ELSEWHERE

More glories of socialized medicine: A pregnant Australian mother was told by two public hospital doctors that the baby was dead inside her and she was sent for a curette to remove the "remains". She asked several times for an ultrasound scan to confirm the diagnosis but was refused because: "The obstetrician said she didn't want to place an undue burden on the ultrasound staff". While she was waiting to go into theatre -- a long wait, of course -- she felt that all was not right, checked herself out and went to a private doctor who booked her in immediately for a scan. The scan showed there was nothing wrong with the baby. So a precious life was saved because of Australia's large private medicine sector. In Canada the baby would be dead.

Socialized arrogance: "A huge headline on the front of a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine said more than was intended: 'Now are we ready to talk about health care?' Inside was an article with the same title by Sen. Hillary Clinton. The casual arrogance of that question is staggering. We talked endlessly about Hillary's proposed government-run medical system a decade ago and decided against it for many reasons. Now this rerun of the same issues proceeds as if the question is whether the rest of us are 'ready' to talk about such things."

Keith Burgess-Jackson has reproduced a letter originally printed in the New York Times in which a woman repeats the familiar complaint that men won't "commit" to marriage or any lasting relationship. She is surprised?? The way politically correct American divorce and palimony laws attack men, I wonder why ANY American male gets married or risks fatherhood. All who do are either heroes or incorrigible optimists. See here. Or maybe they don't know what they are letting themselves in for.

Silver lining? Has Islam killed multiculturalism? The Spectator thinks that may be so in the UK: "The rest of us might have suspected that multiculturalism was officially dead on 12 September 2001; but to hear multiculturalism disavowed, in public, by an organisation hitherto dedicated to its propagation is something else entirely".

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a wide range of reading.

Dick McDonald reminds the younger generation of what the righteous Senator Ted Kennedy really is.

The wicked one tells you what you need to do to get to heaven. You'll never guess.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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FASCISM

I mentioned last Sunday the latest book on Fascism (The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert. O. Paxton) but was too deterred by its obvious biases to do anything more than link to my own article on Hitler so that readers could see for themselves what Paxton had "overlooked".

Marxist "superstar" Terry Eagleton has however now reviewed the book and most of what he says is surprisingly fair. He does, for instance, make clear the antipathy between conservatism and Fascism and even hints at Fascism's Leftist origins and its affinities with modern-day Leftist "post-modernism". He also concludes, as I do, that Fascism seems in the long run to have won the day and that most of the world's political systems are now at least moving towards what would once have been called Fascism.

One of my readers bridled at Eagleton's statement: "The assumption that the free market and political democracy go naturally together was always pretty dubious" but I am afraid Eagleton is right. Up until recently the world's most free market society was Hong Kong, with no democracy at all, and intensely capitalist Singapore has pretty limited democracy too. As in most of his comments, however, Eagleton is overstating his case. Although there is no necessary association between democracy and capitalism, the two do seem to have some rough association.

I should mention, however, that the opening of Eagleton's review is deceptive. He says that Mussolini (the founder of Fascism) opposed Socialism. He omits to mention that what was called Socialism in Mussolini's day was what we would now call Communism. Mussolini, like the Mensheviks, considered Communism/Bolshevism to be a deviation from true Marxist doctrine. Mussolini was a non-Communist Leftist, in other words -- something that is still all around us today. The main difference between the Communists and the Fascists was that the Fascists detested the idea of class-warfare. They wanted the people of their countries to be united in one brotherly band rather than at war with one-another. But both the Communists and the Fascists wanted (and got) an all-powerful State that would allegedly "look after" its people -- not much different in the end from what modern-day Western Leftists clamour for.

And Eagleton's description of Fascists as "uncouth bruisers" is absurd. Eagleton admits that Britain's Sir Oswald Mosley was an "exception" to that but so was Mussolini. Like many modern-day Leftists, Mussolini was an intellectual. He read poetry and philosophy voraciously, including Socrates and Plato. He spoke several foreign languages, was always interested in discussing political and philosophical ideas with almost anyone, had considerable acceptance in his early days as a leading Marxist theoretician, wrote over 40 books, and was a tree-lover and environmentalist 50 years before Greenies were thought of!

