews with Marxist hate that led to his generalized horror of all Jews. He in fact describes his conversion to antisemitism as "a great spiritual upheaval" -- i.e. he abandoned his previous "cosmopolitan" (tolerant) views only with great reluctance.

Whatever else he was, Hitler was a fervent German nationalist and the great love affair of his life was a love-affair with the German people (Volk) as he saw them. But in the aftermath of WWI, Germans were furiously divided among themselves and apparently on the verge of class-war. That grieved Hitler deeply and to salvage his romantic view of his Volk he had to attribute the divisions among Germans to outside forces deceiving them rather than as something intrinsic to Germans themselves. And since the active preachers of class war at the time were often Jews, the scapegoat was obvious. So it was Hitler's nationalist passion combined with the reality of Marxist Jewish hate-preaching that transformed him into an active antisemite.

So Jewish far-Leftists did all Jews a great good turn there, didn't they?

And something very similar happened in Britain. It is sometimes forgotten that Britain too had a considerable Fascist movement in the interwar period. And the leader of the British Union of Fascists -- Sir Oswald Mosley -- was a person of some consequence. The King even came to his wedding! And, like Hitler, Mosley started out seeing antisemitism as ignorant. In the early days he would even expel from the BUF anybody who made antisemitic utterances. But after his street meetings had come under constant attack from far-Leftist Jewish demonstrators, he began to think that Hitler had a point. So again, Jewish Leftists converted a friend of Jews into an enemy. Dreamers and simpletons might like to contend that Hitler was somehow ALWAYS an antisemite but it is very clear that Mosley was not.

The only reliable friends Israel has in the world today are American conservatives and Christians. Will the totally unappreciative attitude of most Jews towards those groups convert a friend into an enemy too? Will the consistent attacks by the ADL on Christian expression in the public square eventually alienate Christians? I fervently hope not but Leftist Jews are not helping the cause at all. With Muslims and the Left now heavily antisemitic, I think that the opposition by Leftist Jews to their only remaining friends almost indicates a death-wish. One can only hope that the many conservative Jews -- such as Jeff Jacoby and Dennis Prager -- who very wisely give every support to Christians will be the voices that Christians mostly hear. Surely nobody with any grasp of history needs to be told that Christian antagonism to Jews is possible!

I imagine that any Leftist Jew reading this will immediately put all their defence mechanisms into overdrive but a distinguished Jewish psychiatrist -- Sigmund Freud -- long ago pointed out that defence meachanisms are pathological and self-destructive so I do hope that denial will give way to an honest contemplation of reality in at least some cases.

Dennis Prager also has some wise words on Jewish Leftism.

Update:

A Jewish reader has written to me saying that Jews who work against the interests of Jews generally should not be regarded as Jews. So humans who work against the interests of humans generally (as Greenies, Leftists and criminals normally do) should not be regarded as human beings? I think not. The reader does have a good academic point however: I have not defined what I mean by "Jewish". As the matter is a very contentious one, I am not big on definitions of "Jewish" but I think that for most purposes the definition offered in the law of the return is sufficient: A Jew is someone who regards himself as a Jew. I would add to that, however, that someone from a clearly Jewish family (e.g. a family committed to halacha) should also be regarded as a Jew, no matter how he regards himself -- which is part of the reason why we have the common expression: "Non-observant Jew".

The same writer implied that I was proposing discrimination against Leftist Jews. Much though I loathe Jews who undermine Israel, nobody will ever find a single word that I have written which proposes discrimination against Jews of any sort. I think the only way one can deal with Jewish Leftism is the way one has to deal with Leftism generally -- through reason, facts and persuasion.

Note also that I am NOT saying that Leftist Jews are responsible for the holocaust. Hitler was. But it serves us very ill if we fail to look into his motivations.

Update 2

I have come across some figures on American Jewish political allegiances:

The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP.

Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver—a mere 2 percent—of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them—Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota—Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats.

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ELSEWHERE

Pelosi hears boos at AIPAC "Members of the main pro-Israel lobbying group offered scattered boos to a statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the Iraq war has been a failure on several scores. The boos, mixed with some polite applause, stood in stark contrast to the reception House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) received minutes earlier. Most of the crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 stood and loudly applauded Boehner when he said the U.S. had no choice but to win in Iraq. Pelosi and Boehner were speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual meeting. AIPAC has not taken a position on the war in Iraq or the supplemental spending bill to be considered this week by the House Appropriations Committee, but much of Boehner's speech was about the future of the Iraq conflict. Boehner sought to link the fight in Iraq to the future of Israel, as he said a failure in Iraq would pose a direct threat to Israel"



The hysterical Left: "“Liberals’ aversion to Fox News has finally gone over the top. The Nevada Democratic Party had agreed to let the right-tilting network co-sponsor, of all things, an August debate in Reno between Democratic presidential candidates. Party officials were serious about drawing national attention to the state’s January presidential caucus, the country’s second in the 2008 nominating process. What better way for the party to reach conservative and ‘values’ voters who might consider changing allegiances? But the socialist, Web-addicted wing of the Democratic Party was apoplectic. The prospect of having to watch Fox News to see their own candidates would have been torture in itself. So they set the blogosphere aflame with efforts to kill the broadcast arrangement, or at least have all the candidates pull out of the event. Before Friday, the opportunistic John Edwards was the only candidate to jump on that bandwagon... No, even unfiltered, unedited, live debate between loyal Democrats couldn’t be entrusted to Fox News. The approach of outfits such as MoveOn.org is so juvenile it’s laughable... This hyperventilation results from the fact that far-left Democrats have no comparable media outlet, nor any widespread national appeal, for their radical views in favor of heavy-handed regulation, wealth redistribution, diplomatic capitulation and economic protectionism. So they attack their rivals’ messenger with a reckless barrage of rhetoric that cuts down their own allies with friendly fire. By Friday, the Nevada Democratic Party caved in to the lunatic fringe and began seeking a more ‘appropriate’ television partner. Comedy Central, perhaps?”

It's not luck: "On St. Patrick's Day, we wear green and celebrate the culture of Ireland. I'll be down at the pub tomorrow, but I'll be toasting Ireland's success at attracting greenbacks -- all that investment flowing into the Emerald Isle and the resulting prosperity. Ireland has boomed in recent years, and it now boasts the fourth highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. In the mid-1980s, Ireland was a backwater with an average income level 30 percent below that of the European Union. Today, Irish incomes are 40 percent above the EU average. Was this dramatic change the luck of the Irish? Not at all. It resulted from a series of hard-headed decisions that shifted Ireland from big government stagnation to free market growth."

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

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

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

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

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



17 March, 2007

MYTHS, MYTHS, MYTHS

In my various blogs I am constantly doing battle with myths -- the myth that Hitler was a Rightist, the myth that global warming is a danger, the myth that Leftists are smarter than Rightists, the myth that being overweight will shorten your lifespan, the myth that salt is bad for you, the myth that more money spent on education will educate the kids better, the myth that Islam is the religion of peace, the myth that America needs illegal immigrants, the myth that the government does anything well, etc., etc.

Two myths that I want to revisit today are the myth that Pope Pius XII was a Nazi collaborator and that Fascism was antisemitic. As a libertarian, I have no time whatsoever for Fascism but it is so grossly misrepresented that I think the untruths have a serious potential to mislead.

In the prewar period, there were Fascist movements in most countries and, largely because they were nationalist movements, there were great national differences between them. Under Hitler's influence, the German version was horribly antisemitic but that was not true of most other versions. In Mussolini's Italy, for instance, Jews were prominent members of the Fascist party in the prewar period and during the war Italy was about the safest place in Europe for Jews to be! Italy rescued most of its Jews during the period of Nazi control there late in the war. And in Britain of the early interwar era, Sir Oswald Mosley used to expel from the British Union of Fascists anybody who made antisemitic speeches. Antisemitism was very common in the interwar era so early in that era the British party which most opposed antisemitism was in fact Mosley's BUF! Pesky! When his meetings came under constant attack from Jewish Leftists, however, Mosley eventually had something of a rethink.

And concerning Pacelli (Pius XII), the true tale of his great efforts to rescue Jews has now long been told but it is still the old Soviet propaganda about him being a Nazi collaborator that lives on in the public consciousness. Like so many myths, what is popularly believed is the reverse of the truth. Pius was simply being a good Italian in failing to see anything wrong with the Jews and doing his best to save them. Although Italy fumbled about on the wrong side of WW2, Italians have nonetheless much to be proud of concerning their treatment of Jews at that time. Extensive data on that in the books below:

And what does all that prove? It shows what conservatives have always said: That reality is a heck of a lot more complex and surprising than the simple generalizations that constitute Leftism.

References:

Herzer, I. (Ed.) (1989) "The Italian refuge: Rescue of Jews during the holocaust". Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press

Steinberg, J. (1990) "All or nothing: The Axis and the holocaust". London: Routledge.

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Brookes News Update

The US and Australia: are their foreign debts a problem?: Our economic commentariat refuses to even consider the role monetary policy plays in distorting the pattern of production, destabilising exchange rates and creating balance of payments crises. It's as if they would rather the economy sank than admit they were wrong
Chinese spying, nationalism and the future: China's regime has now gone from politicising everything to trying to abolish politics. Hence its citizens have enormous access to the West via the net, books, DVDs, television news and visitors. There is the possibility that Beijing would quickly adopt a more aggressive foreign policy stance should the banking system implode
Hong Kong and the Asian success story: The so-called Asian tigers did not owe their growth rates and their export success to 'cheap labour'. If it were that simple, Bangladesh and Ethiopia would outperform all them. Genuine growth is fuelled by savings and driven by entrepreneurship. The tigers were successful with labour intensive industries because they had a comparative advantage in labour
Failing to understand the election of 2006: The American death rate in Iraq is 25 percent less than the murder rate in Washington DC for the same period. The media has done an outstanding job for their fellow Democrats by featuring individual deaths on the nightly news to discourage Americans; likewise every trash can turned over in Baghdad
Keynes' errors, fallacies and contradictions: No less a personage than John Stone, considered one of Australia's arch economic rationalists, described Keynes' 'General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' as a monumental work . As I have tried to make clear, the only thing monumental about the General Theory is the sheer magnitude of its fallacies, inconsistencies and embarrassing contradictions

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ELSEWHERE

Obama runs off the Road Map: "Presidential candidate Barack Obama has misinterpreted a few key principles of the Road Map, an international agreement regarding the steps the Palestinians and Israelis must take for the peace process to begin and to conclude. Senator Obama spoke recently in Iowa, and his remarks have caused some consternation among supporters of Israel in America. As well they should. He stated: "the Israel government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart...." This position contradicts the key principle of the Road Map that states steps must be made by both sides in parallel. Israel is not obligated to take the first steps to restart the peace process. Sen. Obama seems to be following the Palestinian interpretation that places this responsibility upon Israel.

The deceptive Obama: "Obama's campaign aides have emphasized his strong Christian beliefs and downplayed any Islamic connection. The candidate was raised "in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother," his chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement in January after false reports began circulating that Obama had attended a radical madrasa, or Koranic school, as a child. "To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago," Gibbs' Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center. His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended"

Washington stasis: "Democrats have leapt on reports of mold, rats and bureaucratic hurdles at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as further proof of President George Bush's failed war policies. To the contrary, the problems at Walter Reed are further proof of the Democrats' failed domestic policies - to wit, the civil service rules that prevent government employees from ever being fired (a policy that also may account for Robert Byrd's longevity as a U.S. senator). Thanks to the Democrats, government employees have the world's most complicated set of job protection rules outside of the old East Germany. Oddly enough, this has not led to a dynamic workforce in the nation's capital."

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

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

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

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

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



16 March, 2007

Democrats Force American Energy Companies to Flee

Post below excerpted from Gateway Pundit

Democratic policies of "no drilling zones" are forcing energy companies to invest elsewhere. The democrats also keep America dangerously dependent on foreign oil.


Oil giant Exxon announced that of the 32 new major projects for 2006-09 only one is planned in the United States territory.

Investor's Business Daily has the latest on how democrats are forcing American energy companies to flee the mainland and as a result leave our country more dependent on terror regimes for our energy. This is the last thing our country needs.
"Hil verses Hal"

Democrats gleefully demonize oil companies, outlaw offshore drilling and, in Hillary Clinton's case, vow to expropriate profits. In that kind of climate, why the surprise that Halliburton is moving to Dubai?

Halliburton's pullout from its Houston headquarters Monday for a new home in the Middle East drew umbrage from the very Democrats who've had the oil-services company in their gun sights for years.

Clinton led the charge, hinting at more punishment ahead. "I think it raises a lot of very big concerns, and we're going to be looking into it in Washington," she warned.

