ELSEWHERE

Wow! Clinton has just cut the legs off Kerry: "Bill Clinton says that no government could have failed to act against Iraq after the 11 September 2001 attacks in view of intelligence provided". Lots of people have been saying that the Clintons don't want Kerry to win. Dick McDonald has some stuff up to that effect.

But Kerry has quickly jumped on the bandwagon: "Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry said Friday he would be willing to launch a pre-emptive strike against terrorists if he had adequate intelligence of a threat. Kerry offered some support for one of the most controversial aspects of President Bush's national security policy" (Though how he jumped on a bandwagon without legs is a mystery!)

Tim Berners-Lee has just been knighted by the Queen for inventing the Worldwide Web. Al Gore must be jealous.

Blogger.com's recent changes have traps for the unwary. There are now two ways of inputting text. If you choose "Compose", you get more things that you can do but you lose all your breaks between paragraphs! The "Edit html" option is the one you need if you don't want to re-do all your paragraphing manually.

An interesting article on 19th century Russian "Liberals". They were remarkably like American "liberals" today. And 19th century Russian "liberals" ended up producing the Russian revolution: "We might wonder, then, if the liberal worldview would survive a successful ascent to political power. Or would most of it be shed along the way in favor of, say, opportunistic morality and lack of concern for human suffering? We do know that when the originally liberal and humanitarian Russian intelligentsia finally took power in 1917, the results were catastrophic in those precise directions."

Interesting book by a Russian writer: He says that Russians feel a need for a strong father figure as their ruler. It would explain the rather amazing popularity of President Putin -- particularly when you contrast it with the chaos that preceded him.

Even the UN disses Arafat : "After more than 20 years of championing the Palestinian cause, the U.N.'s Middle East peace envoy lashed out at Yasser Arafat and received a stinging rebuke. Expressing frustration as he winds up his Mideast mission, Terje Roed-Larsen blamed Arafat for lack of progress toward vital reforms and peace moves backed by the world body. He was speaking Tuesday before the U.N. Security Council.

The affirmative action myth: "The Supreme Court decided one year ago that racial preferences at public universities are legal, as long as they aren't too mechanically applied. But this has proved cold comfort to affirmative action supporters besieged by evidence that preferences can't deliver the results desired. ... Just what is affirmative action supposed to do? Educators trumpet the virtues of 'diverse' campuses, but their enthusiasm dates suspiciously to a 1972 court decision suggesting diversity as a legal justification for preferences. Ordinary Americans are more practical. Those sympathetic to affirmative action assume that it offers concrete benefits to disadvantaged students. They hope that preferences will narrow our nation's painful racial divide along such metrics as income, literacy, home ownership and health. But affirmative action in this sense is a myth."

"UK home secretary David Blunkett is having another go at banning the incitement of religious hatred.... Laws against religious hatred will grossly infringe on our right to free speech and our ability to criticise religions however we please.... the whole point about free speech is that it is free - and that it's not up to Blunkett or anybody else to decide whether your opinion is reasonable or not. Unless we are able to be wrong, rude and offensive, about Allah, Jesus or even the home secretary, then the right to free speech exists only in theory rather than in practice"

There is a pretty insightful article in Quadrant -- Australia's best-know conservative publication (apparently once financed by the CIA!) about the homosexual marriage issue. I rather liked this report of a typically pungent comment from Australia's most recent Leftist Prime-minister: "Very many heterosexual people will be inclined to remark, as former Prime Minister Keating is reputed to have done in cabinet, "I don't care what you say - two blokes and a cocker spaniel don't make a family.""

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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