BRITAIN

I thought I should mention that there is ONE page on the web which has unchanging content but which I still keep logging on to over and over again. It is “England” and you may have to be born a British subject to appreciate it -- I don’t know. I mostly log on for the words and music of “Jerusalem” -- William Blake’s marvellous British Israel hymn. It makes me weepy every time. What wonderful, wonderful words, so fittingly set to music by Parry!

Interesting that the
British have had better success in running Basra than the US has had in running Baghdad. British experience at running other places has paid off.

The more I hear about Britain’s Blunkett the more I like him. Now that Iraq is free he wants all the Iraqi refugees in Europe sent home: “British Home Secretary (Interior Minister) David Blunkett warned that if voluntary measures did not work then "compulsion" could be used”.

A lot of conservatives are criticizing Blunkett’s law reforms but I cannot see much wrong with them. British justice has become so irrational that something had to be done to give crime victims a chance.

There is a long but interesting article by Dominic Lieven. which endeavours to draw out lessons from the British empire and other empires of the past that might help the USA today now that it seems to have had something of an imperial role thrust upon it. It might be noted that the British empire too is often said to have been acquired “in a fit of absence of mind”. One rather provocative observation:

“Among the empires of the day, the Habsburgs stood out for their protection of the civic, cultural and political rights of minorities, Jews included....” and “The economic and cultural interests of indigenous peoples were usually safer under bureaucratic or aristocratic imperial rule than under settler democracy”.

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ELSEWHERE

Miranda Devine says Greenie opposition to feral dog control in the largest national park in New South Wales is imposing enormous cruelties on nearby domestic livestock.

Surprise, surprise! The Red Cross is keeping 64c out of every dollar it makes from fundraising. Don’t give a cent to the antisemitic scum.

Some Good sense from Ross Gittins: “Those dreaded multinationals often speed a country's growth. The unceasing claim of the mainly youthful protesters against globalisation is that it involves the rich countries - via "trans-national corporations" such as Nike - ripping off the poor countries. But it ain't necessarily so. Indeed, recent research - much of it prompted by the protests, I suspect - suggests that this claim is the opposite of the truth. The developing countries that have done most to open up to trade and foreign investment are enjoying faster economic growth, rising real wages, falling poverty and, eventually, greater environmental protection.”

Interesting: Blacks, unionists and Hispanics are slowly deserting the Dims for the GOP. A very useful trend. Minority support is about all the Dims have going for them.

Jeff Jacoby points out the hypocrisy of the Middle East “roadmap”. Everything is expected of the Jews but the Palestinians can do anything they like without protest.

There is a good coverage here of how slippery “natural medicine” advocates are when subjected to scientific scrutiny.

The Wicked one says we might need genetically engineered crops to save the banana from extinction!

Michael Darby puts the case for having diiferent ages of consent for heterosexual and homosexual intercourse.

Chris Brand points out that “thought crime” is alive and well in modern-day Germany.

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LOTS OF GOOD STUFF TODAY:

Another example here of US stockmarket portfolios continually declining in value. You have to be mad to put your money into a managed fund. It is cheaper to make your own mistakes. My portfolio of Australian stocks has a very successful spread of relatively safe companies that also tend to GROW in value. Details of it are available FREE to anybody. Here are the stocks I hold:

(Australian stockmarket abbreviations): ADB AGL AMC AMP ANN ANZ BBG BOQ BPC BEN BWA BRZ CBA CCL CDO CNN COA CRG CSR DJS FFL FLT FOA FWD GFD GNS GUD HWI ION JHX JUP LDW MCP MPB MRL MTT NAB NFD PPK PPX RIC RIN SHV SMS SSX SGB SUN TAH WWA WBC WOW. Copy my portfolio and you instantly become your own fund manager with a very successful medium-term track record! I am hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. I put my money where my mouth is as far as capitalism is concerned.

Bob Hope has just turned 100! What a marvellous man.

Whoopee! An arrogant Leftist ”human shield” got shot! There should be more of it. They endanger the safety of others as well as themselves.

The latest hijacking attempt shows that safety precautions are virtually non-existent on Australian aircraft but our bureaucratized government assures us that “talks are continuing” on the matter! Great that the flight crew in the latest incident were not seriously hurt, anyhow.

Wow! A Right to Die judgment in an Australian court. Let’s hope it is just a first step in giving back people control over their own lives.

Watch their deeds, not their words: The US Democrats do NOT believe that “diversity” is good for you.

Auditors are refusing to sign off the British Conservative Party’s accounts because they fear that it is no longer a going concern. Amusing! I don’t think they are a going concern either. They seem to have totally forgotten what conservatism is all about.

This research finding will upset the Lefties. They hate anything that ordinary people enjoy -- from McDonalds to video games: Video games that require players to knock off enemies that pop out of nowhere sharply improve children’s visual attention skills. How awful! Violent games are actually beneficial!

The Communist News Network (CNN) recently aired a demonstration of an illegal versus a legal 'assault weapon' that showed the illegal one blowing apart cinder blocks, while the legal model did no apparent damage. After the NRA accused CNN of 'faking' the presentation -- since both rifles should cause the same damage CNN conceded their demonstration was misleading! Soviet-style lies live on among the American Left.

We all now know how crooked CNN was in its coverage of Saddam’s regime but this suggests that ALL the Left-leaning media distorted the truth about Saddam’s Iraq.

Cato says: "There already are early warning signs that the United States can ill afford to linger in Iraq and overstay its welcome. Thousands of Muslims -- Shiite and Sunni -- have protested against the U.S. military presence. American troops, saddled with peacekeeping duties they are not trained to perform, have fired on crowds and killed civilians in Mosul and Fallujah. The lesson is clear: The United States must leave Iraq at the earliest possible opportunity." Hear here!

Oregon folly: “Voters clearly value education, but this new money will largely benefit the teachers' union, not the students. Rather than help the schools in a positive way, the new tax will allow the school system avoid doing two things it must eventually do: control spending and become accountable for learning outcomes."

The Greenie response to complaints from people about wildlife pests (such as noisy crows): "If you just leave them alone, they'll leave you alone". The birdbrain concerned ignores the fact that people are complaining precisely because the pests are NOT leaving them alone.

Arlene Peck's latest column is up here (post of 29th.). She points out that all Jews have been forced out of most Arab countries and asks why, in such circumstances, Arabs have to be given their own State within the borders of Israel. Jews must be tolerant but Arabs don’t have to?

Michael Darby has an article that takes on the “funny money” theorists of “Social Credit” -- theorists who have had a significant following in New Zealand and British Columbia. The Social Creditors mistake the (true) statement that the banking system creates money (because of the velocity of circulation) for the (false) statement that individual banks create money. It is perhaps an understandable mistake.

Chris Brand notes a World Bank report that says many African countries are worse off now than they were at independence in the 1960s.

The Wicked one is glad that a mad Yugoslav was shot dead.

In my academic posting of May 29th. here, I show that standard psychological techniques for detecting lying normally work pretty well.