One of industry's most innovative firms, Halliburton provides the operative brawn to transform the discoveries of oil exploration into fuel ready for pipeline transport all the way to the gas station. It holds 4,700 patents.

The only thing Democrats see in this showplace of U.S. innovation is a criminal conspiracy. But then, leftists have built a whole culture around hating Halliburton. Their Amazon-listed books hawk conspiracy theories about how Halliburton supposedly runs the U.S. or the world or both.

"Tantamount to fleeing the scene of a crime," huffed the Huffington Post, claiming Halliburton's move was to avoid taxes and slip investigations. The company, of course, denies this -- credibly, we might add, considering its remaining base in Houston.

The reality is, Halliburton's pullout is the result of Democrats doing everything possible to give the company reasons to leave. Yet they don't seem to have a clue that that's what's happening.

Clinton says she is "troubled by the continued outsourcing of jobs and . . . eager to find out how the tax code can be strengthened to encourage American companies to invest here rather than abroad."

Invest in what? Democrats have effectively taken away every opportunity that might keep Halliburton in the states. They've blue-penciled all but a small portion of the Gulf of Mexico for offshore drilling. They also have made the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge off-limits and now want that ban permanent.

Add to that Clinton's threat to confiscate the profits of companies such as Exxon, profits now being used to develop the very energy that fuels the electricity in her microphone. The result is a climate so hostile that the only way oil concerns can produce oil is by moving.

It's not just Halliburton. Exxon last week announced 32 new projects for 2006-09. Only three are based in the U.S., and just one is in the Gulf of Mexico. Another project is in Canada, and the rest are overseas, where no Hillary-like hatred of oil companies exists.

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Big problems with ethanol: ""It's easy to see the appeal: Like the flat tax or missile defense, biofuels suggest a simple solution to a complex problem. Like missile defense, they cater to our faith in technological progress. Instead of drilling rigs blighting coastlines, biofuels evoke vistas filled with amber waves of grain. Just like that, dirty, bloody Mideast crude turns out to have a clean homegrown substitute. It's a fairy tale of course, like so many others featuring magically prolific plants.The reality is that it's costly and incredibly inefficient to unlock energy stored inside plant cells, relative to the effort needed to distill comparable volumes of fuel from crude, even crude as expensive as it is today. The reality is that making biofuels from Brazilian sugar cane is much easier, cheaper and kinder to the environment than using Midwestern grain. The reality is that we care about all those principles so much as to impose a stiff tariff on Brazilian ethanol, lest it displace our homebrew."

The poor track record of diplomacy: "There's something about diplomats, no matter how brilliant, that leads them to see a world that never existed, and most likely never will. The past results achieved by the grand master of diplomacy were often disappointing. Kissinger attempted to tame the Soviet Empire by constructing "d,tente," which probably extended the life of the Communist superstate by a decade or more; it took Ronald Reagan to bring it to an end. Kissinger attempted to negotiate peace between Israel and its enemies, thereby spinning out a grand illusion-the misnamed "peace process"-that has created a cottage industry for negotiators but an expanded war for the citizens of the region. The illusion that "diplomacy" can accomplish anything worthwhile with the Islamic Republic of Iran will only intensify the mullahs' conviction that killing Americans is both divinely sanctioned and a winning strategy".



Comeback for Catholic tradition: "Catholics could soon be singing Gregorian chants during worship after Pope Benedict announced he wants the singing style to make a comeback. The 79-year-old German Pope, who last week told the world he does not care much for Bob Dylan, said the Catholic faithful should learn more of the chanting traditionally sung in Latin by choirs of monks. "The better-known prayers of the Church's tradition should be recited in Latin and, if possible, selections of Gregorian chant should be sung," he said in part of a 140-page booklet on the Mass. He lamented that Latin, the Church's official language, was disappearing and said he wanted future priests to study the language. "Nor should we forget that the faithful can be taught to recite the more common prayers in Latin, and also to sing parts of the liturgy in Gregorian chant," he wrote."

Dutch turn to bible belt: "Just 90 minutes' drive from the temptations of Amsterdam is a village so devout that swearing is banned, women refuse to wear trousers and the bank machine does not dispense cash on a Sunday. The Netherlands, best known abroad for its liberal policies on sex, drugs and homosexuality, is also home to a Protestant "Bible Belt" mapped out by villages such as Staphorst. Now a small political party long associated with the Bible Belt, the Christen Unie (United Christians or CU), is benefiting from a surge of support outside its rural heartland triggered by nostalgia for a more moral, compassionate society. After almost doubling its vote in last November's general election to 4 per cent, the CU has become the kingmaker in the Netherlands' new centrist coalition government, a feat unthinkable at the time of the previous election in 2003. "Society has opted for more traditional values, for principles such as security and community feeling," says Gerard Vroegindeweij, a political correspondent with the Reformatorisch Dagblad, a Protestant newspaper".

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

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

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

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

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15 March, 2007

Research into that pesky Left/Right division in politics

Describing the entire domain of political attitudes in terms of a single Right/Left dimension does have its problems. Many people say they have a mix of views that does not makes them clearly either Leftist or Rightist. Libertarians in particular are always promoting a two dimensional description of political attitudes. The political compass and the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" are popular applications of such theories. Below is one example of such a description:



I regret to report, however, that we seem to be pretty stuck with the old Left/Right schema. Academics have been talking about this at least since the 1940s. Various authors (e.g. Eysenck, 1954; Rokeach, 1960; Kerlinger, 1967) have proposed that an adequate description of world politics really needs two dimensions, as we see above. They propose, for example, that the Left-Right dimension be supplemented by an Authoritarian/Permissive dimension. So that democratic Leftists and Rightists are Permissive Leftists and Rightists whereas Communists and Fascists are Authoritarian Leftists and Rightists. They have not however been able to produce strong evidence that the attitudes of the man in the street are organized that way -- as I point out here and here and here, for instance.

The dimensionality of political attitudes was a topic of great interest to me also throughout my research career and many of my published papers bear on it. I attempted an answer to the dimensionality question in the second paper I ever wrote, in fact -- written in 1968 and published in 1973.

What we usually find when we do surveys of people's attitudes on political questions is that MOST people lean one way or the other. A person who agrees with one "conservative" opinion is highly likely to agree with lots of other "conservative" opinions. Very few people are evenly balanced between Leftist and Rightist opinions. THAT is the basic fact of the matter.

By contrast, people are not at all likely to be predictably pro- or anti-authority. Typically they will agree with about equal numbers of pro-authority and anti-authority questions. Leftists will tend to agree with the enforcement of Leftist authority (e.g. over business activities) and conservatives will tend to agree with enforcement of conservative authority (e.g. over moral matters). The Left/Right division swamps everything else. See here.

The account of Left/Right attitudes given in my monograph on conservatism suggests why this is so. For a start, the assumption that Fascists or Nazis are Right-wing is false. Hitler himself energetically claimed to be a socialist and Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) was a lifelong Marxist. The evidence for this has been summarized at great length elsewhere so will not be elaborated here.

Historically, the core of conservatism has always been a suspicion of government power and intervention and conservatives therefore accept only the minimum amount of government that seems needed for a civil society to function. So it is no wonder that there is no authoritarian version of conservative ideology. If it were authoritarian it could not be conservative.

Leftism, on the other hand, IS intrinsically authoritarian and power-loving and will always therefore tend in the direction of government domination. It is only non-authoritarian to the extent that is thwarted by external influences (such as democracy) from achieving its aims. Leftists in democratic societies do of course commonly deny authoritarian motivations but that is just part of their "cover". Deeds speak louder than words.

A way in which a two-dimensional schema is NEARLY correct

As conservatives characteristically know and as Leftists characteristically deny, reality tends to be peskily complex -- and the present subject is no exception. I wish therefore to point out now one of the complexities not mentioned so far.

There IS a way to divide up normal political discourse into two distinct dimensions but those two dimensions tend to be correlated. They are not independent. Knowing a person's position on one dimension will give you a weak prediction of his/her position on the second dimension. Ferguson in fact published such a description of the attitude domain in the 1940s, though he failed to see that his two dimensions were correlated.

And the dimensions identified by Ferguson can always be found in comprehensive survey research and they are in fact rather familiar. They are the religious/moral dimension and the economic dimension. In other words, it is perfectly possible for people to be conservative on religious and moral matters but at the same time to be socialistically inclined on economic matters -- as indeed America's founding fathers initially were. For an extended discussion of just that combination, see here. There IS even now a religious Left who favour all sorts of government intervention in economic matters. As Waldman says: "Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore".

Some attitude combinations are more common than others, however, and it will be no news to anybody to hear that the PREPONDERANCE of religious conservatives also support conservative (non-interventionist) economic policies.

What is surprising, in fact, is how weakly the two attitude clusters are associated. In one of my 1973 papers, I found, for instance, a correlation of only .24 between economic conservatism and social conservatism. It was this weakness of association that misled Ferguson into thinking that his two dimensions were not correlated at all.

It would appear, however, that this weakness of association stems from areas of discourse that are less central to overall political orientation -- as, in some 1984 research, I found that moral issues lay at the centre of all conservatism/Leftism issues. See the second Appendix in the paper. It is no wonder, then, that religious conservatives figure so prominently in America's Grand Old Party at the beginning of the 21st century. It shows, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the most personal issues are also the most important in politics.

In summary, then, religious/moral conservatism and economic conservatism are distinct but related -- and the more important the issue is the more highly they become related. It is perhaps encouraging that psychological research from many years previously in Australia predicted so well what is happening in American politics in the early 21st century.

References:
Eysenck, H.J. (1954) The psychology of politics. London: Routledge
Ferguson, L. (1941) The stability of the primary social attitudes. J. Psychology, 12, 283-288.
Kerlinger, F. N. (1967). Social attitudes and their criterial referents: A structural theory. Psychological Review, 74, 110-122.
Rokeach, M. (1960) The open and closed mind. N.Y.: Basic Books.

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ELSEWHERE



The Democrats are at the moment trying to make a big case out of the firing of eight Federal prosecutors by the Bush administration -- something the administration was perfectly entitled to do as the appointments are politiical ones anyway. I have some comments by Attorney General Gonzales about the matter up on Immigration Watch and there is more from him here. What the Democrats are determinedly ignoring was that Bill Clinton fired ALL 93 Federal prosecutors when he came to power -- thus bringing to an end investigations of his dubious personal history. See here. See also here for another way in which the pot is calling the kettle Afro-American.

There is so much being written at the moment about General Peter Pace and his adverse view of homosexual acts that I hate to add to it. Keith Burgess-Jackson does however, summarize the matter succinctly.

Reuters ignores Muslim attacks on Arab Christians: "In an outrageous piece of Anti-semitic journalism, Reuters blames "Israeli occupation" for the Christian flight from the West Bank"

Hating Halliburton, episode 9341: "Halliburton apparently does now, as this report from the Houston Chronicle indicates. And to answer the important question, no, Dubai doesn't. Extradite everyone we ask for, that is. Perhaps Dubai will extradite Halliburton executives in the future, and Halliburton accountants and administrators and operators, too. We will surely need their testimony, and their bad selves, for all those future criminal charges here in the United States. Maybe Dubai will, maybe Dubai won't. If I were Halliburton's CEO Dave Lesar, with less than two years left in a Cheney administration, I'd move all the junk in my trunk to Dubai, and quick. Time is money. And there could be a lot of time served given the way Halliburton has 'earned' their government paycheck over the past six years." [If I had been subjected to as much abuse as Halliburton has, I would want to move somewhere else too]

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

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

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

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

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14 March, 2007

El Pollo Puesto en Peligro

The post below is lifted from Taranto. I have never studied Spanish but I interpret Taranto's Spanish above as "The chicken position in danger"

It's been three years and a day since al Qaeda's pre-election attack on a Madrid train station, in which 191 people were murdered. The Los Angeles Times has a follow-up report, which includes this:

Spanish officials and experts say the country is potentially in more danger now than ever before as extremist groups reorganize just beyond Spain's southern coast.

As the trial began here last month, more arrests and prosecutions were announced, and senior officials say radicals in Morocco and other parts of northern Africa, many with ties to Spain, increasingly take their cues from Al Qaeda....

Maghreb-based networks remain the most serious threat to Spain in terms of Islamic extremism, law enforcement officials said this week. They said militants had begun to set up a centralized command and a string of training camps in southern Algeria and northern Mali, and have launched recruiting efforts targeting their brethren who live in Spain.

"We are seeing the Al Qaeda-ization of the Maghreb militants, and that is the evolution that most worries us," a senior counter-terrorism official in the Spanish Interior Ministry said in an interview.

