ELSEWHERE

How awful for the Left: Life in the Western world has continued to improve steadily throughout the last century. For all the prophecies of doom coming from the Greens and the Left, the opposite has happened. Just this one sentence must be deeply upsetting for the American Leftists who hate their own country: "Incomes are up. Inflation-adjusted per capita income has doubled since 1960". Fancy that nasty old capitalism making people twice as rich as they were in the 1960s so beloved of the Left! But the Left will just deny it all of course. It is their own wonderful feelings that matter to them, not facts -- and certainly not the welfare of Joe Average.

I am a bit uncertain what to think about the French ban on Muslim headscarves. On the one hand, the libertarian in me says that people should be free to wear funny hats to their heart's content, but on the other, the French seem to see the ban as a signal to their large Muslim population that they are not going to have France Islamicized. Since Islam is a deadly foe of liberty as we know it, I have some sympathy for that. Good to see that the Sikhs are unlikely to be banned from wearing their turbans.

I must say I am rather pleased to see Eastern Orthodox Christianity being treated with great respect in Cuba. It's a small step but a good one.

An amazingly pro-Bush article in Australia's most Leftist newspaper here: "Most Americans also support Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. They are not stupid".

A Brazilian reader has responded to my post about Brazil yesterday, noting that privatization there has delivered SOME benefits: "Telephones and comunication are great now, and roads with tolls on them are much better". He also points us to this site -- where a Brazilian writer rather despairs of the instinctive anti-Americanism that prevails in Brazil. His article on the causes of poverty in Brazil is hard-hitting.

And Brazilian blogger Luis Afonso has drawn my attention to this article -- which sees the present Brazilian Leftist government on a Gramscian path of gradual takeover of all the institutions of Brazilian society. There is no doubt that Brazil has taken a big risk with its present government but it seems to me that how good the outcome is depends very much on President Lula Da Silva himself and a drift from Left to Right with age and a drift from Left to Right on attaining power are both far from unknown. One can only hope at this stage. His recent alliance with a major "reactionary" party would seem to suggest that there are some grounds for such hope.

My mention of flat tax yesterday caused one reader to ask what its advantages are. Here is one answer.

Steve Sailer has summarized the available evidence on the IQ of GWB and finds he scores in the top 5%! Pretty good. Sailer reports grumbles from a psychologist about GWB's simple recreational interests but that probably keeps him close to the average American -- which is surely a virtue in a democratic leader. There is also talk of GWB not being very "open to experience" but psychologists talk such a lot of nonsense about that subject (See e.g. here) that I am not even inclined to look up the evidence for the claim. I have got very tired of refuting that sort of nonsense.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan receives the German Media Award 2003 this Wednesday in Baden-Baden, Germany. Former US president Bill Clinton will hand him the award.... The award for Kofi Annan - who was against the invasion in Iraq - is a message from the German media to the world: Annan yes, Bush no.

Some American Leftists support the Iraq war regardless of the WMD issue. Good to see that some Leftists really are against Fascists, since the Arab world has little else.

Random observations thinks that the Leftist Tugboat has sprung a leak over that pesky conservative happiness.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

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