I linked to a review of Eagleton's own recent book on 29th April. That reviewer noted Eagleton's superficial cleverness. A good example of it can be found in the last sentence of his review of the Paxton book.

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ELSEWHERE

The hysteria about childhood obesity is rising -- as this article shows. Obesity is a great discovery for the Left. It will NEVER be cured so they will be able to go on for years making nuisances of themselves over it.

Statistical expert John Lott Jr. sets out why California's virtual ban on electonic voting is just ignorant technophobia. Australia has paper voting only so I have no personal knowledge of alternatives but his claim that electronic voting is in fact more secure than paper voting seems reasonable to me. Voting security in Australia is a joke -- leading to Al Capone's famous saying "Vote early and vote often" being regarded as good election-day advice in some Australian Leftist circles. Rather like Pakistan.

From one who knows: "I was on Mr. Kerry's boat in Vietnam. He doesn't deserve to be commander in chief."

Steve Sailer tells us what few others will about Europe's Gypsy problem.

How odd! Many of the "ex-diplomat" critics of Tony Blair are so involved in businesses in Arab countries that they are known as the "Camel Corps". But none of them declared a conflict of interest, of course.

This very amusing but serious article by David Carr on the recently enlarged EU shows all by itself why "Samizdata" is such a popular blog.

Who armed Saddam? There is a great chart here showing that 57% of Saddam's arms imports came from Russia, 13% from France and 1% from the USA.

In his post of 28th April (no permalink) Snowball sets out a whole host of criticisms of the proposed ID card for the UK. There is opposition to national ID cards on both the Right and the Left but I must say that they seem a reasonable way of limiting fraud to me. Perhaps I am not paranoid enough.

Icelandic blogger Willy Sutton has now started a separate blog for what he calls "visual economics". See here. It's a good idea to show the follies of socialism in pictorial form and he does have some good pictures.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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LADY THATCHER

I was delighted to read that Lady Thatcher has made a good recovery from her recent illness and bereavement. And this comment rings true too:

"She remains a self-effacing, charming, polite woman in private, never seeking to be the centre of attention - though of course she cannot help but be in almost every setting - and with an immense humanity that her critics simply refuse to believe exists. Her sincerity and basic decency illustrate one of the most important and fundamental truths about her, that she was never in it for herself."

That self-effacement is precisely what I noted on the occasion that I met her at a small garden party in Kent in 1977. When people began to make her the centre of attention then (while I was talking to her as it happens) she turned around and did her best to break it up.

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby points out that America's marching feminists are not feminists at all, just far-Leftists. If they were really concerned about women, they would be attacking Islamic fundamentalists, not GWB. But you never hear a word from them about the suffering of women under Islam: The usual total hypocrisy of the Left.

Sad: The Australian Federal government is trying to bribe young men into taking up primary school teaching. Given the prejudiced way false allegations of sexual abuse against male teachers are handled, I can only hope that no young men are desperate enough to take up the offer. They risk having their lives ruined if they do.

Shawcross on Iraq: "Do not forget that during the 1990s, when there was no war in Iraq, perhaps tens of thousands of Islamic warriors were trained in the bin Laden camps in Afghanistan. That was a time when the US president, Bill Clinton, was working overtime to create an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The US finally came to the rescue of Muslims in Bosnia, after Europe had failed to do so, and then led the effort to save Muslims in Kosovo. None of that stopped bin Laden from building up his organisation and attacking the US wherever he could.... They live to kill. The most determined and, by their own standards, the most devout live to die. They cannot be appeased." Note that Shawcross was an ardent Leftie once. See here. He now says: ""As in the twentieth century, so in the twenty-first, only America has both the power and the optimism to defend the international community against what really are the forces of darkness." How awful for the Left!

The man behind most of the anti-Bush ads: "During the eighties he grew more corporate and at the same time more radical, building offices for Fenton Communications in New York City and Washington while fattening his payroll by performing services for various communist state and "liberation" groups, including the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, the dictatorship of Grenada's Maurice Bishop that President Ronald Reagan sent troops to overthrow in 1983, the El Salvadoran terrorist Farabundo Marti National Liberation group and the conspiratorial Christic Institute, which spread vicious, baseless smears about retired U.S. military heroes." So you know you can trust him.