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BLOGGER.COM BLUES

Ever since Google took over Pyra, the blogspot archives seem to have become progressively more and more of a shambles. Nothing seems to archive automatically now. You have to manually republish all the time. And even manual republishing does not work sometimes. All my posts on this blog from last year, for instance, seem to have vanished. I think that this sort of thing must bother most bloggers. Most of us, I fancy, do want our words of wisdom to remain accessible for some time. I certainly think that my efforts have some permanent worth. Fortunately, I do have copies of all my posts so I have now republished the ones from last year in the only way I can -- not as archives but as front-page posts on new blogpot sites that I have created especially for the purpose.

So my posts for July, August, September and October 2002 can now be found on http://lostleft.blogspot.com;

My posts for November 2002 are on http://lostlef2.blogspot.com

and my posts for December 2002 are on http://losleftdec.blogspot.com

My archives for this year are in better shape (at the moment) but, just in case, I have put them up elsewhere too. See http://jonjayray.tripod.com/archive.html.

In creating the new sites I needed I was automatically directed into the new version of the blogger.com software. What a shambles! I have always said that Blogger was the most bug-prone software that I have ever had the misfortune to get entangled with but I now take that back. The new version of the software is even worse! It takes the patience of Job to get it to do anything at all and when you do get some response out of it posts disappear, edits disappear and you keep getting error messages. In creating one of the new sites I needed I just could not get it to post properly and had to delete the whole blog and start all over again from scratch. I spent hours on doing what should have taken 10 minutes.

Dread the day when Pyra makes all users convert to the new software. One hint though: If you click all buttons about 8 times in rapid succession instead of the usual once or twice, you are more likely to get something to happen.

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OGBU WAS RIGHT

I noted recently that Prof. Ogbu, a black researcher, has found that black students from affluent homes do poorly at school because they are lazy and think that doing well is "acting white". A reader comments:

“Black underachievement is such a disaster that it is almost unfixable. In Florida, the NAACP has threatened a boycott if students are not given a high-school diploma even if they fail the exit exam - given 6 times to pass the same exam. Ant Gov Jeb Bush has actually spent the time of day to discuss this issue. This is a no-brainer - stupid people shouldn't get a diploma - and we need more people like Prof Ogbu to tell these 'race warlords" to take a hike.

My daughter (graduate student in Sociology at UC) is familiar with Prof Ogbu's work - she actually admitted that he might be right - this is a milestone in my battle against her Communist indoctrination.

Personal experience reinforces my belief in Prof Ogbu's work. Years ago (before the Prof coined the term "acting white"), a Black friend confided in me that her two sons had faced harassment in school for "acting white" - a major stress in her life had been to convince her sons to do well in school inspite of this harassment. This is not a fantasy of a professor - this is real life.”

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LOONY WATCH

These loonies are just as bad as Islamic Terrorists and should be treated accordingly. Excerpt:

"The radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front is claiming responsibility for fires that destroyed two houses near Ann Arbor [MI] in March. The slogan 'ELF, no sprawl' was spray painted on the garage door of a house next to one of those burned March 21 in the Mystic Forest subdivision. On its Web site, the group claims responsibility for the fires, which it says caused $400,000 in damage. The group also takes responsibility for burning luxury homes being built near Philadelphia late last year. A picture of a burning home is featured on the Web site, along with instructions on how to start fires."

"'Hey, hey, ho, ho, drugs in meat have got to go' chanted protestors outside a McDonald's in Maine. The oh-so-clever rabble held up massive 'pill burgers' (hamburgers with a big pill inside) and were joined by the Union of Concerned Scientists' Michael Khoo, who recently penned an article entitled 'Want drugs with those fries?' for the insanely self-important TomPaine.com. While Khoo tries to scare the public about antibiotics in hamburgers, the organization he works for declares that it's a non-issue."

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ELSEWHERE

Disgraceful: San Francisco's Irvine Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life for Californians. But the foundation has improved life for one individual in particular: a previous president. He got $717,000 in pay, retirement and perks. I have noted previously that charities often become little more than a honeypot for their staff. Congress seems to be doing something about it but I doubt if it will improve things much.

There is a fairly comprehensive report here about the now controversial Jessica Lynch rescue. Leftists blame US troops for being cautious! In the middle of a war!

Germany supports India in its war against Muslim terrorism! I suppose that's something.

Threatening budget cuts, the Howard Government has savagely attacked Australia's public broadcaster, accusing it of being blatantly biased and anti-American in its Iraq war coverage. About time!

The Dean Esmay version of the Carnival of the Vanities is now up. Much to read.

China Hand is rather peniternt for disparaging the pastoral work of the (Roman Catholic) Maryknoll Society in China.

Chris Brand says that elitism in UK universities is soundly based.

Michael Darby says that attacks on Australia's former Governor General were unjustified but that our constitution showed its worth in how the matter was handled.

The Wicked one points out some surprising facts about heroin.

In my academic posting of May 28th. here, I show that there are many influences on how people vote in Australian Federal elections.

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GOOD ARTICLES FROM BROOKES NEWS

Why regulating gas prices doesn't really work. Recent events in Australia and California have brought government intervention in prices and production back on to the political scene. Gas is a particularly good example for Australia regarding the dangers of price-fixing regulations.

Anti-growth nonsense from lefty lecturers. The world's present population owes its existence to economic growth. Stopping growth would literally be a sentence of death for several billion people. But as Dr Van den Bosch, another greenie, said, "They're only little brown people in poor countries."

The trade balance and the value of the dollar — what is the relationship? Explains why the dollar has fallen. And guess what? It has nothing to do with the balance of payments or the balance of trade.

Details here

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MATTERS OF RELIGION

I am a great admirer of the Sydney diocese for showing that real Christianity can still flourish within the Anglican communion but I do regret that they are betraying one of their core traditions by denying the significance of the priesthood -- and with it the whole notion of the Apostolic Succession.

"Culture Wars" sees the pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church as in part a product of its defection (after Vatican II) from its traditional values and its adoption instead of quack psychological dogmas (especially Reich and Rogers) from the secular world.

This VDARE writer says US Roman Catholicism is really post-Catholic these days and that its pews would be steadily emptying except for poor immigrants with a traditional Catholic background.

An interesting article on Euthanasia here. Australia's Dr. Nitschke seems to be the main successor of Dr Kevorkian. Giving Dr. Kevorkian a long jail term for his work of mercy is a grotesque crime in my view.

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ELSEWHERE

As a former Army man myself, I am pleased to see that most Americans now trust and respect their military. The military is the one branch of government that it takes real committment to belong to.

Hey! Is this sympathy for Bush from the NYT? “The Mideast is once again testing American leadership in ways that would tax any administration.”

Krugman is finding Nazis under the bed again. His latest conspiracy theory is as absurd as most: The Bush administration is setting the country up for a financial crisis so social programs can be cut.

Globalization is a great boon for third world scientists -- putting their ability to communicate their ideas on a par with that of First World scientists.

