ELSEWHERE

Useful Fools is worried that North Korea might use the attack on Iraq to invade the South

Michael Darby has a poem addressed to the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

Chris Brand reports that he has had a hard disk crash and has lost his address lists. If you want to receive emails from him, maybe you should email him your address.

The Wicked one reports two welcome examples of sanity from the courts.

My latest posting of my past academic papers here deals with one of the favourite ideas of Leftist political psychologists: “authoritarianism”. The article points out that the idea is totally discredited among those who have researched it but still the Leftist psychologists cling on to it. Surprise!

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TOURIST TERRORS IN OZ

Somebody has had a lot of fun with Invisible Hand. He visited Australia recently and obviously fell victim to the Aussie sense of humour. He was told that Koalas are savage, that Australia has only one casino and that our large bats are dangerous. The truth is that Australia has lots of casinos, that it is routine for tourists to be given a Koala to cuddle (or at least it is only 15 minutes drive from where I live in Australia's third-largest city) and that, although our bats (we call them "flying foxes") are larger than other bats, they are still only about the size of a small cat, eat fruit and are completely harmless. And although there are some stinging flies, they are quite rare.

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RECENT CORRESPONDENCE: HITLER and IQ

I have put up here two emails recently received. One is from a socialist who tries desperately to deny that Hitler was a Leftist. He is so keen to do so that he even says Stalin was not a Leftist but a Fascist! Wow!

The second email is from someone who puts very briefly but very clearly the issues involved in saying that IQ is largely hereditary. All his points are spot-on but he balks at the final hurdle when he points out that lower average negro intelligence COULD be due to black Americans growing up in much less favoured circumstances than American whites. He is right. It could be that. But how come that almost any other group in the US (Chinese, Japanese, Jews) who start out behind soon end up ahead? Odd that blacks are the only exception! Asians in America who cannot even speak English well still do better than blacks who speak it perfectly. If environmental (non-hereditary) factors were the key issue, blacks should do better than Asians but they do not.

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RECENT CORRESPONDENCE: LEFTIST ACADEME and DEMOCRAT RACISM

I have also posted here two other emails recently received. The first is from a student who reports on the pervasive Leftism in what he is being taught at college. He is also courageous (foolish?) enough to be answering back in class against the Leftist nonsense. I do not predict good grades for him but I feel that he deserves our congratulations nonetheless.

The second email is in response to my recent post here about how Leftists constantly use the “big lie” technique in their propaganda. He points out what a big lie it is to say that it is the Republicans who are the racists. I guess Abraham Lincoln must have been a Democrat? And the Jim Crow laws of the old South must have been put in place by Republicans? No need to guess, is there? How do the Leftist liars get away with it? I guess hardly anybody knows their history so that gives the liars free rein.

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OTHER READING

French unilateralism: The French REALLY know how to be unilateral. The whole world (more or less) was against their nuclear tests in the Pacific but they still went ahead. They are the last ones who should be talking about unilateralism. But French arrogance disregards anything that does not suit the French, of course.

Jeff Jacoby says that past US support for Saddam in his war with Iran should not stop us now from correcting that mistake.

Leftists are on the side of the poor, right? We how come so many of those they favour are so rich?

Thjere’s a good lesson here in how to be a “liberal”

As a libertarian and a former economics teacher, I am a strong advocate of free trade so it did not bother me to see that a German firm had won the competition to redesign the World Trade Center. But I was still a bit pleased to see this note:

The head of the architectural firm is an American who works in Berlin right now. He'll move to Manhattan for this project and there'll be plenty of work for everyone. From Bill Quick's site.




Chris Brand looks at the various explanations for how differences in IQ arise.

The Wicked one reproduces a fairly learned email from someone who argues that Abraham Lincoln was concerned only with keeping Americans all under one rule -- with slavery an afterthought.

Michael Darby continues his campaign to keep us informed about what is happening to the unfortunate people of Zimbabwe.

Today's academic paper is here. It looks at the female mid-life crisis and what actually goes on then. This is the longer version of a paper that will be coming out later this year in one of the academic journals in an abridged and revised form.

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LEFTIST INTELLECTUALS: WHY?

Robert Nozick's explanation of why most intellectuals oppose capitalism in general and the USA in particular is well worth a read. Basically, Nozick's point is that intellectuals think that our society does not reward them to the vast degree that they think they deserve. So in childish petulance they do all they can to denigrate that "unappreciative" society.

My intellectual credentials are as good as anyone's so how did I escape that feeling of grievance? I know that I have always had a strong tendency to be happy with whatever I have got so that would probably explain why I have never felt any urge to denigrate the society in which I live. I am profoundly grateful to it in fact. I could have been born an Iraqui.

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"POSTMODERNIST" CULTURAL STUDIES IN THE UNIVERSITIES

"There is no such thing as truth" and "Reality is merely a political construction" seem to be the two most widely promoted views among modern Leftist intellectuals. For people who find facts and reality so embarrassing they WOULD say that, of course. The emptiness of all their high-flown rhetoric on the subject was shown by the "Sokal hoax". See here and here Give me Warren Buffett's view of the matter any day:

"You're neither right nor wrong because people agree with you. You're right because your facts and your reasoning are right. In the end that's all that counts"

Not profound but look at his results!

There is a new site called ObjectiveReality with some good essays up that should be just about the dead opposite of what “postmodernists” believe in. Have a look!

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LEFTIST ACADEMICS SURE DO HATE HISTORY

I've heard it all now: the history department at Harvard University no longer offers a course on the American Revolution. In its place, it now offers a course on the history of midwives and quilting. It sounds like a deliberate plan to devalue university degrees to me. It will succeed. The only talent Leftists have is for destruction.

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AND GENETICS IS JUST SO EMBARRASSING!

There is a BIG essay on Gene Expression that looks at the writings of prominent psychologist Jerome Kagan. It shows in great detail how Kagan's Leftist and anti-heredity ideology makes him ignore and contradict his OWN published research findings -- which show big hereditary influences.

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GREAT MOMENTS IN SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

One of Britain's biggest hospitals, University Hospital of Wales, had to postpone a heart operation because the surgeon couldn't find a parking space thanks to the "improvements" they made in parking arrangements meant to increase the number of spaces available for patients and visitors.

"By the time I arrived I felt so stressed I was in no state to perform the surgery," says heart surgeon Ulrich Von Oppell who spent an hour finding a parking spot. "I am sorry for the patient but I felt this was the right decision to make."

(Via Jerry Lerman -- from the UK Telegraph of March 4th. under “News in Brief” -- Free registration required)

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OTHER READING

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It demolishes a claim by another group of authors that they have called into question my finding that aggressive dominance is the major psychological precursor to coronary heart disease. Pushing other people around can give you a heart attack!

Useful Fools has a good collection of jokes about the French.

Clubbeaux has a big essay on why NATO has now outlived its usefulness.

Hooray! When the Turkish parliament decided not to co-operate with the USA, the Turkish stock market plunged 11 percent and the national currency, the lira, fell four percent.

