More Google gaggle

I recently got an email from Google saying that their automatic spam detectors had detected my Marx blog as a spam blog and had blocked it from further postings. They also said that they intended to delete the blog within 20 days if I did not click a certain link. I clicked the link twice and twice I got a "task failure" response. A bit pesky! Anyway, I knew enough about the system to go to the blog itself and attempt to post something. I then got a link which enabled me to request removal of the block and the block was in fact removed a couple of days after that.

The thing that gets me, though, is why their software suddenly detected my blog after it had been up since 2004. And I had posted nothing on it since July so it was not fresh posts that they were monitoring. And it cannot have been the content of the blog that attracted automatic attention. The blog consists almost wholly of quotes from old Karl. Any algorithm that flagged that sort of content would have flagged half the Leftist blogs in the blogosphere!

The quotes from old Karl on the blog are however ones that Leftists would generally hate you to know about (showing what a racist he was, for instance). So I can only conclude that there was no automatic detection at all. It seems to me that the detection was by a Google employee who hoped to close down anything anti-Leftist. That's not at all unexpected from Google. Sites that quote the bad bits in the Koran get a hard time from Google on occasions. Google can be quite evil sometimes.

And another odd thing is that a REAL spam blog -- such as this one -- Google will not touch, despite repeated requests from me to blogger.com that they delete it. It uses one of my old addresses.

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Recently up on ICJS

The fear Factor
Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn't Learn
Shame on `Ha-Aretz'
LETTER TO THE WORLD
Academia, the Left, and Islamo-Fascism
We came so close to World War Three that day

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ELSEWHERE

Did you remain calm too?: "An absurd "news" story in the AP suggests that that organization wants to be numbered among the good dogs, not the bad dogs: "Clinton calm in hostage crisis. When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis. The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for - namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner". We don't know about you, but, difficult as it is, we always try to remain calm when drunks tape highway flares to their shirts five hundred miles from our house."

Even the L.A. Times calls CNN "The Corrupt News Network": "The United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest. So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag? In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it. When one considers CNN's performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent."



What a pathetic admission of fraud: "The New Republic has, at last, retracted the Scott Thomas Beauchamp stories. It takes Franklin Foer fourteen long pages to do so, waffling and tapdancing the whole time: "When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories." He blames a lot of people, including Beauchamp's wife (does she still work there, one wonders). But in the end he has tried to shuffle blame away to no avail. How long until Foer "leaves to pursue other opportunities?"

Democrats: New Party of the Rich?: "Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts. In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats. He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats. "If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said... Mr. Franc's study also showed that contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define Republicans as the party of the rich, "the vast majoritiy of unabashed conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-class districts."

British navy 'would struggle to fight a war': "BRITAIN'S Royal Navy would struggle to fight a major war because of years of under-funding and cut-backs, according to a defence ministry study leaked to a newspaper. The Sunday Telegraph said the report was ordered by Defence Secretary Des Browne to counter claims from opposition political parties and the media about a lack of resources in Britain's military. But the study concluded: "The current material state of the fleet is not good: the Royal Navy would be challenged to mount a medium-scale operation in accordance with current policy against a technologically capable adversary." A "medium-scale operation" is similar to Britain's naval involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the newspaper said. The document comes at a time of concern about the capabilities of Britain's armed forces due to a perceived lack of adequate funding for equipment and so-called "overstretch" because of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five of the country's former top military commanders last month criticised Prime Minister Gordon Brown for failing to fund adequately the armed forces during his 10 years as finance minister under Tony Blair."

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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The latest IQ debate

Apparently James Flynn and Charles Murray have had another public debate about black/white IQ. Flynn is the only Leftist who is capable of sustaining an informed debate on the matter (people like Gardner and Sternberg are off with the fairies). There was another debate between Flynn and Murray a year ago. The report of the latest debate is by John Derbyshire, who is as cautious and polite as ever.

It is really sad to hear that Flynn is still leaning heavily on the old Eyferth study. Flynn himself knows the problems of generalizing from that study and I point them out with my usual brutal frankness here. Flynn is a perfectly competent IQ researcher so why he clings to something so unhelpful to his case is quite a mystery. It must just be that curious Leftist inability to cope with the world as it is. In Flynn's case it is denial on a pathological scale.

If anything, the Eyferth study shows the central role of genetics in IQ. The study found that the children of black American GIs and white women had similar IQs to whites. But blacks at the time had to pass the same IQ test as whites to get into the army. So what the study shows is that what IQ tests test for is genetically transmitted! And it shows that it was genetically transmitted AMONG BLACKS! Nasty! Putting it another way, it shows that only a subset of blacks especially selected by IQ tests will get results similar to whites. Why Flynn thinks that study helps his case is rather a mystery. It does make him look like some sort of mental case. It might be worth noting that Leftists themselves are much less confident of their mental health than are conservatives.

The other study mentioned by Derb is the Ogbu ("Shaker Heights") study. Black researcher Ogbu found that the children of middle class blacks did not do as well at school as the children of middle class whites. Ogbu himself attributed that to an anti-intellectual culture among blacks and there is no doubt that such a culture exists. A more straightforward explanation of his findings, however, is that affirmative action makes it easy for blacks of only average ability to rise into the middle class whereas whites have to be above-average to get there. So the children simply reflect the genetic endowment of their parents.

There is also a statistical effect known as regression to the mean that could be at work in the Ogbu study. The effect says that parents who are exceptional within their group will IN GENERAL have less exceptional children. That regression to the mean effect has always been a bit of a teeth-grinder for me, in fact. It has always had me wondering about how bright my son would turn out to be. His recent achievements in mathematics have allayed such doubts rather convincingly, however.

Reference:
Eyferth, K. (1961). Leistungenverchiedener Gruppen von Besatzungskindern im Hamburg Wechsler Intelligenztest fuer Kinder (HAWIK). Archiv fuer die gesamte Psychologie, 1 13, 222 241.