Something that the economic irrationalists of the Left should bear in mind: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." -- Henry Hazlitt; and: "Trade barriers are an excellent means to higher wealth for the few but lower wealth for the many." --Walter Williams. Via The Federalist

Whether you get fat or not is surely an individual decision but US government control-freaks now feel they must protect people from getting too fat.

NIKE workers in Indonesia need to be saved from Michael Moore and the anti-globos trying to save them from multinational corporate greed. Moore presumably wants worse things to happen to them.. like not working for Nike.

There is a good article by Jason Soon on unfair dismissal laws that makes a point that would be obvious to almost anybody who thought about it but which Leftists nonetheless ignore: If you make it difficult for employers to fire someone they are not happy with, their only defence against getting saddled with a drone is to be a lot more cautious about hiring people in the first place -- i.e. unfair dismissal laws increase unemployment.

A good comment on Lefty regard for the truth from Jim Kalb: “Among the claims Professor Bellesiles made in his Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture — a book once acclaimed and now thoroughly discredited — was that there was no significant market for guns in early America. Clayton Cramer, one of Bellesiles’ most effective debunkers, describes the results of a quick look at 18th and early 19th c. newspapers: you just can’t avoid the gun ads. As Cramer asks, why did the experts, many of them specialists in the period, who praised the book and gave Bellesiles the Bancroft Award get taken in so easily?

Chris Brand looks at the relationship between freedom and justice

Michael Darby commemorates the Dunkirk evacuation.

The Wicked one has an interesting post under the heading: Nazism was gay

In my academic posting of May 27th. here, I look at a theory that Leftists are “life-loving” and conservatives are “death-loving”. Needless to say, the survey data showed no such relationship.

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SCHOOL CHOICE

Eleanor Spreitzer emails me that Robert Kennedy Junior was in boarding school -- a college preparatory school -- when his father was shot. She comments:

"This is a member of a family that foams at the mouth against school vouchers and school testing. School Choice? The children in their family go to boarding schools - college preparatory schools - the children of the poor and undereducated go to failing - actually dangerous (because of no disciple) - schools. These failing schools produce the foundation of poor and undereducated needed for the children of the rich and powerful to get and maintain government jobs, salaries, privileges, pensions and most importantly - POWER.

The children of the rich and powerful learn the routine quickly and easily - promise the poor and undereducated - a better life and better education - but in reality - keep them right where they are - undereducated. Undereducated people are easy to control. Tell them anything - they are too ignorant - and too browbeaten to question any one with such a grand education. This has been going on for the last 50 years. Conservatives and Republicans want to stop this cycle - and we are called the mean spirited ones!"

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VIETNAM AND JFK

Kaplan makes a pretty weak argument that JFK would not have pursued the Vietnam War Kaplan says JFK distrusted his advisors, the same team who, under LBJ, took the US into all out war in Vietnam (see here) and then managed to lose it. If JFK had really distrusted these losers he would have sacked them. After all he didn't mind sacking CIA director Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell (see here) over the 'Bay of Pigs'. Pat Buchanan provocatively argues that once Nixon (certainly no saint but not the devil incarnate of liberal mythology either) started to turn the JFK/LBJ Vietnam disaster around, the liberal establishment got rid of him.

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ELSEWHERE

Was Saddam betrayed by his relatives in his army who ordered his army not to fight? Maybe so but there was little sign of his army fighting for him any way. Only anti-American Islamic fanatics fought. I think the claim is like the other claim that before the invasion began, U.S. special forces had gone in and bribed Iraqi generals not to fight. Both claims are supposed to cover up Arab cowardice when faced with an enemy able to defend himself. Treachery, terrorism and the stab in the back are the natural Arab modus operandi. Always have been. Always will be. Only Islamic fanaticism has ever got any more out of them.

Another Pro-Israel and anti-Muslim article from India. Good to have Indians on board. Hardly any Westerners realize it but nobody has suffered more from Muslim attacks in recent times than Hindu India. And Muslim Pakistan still occupies Indian territory in Kashmir that it seized by force in 1948.

Jeff Jacoby points out that giving preference to the children of graduates in university admissions differs from admissions under affirmative action in at least one major respect -- it spurs donations. Loyalty to the alma mater greatly reduces the fees that many colleges have to charge -- a distinct benefit to the students and their families!

I said yesterday that it was a lot of nonsense to blame Bush Administration rhetoric for the fall in value of the US dollar. Forbes seems to agree.

Tony Blair’s policy for transforming standards in inner-city schools has produced little or no improvement in pupils’ results despite 800 million pounds in spending. Funny that! Money is no substitute for discipline. Who would have thought it?

Great news: Pressure has mounted on Tony Blair to hold a referendum on the new EU constitution after Giscard himself said he would be “very pleased” to see his ideas put to the vote. A referendum almost certainly means that the British public will knock the thing on the head.

The accusations against Britain’s Colonel Collins in Iraq seem to be pretty clearly spite-motivated. The Franco-American accuser should be disciplined himself.

A fun picture of one of nature’s wonders here. Or could it be good Photoshop work?

Another reason why nobody will ever solve the problems of Africa: Well-fed African parents who let their kids starve.

Indonesian mass-murderer gets off Scot-free. A lovely lot, Australia’s Islamic neighbours.

China Hand says that Christian teaching and preaching is widely tolerated in China these days.

Michael Darby has a rather satirical excerpt about the Middle East “peace process”

Chris Brand looks at what psychological meaning can be extracted from notions of equality.

The Wicked one is delighted that some members of Britain’s House of Lords think spam comes out of a tin can.

In my academic posting of May 26th. here, I show that many people who vote for Leftist political parties are in fact conservative. They just get taken in by the better deal that Leftists appear to offer them. Leftist deceit has some rewards.

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SAUDI CENSORSHIP

Amusing: I linked yesterday to a story in the Arab News of Saudi Arabia about reformist protests in Iran. Apparently, however, the story was subsequently censored -- as the original link now gives the results of a cricket match! According to Google News, the original story was headed: Reformists Warn Khamenei Over Political Deadlock and the first line went: "The reformist members of the 290-seat Majlis blasted the conservative-controlled institutions for violently stalling reforms and denying the will of Iran's people" But all is not lost: You can still read other reports of the same story here and here

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BRITAIN IN EUROPE

There is a great site here detailing the work of a group of patriotic Brits who are challenging the legal powers of the British parliament to hand over so much power to the EU. The challenge would seem pretty thinly based legally but certainly should be made. The Guardian has a pretty desperate defence of the new EU constitution that Tony Blair is trying to ram through -- arguing that it is as yet “unformulated”. Utter rubbish, of course. The final form of it may not as yet be agreed but Giscard’s draft is well-known.

Matthew Parris in The Times argues that Britain’s big bust up with France and Germany over Iraq has permanently ruined any hope of further UK/EU integration. Sounds reasonable. Let’s hope.