Michael Darby reports on Leftist disruption of a local council and the drug legalization policy of the Greens

Chris Brand reports on genes for anxiety, AIDS in South Africa, book-pulping etc

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THIS IS NOW MY MAIN SITE



I have abandoned my old site because I was getting constant error messages when loading to it...

PILGER: AN INTERESTING CASE-STUDY

TIM BLAIR in the THE BULLETIN (4 March 2003, p. 18) recently published these two quotes side by side:-

"No one can doubt its cruelty and atrocities, but comparisons with the Third Reich are ridiculous." - John Pilger on the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, Nov 15, 1999

"The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times." - John Pilger on the government of George W. Bush, Jan 29, 2003.

I feel rather sorry for Pilger. He has flashes of sanity and realism at times (as in his film about Pol Pot) but his desperate need for attention causes him to say ever more outrageous and unreasonable things -- to the point where he is basically just laughable. He is a good study in how the Leftist mind works. That juvenile need for attention overrides almost everything else.

There is a very good brief demolition of Pilger's film about Iraq here.

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IRAQ

Daily Rant points out that Clinton was at least as "unilateral" about Iraq as is Bush. In saying that I am recognizing that Leftists now use "unilateral" to mean "without universal approval" -- which is an example of the way Leftists have always loved to play with words rather than face reality. Of course any national leader who waited for universal approval before he did anything would never do anything at all. And having the approval of the corrupt French is certainly no honour either.

“Now please stop this preposterous charade of pretending to need the imprimatur of that exclusive club for mass murderers, thieves, thugs and tyrants (The United Nations) to justify anything whatsoever”. From Samizdata.

What a laugh: Some of the peace activists who went to Iraq to serve as human shields in the event of war returned home, fearing for their safety, a spokesman said Sunday. Via Hoosier Review

The Swedish Nazis are supporting Saddam! That must be comforting to the Lefties! There’s an old saying: “You know a man by the company he keeps”. Via Dean’s World.

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SOME INTERESTING QUOTES

Two good quotes from Peggy Noonan’s letter to the Democrats:

There is another problem. You have become the party of snobs. You have become the party of Americans who think they're better than other Americans.

and

This is the Democratic paradox: You want so much to run America and yet you seem not so fond of Americans.



There is a good analysis of Australia’s anti-Americans here. Excerpt:

Anti-Americanism should be studied as a serious psychological affliction, a pathological condition which paralyses the mind's analytical capacity.



OTHER READING

Gloom! There is an election campaign on in Australia’s most populous State and even the conservatives are promising an indefinite “moratorium” on genetically-modified crops if elected. And the Leftists have weighed in too, of course. Just when Australia has almost entirely got rid of the impoverishing stupidity of socialism from its politics we now have the impoverishing stupidity of the Greenies to contend with. Superstitious fear is all that is behind the GM ban. I guess we are still not far away from our caveman ancestors.

Here is an Arab-American who LIKES airline security checks.

A big international survey has found that: Christian religions are more positively associated with attitudes conducive to economic growth. Orrin Judd will like that one.

Black community leaders don't want their kids going to all-black schools. I can't say I blame them.

Chris Brand turns a cynical eye on claims that relationships between younger teenage girls and older men must always be a bad thing.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It deals with some technical questions about how best to measure differences in people’s personalities.

Michael Darby documents more bungling in the government-run railway system of Australia’s largest State.

The Wicked one has a laugh at the “black” college degrees produced by Affirmative Action and gives three reasons why talk radio is Rightist.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of reading.

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LEFTIST “BIG LIES” AND THE “STOLEN GENERATION”

The CounterRevolutionary has recently argued (with obvious truth) that what influence Leftists have stems from their being better at propaganda rather than from their capacity to deliver desirable results. He argues therefore that conservatives should do more to press their arguments rather than just respond to Leftist claims. He is undoubtedly right but I think that conservatives will never be as good at propaganda because we do not have the Leftist’s carelessness about the truth.

The greatest triumph of the Leftist “big lie” technique in recent times would have to be the way they have persuaded almost everyone that Hitler was a Rightist when he was in fact one of them -- an extreme socialist. He was to the Right of Stalin but that is about all.

But there are many smaller examples of successful Leftist deception and the “stolen generation” story in Australia is one of them. The story is that wicked white racists early in the 20th century tore black children out of their mothers’ arms and farmed them out to cruel white foster parents to be brought up in white ways rather than in black ways.

The truth is that it was white do-gooders and social workers just like the Leftists of today who ran the programme concerned. The children concerned were all half-castes (of partly white ancestry) and the wiseheads of the day felt that “for their own good” such children would have “a better chance” if they were brought up in white families. Like the Leftists of today, the “welfare” workers of that time felt that they knew what was best for other people -- regardless of what the people concerned might want. Disgusting!

But to this day most Australians believe it was all just racism -- with no awareness of the do-gooder motivation for it all.

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ANTISEMITISM AMONG THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

There is an interesting account here of the prevalence of antisemitic beliefs among members of the US Christian Right. I think it is wise to keep this phenomenon in proportion, however. As the article also points out, the same people are often among the strongest supporters of Israel. In this they differ greatly from the antisemites of the Left who want to destroy Israel.

The Judaic religions (Judaism+Christianity+Islam) all tend to the view that their particular sect is the one and only possessor of the truth. So anybody of the "wrong" sect will tend to be condemned. So while Protestant fundamentalists may condemn Jews for their "wrong" beliefs, they would also condemn (say) Catholics with at least as much fervour -- because Catholic beliefs are "wrong" too.

At least Christian fundamentalists have usually evolved beyond the stage where they physically attack people with the "wrong" beliefs -- unlike Muslim fundamentalists.

And as for the anti-Israel attitudes of the current Pope -- well he IS a Pole. The Poles were generally delighted to help the Nazis round up the Polish Jews during World War II.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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MORE GRIEF FOR THE GREENIES

I noted some days ago that young Australians are less Green than their elders and also noted that, from what my 15-year-old son tells me, the kids get so much pro-Green and pro-black propaganda these days that it bores them silly and they react against it. I also see now that Tech Central Station has a name for the the young people concerned: "South Park Republicans"

The Swedish Greens have at last woken up to the fact that most recycling is in fact wasteful of energy and other resources and so are now OPPOSING recycling. (If the article fails to load, Instapundit has a big extract here)

Details here of just how ridiculous and wrong-headed recycling is. Here's just one little excerpt:

We are not running out of trees or forests. America has three-and-one-half times more forest land today than it had in 1920. America is growing 22 million new acres of forest annually while harvesting but 15 million acres, for a net gain of 7 million acres each year.

A classic article by SLATE magazine's economics columnist Steven Landsburg on "Why I am not an environmentalist". And the subtitle is: The Science of Economics Versus the Religion of Ecology. Excerpt:

The naive environmentalism of my daughter's preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism. The antidote to bad religion is good science. The antidote to astrology is the scientific method, the antidote to naive creationism is evolutionary biology, and the antidote to naive environmentalism is economics.

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OTHER READING

Chris Brand discusses the present state of the nature/nurture debate.

The Wicked one tells is what a vague and wimpish character Abraham Lincoln was and how little respect he had from those who knew him.