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Bloodthirsty Muslims

Post below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links

The behavior the Associated Press describes in this report from Khartoum, Sudan, does not strike us as completely normal:

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad." In response to the demonstration, teacher Gillian Gibbons was moved from the women's prison near Khartoum to a secret location for her safety, her lawyer said. The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons, who was sentenced Thursday to 15 days in prison and deportation. She avoided the more serious punishment of 40 lashes. . . .

Meanwhile, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have had the following to say about Gibbons's plight: . It's a statement that is all the more powerful for its brevity.

Note that, courtesy of the wicked Bob McCarty, you can now buy "Mohammed the Bear" -- as below:



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ELSEWHERE

Pure bias at CNN: "Eason Jordan famously sullied the reputation of CNN by trading journalistic integrity for access in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. That wasn't his only transgression of course - things of this sort are rarely, if ever, single events. We should have remembered that lesson when it came out the other day that the CNN audience for the Democratic presidential debate was full of plants - Democratic Party activists and campaign workers. If we had remembered the lesson, we wouldn't have been surprised at the news that the CNN Republican presidential debate was also full of plants - and that these too were Democratic Party activists and campaign workers. This is shocking behavior on the part of a company that calls itself a "news" network. That this behavior is partisan is not really the point - the shocking part is that CNN has utterly dispensed with any pretense of journalistic integrity"

Arab apartheid at work: "This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil. Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs."

Useless diplomacy: "But does modern diplomacy actually work? Careful consideration does not make for comfortable reading. Kosovo, Darfur, North Korea and Iran suggest that more progress might have been made had a little more stick been employed than endless talk. All the main aid agencies estimate about two million innocent civilians have been the victims of the Sudanese Islamic militias that have waged a genocidal campaign against the Christian and Animist tribes that predominantly inhabit the south of the country. There are 700,000 people in refugee camps in the Darfur province of western Sudan and eastern Chad and it is universally agreed that this is the one issue that demands immediate and effective attention. But four years after the start of a conflict former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called "little short of hell on earth", the killing and deprivation goes on"

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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The Palestinian "Right of return" claim in context

During the fighting in 1947-1948, about three-fourths of a million Arabs fled or were driven (both are true in different places) from Israel and found refuge in the neighboring Arab countries. In the same period and after, a slightly greater number of Jews fled or were driven from Arab countries, first from the Arab-controlled part of mandatory Palestine (where not a single Jew was permitted to remain), then from the Arab countries where they and their ancestors had lived for centuries, or in some places for millennia. Most Jewish refugees found their way to Israel.

What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan. Millions of refugees fled or were driven both ways -- Hindus and others from Pakistan to India, Muslims from India to Pakistan. Another example was Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, when the Soviets annexed a large piece of eastern Poland and compensated the Poles with a slice of eastern Germany. This too led to a massive refugee movement -- Poles fled or were driven from the Soviet Union into Poland, Germans fled or were driven from Poland into Germany.

The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in neighboring Arab countries.

The government of Jordan granted Palestinian Arabs a form of citizenship, but kept them in refugee camps. In the other Arab countries, they were and remained stateless aliens without rights or opportunities, maintained by U.N. funding. Paradoxically, if a Palestinian fled to Britain or America, he was eligible for naturalization after five years, and his locally-born children were citizens by birth. If he went to Syria, Lebanon or Iraq, he and his descendants remained stateless, now entering the fourth or fifth generation.

The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

Source

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Brookes News Update

Economics sank the Howard Government: It is very likely that an autopsy will reveal that the principal cause of the Liberal Government's demise was its grotesque mishandling of labour market reform
Recession, the dollar and the US economy: Once again the US economy is defying gravity as well as the pessimists. Predictions that the 'mortgage crisis' would bring down the economy have been confounded, much to the disappointment of the Democrats. So what is really happening?
Protectionism and " free-market absolutism": Once again Terry McCrann demonstrates why he should give up economic commentary. Unfortunately his incompetence in the field of economics is shared by other media commentators. People - including McCrann - need to learn that economic laws do exist, and ignoring them can be a wealth hazard
The Al Qaeda-Iran axis has been beaten in Iraq: Al Qaeda has been thrashed in Iraq and its Iranian alliance broken. It now seems that it might by the mad mullahs turn to get a beating
Truthless in Gaza: the al-Dura scandal exposed: Western journalists have a long record of collaboration with the Arab propaganda machine. It is Western journalists who suppress the truth about the Palestinian Authority. It was the same journalists who lied about the Iraq. This is the same scum that pushed the al-Dura affair that has now been exposed as a vicious anti-Semitic hoax
How global warming activism hurts the poor: The Religious Left - a group of socialists posing as Christians - is using the myth of man-made global warming to launch a thoroughly dishonest attack on the US economy. It's calling for more taxes, spending and greater control of the economy

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Gerson has a very strange view of conservatism. He is a retired GWB speechwriter and he has written a book called "Heroic Conservatism". There is a review of his book here which points out how off-beam it is. (H/T KBJ)

Bans on Muslim garb in Flanders: "Belgium's third largest city Ghent has banned its employees from wearing Muslim headscarves and other religious or political symbols. All city personnel, such as librarians and child care workers, will not be allowed to wear such garments or symbols if they come into contact with the public, a city spokesman said. Similar measures have been imposed in other European countries like France, where there are growing numbers of Muslim immigrants. The council voted 26 to 23 yesterday for the ban, with the Liberals, Christian Democrats and far-right Vlaams Belang in favour and the socialists and Greens against. "It is really not clear who counts as an employee in contact with the public, but we will have to carry it out," said the spokesman. The city has 4700 employees and is aware of two women wearing headscarves who work on counters dealing with the public. It was possible they might be offered work elsewhere, the spokesman said. The ban would not affect teachers and police officers. Ghent follows Belgium's second city Antwerp, which banned its workers from wearing headscarves and religious wear earlier this year. Antwerp has since said Muslim women in nurseries would be allowed to cover their heads with bandanas instead."