But wait! Didn't Spain respond to the 3/11 attack by electing a Socialist government that quickly cut and ran from Iraq? Si, they did! Why in the world would al Qaeda still hate the Spanish then?

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Soul Murder: Nurtured on Hate

Excerpt from a post by Shrinkwrapped:

The New York Times has what is clearly meant to be a sympathetic article about the plight of the young in Palestine. The article is sad, deeply pessimistic, and incomplete in ways which reveal a surprising lack of curiosity:

Years of Strife and Lost Hope Scar Young Palestinians

NABLUS, West Bank - Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence and most despairing. They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territory riven by infighting, seared by violence, occupied by Israel, largely cut off from the world and segmented by barriers and checkpoints.

To hear these young people talk is to listen in on budding nihilism and a loss of hope. "Ever since we were little, we see guns and tanks, and little kids wanting little guns to fight against Israel," said Raed Debie, 24, a student at An Najah University here.

The article is filled with stories of unhappy, despairing youngsters in Palestine. The reporter assumes the typical point of view, that the cause of the Palestinians despair is the lack of a state of their own and the onerous Israeli occupation.

Israeli checkpoints, barriers and closures, installed to protect Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers, have lowered these young people's horizons, shrunk their notion of Palestine and taken away virtually any informal interaction with outsiders, let alone with ordinary Israelis. The security measures have become even tighter since the election to power a year ago of the Islamist group Hamas, which preaches eternal "resistance" to Israeli occupation and rejects Israel's right to permanent existence on this land.

There is only one brief mention of how the Palestinians have been educating their young; Ayman is a 16 year old:

Ayman, however, like most members of his generation, cannot imagine living in peace next to an Israel that has ripped up his town, or becoming friends with an Israeli who has rolled over his schoolyard in a tank. "Israel should leave this land," he said angrily, then repeats what he has been taught, that all of historic Palestine belongs to Muslims. "The Jews should go back to where they came from, to Europe, Russia and America," he said. "They have no place here." Israel breaks all its agreements, Ayman says. "How can you make peace with them?" he asks. "Even the Koran says there will be war with them until the day of judgment."

Yet Mr. Fayyad [Ayman's father] has not given up all hope. He says he believes that this generation is still malleable, immature. "You can influence them through realistic solutions," he said. "If you delivered a real, two-state solution, believe me, they would go into the streets and dance. But if nothing changes, believe me also, they are lost - lost to all of us."

There is also only a cursory discussion of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah, a conflict that is dominating Palestinian life, especially in Gaza. However, nowhere in the article is there any sense that the Palestinians might have a great deal of responsibility for their own plight; they are forever victims of circumstances beyond their control.

When the Oslo accords were signed with such great fanfare, and the terrorist murderer received his Nobel Prize, part of the agreement was for the Palestinians to stop the teaching of hate which was a staple in their schools and in the state controlled media. This was never done and the hatred spewed forth at Jews, Israelis, Americans, et al, continues to poison the minds of Palestinian youngsters.

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French Jews Fleeing Into Florida: "Over the past few years there have been reports of French Jews relocating or even being urged to relocate by some Jewish groups and now there's a new twist: French Jews are fleeing into Florida, the Miami Herald reports. And it's providing a booming business for Florida immigration lawyers. French Jews living in South Florida told The Miami Herald that hostility from Islamic militants in France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States spurred them to leave. Departures surged after last year's abduction and death of Ilan Halimi in France."

Russia's patience wearing thin with Iran: "Iran's isolation over its nuclear ambitions has deepened as Russia, its closest big power ally, announced indefinite delays to a joint nuclear power project and accused Tehran of abusing its goodwill. Russia has defied Western concerns to supply arms to Iran, aided the Iranians in building the Bushehr nuclear power station and helped to water down sanctions against Tehran in the UN. But it is now signalling its patience with Iran's leadership is wearing thin. Atomstroiexport, the state-owned contractor helping build the Bushehr plant, said the first fuel deliveries would not go ahead as planned this month and the scheduled September launch date would not now be met either. The contractor said the delays were caused by a payment row, but observers in Moscow said the project was, in effect, being mothballed because of political sensitivities. The US, which suspects Iran of accumulating nuclear knowhow to build a bomb, has for years urged Moscow to halt the project, but the Kremlin refused."

CAIR OK'd to meet in Capitol: "A House Democrat has arranged for a conference room in the Capitol building to be used tomorrow by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group criticized for its persistent refusal to disavow terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The District-based group also is singled out by other Democratic lawmakers and some law-enforcement officials because of financial ties to terrorists. Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., New Jersey Democrat, reserved the basement conference room for CAIR's panel discussion Tuesday titled "Global Attitudes on Islam-West Relations: U.S. Policy Implications."

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

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

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

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

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13 March, 2007

Atheist conservatives

I am myself both an atheist and a libertarian conservative and some libertarian conservatives are hostile to the role of Christianity in American conservatism. They feel that Christian conservatives oppress them and make conservatism unduly narrow. I do not feel that way. I have the warmest feelings towards Christians -- and I know Christianity very well, both from upbringing and from a strongly evangelical phase in my teenage years.

There is a good summary of the controversy by Steven Warshawsky. I reproduce below one paragraph from his article that I particularly appreciate and agree with:

"I have long believed that part of being a "conservative" is being respectful of religion. Or rather, to be more precise, being respectful of Christianity. Unlike Orlet, I am not offended when someone says that this is a "Christian nation." It is. America certainly is not a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist nation. As a Jew, I am deeply grateful for this nation's Christian heritage. No nation on earth treats Jews better. While there are many reasons for this, I believe that Christianity is part of what makes America the great country that she is. And as a fervently patriotic American, I will support and defend this country's Christian heritage to my dying days.

And I have had a privilege and a pleasure Warshawsky has not -- the privilege of once having been an evangelical Christian. And to this day when I listen to the great Protestant hymns -- such as "How great thou art" -- I am always profoundly grateful for the powerful and transformative religion we have inherited from the men of faith who shaped the world we live in.

Warsharsky probably does overgeneralize a bit in some of his other statements, however, and I reproduce below part of a reply to his unduly sweeping claims. I have myself written at some length on the complex historical relationship between Christianity and politics here.

I might just point out here that any such conflict hardly arises where I live -- in Australia. Australians are usually very skeptical religiously so most conservatives are respectful of religion but are not particularly religious themselves. And yet Australia is in some ways more conservative than the USA!

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The historical origins of Christian religious tolerance

Christ's command: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matthew 19:19) should have been sufficient warrant for Christian tolerance but historically it did not work out that way. Excerpt below from The American Thinker

The fact that any and all religions can be openly practiced in America is an outcome of the phenomenon that was very different - and, in fact, exactly opposite - to Christian tolerance; it grew out of Christian intolerance to Christians, and of the oppressed Christians' desire to put an end to it.

This is not as confusing as it sounds. Before the reformation, there was only one Church and only one Christianity, Catholicism - all other ones being successfully suppressed. Reformation - the split of Christendom into the Catholics and the Evangelicals - broke not only the Pope's monopoly on creed but, far more importantly, on his ability to enforce it, because allegiances of those wielding secular power split too. Many powerful princes and communities - first in Germany, but later in Switzerland, Low countries, Sweden, England and France - also took the reformist's side. The split of Christendom into two roughly equal centers of power resulted in wars that were horrifying - far exceeding in bloodshed and misery the present-day's dust-off between Shiahs and Sunnis in Iraq - and taught the European and, later, American Christians that sticking one's Truth, no matter how obviously True, down the neighbor's throat is not going to do anybody any good.

Moreover, the logic of evangelicalism with its stress on coming to God through personal acceptance of Christ, and realization that only the few were really intended to be saved, meant that religious coercion not only didn't make any sense theologically, but was in fact an ultimate act of irreligion. Hence, John Milton could react to the attempt to institute licensing of clergy in the Cromwellian England by describing such clergymen as "hireling wolves whose Gospel is their maw" and appealing to Oliver Cromwell to thwart the efforts of those who "threaten to bind our souls with secular chains." Conscience that was free on any coercion - and hence, free speech and free exercise of religion - were to become the gateways to God.

American Christians got this notion from their English puritan fore-fathers, who came to this conclusion in the crucible of the English Civil war of mid-seventeenth-century. Around 1640 there was a clash between two opposing, intolerant, ayatollah-style forces: Anglican church under heavy-handed Archbishop Laud, and the equally narrow-minded Scottish Presbyterians, a clash which left the puritan non-conformists squeezed in the middle and harassed by both sides, developing in the process a notion of separation of church and state, and producing in Roger Williams a brilliant advocate of the idea that the matters of religion should better be left to each individual alone. The separation of church and state which ensures our freedom to believe just as we see fit was, thus, not an act of generosity on the part of Christians towards non-Christians as Mr. Warshawsky would have us believe, but a vital necessity, effected by the Evangelicals and for the Evangelicals.

And it is this separation of church and state - that in effect outlaws the very notion of "True Faith" which bedevils today's Moslems and causes them to resort to violence - is the main legacy of Christians in America and, being enshrined in the first amendment of the US constitution by the very religious, very Christian, very conservative yet very clear-minded founding fathers, is Christianity's chief contribution to American way of life, and an enduring symbol of the fact that the religious can overcome narrow-mindedness and not be the brainless, intolerant, monomaniacal, homicidal and suicidal idolatrous two-legged creatures like those populating present day's Moslem Middle East.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a post here reporting some rare media realism about the war on Islamofascism in Iraq and elsewhere.

The usual Leftist interest in the facts: "Democrats voted for the war in 2002 without ever having read the classified National Intelligence Estimate that they demanded. The Washington Post reported that only a handful of Congressmen and 6 Senators signed in to view the classified report. Then, after authorizing the war, they claimed that they had not seen the intelligence caveats that detailed the confidence in various intelligence claims about Saddam's regime.caveats that were in the classified version that they chose not to read. One would think that the next time Congressional Democrats demanded intelligence assessments, they'd actually read them. Nope. Since last August, Congressional Democrats have "demanded" that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) provide a briefing to Congress on the war in Iraq. In January the DNI arranged for briefers from all of the different intelligence agencies to spend a full day briefing all of Congress. Your Congressman and mine, your Senators and mine all chose not to attend. No members of Congress attended the briefings they had demanded."

Is this the REAL Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick story? It sounds plausible and it is certainly worth having on record.

Chris Brand has a roundup of the latest "racism" controversies in Britain.

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

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

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

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

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12 March, 2007

STIGMATIZING ISRAEL AS AN "APARTHEID STATE"

Post excerpted from Democracy Project

We see ... the international propaganda effort to label Israel an "apartheid" state. It's a well-considered and coordinated campaign, to make Israel a pariah. Former president Jimmy Carter is a willing co-conspirator, and he didn't start recently. None other than John Kerry's hagiographer, Douglas Brinkley, revealed what Carter was advising Yasser Arafat on how to describe the 1987-1993 Palestinian intifada:

Carter advised him to tell the world of the Palestinians' situation in speeches designed ``to secure maximum sympathy." .Brinkley said Carter told him, referring to the civil rights injustices that occurred in the southern United States in the 1960s, that ``the intifada exposed the injustice Palestinians suffered, just like Bull Connor's mad dogs in Birmingham."

Carter ratcheted up his animosity to Israel in his latest description of Israel as an apartheid state, and seeks to mask his purpose by saying, as the Associated Press reports "I have spent a good part of my life seeking peace for Israel based on justice for the Arabs." One-sided "justice" is otherwise known as a kangaroo court and, in this instance, annihilation of Israel and Jews....

Benjamin Pogrund, former deputy editor of South Africa's Rand Daily Mail, explains:

Apartheid . comes easily to hand: it is a lazy label for the complexities of the Middle East conflict. It is also used because, if it can be made to stick, then Israel can be made to appear to be as vile as was apartheid SA and seeking its destruction can be presented to the world as an equally moral cause.

The influence of such intellectual laziness, or animosity, in using falsely inflammatory words is international.

Cardinal Karl Lehmann, chairman of the Conference of German Catholic Bishops, deplored Wednesday remarks by bishops who said walls around Palestinian communities reminded them of the Warsaw Jewish ghetto.. Two Catholic bishops in a party that visited Yad Vashem this week had been quoted saying they were shocked to see on the same day images of the ghetto where the Nazis confined Warsaw Jews and the confinement of Palestinians in the West Bank by walls. . Lehmann said, "The German bishops are aware of their historical responsibility. We know that we have to constantly show this anew by being sensitive in our choice of words."