Some good quotations recently in The Federalist:
"The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong." --Calvin Coolidge
"The elements of our strength are many. They include our democratic government, our economic system, our great natural resources. But, the basic source of our strength is spiritual. We believe in the dignity of man." --Jeane Kirkpatrick
"Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom." --Thomas Sowell

Amusing. Chris Brand has started off his postings for May with a full measure of the incorrectness that he is known for: "Star slut Sharon Osbourne was also in trouble at the Grauniad for saying she wanted to have sex with a well-hung Black man before she died. What could she mean, asked the troubled Grauninannies? She surely could not be referring to Phil Rushton's anathematized findings, contested by the small-peniled left, - findings which actually take no account of the pretty minimal staying power of the average Black or of females' greater interest in property values than in penile volume. [While we're at it, it should be noted that the evolutionary advantages of a modest and amply-foreskinned penis are to avoid frostbite while hunting in northern climes and to allow of ready erection in days before Viagra. Sluggish AIDS-prone slit-splitting members are of more interest to pervs than to women.]" I have added a couple of links and edited the quote slightly to make Chris's telegraphic style a bit easier to follow but you can find the original at the BOTTOM of his page here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMIC REALITIES

Marginal Revolution discusses (Nobel prize winning economist) Gary Becker's plan to cut drug prices by cutting FDA red tape: "...a return to a safety standard alone would lower costs and raise the number of therapeutic compounds available. In particular, this would include more drugs from small biotech firms that do not have the deep pockets to invest in extended efficacy trials. And the resulting increase in competition would mean lower prices - without the bureaucratic burden of price controls..."

Is the EU a tax cartel? "Germany yesterday threw cold water on the festive mood ahead of this week's European Union enlargement by telling its eastern neighbours that low corporate tax rates used to attract foreign investment were unacceptable"

In Argentina privatization of the water supply led to a drop in child mortality of 5-7 percent, with reductions of 24% in the poorest areas

The Stossel "problem": "According to some leading journalists and consumer activists, ABC's news division suffers from a major problem: John Stossel. He used to be such a good consumer reporter, years ago, worthy of his numerous Emmies. But now he thinks that markets protect consumers better than governments do, and he's skeptical of all sorts of beliefs that we all just know are right. ... The real Stossel problem is that he's so alone..."

The private sector in Australia has been using new technology (mobile phones and trunk radio) to provide a better service to taxicab users. So the government wants to ban it: "Groups of entrepreneurial cabbies have created a thriving business providing luxurious, limo-class service at cab prices. The passengers are thrilled and the drivers are getting ahead in an ingenious example of how the market can outwit the leaden bureaucracies of big government regulation. But last week, the Transport Minister, Michael Costa, spoiled it all. As part of his "reform" of the taxi industry, Costa announced a ban on "private network" cab drivers who use mobile phones to service private clients, threatening fines ranging from $1100 to a staggering $110,000"

South Africa today. "South Africa now has a high rate of taxation, restrictive labor laws, is Africa's largest welfare state and has Africa's largest, most politically well-connected and politically influential labor union movement... At the present day, an estimated 42% or 8-million employable non-white South Africans are unemployed. The unemployment among this segment of the population is higher today than at any time during the apartheid era... South Africa's long term economic future appears bleak due to the policies that the nation's government has already enacted. The disarming of the civilian population has left it at the mercy of armed criminals."

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ELSEWHERE

On Saturday I linked without comment to an article about gun control that referred to work by John Lott. John Lott has of course been much criticized by Leftists because he could not produce the original data behind one of the surveys he quoted --- a fact originally brought to light by a libertarian blogger. Lott says he lost the data in a computer disk crash. As I have myself lost stuff that way despite being generally very careful about backups, I sympathize with such problems. Conservatives are divided over Lott's claim but I note that The person who knew Lott's work best at that time has testified in Lott's favour and that even the Leftist Mother Jones says that the particular survey concerned "isn't central to the argument".