Michael Darby has a rather horrifying story about how a white tourist was treated by black Zimbabwean “police”.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It deals with the rather hilarious claim made by Leftist psychologists to the effect that conservatives are too pro-authority. The paper shows that there is in fact no such thing as a general attitude to authority -- i.e. approving of one type of authority does not mean that you will therefore approve of other types of authority.

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DEMOCRACY NATURAL?

A recent book by Rubin is summarized by a reviewer as arguing that:

Autocratic society violates human nature for most of those who belong to it and therefore is inherently unstable. Rubin also argues, however, that libertarianism is unstable because it entails extremes of individuality that equally violate evolved human tendencies and thus cause social breakdown.

And the conclusion from that is that the compromise represented by modern democracy best suits human nature.

That may be a comforting conclusion but I think one of the assumptions is wrong. The plain historical fact is that human beings have almost always lived under a tyranny of some sort. Ancient Athens emerged from tyranny for about 100 years and then self-destructed and the Roman republic was never more than an oligarchy until it too became an empire. And the supremacy of Parliament in England dates only from 1649. So if autocracy is against human nature we have had an amazing amount of it. Some governments of the past were more consultative than others but there was almost always a king, Pharaoh, emperor or the like running the show.

I think it is much more obvious to argue that autocracy is what in general comes naturally and the love of big government exhibited by Leftists is the modern-day evidence of that inclination.

So modern democracy is in fact a painfully learned lesson in overcoming human nature that only a minority of humankind seem to have learned to this day. Human nature is powerful and I would be the last to underestimate it but it is not a straitjacket. Wearing clothes is not natural but we all do it. Let’s hope that we will all also practice democracy one day.

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A CONFUSED GREENIE

There is an interview with a rather confused "feminist critic" of environmentalism here. She rightly sees people-hating impulses at work among the Greens and says that is Right-wing. Then she endorses the optimistic perspectives of free market anti-Green economist Julian Simon. So Left is Right and Right is Left to her. Maybe she has been converted to conservatism but has not realized it yet.

It was whilst trying to debunk Simon's work that Green heretic Lomborg realised Simon may after all be correct. For more on Simon see here. The story of Simon's influence on Lomborg is here

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MORE GREENIE NEWS

Hooray! Exposing Greenie dishonesty works! After a lot of publicity of their lies, the Greenies in Brazil have given up opposing nuclear power (the safest, cleanest and cheapest form of energy generation there is) and new nuclear power stations are now being built there. Via Aaron Oakley.

Hooray again! It looks like Russia too will refuse to ratify the nutty Kyoto “Greenhouse” treaty. Death knell! Via Country Store

There are two quality articles here and here from the CIS detailing the growing threat of old fashioned trade protectionism disguised as new fashioned environmentalism.

Dioxin has long been one of the great Greenie swear-words. All sorts of health disasters have been blamed on it and anything that produces dioxin is supposed to bring us all a slow and painful death -- and deform our babies too, of course. But it has just been discovered that the peat fires that the Scots and Irish have used for millennia to keep themselves warm in winter also give off lots of dioxin! How awful for those poor Scots and Irish! They must not realize how ill and deformed they are.

And it does look like the poor old Greenies are gradually having global warming chipped away from them too. Note this:

Data compiled from the journals of early Arctic explorers casts doubt on the assumption that recent thinning of Arctic ice is the result of human-induced climate change. Via Cronaca.

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OTHER READING

When the US attacks Iraq, could it spare a few bombs for Riyadh? The way the Saudis torture Westerners to extract false confessions puts them in much the same league as Saddam. A lovely lot, those Arabs.

Revealed Truth thinks that the current Leftist hatred of the Jews may be motivated by a feeling of betrayal. Minorities are supposed to be uniformly Leftist.

Chris Brand notes some encouraging signs of realism among Muslims.

The Wicked one has had a couple of good jokes lately.

Michael Darby has a link to the persecution of Christians by Moslems and another report on the incompetence of a government-run railway

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I show that middle-America tends to be “authoritarian” in the sense used by psychologists but also point out that this essentially means no more than that middle-Americans have old-fashioned values.

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THE NAZIS ARE BACK -- AND STILL ON THE LEFT

This article by David Brooks -- already noted on Israpundit -- must be one of the saddest articles I have read for a long time. An old and cruel folly has roared back into life. Although I am an atheist with not a shred of Jewish ancestry, I have been writing on antisemitism for over 30 years (e.g. Ray, 1972). When I started out, antisemitism was vestigial and no Leftist in the Western world would have a bar of it but now it really is a major phenomenon on the Left worldwide -- including the “liberals” of the USA. The battle with irrationality is unceasing, I am afraid.

Just listen to this bit of poison from Yale university:

But does the prevalence of Jews in American media, business and politics help explain America's steadfast support for Israel, whose 35-year occupation of Palestinian lands is an affront to human decency? Of course.

It’s Hitler’s “National Socialism” all over again. That a decent person of any religion might support a people trying to defend itself against persecution, outside military attacks and internal terrorism is obviously beyond the ken of the hate-filled writer (Sahm Adrangi).

Reference:
Ray, J.J. (1972) Is antisemitism a cognitive simplification? Some observations on Australian Neo-Nazis. Jewish Journal of Sociology 15, 207-213.

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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LEFTIST CHILD-HATERS

An appalling quote from a Feminazi professor who objected to her female colleagues taking leave to have babies:

"Having babies is a choice -- already, people who have babies are getting tax breaks, getting hugely discounted insurance (forcing those more reproductively responsible to subsidise them), and often getting to slack off work for some 15 years using children as an excuse to reschedule meetings and avoid heavy committee work. This is NOT a women's issue -- it is a matter concerning a specific group of people taking advantage of the rest of their department."

More here

Who does she think will support here in her old age through their taxes? Those selfsame people who are now babies. If everybody was "reproductively responsible" in her sense, she would die of hunger and disease in her old age -- and justly so.

Speaking of feminism, I am no feminist but I do like and respect women so I would have a strong urge to put a .50 calibre slug through the guy in this picture.

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HUMAN SHIELD MOTIVATION

A good summary of "human shield" motivation below:

Hi, I'm Special Ed and I'm a human shield. I come from a country with many freedoms and opportunities, all of which I take for granted. I suffer from a God complex, low self-esteem, a desperate need to feel better about myself at the expense of others and I crave attention like a three year old. I feel the need to take time out from my job and leave my family so that I may deny you - the Iraqi people - the same freedoms and opportunities I do not appreciate in my own country. I am committed to preserving Saddam Hussein's brutal and oppressive regime. Why? Because I'm a socialist and I know what is best for the Iraqi people.

From The Ville (Post of 26th)

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THE "PEACE" MARCHERS

Spiked argues that the British "peace" marchers are not interested in peace or anything else much. They are simply alienated -- they do not trust government or politicians. The anti-government factor does help explain why there are some antiwar conservatives and libertarians.

But The Tocquevillian thinks that the American peaceniks are just the old Communist-sympathizers revived.

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OTHER READING

There is an article here on the Left's 'unholy alliance' with Islamic extremism

Anti-business bureaucrats have twisted Bill Clinton's medical leave law so that you can now take sick-leave for all sorts of minor ailments and still have your job protected.