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Disgusting Primitive Cultures that Leftists Drool Over

Post below excerpted from American Digest -- which see for links

I love gloating at little news squibs like this:

GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday. "That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,"

That's a classic bit of blather served up by the guileful for the clueless. The takeaway is that it would be an 'affront' and somehow 'unclean' for the President of the United States to place his feet on the "sacred lands" of the Maya; that to do so would somehow imbue such sites with "bad spirits." Oh really? Before we all launch into another round of post-modern reverential drool over Native Mesoamerican cultures of yesteryear, let's review the "spiritual" record of the Mayan "culture," one that peaked about 1,100 years ago and has yet to recover from the muck of its "Golden Age." In this case, the site that Bush is scheduled to visit is Iximche. The spiritual activities there when it was a Mayan cultural center and disco parlor included:

"After extraction of the heart, which was offered to the idol, the heads were put on poles on a special altar dedicated to this purpose, where they remained for some time, after which they were buried. The bodies of the sacrificed were cooked and eaten as sanctified flesh (Guillemin, 1969:27; 1977:258). Aspects of this religious complex show up in the human remains excavated at Iximche, the Kaqchikel Maya capital." ....

Oh, didn't I mention that the Noble Ancient Mayan's especially valued children when it came to human sacrifice? They did. It seemed kids made it a better ritual when the innocent were being hacked up, and better still when their suffering before being slaughtered was audible. More stimulating, one would imagine. Hotter soundtrack. The menu was something like this:

"Human sacrifice was perpetrated on prisoners, slaves, and particularly children, with orphans and illegitimate children specially purchased for the occasion. Priests were assisted in human sacrifices by four older men who were known as chacs, in honour of the Rain God, Chac. These men would hold the arms and legs of a sacrificial victim while the chest was opened up by another individual called a nacom."

The Mayans, inheritors of a great and noble culture. I sort of hope they get into purifying the site of their oh-so-noble ancestors at Iximche on a daily basis.

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ELSEWHERE

The REAL documentary about global warming -- the British film, "The great global warming swindle" -- is now up for viewing online. Click here and see some real science for a change.

Iranian Imam Receives Christ Via Satellite TV, Escapes Country: "One of the top Islamic leaders in Iran accepted Christ and left the country after facing death threats and imprisonment, according to an Iranian pastor living in the U.S. "This man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years," said Pastor Elnathan Baghestani, founder of Iran for Christ Ministries. (www.iranforchrist.com) Pastor Baghestani and his wife provide Christian programming to the Mohabat Network satellite, which broadcasts 24/7 into Iran and other Middle Eastern countries... While it is illegal to own satellite dishes in Iran, many hide them on their roofs or other locations on their property. "They arrest people for having satellite dishes because they know the Christian programming is effective," Baghestani noted."

Bush's unsung battle against anti-Semitism: "Politico.com excerpts the new book A World Ignited: How Apostles of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Hatred Torch the Globe, by Martin and Susan J. Tolchin, with evidence of the President's battle against gobal anti-Semitism, a battle for which he receives precious little support from Jewish voters. I am not holding my breath waiting for the New York Times to review this book.

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

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

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

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

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11 March, 2007

Who are the "good guys" in the Middle East?

On Wednesday, Israeli troops arrested 18 fugitive terrorists. Were these operatives of the evil Hamas movement or the Iranian oriented Islamic Jihad? No, they were members of the Fatah movement of "moderate" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. part of the Fatah Al-Aqsa brigades. Where they were arrested is even more interesting, since they were hiding in Palestinian Military intelligence headquarters, where they were supposedly going to be absorbed into the Palestinian Police Force!.

This raid points out one of the absurdities and double binds of an increasingly absurd situation. On the one hand, Mahmoud Abbas is supposed to be a "peace partner." In that capacity, the United States has been supplying his forces with arms. On the other hand, the Fatah remains committed to "resistance" (=terrorism) against Israel. When your "peace partner" attacks you, or harbors terrorists, what are you supposed to do? And after you do it, how do you meet your "peace partner" for further talks? True, these people were supposed to be absorbed into the Palestinian police force. This absorption was supposed to happen in 2005. It is not happening. If some Al Aqsa brigade members join the police force, others are quickly recruited for the role of terrorists. Security in the Palestinian authority turns out to be a comic opera farce in which the police and the terrorists are the same people in different uniforms, guarding themselves against themselves. Of course, there have also been too many instances in which Palestinian police in police uniforms have attacked Israelis.

After Abbas succumbed to Hamas demands and agreed to allow Hamas to take over the PLO as well as forming a government with them in the Mecca agreement, the question of "who is the good guy?" in the Palestinian Authority must be addressed with new urgency. Israel and the United States have to rethink have to rethink their attitude to Mahmoud Abbas. If he wants support as a moderate, he must show some signs that he has earned that support.

Source (See the original for links)

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The sources of Leftism in intellectuals

Excerpt from here. I have written on this at greater length here (or here)

Schooling, maintains Nozick, breeds in intellectuals a sense of superiority, and with it a sense of entitlement to the highest rewards society has to offer - not just top salaries but praise comparable to that lavished on them by their teachers. After completing their formal academic training in the centralized environment of the classroom, intellectuals go forth into a seemingly chaotic capitalist society, which purports to reward individual citizens by merit but in fact applies a different standard of merit from the one imparted in the classroom.

So an open, capitalist society falls just short of satisfying intellectuals' sense of entitlement. At least three points are worth teasing out of Nozick's essay. One, capitalist society allows wordsmiths to live comfortable lives-but those who excel outside the classroom often reap the highest material rewards. Entrepreneurship in business or other applied disciplines -- disciplines that may or may not depend on pure academic knowledge or verbal dexterity -- can bring a far more extravagant lifestyle than a career in journalism, government, or the academy.

This runs afoul of intellectuals' sense of their place in the natural pecking order. But it should have little bearing on intellectuals' attitudes toward the armed services, given the less-than-generous salaries and benefits paid to soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Servicemen rank well below wordsmith intellectuals from a purely material standpoint. This disparity should seem to reinforce intellectuals' sense of superiority.

But, American society reserves the highest respect and admiration not for professors or journalists but for those in practical disciplines such as the armed forces, law enforcement, firefighting, or emergency medicine. Americans typically rate the military at or near the top of the nation's institutions, with journalism and lawmakers near or at the bottom. This status deficit rankles intellectuals. While America certainly needs academic skill and enterprise, an open society maddeningly-prizes other things as much as if not more than the ability to turn a clever phrase.....

Nozick observes that academic training teaches intellectuals to prefer a centralized environment in which an authority figure, not the vagaries of the market, sets standards and dispenses rewards and punishments according to certain rational standards.

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Brookes News Update

Keynes' errors, fallacies and contradictions: No less a personage than John Stone, considered one of Australia's arch economic rationalists, described Keynes' 'General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money' as a monumental work . As I have tried to make clear, the only thing monumental about the General Theory is the sheer magnitude of its fallacies, inconsistencies and embarrassing contradictions
South America's resurgent left is a threat to liberty: South America's cultist left, led by political gangsters like Chavez, is aligned with Muslim terrorists and Colombian narcoguerrillas. Its goal: to utterly destroy any possibility of liberal societies emerging in South America
Australian media's support for Clinton and the Democrats explains their hatred of Bush: Australia has no equivalent of the 'Washington Times' or the 'American Spectator' to counter the country's leftist journalists. In fact there genuine media criticism is basically non-existent
The liberals compulsion to apologise: Nothing more epitomizes liberals' fear of envy than their compulsion to apologize. Apologize to the world for the existence of exploitative America. Apologize to the Earth for the existence of polluting humanity
Income inequality and leftist bigotry: Income inequality: exchange in a free market is based on voluntary transactions. If the so-called distribution of incomes is unjust then the exchanges that brought about the distribution must also be unjust
Why Hillary Clinton's plan to impose price controls on the drug industry will fail: There is a single historical example of prices controls succeeding. Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton, the genius that created the vaccine shortage, and her fellow band of economic illiterates insist on apply the same destructive policy to all drugs

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

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

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

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

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10 March, 2007

LEFTISTS DON'T BOTHER WITH FACTS

Let's compare and contrast Liberals' view of two mathematical models: On the one hand, Liberals demand immediate drastic and costly policies to curtail man-made greenhouse gases based on complex mathematical climate models that predict global warming sometime in the distant future - models based on questionable data resulting in predictions that cannot be tested for at least 50 years. Meteorologists and Climatologists who dissent with this liberal view are equated with holocaust-deniers with demands made to withdraw their professional credentials.

On the other hand, Liberals ignore and discount the enormous historical evidence showing the accuracy and efficacy of "supply-side" economic models developed by Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer and others that were implemented as tax-cut policies by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. This evidence includes sustained economic growth, sustained employment growth resulting in low-rates of unemployment, and enormous (albeit minimally reported) increases in Federal Tax revenues and reductions in the Federal budget deficit - all of them accurate predictions of the models!

Further confirming evidence can be found elsewhere in the world in countries such as Chile, Estonia and Britain under Margaret Thatcher. Despite this overwhelming evidence, Liberals still question the utility of tax-cuts as means for government to stimulate the economy and increase tax revenues. Indeed, despite his unrelieved record of erroneous forecasts of impending economic recession over many, many years now, no Liberal is questioning Paul Krugman's credentials as Princeton Professor of Economics or New York Times columnist. This dichotomy only underscores the conviction that modern Liberalism is a quasi-religious set of beliefs that cannot be perturbed by facts or evidence.

Source

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Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General: 'Why Do Islamist Extremists Who Incite Against the West Insist on Living There?'

A good question: In an article in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Al-Arabiyya TV Director-General Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed criticized the hypocrisy of Islamist extremists who live and operate in the West. He said that while these extremists spread hatred for the West and incite against Western culture, at the same time they fight for the right to stay there. The following are excerpts:

"The common denominator shared by Abu Qatada, currently under arrest in Britain, Osama Nasser, who was kidnapped in Rome, and Omar Bakri, who fled from London, is that all of them want to [live] in the West, rather than in their native Islamic countries. Abu Qatada prefers to remain under arrest in Britain, and not to be deported to Jordan. The Italian imam Abu Omar Osama Al-Masri, who was kidnapped by the CIA [and taken] to Egypt, is likewise demanding to return to Milan, the fashion capital, and is even suing for financial compensation. As for the most famous of the three, [Omar] Bakri, he hurried to the airport and grabbed a flight to Lebanon when the [British] government prepared [to take] punitive measures against [individuals] who incite to violence. [But] now, after spending some time in his homeland, he is begging to return to London, despite all the [British] decisions, and despite all his statements against them.

"What makes fundamentalist extremists, who incite against the West and its culture, the first to run into its arms, and to fight [for the right] to stay there? Do they suffer from a split personality, with one [personality] endorsing an ideology of hate, and the other wanting to enjoy the principles [that form the basis] of life in the West? We have never heard of [these extremists] wanting to immigrate to Somalia or Pakistan, or [wanting to return] to their countries of origin. [This], despite all their sermons and writings about religious duty and love of the homeland, [and despite the fact that] they characterize others as 'infidels,' to the extent that some [extremists] even call to fight [these infidels]."

"What makes Omar Bakri, who enjoys liberty in Britain, spread hatred [against Britain], fight its culture, and say obscenely that [Britain] is a toilet in which he lives in order to defecate there? Does it make sense for someone like him to express a desire to return to Britain after everything he has said and done? "As for Abu Qatada, he prefers to remain in prison and not to return to his homeland Jordan, just like [Osama Nasser], the imam from Milan, who is protesting about being taken to Egypt and about being imprisoned there. Not only is he protesting his abduction; he has also decided to sue for 20 million Euro in damages.

"It is blatantly obvious that all three are enjoying all the benefits of the [government] they despise: They want the financial aid, the security, the [rule of] law, the justice and the freedom of expression afforded by this government. Is this not the epitome of hypocrisy? When they preach, aren't they greatly deceiving their followers - [considering this discrepancy] between what they say and what they do?

"It is some of the extremist hate-mongers living in the West who are inciting the Muslims in the East against Western countries... - those [same] countries that have hosted them, given them protection and shelter, and in many cases also financed the education of their children, including their Islamic and Arabic language studies. It is also revolting to see writers denouncing the actions of [Western] governments that wish to get rid of the extremists by sending them back to their Islamic countries.

