Far from being an evil dictator, Pinochet rescued Chile

Historian James Whelan says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, former Chilean autocrat Augusto Pinochet averted civil war and saved millions from the destruction of socialism

Six months before Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973, Volodia Teitelboim told an interviewer for the Communist Party daily newspaper in Santiago that if civil war were to come, then 500,000 to one million Chileans would die. Teitelboim knew whereof he spoke. He was then the No.2 man in the Chilean Communist Party, the third largest in the Western world (after France and Italy), and a senior partner in Allende's Marxist-Leninist government. The Communists were then planning to seize total power in the country, though they were not in as much a hurry to do so as the Socialists, the principal party in the Allende coalition and one passionately committed to revolutionary violence. So the Communists and the Socialists shared the same goal - ending once and for all the bourgeois democratic state - but differed on methods. Allende, a Socialist, was somewhere in between, wavering between his own bourgeois tastes and the totalitarian temptation.

Allende had come to power in September 1970 with not enough votes to win outright election - only 40,000 more than the conservative runner-up - and so had to be voted in by Congress in exchange for a statute of guarantees drawn up by the Christian Democrat majority. A few months later, Allende told fellow leftist Regis Debray that he never actually intended to abide by those commitments but signed just to finally become president, having failed in three previous runs for the office.

In those first 2 1/2 years, Allende had plunged Chile into hell-on-earth chaos. Former president Eduardo Frei Montalva - the man more responsible than any other for Allende's ascent to the presidency - called it "this carnival of madness". Violence, strikes, shortages and lawlessness stalked the land. The Supreme Court declared Allende outside the law. So, too, did the Chamber of Deputies in August 1973 in a resolution that all but demanded the armed forces seize power to rescue Chile from the inferno. So, when the armed forces finally did act on September 3, they did so in response to the clamour of an overwhelming majority of Chileans and not as the jackboot power bandits of typical Latin American revolts. News stories about what happened on that Tuesday in September routinely speak of the bloody coup. It was no such thing. About 200 people died in the shooting on September 13 and a little more than 1000 in the first three months of virtual civil war.

But not the civil war the Communists were perfectly prepared to accept as their price for power: 500,000 to one million. Indeed, in all 17 years of military rule, the total of dead and missing - according to the only serious study - was 2279. The Chilean Revolution thus was, by far, the least bloody of any significant Latin American revolution of the 20thcentury, though you would never guess that from reading or watching news reports.

The Chilean revolution was different from other Latin American revolutions in another respect: it left the country far better off than the one it found. Indeed, Chile is the envy of the entire region for its spectacular economic progress and for the solidity of the institutions the military government created. Consider: Inflation was slashed from 600 percent to 6 percent; infant mortality rates came down from 66 per 1000 to 13 per 1000; urban access to drinking water increased from 67 per cent to 98 per cent; and living standards more than doubled.

Pinochet et al realised, from the start, that the country they had agreed to rescue was in an institutional shambles. More than half a century of cheap politicking had - in the phrase of Chile's leading historian - so rotted the country's institutions as to bring about their death. A brand new beginning was needed. Crafting the new constitution and other institutions was complicated by the presence in the country of thousands of foreign and local terrorists. Indeed, as late as 1986, Fidel Castro shipped 25 tonnes of arms to Chile: the largest clandestine arms shipment in history, sufficient to arm 5000 terrorists. (News reports routinely refer to these people as political opponents. The overwhelming majority of the dead and missing were, in fact, either outright terrorists or those who were sheltering, financing and supporting them.)

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Homosexuals need to lose a little something: "Circumcising men cuts their risk of being infected with the AIDS virus in half, and could prevent hundreds of thousands or even millions of new infections, researchers say. Circumcising men worked so well that the researchers stopped two large clinical trials in Kenya and Uganda to announce the results today, although they cautioned that the procedure does not make men immune to the virus."

Censure Israel-hating Jimmy: "The past few weeks the news media has been fixated on discussions of efforts by Democrats to either impeach or censure President Bush. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has made the push to censure President Bush for the administration's wiretapping of suspected terrorists. Meanwhile a group of activist liberals has launched ImpeachPAC, which is raising money to support congressional candidates who favor impeachment proceedings against Bush for taking the fight to the terrorists in Iraq. I have a better idea, how about censuring a president who has increasingly led an effort to undermine American foreign policy and who has embraced terrorist organizations and urged international funding for them. How about censuring former president Jimmy Carter? While the mainstream news media has portrayed Carter in a saintly light, preoccupied with building homes for the underprivileged, Carter has devoted most of his time to condemning the United States to any audience who will have him. The man who sat impotent while Iranian radicals stormed the American Embassy in Tehran has been busy appeasing America's enemies since he left the White House."

