Good War News....from Atlanta

Post below excerpted from Charlie Foxtrot . See the original for links. I am so pleased that at least some of the military are getting the recognition that they deserve

Today Bob posts some good news from the war that he experienced himself firsthand....at the airport in Atlanta .

"...I wasn't prepared for what happened today. As my flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta was beginning its descent, the flight attendant began her normal spiel about landing and gates, and assistance finding your connecting flights and so on. Then she announced that I was on board and on my way back to Afghanistan after spending two weeks with my family. The plane erupted into applause. I was stunned."

But it doesn't stop there....

"They formed us into a line upstairs at the USO, probably 200 or more of us, and took us downstairs in two long lines. Soldiers and Marines paired two by two in a long line snaked through the airport towards the Army Personnel Command desk to do our formalities. As we wove through the airport, the throngs of travelers began to applaud. I wasn't prepared for that, either. Again, I struggled not to lose it. It was like cracking the seal on a warm, freshly shaken coke. All the bubbles rush towards the cap, bringing the contents of the bottle along. That's what it felt like. I managed to keep all my fluids contained; but it was another close call. "

While these stories are not unique, I believe that is a great demonstration that the public opinion battle over the war is not lost as some might want to claim. I am sure that not all of those applauding support the war in Iraq, and maybe not even the War on Terror, but were merely showing their respect. But if the public opinion had truly been lost, I don't think we would see such public displays of support, even if the military is highly respected.

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Black IQ controversy still bubbling

World Science recently had a fairly conventional article on the deeply unpopular observations of James Watson that did however include this report:

But Linda S. Gottfredson, a sociologist at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del., defended Watson Thursday and called the museum's cancellation of his appearance "an outrage." "Prof. Watson's views are actually in the mainstream of knowledgeable scientific opinion," she wrote in an email. "The Museum is wrong on two counts: first, that certain scientific questions may not be debated, and, second, that Prof. Watson is surely mistaken and alone in his scientific judgment on group differences in average intelligence.

World Science got a lot of comments and email over it, including this profundity from a "philosopher": Watson and his supporters like Gottfredson are clearly racists.

World Science now has a poll on the question. Finding truth by majority votes rather than by a careful examination of the known facts seems to be all the rage these days.

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ELSEWHERE

A small apology: There seems to be a real proliferation of social networking sites. Mainly in response to invites from others, I am on lots of them: Myspace.com, spaces.live.com, facebook.com, wayn.com etc. I have quite lost track of them all. I am calling a halt now, though. I have received invites from various people for many other sites but enough is enough. I won't be registering for any more of such sites. I don't make any use of them anyway. The only one I update occasionally is the Microsoft one. By clicking "More" there, you can get to a more readable version of the blog part of it. You will see that I have no "friends" there. Isn't that sad? I think that might be one Microsoft facility that has very few users.

Lots of us like a good shot at the utterly biased NYT and Taranto gets a good one in today (first item). It may help if you know that it took a lot of plastic surgery to make Tori Spelling look presentable (sort of).

The "population bomb" of the 1960s gets a re-run: "The speed at which mankind has used the Earth's resources over the past 20 years has put "humanity's very survival" at risk, a study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded. The environmental audit, for the United Nations, found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can supply." [According to similar prophecies in the 1960s we should just about all be dead by now]

Time to get tough with Turkey?: "The United States should radically rethink its relationship with Turkey. For the sad fact is that Ankara no longer seems to be an ally worthy of the name - indeed its threatened invasion of Iraq would be the act of an outright enemy. Nor has Turkey behaved like a genuine ally for more than four years. It's not merely that Turkey refused at the last minute to let Coalition forces invade from the north in March 2003 - though that did affect the war and its aftermath in unfortunate ways. There have been other equally serious derelictions, ranging from the refusal to allow a damaged U.S. warplane to make an emergency landing in March 2003, to active subversion of the Coalition and the post-Saddam Iraqi authorities."

Islamofascism week brought out the Fascists: "The fascists came out in force tonight at Emory University and broke up what would have been an interesting conversation. I hardly got through fiteen minutes of my scheduled talk before members of the audience who come to protest rather than to listen became so unruly that it was impossible to go on. (Video and reports on Islamo-Fascism Week available at www.incorrectu.com) . This is too bad, particularly for the students at Emory, which is a good school and whose student audiences have always been civil when I spoke there in the past. [In football, I think this would be called an "own goal"]



Insane bureaucracy: "The Russian Ilyushin-76 "waterbomber" jet [above] that can douse a fire the size of 10 football fields in a single pass is not being used to fight the California fires because it hasn't passed U.S. inspections, federal officials have confirmed for WND."

Microsoft surrenders to EU: "Microsoft Corp. dropped a nearly decade-long legal battle with European regulators Monday, agreeing to key parts of an antitrust ruling that has already led to hundreds of millions in fines. The world's largest software company will slash the royalties it charges rivals for interoperability information needed to make programs that work smoothly with Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will make access to the data easier for open source developers who the EU said are now "virtually the only alternative for users." Microsoft said it would not appeal a EU Court of First Instance decision on Sept. 17 that turned down its challenge to a 2004 European Commission order that found it guilty of monopoly abuse".

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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