"Instead of demanding that the Arab [countries] mend their legal and security deficiencies, they ask the [Western] countries that have thrown out these extremists to spare them and to tolerate the ideological damage that they inflict upon their societies."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

British justice: "A pensioner [State-supported senior] who lives beside the seaside has been warned by his council that he faces a heavy fine for fly-tipping if he returns windblown sand in his garden back to the beach. Arthur Bulmer, 79, has long complained of sand drifting on to his property on the fore-shore at Lytham St Anne’s, in Lancashire, but this year’s gales have exacerbated the problem. When he asked Fylde Borough Council if it was permissible to return the sand where it came from, he was told it would constitute fly-tipping. He should treat it as litter and take it to the municipal refuse tip. The council told him that they happily clear sand deposited on the public highway but once it lands on private property it becomes the responsibility of the owners. The pensioner says that he has no alternative but to pay a specialist waste disposal firm to collect his unwanted sand and take it away."

Wow! How wicked! Walgreen sends black employeees to work in black areas!: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that the Walgreen drug-store chain has been discriminating against African-American workers. The suit alleges that Walgreen commonly sends its African-American managers and pharmacists to low-performing stores and those in predominantly black neighborhoods."

I have just put up one of my occasional posts on my personal blog (backup here), for what small interest it may have.

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

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

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

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

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9 March, 2007

Why do psychically and economically marginal Westerners convert to Islam?

Excerpt from Dhimmi Watch

There is no one reason. There are many reasons. Islam is wrongly perceived as a vehicle for "social justice." The fact that a rich Muslim can stand side by side with a poor one at a mosque is misinterpreted. The fact that Muslims are required to offer zakat to fellow Muslims is also misinterpreted as meaning that there is some kind of "sharing of the wealth."

But one has only to look at the history of Islam, and look at Muslim societies today, to see the extremes of wealth and power. In many Muslim countries the only way to get that wealth is for the rulers and their collaborators to help themselves to the national riches, whether those riches come from oil or smuggling (Syria) or Jizyah from Infidel lands (Egypt, the "Palestinians"). There are no Infidel lands that offer the same kind of gap between rich and poor, the ruler and the ruled, as do Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries...

A second, and related reason for some to convert to Islam is that Islam is depicted as the belief-system that most accords with, and furthers the interests of, les damnes de la terre, especially non-whites. It is amazing how carefully campaigns are targeted at certain groups -- say, black prisoners in America and England -- without any countervailing effort by the authorities, or even by Christian groups, or even by black Christian groups, who could and should be funded for such undertakings. They could present the evidence about the history of Arab slavers seizing and castrating black African boys, or about the duration of the Arab slave trade, which began long before, and ended long after (where it did end) than the European slave trade, and the continued, indeed permanent, defense of slavery in the texts of Islam, which can never be overcome, and the continued enslavement of blacks by Arabs, in the Sudan, in Mauritania, and elsewhere, far from any Western reporters. There is so much information about this, but so little attempt to sensibly disseminate it.

Still a third reason for Islam's appeal is that it is so simple to become a Muslim. You don't have to learn a thing. You can become a Muslim without knowing a thing about Islam. So eager are Muslims for what are seen as recruits to the army of Islam that it doesn't matter if those converting or "reverting" know a thing about it, for it is not the saving of their souls that matters. All that matters for most Muslims is to swell further the ranks of Islam. That is why, early on, Islam required only a recital of the Shehada -- a single sentence, a single declaration -- and then one became a Muslim, and found out later what it was all about. But by that point one had no way to gracefully, or safely, within lands dominated by Muslims, get out of that faith.

A fourth reason is that not only is Islam a faith simple to join (whereas if you wish to become, say, a Christian or a Jew, you have to study, you have to actually learn something about Christian doctrine or Jewish faith) but it is a simple-minded faith, that appeals to the simple-minded. It is not a faith bent on questioning itself. It is the perfect faith for someone who cannot think, and does not like to think, and prefers to have handed to him a Simple and Total Regulation of Life, and a Complete Explanation of the Universe. For all those who need certainty, who cannot stand individual responsibility or moral choice, who prefer to be slaves of Allah -- well, Islam is just the ticket, it's just the thing for you.

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ELSEWHERE

Iranian general 'seeking asylum in US': "A retired Iranian general who went missing in Turkey last month has defected and sought asylum in the US, according to a well-connected Arabic newspaper published in London. The newspaper, al-Shark al-Awsat, cited "high-profile" sources saying former Iranian deputy defence minister and Revolutionary Guard commander Ali Reza Asghari had gone over to the West. Reports from Istanbul that General Asghari's family had also disappeared in Turkey support the likelihood that he defected rather than was kidnapped by either the CIA or by Israel's Mossad, as has been speculated. The general went missing from his Istanbul hotel a month ago. Iranian authorities, who have been silent on the disappearance until this week, claim he has been abducted. "It is likely Asghari has been abducted by Western intelligence services," said Iran's top police officer, General Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam. Defection of such a high-ranking figure would leave no external enemy to blame and would be seen as a rejection of the Islamic state by someone who well knows its inner workings. General Asghari's crossing of the line, whether voluntary or not, is a resounding blow for the Iranian Government since he is privy to its most intimate secrets, particularly those concerning its nuclear capabilities and plans."

"Swift-boating": "It has become an article of truth to many on the left that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were a pack of liars. They believe that this group of former Vietnam Swift Boat vets were enticed by Republican operatives to sell themselves out to sink the presidential aspirations of John Kerry. And they further believe that the only reason it worked was because Kerry was slow to respond. I hate to buck the left's conventional wisdom, but I don't buy that at all. A couple of points. John Kerry made both Vietnam and his service there the major backdrop of his campaign. Not the SBVT, but Kerry. And after shunning his "band of brothers" in the '70s and calling them killers, murderers, torturers and the like, Kerry suddenly rediscovered them when it was politically expedient to do so. This, as you might guess, rankled some of his peers from that era, especially when he started making claims about his service that just didn't add up. And I spent an enormous amount of time combing through their claims, reasearching them and writing about them. What becomes clear now, is that some on the left are busy trying to swift boat the Swift Boaters. And yes, "swift boat" is now a verb meaning to unfairly and untruthfully attack someone"

Europe lagging badly: "The EU is 22 years behind the US on economic growth according to a new study, with several other economic indicators showing further gaps despite Europe's ambitious reform agenda to be praised by leaders at this week's summit. A report by Eurochambers, the Brussels-based business lobby, published on Monday (5 March) argues that the US reached the current EU rate of GDP per capita in 1985 and its levels in employment and research investment almost 30 years ago. Economic growth, jobs and innovation feature as top priorities of the so-called Lisbon Agenda - agreed by EU leaders in 2000 - with the original aim for Europe to become the most competitive economy by 2010 and with the US seen as its key competitor. However, according to the Eurochambers study, the EU time lag behind the US has expanded further since 2003 when the group published its first report comparing the economic indicators on both sides of the Atlantic.

Incredible British bungling: "A new radio system for the Armed Forces, developed at a cost of 2.4 billion pounds, is too heavy for the average soldier to carry, a report by MPs has revealed. Soldiers using the Bowman digital radio have also found that they cannot talk to other communication systems deployed with allies on the battle-field in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bowman, which is beginning to replace the 30-year-old Clansman radio, should have been in service ten years ago, the MPs on the Public Accounts Committee said. However, delays had been caused by substantial technical problems, not helped by a Ministry of Defence decision to hand the contract to the Archer consortium, which was "unable to deliver the required product". Transferred to General Dynamics, the Bowman system began entering service in March 2004, but with 27 "provisos" and a number of capabilities removed from the specification. One of those was the ability to communicate secure data to the radio systems of allies to help to reduce the danger of "friendly-fire" attacks by coalition partners in a war."

There is a small update here on the antiwar doings in the frantically Leftist Pasadena, California.

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

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

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

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

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8 March, 2007

MORAL RELATIVISM IS JUST ANOTHER STRATAGEM FOR THE LEFT

They really do however believe in nothing. The only thing that really motivates them is their visceral hatred for the world about them and their wish to tear it down. And any excuse that might pass at the time will do to accomplish that. Their destructive policies are no accident. Destruction is what they really aim at. Post below excerpted from Dr. Sanity

Victor Davis Hanson in The Corner:

Democratic Disconnect

We need an Orwell to offer some psychological explanation for why an Al Gore, who gobbles up carbon-based power in his mansion and private jet, continues to harangue the less well off about their energy profligacy and threats to the planet, or why a John Edwards, who just finished a towered 28,000 sq. foot palace, claims Jesus would find us unforgiving to the poor, and serially speaks in terms of two nations, rich and poor.

Is this disconnect explained by an easy means of alleviating guilt over their own largess through cosmic preaching about the inequality and selfishness of others?

Or is it a genuine notion that as a crusading Senator and trial-lawyer they have battled enough for the less well off to justify some small compensation for their ongoing labors?

Or is it a clinical schizophrenia in which one side of the Mother Teresa brain has no connection with the Donald Trump other?

It may be all or none of the above clinical syndromes, but I refer to it as the political left's "theory of relativity." Al Gore is just one of the more recent relativists who believe in the theory.

For Democrats and the left, there is no "disconnect" or even cognitive dissonance about such contradictions. As a group that wholeheartedly subscribes to moral relativity and subjective ethics, it makes perfect sense that they have no problem with any "moral authority" as long as that authority just happens to agree with and justify their beliefs.

After all, if morality is relative; if truth is subjective and there is no objective "good" or "bad"; then why bother to look any further?....

This article discusses the frequent leftist accusation of being a "chickenhawk" if you support the war but have not been a veteran; or have not lost a loved one or sent your own "children" off to fight in the war. John Murtha is one who makes this accusation. He has the proper moral authority, because he fought in Vietnam. So does John Kerry. The other 25% of the Congress who served in the military have no such authority (because they disagree with Murtha and Kerry perhaps?); and the opinions of the vast majority of the grown-ups who are actually doing the fighting for the American public are unimportant. You might as well call Al Gore and most of the environmentally righteous "chickengreens" as one blogger, noting the left's hypocrisy has.

In all three of these cases, the persons in question have become the left's vocal "moral authority" [only] because they happen to agree with the left's beliefs about the key political issues and are anti-Bush , anti-Republican, along with varying degrees of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalistism thrown in for good measure.

What these three examples (and there are many more) have in common is both a breathtaking subjectivism and relativism in one breath; and ideological absolutism in the next.

They all demonstrate the inherent philosophical and psychological contradictions that the postmodern left exploits in order to achieve political power. They are perfectly aware that their positions don't make any sense and can be refuted by anyone with basic knowledge of logic and logical fallacies; but their goal is to maintain the psychological denial necessary to believe in the left's ideology. Interpreting this defense and exposing it is essential to countering that ideology.

Stephen Hicks asks this important question (page 184):

The pattern therefore raises the question of which side of the contradiction is deepest for postmodernism. Is it that psotmodernists really are committed to relativism, but occasionally lapse into absolutism? Or are the absolutist commitments deepest and the relativism a rhetorical cover?

The possibility that the relativism is primary can be ruled out with some thought. If the modern leftist truly embraced relativism, then you would not see the uniformity of their politics. Hicks again:

If subjectivity and relativism were primary, then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that simply is not happeniing.

Indeed. Thus we must conclude that the moral relativism that characterizes the left's equation of terrorism with America; deliberate targeting of innocents with herculean efforts to spare innocent life; Bush with Hitler; Iraq with Vietnam; and the use of the global warming debate (and it is still a debate) to morally impugn their critics, while exhibiting the most obvious hypocrisy themselves--all this suggests that these issues are are simple rhetorical devices that are used to manipulate and forward their socialist / totalitarian agenda.

The truth is that the postmodern leftists don't need to believe anything that they say. In fact, they can easily ignore evidence that contradicts their arguments; never acknowledge that their arguments (or more precisely, their beliefs) have been debunked and; and ultimately they can simply redefine words or resort to word games (the various meanings of "is" for example); or move the goalposts (those aren't the WMD's we were looking for) when convenient.

The word games and much of the use of anger and rage that are characteristic of much of their style can be a matter--not of using words to state things that they think are true--but rather of using words as weapons against and enemy that they still hope to destroy.

The usefulness of the theory of relativity is that all issues can be brought up over and over again at the appropriate time to get your opponents or critics off your back and get some breathing space.

If your opponent accepts that the debate is a matter of opinion or semantics, then your losing the argument does not matter: nobody is right or wrong. But if your opponent does not accept that everything is a matter of opinion, then his attention is diverted away from the subject matter at hand--namely politics--and into epistemology. For now he has to show why everything is not merely semantics, and that will take him awhile.

We see this done cyclically. No issue is every resolved. When the left realizes it is in a losing position, it simply backs off until it is opportune to revive the argument. And then they start back at the same points which were countered and try again, this time with more passion and outrage. This "theory of relativity" works very well for them.

