GREENIE WATCH blocked by Google

On the grounds that it seems to be a "spam blog". Pretty absurd. Abuse of Google's blog "flagging" system by Warmists is the most likely cause of the nonsense. Google need to do something about such abuses. The block should be lifted in a day or two but in the meanwhile, my mirror site is still functioning and has new posts up that are not on the blocked blogspot site.

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Leftism is powered by hate, not facts or ideas

An email from a reader:

I was recently in a small "debate" with a leftist college professor in some forum. And generally, I find that when they are challenged they only respond with a stream of invective and insults, or try to shame you over something silly. For example, he triumphantly expressed: "The US always supported Saddam when it was in our interests!"

I noted, "Well, of course! Should we have opposed him if what he was doing was in our interests?" He had no answer for this.

And then I did what I've found to be the ultimate provocation of a leftist. I suggested that Leftism isn't really a political ideology that it is really just a collection of personality pathologies, that multiculturalism is a sham that even they don't believe in, and that the entire American left had absolutely no positive vision for where they wanted to take the US. I should note that I delivered this in a much less direct way and as politely as possible.

He called me a bunch of very colorful things, such as "f*ckface" in response.

I then asked him to name one US leftist intellectual who had articulated a positive vision for the US and wrote a serious book about our future, our liabilities and assets, strengths and weaknesses.

He called me f*ckface again. I kept asking. He refused to name any, but insisted that I was "full of sh*t."

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ELSEWHERE

Bad ecology is a new blog with a name that speaks for itself.

Sarkozy gets off his butt: " In a few weeks this summer, in volley after legislative volley, he has taken aim at some of the most sacred cows in French social and economic life. If he keeps up this pace, he will indeed change the face of France. The keystone is a law making it easier to set up in business, cutting red tape, freeing up the commercial sector by allowing retailers to negotiate directly with suppliers - which, incredibly, French law proscribed - and creating an independent competition authority. More flexible job contracts have been introduced to free up the labour market, and benefits curbed for jobseekers who reject more than two "reasonable" offers of work. To tackle the huge pensions deficit, retirement age is to be raised by a year - explosive in a country where successive governments failed even to abolish unfair pension privileges for public sector workers. Sarkozy succeeded only after toughing out a nine-day transport strike. He has risked student mayhem by allowing universities more freedom not just to raise private research capital, but to choose which students to admit. He has even announced the privatisation of the ports"

Anthrax case resolved after new FBI investigator appointed: "The chief suspect in the 2001 anthrax postal attacks in the US has died from an apparent suicide just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him. Bruce Ivins, 62, one of America's top biodefense researchers, had been told that he was going to be prosecuted for the attacks that killed five people and sent the country into panic in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. He died in hospital on Thursday after taking a huge dose of prescription Tylenol, a painkiller, mixed with codeine. His imminent prosecution had not been made public but followed a government payout of $US5.82m to a former government scientist, Steven Hatfill, who had been the FBI's chief suspect for the anthrax attacks almost since the beginning. The payout to Hatfill, an unusual development that exonerated him of being the anthrax attacker was an essential step to clear the way for prosecuting Ivins, lawyers familiar with the case told the LA Times. The focus was moved to Mr Ivins after the head of the anthrax investigation was moved. His replacement ordered agents to re-examine leads or potential suspects, and this led the FBI back to USAMRIID, where agents had first questioned scientists including Mr Ivins in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings."

U.S. gives Israel missile detecting technology : " The United States will provide Israel with a radar system used to detect and track missile and rocket attacks, a senior Pentagon official told CNN Tuesday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. assistance will include an agreement to facilitate the sharing of U.S. "early warning" launch data and technical and financial help developing defenses against shorter range rockets and mortars. The technology is called X-band frequency, which has microwave range and provides for ultra-high very precise resolution. It is able to distinguish between real missiles, decoys and debris. The technology would be running before "the new [U.S.] administration arrives" in January, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, according to Israel's Haaretz newspaper. The plan for assistance was announced after Barak met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday".

Elitism and the Starbucks decline: "Bad news has been pouring down on Starbucks for a year. The price of the company's stock has been cut in half - and then some. Fewer people come through store doors and those who do buy less. Still when Starbucks, that longtime engine of growth, announced that it planned to close 600 US stores - 50 of them by the end of July - and lay off 12,000 employees, company watchers reacted with surprise. ... The company thrived throughout the past 15 years by giving middle-class Americans exactly what they thought they wanted - and this wasn't really about coffee. It was about creating a product that allowed doctors and lawyers, IT specialists and travel writers, and then their imitators, to portray themselves as they wanted to be seen. That's how products work in the world we live in. We buy things to announce something about ourselves. For the most part, the products that sell the best are the ones that communicate most effectively. That's what Starbucks did with their coffee. Really, then, they sold not coffee but elevated status. Just by buying the coffee and speaking the company's made-up lingua franca, you became a cup-carrying member of the upper class. And that made Starbucks, overpriced as it was, an affordable form of statusmaking. That sense of success - that sense of cool - is what is gone now. Now that there are Starbucks stores everywhere, in Tokyo and Terre Haute, London, and Lancaster (Pa. and Calif.), and Franklin, Tenn., and Franklin, Ind., it is too ordinary."

Brownout: "A year ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was enjoying a honeymoon as a new prime minister, building on a decade of Labour Party dominance under Tony Blair. How things have changed. A poll yesterday for the Independent newspaper found nearly a quarter of Labour voters believe Conservative Party leader David Cameron would make a better prime minister than their own Mr. Brown. Among all voters, Mr. Cameron held an 18-point lead on that question. That's why the Scotsman, the leading newspaper in Mr. Brown's native Scotland, is rattling political china with its report that Labour ministers are considering a "suicide election" to give the party a fresh start under a new leader. Under this scenario, Mr. Brown would be dumped either this fall or next spring, and the party would call an immediate election in which defeat would be the most likely outcome".

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

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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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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