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LONDON AIR POLLUTION

Mike Kerrigan has written in to challenge my claim that the Clean Air Act was responsible for the elimination of London’s smog. I knew somebody would challenge that. Julian Simon’s point that pollution was declining in London before the Act was passed is well-known both among libertarians and among opponents of the Greenies. I mostly agree with Simon but I am myself a research statistician and I know how carefully you have to treat trend data. You have to read it in conjunction with ALL the other data on the question if you are to arrive at reasonable conclusions. What Simon overlooks in this is that trends in biological data commonly reach an asymptote (i.e. eventually level out) -- as the trend to cleaner air in London now in fact has. It is precisely the way Greenies ignore this and rely on straight-line extrapolations that normally unglues them. In the London case, the air pollution was indeed declining up to the 1950s -- mainly because of London’s de-industrialization and population decline -- but it seems clear that it is only the compulsory phasing out of domestic coal fires that has allowed the pollution to continue to decline to its present low level.

And if we look at Lomborg’s graph (p.4, PDF file) there DOES in fact seem to be a levelling out followed by sharper decline in both smoke and sulphur dioxide levels in London during the 1950’s. The Act was passed in 1956.

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THE GREAT TRAINING ROBBERY

Whenever the Australian or British governments try to rein in higher education expenditure or shift more of it to user-pays, we get all sorts of doom and gloom about dumbing down the clever country, undermining future prosperity etc. But what is the connection between education spending and economic growth anyhow? Not what we are being told, at least according to this study of US States: "Using data from all 50 states and spanning two decades... Three distinct regressions find no consistent, statistically significant impact of higher-education appropriations on states' economic growth. Indeed, a stronger relationship is found when the models are reversed, suggesting that a better case can be made that growth drives spending, rather than spending driving growth." "Comparing states' higher-education appropriations and gross state products also yields no solid evidence that spending drives economic growth."

I found similar results some time ago in Australia. See here or here

And using even broader statistical data, Ivar Berg long ago made the related point that a higher education is of questionable economic benefit to the individual being educated too.

Reference:
Berg, I. (1973) Education and jobs: The great training robbery Harmondsworth, Mddx.: Penguin.

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ELSEWHERE

A long and quite silly Reuters article by a Frenchman argues that the recent drop in value of the US dollar is due to what economists call “jawboning” -- official pronouncements. All governments wish it was that easy. The obvious truth is that the dollar was a refuge currency amid world uncertainty and now that things have settled down a bit after the Iraq war, people are looking for better returns elsewhere.

Worth reading: An excellent (9 pages!) article in the NYT about conservative students giving their “liberal” colleges a big wake-up.

A great article by Andrew Bolt on why talk is useless when it comes to dealing with Islamic extremists.

Michael Darby thinks that the many chemicals encountered in modern warfare have a serious impact on the subsequent health of the soldiers who fought.

Chris Brand notes some progress in getting the evidence about racial IQ differences recognized.

The Wicked one notes the conflict between animal rights and Muslim slaughtering practices.

In my academic posting of May 24th. here, I show that, despite their many years of studying it, psychologists still know very little about materialistic ambition.

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MACHIAVELLIANISM IN FARM POLICY

I don’t know why the penny did not drop before but it took one of my readers to point out to me that EU opposition to genetically modified food (which Americans eat without harm all the time) is just to protect the crazy EU farm policy. If EU farmers started using GM crops it would make them even MORE productive and thus bankrupt the EU farm policy -- which is obliged to buy up whatever the farmers produce. That the policy is also applied to farmers in poor countries who export to the EU and thus keeps those farmers poor does not bother the EU a bit. Better for Africans to stay poor than for the EU farm policy to collapse under the weight of its own stupidity.

The reader concerned is a good cynic. He also points to the instant US ban on Canadian beef after just one Canadian cow was found to have mad cow disease and links it to the way Canada and its Froggy Prime Minister antagonized many Americans with its repeated attempts to protect Saddam Hussein. Canada squandered a lot of goodwill over that so a bit of quiet retaliation was bound to come.

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DEATH DUTIES

Around 20 years ago, all Australian States abolished death duties but they still exist in many places elsewhere. The SCOTSMAN features a well argued attack on Death duties.

This pro-death duties article outlines some of the history of Australia's death duties abolition.

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ELSEWHERE

Extra anti-terrorist police patrolling London's streets have been given orders to shoot to kill suspects. Good to see that the British police can get serious sometimes.

Good to see that the Iranians are trying hard to neuter their Mullahs.

A good summary of feminism -- at least as it once was: "Feminism proclaimed that for women to be fulfilled they had to adopt the career ambitions of workaholic men, the sexual promiscuity of John F. Kennedy, and the cynicism of Gloria Steinem (the pre-married one, that is). Can you think of any demographic group other than women who would have bought into this prescription for complete disaster and then cried victim when the Bunker Buster of Inevitable Biology crashed through the roof and blew up in their faces?"

Christopher Hitchens has a very acerbic attack on the way Leftists betrayed their own supposed values over Iraq. He uses their own jargon to good effect: "The government and people of these United States are now at war with the forces of reaction." "Reactionaries" are what Leftists call conservatives but the Muslim fundamentalists are of course REAL reactionaries. They really do want to take us back to the Middle Ages.

Amusing: In the anti-smoking debate, the Arab News has come out in favour of "personal choice". How about personal choice for Saudi women who want to drive a car etc.?

A remarkable research report here about black under-achievement at school. An extremely thorough black researcher found that black kids from wealthy black homes do not do well at school because they are lazy! Gasp!

Good to see that Israel, the USA and India are beginning to see one-another as natural allies. All three are strong democracies that have big problems with Islamic fruitcakes.

Interesting that blacks are now more often prosecuted for lynching than whites are.

Cuba: “The recent round of crackdowns has not only brought a new wave of international criticism -- as it rightly should have -- but it has once again thrust the issue of what to do with Castro's Cuba back to the forefront of American politics."

After the avoidable loss of two shuttle crews, even NASA now realizes that its credibility is just about zero.

Leftists often seem to think that even the mentally ill are “equal” and “victims”. The Misanthropyst has an amusing link that tells of one of the do-gooders getting a dose of reality about the matter.

The NYT's Jayson Blair falsifications seems small time compared to their Duranty affair in the '30s. There are some other unsavoury NYT episodes listed here

The Wicked one is pretty scathing about Lew Rockwell’s hatred of the “neoconservatives”.

Michael Darby has an extract from a V.D. Hanson article in which VDH argues that there is no problem with us understanding the Islamic world. It is the Muslims who do not understand the modern world.

Chris Brand sees the proposed new European constitution as yet another hope for causing a big bustup in the British Labour party.

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CHEAP DRUGS FOR THE POOR

In response to my recent note about the attempt in Maine to force drug prices down for the uninsured, one of my readers who is a medical specialist writes:

This drug price control will just result in a shortage of drugs - for "the poor" - NPR had a good discussion of this issue. One way the drug companies can wiggle around this is to restrict their supply; and the insurance companies can apply restrictions on distribution, like requiring pre-approval; when "the poor" realize that they will have to make another trip to the doctor's office to obtain pre-approval, etc.. many will not go back and simply will not get their drugs.

