Brookes News Update

US economy, commodities and China : Rising commodity prices have been explained largely in terms of rapid growth in the US and China. But some think that it is "excess money" that is really driving commodity prices rather than growth
Australia, recession and our boom: The Australian economy is displaying all the symptoms of a classic boom at its peak. Is this a question of not if but when?
Ralston Saul: Nonsense from an anti-market ideologue: Ralston Saul is an anti-market ideologue who speaks with an authority that he has not earned. His intellectual shallowness was exposed by his silly assertion that a truly intelligent person never uses words like inevitable, fact or truth
Australia, free trade and consumers' well being: A favoured criticism of some Australian commentators is the issue of free trade. It is argued that this policy leads to a flood of cheap imports that destroy our industrial base and cause unemployment and economic misery
Israel withdraws: What's done....is done: Gaza, as horrific as it has been, is just a preview of what is to come, thanks to Sharon, Condi and Dubya. By all means, let's appease genocidal terrorists, and hope they won't take advantage of our societies
Believe it or not: Abortion causes illegal immigration: Who will 12 million aborted Americans? Most likely, 15 million more foreign-born Hispanics with a propensity for hard work and a burning desire to reclaim the American Southwest for Mexico

************************

ELSEWHERE

Poverty. A good email from a reader: "The poverty statistics in the US are fraudulent. They are produced by bureaucrats who have a vested interest in exagerrating the number. Case in point is myself. I am considered to be living in poverty despite being a homeowner and business owner with a 6 figure net worth. For the past year I have been involved in a new business venture and haven't yet turned a profit or taken a salary so my income last year fell below the poverty line. The poverty figures are based on income exclusively hence I am "living in poverty". Half of all Americans "living in poverty" are homeowners. The reality is that less than 1% of Americans are living in true poverty. True poverty is being homeless and/or not having enough to eat. Most Americans who are "living in poverty" have more than enough food to eat and a home to live in".

There is a furious response in Spiegel, Germany's major noewsmagazine, about the general German response to hurricane Katrina, Excerpt: "Hurricane Katrina has cost the lives of hundreds and devastated the US Gulf Coast. But instead of aid donations and sympathy, the Americans have heard little more than a haughty "I told you so" from Germany. It's another low point for trans-Atlantic relations -- and set off by a German minister. How pathetic.... It's not the American people's fault that the storm hit and they couldn't have stopped it. The Germans, on the other hand, could have done a lot to prevent World War II. And yet, care packages still rained down from US troops." Some American responses to the German attitude here

Disasters unlimited: "When disaster subsidy zones are created, disasters proliferate and tragedies continue. Almost one thousand years ago in England a subtle lesson in the limits of public authority was offered by King Canute who, when implored by fawning courtiers to demonstrate his regal powers by commanding the ocean waves to halt their assault of the shores, waded into the surf, held up his hand in mock gesture, and permitted all to observe his royal drenching. Canute could not avoid the force of Nature. Today, government intrusion into these areas produces a severe loss of individual responsibility and leads to the prospect of an all-powerful government attentive to special interests."

Good point from Michelle Malkin: "Bean-counting government bureaucrats are free to take race, ethnicity and gender into account when doling out public funds to non-white-male contractors. But God help law enforcement officers, air marshals and border agents who try to use those same factors to combat terrorism and protect American lives."

Good quote from Wizbang: "The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers. When we were going to capture Osama bin Laden, for example, the lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden's safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him. We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair. They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard. The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community."

Good comment from Robert Bork: "Once the justices depart, as most of them have, from the original understanding of the principles of the Constitution, they lack any guidance other than their own attempts at moral philosophy, a task for which they have not even minimal skills. Yet when it rules in the name of the Constitution, whether it rules truly or not, the Court is the most powerful branch of government in domestic policy. The combination of absolute power, disdain for the historic Constitution, and philosophical incompetence is lethal."

There is a big list here of military bloggers -- good for first-hand reports not filtered through a hostile mainstream media.

I am afraid that my taste in visual art is as shallow as my committment to music is deep. As I am writing this I am listening to Sir Edward Elgar's "Where Corals Lie", sung by Dame Janet Baker -- and it is moving me to tears, as it always does. But in visual art I must confess that the only prints I own are by Namatjira. My only consolation for such a plebeian taste in paintings is that the Queen has some Namatjiras in her collection. So I was most interested to read this article by Ernest Gombrich, a great art historian and critic, which praises the paintings of Winston Churchill. I had always thought that Winston was just a senile old dabbler. But I bow to greater expertise.

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

**************************

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

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" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************