ELSEWHERE

Fascinating: Hans Blix thinks the anti-war demonstrators caused the war on Iraq. He has a point.

This "Earth Liberation Front" seems to be a nasty business. They not only torch SUVs but also homes under construction. The police may have to use RICO (organized crime) laws against them. In true Leftist fashion they have no respect for democracy. "It makes no sense to think that we can have success without combining legal and illegal tactics, both violent and non-violent", they say. What people can be persuaded to vote for is irrelevant to them. THEY KNOW what is good for us and too bad if people don't agree with them.

The American Library Association (ALA) has declared this week to be Banned Book Week. Practically anything that has ever been “banned” can however be read here. What the week is all really about is an attack on Christian groups and parents exercising their right to have a say in the education of their children. As Steve McKinzie pointed out a few years ago, very few of the ALA’s “banned” books have in fact been banned by anyone. All that has happened is that parents and Christian groups have questioned their suitability for use in schools due to their explicit sexual content etc. The whole exercise pretty dishonest, in other words. Any guesses about how most ALA members vote?

America’s leading expert on the Islamic countries says that it is only their own failure to modernize that lies behind the way the West has got so far ahead of them in the last few hundred years. But he sees no reason why they cannot modernize.

In my latest academic upload here (or here) I report some findings about the nature of immigrants. Do they tend to be misfits or to be especially enterprising?

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