There is no free lunch. Following all the pressure to discount anti-AIDS drugs for Africa's "poor", there has been a great reduction of new such drugs - no surprises here. Likewise - there have been few new drugs for malaria - most of the people who need them the most can't afford them. Of course, "need" is simply not a market force - some people are just out of luck.

Fortunately, some have developed common sense in this area - South Africans have re-discovered DDT and the incidence of malaria has dropped greatly - again, no surprises - except to Greenies like Christie Whitman; I always believed she was an airhead when, as Governor of NJ, she fired the chief of the NJ State Police when he said "of course, we profile"

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SMOKING

A smoker among my readers has reproached me for saying that people have a “right” to breathe unpolluted air. To clarify: I am not an anarcho-capitalist -- though I did once trifle with the idea. Like most libertarians I am a Minimal Statist -- which means that I see some role for laws. It seems to me that air pollution is a case in point. 300 years of capitalism did nothing to clear up London's smog but the Clean Air Act did the trick. So I support restrictions on air pollution -- whether emanating from factories, cars or smokers. Breathing is pretty basic and so therefore is pollution of it.

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THE LATEST FROM BROOKES NEWS

Why does Ralph Nader bat for Arafat against Israel?: Nader is more than just a hypocrite. His support for Arafat was a backdoor way of denying the right of Israel to exist _ and what would that mean for Jews everywhere? Bunny Champers: media corruption and the Iraqi war.: It still pains an old battle scarred war correspondent like myself to recall how his fellow scribes refused to report the truth about Saddam and how they lied about the looting and the hospitals so as to make the Yankee Doodle Dandies look bad. Oil prices and energy taxes: another green con.: Free markets, not taxes, conserve resources. This is really basic stuff. When the supply of any resource falls its price rises. Eventually the price reaches a point where the cost of producing an additional unit exceeds the demand. This is why we never run out of resources in a free market.

Details here

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BRITAIN

Wow! Britain is to get a national ID card. I thought only the Europeans went in for that sort of thing. When the Hawke Labor government tried to bring one in for Australia there was a huge outcry that finally knocked the idea on the head. Though I must say that I cannot see what honest people have to fear from it. But at least the new UK legislation will include a further clampdown on the appeal rights of rejected asylum seekers and measures to tackle those who destroy their documents on arrival in Britain.

This EU constitution that Britain looks likely to adopt will essentially make Britain no longer an independent country and will remove from its Parliament most of its powers in favour of dictates from Brussels. If the British accept that they deserve what they get. An Indian reader has emailed me with the claim that Indians under the British Raj had more rights and independence than Britain would have under the new EU constitution. No wonder Tony Blair does not want to put the thing to a referendum. He knows it would be rejected.

All that antiterrorism experience in N. Ireland may come in handy: "Coalition chiefs plan to send 5,500 British paratroopers to Baghdad to save US troops from losing control of the Iraqi capital."

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ELSEWHERE

Clever! Israel has accepted the nutty US “roadmap” for peace. Why? Because they know the Palis will never fulfil their part of it so the whole thing will fall in a heap anyway.

What fun! The “diversity” mania of American colleges and universities is now causing better-qualified girls to be excluded in favour of boys! Feminists will love that. Will we now see feminists AGAINST affirmative action?

James Glaser makes a persuasive case for the view that there is still NOTHING stopping more terrorists and their deadly cargo from entering the United States.

Chris Brand notes that eugenics has just found some support on the Left and that Enoch Powell is getting new respect.

Michael Darby wonders at the continued glamorization of the brutal Fidel Castro.

China hand discusses the merits of renting versus buying in China.

The Wicked one is critical of both the Federal Reserve banking system and the FBI

In my academic posting of May 23rd. here, I try to inject a bit of psychometric sophistication into the measurement of chronic anxiety.

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SLOW LOADING?

Blogspot blogs often seem to be very slow to load lately. If you are finding this blog difficult to access, however, you have options. Both of my mirror sites (see the links top left on this page) should be faster-loading. Try both and bookmark the one that seems to work best for you. The Lycos network seem to have overcome their problems so I have also revitalized my Tripod site lately.

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THERE ARE MANY HOLOCAUSTS

I certainly do not agree with all of Henry Makow’s views but the point made in his post of 19th ( “The other side of holocaust denial”) that there have been many recent holocausts as reprehensible as the Jewish holocaust is undoubtedly true -- and that millions of Germans died AFTER World War II as a result of deliberate Allied policies seems also to be true. It does seem about time that these other holocausts became better known. Maybe the recent mini-holocausts in the Balkans (Kosovo, Bosnia) could have been prevented somehow if we had all long ago realized and accepted that it is in fact common for human beings to perpetrate mass slaughters of those they perceive as “other”. I personally grieve at the Jewish holocaust most because of the vast talent that was lost to the world in that terrible event but for Christians ALL human life is supposed to be sacred.

This article points out that many “holocaust revisionists” are Leftists and that only a minority are at all sympathetic to Nazism. It also tries to explain why such revisionism matters. But for the life of me I still do not get why it matters. If it was 1 million rather than 6 million Jews that the Nazis killed, how does that make the deed any more excusable?

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STATE EDUCATION WATCH

British socialism has now got so bad that they cannot even afford to pay all their schoolteachers and are having to sack some of them. Sounds like Russia. One of their headmasters put his finger on the problem, though: "There is more money going into the system, but so much of it is taken up by bureaucracy that it is not finding its way to schools". You can bet that there will not be any bureaucrats sacked.

By lowering testing standards, some U.S. States hope to evade the penalties that a federal law imposes on schools whose students fare poorly on standardized tests. Anything rather than actually educate the kids!

Jeff Jacoby is pretty plainspoken about teachers’ unions and tells us that we need to recognize that first and foremost: “Teachers unions, like all unions, want to make money and amass power. Those are the motives behind everything they say and do. They're not in business "for the children." They're in business for themselves.”

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ELSEWHERE

A great victory for the USA/UK in the U.N. As big as the military victory in Iraq in a way. Russia too is once again decidedly friendly to the USA. Marvellous!

Arlene Peck's latest column -- commenting on the absurd "roadmap" for peace in Israel -- is up here (post of 22nd.)

The media love a panic. But another one has quietly faded away: The British Mad Cow death toll prediction has now been cut from 50,000 to 40. That might be some small comfort to the frantic Canadians.

A suburban Washington woman was in a Maryland jail Monday on charges of assaulting a 4-year-old after he spilled ice cream on her in a fast-food restaurant. Unbelievable. A little 4-year-old! I hope they give the bitch years inside.

Tobacco: A Florida court threw out the landmark $145 billion punitive award of 2000, saying the suit against cigarette makers should never have gone forward as a class-action. Great! I loathe smoking but blaming other people for your own bad decisions stinks even more.

The House gave final approval to President Bush's $15 billion global AIDS initiative on Wednesday. The US taxpayer must not have much to do with his/her money!