The cure for poverty: "Countless studies have shown that children raised in a two-parent family are less likely to be raised in poverty, less likely to do drugs, less likely to be criminals later in life, and more likely to graduate from and do well in school. Married people tend to take care of themselves better and live longer. They typically eat better, have more settled lives with less stress and fewer risky habits, monitor each other's health, and are quicker to seek medical attention for problems that arise. Married people, particularly those with children, seem to be motivated to save and invest more for the future and to live longer to enjoy their savings and their children's future. Out-of-wedlock births increase the national incidence of: lowered health for newborns; retarded cognitive, and especially verbal, development of young children; lowered educational achievement; lowered job attainment as young adults; increased behavioral problems; lowered impulse control (aggression and sexual behavior); and increased anti-social development. It's been said you need only do three things in this country to avoid poverty: finish high school, marry before having a child and marry after the age of 20. Among those who follow such advice, only 8% are poor, while 79% of those who do not are poor. The consequences of this trend are crime rates higher than they should be, graduation rates lower than they should be and a treasury depleted in the name of trying to solve both problems by throwing more money at them. No culture can remain healthy with illegitimacy rates like these. And it is simply impossible to understate the socially catastrophic consequences of America's crisis of illegitimacy. The family is still the best department of health, education and welfare ever invented."

How pesky for the Left: "Though Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, the Pentagon said Tuesday it is having success enlisting new troops. The Navy and Air Force met their recruiting goals last month while the Army and Marine Corps exceeded theirs, the Defense Department announced. The Army, which is bearing the brunt of the work in Iraq, did the best. It signed up 6,485 new recruits in November compared with its target of 6,150 - meaning 105 percent of its goal. All the services turned in similar performances in October as well, meaning they so far are meeting their goals for the 2007 budget year that began Oct. 1. "The services are starting off well," said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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The Real Hanukah: A Celebration of the Religious Right

By Michael Medved



Who are the bad guys in the Hanukah story? And who are the good guys? These are serious questions with serious consequences.

Most Jews (and certainly most Christians) dismiss the winter holiday as a trivial, feel-good festival about candles, potato pancakes, spinning tops (dreidls),and eight nights of gifts, without coming to terms with its serious, relevant and distinctly uncomfortable messages. While frequently (and fatuously) described as a "celebration of tolerance," Hanukah is more properly designated as an annual re-dedication to the values of the Religious Right.

No wonder that so many American Jews (with their reflexive, often ignorant liberal instincts) refuse to acknowledge the real Hanukah and its politically incorrect messages. In last week's Washington Post, a householder from Potomac, Maryland named Kenneth Nechin proudly explained that his home attempts to honor the "deeper meaning" of the holiday: "Religious tolerance, the freedom to practice religion, minorities overcoming majorities who are trying to take your rights away."

Actually, far from celebrating "diversity" or "tolerance" or "respect for every faith," Hanukah (the name means "dedication" in Hebrew) marks a singular display of intolerance-- when religious zealots, exalting the values of "that old time religion," came into the Temple in Jerusalem and drove out all alternate, "creative" forms of worship. In the "For the Miracles" (Al HaNissim) prayer recited at least three times a day by religious Jews during the eight days of the festival, we salute this uncompromising assertion of absolute truth: "Your children came to the Holy of Holies of Your House, cleansed Your Temple, purified the site of your Holiness and kindled lights in the Courtyards of Your Sanctuary." No, the fervently faithful rebels did not assign a special area for other religious impulses as part of some ancient commitment to multiculturalism....

The bad guys of the Hanukah story weren't so much foreign occupiers as they were indigenous traitors who junked the demanding faith of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for the trendy, hedonistic, easy-going relativism of Aristotle, Alexander and Antiochus. By placing Greek gods in the Temple in Jerusalem, the Hellenist Jewish leadership didn't try to exclude or prevent the old worship - they meant to open up the Holy of Holies to worshipers of every nation and of every deity in a grand celebration of diversity.

Anyone who takes even ten minutes to read the actual history of the Maccabean revolt will see similarities between its priestly leaders (most conspicuously, the great commander Judah Maccabee, son of Mattathias) and today's prominent figures in the Religious Right. The Maccabees insisted on re-affirming ultimate right and wrong, and saw their battle as part of a timeless struggle of good and evil. They demanded a return to the old ways, to the authentic, uncompromising laws of God and the Torah, and they felt only contempt for the Hellenizing modernists who fought against them. The rebels represented the common people - the poor and the humble artisans and the struggling farmers who remained loyal to the ancient faith - while their enemies represented the pampered urban elites, over-educated in the cosmopolitan ways of Judea's Greek overlords.