McCain opposes waterboarding: "It is a matter of controversy whether waterboarding constitutes torture. McCain's position is certainly a defensible one, but we find his instinct unsettling. There are going to be gray areas in the war on terror, and we'd rather have the man at the top be someone who, when faced with difficult questions, errs on the side of protecting American women and children from being murdered rather than protecting terrorists from being treated unpleasantly.

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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A small personal note



Life is not all politics (Thank goodness) so I cannot resist a little note of satisfaction here about the results my son has just got in his university examinations for the final year of his B.Sc. All his subjects were in mathematics and he got 7s (the maximum possible mark) in all subjects. He will be heading for his doctorate in mathematics now. I am sure it is very evil of me to say so (according to Leftists anyway) but it is a great satisfaction to have a very bright son. His mother is over the moon too.

Neither of us have ever "pushed" him in any way. He is just a natural-born academic. I can't imagine where he gets that from! Since IQ is not genetically inherited (according to Leftists) it must just be a random event! I will be going to his graduation ceremony in a couple of weeks. I wonder if I should wear my doctoral robes?

We will be having a small family celebration of the occasion this Sunday -- at which I will of course be opening a bottle of Penfold's Grange.

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"HATE" PICTURES

I mentioned recently that the Religion of Peace site has been "filtered" by several internet censoring companies as "hate speech". To get the filtering lifted they had to remove certain pictures. Following are links to the censored pictures. One depicts Iranian punishment for adultery and the second Iranian punishment for homosexuality. See here and here

Reality must be censored! You are too immature to be told the truth. Our wise Leftist guardians know best!

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ELSEWHERE

Iran has built a new submarine, with which it is threatening the world. A picture of it below:



It looks about the same size as a World War I submarine. Details of the huffing and puffing here

Qualifications for top job?: "If a CEO of a fortune 500 company were to retire, would anyone seriously consider his wife to be an adequate replacement simply because she was married to him when he ran the company? What about a Super Bowl winning football team? What do you think the reaction of their fans would be if their coach's wife was being seriously discussed as his replacement? It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Yet, Hillary Clinton has practically been anointed by the press and the punditocracy as our next President, despite the fact that her run at the presidency is almost entirely based on being Bill Clinton's wife. By that, I mean that if Bill Clinton had meant the sweet nothings that he whispered in Monica Lewinsky's ear and he had divorced Hillary and married Monica, today Monica would be planning her Senate reelection campaign while Hillary would probably be working as a lobbyist for the Chinese toy manufacturers association."

Muslim paranoia: "Doctors treating an Indonesian man known as "Tree-man" - because of root-like growths on his hands and feet - have been slammed by the country's health minister. Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari has criticised the US doctor treating 35-year-old Dede for taking blood and tissue samples out of the country, the UK newspaper The Telegraph reported. Dede, who lives in a village to the south of Jakarta, is believed to be suffering from a rare strain of the Human Papilloma Virus. The US dermatologist treating the fisherman, the University of Maryland's Dr Anthony Gaspari, told The Telegraph that money had nothing to do with taking the samples out of Indonesia. "We did take samples, and the reason we did was to render a diagnosis," Dr Gaspari said. "We did it for humanitarian reasons, to help the patient." [More here]

More Muslim paranoia: "A British teacher in Sudan faces lashes and deportation as she languishes in police custody accused of insulting the Muslim prophet for allowing young children to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Sudanese police arrested Gillian Gibbons in Khartoum on Sunday after parents complained that she allowed six-year-old boys and girls at an expensive English school to name the bear, and so insult the Prophet Mohammed. The penalty carries the death sentence for Muslims in Sudan, where Islamic Sharia law is enforced in Khartoum and the north, but a non-Muslim could face a maximum penalty of lashes, prison, a fine and deportation if found guilty. A shaken Ms Gibbons, whom a British embassy spokesman said overnight had not yet been charged and who never intended that naming the bear would cause offence, was poised to spend a second night in police custody."

NYC Murders Drop, Democrats Call for Cop Pull Out : "As the number of murders in New York City reached a 40-year low, Democrats in Congress introduced a measure calling for an immediate and total pull-out of law enforcement personnel citing the high cost of fighting crime, the risk to those in uniform and "lack of political progress" in the city. In a typical Congressional maneuver, Democrats attached the redeployment measure as an amendment to an unrelated bill, sponsored by Republicans, which would provide senior citizens with a taxpayer-funded MediCare prescription golf benefit. Official statistics show the Big Apple's murder rate is now less than a quarter of what it was in 1990, but Democrats in Congress say the reduction has nothing to do with the actions of the New York City Police Department or the policies of the last two Republican mayors. "The dip in the murder rate is certainly temporary," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, "and it presents us with a window of opportunity to safely extract our brave men and women in uniform before the slaughter returns to normal levels." [With grateful thanks to the inimitable Scrappleface]

OK to abort kids but not to spank them? "Parents who spank their kids - even in their own homes - would be slapped by the long arm of the law under an Arlington nurse’s proposal to make Massachusetts the first state in the nation to outlaw corporal punishment. Kathleen Wolf’s proposed legislation will be debated at a State House hearing tomorrow morning. If signed into law, parents would be prohibited from forcefully laying a hand on any child under age 18 unless it was to wrest them from danger, lest they be charged with abuse or neglect. Rep. Jay Kaufman, a Lexington Democrat, submitted the 61-year-old Wolf’s petition at her request, but is not taking a position for or against corporal punishment."

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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Arrogant Afghan still ignoring the basic facts

Cosma Shalizi is a rather egotistical-sounding young man of apparently Afghan ancestry. He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. On his blog, Three Toed Sloth, he has a long post demonstrating that a popular form of mathematical analysis generically called factor analysis cannot be used to demonstrate the existence of IQ (or 'g' as we psychometricans call it).

