ELSEWHERE

If you want to see some REALLY offensive cartoons, have a look at some Korean cartoons about the Japanese. Because Japan conquered and controlled Korea for many years (up to 1945), Koreans hate the Japanese. An amusing story about that: When the Koreans decided that they wanted some high speed trains, did they import the famous Japanese "Shinkansen" trains from virtually next-door? No. They imported them from FRANCE!

Another problem for Social Security: "Harry Weinstein used to think of 93 as ancient. Now that he's reached that age -- well beyond today's average life expectancy -- he's looking forward to turning 100.... People much older than Weinstein could become the norm, said Stanford University biology and demographics Professor Shripad Tuljapurkar. He believes medical advances in anti-aging technologies could increase Americans' average life expectancy in the near future from just under 80 years to 100. Society needs to consider the possibility, Tuljapurkar argues, because the implications for programs like Social Security are mind bending. Would retirement begin at, say, 85? How will we care for everyone?"

Why the Islamists have whipped up hatred of Denmark: "... the government introduced drastic measures to curb the influx of low-skilled immigrants from Third World countries. "There is no danger that Denmark will become a multicultural society, because this is not our goal," Rasmussen said before the elections. The new government introduced legislation that made it harder for immigrants to enter Denmark and to acquire Danish nationality. Copenhagen began to repatriate illegal immigrants and encouraged rejected asylum seekers to leave. It implemented stricter rules to determine who should receive residence permits. It slashed social benefit payments to newcomers, allowing them only a box of bare necessities. As a result, the number of asylum seekers in Denmark dropped from 12,100 in 2000 to 3,222 in 2004. The number of people recognized as refugees decreased from 5,159 in 2000 to 1,607 in 2004. Residence permits for family reunification dropped from 10,021 in 2000 to 4,791 in 2003. The number of people acquiring Danish nationality fell from 18,811 in 2000 to 6,583 in 2003, with Asians down from 7,844 to 1,436 and Africans from 2,371 to 312. People who wanted to become Danes had to pass a language, culture, and history test.

The VERY dubious CAIR: "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), headquartered in Washington, is perhaps the best-known and most controversial Muslim organization in North America.... The Department of Homeland Security refuses to deal with it. Senator Charles Schumer (Democrat, New York) describes it as an organization "which we know has ties to terrorism." Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) observes that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect." Steven Pomerantz, the FBI's former chief of counterterrorism, notes that "CAIR, its leaders, and its activities effectively give aid to international terrorist groups." The family of John P. O'Neill, Sr., the former FBI counterterrorism chief who perished at the World Trade Center, named CAIR in a lawsuit as having "been part of the criminal conspiracy of radical Islamic terrorism" responsible for the September 11 atrocities. Counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson calls it "a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas."...."

Those evil whites again: "South Africans are worse off than they were before the end of apartheid, at least as measured by real incomes. In Incomes in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid (NBER Working Paper No. 11384), co-authors Murray Leibbrandt, James Levinsohn, and Justin McCrary document that decline and attempt to explain what has happened. They show that average incomes of South African men and women fell by about 40 percent between 1995 and 2000, and note that there has been little improvement since then.... Their focus is on economic well being as measured by income, rather than on other ways of evaluating social welfare, including measurement of political freedom. The change in income is most pronounced in the lower half of the income distribution and has disproportionately affected younger workers, women, and blacks".

The Dutch are slowly learning: "Dutch judges convicted nine men yesterday of belonging to a terrorist group, a landmark verdict that concludes promoting a violent version of Islam can itself be an act of terrorism. The case opens a new way for prosecutors to stop potential terrorists and for the Netherlands to tackle the broader problem of the spread of radicalism among Muslim youth... Two men received 15- and 13-year prison terms for attempted murder after a clash with police during their arrest. One received a five-year term for possessing a loaded machine gun. The convicted men, known as the Hofstad Group, included Mohammed Bouyeri, who already is serving a life sentence for the November 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh. The rest were sentenced to up to two years in prison. All were found to have spread hate propaganda among their friends and on the Internet, encouraging Muslims to join a holy war against the West. Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration politician who was threatened by the Hofstad Group, said the ruling didn't go far enough. "This is a judgment befitting a banana republic: very weak and unacceptable," he said, adding that judges "don't understand the threat posed by Muslim extremism."

Both Chris Brand and I have recently put up elsewhere comments about the Frank Ellis case -- where Leeds university students in the UK are trying to get one of the teachers there sacked for "racism". See here and here.

I have just put up an excellent satire on Australian Politics, though you probably have to be an Australian to get it all.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here

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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)

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