ELSEWHERE

Phenomenal!: "Japan's lower house of parliament has narrowly approved plans to privatise the country's huge postal system. The move is set to create the world's largest bank, as Japan Post controls 350 trillion yen ($3.2 trillion) in savings and insurance funds. The 233-228 vote was a victory for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who had pledged to push the reforms through before leaving office in 2006. But it was a tight call, with members of his own party voting against him. Under the proposed reforms, Japan Post would be split into four entities in 2007 in the hope of stimulating competition. Its savings and insurance arms would have to be sold by 2017. Advocates of the reforms claim that privatisation will make more efficient use of the service's huge funds for investment. But the country's 300,000 postal employees - a powerful lobbying group who are also instrumental in mobilising rural voters - opposed the bill, fearing for their jobs."

The Iranian election: Most Westerners seem to have accepted the recent election as in some sense legitimate and as representing the will of the Iranian people. That is incredibly naive. The election was thoroughly rigged. Some of the overlooked factors: "Most of the Iranian people rejected the elections and even stayed home in order to avoid being forced to go to the polls; The minimum age requirement to vote was reduced from sixteen to fourteen; The use of food coupons and admission in high school, college and university examinations required a seal on one's birth certificate indicating that the person had participated in the elections; Threatening hospitalized patients that if they did not vote, they would not receive their medications and other services; Threatening government employees that if they did not vote, they would lose their jobs; Increasing the hours of voting during the last minutes of the election day and transporting regime agents by bus from one polling place to others in order to increase the number of votes; Printing more than three million birth certificates with fake names and announcing that birth certificates without pictures would also be accepted as well as passports; Cheating in counting of votes which caused different voting results being announced by the Guardian Council and the Interior Ministry".

In case you have not seen it, there is a 2002 report here from country music star Charlie Daniels about what he saw when he visited Guantanamo Bay to entertain the troops. One thing I had not realized is that the Red Cross have people there watching everything.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

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"

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