His criticisms are perfectly correct. Factor analysis cannot prove ANYTHING in fact. It is just a convenient but rather arbitrary way of summarizing a set of correlations. Factor analysis is such a weak technique that I myself in my more than 200 published academic papers have used it only rarely -- even though I normally present my research results in correlational form. Shalizi is also correct in saying that much of the research into IQ has used factor analysis as a way of summarizing findings. That the findings are not DEPENDANT on that descriptive technique is the point he appears to overlook.

The underlying finding for 100 years or more is that ability to solve one sort of puzzle generalizes strongly to the ability to solve other quite different sorts of puzzle. Problem solving ability is general, no matter how you choose to summarize that. And problem-solving ability is what IQ or 'g' measures.

OK. What I have just said above is an excerpt from what I said on October 25. I emailed Shalizi a link to the October 25 post and I hear that others did so too. He has completely ignored it. In fact he has a very inflated recent post here in which he uses his previously demonstrated "wisdom" to attack the article on IQ in Slate by Saletan. Shalizi is so sure of his wisdom that he can only ascribe discreditable motives to Saletan and his editors for publishing what they did. And other bloggers (e.g. here) have taken Shalizi and his conclusions at face value. They seem to think that Shalizi has made lots of large correlations between different types of ability tests suddenly disappear!

A matter I did not address in my previous post is heritability. Once again in this case, Shalizi uses perfectly legitimate concerns about the statistical techniques used in summarizing the findings to claim that no firm conclusions at all are possible. In so doing he is using an old Leftist dodge that I commented on many years ago. He sets the standard so high for what he will accept as satisfactory evidence that nobody could prove anything to him under such standards.

In most of science, maybe ALL of science, you cannot prove things beyond all shadow of doubt -- so someone who does not want to believe something will always be able to say that the evidence is still not good enough. But if we normally behaved that way we would disregard most science. But we don't. And that is because we get a lot further by accepting that science is an enterprise that deals in probabilities rather than in certainties. If you want certainty, you need to turn to either theology or mathematics and you might not even find it there.

So what Shalizi is doing is what is called "intellectual dishonesty" -- judging a matter not on the balance of the evidence for and against it but rather on whether or not the concusions suit him.

And again, when you look at the underlying evidence about heritability that the various statistical techniques try to summarize, there is a lot there that Shalizi just cannot make go away. The IQ scores of identical twins will almost always be strikingly similar, for instance -- much more similar than the IQs of normal brothers and sisters or even of fraternal twins -- and certainly much more similar than the scores of random strangers. The facts on the ground just don't go away, no matter how you choose to summarize them. And those facts show that IQ scores are clearly tied to your genetic inheritance.

Razib makes further points about Shalizi's shilly shallying. Razib shows that, if you look hard enough, Shalizi does in fact to a degree acknowledge the underlying realities in his writings. But you would never guess that from his dismissive conclusions.

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ELSEWHERE



Iraq involvement ending: "With the eyes of the world focused on the Middle East peace talks in Annapolis, Md., President Bush's war tsar, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, quietly announced that the American and Iraqi governments will start talks early next year to bring about an end to the allied occupation by the close of Mr. Bush's presidency. The negotiations will bring to a formal conclusion the U.N. Chapter 7 Security Council involvement in the occupation and administration of Iraq, and are expected to reduce the number of American troops to about 50,000 troops permanently stationed there but largely confined to barracks, from the current 164,000 forces on active duty. "The basic message here should be clear. Iraq is increasingly able to stand on its own. That's very good news. But it won't have to stand alone," General Lute yesterday told reporters in the White House."

More rocket attacks on Israel during Annapolis peace conference: "With the opening of the Annapolis Conference, Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip are sending a clear message to those gathering in Maryland. Tuesday morning the Popular Resistance Committees announced the beginning of operation "Autumn Storm" in which the organization plans to launch rocket attacks at Sderot and the western Negev during the conference. Meanwhile, fighting in the field has not ceased for a moment: in the last 24 hours at least eight Palestinians have died in a string of clashes with the IDF, including attempts to launch rockets and plant bombs near the border."



Muslim riots in Paris worsen: "French police beefed up security yesterday after riots continued for a second night in flashpoint Paris suburbs despite the launch of a judicial probe into the deaths of two teens, which sparked the violence. Police said yesterday 64 officers were injured in clashes with youths in and around the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, adding that five were in critical condition. "One policeman was wounded in the shoulder after being hit by a high-calibre bullet," a security official said. The injuries followed rioting in Villiers-le-Bel and the nearby towns of Sarcelles and Garges-les-Gonesses, police said. Riots intensified in the town and neighbouring areas, police said yesterday. Six hours of violent clashes erupted in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday after the teenagers' motorbike crashed into a police car. Yesterday, about 100 youths crouching behind bins in Villiers-le-Bel hurled objects at 160 riot police, who responded with rubber bullets and teargas. Police said young rioters in other towns were armed with baseball bats, Molotov cocktails and bottles of acid."

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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A SURGE OF GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ

The news from Iraq has been so encouraging in recent months that last week even the mainstream media finally sat up and took notice. Can the Democratic Party be far behind? In a story titled "Baghdad Comes Alive," Rod Nordland reports in the current Newsweek on the heartening transformation underway in the Iraqi capital: "Returning to Baghdad after an absence of four months," he writes, "I can actually say that things do seem to have gotten better, and in ways that may even be durable . . . There hasn't been a successful suicide car bombing in Baghdad in five weeks . . . Al Qaeda in Iraq is starting to look like a spent force, especially in Baghdad."

The signs of life, Nordland acknowledges "grudgingly" - his word - are undeniable. "Emerging from our bunkers into the Red Zone, I see the results everywhere. Throughout Baghdad, shops and street markets are open late again, taking advantage of the fine November weather. Parks are crowded with strollers, and kids play soccer on the streets. Traffic has resumed its customary epic snarl. The Baghdad Zoo is open, and caretakers have even managed to bring in two lionesses to replace the menagerie that escaped in the early days of the war. . . . The Shorja bazaar in old Baghdad, hit by at least six different car bombs killing hundreds in the last year, is again crowded with people among the narrow tented stalls. On nearby Al-Rasheed Street, the famous booksellers are back in business. . . . People are buying alcohol again -- as they always had in Baghdad, until religious extremists forced many neighborhood liquor shops to close."