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Dumb Democrats: "He is expected to have a deep understanding of terrorist groups and their threats to the US. But the incoming chairman of a US congressional intelligence committee was struggling yesterday to explain his ignorance of al-Qa'ida and Hezbollah. Silvestre Reyes, the Democrat chosen to head the House of Representatives committee, was asked whether members of al-Qa'ida came from the Sunni or Shia branch of Islam. "Al-Qa'ida, they have both," he answered, adding: "Predominantly probably Shi'ite." In fact, al-Qa'ida was founded by Osama bin Laden as a Sunni organisation, and views the Shia Muslims as heretics. And Sunnis dominate the militias and death squads in Iraq. A reporter for Congressional Quarterly, Jeff Stein, then put a similar question about Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group. "Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah," replied Mr Reyes. "Why do you ask me these questions at five o'clock?" he said. "Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?" Go ahead, said Mr Stein. "Well, I, uh ...," said the congressman. His apparent ignorance of the basic facts raised fresh questions over his suitability for the key intelligence post - as well as the judgment of Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, who picked him for the job".

High achievers leaving France: "After failing to become a Belgian, Johnny Hallyday, France's biggest rock star, is planning to move his residence and his money to Switzerland, it emerged yesterday. The imminent exit of the country's most popular singer was used by ministers to bolster a promise by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, to cap France's crippling taxes on the wealthy. Hallyday, 63, is an active supporter of the presidential campaign of Mr Sarkozy, who is Interior Minister and leader of the Union for a Popular Movement. Le rockeur national, who has sold 80 million records since 1961 and is still touring and topping the charts, was reported by L'Express magazine to be aiming to settle in Gstaad, the mountain resort. It is assumed that he wants to join the 100,000 other rich French citizens who have fled their country's annual wealth tax. Like Belgium, Switzerland imposes no wealth tax and it taxes only part of the annual income of rich foreigners."

Plenty of money for Britain's ballooning bureaucracy: "Gordon Brown's claims to be getting to grips with the ballooning government workforce took a battering yesterday from official figures. Far from taming the public sector jobs juggernaut, the figures suggested there has been a resurgence in hiring of state workers this year. The Office for National Statistics reported that the number of public sector workers rose by 7,000 to 5.86 million in the six months since March this year. The rise is mainly down to hiring by local authorities. The figures clash with claims by the Chancellor earlier this month that he is successfully taking an axe to public payrolls. Mr Brown has promised to shed tens of thousands of posts by 2008 as he tries to cut back black hole in the public finances, and in his Pre-Budget Report he claimed to be well on the way. Official figures show that state hiring has accounted for a third of overall job creation since 1998, the year after Labour came to power"



Amazing. Competition between London's airports coming: "Gatwick Airport could be for sale within weeks with a price tag of up to 3 billion pounds after the break-up of BAA's London airport monopoly was signalled by the UK's competition authorities. With BAA's control of 90 per cent of the London market through its ownership of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted set for a probe by the Competition, industry insiders believe BAA's new Spanish owner Ferrovial could be set to hatch a Gatwick sale plan... In a stinging attack on the BAA monopoly - also seen as a rebuke to a Labour Government that has allowed the company to keep ownership of the UK's three busiest airports - the Office of Fair Trading said BAA should be subjected to a full-blown investigation by the Competition Commission. Citing poor passenger ratings for its London airports, OFT chief executive John Fingleton said: 'Greater competition [between airports] could bring significant benefits for passengers.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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The backlash against the illegal immigration flood is at full boil in Tennessee

You can push people too far

Kit Brewer doesn't like immigrants. "While America was harnessing electricity, while America was winning World War I, winning World War II, inventing the computer, inventing nuclear weapons [and] breaking the DNA code, what were the Mexicans doing?" he asks. "They were making tacos." He pauses to clarify. "By Mexicans, that's kind o' a generic term for me that also includes Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc.. I don't want any immigrants from the Third World." He also mentions Iraq and Sudan.

Brewer used to live in Antioch-which he calls "Hispanioch," because of its large Hispanic immigrant population-but moved after getting tired of his child "having to step over drunk Mexicans in a ditch to get to the school bus." "Thank God I got out," he says. "While I could still get something for my house."

Brewer insists that he doesn't have a problem with all immigrants, just the "Third Worlders." "If somebody wants to come here form Western Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, that's fine. I would have hated to turn away Albert Einstein," he says. "I don't think that the next Albert Einstein is going to come from the Sudan, Mexico or Honduras."