There is a recent scholarly paper by G.A. Mauser here (PDF) surveying the results of gun control in Britain, Canada and Australia which describes Australia's gun-buyback scheme and associated bans as a "failed experiment". The article concludes: "In all cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive and often counterproductive".

Nader: A man of principle? "Despite the millions of dollars he commands, he historically paid his professional staff less than minimum wage... When I worked for Ralph Nader in 1980-81, he paid us $8,000 a year, hardly enough to get by on even then. We could scarcely afford the time to spend money, though, because Nader expected staff to work around the clock.... Though Nader claims he wants to fight discrimination, he and his staff asked me my age, religion, sleeping habits, family tree, medical history and a lot of other highly personal questions in violation of District of Columbia's employment law".

More glories of socialized medicine: Canadian healthcare workers are on strike because their government wants to cut their annual leave from 9 weeks to a "measly" eight weeks! The poor darlings!

Crystal ball experts: "The United States said Monday it would not force the issue of placing armed sky marshals on trans-Atlantic planes if European countries reject such anti-terrorist precautions.... Portugal, Sweden and Denmark have signaled they prefer canceling flights to deploying armed guards on planes if there is a strong suspicion of an attack."

Hooray! "A Southern California college professor who received wide media attention when she claimed that racists had vandalized and defaced her car with ethnic slurs was charged on Monday with filing a false police report and insurance fraud.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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"THINK ISRAEL"

Some recent articles on Think Israel:

"SHARON'S DISENGAGEMENT PLAN"
"ISRAEL'S GAZA GAMBLE"
"ISRAEL'S REAL CHOICE IS EITHER TO FIGHT AND SURVIVE, OR TO CAPITULATEAND BE DESTROYED"
"PALESTINIAN FALLACY"
"SHI'ITE IRAN: THE KEY TO THE MIDDLE EAST:
"AN UNTONED-DOWN COMMENTARY ON SUDAN"
"MAKING THE CASE FOR JEW HATRED: Martin Jay Explains How Jews Cause Antisemitism"
"ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMNS"

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"THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW"

Thought you should know is site worth bookmarking. It is not quite a blog as the owner of the site lets the news stories and articles he links to speak for themselves. But he sure get some good ones. A quick sampling of recent headlines:

Homosexual Leader Vows to 'torture' Opponents
N. Korea banks on Kerry White House
'Several Thousand' Foreign Fighters Slip Into Iraq
Detroit Woman Tells of Self-Defense Shooting
Heroes and Wusses
Al Qaeda and Converts to Islam
Liberals ARE Unpatriotic

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ELSEWHERE

Australia's Leftist State governments are proposing a massive re-socialization of schools and hospitals: "EIGHT Labor premiers and chief ministers are working on a radical plan to overhaul the way the nation runs its hospitals and schools. They are considering proposals forcing all schools - public and private - to accept students who cannot afford to pay fees. They also are looking at "enrolling" families with a selected GP or health clinic for life." Too many Australians have escaped to the private sector for the idea to be a vote-winner, though.

The NYT has an adulatory review of the latest book about Fascism: The anatomy of Fascism by Robert. O. Paxton -- in which the author claims that Hitler was an "antisocialist". That would have been news to Hitler! Hitler did after all call the political party he led "The National Socialist German Worker's Party". I might say more about all the Leftist distortions involved in Paxton's book at greater length tomorrow but I suspect that I have said it all already.

USA Today is back to doing good editorials again -- this time condemning government intervention in the airline business. Excerpt: "That's the type of meddling Congress rejected when it deregulated the industry 26 years ago to let customer demand, not federal bureaucrats, determine flights and prices"

Have Saddam's WMDs been found? "In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors."

There has of course been lately much pontificating about the nature of Islam and why it is so anti-Western. Two of the better efforts are here and here. I myself don't think such debates matter a hill of beans. It is clear that only an armed response has any chance of restraining the terrorists. They won't be debated into giving up violence. Israel has been very peaceful lately after they knocked off the last two Hamas leaders.

This may be the last we hear of the disgusting Amirault case -- where virtually the entire Massachusetts establishment colluded to keep an innocent man in jail for 18 years. But since when did America's so-called "liberals" ever really care about liberty or the little guy? All they cared about in this case was saving face for themselves and their cronies.