Who says there is free speech in America? Not at Michigan State University, there’s not. How can someone in the US get a criminal record for doing something that is protected by the US Constitution? I would really like to know. And particularly since blacks can do exactly the same thing with impunity. America sure is a classically racist society. There is one law for whites and another for blacks. It’s a mockery of justice.

Chris Brand thinks that “paedophile” Roman Polanski has done no harm and that better nutrition can prevent a lot of crime.

Michael Darby has a reflection on socialism being inimical to families.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I again review Altemeyer’s claims about Right-wing authoritarianism -- this time in the context of the overall lack of a scientific orientation among modern academic psychologists.

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ENGLAND OR THE USA?

Over at England's Sword there is quite a good debate going on in the Comments about whether the USA or England is the better place to live. I have spent time in all the English-speaking countries and my first preference is Australia (my country of birth) but after that I choose England. The US is clearly better off in almost every material respect but I just LIKE England better -- mainly because it is a much more relaxed place, I think. Also, I think that the English have by far the best patriotic songs (I am listening to an infinite loop of "Jerusalem" as I write this). On the other hand, I think that the greatest and truest gentleman who has ever lived is an American -- Ronald Reagan.

Some thoughts from others on the countries concerned ....

In the UK, one snowflake is enough to bring the country to a standstill.

There is a good article from Britain on the stupidity of America-bashing here

Gregory Hlatky has an interesting post on how much more Fascist Europe is when compared to the USA.

"Damn Americans. . . . I hate those bastards." The words of a "liberal" Canadian member of Parliament. What is that if it is not left-wing racism? And a particularly stupid form of racism at that. More here.

There is a fun article here which argues that instead of making Britain's House of Lords less hereditary, it should be made WHOLLY hereditary. He makes a good case too.

Interesting impressions of a newcomer to Southern California here. I had similar impressions when I first went there over 25 years ago.

Chomsky's virulent hatred of America has apparently made him insane. He actually says "East Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise" More here.

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LEFTIST DENIAL OF REALITY

Freelance Radical has some interesting ideas about:

Why people might become ignorant liberal-lefty's:

DENIAL

These are individuals who so deeply desire to never become identified with any form of aggression, that they'll dissociate themselves from its reality and completely deny its existence in an attempt to perceive themselves, others, and the rest of the world, as being tolerant, peace-loving, and rational. It's a really sad and ironic truth, however, that their unwillingness [when confronted with aggression] to assert their own authority, while at the same time curtailing that of others, causes the proliferation of that very same evil aggression they so much abhor.

FEAR

People who spent their childhood with parents who were either violent, psychotic, or both, would be unable to admit to themselves, when young, that they were at the mercy of adults they could not trust. Acknowledging this violence or craziness as being real, could invoke such catastrophic fear in a child, that it might literally be unable to survive. So it blinds itself to what its parent really is. But this blinding terror continues to operate long after such people have become adults, making them unable [or unwilling] to acknowledge similar truths in the real-life world of political matters.

BELONGING

For many people, life is boring and nobody seems to care about anything too much and so they get kinda depressed just getting up in the morning. That is, until they decide to join the anti-war crowd and suddenly they're part of a group, a gang, an organization, and they've got a "home" and others care about where they go and how they'll get there and they're invited to join a bus trip, a flight to another city, a sign-making group, discussion forums, strategy planners.......wow!! life is no longer boring and they don't want this to end - not ever - and so, these liberal-lefty anti-war marchers have zero interest in ever finding out about any political truth that might ruin their new-found sense of belonging!

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UNIVERSITY ANTISEMITISM

There is often a temptation among right-wingers to think, "Why can't this problem of anti-Semitism just go away? It's such a distraction from more vital concerns." But the problem is, as much as you would like it to, the problem of anti-Semitism doesn't go away, and if you ignore it, it just gets worse. Furthermore, as cannot be said often enough, the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine. When a society starts veering into moral nihilism, the first target is almost always the Jews. But they're only the first target.

More here

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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OTHER READING

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I expose the almost bovine stupidity of a famous Leftist psychologist who tries to pin authoritarianism onto conservatives.

Chris Brand has more on C.R.A.C.K. and Britain's ethnic problems.

The Wicked one tries to explain the popularity of Hitler in British schools.

Michael Darby has a retort to John "Third Reich" Pilger.

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CHIRAC IS JUST BEING FRENCH

The French have always hated the way “inferior” British and now American culture has been so influential worldwide. They think that “Gloire” (glory) should always belong primarily to France. So they have always been very prone to lumping together the despised British and Americans as “The Anglo-Saxons” -- even though US/UK co-operation has been far from complete in the past (e.g. in two world wars, the Suez invasion and Vietnam). They even call Kofi Annan an Anglo-Saxon because he speaks English! Now that the co-operation between Britain and America has really become as whole-hearted as the French always pretended it was, that really frustrates them -- hence their present efforts to obstruct the “Anglo-Saxon” attack on Iraq.

My favourite Professor has published a defence of French military prowess. He has to go a long way back to find much to say about victories, however, and his idea that Napoleon was defeated only by superior numbers is way-off. Napoleon was defeated by his misjudgment of Russian resolve and the Russian winter and it was his hesitancy that lost him the battle at Waterloo. Napoleon was his own worst enemy. And he wasn’t French anyhow. His native language was a form of Italian. And William the conqueror may have spoken French but his immediate ancestry was Norse (Viking).

There is a nice anti-French poster here that would look good on a lot of websites

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“FRANKENSTEIN” SCIENCE

This is the sort of thing that would have Greenies frothing at the mouth. How DARE our scientists gaily produce such “unnatural” organisms. Should be a law ....

“I recently heard a presentation on this crazy guy, Peter Schultz, who has engineered bacteria to use para-aminophenylalanine instead of amber codons. The bacteria synthesize para-phenylalanine, have a para-phenylalanine tRNA synthetase, and and insert it with very high fidelity whenever the amber codon is found. The amber codon, which causes the ribosome to stop reading the mRNA when it's found, is apparently quite rare, and because bacterial mRNAs aren't as processed as eukaryotic ones, the bacteria get along quite well. I was thinking it would be really keen to make a series of mutants, each of which incorporated a different D-amino acid instead of the L version. Then, analysis of the structures of the D tRNA synthetases, of the ribosome translating the codon, and of the resulting protein could contribute a little information towards answering why we use all L amino acids.

More here. That a better understanding of all life will come from people doing this sort of thing would not worry a Greenie. They want to take us all back to a primitive past anyway.

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IRAQ

The latest claim that British Prime Minister Tony Blair is losing support for war on Iraq is nicely answered here.

Just a reminder here of what the American military freed the Afghans from. And some good news about what Afghanistan is like now.

There is a good site here that spells out the comparison between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler.

Antiwar protesters are animated by a deep dislike of George Bush. They don’t like his mannerisms, his haircut, his use of the word “evil”. In short, they dislike his style . . . and for this they are willing to march in defense of fascism incarnate, chant infantile rhymes in public, and chain themselves to Iraqi military installations. From Invisible Hand -- who backs up his argument with lots of quotes from what Leftists have been saying. I think he has a point. The Left really can be that infantile.