Newsweek's isn't the only big media voice bringing tidings of comfort and joy from the Iraqi theatre. On Tuesday, The New York Times led its front page with a good-news headline - "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves" - and a large photo of an Iraqi bride and groom, bedecked in wedding finery and accompanied by a band. Below that: a picture of smiling diners at Al Faris, a restaurant on the Tigris riverbank that is booming once again. Inside, across four columns, another photo showed an outdoor foosball game in Baghdad's Haifa Street, once dubbed the "Street of Fear" because it was the scene of so many lethal sectarian attacks.

In another Page 1 story the day before ("U.S. Says Attacks in Iraq Fell to the Level of Early Last Year"), the Times recounted some of the auspicious data: civilian fatalities down 75 percent in recent months, Iraqi security-force casualties down 40 percent, total weekly attacks nationwide down nearly two-thirds since June. The Los Angeles Times, too, fronted a story on the promising developments, describing last Monday an "unexpected flowering of sectarian cooperation" in which "Sunnis and Shi'ites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants." The results, the paper reported from the rural community of Qarghulia on Monday, "are palpable. Killings are down dramatically and public confidence is reviving." ....

With the media at last paying attention to the remarkable progress in Iraq, shouldn't leading Democrats think about doing the same? Perhaps this would be a good time for Hillary Clinton to express regret for telling Petraeus that his recent progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief" -- in effect, calling him a liar. Perhaps Senate majority leader Harry Reid should admit that he may have been wrong when he declared so emphatically: "This war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Tony Judt is a New York historian who ignores history when it come to Israel. Why? It seems that he does not like being Jewish and slandering Israel makes him feel better about that. His superficialities are taken apart step by step here

Fred Thompson calls for flat tax: "Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson proposed an income tax plan Sunday that would allow Americans to choose a simplified system with only two rates: 10 percent and 25 percent. Thompson's proposal, announced on Fox News Sunday, would allow filers to remain under the current, complex tax code or use the flat tax rates. Asked whether the plan would cut too deeply into federal revenues, the former Tennessee senator and actor said experts 'always overestimate the losses to the government' when taxes are cut. 'We've known for years any time we have lowered taxes and any time we've lowered tax rates, we've seen growth in the economy,' Thompson said. Thompson added that money would be saved by his Social Security reform plan."

Jihadi Professor goes to prison: "A former professor accused of providing money to Hamas terrorists was sentenced Wednesday to more than 11 years in prison and fined $5,000 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a former associate professor of business at Washington's Howard University, showed no emotion as US District Judge Amy St. Eve imposed the sentence. But several relatives wept openly in the courtroom. Ashqar was convicted earlier this year of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian militant movement Hamas on June 25, 2003. But he was acquitted of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy aimed at bankrolling the terrorist group Hamas."

Reaganomics Sweeps the World: "If the supply-side tax rate reduction model is truly so abhorrent, why are so many nations around the world latching on to it? What explains the Irish Miracle? Why are Germany, France and the U.K. slashing their corporate tax rates? Why are there 18 countries with flat taxes? Are their leaders deranged, or been bamboozled by crackpots? Perhaps a better explanation is that they know intuitively what a new National Bureau of Economic Research study has found: Nations with low tax rates on business have statistically significant higher rates of new business formation, investment and income. History is clearly not on the side of the anti-supply-side attack dogs, and they're losing the policy debate every day in political capitals around the world. Poland just announced it wants to implement a 15% flat tax by 2009. But the American left's obsession with the notion that tax rates don't matter tells us something important about the future. They are preparing the ground for massive tax increases if and when they capture control of the presidency.

Maker of Undercover Mosque documentary considers suing police: "The documentary maker cleared by regulators of misleadingly editing a Channel 4 programme about extreme Islamic preachers is considering legal action. David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions which made the Dispatches film Undercover Mosque, said he was still "very, very angry". With the backing of Channel 4 he hoped to launch a libel action against the West Midlands police and a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who was quoted in a joint press release accusing Hardcash Productions of "completely distorting" what some of the preachers were saying. The media regulator dismissed the complaint saying it was a legitimate investigation. "I really don't like the libel courts and believe in a world of free comment. I don't mind abuse, but Hardcash's reputation has been severely damaged and it was a good reputation," Henshaw said. "The Ofcom judgment is great and if anyone bothers to read it they'll realise this was a bloody good programme. But damage was done that day in August, huge damage."

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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Traditional Catholicism reviving strongly in France

They give the traitorous "modernizers" who believe in nothing their answer. I don't believe in any of it either but nor do I pretend to be a Catholic. Those who do believe, however, have the very best of my best wishes

If the photographs in Les communautes traditionnelles en France are anything to go by, then just across the Channel there lies a whole rich seam of Catholic religious life that is young, vibrant and growing. In addition to youthfulness and success, there are two other common features that unite the communities featured in this book. One is that they all have the extraordinary form of the Roman liturgy - the "traditional" rites liberated by Pope Benedict XVI's recent Motu Proprio - as the heart and foundation of their spirituality. The other is that many of them long enjoyed the steadfast, if unofficial support, of a certain well-placed cardinal in Rome. His name was Joseph Ratzinger.

Looking at these particular images it is not difficult to understand just why the Pope and his right-hand cardinal have invested so much hope in these communities. Whether it is Solemn Vespers in a great baroque abbey, or low Mass celebrated on a rock in a clearing for scouts, the liturgical celebrations depicted in this book are all beautiful and dignified. The average age of the monks, nuns, friars and priests and seminarians is also remarkably young. According to Cardinal Castrillon, this should not surprise us. The message that these communities pursue is the message of Jesus Christ. This message is eternal, and therefore forever young.