Tax cuts: Congressional Republicans have shown themselves just as willing to spend as Democrats. These bipartisan big spenders are the real source of deficit concerns -- not a modest tax cut.

President Bush said that the ban on genetically modified food had discouraged third world countries from using that technology, undermining efforts to end hunger in Africa. Good to hear that at least GWB is not captive to the Greenie lunatics.

Replacing Whitman: A new EPA director will have to confront the erroneous assumption that more federal regulations are the key to achieving greater environmental quality and that government can be expected to act as a better guardian than private individuals."

Chris Brand says that social class is not as important as sociologists think it is.

Michael Darby points to the heartless government policy that denies grandparents the right to be foster parents to their own grandchildren.

In my academic posting of May 22nd. here, I again look at the Leftist claim that conservatives are maladjusted and report survey evidence showing it to be false. The study concerned was done in conjunction with a prominent (Leftist) sociologist.

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LEFTIST DECEPTION ABOUT CANADIAN ATTITUDES

Opinion pollsters can certainly talk some garbage. There is an absurd bit of work here by a Canadian pollster which examines average Canadian attitudes WITHOUT taking into account the large French population in Canada. So -- surprise, surprise -- he finds that average Canadian attitudes to Iraq etc differ from average American attitudes. What a lamebrain! You don't need to be a sociologist to know that French and English Canadians have their differences. Had he tabulated the averages for French and English Canadians separately it might have told us something. And he concludes that the minority of Canadians who support the USA "are fortunate to live in a country where minority opinion is encouraged" -- as if the USA did not allow dissent! What a puffed-up nincompoop!

Note this more objective report of Canadian attitudes: "Opposition to the United States was heavily concentrated in French-speaking Quebec. In English Canada, a clear majority supported the liberation of Iraq, and two-thirds wanted Canada to help the allies"

And those Canadians who DO think that Canada is too good for the rest of us must have been getting a little rocked lately -- with Toronto recently quarantined over SARS and now Mad Cow disease in their beef herds.

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ELSEWHERE

Christie Whitman resigns. Good riddance to a Greenie dupe.

It looks like the US Federal government is getting involved in the anti-smoking push. Seems a bit excessive getting the Feds involved, let alone international treaties. In Australia it is a matter decided at State government level. I think that in much of the developed world we are not far off the point where smoking will be permitted only between consenting adults in private -- which seems to me a fair balance between respecting the right of the unfortunate addicts who need to smoke and the rest of us who have the right not to have have their air polluted.

Why on earth is the USA supposed to be responsible for the unending disasters of every African tinpot country?

Carnival of the Vanities is up again. Worth a look.

Tony Blair faced his fourth rebellion in two months last night as 34 Labour MPs defied government whips and voted against plans to curb the right to trial by jury Good show!

The Indonesians now have a 30,000- member force in Aceh trying to crush 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas in a dense, mountainous forest. The sides have been fighting since 1976, making this one of Asia's longest-running conflicts. I would normally be on the side of the independence fighters but since they are Muslim fanatics being opposed by Indonesia's secular government, I am rather on the government side this time -- despicable though the Indonesians were in East Timor.

"A federal children's health agency is funding a study of the sex habits of old men.
That's government for you.

Maine will use Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor, to force drugmakers to lower the costs of prescription drugs for uninsured residents, regardless of their income." So people who pay for their health insurance will have to subsidize the free-riders who do not! That's Lefty justice for you.

"Any charge that the U.S. military misrepresented the facts of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch's rescue on April 1 from an Iraqi hospital to make the mission appear more dramatic or heroic is 'void of all facts and absolutely ridiculous' the Pentagon said Monday -- Responding to a BBC report that called the Pentagon accounts of the rescue 'one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived,' Knowing the frantic Leftist and anti-American bias of the BBC I am inclined to believe the Pentagon.

"A Hamilton County grand jury today declined to indict Harold McKinney, a Citizens on Patrol Program member who police say shot a man May 8 as the man was robbing a Northside bar. Grand jurors ignored charges of felonious assault and carrying a gun in a liquor establishment, charges police had brought against McKinney." Thank goodness for the Grand Jury system! McKinney should never have been charged. The Police were just peeved that he was on their "turf" in the matter.

Michael Darby has a contemptuous letter to the French in which the writer points out what shalom means in Hebrew.

Chris Brand notes that the US Senate wants to give $15 billion to provide for programmes in Africa for "reducing sexual violence and coercion, including child marriage, widow inheritance and polygamy." That seems a lot of US taxpayer money for what is hardly a US vital interest.

The Wicked one points out some possible implications of the recent finding that Chimps and humans are almost identical genetically.

In my academic posting of May 21st here, I look at international levels of chronic anxiety (neuroticism) and find that the average level is surprisingly uniform from country to country -- consistent with the view that this basic personality variable is genertically determined rather than being the outcome of circumstances or environment. If you are the sensitive, worrying type, it is because you were born that way.

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AUSTRALIA’S IMMIGRATION POLICY STILL TOO PERMISSIVE

Although Australia’s policy on illegal immigration has been a brilliant success -- stopping illegal immigration just about stone dead -- Australia still accepts large numbers of legal immigrants on compassionate grounds -- including lots of Muslim “refugees”. And they bring with them the attitudes that have messed up their own countries. As a reader writes:

It is interesting that with the upcoming Rugby world cup all the visiting teams are being housed here in Sydney, except for the US team which is being put up out at Bowral for security reasons because the security authorities are concerned about their safety from ethnic minorities in the Homebush region.

Regardless of one's views on the rights/wrongs of US foreign policy or the Iraq war, the fact that guests to this country can no longer be safe because of ethnic groups that our own authorities let in shows that something is quite wrong with our multiculturalism policies and the mindset of those communities. Whilst all the political focus is on refugees and mandatory detention, the basics of immigration policy ..what kind of country do we want.. get pushed out of view.

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BRITISH IMMIGRATION POLICY A FARCE

The UK government gave, after only four hours of effort, a British reporter "asylum status," meaning he now gets free housing, food and travel in the UK, when he came to them faking an East European accent and claiming that the government of Moldova would kill him if he returned to Moldova.

When they asked him for an ID he said he had none because it was too dangerous to carry any which was a good enough explanation for the Home Office Asylum Screening Unit, in Lunar House, Croydon, Surrey, for those of you who want someone to take care of you the rest of your life and who can fake an East European accent.

“Lunar House” -- sounds well-named in the circumstances.

The UK Sun 19-May-03. Via Jerry Lerman.

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DECRIMINALIZING MARIJUANA

"Marijuana advocates across Canada are celebrating a May 16 Ontario court decision, which effectively legalized possession in Canada's largest province.

The Canadians are pretty incensed about pressure from the USA to abandon their permissive stance on Marijuana. I must say that I think the Canadians are right on this one. US Prohibition on alcohol did more harm than good. Why anyone thinks Marijuana use is any different escapes me. Though I myself have never used ANY illegal drug -- nor do I intend to.