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OTHER READING

Today’s academic paper from my past is here and deals with the fact that many people who answer questionnaires will say “Yes” to anything. Ways of dealing with this problem are analysed but it is pointed out that many psychologists simply ignore the problem -- making their survey results pretty meaningless.

Lovely! America’s Nation Organization of [Leftist] Women tried to get anti-abortion protesters sent to jail for protesting! Free speech anyone? Not if Leftists have their way! Fortunately the Supreme Court has just knocked that attempt on the head. (Article requires free registration)

The USA seems to be in danger of banning all cloning. Charles Murtaugh bravely battles the vast ignorance so frequently expressed on this subject and makes a good case for allowing at least some forms of scientific research on the subject to proceed.

Orrin Judd reproduces another wonderful speech by Ronald Reagan -- whom Orrin refers to simply as “The man”.

Michael Darby has a review of the situation in Zimbabwe

Chris Brand has an excerpt of a news report about some controversial help being given to drug addicted mothers in the USA.

The Wicked one has some fun with Korean names and New Zealand TV.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit here instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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MY ACADEMIC PAST

In my now rather distant past I taught psychology for two years and sociology for 12 years at major Australian universities. During that time I did a lot of research and that research resulted in my getting over 250 papers published in the academic journals. In the age of Google and the internet, however, very few people -- even academics -- now read academic journals. I am therefore in the weeks ahead going to be putting up my old academic papers on Blogspot in the faint hope of introducing them to a wider audience. I have always tried to write even my academic papers in as jargon-free a way as possible so I live in some hope that there may be many outside the universties who can follow what I have written.

The paper I have just put up here asks about the relationship between ambition and anxiety. If you are an axious sort of person does that mean that you are also ambitious or does anxiety make you less ambitious? Or are the two unconnected? (statistician’s jargon for “unconnected” is “orthogonal”). Have fun (I hope)!

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FROGGY MATTERS

The Wicked one point out that the French have despised Americans for at least a century.

This article by Semmens points out that giving the U.N. a power of veto over American war plans for Iraq amounts to giving Jacques Chirac a veto and points out what an unsavoury character he is to be wielding any veto.

Prominent British Conservative politician David Davis thinks that if Scotland and Wales can have a parliament of their own in addition to seats at Westminster then there should be a wholly English parliament too. Logical. If the USA, Germany, India, Australia and Canada can have successful Federal systems, why not England too? Let's leave centralism to the French.

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THOSE NAUGHTY GENES

Another good article by Steve Sailer in reply to the Leftist claim that "science" shows there is no such thing as race. Leftists really are brilliant at ignoring the evidence in front of their eyes.

There is a fairly scandalous story here about the repeated misuse of DNA evidence by government prosecutors. Be afraid!

Eugenics lives! Genetic screening has now all but eliminated an awful hereditary disease. Via Steve Sailer.

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AFFIRMATIVE RACISM

Hello Bloggy takes a swipe at the argument that affirmative action benefits us all.

Chris Brand points to the idiocy and injustice of affirmative action in British universities.

One of my correspondents (a medical specialist) writes to me:

"Of great amusement to me are the leftist doctors that crusade for "better access to care" for "underpriveleged Blacks" - clearly racially profiling - but encourage you not to say "The patient was a 25 year old Black male with a gunshot wound to the chest" etc. because "race isn't relevant" to the discussion of the patient."

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LEFTIST MOTIVATION

A good line from SpicedSass: "Probably why the Whores of Hollywood are so symbiotic with liberalism. They all specialize in creative lying."

Is this the ultimate Leftist distortion of history? "And did you ever think about the socialist revolution in France that was crushed by D-Day because the socialists were fighting off the Nazis single-handedly?" Via Layman's Logic. Again we see Leftists ignoring reality in favour of their dream-world.

A recent documentary about Cuba showed that you can shove facts and reality right down the throats of Leftists and it just makes them angry. They prefer their preconceptions to the truth. Their ego is so bound up with them being right and everybody else wrong that they just do not WANT facts. Via Aaron Oakley.

A famous Heinlein quote: The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. That does just about sum up the Left/Right division these days.

Michael Darby notes all the things that the "peace" demonstrators do NOT demonstrate about. "Compassion not included" seems to be their motto.

This article points out that Leftist guru Robert Fisk realizes that the liberation of Iraq will be welcomed by Iraquis but still hates it because it will be done by Americans. Great hatyers, those Leftists.

Amax gives Leftie columnist Philip Adams a big blast for the dishonesty of his criticisms. Things that are bad in GWB are OK in Saddam, for instance.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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THE AIDS VACCINE AND BLACKS

I am rather pleased that the news about there being a really good vaccine against AIDS that works with blacks only has got a lot of coverage. See here and here. What surprises me a little is that most people seem to be unable to explain the finding. It seems to me that there is an obvious evolutionary explanation: AIDS is said to originate with West African monkeys and to have been passed to man by West African blacks killing monkeys and eating them. American negroes originate from West Africa. Fill in the gaps.

In case the gap answers are not obvious, let me point out: AIDS is not fatal to everyone and the survivors of it over the millennia would therefore have tended to spread the genes that promoted survival throughout the West African population. So presumably most West Africans need only a little help to beat AIDS -- and the vaccine gives them that little bit of extra help.

That’s probably an oversimplified explanation but I suspect that it starts us off in the right direction. One of many possible questions would be: Is HIV a recent mutation or something that has been around for thousands of years? Lots of people think the latter but it would actually make more sense if it were a recent mutation so that inherited immunity to its predecessors was only weakly helpful with the present mutation.

The Leftists are frantically panning the whole study, of course, with the usual comment being “the numbers are too small”. But the fact that the results among blacks were statistically significant at the <.01 level means precisely that the result was NOT the outcome of small sample size. Anyway, if I were a black gay, I would be wanting that vaccine NOW!

Note that findings of medically-relevant differences between the major races are not at all new.

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MORE PROBLEMS FOR GREENIES

The Baltic Sea has the most extensive ice cover in decades. Oh Dear! Where has all that nice global warming gone?

A nasty one for the Greenies: Using a dishwasher may be be better for the environment than washing up by hand!

The prophets of doom were telling us that the world was in danger of global cooling not so long ago!

Young Australians are less Green than their elders. Aaron Oakley thinks it might be because all reasonable Greenie demands have now been met. From what my 15-year-old son tells me, however, the kids get so much pro-Green and pro-black propaganda that it bores them silly and they react against it.

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OUR DELIGHTFUL PRIMITIVES

Ever since Rousseau, Leftists have tended to romanticize primitive people and their religions and say how much better and wiser they are/were than modern man. The Maya of Central America were once an example of such puffery. But note what one historian says now that Maya writing has been deciphered: "decipherment transformed the Maya, once thought to be unusually peace-loving, into one the most vicious and violent of all ancient cultures, one delighting in torture and human sacrifice". But Leftists would like such behaviour anyway. Look at Stalin. Western Leftists defended him until the day he died -- and then some.