These intriguing photographs invite us to enter into another world. Despite the obvious challenges implicit in a daily life circumscribed by rules and traditions, the subjects of these communities look remarkably happy. The text often talks of sacrifice and self-surrender, but the pictures show young faces that are smiling and laughing.

There is certainly no hint of any crisis of clerical identity. These young clerics do not rely on jeans or Che Guevara T-shirts to make them feel connected to the youth; rather, it is the authenticity of their life that seems to make that connection. We see seminarians effortlessly skiing through the alps in long black soutanes, while nuns in crisply starched wimples gather hay in the fields outside Marseilles. At the high point of the traditionalist calendar - the annual Pentecost pilgrimage to Chartres - thousands of young pilgrims walk behind priests, monks and friars on the three-day march from Paris. Carrying crosses and banners, they all look very glad, and proud, to be Catholic.

Neither is there any evidence of a decline in vocations. The story of the Benedictine convent of Jouques is typical. Since its foundation near Aix en Provence in 1967 this community has attracted so many vocations to its novitiate that it has been necessary to open daughter houses elsewhere in France and in Africa to house the overspill.

The monks of Le Barroux, north of Avignon, still wear the corona - the full monastic tonsure depicted in medieval woodcuts and books of hours. After humble beginnings in a caravan in 1970 this community now worships in a mighty abbey church which the monks built themselves in the form of a Romanesque basilica. In the early hours of the morning, this building hums like a holy beehive as the many priest-monks celebrate their private Mass at side altars, served by novices and lay brothers. The extensive choirstalls here are now so full that this monastery has been able to spare a detachment of young monks to found a daughter house not far from Toulouse.

All of the institutes featured in the book are run on strictly traditional principles. But this does not make them old-fashioned. Rather, it gives them a timelessness that many young people are finding increasingly attractive. Some of the communities are contemplative, but many are active. A good example is the Institute of Christ the King. From its picturesque Renaissance villa outside Florence "The Institute" has gradually grown into a global conglomerate. In addition to serving parishes in France and America, it also runs several missionary stations in Africa.

The recent Motu Proprio confirms what these communities have known all along: that the traditional Mass never was, and never really could be, abrogated. In his explanatory letter accompanying this decree the Holy Father stated that the extraordinary form of the liturgy is not just for an older generation that found innovation difficult to cope with. He wrote: "It has been clearly demonstrated that young persons, too, have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mysteries of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them."

More here

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ELSEWHERE



Don't you like the image above? It is about the recent but long overdue changes to the exchange-rate of the greenback -- changes that have American producers and manufacturers rubbing their hands with glee. The changes are just about the best news possible for their "buy American" campaign. But even if you don't read German, I think you can see that Spiegel magazine is treating it as something catastrophic. Like American Leftists, Germans don't want to believe anything good about America. Sad. David's Medienkritik has the details.

British intolerance on display: "The Oxford Union debating society faced growing calls to cancel an evening with Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, and David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for Holocaust denial. The debating society’s decision to ask the pair to speak at a forum on the limits of free speech tonight has attracted fierce criticism from MPs, antifascist groups, and Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, who said the invitation was a “disgrace”. Antifascist groups said that they expected hundreds of demonstrators to descend on the city to protest against the presence of the two men, and police have warned the debate’s organisers that they fear a number of ultra-rightwing activists will stage counter-protests.

BBC bias again: "Looking at al-Beeb's website this evening, I chanced upon the news that two Bollywood stars are claiming that they had racist remarks shouted at them from a passing car, as they shot a film in Southall. This, clearly very important and newsworthy, story is currently receiving second billing on the "England" section of the BBC News website, and has had quite a lengthy, illustrated, article devoted to it. Of course, the Beeboids did not see fit to publish a single paragraph on a rather more serious recent case in which a man had his skull sliced open with a machete in a racist attack, but that's understandable: the victim was only white, after all."

Official anti-father attitudes: "A woman who became pregnant after a one-night stand has been given the right to keep the birth a secret from the father. The Court of Appeal ruling came after a county court ordered the 20-year-old to tell both her parents and the father. The three appeal judges agreed "the ultimate veto" over who is told about the birth lay with the mother. Fathers' groups said the ruling treated the child as the property of the mother "to be disposed of as she sees fit". Fathers 4 Justice barrister Michael Cox said: "This father is the victim of a wicked deceit in which the State has been complicit. "It is now clear that the Government believes children have no entitlement to a relationship with their fathers and that children are the property of their mothers and of the State."

Donation racket in Britain too: "A builder who lives in a former council house in Newcastle and "can't stand" Labour has been named as one of Gordon Brown's biggest donors - prompting fresh questions over the party's finances. Ray Ruddick, who drives a battered Transit van, is officially listed as having contributed more than 104,000 pounds to the national party's coffers since Mr Brown became Prime Minister less than five months ago. His contributions, combined with those of a woman he is linked to, make him Labour's third biggest donor under Mr Brown"

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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The EU hates Switzerland's low taxes

And they are using the flimsiest arguments to attack them. They are claiming that low taxes are "subsidies"!

Another round of fruitless discussions forming part of the ongoing battle between the European Union and Switzerland over the latter's corporate tax system took place in Bern on Monday. But while the European Commission has the obvious weight advantage over its more nimble neighbour, at present Brussels simply doesn't have the legal reach to deliver the knock-out blow that would oblige the Swiss to capitulate to its demands.

The dispute, and the focus of the latest discussions, centres on Switzerland's cantonal tax system. The European Commission considers certain cantonal company tax arrangements to be incompatible with the 1972 Free Trade Agreement - a notion that the Swiss government firmly rejects.

The EC argues these cantonal company tax regulations restrict trade in goods between Switzerland and the EU, and distort competition. However, this is only a part of the debate. At its heart is the Commission's complaint that the cantonal tax systems encourage EU-based firms to set up holding companies in Switzerland to avoid taxes in EU member states.