Brewer also thinks that Americans are inherently better and smarter people than those from other nations. "Like it or not, their I.Q.s, except for Orientals, average seven to 20 points below the average American white." When asked how and where he found such a statistic, Brewer cites "the Internet." [See here]

Unlike some other people who have strident opinions about immigrants and the impact that they're having in the U.S., Brewer doesn't differentiate between most legal and undocumented immigrants. "A legal immigrant from the Third World is just an illegal immigrant with a green card," he says.

Kit Brewer is not alone in his isolationist leanings. Throughout Tennessee in recent months, there have been many public and private displays of sentiments that closely echo Brewer's.

More here

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OBAMA AS A RORSCHACH INKBLOT

If you love Barack Obama, as almost everybody interested in U.S. politics does right now, ask yourself this simple question: What do you know about his opinions on any subject? You probably remember he gave a masterful speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. You recall how he spoke and that it was he who spoke: a poised and handsome black man with a deep voice that's reassuring and commanding at the same time.

But what did he say? Admit it. You don't really care. Obama is an uncommonly opaque rock-star politician, though not through any fault of his own. He's written and published two wildly successful books, a memoir and a rumination on politics and policy. But of the million or so people who've bought his books, I'd wager only a tenth have sampled more than a few pages. They don't need to read Obama to love him. They love that he writes and he publishes. They love how he speaks. They love the fact that he exists. They love the way he makes them feel.

This is the key to his appeal, and it places Obama in a very unusual position for an elected politician: He is now the semi-official Rorschach Candidate of 2008. The Rorschach Candidate is the one who provokes enthusiasm not because of the positions he takes but because of who he is. He doesn't seem like a politician; he seems to be better than a politician - fresh, new, different. The Rorschach Candidate is especially exciting because under normal circumstances he couldn't possibly take the nomination, and his race for president would seem like a revolutionary and transformative act in itself. Rorschach Candidates have hovered around presidential contests for the past couple of decades....

Obama is a different kind of Rorschach Candidate, because he's actually run for office and won. A sitting senator, albeit one with only two years under his belt in Washington, he's already cast hundreds of votes - and his votes suggest only that he is a down-the-line liberal Democrat with nothing remotely unconventional about him. Indeed, his close relationship with a crooked Illinois fund-raiser - a relationship that will surely become clearer and more public if he runs - suggests he is a conventional politician in another, more distressing way.

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There is a very good bit of sarcasm here about the media hatred of the too-successful Chilean General Pinochet. It is often forgotten that the world-transforming free market reforms instituted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were in fact pioneered some years earlier by Augusto Pinochet. It is also usually forgotten that Pinochet overthrew the Marxist President Allende in response to a request from the Chilean Parliament -- not unlike the way Cromwell and Fairfax overthrew the tyrannical King Charles I in response to a request from the English Parliament (You won't read THAT in the newspapers!). I also have an article about Pinochet on Political Correctness Watch today.

A new monument in France -- to French decay: "This one was unveiled at the end of October in Clichy-sous-Bois. If that name rings a bell, it’s the bell on the fire truck racing through the streets to douse the flaming Citroens and Renaults in last year’s riots. They began when two of France’s legions of — what’s the word? — “youths” were fleeing the cops and decided to hide out in an electrical substation. Bad choice. They were electrocuted. Their fellow “youths” blamed the police and launched a three-week orgy of destruction. Now Clichy-sous-Bois has put up a monument to the unfortunate Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore. As in Arizona and London, this is an official memorial. That’s to say, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois unveiled the monument to Messieurs Benna and Traore in the front of their school and then led a “silent march” to the substation where he laid a wreath commemorating their death — or, indeed, manslaughter, if some of the complaints against the pursuing gendarmes come off.

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts -- including a big coverage of Tony Blair's recent watering down of official British multiculturalism.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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THE KATRINA DISASTER .... WHOSE FAULT?

An interesting comment from Boortz

Are you starting to get an idea just why the people of New Orleans were so messed up by Katrina? Are you starting to understand that most of the problems were of their doing, not the fault of FEMA or George Bush?

This idiots down there have reelected William Jefferson as their congressman. This is the crook that was found with $90,000 in cash in his freezer, cash that is believed to have come from a $100,000 bribe he took. He is most likely headed to an indictment in the next few months, and these idiots voted him back in office.

Now we know that a huge portion, perhaps a majority of the people who live in this congressional district are completely lacking in any sense of right-and-wrong. It's a welfare district and Jefferson delivered the goods ... both to himself and his district. It should come as no surprise at all that people who would send a crook like this back to congress would be unable to care for themselves in the face of a hurricane.