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ELSEWHERE

This gave me a laugh: The French Foreign minister (Villepin) has written that Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo "shines with an aura worthy of victory". With a wacko like that in charge of French foreign policy, no wonder the USA is having trouble with France. The Corsican was a clown at Waterloo anyway. He used no strategy -- just a frontal attack -- and waited until lunchtime to advance. If he had moved before dawn (like many before him) he would probably have won.

Better Living Through Software has put a nasty spin on Red Ken's London congestion charge. His version is:

But the way I see it, here is what happened -- traffic was bad, and someone had the brilliant idea "things would be a lot better if we pass a law that says poor people are not allowed to use the roads" -- and they passed a law.

That should cause some heartburn among Red Ken's supporters if it gets bruited about.

The sad story about the kid who reached 4th grade without being able to read shows that if equality is enforced, achievement becomes irrelevant -- so his teachers were simply obeying the stupid Leftist system they were in.

Chris Brand has quotations from several scholars to the effect that inherited IQ has a big influence on where you end up in the British social class scheme.

Michael Darby says it is all about oil money for the French and Germans and that they have no conscience.

The Wicked one has a good Jewish joke.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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A SIMPLE STATEMENT ABOUT IRAQ

The “It’s all about oil” mantra does seem to feed off a genuine incomprehension among many people about why the US is going to war with Iraq. So let me put it in one simple sentence that maybe will get through to the confused ones: The forthcoming Iraq war is a defensive war -- to protect the US from further terrorist acts like 9/11 by keeping dangerous weapons out of the hand of the Islamic lunatics. I hope that helps someone.

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THE GORILLA ARAFAT

An interesting but exceedingly optimistic view from a Leftist U.S. blogger:

The problem is that Arafat is an 800 lb. criminal gorilla. He has to go, as he PERSONALLY benefits from the status quo to a degree that dwarfs anything on the Israeli side. If a deal can be worked out with Israel's sponsors in Washington that, because of Arafat's longstanding simpatico relationship with SADDAM HUSSEIN, Israel has full cover to remove him and Fatah, and then implement the rest of Mitzna's agenda, we will see a political resolution of the "Israeli-Palestinian crisis" within one year

(Crossposted on Israpundit)

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GREENIES HATE THEIR HERETICS

Tim Gillin writes:

Lomborg is not the first heretic to be sent to coventry by the green faithful. This older post by former Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore shows an earlier incident in the campaign.

Moore's heresy is his belief that "the sustainable economy" beloved by environmentalists needs a forestry industry and green campaigns against foresty, especially clearcutting in old growth forests, do more harm than good.

To add insult to injury he has pointed out that "clearcuts", a photogenic eyesore that is a moral sin to the greens, of themselves, are no more environmentally damaging in the long run than the various 'natural' calamities that forests take in their stride. The attempt to equate clearcutting with deforestation is misleading propaganda. Clearcutting is a forest management technique that can be used destructively or as part of sustainable management strategy. 'Deforestation' only occurs when the natural forest cover is not permitted to grow back usually due to farming.

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A COLOUR PROBLEM

Tim Gillin writes about the latest caper of Australia's "multicultural" bureaucrats:

This is a bit odd and may upset your Irish ancestors:

The organisers want everyone to wear orange to celebrate harmony day. Orange is said to represent the Australian sun. Considering maybe 20-25% of Australia's population are of southern Irish descent this seems to be a lapse in the bureaucracy's ethnic sensitivity radar. Would they dare suggest we wear 'white' to represent the colour of crashing waves? Why not recommend the colours of the Aussie flag or our sporting colours instead? My own views on this derive from this old Top 40 song.

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ELSEWHERE

Dr Weevil thinks that the antisemitism of the modern-day Left will be electoral suicide for them. I hope he is right.

Michael Miller has just put up a whole swag of new stuff on his “Hitler was a Leftist” site. He has had quite a few hits for a site that has been up for only 2 or 3 weeks.

Leftist twit, Eric Alterman, has just made a flying visit to Europe to find out if it is anti-American or not. His conclusion?? Surprise, Surprise!! He says that they are not anti-American, just anti-Bush. He even seems to think the French are not anti-American. The French are anti-everyone non-French!

Bleeding Brain says of the French: “Their selfish motives for attempting to preserve Saddam Hussein are absolutely inexcusable. And there is much, much more ....

Wow! Ken Livingstone's congestion charge on London roads is not the only bit of Friedmanite thinking surfacing on the British Left. Stephen Pollard points to lots of other Friedmanite thinking in the British Labour Party. The sensible Left in Britain seems to be growing. Maybe the loonies will soon be marginalized.

There is a BIG post at Critical Mass about the utter destruction that has been wreaked on black education at high school level by affirmative action. Leftist tolerance and lack of any standards has meant a total betrayal of black students -- giving them virtually no education at all. Leftist dishonesty really is immensely destructive wherever it is allowed to prevail.

A good post at Tobacco Road that begins: "If today's Democrats had been in power during World War II they would have opposed the Manhattan Project... “

Michael Darby has some comments on the disgraceful state of child protection services in New South Wales and some moral thoughts from Eddie Cross in Zimbabwe about what history indicates for the future of the Mugabe regime.

Chris Brand has a post on the importance of general intelligence.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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“GERMANIC”, “TEUTONIC” AND THE JEWS

In my various postings about the sources or alleged sources of the respect for individual liberty that characterizes the English-speaking nations, I have often referred to what I take to be the ancient Anglo-Saxon sources of such attitudes and have referred to such attitudes as “Germanic” -- on the perfectly undisputed grounds that the Angles and the Saxons were a German-speaking people when they arrived in England 1500 years ago.

The word “Germanic” has troublesome resonances for many people, however. It sounds to them like Hitler. They ask: Is what I am saying not reminscent of Nazi doctrines of German racial superiority? Am I not attributing at least one type of superiority to Germans just by reason of their being German?

In response I have to say that I have been a student of the Nazi phenomenon for most of my adult life and have even written several papers for Jewish journals about it but I still do not know what Hitler thought was Germanic. On my reading he had no clear idea at all: Just confused and contradictory utterances from time to time. He was in fact much more vocal about being Aryan than being Germanisch. So it is difficult to show that my ideas are dissimilar to Hitler's without knowing exactly what his ideas were. His speeches are raves rather than anything consistent.

I guess, however, that the one lesson he would NOT draw from German history is precisely the one that I DO draw: That the German spirit is inimical to tyranny and in favour of individual liberty. I think it is fairly clear at least that individual liberty was not one of his priorities. So does that not make me ANTI-Nazi? I think it does.

But why should I even try to make such distinctions between my arguments and Hitler’s? I do not really see why a rational debate should be distracted by irrelevant comparisons with a populist demogogue. On the other hand, I do not like to give needless offence so I am making this clarification.

Actually, I should probably have been using the word “Teutonic” instead of “Germanic” as it is clear that everything I have so far said about the Anglo-Saxons is equally true (if not more so) of the Scandinavians. Those Vikings were certainly an individualistic, independent and decentralized lot! They also treated women more or less as equals and have a great history of democracy. The oldest continuously sitting parliament in the world is in fact the Althing of Iceland -- with a history going back 1,000 years. And Scandinavians are almost 100% Protestant too -- which fits with a spirit of independence and individualism.

