ELSEWHERE

Safire in the NYT has joined the chorus in concluding that the Iraq invasion has been of enormous strategic benefit to the USA and to world peace. And even a German newspaper has condescended to notice positive developments in Iraq.

Keith Burgess-Jackson says that feminists have lied to women in saying that they "can have it all" -- and he once had feminist views himself. I myself have been fortunate in knowing lots of women who are very happy to be female but I do blame feminism in part for raising women's expectations to unrealistic levels and thus making them postpone childbearing until it is too late. Two of my four ex-wives have had no children -- despite both being very good and capable women.

The current City Journal has a couple of rather pessimistic articles: George Will thinks it will be a long haul before Iraq becomes democratic and James Q. Wilson thinks that terrorists will be with us for a long time yet.

Putin's "authoritarian liberalism" may be better for Russia than corrupted democracy. We cannot expect them to leap in one bound from centuries of oppression to where we are now: "For all its dictatorial tendencies, the contemporary Russian state clearly exhibits some restraint. It does not seek to intervene in every aspect of its citizens' lives, and Russia is a country where people can and do criticise the government without being molested. In many respects the government of Vladimir Putin is probably the most benign in Russian history. Like the Whites, Putin is no liberal democrat, but his promotion of state interests may well be the best hope for liberal democracy in Russia."

Slavery is alive and well in the Islamic world: "From the Niger River to Sudan slavery continues to be practiced and justified in the name of the Koran"

Now that soot has been shown to have global warming potential, the Greenies are trying to blame soot on Diesel engines used in the West and are ignoring the huge output of soot from poorer countries. A reader who has been overseas recently writes: "I crossed from Romania to Bulgaria, two extremely poor, poor countries, the living conditions were about 12thC in the country, Romania especially. The Danube was anything but blue & huge power plants belching out smoke & SOOT! It certainly did away with any romantic notions one may have had".

A good report about current health panics on "Spiked" -- problems which the do-gooders of course blame on everything modern: More people are getting cancer! How Awful! But is it? It's mainly because people are living longer and older people are more prone to cancer. British sperm counts are dropping! How awful! Will the British die out? Hardly, it was only men with fertility problems who had lower counts and counts vary widely anyhow.

Not all actors and actresses are imbecilic Leftists. See at the bottom of this article for some very sensible comments by John Rhys-Davies, the actor who played "Gimli" (the dwarf) in 'Lord of the Rings'

PP McGuinness has an interesting review of a humorous film about the old Communist East Germany. He knows something of it from personal experience. He concludes: "Everybody has had hankerings after the creation of a new society, a vision, the ongoing progressive march forwards - but the reality is that carrying such hankerings beyond youth leads not to utopia but to dystopia".

A big collection of LEFTIST race-hatred here.

Yesterday I mentioned in passing an economist (Gittins) who thinks that "money does not buy happiness" is a reason to stop giving people more of what they want. There is a reply to Gittins here

Heh! Heh! I am in a minority again: "Blogs are currently the province of the young, with 92.4% of blogs created by people under the age of 30".

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