Boortz also has a rather amusing picture of arrogant Leftist Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. It reminds me of the old British "Golliwog" caricature:



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"LAME DUCK" CONGRESS HAS SOME FUN

In a final, late-night surge of legislating, the 109th Congress passed $45 billion in tax cuts and a trade package affecting at least 150 developing nations, as well as a range of smaller bills on issues from healthcare to energy. But they left most of the current fiscal year's spending decisions to the next Congress...

The 11th-hour output includes popular tax extenders, such as the research and development tax credit for businesses and the tax break for college tuition. It also includes more controversial provisions, such as opening some 8.3 million acres along the Gulf Coast to oil and gas drilling, and a trade deal with Haiti that could hurt US textile interests....

As late as Friday, eight senators from textile states were threatening to block the omnibus trade and tax bill unless a proposal to lift tariffs on clothing manufactured in Haiti was removed. They said it would open US markets even further to unfair competition from China, but they fell short of the votes needed to prevail. "It's stunning that the House leadership and Senate as its last act before it adjourns is going to ramrod a job-destroying trade bill past the Congress," said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, before Friday's vote. In response, backers said the trade package, including permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam, will lower costs for US manufacturers and consumers. "This legislation will help to create stronger trading partners for the future, while also recognizing our responsibility as having one of the world's strongest economies to help developing countries grow," said House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R) of California in a statement after the 212-to-184 House vote.

The 109th Congress also voted to postpone completing nine of 11 FY 2007 spending bills until Feb. 15, forcing Democrats to take up divisive spending issues as they are ramping up in the next Congress. "It's real act of defiance by the lame-duck Congress and a conscious attempt to set up a political problem for the next Congress," says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at the Boston University. "It's more than just leaving a budgetary mess. It's creating a huge problem in how Democrats will solve the tension within their party between fiscal conservatives and those who want to start new spending initiatives and how Democrats will deal with corruption and whole pork-barrel issues," he adds.

More here

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Brookes News Update

President Bush's tax cuts and the Democrats' economic illiteracy: Filthy rich Democrats like Pelosi, Kerry and Kennedy need to explain why tax cuts that promote capital formation and raise real wages and living standards manage to benefit only the rich
Is falling unemployment bad news for the Australian economy?: Australia has been running an unsustainable monetary boom that can only result in recession. The Reserve Bank's reckless monetary policy has created a mass of imbalances, including the current account deficit. This means that sooner or later the bank must apply the monetary brakes
Democrats and the two Robin Hoods: Nancy Pelosi's former chief of staff announced this week the Dems' intention to demonize Big Business, harassing corporations with investigations and hamstringing their capacity to produce. It's all the same classic pander to envy as an excuse to gain more power over people's lives and fortunes
Giving away the Israel and the candy store: What is wrong with the Israelis? What have we become? I know one thing: despite all, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Ariel Sharon taught his protege, Olmert, well: the country is your personal candy store
The utter nonsense of the Iraq strategy: The pure lunacy of the Iraq debate is only understood when one arrives at the understanding that the collective we in the West are not really a part of this mislabeled 'War'
Gullible Jews and the Jewish press : Contrary to the common belief of anti-Semites that Jews are shrewd, we are quite a trusting people and naivee leader of the free world

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AFL-CIO wants to eliminate low-skilled jobs and low-cost consumer goods: "As the AFL-CIO gathers in Washington today for a post-election organizing summit, the labor movement is assured of a seat at the table in the new Democrat-controlled Congress, and it has an ambitious agenda: raising the minimum wage, restricting trade agreements, beefing up worker health and safety protections and rewriting the National Labor Relations Act to make it easier to organize unions."

The Dec. 11 post here has a nice bit of sarcasm about the awful sin of being a white male.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS

Explaining basic reality so simply that even a Leftist might understand:

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, themurder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep. I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial. "Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

Much more here

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WHY ARE BLOODY CONQUESTS BY MUSLIMS IGNORED WHILE THE WEST IS ACCUSED OF "IMPERIALISM?

Once known as Constantinople, this was one of the great cities of Classical and Christian culture, home to one of Christendom's most magnificent churches, Hagia Sophia, the church of the Holy Wisdom. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople ceased to exist, falling to the armies of the Sultan Mehmet II: "By noon," John Julius Norwich writes, "the streets were running red with blood. Houses were ransacked, women and children raped or impaled, churches razed, icons wrenched from their golden frames, books ripped from their silver bindings. . . . In the church of St. Saviour in Chora the mosaics and frescoes were miraculously spared, but the Empire's holiest icon, the Virgin Hodegetria, said to have been painted by St. Luke himself, was hacked into four pieces and destroyed. The most hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of the Holy Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks soon smashed their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for their captors to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued with the Mass as long as they could before being killed at the high altar."