As to Jewry, I no more believe in Jewish conspiracy theories than I believe in the man in the moon. I will leave such beliefs to the simple-minded of both political extremes. I am and always have been, however, an unapologetic and unreserved supporter of Israel. But I hope nonetheless that I have the sort of balanced view of the Jews that one should have of any group -- seeing both strengths and weaknesses. I think that Jews in general are a remarkable and admirable people but I do not think that they are right about everything and I think that their historic collectivist doctrine that they are a "chosen people" has been both a blessing and a curse to them.

And insofar as Christians have adopted such “groupthink” it has been a dubious influence among them too. Fortunately, St. Paul (a Jew) initially set Christianity on a much more inclusive path that that adopted by Jews before him so group consciousness has not had such good precedents among Christians. The way both Catholics and Protestants have engaged in persecution of those not of their faith does however show that religious groupthink is far from absent among Christians.

Interestingly, both modern Jews and ancient Jews have always been fractious and disunited so Jews could be an inspiration to those who OPPOSE collectivist thinking if we looked at what they did rather than what their religion preaches!

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ELSEWHERE

Shiny Happy Gulag (from Canada) has some good posts up at the moment -- from quoting Nye Bevan at the French to throwing the Swedish example at Canadian socialized medicine.

Now that China is blocking Blogspot again, this graphic is pretty appropriate.

Here is someone who regrets trying “alternative” therapy. Via Secular Blasphemy.

This is a good one for animal lovers: A cockatoo that attacked intruders and led to their conviction for murder. Via Betsy’s Page.

Marc Miyake has an amusing link to what is now regarded as politically correct speech. Apparently it is hard these days to speak of your own grandmother without offending against political correctness!

The Curmudgeon has moved house on the net and has some very funny news headlines up at the moment.

That oldtime British actress and all-purpose Leftist agitator, Vanessa Redgrave, has proposed her solution to the Iraq problem: Declare Saddam Hussein a war criminal and bring him before the International Criminal Court. She does not say how we might get him there, however. You couldn’t call that thinking, but that’s Leftism for you. Via Conservative Commentary.

Useful Fools has a link to a NYT article about “Ethnomathematics”. Marc Miyake was heaping scorn on “Hawaiian” mathematics a few months ago but the nonsense goes on.

Michael Darby has some thoughts on the nature of government intelligence-gathering plus a horrible story from Zimbabwe.

Chris Brand looks at the basic questions about the nature of IQ or ‘g”

The Wicked one has a couple of good jokes up.

OUSTING SADDAM

Winds of Change has some detailed strategy for how the Iraq war should be fought.

The Infidel reports an Australian Leftist parliamentarian who defends Saddam's use of poison gas against his own people -- babies included. Lovely!

A good spoof here on the Belgian unwillingness to bring Saddam to heel.

Only 28% of Britons think: "It's all about oil". More here.

Spiked has an amusing article called “DON’T MENTION THE ‘U’ WORD”. Summary: “In an age when unilateralism is out, Western powers pursue their agendas under the guise of an increasingly fictitious 'international community'.”

For those who have not seen it already, the WSJ has a fabulous article in support of unilateral military intervention from a most unlikely source. Consistency is NOT a Leftist virtue!

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MORE GREENIE NONSENSE

According to lots of experts quoted in this article, climate science is in its infancy and any global warming observed has many possible explanations others than greenhouse gases resulting from human activity. In other words, the science of the matter is a big: "Don't know". "Greenhouse" is just guesswork, in other words. So we should spend billions of dollars and change virtually everything we do on the basis of something as unknown as that? Only a Greenie would think so.

The UN Panel on Climate Change uses a computer model to predict global warming. Another choice prediction from the same model: The average income of South Africans will have overtaken that of Americans by a very wide margin by the end of the century. In fact America's per capita income will then have been surpassed not only by South Africa's, but also by that of other emerging economic powerhouses, including Algeria, Argentina, Libya, Turkey and North Korea... And that's the sort of wacko "science" the Greenies are relying on! Great predictions! More here.

Greenies are trying to stop starving Africans from getting US food aid because American food (which Americans eat with no ill-effects) is genetically modified. How to explain such cruel behaviour? Easy. Greenies hate people anyway so who cares about a few million Africans starving to death? Not the Greenies. Greenie religion trumps compassion every time.

The British government’s Environment Minister thinks that people are a “virus” infecting the Earth and that we are all on the brink of a vast ecological disaster. Greenies have of course been saying that for decades -- with no evidence in sight -- but it is a bit weird coming from a government minister. Mick Hume thinks that he might get the boot shortly.

There is an excellent listing of the large number of ways in which Environmentalism functions as a religion here. Via Bizarre Science

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ELSEWHERE

My post on whether Christianity had any role in fostering the respect for individual liberty that characterizes the Anglo-Saxon nations drew a few emails in response. I have just posted one particularly interesting correspondence here.

Orrin Judd has reproduced a fabulous and historic speech from the Gipper (scroll down).

Michael Miller has put together a site devoted to spelling out the various ways in which Nazism was Leftist. I have contributed a couple of articles to it. The site is still under development but there is already a lot of interesting stuff up there.

GASP! The British press has identfied two rapists as BLACK! How politically incorrect! No doubt protests will ensue.

A pretty disturbing report here about how police laziness leads to murderers not being caught. Sherlock Holmes they are not.

Arlene Peck thinks that the USA should now let Europe sink or swim -- by withdrawing troops from all countries that have recently shown themselves as anti-American. See here I think there would be widespread agreement with that.

Jesus Gil has an excellent site for reporting what is going on in the Spanish-speaking world. But one of his posts of 20th you should NOT read.

Michael Darby has some thoughts on Australian Muslims in the aftermath of the Bali bombing.

Chris Brand looks at the history of ways in which we describe the personalities of people that we encounter.

China Hand says investment in coastal China is going gangbusters but that investment inland is held up by corrupt local officials.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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CHRISTIANITY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY

The English-speaking world in general and conservatives in particular have always been characterized by a strong respect for the individual and for individual liberties. Christians often attribute this to the influence of Christian teachings despite the fact that Christianity is far from peculiar to Anglo-Saxon countries. When this is pointed out, they often admit that what they really mean is the influence of Protestant Christianity in particular. The idea that Catholics are not really Christian is very common among Protestants.

But both Protestantism and Catholicism have in the past been fiercely intolerant and, as such, resolute enemies of individual liberty. Whether it be John Calvin (who, with Luther, was one of the founding fathers of Protestantism) burning the scientist Servetus at the stake, the forbidding Puritans of Cromwell's Protectorate or the antisemitic writings of Luther himself, no-one can say that Protestants are totally different from the very holy Catholics of the Spanish Inquisition or such products of a good Catholic education as Adolf Hitler. All forms of Christianity appear to have within in them much of the intolerance that characterized the "jealous God" of the Jews (Exodus 20:5).