On the first point, the Swiss delegation, led by Alexander Karrer, Head of the Monetary Affairs and International Finance Division in the Federal Department of Finance, and including representatives from the cantons, argued that Swiss taxes do not distort bilateral trade, because the types of company concerned in Switzerland have no, or at most subordinate, business operations which are taxed normally. Regarding the second point, Karrer's delegation countered that in the case of holding companies, revenues from Swiss sources are taxed in the same way as those from foreign sources. Furthermore, the Swiss emphasised that both domestic and foreign-controlled companies are entitled to take advantage of holding-company privileges.

The European Commission is basing its legal argument against Switzerland on the latter's alleged breach of state aid rules, which, in the EU, are in place to prevent member states from favouring certain companies and industries with beneficial tax rules and subsidies. But the Swiss say that the EC's arguments rest on shaky very legal ground, pointing out that the country is neither an EU member or part of the Single European Market, nor party to the competition regulations of the EC Treaty, including those on state aid. Moreover, Bern insists that even if the tax laws in question were covered by the 1972 Free Trade Agreement, they would not fall under the EU's definition of state aid, because they do not favour certain companies or industries.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I have added a fair bit recently to my "permanent" comments in the side columns of my various blogs. So if you have not looked at them recently you may find something of interest there. I have also put a few things up on my personal blog recently, for what interest that may have. See here or here.

Iraqi school guard and wife beheaded as children watch: "Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday. The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers, they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad. The three cousins executed Hayali and his wife Zeinab Kamel at the all-boys school in Jalawlah in Diyala province, village police chief Captain Ahmed Khalifa said..."

Strange Swede: "When I read that a Swede had been arrested for a vicious attack on a man in a pub-brawl in which the man's lip was bitten off, I was surprised. Whenever I had met Swedes either traveling or through business they were always polite, unflappable, and level-headed. Even when drinking way more than we should, the only physical danger you face from a Swede is being bear-hugged to death. There had to be more to this story. Whaddya know? There is... "The victim, a 23-year-old English tourist, suffered six months of painful surgery to repair his face after he was pinned down and half of his bottom lip bitten off to the chin. Diar Abdullah, a 28-year-old native of Sweden, was arrested at Sydney Airport about midday yesterday as he disembarked from a flight from Queensland." I'm just guessing, this native of Sweden probably doesn't have Viking ancestry?"

The Church of homosexuality: "The openly homosexual bishop whose ordination sparked the split in the Anglican Communion has claimed that the Church of England would come close to shutting down if it was forced to manage without gay clergy. The Bishop of New Hampshire in the US, the Right Rev Gene Robinson, who is divorced and lives openly in partnership with a gay man, said that he found it mystifying that the mother Church of the Anglican Communion was unable to be honest about the number of gay clergy in its ranks."

British officers quit army in record numbers: "The army has suffered an unprecedented exodus of more than 1,300 officers in the past six months amid anger about government cost-cutting and equipment shortages. The number quitting is more than double the rate in the previous 12 months and will add to pressure on Gordon Brown about the way his government is funding the armed services. Many of those who have resigned their commissions are from frontline units. Most are captains or majors with invaluable experience of battle. "The loss of a whole swathe of middle-ranking officers will leave us struggling to find the top quality generals of the future," said one senior officer. "But it is clear the government does not care and would be happy to see the army reduced to a token force."

Ian Smith was right: "Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian prime minister, who made his unilateral declaration of independence from Britain in 1965 and fought a bitter rearguard action to prevent black majority rule, never lost the ability to inspire strong emotion... Yet the odd truth is that in retirement after 1980, when Mugabe took over, Smith not only did not fade away but grew both in stature and popularity. As Mugabe's regime became steeped in blood and violence, Africans of all persuasions flocked to Smith's house to consult him. The (all black) student body of Zimbabwe University gave him a standing ovation for his ringing condemnation of "the gangsters", as he always called Mugabe's corrupt ruling mafia. Visiting him at his house in Harare (next to the Cuban embassy, the hammer and sickle flying) I marvelled at the fact that, after the death of his wife Janet, he lived alone with just a cook and minimal security. When he walked the streets of Harare, Africans would almost queue up to grasp his hand and wish him well." [I say more about Ian Smith and Rhodesia here]

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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The Ruddslide

Some readers may be looking to me for a comment on the implications of the recent Australian Federal election. As I see it, one centre-right government has been replaced by another. As Andrew Bolt has pointed out, there are even some ways in which Rudd is to the Right of John Howard. And the policies of the two major parties on social issues such as illegal immigration, abortion and homosexual marriage seem to differ only in the smallest of details.

There are some causes for concern, of course, but nothing major is likely to change much. The Australian Labor party is arguably the world's most conservative Leftist party and they strongly reinforced that in the recent election campaign by their constant "me-toos" to the policies of the Howard government. They NEEDED to do that. Any hint of traditional Leftist policies would have sent them to oblivion again -- as it did in the previous election under the leadership of Mark Latham. In other words, they won by promising that there would be only micro-changes. That is pretty conservative in at least one sense.

There will certainly be a lot of rabid Leftists in the new Labor cabinet (government) but Rudd has immense authority for having led them out of the wilderness and he is also an obsessive bureaucrat who will not let much past him and he knows full well what his victory depended on. So any Bolshevik tendencies in the cabinet will undoubtedly be stared down.

If Rudd WERE to depart from his election promises to any substantial degree that would be a strong confirmation of what his electoral opponents constantly harped on during the campaign: Can he be trusted? And that would almost certainly lead to his defeat in the next Federal election in 3 year's time. And I know without looking that Rudd has far greater ambitions than being a one-term Prime Minister. So, ultimately, it is the electorate that is the watchdog watching him. And his recent success shows that he is too good a politician to be unaware of that gaze.

The biggest danger that I see is in his High Court appointments. Judges generally seem pretty power-mad and Rudd appointments could take the brakes off that. Australia has had a lot less legislating from the bench than the USA has had so it would be a great pity to lose that restraint.