Ancient history, you say, irrelevant to the present? But do not the Muslims repeatedly invoke the historical crimes of the West to justify terrorism? Are not the sins of colonialism and imperialism continually cited, even though France and England's 150 years in the Middle East and North Africa are dwarfed by Islam's several centuries in Spain and the Balkans and the cradle of the West, Greece? Is there some statute of limitations on conquest and the transfer of territory that attends it, so that the conquests of Islam are legitimized by time, while those of the West can never be?

Why do we accept this double standard? Why are the continuing persecution of Christians today, despicable anti-Semitic slanders, and the desecration of temples and churches in Muslim lands shrugged away in the West, while trivial cartoons and mere statements of historical fact are met with hysteria, violence, and threats? Why are churches disappearing throughout the lands of Christianity's birth and growth, while huge mosques are going up in London and Milan? Why are Christians and Jews forbidden entry into Saudi Arabia, while Muslims in Europe demand special privileges and recognition of their faith?

Nowhere is this insane, groveling capitulation of the West more obvious than in its treatment of Israel. By all rights, when Israel recaptured Jerusalem from Jordan -- in a defensive war Israel did not want, a war Israel literally begged Jordan to stay out of -- Israel could have razed the Aqsa mosque and rebuilt the temple on the site it had stood on for centuries before Islam even existed. Instead, the Temple Mount is still controlled by Muslims, who are free to worship in the mosque all the while they allow the children of Allah to throw stones on the Jews who come to worship at the few scraps of the temple wall, all that is left to them of their holiest site. Meanwhile the countries of the West decry the "illegal occupation" of Jerusalem and Judea and Galilee, refuse to put their embassies in the capital of Israel, and continually demand more and more concessions to a people who have made it clear that their conquest of Jerusalem is legitimate, that Israelis, not they, are the interloper in the Jews' historical homeland, and that violence against innocents is justified to undo a history deemed to violate Allah's will.

Much more here

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AN INTERESTING SCENARIO

Suppose for a moment that Iran has acquired a nuclear weapon - either on the black market, as many sources believe; or through a clandestine uranium enrichment program, which the CIA discounts (because they have no spies in Iran who might detect such a program).

Iran could send a heavily-shielded nuclear warhead to Venezuela, where it would be fitted to a short-range missile and stowed on board a U.S.-bound cargo ship. That cargo ship would not be owned by Iranians or by Venezuelans, but perhaps by some Qatari millionaire through a front company in the British Virgin Islands. The deadly ship would then depart Venezuela carrying perfectly legitimate, declared cargo for the port of Newark, New Jersey. Perhaps the ship might not even be bound for the United States at all, but for Halifax, Nova Scotia, further up the Atlantic seaboard. Either way, the likelihood it would be inspected on the high seas are very low.

Steaming along in commercial shipping lanes one hundred miles off the coast of Washington, DC, the ship's international crew brings the missile launcher up from the hold and prepares it for launch. Under the cover of darkness, they fire their weapon, then stow the launcher and continue on their way. Two minutes later, Washington, DC is hit with a fireball that obliterates the White House, the Capitol Building, and the national monuments in seconds. And no signature links this act of war back to Iran. This, of course, is just fiction. But the technology is known and available. Iran has been testing sea-launched ballistic missiles since 1998.

Much more here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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HOLLYWOOD ECONOMICS

It is not really news that Hollywood is still producing anti-business movies, but there is a certain irony in it nevertheless. Although these movies tap a certain envy and resentment of corporate wealth, that large corporate wealth comes from far more modest individual amounts of money from about half the population of the United States, which owns stocks and bonds -- either directly or because money paid into pension funds or other financial intermediaries are used to buy stocks and bonds. The irony is that the average Hollywood star who is making anti-business movies is far wealthier than the average owners of those businesses, who are half the population of the country.

The Los Angeles Times refers to documentary "films" that are "critical of corporate power." But just what does this vague word "power" mean when it comes to businesses? Wal-Mart is the big bugaboo these days but what "power" does Wal-Mart have? I lived three-quarters of a century without ever setting foot in a Wal-Mart store and there is not a thing they can do about it.

It so happened that this past summer in Page, Arizona, I needed to buy some toiletries, which caused me to go into a nearby Wal-Mart for the first time. Inside, it looked more like a small city than a large store. But the prices were noticeably lower than in most other places. Is that the much-dreaded "power"? Apparently Wal-Mart does not pay its employees as much as third-party observers would like to see them paid. But obviously it is not paying them less than their work is worth to other employers or they probably would not be working at Wal-Mart. Moreover, third parties who wax indignant are paying them nothing.