And not much has changed in recent times. Would anyone like to read this story from Rwanda and still tell me that Christianity, by itself, leads to respect for the individual? Or do we need some other instincts of Northern European origin as well? The Rwanda story is about some pretty fervent Christians. Excerpt:

Elizaphan Ntakirutimana and his son Gerard were accused of herding large groups of Tutsi men, women and children into a church and hospital compound in the Kibuye region of western Rwanda in 1994 and then calling Hutus to come and kill them. The 78-year-old Seventh Day Adventist pastor was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide.

The example is merely illustrative of course. The underlying point is that Africans everywhere are commonly enthusiastic Christians whilst also being characterized as a group by extremely high rates of violent crime, including murder. So looking to Christianity or even Protestant Christianity (Seventh Day Adventism is a very Protestant sect in many ways) for a sole explanation of the greater respect for individual rights among peoples of Anglo-Saxon origin runs up against both historical and sociological evidence to the contrary.

It is then the fact that Protestantism became the characteristic religion of the Anglo-Saxon peoples -- with their ancient pre-existing non-religious respect for the individual -- that made it a force for tolerance rather than the fact that it was Christian. In MOST of its forms Protestantism was more liberating than Catholicism. Anglo-Saxon (individualistic) values did what Judaic (group-conscious) values could not.

I should perhaps spell out that "Judaic" is not synonymous with "Jewish". The Judaic religions are of course Judaism and those religions descended from it -- Christianity and Islam. The common features of Judaic religions are too well known for me to spell out (monotheism etc) but the feature of them that seems to me most pernicious is the belief that belonging to the particular religious group concerned makes you superior (chosen or special or saved) in some way. It seems to me that the example of Islam shows vididly just how pernicious and intolerant that belief can be and that the example of the British empire shows that such beliefs do not need to go to anyone’s head if one also has non-religious pre-Christian traditions of individual liberty. And many non-Judaic religions -- such as those of the far East -- are of course almost completely tolerant of one-another.

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A PEACENIK REVIEW

A good post on why it is that Leftists are always demonstrating about something here. Excerpt: "street marches are basically the Spoiled Child Temper Tantrum method of political discourse. Nobody in a demonstration is there to listen or learn or reason"

There have been some great pictures of idiotic "peace" protestors but this one seems to be everybody’s favourite. The peacenik does not seem to know what makes buses move. I wonder does he realize that he is being laughed at across the whole planet.

Leftists will do ANYTHING to get attention. The Curmudgeon has a picture of some "anti-war" demonstrators carrying a big North Korean flag! They are willing to espouse the most oppressive dictatorship on earth just to be different! I think it is called "compassion". But why I do not know.

Always Right has a good quote: "Those who marched in peace demonstrations this Presidents' Day weekend probably missed the irony: The two men we were commemorating -- George Washington and Abraham Lincoln -- chose war when they believed it was the lesser of two evils."

Jeff Jacoby makes the point that 4 million Iraquis have fled Iraq since Saddam took power. So how come that none took part in the “antiwar” demonstrations? Do they WANT Saddam bombed? You bet!

And the WSJ records WHY no Iraquis were to be seen at the demonstrations: The peacenik organizers BARRED Iraquis from being present. How “caring” of them!

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ELSEWHERE

Hey! This blog is no 58 on Technorati’s list of the top 100 most interesting recent blogs! I don’t fully follow the rationale but it certainly sounds good when you consider that Blogger.com alone has over a million bloggers using them. To be anywhere on any list extracted from a million or more blogs seems an achievement. But there is also a website dedicated to pictures of dogs in cars which gets 10 times as many hits as I do so that should help keep me humble!

The Wicked one has a very logical sort of joke

Michael Darby punctures some more myths about business.

Chris Brand thinks that the Franco-German axis is effectively Nazi. They do after all back the Nazi-trained Saddam Hussein.

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Comments? Email me. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my "First Draft" site instead or check my HomePage for a new blog address.

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AMERICAN "IMPERIALISM"

The idea of American military or political imperialism has always been a fantasy that flies in the face of all the facts. American troops have gone all over the world in the last 50 years but have only ever been used to install or protect local self-government, not take it away. Americans just don't WANT an empire. Ideally, they just want to be left alone instead of being hated by every crazy loon around the world with nothing constructive to do. And not many imperial powers would sentence one of its soldiers to 30 years in jail for assaulting a local.

But the idea of American cultural imperialism has at least had the basis that American films etc are very popular worldwide and provide an attractive model against which local cultures often look pretty stupid even to the locals concerned. But now even that is changing. Competition with the American output has made filmmakers in India, Europe, Australia and elsewhere sit up and start producing films that people want to watch. So the popularity of American films abroad is steadily declining. Another empire lost! How sad! More here.

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BAGHDAD WATCH

Sometimes the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) does get in touch with reality. As were see here. They ask, if Saddam does not have chemical weapons, why is he preparing his troops with protective measures against such weapons? He must know that the West will not deploy them. So it is clear that the Iraquis need protection for when they deploy such weapons themselves.

Country Store thinks the "human shields" in Baghdad have got a weak grip on reality. Sure have! Do they really think that even one cruise missile is going to be retargeted because of them? I actually have this guess that they will succeed in keeping well out of harm's way and will end up going home and dining out on the story of their "bravery" for years.

Why are 3 large cargo ships going round and round in circles in the middle of the Indian ocean? Is that one of the places where Saddam has stashed the weapons he says he does not have? It seems likely.

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“KEN IL SUNG” IS RIGHT

We live in strange times. Having Leftists defend an alleged Communist dictator like Kim Il Sung is old hat but having them defend an outright Fascist dictator like the brutal Saddam is certainly strange. “Fascism” used to be the constant Leftist swear-word (and, hopefully for some Leftists it still is). But brutality has never bothered the “compassionate” Left. That Saddam’s regime will crumple like a house of cards as soon as the US lays a hand on it is all that bothers the Left. They have no moral anchors to make them look at what sort of regime it is. Power is all they care about. They will oppose any power but their own.

Even stranger, in a way, is what is happening in London. Before he got his present nickname, the Lord Mayor of London was known as “Red Ken” -- for good reason. Yet his just-introduced solution to London’s traffic jams is as thoroughly market-based as you could imagine. He is now CHARGING people to drive into the city. Economists and libertarians have been advocating such things for a long time but it has taken an extreme Leftist to do it! (Though Singapore has been doing much the same for years). To really solve London’s transport probems, you would have to privatize the “Tube” (underground railway) and the main roads but all of that seems to be firmly stuck in the “too hard” basket.

There has been a bit of discussion about the matter on England’s Sword recently. And there have also been some grumpy comments about it on Catallaxy.

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ELSEWHERE

The Moonbat does it again! He thinks that the problem of the USA and the West generally -- and why they want to oust Saddam -- is that we have too much capital that we do not know what to do with. We are just SO rich that we have nothing to spend our money on! You really do have to be batty to believe that! But he does!

There has been a rather worrying development for anyone in Britain with unorthodox opinions. Just expressing disapproved thoughts about race etc could now land you in jail. Freedom of speech has effectively been abolished there. More here. And it is the European contagion that is behind it, of course.

Michael Darby punctures some myths about business.

Chris Brand has some more news about multicultural madness in Britain.

The Wicked one is having a laugh at the French again.

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