The Rudd stance on the Iraq involvement is certainly weaker than that of John Howard but I again think Rudd will be cautious. His habit of caution and avoiding controversy should see any moves being slow and well-considered rather than hasty. He is certainly a lot less frantic about it than the U.S. Democrats are. Britain is already in the process of pulling out of Iraq, however, so that makes whatever Rudd does fairly inconsequential by comparison.

SO YOU THINK YOUR PHONE COMPANY IS HOPELESS!

By all accounts, the world's worst phone company is the major provider in Britain: BT. There is a good example of the way BT treat customers just up on Wicked Thoughts. A customer had to post his complaint on YouTube in order to get them to talk to him. A phone company that refuses to talk is pretty strange, isn't it?

But I am sure that many American readers have plenty of gripes with their phone company too. I myself have had innumerable run-ins with Australian phone companies. Talking to Telstra via their phone help-line or their email help-line is quite hopeless. You either get an insincere promise to look into it or you get told point-blank that they can't help you. Either way you have wasted your time.

Fortunately, there is a tiny chink in Telstra's armour. If you write to their chief executive you do get a mostly intelligent response and the response sometimes -- but not always -- does fix the problem. So I have only minor gripes with them at the moment. I thought it might be amusing, however, to put up copies of some of the letters I have had to write to them in the last few years. You will see how heavy I sometimes had to get in order to receive a helpful response. You can read the letters on Pondlife.

I imagine that there is already such a thing elsewhere but if I get enough emails telling of bad experiences that readers have had with their phone company, maybe I could start a site to publish such emails. It could well become both popular and a real help to people victimized by arrogant and unresponsive phone companies.

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Arabs are never to blame

When the US intervened in 1999 to stop the mass murder of a Muslim minority by Slobodan Milosevic, it was savagely criticised by a Europe desperate to distance itself from the action. Eight years later, the US is being savaged for a perceived lack of engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It is becoming increasingly de rigueur around the world and, for that matter, in certain segments of the Democratic Party, to place responsibility for all international crises on the US Government. When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, it has attained the level of high fashion to ascribe the persistent absence of peace to a lack of adequate US "engagement" in resolving it. If the administration of President George W. Bush were truly engaged, the argument goes, the chances for Middle East peace would be greatly improved.

Next week's meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, between Israel and Arab representatives has the look and feel of more of the same. The State Department has sent out formal invitations to the event, but it remains unclear who will attend besides Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. If history is any guide, the meeting will yield unsatisfactory results, Israel will be blamed for failing to make the requisite concessions and the Bush administration will be criticised for its "failure to engage".

This analysis, simple and neat, and for so many so satisfying, would seem at odds with the historical record.... It was the Arab bloc, including the Palestinian leadership, that decided to reject the UN's 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, living side by side. Instead, it invaded the nascent Jewish state rather than choosing to co-exist with it, spawning the conflict that has so burdened the world for the past 60 years. This was not a decision made by the US.

The US is also not responsible for the Arab world's choice not to create a Palestinian Arab state in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, when it easily could have done so -- before there were any Jewish settlements there to serve as the public object of Arab grievance. It was not the US whose leaders rejected peace with Israel, negotiation with Israel and recognition of Israel in 1967.

Nor can the Clinton government be criticised for failing to pursue Yasser Arafat with sufficient solicitude between 1993 and late 2000. The Clinton administration was, after all, the most ardent of suitors of the Palestinian leader -- only to be forced to watch Arafat reject an independent Palestinian state in all of Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank. It was the Palestinian leadership, not the US, that decided in 2000 that, rather than accept an independent Palestinian state.....

Under the circumstances, one might imagine that those in a position to improve the situation in the Middle East -- but who have chosen by their inaction to worsen it -- might feel sheepish about placing the onus for the absence of Middle East peace on the US. The only thing in shorter supply than sheepishness when it comes to the Middle East, however, is helpfulness. As far as helpfulness is concerned, it is past time for those who complain most about the lack of American engagement to begin providing some.

More here

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Yes. Australia now has a new Leftist government. But it is probably the world's most conservative Leftist government. Well to the Right of Tony Blair.

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ELSEWHERE

Syria 'was building A-bomb': "The secret Syrian structure bombed by Israeli planes three months ago was not a nuclear reactor for producing plutonium but a plant for building a bomb using plutonium that Syria apparently already had, an expert says. Uzi Even told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Syria had been far closer to a nuclear bomb than anyone believed. "In my estimation," said Professor Even, who had worked as a chemist at Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor, "this (structure) was even more dangerous than a reactor. I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium -- that is, a factory for assembling the bomb."

Denmark convicts men in bomb plot: "A court in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, has found three men guilty of planning bomb attacks. Mohammed Zaher, Abdallah Andersen and Ahmad Khaldhahi were part of a group of four men arrested after a raid in the city of Odense last year. Chemicals used to make explosives were found at one of the men's homes, the court heard. The men had also been recorded discussing targets to attack. The fourth man, Riad Anwar Daabas, was acquitted by the court.... The men were charged with acquiring chemicals and equipment used to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) - an explosive compound used in the 2005 London bombings. The evidence against them included a bottle containing a small amount of TATP, found at one of the suspects' homes, and surveillance recordings in which the men are apparently heard discussing targets for possible attack".

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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Big day for Australia today

I have just gone and voted in Australia's Federal election. My local polling place was VERY well-staffed and well managed. I was in and out in 10 minutes -- unlike the way many Americans have had to line up for hours in their previous Federal elections. And because all votes are on paper, recounts are fairly easy and disputes about the results are rare.

We have separate ballot papers for the Senate and the lower house and the fact that the two ballot papers are very different in size means that it is almost impossible to get the two mixed up. Nonetheless there was a lady standing by the ballot boxes to see that everybody put their paper in the right box. Very good for absent-minded people like me!

I gave my Senate vote to Pauline, of course. Her policy of restricting Muslim immigration is the only sensible one for any Western nation, in my opinion.