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German hypocrisy: "SPIEGEL ONLINE has returned to its old modus operandi. It goes something like this: First, find an extreme and unusual act of grotesque violence or some other extreme form of social deviancy related to the United States. Second, extrapolate the incident onto the entire nation. The latest installment is an article entitled: 'Brutal "Trendsport" in the USA: Teenagers Hunt the Homeless'. That's right folks: According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, it's the latest hip trend sweeping the United States. Young people can't get enough of this new sport: Everywhere you look, homeless people are being mercilessly beaten by roving bands of drunk and high teenagers. The bodies are piling up left and right and the hospitals are overflowing. Right. Frankly put: The "Trendsport" article is both an ugly smear of the United States and an unabashed example of trashy German media hypocrisy of the worst sort. Here again, German media have demonstrated that it is far more convenient and comfortable to vilify World-Scapegoat-America than it is to look in the mirror at the many social, economic and political problems that plague Germans in their own backyard."

45 internet cafe bombings in Gaza since December 1: "Soon after a firebomb exploded at 3 a.m. and destroyed four computers in the Al-Shawa Online Internet Cafe in Gaza, owner Alaa al-Shawa clicked onto his e-mail at an undamaged machine. The first message surprised him: It was from the bombers themselves, explaining that establishments such as his were keeping Muslims away from prayer and providing pornography. That's why it was hit. "This just shows how confused these fanatics are," said Al-Shawa, 27. "Even they use the Internet to circulate their statements, but they think everyone else uses it for porno." About 45 Internet outlets have been bombed since Dec. 1, according to figures from Gaza's Central Police Office... A group called the Swords of Islamic Righteousness has claimed responsibility for the attacks."

China Hand has just put up a post on his other blog (also see here) which criticizes the arrogant Ross Gittins, an aging Australian economist/journalist who wants to tell other people what to do. He points out how the choices that the Chinese have made make Gittins look foolish.

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

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

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

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

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7 March, 2007

SOCIALISM IN AMERICA

Excerpt from Democracy Project

According to today's New York Times: "The strongest job market New York City has had in decades has not helped the city's youngest workers find jobs, leaving them at risk of becoming permanently unemployable..."

New York is the city with the strongest unions, the highest taxes, the most government intervention and the most welfare. It is the city closest in the nation to a socialist model. Yet, New York has largely excluded minority youth from employment. The reason is in part lack of access to a failed educational system that relies on the failed theories of John Dewey, but also, that union entry restrictions limit minority employment in the construction crafts, and that political and business connections are necessary for jobs that rely on government support and political largess. Those without connections or an Ivy League education find themselves excluded from New York's socialist economy.

In this regard, there is a marked parallel between Paris and New York . Just as the French have relied on a heavy dose of socialism or dirigisme in their economy and have excluded low income minorities from participation in their economy, resulting in the riots in the banlieue, so New York has excluded low-income minorities. Both Paris in New York can be proud of their socialist policies.

The process by which socialist economies exclude minorities is administered wages. Administered wages are wages above the market clearing level. One key cause of administered wages is labor unions. Labor unions push for higher wages, but in order to pay higher wages employers must reduce the number of workers and substitute capital for labor in the form of machinery. The excluded workers can move to Colorado or London or start their own businesses, but if they lack basic skills they may end up unemployed. This crowding out effect is characteristic of socialist economies where workers are paid above-market clearing wages.

India is a more extreme example of socialist oppression of the poor through this crowding out effect. In recent years liberal economists have complained about income inequality and its supposed ill effects. There is no data or economic theory to support this argument. In fact, when income inequality was at its apex in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, the United States first developed the telephone, kerosene (and subsequently gasoline), the light bulb, AC electricity, mass production of the automobile and a wide range of other innovations that subsequently improved life.

When income equality increased in the mid twentieth century due to punitive income taxes, innovation slowed. The mid twentieth century is best remembered for Elvis Presley rather than technological innovation. It wasn't until after the Reagan tax cuts in the early 1980s that the pace of innovation increased. Now our geniuses from the liberal economics establishment, the ones who brought us our piddling social security benefit and who apologized for Stalin in the 1930s, for Mao in the 1970s, and gave us stagflation in the 1970s, are arguing for a renewal of punitive taxation. True geniuses.

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ELSEWHERE

Excerpt from an NYT editorial. No political bias, of course: "The Bush administration's assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough. Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America's global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices."

Fresh doubts about the dubious "Lancet" study of Iraqi deaths: "The implication of the Lancet study, which involved Iraqi doctors knocking on doors and asking residents about recent deaths in the household, was that Iraqis were being killed on an horrific scale. The controversy has deepened rather than evaporated. Several academics have tried to find out how the Lancet study was conducted; none regards their queries as having been addressed satisfactorily. Researchers contacted by The Times talk of unreturned e-mails or phone calls, or of being sent information that raises fresh doubts.... Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word "casualties" to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the "three-to-one rule" - the idea that for every death, there are three injuries - there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports. "The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions," contends Professor Spagat"

Blacks who want to be "Indians": "The Cherokee Nation vote this weekend to revoke the citizenship of the descendants of people the Cherokee once owned as slaves was a blow to people who have relied on tribal benefits. Charlene White, a descendant of freed Cherokee slaves who were adopted into the tribe in 1866 under a treaty with the U.S. government, wondered Sunday where she would now go for the glaucoma treatment she has received at a tribal hospital in Stilwell. "I've got to go back to the doctor, but I don't know if I can go back to the clinic or if they're going to oust me right now," said White, 56, a disabled Tahlequah resident who lives on a fixed income. In Saturday's special election, more than 76 percent of voters decided to amend the Cherokee Nation's constitution to remove the estimated 2,800 freedmen descendants from the tribal rolls, according to results posted Sunday on the tribe's Web site." [We also have in Australia whites who claim to be Aborigines]

Rare union realism: "In an about-face that bespeaks the stark reality of the financial situation facing the United Auto Workers union and the Big Three U.S. auto makers, members of the UAW local at Ford Motor Co. are taking various initiatives to help the financially beleaguered car company cut costs, concessions that would have been unthinkable years ago. "Ford is in a desperate situation. If this company goes down, I want to be able to look in the mirror and say I did everything I could,A" Jerry Sullivan, head of the largest United Auto Workers local at Ford Motor Co., was quoted as say by The Wall Street Journal. After years of fighting for higher pay and job protections, Sullivan, for example, has encouraged his members now to accept the outsourcing of company factory jobs to lower-paid workers and to work new shifts without being paid the overtime they would have earned under better times. Once rated the most efficient Detroit auto maker, Ford lost $12.8 billion last year"

Pakistani policeman murders Ahmadi "infidel": "The Ahmadi sect is one of the few Muslim groups that eschews jihad violence, and for this reason among others it is persecuted and vilified as heretical by other Muslim groups. Westerners sometimes point to the Ahmadiyya as evidence that Islam can reform and become peaceful, and attach a great deal of hope to the sect. But before they can become the vanguard of Islamic reform, other Muslims will have to stop killing them."

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

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

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

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

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6 March, 2007

Evil Fiction about Israel

Let me tell you about an audiobook that I hated. I didn't hate it because it was badly written -- it was mediocre in the way that mediocre thrillers usually are, and that means it would ordinarily have been tolerable. No, the reason I stopped listening to Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link is that this book is evil. I don't mean it's about evil. I don't even mean that it is evil-porn, like those horror books whose authors are pervertedly devoted to thinking up cool ways to torture and kill people. I mean that this book, to the degree that it is read by people ignorant of history (i.e., practically everybody), will move us closer to a future in which our society permits or even approves of the murder of Jews and the destruction of the state of Israel.

Wait! This book is fiction! How could it have such an effect? Well, it can't -- not all by itself. Its effect is incremental. But it's real. Here's how it works. At the beginning of the book, we are shown a Palestinian during the 1948 war over the creation of the state of Israel. The scene is about how this Palestinian has been torturing a man he captured in order to find out what he is doing; then he kills him. But the torture is not treated in the fiction as anything other than a regrettable necessity; later, the character does in fact regret his actions that day.

That's not what makes this book evil. No, it's the fact that Berry sets this scene against a background in which Israelis are systematically driving all the Palestinians out of Israel; the Israelis are heavily armed by the British while the Palestinians have no weapons to counter them; and the Israelis have rounded up whole villages of Palestinians and slaughtered them, men and women alike. These things are not what the scene is about. They are slipped in as background; they are treated as if they were the sort of thing that was really going on in Palestine in 1948.

This is the kind of thing that readers -- especially ones who don't know anything about history -- are likely to assume the writer has researched, so that it can be trusted. The book is fiction, so we know this particular character did not torture and kill the other guy -- that part is obviously made up. But the background is assumed to be real. And readers often come out of books like this thinking they now know something about the real world.

In fact, what Berry is providing is pure propaganda -- the propaganda created by terrorists and murderers to "prove" that Jews "deserve" to be blown up by suicide bombers. It is exactly as reliable as the widely-believed propaganda lie that either President Bush or the state of Israel -- or both -- actually carried out the 9/11 attacks in order to provide a pretext for invading innocent Muslim countries.

The truth -- the well-documented historical truth -- is that the British did not arm the Israelis. They blocked all attempts by the Israelis to arm themselves. Every weapon that the Israeli army had in 1948 was smuggled in. While the "poor, unarmed Palestinians" were supported by the fully-armed military forces of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. The Arabs had the military advantage, in numbers and in weaponry. Furthermore, while there were places where Israelis encouraged Muslims to flee, it was not a systematic effort, and many of those who fled did so at the well-documented insistence of Muslim leaders, who wanted Muslims out of the way so they could set about the business of slaughtering Jews. Only Israeli courage and audacity in combat prevented the genocidal outcome intended by the Arabs who defied the United Nations by trying to destroy Israel at the moment of its creation.

At the end of the war, the reason there was no Palestinian state is not because the Israelis prevented it. It was because the Arab nations prevented it -- Egypt took over the rule of the Gaza Strip and Jordan ruled the West Bank, declaring it to be part of their national territory and suppressing any attempt to create a Palestinian state there. As for wholesale slaughter of Palestinian civilians by Israelis, it didn't happen. Nowhere, not in 1948, and not since then.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Gore Funding Plan For "A New World Order": "If your employer began paying you 80 cents on the dollar, but, not to worry, the other 20 cents was going to support "good causes", thereby giving you value instead of capital, would you be pleased? If not, you won't like what Al Gore has been quietly planning along with his Global Warming initiative. He and others are working to achieve that very thing and to bring it about in a manner which doesn't give you a vote in which values your dollars end up supporting. Gore is quietly funding an assault on Capitalism as we know it, one that begins but doesn't end with Global Warming. That's only the model for what's coming next. Sans news conferences and Oscar nods, it's a well-funded, grand design to re-shape, not just America, but the global economy in such a manner so as to inculcate Liberal values into the world's system of finance."

CAIR: Admits Officials Have Ties to Islamist Terrorism": "In a stunning revelation, Corey Saylor, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) government affairs director, on 2 March admitted that convicted Islamic terrorists were CAIR officials when they committed terrorist acts against the United States. In an article carried by Delcotimes.com, Saylor is responding to questions about Ghassan Elashi and Ismail Royer and their ties to the leader of Hamas and activities in support of overseas terrorist organizations."

Selective Memory Loss On Prosecutor Firings: "Funny how the New York Times is breathless about the recent firing of seven...yes SEVEN...federal prosecutors. Why is this funny? Because they have failed to recall, I would call it selective memory loss, the 1993 firing of all 93...yes, NINETY THREE, federal prosecutors by one Clinton appointee named Janet Reno" [Macsmind has more]

Obama's Marxist Liberation Theology Church : "Obama's pastor, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, continued to evade Hannity while he hammered away asking again and agin if Hannity had ever read James H. Cone, one of the primary authors of Black Liberation Theology. Oddly enough, I just happen to have several of Cone's works on hand. Here's just a little from Cone's classic book A Black Theology of Liberation (Twentieth Anniversary Edition): "The definition of Jesus as black is crucial for christology if we truly believer in his continued presence today. Taking our clue from the historical Jesus who is pictured in the New Testament as the Oppressed One, what else, except blackness, could adequately tell us the meaning of his presence today? Any statement about Jesus today that fails to consider blackness as the decisive factor about his person is a denial of the New Testament message. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal that he is the man for others, disclosing to them what is necessary for their liberation from oppression. If this is true, then Jesus Christ must be black so that blacks can know that their liberation is his liberation. . . To be a disciple of the black Christ is to become black with him. Looting, burning, or the destruction of white property are not primary concerns."