And it has just been anounced in Australia that “Legalised cannabis will be prescribed to people suffering from chronic pain or wasting illnesses”

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ELSEWHERE

A 17-year-old German was convicted and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail on Tuesday on charges of taking four children hostage at gunpoint at their school last fall . 3 1/2 years? Surely any parent would want that garbage put away for life!

Surprise, surprise: United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the UN Oil-for-Food Program

An amusing article on the new German/French/Belgian military force -- or was that “farce”?

John Derbyshire reminds us that mass-murderer Idi Amin -- with only 300,000 dead Ugandans to his “credit” -- is living a life of ease and luxury these days -- where? In Saudi Arabia. Strange that he has not been extradited to be tried as a war criminal, isn’t it? More about Amin here.

Daniel Pipes has a pretty appalling but well-documented story about how the Saudis BUY “protection” in Washington.

Big scientific discovery: politicians lie. “Politicians need to be more honest about lying," he told the newspaper.” (??).

Michael Darby notes how the Zimbabwe police now have no regard for the law.

Chris Brand notes recent false accusations of rape and the damage they have done.

The Wicked one does not think much of Martin Luther King.

In my academic posting of May 19th here, I show that older women tend to misrepresent themselves.

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THE WICKEDNESS OF CHEAP COFFEE

Where you get your coffee beans from seems to have become something of a cause among Leftists looking for something with which to inflate their claims of “compassion”. Now that Vietnam has become a big producer of coffee-beans, the worldwide supply has increased greatly and the price, of course, has tumbled. So lots of coffee-bean producers in poor countries have had drastic cuts in their already low income. The big brains of the Left blame the problem on the coffee-roasting companies of course and try to heavy them in various ways.

In this report, however, the real solution to the problem is left to a single sentence at the end: Coffee-growers have to start diversifying into growing something else. Unforunately, however, even if they do, the determination of Western governments (USA, EU, Japan) to protect their own high-cost farmers with huge subsidies and tariffs makes it difficult for third-world farmers to get ANY of their their produce into our markets. So bring on free-trade! THAT is how to help third-world coffee growers. But how often do you hear of Leftists pushing for free-trade? The anti-globalizers are certainly dead against it.

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THE EU BAN ON GM CROPS -- A CRUEL GREENIE HOAX

"After months of anticipation, the U.S. government is expected to file a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization against the European Union's five-year moratorium on new genetically modified crop varieties. Critics often deride GM crops with built-in pest, weed, and disease resistance as helpful only for wealthy farmers in industrialized nations but developing countries could benefit tremendously from the adoption of GM crops. As much as 40 percent of conventional crop productivity in Africa and Asia is lost to insect pests, weeds, and plant diseases. But many of the same GM crops available in North America are already helping poor farmers in South Africa, India, China, and the Philippines combat often-voracious insects while reducing the amount of insecticides or eliminating them altogether".

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"FREE" MONEY

Matthew Lesko has built a lucrative career on exploiting the government's recklessness with and waste of taxpayers' money. Lesko's "Free Money From the Government" book series does nothing but show people how to apply for and receive for themselves the money that you work for. Among the offerings the "Guru of Government Giveaways" promotes are the government sources and methods to apply for: $100,000 in grants to start a home based business; $75,000 housing grants to remodel your house and $3,000 in grants to help buy a car. Lots of people get angry with him but I think he does libertarians a big favour by highlighting how irresponsible government is with taxpayer funds.

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ELSEWHERE

I am reluctant to believe any reports from the perennially biased Reuters but it does seem that the US administration of postwar Iraq is one huge bureaucratic bungle.

Great stuff: “For the first time, members of the US Congress have established a caucus devoted to Australia. The Friends of Australia Congressional Caucus was set up last week with the immediate aim of supporting the US-Australia free-trade agreement now being negotiated."It's broader than that, but at this juncture that's its primary focus," said Jen Burita.”

An excellent article arguing that Britain's future lies over the Atlantic - not the Channel from Dick Morris -- a former leading staffer for Bill Clinton. Britain should forget about the miserable EU and go for a free-trade agreement with the USA -- as Australia is.


Another excellent column from Paul Sheehan discussing opposition to the bridge to Hindmarsh Is. in South Australia and 'secret women's business' and how the media and academia treated it. The truth is the first casualty where Leftists are involved, of course.

Midnight muncher sows seeds of suspicion: Three stands competing for gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show were damaged by a mystery crisp eater on the eve of a visit by the Queen today. Dotty Britain lives! Good to see that such things can still get a headline in The Times.

The House is considering a bill that could force the nation's foundations to give away more of their money to charity each year. About time! There is a huge tendency for charitable foundations to become little more than a honey-pot for their staff.

The Mike Hawash case should be pretty disturbing to any American who thinks he has any rights. The fact is that your government can lock you up without trial for as long as it likes and there is not a thing you can do about it.

Michael Darby has an excerpt from an article by Anne Coulter which pokes fun at the way Leftists fear having US Christians in Iraq and marvels at the Leftist arrogance in claiming that they know what “true” Islam is.

Chris Brand looks at the psychology and biology of sex differences.

In my academic posting of May 19th here, I look at a claim by Leftist psychologists that Leftists are love-motivated and report a survey which shows the opposite.

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THE ABUSED ARCHBISHOP

A reader writes:

“These claims about Archbishop Hollingworth overlooking 'child abuse' are amazing. Child abuse is the last moral barrier and the Left goes to town on anything remotely associated with it, whilst giving their intellectual blessing to social changes, like the breakdown of the traditional family, that if anything expose thousands of children to risk.

At the same time they can be completely blind to what looks like systematic abuses in the Aboriginal community that if inflicted under the auspices of Church missionaries or orphanages would lead to cries for a Royal Commission into a new 'abused generation'. I think Paul Sheehan is right, the Hollingworth witch hunt is being fuelled by republican and anti-Howard agendas that have very little to do with the Bishop himself.

Personally I don't think it is a good idea to appoint a clergyman to a vice regal position. However wasn't it the Leftist South Australian Premier Don Dunstan who initiated the practice with the appointment of a clergyman Sir Douglas Nicholls? I don't remember a lot of the Left-leaning people who object to this alleged mix of church and state objecting then. Of course Nicholls was not a Bishop -- and he was an Aborigine!”

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SALLY SATEL

Sally Satel, author of "HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS CORRUPTING MEDICINE" has a recent article on the growth of the psychological "trauma" industry in which she points to evidence casting great doubt on all the repressed memory stories we hear. There is an archive of Satel's recent articles here. She has an interesting article discussing recent attempts by lawyers to turn "fast food addiction" into a basis for lawsuits and regulation of the fast food industry. She says that Fast food 'addiction' feeds only lawyers.

Satel's article on race and medicine is particularly good -- noting that there are medically important differences between blacks and whites and showing that the “Race is a myth” mantra is itself a myth.

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ELSEWHERE

A rather amazing story of an Australian soldier who took on 20 Iraqis and won despite coming under heavy fire. It’s like a tale out of the wars of the old British Empire. True grit still exists among us.