The Policeman's blog continues to show what a mockery British policing is these days. I don't think I'll visit Britain again any time soon. "The old grey mare aint what she used to be".

China Hand is back blogging again -- with posts on buying a car and running a small business in China.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

GUN CONTROL

Guns save lives: "How strange it must be to be a liberal. Driven by slogans, blinded by superstitions, dazzled by fantasies, the liberal stumbles through life oblivious to facts. There is almost nothing the liberal thinks he knows about race, social policy, sex roles, individual differences, and even history that is not some combination of slogan, superstition, and fantasy. John Lott's soberly brilliant More Guns, Less Crime could not possibly be a more convincing demonstration that what liberals think they know about guns is fantasy, too. The liberal view, of course, is that private citizens should not have guns and that gun control will stop violence. Prof. Lott, who teaches law and economics at the University of Chicago, makes an air-tight case for the opposite view"

Shoot attacking cougars or wave at them?: "California game wardens now visit elementary schools, advising children to stand still, wave their arms and shout when they encounter one of these deadly predators. It's good advice as far as it goes -- the animal is far more likely to take a small human for prey if it tries to run away. But shouldn't the kids yell something else, first? Something like, 'Daddy, shoot the cat?' For most absurdly of all, the pathetic bedwetters who have taken over the state of California have made it almost entirely illegal to carry a firearm for self-defense in precisely the places citizens are most likely to have this kind of unpleasant encounter -- the state's parks and recreation areas."

And in Alaska, the do-gooders fight bears with pepper spray. How dangerous can the antigun mania get?

Peter Hitchens has a good article on the gun-control lunacy in Britain.

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ELSEWHERE

More glories of socialized medicine: "Senior health officers tried to disguise the truth from a mother desperate to know if a hospital blunder had put her baby in danger.... It is just one example of how health chiefs blamed for substandard care in Sydney hospitals attempted to "spin" their way out of the crisis. A Daily Telegraph investigation has uncovered at least five cases of patients who received substandard treatment being deliberately misinformed or having relevant facts withheld from them, their families and the public".

Plain talk: "The advanced state of Britain's utter moral bankruptcy is on vivid display today with the publication of the scream of venomous outrage by 52 ex-diplomats against Tony Blair's backing for George Bush over Iraq and Blair's failure to rein him in over his support for Israel. Their letter speaks volumes for the rancid prejudice which animates so much of the British foreign policy mandarinate, and has now unfortunately influenced the attitude of so much of the population".

Keith Burgess-Jackson recently had an article on Tech Central Station explaining why Leftists are such an angry, hate-filled lot. He got a heap of attention out of it, including lots of emails. He posted on his blog a lot of the critical emails he got from Leftists. He must have hit where it hurt because some of his Leftist critics even went so far as to criticize him for saying that Leftists believe in equality! But then other Leftists have said that Communists like Castro and Stalin are conservatives (!) so it just goes to show that Leftists will say anything that suits them at the time. Truth doesn't matter to Leftists -- only their own pathetic over-inflated egos matter.

The National Center for Public Policy Research responds to the "Nightline" stunt about America's fallen soldiers.

Amazing: Kofi Annan supporting Ariel Sharon and criticizing the Arabs: "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Yasser Arafat Friday to give Israel's Gaza pullout plan a chance".

More amazement. Australia's Leftists are making the teachers shriek: "Labor's plan to give more money to poor private schools would hasten the flight of middle-class students out of the state system, defenders of public education have warned. Chris Bonnor, president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, said the "populist" pledge to take money from wealthy private schools and redistribute it to needy non-government schools would make low-fee schools more attractive to parents".

Wonders will never cease: Australia's Leftist wishy washies calling for Koalas to be shot. They are right for once: "A koala population explosion on an Australian island has prompted calls for 20,000 of the furry, native marsupials to be shot to stop them destroying their island habitat".

There is a good post here on the utter brainlessness of John Kerry's solution to the outsourcing "problem".

David's Medienkritik has made an amazing find: A pro-American and pro-Bush article in a major German newspaper!