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

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

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

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

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5 March, 2007

A GOOD IDEA FROM DR. WEEVIL

Sometimes a troll will say something so stupid that it inspires thoughts that would not otherwise have been thought. A law professor in Colorado has called Instapundit a "fascist" and suggested that he be fired for wondering "why the Bush administration wasn't acting covertly to kill radical mullahs and atomic scientists, rather than preparing a major attack on Iran. (Silly me, I thought this was advocating a less warlike approach)." Part of Instapundit's argument is that the ban on assassinations is not a law passed by Congress but an executive order, which means any president can rescind or amend it.

One of the trollier trolls on Protein Wisdom objects: "It's not illegal if the President overturns the order. Isn't that illegal now then?" Well, yeah, it is illegal now. I imagine Instapundit assumed that his readers were smart enough to realize that he thinks that the president should first cancel or revise the executive order, and only then start assassinating insane mullahs and the nuclear scientists who work for them.

So much was obvious, but it gave me an idea: Bush should ostentatiously rescind the presidential order while pointedly declining to say whether he intends to make use of the new (lack of) rules. That would concentrate a few minds, and not only in Iran. Kim Jong Il might start seriously thinking about doing a Kadhafi on his nuclear inventory, rather than risk dying much earlier than actuarial tables calculate. Bashar Assad might spend more time trying to make his Syrian subjects less miserable and less time making the Lebanese as miserable as possible. Cuban generals furtively planning for life after the Castros might start thinking a little more about topping up their Swiss bank accounts and contacting realtors on the Riviera and a little less about which colleagues they would have to kill to keep power over a country that no sane person would want to be responsible for in the first place. Examples could easily be multiplied. After a few months, when none of the plausible targets has died suddenly or of mysterious causes, they would start relaxing their guard. That would be the time for Bush to use his reclaimed powers, preferably all on the same day in several countries on more than one continent.

Source

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MICHAEL MOORE UNDER ATTACK FROM HONEST LEFTISTS

The hunter has become the hunted. Michael Moore, the celebrated left-wing film-maker, has become the unwilling subject of a new documentary that raises damaging questions about the credibility of his work. The director and star of successful documentaries such as Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore has repeatedly been accused by his right-wing enemies of distorting or manipulating the material in his films. On his website he dismisses his critics as "wacko attackos".

Yet the latest assault on Moore's film-making techniques has come from an unexpected quarter. In Manufacturing Dissent, a documentary to be shown for the first time at a Texas film festival on Saturday, a pair of left-wing Canadian film-makers take Moore to task for what they describe as a disturbing pattern of fact-fudging and misrepresentation. "When we started this project we hoped to have done a documentary that celebrated Michael Moore. We were admirers and fans," said Debbie Melnyk, who made the film with her husband, Rick Caine. "Then we found out certain facts about his documentaries that we hadn't known before. We ended up very disappointed and disillusioned." Melnyk and Caine are best known for their previous documentary Citizen Black, about Conrad Black, the Canadian-born former proprietor of The Daily Telegraph. Last week both of them acknowledged an important debt to Moore for popularising the documentary genre.

Yet when Caine and Melnyk began to follow him as part of their own documentary, their efforts to interview him met with the same kind of obstruction, denial and, ultimately, physical ejection that Moore had suffered when he tried to track down Roger Smith, the former chief executive of General Motors, for his first film, Roger & Me. It was in Flint, Michigan, Moore's former home town, that Caine and Melnyk made the first discovery that they say rocked their confidence in his approach. Roger & Me was a hugely successful account of what Moore portrayed as a fruitless task to force Smith to answer questions about GM's policies in closing the car manufacturing plants that had long been Flint's economic lifeline. Caine and Melnyk claim that Moore interviewed Smith on camera twice. But the scenes were left on the cutting room floor, apparently for greater dramatic effect.

Manufacturing Dissent includes a long catalogue of alleged exaggerations or distortions in several of Moore's films. In Bowling for Columbine, a scathing indictment of US gun violence, Moore visited Toronto to show parts of the city that were supposedly so free of crime everyone left their front doors unlocked. "In the film, Michael makes it look as though 100% of the doors were unlocked, but his local producer told us it was really only 40%," said Caine.

Caine and Melnyk said they had hoped to interview Moore about his views on how much editing was acceptable before a factual documentary turned into misleading propaganda. "We had met him at a premiere of the Columbine film in Toronto, and he said, `Oh yes, talk to my people and they'll set something up'," said Caine. "We then called his people and they said he's not doing any more interviews in Toronto. We had his e-mail, we sent a letter to his lawyers, we had his phone number in New York. But each time he said no." Then Caine and Melnyk began to run into open hostility. Eventually, in a scene that might have come from Roger & Me, they were bundled out of an event at Kent State University, where Moore's sister, Anne, knocked aside Caine's camera.

Moore is reportedly editing his next film, Sicko, about the US healthcare system, and a spokesman said he had no comment on Manufacturing Dissent. On his website he dismissed critics of Bowling for Columbine as "lying liars" and claimed that "organised groups [are] going full blast trying to discredit me". Yet Caine and Melnyk insist they should not be confused with the right-wing hordes who want to damage Moore. "If you have to sell out your values and principles to get at a greater truth, where does that leave you?" said Melnyk. "If we think it's wrong for the government to lie and manipulate, how do we think that [left-wingers] doing it is the solution?"

Source

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ELSEWHERE

It seems that what I write on this blog does occasionally get read by the Great and the Good. My comment of 2nd. on the Edwards Presidential campaign and its apparent admiration of proto-Fascists got a reply from Mrs Edwards herself -- predictable stuff of course -- just the usual Leftist use of denial. That Edwards supports ideas which have in the past been integral with Fascism was evidently not thought about at all. See the comments here. Mrs Edwards seems to do a lot of talking on behalf of her Johnnie -- witness her reply to Ann Coulter. One does get the impression that Johnnie needs his mommy. I say more about the Coulter matter on TONGUE-TIED and Flopping Aces has some background.

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

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

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

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

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4 March, 2007

Anti-democratic "Democrats" oppose secret ballots

For Big Labor, this week's "card check" victory marked the ultimate payoff for past Democratic election support. For House Democrats, it marked the end of the honeymoon. Democrats won in November in part by playing down their special interest patrons--unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers--and by playing up a new commitment to the moderate middle class. The big question was whether the party had the nerve to govern the way it campaigned, and card check was the first test. The answer? AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney isn't smiling for nothing.

Up to now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had kept her troops in line and her party's liberal wing in check. The vaunted first "100 hours" was run like a military operation, and revolved around a carefully chosen legislative agenda that would unify every faction in her party. It was small potatoes, but it worked, and it was a lesson in how Democrats can practice smart politics.

The card check, in contrast, is a lesson in how the party's liberal base forces Democrats to back political losers. The legislation's only purpose is to give unions an unfair advantage in organizing, namely by eliminating the secret ballot in union elections and instead allowing thugs to openly bully workers into joining up. Americans understand and despise this, with polls showing 90% of the public thinks card check is a racket.

Democrats therefore left themselves wide open for their first public drubbing. The card check gave Republicans a rare opening to beat the daylights out of the new majority, successfully accusing it of trashing democratic elections and shutting down free speech. It unified the business community, which put aside its disagreements on health care and immigration to instead team up to make the vote as painful as possible for Ms. Pelosi's moderate wing. Even the liberal press jumped ship.

And all this, meanwhile, for a vote that was largely symbolic. President Bush has vowed that a card check law is dead on arrival. And that assumes the legislation could even make it through a Senate filibuster--which it can't. As low points go, this was the lowest the new majority has had so far.

The issue for Ms. Pelosi is that this will undoubtedly not be the only low point. The card check is instead the first illustration of the biggest dilemma Democratic leaders will face over the next few years. Savvier party members understand the threat special interests pose to Democrats' ability to commune with more of America. Yet the party is completely dependent on those left-wing interest groups to finance and man their electoral victories. They want a return on their investment.

More here

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THE ARAB-ISRAEL DIFFERENCES

Post excerpted from SCA

Societies and cultures are measured by what they build and not by what they destroy. They are also measured by how they compare with each other, no matter how much political correctness abhors that truth. The character of a nation can be determined by the institutions that nations enshrines. That is no less true in the Middle East.

Israel has built some of the finest educational institutions in the world. Her neighbors have some of the worst. Israel has built a self sustaining, first world economy. The Arab world's singular notable achievement has been in achieving almost universal hatred of Jews. Mein Kampf remains an Arab best seller and the desire to `finish what Hitler started,' is more essential to the Arab world than and the study of physics.

Israelis celebrate humanitarians, scientists and artists. In the Arab world, terrorists and terror leaders are hailed as heroes. Schools are named after suicide bombers that target innocents. In Syria, the `Lion' leader, Hafez al Assad is an object of veneration. The reality that 20,000 to 30,000 were slaughtered in Hama, is of little consequence, at least publicly. Assad hated Israel and Jews- that was enough. The Syrian regime was relieved of it's obligation to her citizens.

The Arab world believes that Europe is supportive of their delusions and dysfunction. They are wrong. Europe finds the Arab cause as temporarily useful, and no more. Why? Because for the time being, anti Americanism and anti Semitism are once more, politically acceptable and au courrant, in Europe. Europe will not trade cowboy hats for keffiyas. To believe otherwise, even for a moment, is absurd. The Arab world does not understand that they are no more than this generations `useful idiots' for the fickle Europeans. The nations of Europe will be no more loyal to the Arab world than they were to each other. History tells that tale.

In rhetoric and deed, Arab world leaders have more in common with Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin than Washington, Jefferson or Winston Churchill. In following their leaders, the Arab world reveals more about itself than they might care to admit.

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ELSEWHERE

Pay bosses more!: "On a recent visit to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, President Bush saw fit to decry the rising inequality in America, complaining that corporate salaries, bonuses and stock options were part of the problem. 'We need to pay attention to the executive compensation packages that you approve,' he told the audience. With all due respect: nonsense. Excessive executive compensation harms no one but perhaps the stockholders who put up with it. And stockholders put up with it because there's good reason to believe that sizable CEO compensation packages help -- not harm -- corporate performance, which redounds to their benefit, and that of the firms' workers."

Nifong unrepentant: "When we last left Michael B. Nifong, he had begged off the Duke Non-Rape, Non-Kidnapping, Non-Sexual Assault case in order to deal with his personal legal matters, those being ethics charges filed against him by the North Carolina State Bar. Because the case now is in the hands of special prosecutors appointed by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, one would think that Nifong would simply become background noise. Think again. Nifong has managed to make himself front-and-center once again, this time by his answers to the more than 100 charges that the bar filed against him. If one might think (or even hope) that the man would be contrite when faced with massive evidence of misconduct and outright lying, then that person would be greatly disappointed."

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

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

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

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

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3 March, 2007

MULTICULTURALISM HAS MADE BRITAIN A MAJOR EXPORTER OF TERRORISTS

"In August 2005, the Independent published a story with the headline: 'Intelligence Chiefs Warn Blair of Home-Grown Insurgency.' Raymond Whitaker and Frances Elliott wrote in this report that 'there were more than 100,000 people in Britain from "completely militarized" regions, including Somalia. and Afghanistan. Every one of them knows how to use an AK-47. About 10 per cent can strip and reassemble such a weapon blindfolded, and probably a similar proportion have some knowledge of how to use military explosives.'

"The Sunday Times wrote on June 4, 2006 that between 120 and 150 radical Islamists had traveled to Iraq to join the 'British Jihad Brigade,' in answer to Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's appeal. The paper cited a senior security source as saying that the 'foreign legion,' which is comprised entirely of Westerners, was set up to fight alongside the Iraqi insurgency.

"The British journalist Melanie Phillips. cited British government appraisals from one year before the London attacks, to the effect that 16,000 British Muslims were either directly involved in or supported terrorist activities. Three thousand had attended Al-Qaeda training camps abroad, and a few hundred of them were prepared to carry out attacks in the U.K. itself. There were also other British Muslims who traveled abroad to take part in terrorist attacks.

"On December 22, 2001, the British-born Muslim Richard Reid was arrested after raising a din on a flight from Paris to Miami. "Reid, who is known as 'the shoe-bomber,' attempted to blow up the plane with explosives hidden in his shoe. In his confession at his trial he said: 'I admit to what I did. I will not apologize for it. I am at war with your country.' In January 2003 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

"On January 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl disappeared in Pakistan while preparing a report on extremist groups. On February 21, 2002, the U.S. State Department officially announced his death. A videotape showed masked terrorists slaughtering him; it later became known that these were the British-born Ahmed Said Sheikh and three of his assistants.

"In 2002, the Egyptian authorities arrested 26 members of Hizb Al-Tahrir Al-Islami. Among them were three British citizens who had resolved to carry out terrorist attacks. The group was convicted in March, 2004, and the British citizens were condemned to five years' imprisonment.