An equally amazing story of politically correct stupidity in some Australian schools is just up on PC Watch. ALL discipline looks like being banned in the State of New South Wales.

The New York Police Dept. kills an innocent woman in her own home and all they do is APOLOGIZE??

And one wonders at the mentality of these Australian prosecutors who went for and got a conviction even whilst holding evidence that would have proved the accused to be innocent. It’s the prosecutors who should be in jail.

The Misanthropyst has dug up another example of the vast disconnect that exists between what Leftists say they believe in and what they actually do when given the opportunity. In this case a leader of a teachers’ union who was very militant about getting more money for his members whilst at the same time ripping them off for vast sums.

This should be a joke but it isn’t: “The pair wants a city ordinance stating 'that all brewed coffee sold in town must be brewed from coffee beans that are organic, fair-trade, shade-grown or a combination.'.

And this is no joke: There really is a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement -- Greenies of course. I have always said that Greenies hate people but I am still a bit surprised about anybody being so blatant about it.

After successful fights against asbestos and tobacco companies, some top plaintiffs' lawyers are taking on drug makers, claiming they hid the dangers of some of their pills. This really ought to be stopped. We need drug companies to be spending their money on research, not on lawyers.

Jim Kalb points out that There are some amazing similarities in the way the NYT handled repeated evidence of misbehaviour by its rogue black reporter and the way the RC church handled priests accused of pederasty. Lefties will not like the comparison.

Michael Darby has some notes on the nutty types at the Greenie “Biodevastation” conference just held.

Chris Brand notes that the equally nutty Zimbabwe regime is now taking a real risk -- kicking out a Guardian reporter. That will sink them -- the way killing thousands of their own citizens never would!

The Wicked one notes that there is one Greenie who comes to some rather conservative conclusions.

In my academic posting of May 18th here, I look at what influences the distance from one-another that we adopt during conversation.

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CAPITALIST RECYCLERS

The view that most of us have of Britain's Victorian era is strongly shaped by the dramatic novels of Charles Dickens. Dickens was however a reformer in his day so focused on the worst things in his environment. There is a very interesting article here that shows -- surprisingly -- that the Victorians were in fact great recyclers. But they did it for profit, not under government compulsion. That constitutes pretty powerful evidence that even recycling should be left to the marketplace. Modern-day government recycling programs almost always cost money rather than make money.

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THE DISHONESTY OF NOAM CHOMSKY

Keith Windschuttle provides a very carefully documented demolition of Noam Chomsky and his very popular (among Leftists) defence of terrorism against the USA. Excerpt: "In fact, Chomsky was well aware of the degree of violence that communist regimes had routinely directed at the people of their own countries. At the 1967 New York forum he acknowledged both "the mass slaughter of landlords in China" and "the slaughter of landlords in North Vietnam" that had taken place once the communists came to power. His main objective, however, was to provide a rationalization for this violence."

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BROOKES NEWS

There are some great headlines on Brookes News at the moment. Try these for a sampling:

A British academic defends Saddam's regime. What is it with lefties? No matter how vicious, dangerous and monstrous a regime is one can guarantee that some group of lefties will find some justification in its existence, provided, of course, that it is anti-American.

The minimum wage rise con and the failure of our right. The minimum wage has been increased in the name of social justice. I for one cannot see any justice in pricing some people out of work in order to raise wages of who are fortunate enough to keep their jobs.

Kim Jong-il is also Beijing's problem — so what will she do? There are those in Beijing who realise that it is in China's interests to have a unified and prosperous Korea free of foreign (read American) political and military influence than one divided by hostile armies.

China's growth is no threat to the world's resources. China's economic development is not a threat to the world's resources or its environment.

Warren Buffet's stupid economics. Buffet may be brilliant when it come to picking stocks but in the field of economics he is a dangerous buffoon who allows his loyalty to the Democrats and his contempt for Bush to distort his judgment.

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ELSEWHERE

An honest politician at last! All the newly-elected President of Argentina is offering is fresh air: “We are going to bring some fresh Patagonian air to the capital to engineer a change," he said late Thursday.”

Somewhat to my surprise, there is a rather sensible editorial in USA Today about the Jayson Blair affair. It says that it may be justifiable to let minorities in the door under affirmative action programs but once they have been accepted into the institution they should be judged by the same criteria as anyone else. That would be a big improvement on doing anything to keep the minority numbers up -- which is what the usual system seems to be.

Caerdroia has a good formulation of what he thinks is the essential nature of America. He is obviously right but much of the rest of the world is too mean and nasty to believe it.

A great way to encourage motorcycling -- should be more of it: "Motorcyclists would be free to run red lights if they exercise 'due care,' under a bill overwhelmingly approved by the state Senate yesterday. The legislation was needed because many new model motorcycles do not have enough metal in them to trigger magnetic sensors that tell some traffic lights to turn green, Sen. Bill Clabough, R-Maryville, the bill's sponsor, said. 'Many new bikes are almost all plastic, and they sit there for a long time' ..."

Wendy McElroy is very critical of male bashing -- the stereotyping of men as brutal, stupid or otherwise objectionable: "Our sons, husbands, fathers and men-friends are gleefully slandered because they are male. They are subjected to malicious jokes and attitudes that would be decried if directed at blacks, Hispanics or women."

"As we observe the current frenzy of lawyers preparing to sue McDonald's and Burger King -- and even suing Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreos -- for allegedly causing their clients to suffer from obesity, we cannot help but wonder what lunatics have taken over the U.S. legal system.

One antiwar protestor sees part of the picture anyway: “"The most unsavory part of being against the war, for me, is the company one has to keep on the barricades. It's most uncomfortable being surrounded by Greens, socialists, effete literati, Hollywood bleeding hearts, European politicians, animal-rights protesters and a vast assortment of other wacko leftists who I'd forgotten were even still alive.”

Chris Brand notes that in Britain whites are guilty if blacks fail at school.

Michael Darby notes that if you really want to protect the environment, the first thing you have to do is to protect private property rights.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of interesting posts.

In my academic posting of May 17th here, I give chapter and verse on the strange contortions academic psychologists go through in order to see in their research results some shred of support for Leftist beliefs.

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PUTIN TALKS THE TALK

This should make Vlad think: "At least 14 people were reported dead in Chechnya yesterday when the second suicide bombing in two days narrowly failed to kill the Moscow- backed head of the local administration. The bombing came as Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow on Iraq and international terrorism, and just two days after a suicide bomber blew up an administration and security service building a few miles from the Russian border”.

And apparently it has. In his latest speech. he listed Russia's declining population, poverty, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism as among its most severe problems. He said Russia's bloated bureaucracy must be cut. But in a country that has seen political turmoil and constant change for 15 years, Putin warned against reform for reform's sake. “There cannot be a permanent revolution,'' he said. Also on Friday, Putin spoke with President Bush by phone about the need to increase joint anti-terrorism efforts.

Best of all, Russia now wants to make sure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. Since Russia supplies Iran with its reactors, they are in a position to get their way there.

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