Much more here

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IMMIGRATION: THE BRITISH LEFT GETS A MESSAGE

The chairman of the Labour party, Hazel Blears, has warned that immigration is set to explode as an issue before the next general election in a way "unseen before in UK politics". Blears suggests the government's argument that the current policy benefits the economy holds little sway with voters, and says Labour risks appearing "unconcerned and out of touch".

In an intervention which will surprise cabinet colleagues, she told The Sunday Times: "Labour must address people's concerns about immigration head on. "Simply making the `liberal' argument that immigration is good for the economy, or starting from the viewpoint of `human rights' does not give people the reassurance that politicians understand people's genuine concerns."

Blears has been alarmed by an internal analysis of campaigns by the Labour party in Keighley, West Yorkshire, where the British National party (BNP) is particularly active. The document, which has been seen by The Sunday Times, is being studied closely at Labour headquarters. It says the party's failure to address public concern about immigration is playing into the hands of both the Tories and the BNP and warns that Labour "will not be forgiven by the electorate" if it does not address the problem.

In a further warning to Labour, the report says the Asian community in Keighley is becoming "disengaged". The threat is being taken seriously by Blears, who believes there is a risk that support for Labour from Asians is diminishing elsewhere in the country. The document also questions the quality and performance of some Labour councillors in the area, describing some as "woefully inadequate". It says potential Labour voters are defecting to the BNP, not because they are racist, but because they believe their "genuine grievances" are being ignored by mainstream parties...

Blears's warning comes after Tony Blair, the prime minister, declared that immigrants who do not like British values should leave the country...

More here

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ELSEWHERE

British Conservatives back return to Victorian values: "The Conservatives are to launch a crusade for personal morality to try to halt what they say is a breakdown in traditional family values. It comes in the wake of a Tory report that says unmarried parents are driving a generation of children into crime and drug dependency. Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney-general, said last night that people who tackle teenage yobs should not be prosecuted for assault. He added that strict Victorian values on family life had in some ways been successful. The Tories claim the rise in cohabitation and single parenthood is unleashing a social and economic crisis. In an appeal to grassroots supporters, the party will this week put the promotion of marriage back at the heart of its agenda, warning of dire consequences if more couples are not encouraged to wed. A report commissioned by David Cameron, the Tory leader, claims the breakdown of the family is driving boys into the arms of street gangs at an annual cost to the country of more than £20 billion... It is the first heavyweight submission by the panels Cameron set up when he became leader to thrash out party policy. The interim report of the Social Justice Policy Group, headed by Iain Duncan Smith, gives an insight into the possible elements of the party’s next election manifesto. It warns that family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction, welfare dependency and educational failure have created an underclass mired in misery and “cut off from much of mainstream society”. The burgeoning underclass also “threatens the wellbeing of middle-class people living in once tranquil neighbourhoods”. The report suggests that without a radical reappraisal of government policy towards marriage and the family, social tensions will grow, fuelling violent crime.

Stupid Leftist populism: "What is the difference between "populism" and "fascism by the majority"? I sure can't see any difference. I love it when I see stuff like "take on the oil companies" or "take on the drug companies." The oil companies make about an 8% profit in a good year. Drug companies are a bit higher, but not that much. Let's say the government runs their profit down to zero. That would then yield everyone about a 6% discount at the pump (presumably gas taxes would not go down, thus the lower percentage) and an average 12%-ish discount on drugs. Is it really the Democrat's intention to trash incentives in these critical industries for future long term investment (oil exploration in one, drug R&D in the other) so politicans can hand out a 6% discount to the voters?

Britain. Islamic martyrdom redefined: "A government-backed Islamic organisation is teaching young Muslims that dying while fighting for the British armed forces is an act of martyrdom. The British Muslim Forum (BMF) explains to young people that even if a Muslim soldier dies in combat while fighting in an Islamic country such as Afghanistan, he will still be regarded as a martyr and a hero for this country. The BMF is holding talks across Britain to persuade young people not to follow the teachings of Muslim extremists who instruct their followers that joining the British military is a "traitorous act". Its aim is to counter radicals' misuse of the term "martyr", which has become associated with terrorist suicide operations."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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FLYNN THE FOOL

Ideology can make a fool out of otherwise creditable scientists. The way that the remarkable temperature stability of the 20th century (according to the U.N. only .6 of one degree rise over the entire 20th century) can be portrayed as an era of global warming is ample proof of that.