"In the recent fighting in Somalia, in which the government forces, with military support from Ethiopia, defeated the forces of the extremist Union of Islamic Courts, there were British Islamists who fought alongside the Islamic Courts. Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi revealed, in a January 9 press conference, that his country's forces had arrested seven British fighters as they tried to escape Mogadishu together with the Islamist militias. They were arrested together with a number of Canadians and other Westerners, whom he described as 'the international faction'. The news reported that many of them had been killed in battle.

"The British Islamists had joined the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts in answer to the call issued by Al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, in early January. He had called on Al-Qaeda's supporters in the West to join in the suicide-bombing campaign and guerilla war in Somalia. "The aid coming from Britain to the Islamic Courts was not limited just to fighters, but also included funding. A report issued by a U.N. supervision agency last November stated that 'in recent months Somalis in the U.K. had raised more than $1 million in donations. These funds were sent to the Islamic Courts.' The report added that London had become the primary channel through which monetary aid was passed on to the Islamic Courts.

"Last but not least, Britain's Channel 4 broadcast, on Monday, January 13, 2007, a documentary film that was surreptitiously shot in a number of British mosques, the most important of which was the Birmingham Mosque. The results were alarming. The sermons were hostile to 'infidels,' Jews, and Christians, and called for the killing of homosexuals, among others. In addition, they offered Islamic legal justifications for marrying off girls who were still minors to elderly men. "Some of the British mosques offered a live satellite videoconference with the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who answered the questions and inquiries of those present at the mosque. Some of the mosques carried live Friday sermons and prayers from mosques in Saudi Arabia.

More here

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ELSEWHERE



Trial Balloons Reach Speed Of Light: "The Democrats are floating trial balloons so fast, they have actually set new speed records with them. Literally just hours after they tried to float one about possibly cutting some funds out of the military budget, they reversed course so fast that reporters got whiplash trying to follow them. They now say they have no intention whatsoever of cutting the funds."

Guardian of misrepresentation : "There is a real country called Iraq, where a real war is going on, with real progress but very real challenges. We are not going to "win the war" in six months -- nor would anyone expect to. But the Guardian seems to be describing some completely different, (possibly mythical) country, and some imaginary group of harried and depressed advisers bearing no resemblance to reality. As counterinsurgency professionals, we take a fact-based approach and we are well aware of the extremely demanding task we face. That makes us cautious realists -- but we are far from pessimists, as the Guardian's anonymous source seems to imply."

Electronic Jihad: "Alongside military jihad, which has been gaining momentum and extracting an ever growing price from many countries around the globe, Islamists have been developing a new form of warfare, termed "electronic jihad," which is waged on the Internet. This new form of jihad was launched in recent years and is still in its early stages of development. However, as this paper will show, Islamists are fully aware of its destructive potential, and persistently strive to realize this potential. Electronic jihad is a phenomenon whereby mujahideen use the Internet to wage economic and ideological warfare against their enemies. Unlike other hackers, those engaged in electronic jihad are united by a common strategy and ideology which are still in a process of formation."

Hot air or desperation? "North Korea's No. 2 leader reiterated Thursday his country's pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons, as the impoverished nation sought a resumption of aid at its first high-level talks with South Korea since conducting an atomic test. Kim Yong Nam said "the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula is the dying wish" of the country's founding president, Kim Il Sung, the father of current leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea "will make efforts to realize it," he told South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung in Pyongyang, the North's capital."

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

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

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

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

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2 March, 2007

DOES JOHN EDWARDS SUPPORT FASCISM?

Pretty-boy Democrat Presidential hopeful John Edwards has a blog. I am not sure who is allowed to post on it but someone has a very interesting post there. I imagine that it could get deleted so I will reproduce it in full:

Progressive Populists Unite!

2/14/2007 at 5:44 PM EST

In the late 19th century a wonderful movement emerged in our great nation. A populist movement, that eventually merged with the Democratic Party in the 1896 election with William Jennings Bryan as its figurehead. This was largely a movement of agrarian radicals in the South and Midwest, but its principles of economic justice, anti-corporatism, and political accountability still remain in the American psyche. Also during this time, groups like the Farmers Alliance (which was known for its strong inclusive stance on race) and the Knights of Labor were formed.

This all occurred during the time of the Gilded Age. Well, it appears we are in the New Gilded Age, an age where the rich and poor grow further apart. An age where it seems more difficult for working families and middle-class families to have some sense of economic security. Those progressive populists of the 1880s and 1890s help to change the national consciousness. We need a similar change right now in America. John Edwards is the candidate who can bring that change right now. 21st century progressive populists need to unite behind his campaign now!

Source

So what is wrong with that? Only the fact that the "Progressives" of around a century ago whom the writer praises were proto-Fascists. They were war-mongering antisemites, lovers of Aryans, oppressors of blacks, believed in government regulation of just about everything etc.

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ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS

Moderates must not become apologists for radical Islam
A man of the people
Raphael Israeli: Muslim apologist, thy name is coward
Let people say when to give in to minorities
Jimmy Carter's Bonfire of the Vanities
The Rape of Europe
Braving the wrath of latte man
Liberals are now the appeasers of hate
Gagged - or just challenged?
Protector of the free world deserves better
No wisdom mollycoddling Muslims
Beyond burger imperialism
Israeli police storm temple
Intimidation tactics
Modern Israel is a far cry from old South Africa
In defence of '24'
Sleepwalking with the enemy
Trioli fills hole left by McKew on Lateline
Meet Aunty's new, objective and fair-minded TV host
A question of identity
UK Jews: Replace BBC Mideast editor
The Left is onside with hate

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ELSEWHERE

Weighing the national character: "One hears much admiration from politicians of the American 'national character,' by which seems to be meant the aggregate of prevailing values of the majority of the population. I gather that Americans tend to regard their national character as comprising such things as freedom, independence, individualism, and self-reliance. One thinks of Daniel Boone or Marlboro Man. In fact we no longer have these qualities and probably never will again. Generally we now embody their opposites. Modern society has become a hive of largely conformist, closely regulated and generally helpless employees who depend on others for nearly everything. ... What then is the national character today? I think we are first an obedient people. We submit."

Save the Mandeans: "The war in Iraq has let loose extreme supremacists who seek to murder anyone not of their faith. Iraq is being torn apart by religious wars in which the supremacists are killing not only those of a different sect of Islam but also Christians and other religious minorities. A little known ancient religion in Iraq is in danger of being totally exterminated: Mandaeanism. Mandaeans date back to New Testament times as a branch of the Gnostic movement related to early Christianity. The Mandaeans regard John the Baptist as their great teacher. According to the article, Who Are the Mandaens? by Julie Abadirad, they lived "in the lands of the lower Euphrates, the lower Tigris , the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab, and in the adjacent Iranian Province of Khuzistan (once called Arabistan)." Portuguese monks called them Christians of Saint John because of their baptismal rites, although the Mandaeans are not Christians."



Muslim girl lost in poker game: "A teenage girl in southern Pakistan, whose late father lost her in a poker game when she was two years old, has asked authorities to save her from being handed over to a middle-aged relative. Rasheeda, 17, said she has filed applications with the police and a local councillor asking them to prevent Lal Haider, 45, from taking her to his home. Her mother, Nooran said her husband racked up a debt of 10,000 rupees ($190) to Haider playing cards. "My husband didn't have money to pay, and instead he told Lal Haider that he could take Rasheeda when she grows up," she said. Despite being paid his money last year, she said Haider still insisted the girl should be given to him because of tribal customs."

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

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

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

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

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1 March, 2007

WHY THE LEFT LOVE ISLAM

Why does the Left excuse in Islam everything they once claimed to oppose? Excerpt from Dr. Sanity

Everywhere the leftists march and strut their stuff, you will see the tacit support given, either consciously or unconsciously, to all the thugs of the Middle East (and elsewhere) who engage in jihad, murder, and the most vile anti-semitism, sexism and homophobia. Yes, on the surface it certainly does seem weird, if you only listen to what they are saying. But when you consider the underlying philosophical principles of the left and those of radical Islam and then observe their behaviors, you will discover the philosophical harmony that exists between them.

Islam--particularly the extreme elements-has easily been able to take maximum advantage of the Achilles heel of the West; a vulnerability that has come into existence as a result of the rarely articulated philosophical and political strategies adopted by the political left when they abandoned classical liberalism. In the table below are the philosophical elements of Classical Liberalism versus Postmodernism. Over the last 50 years or so, the values of the West , the beacon of classical liberal ideas, have incrementally been eroded and undermined as Western intellectuals in the academic world have embraced postmodern ideas. The two world views are not compatible.



Fundamentally threatened by classical liberal values, the world view of radical Islam happens to be entirely compatible with the new postmodern philosophy. The essential anti-reality, anti-reason, anti-human collectivism that underlies radical Islam is practically indistinguishable from today's leftist thought processes. Of course, the particular content and the ultimate destination are unique for each; but only to the extent of the differing utopias they each desire to impose on the world.

That they each desire to impose their own version of utopia on the rest of us is the metaphysical and epistemological glue that binds them together. Either we submit willingly, or they will use any and all coercive strategies--including violence and terrorism--to bring us around to their way of worship. The left does it for our own "good"; Islam does it for the sake of Allah.

Despite the rhetoric of "peace" and "love" and "brotherhood" and "justice" that emanates from the left and from Islam (the "religion of peace"), both subscribe to their own unique brand of "jihad" (the political left prefers to call it "revolution"). Both are quite comfortable with initiating and using force up to and including terrorism to achieve their ends. Of course, they generally couch it in terms of self-defense--and that is why identity politics and the quest for ultimate victimization from the imperialist/ capitalistist West (Marx's "oppressed" vs "oppressor" dialectic applied via multiculturalism) come into play.

The vulnerability created within Western culture has been effectively used to optimize Islam's own religious, political, psychological, and military objectives. And they have been successful precisely because they are in philosophical and ethical step with the political left of Europe and America.

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ELSEWHERE

In a couple of months it will be 400 years since the first permanent European settlement was established in what is now the USA. It was established in Jamestown, Virginia. Europeans have been in America continuously ever since. Where's the hoopla? Does anybody even know about such a big anniversary? Or is it now a cause of shame because the settlers were white?

Jeb in 2008?: "Don't be surprised if, come November of 2008, voters are choosing between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush for president. But how can that be? Jeb's not running. Well, he isn't running now, but the new, front-loaded primary system may, counterintuitively, allow him to enter the race late as a 'white knight' rescuing Republicans from a morass of unhappiness and indecision. Here's how ..."

Why Europeans can drink milk: "The gene that allows north Europeans to digest milk has evolved only in the past 8,000 years. Scientists at University College London found that the gene emerged long after humans had moved into Europe from Africa. An analysis of DNA extracted from Neolithic skeletons from central and east Europe, indicated that the gene for lactase production had not yet evolved. The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Non-Jewish Jews: "What do Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Noam Chomsky and George Soros have in common? They were/are all radicals, born to Jewish parents, had no Jewish identity and hurt Jews (not to mention non-Jews).... How to explain such Jews? People with no national or religious roots who become politically active will often seek to undermine the national and religious roots of others, especially those in their own national/religious group. It is akin to the special animosity some ex-Catholics have toward the Church. Non-Jewish Jews are far more likely to work to weaken Christianity in America than Jewish Jews, especially religious Jews. Religious Jews celebrate religious Christians. Jews with no religious or national identity do not like Jews who have those identities, and Americans who have likewise become world citizens do not much care for Americans who wave the American flag. Just as chauvinism -- excessive and amoral nationalism -- can lead to nihilism, so, too, the absence of any national or religious identity can lead to nihilism. The radical non-Jewish Jew loves humanity, but hurts real humans, especially his own."

Murtha's fake statistics: "Murtha also has been trying to justify his anti-surge strategy by propagating the notion that the Iraqis want U.S. forces out of their country. To this end he keeps regurgitating statistics according to what he calls "the latest polls." The congressman's message, according to Zev Chafets? Look at how many Sunnis want U.S. forces out, how many Shiites approve of killing Americans, how many Iraqis disapprove of their own leaders.... I've got the numbers right here, scientific as a Con Ed meter reading and twice as authoritative. Who are the meter-readers upon whom Murtha relies to validate his pitch?.. They contracted the job out to a U.S. firm, D3 Systems - which subcontracted it to KA Research. Matt Warshaw, a D3 spokesman, says KA Research is owned by Iraqis and Turks, but isn't prepared to name them. Chafets went on to critique the survey: It is based on dated statistics and on claims of interpersonal types of interviews difficult to imagine successfully conducting under the present circumstances in Iraq; also, there have been no real outside verification of KA's data."

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

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

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

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

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