And James Flynn is another example of that. He does generally good science and knows heaps about IQ research but when it comes to interpreting scientific findings which clash with his faith he goes bananas. He is a fervent Leftist -- with all the faith in being able to "mould" people into some sort of ideal man that usually goes with that faith. And genetic influences have a nasty unalterable character that clashes with that faith.

So what does he do when faced with an unremitting torrent of research findings that show a consistent black/white gap in average IQ of around 15 points? He points to just ONE study which shows no significant gap. And that study must be just about the most irrelevant one in the literature. He points to a study which shows that the illegitimate children of black GI's in Germany are no dumber than the illegitimate children of white GI's in Germany.

I don't know how to put this politely, but, as far as I can see, all that that result shows is that German women don't go to bed with dumb blacks. They only go to bed with the brighter ones. And the U.S. army of the 40s and 50s was a good place to find the brighter ones. Blacks had to be at least as bright as whites to get into the U.S. army of the 40s and 50s. Ever since 1917, the U.S. army has accepted only those recruits who pass an IQ test at a standard level. And there have always been SOME blacks who pass. So Flynn bases his faith in the unreality of black/white IQ differences on a sample which has been deliberately equalized in terms of IQ! What a fool! I can think of no other term for him that fits.

You can find detailed accounts of Flynn's follies in the matter here and here. In his most recent posts, Chris Brand also points out the limitations of the study Flynn relies on. I have commented previously in the academic literature on explanations for his own findings that Flynn does not consider. See here and here.

Related:

Black/White IQ gap still large: "Despite widespread claims that the gap is closing between Blacks and Whites in educational achievement and intelligence test scores, new research shows the 15-point IQ difference is as large today as it was 100 years ago. A study published in the October 2006 issue of Psychological Science showed the same Black-White IQ difference in large standardization samples for four major IQ tests. The researchers reported on the Wonderlic Personnel Test, the Kaufmann Assessment Battery for Children, the Woodcock-Johnson test, and the Differential Ability Scale, which all combined to show a Black gain of less than 1 IQ point over the last 30 years. The study's authors were veteran IQ researchers J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario and Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley... Rushton also said the results could undermine affirmative action policies as the US Supreme Court's 2003 decision on the University of Michigan only being permitted affirmative-action on the assumption that Black-White test scores were converging. That assumption has been shown to be untrue."

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ELSEWHERE

Recent vote was NOT for open borders: "The idea is spreading that this month's Republican electoral defeat somehow represented voter rejection of the enforcement-first approach to immigration championed by the House Republican leadership, and meant, instead, voter endorsement of the Bush-McCain-Kennedy approach that would amnesty (or "legalize") the illegal aliens already here and double or triple future legal immigration. This notion is so colossally wrong only a senator could believe it.... The open-borders crowd scavenged for results they hoped would confirm their pre-packaged conclusions. A favorite was the defeat of two Republican immigration hawks running for the House in Arizona, incumbent Rep. J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, who was seeking liberal Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe's seat. The problem with pointing to these results as proof of the public's support for the Bush-McCain-Kennedy "comprehensive" amnesty plan is that the very same voters overwhelmingly approved four good ballot measures related to immigration: denying bail to illegals, barring illegals from winning punitive damages in civil suits, prohibiting illegals from receiving certain state subsidies for education and day care, and declaring English the state's official language. Clearly, the actual policy issue of immigration control remained hugely popular"

Blue Dogs no longer runts of Dems' litter: "Now that the results of the midterm election have demonstrated the strength of moderate to conservative Democrats in swing districts, the clout of the independently minded Blue Dog Coalition is on the rise, say political observers, and its bite could match its bark. 'They can cause fits for the majority leadership,' said Brookings Institution scholar Ron Haskins. Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi 'is going to have a lot of trouble holding that coalition together.' Democrats will hold 232 seats in Congress come January; Republicans will have 200, and three races are still undecided but looking to go to the GOP. With 218 votes needed to pass legislation, and 44 incoming Blue Dogs next Congress, according to the group, a strong voting bloc could make or break Democratic-sponsored legislation."

A right to earn a living? "Imagine you own a business that you built from the ground up. You have satisfied customers, good employees and provide a useful service. There's just one problem: your competitors don't like that you charge less while providing better service. Instead of lowering their prices and working harder, they call their lobbyists and get the government to make your business illegal. Can they get away with this? According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the answer is 'yes.'"

Corrupt Associated Press: "The most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous - used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong - but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they're at it again in Iraq. I have got direct experience of this.... "

There is a post just up on Strange Justice which adds to the evidence that the FBI these days is a decayed organization.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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