The wicked one has got some good pictures for you.

Dick McDonald is still blogging up a storm. He covers a lot of the stuff I would cover if I were more energetic. I urged him to start blogging because I liked his emails and he has not disappointed. He's got a good colour scheme too!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here. PC WATCH notes some pretty alarming attacks on free speech in connection with immigration.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES

A minor eccentricity of mine is that I find amusement in a lot of things that most others don't find amusing at all. For instance I find Mein Kampf an amusing read -- because you can open it almost at random and be struck not only by what a good Leftist of his day Hitler sounds but also by what a good Leftist he was even in modern terms -- as I have previously pointed out here.

Another text I get a kick out of is about as unlikely as you can get: The "39 Articles of Religion" of the Church of England. To this day all Anglican priests have to swear that they agree with them before they can be ordained. They are the original definition of Anglicanism and go back to 1571. The main reason I enjoy them is that so many of them are very plain-spoken. They conspicuously lack the waffle, obfuscation and infinite compromise that characterizes the Church of England and its daughter churches of today. Note a few of them below. All conservatives should like the last two I quote. The meaning of some words has of course changed a bit over the centuries. "Fond", for instance, meant "deluded" in the 16th century. So being "fond" of someone originally meant being crazy about them! And a "fond hope" was a crazy hope.

The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture; but rather repugnant to the word of God.

It is a thing plainly repugnant to the word of God and the custom of the primitive Church, to have public prayer in the Church, or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

The Cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people; for both parts of the Lord's sacrament, by Christ's ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.

Bishops, Priests, and Deacons are not commanded by God's laws either to vow the estate of single life or to abstain from marriage. Therefore it is lawful also for them, as for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as they shall judge the same to serve better to godliness.

The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England. The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences. It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars.

The riches and goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast; notwithstanding every man ought of such things as he possesseth liberally to give alms to the poor, according to his ability.

It is the English of over 400 years ago but I still think it is hard to beat for plain-speaking: Most refreshing in the present era of political correctness. There was no worry then that they might make someone feel "uncomfortable".

And the simplicity and clarity of the wording does not stem from simple-mindedness on the part of those who wrote the 39 articles. Where they feel a need to get theological -- on the difficult doctrine of predestination (Article 17), for instance -- they are as complex as any modern theologian.

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ELSEWHERE

I have recently done a long overdue cleanout of my blogroll in the green column to the Left. All the links there now should be "live". If I have missed out anybody who should be there for some reason let me know.

A day in the life of an anti-war protest Some fun pictures and commentary from Washington, DC. (Via The New Criterion)

Arlene Peck thinks that there is too much talk about Arab fundamentalism and not enough action.

Australia's cultural protectionists are getting hysterical about the effect of the U.S./Australia free trade agreement on Australian films. Maybe they think Hollywood should be protected against Australians such as Nicole Kidman, Peter Weir, Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson. Fair's fair!

Brazil once had a comparable per capita GDP to the US. Then it discovered ...corporations tax.

Academic researchers find that Fox News, typically blasted by Leftists for conservative bias, is "fair and balanced" in its reporting

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

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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"THE AUSTRALIAN" HAS A GOOD DAY

Interesting that this article on gross Leftist bias in American universities was reproduced half way across the world in yesterday's "The Australian" newspaper (p.33 April 28th). "The Australian" is the nearest Australian equivalent to the London "Times". Rupert Murdoch owns both, of course. Excerpt: "A criminology professor asked his class to write an essay on "Why George Bush is a war criminal." One student balked and instead turned in a piece on why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. He got an F."

Interesting admission here that the most passionate advocate of racism in Australia a century ago was the leader of the Leftists, Chris Watson. Excerpt: "McMullin doesn't deal with Watson's role in the creation of White Australia but it is revelatory. After Edmund Barton, as inaugural PM, introduced the bill in 1901, Watson led the attack seeking not a dictation test but, on Labor's behalf, a direct racial ban. He told the house his objection to the mixing of coloured and white people "lies in the main in the possibility and probability of racial contamination". And all Australia's Leftist honchos were loudly celebrating Watson's government just yesterday! Leftists change their principles as easily as they change their clothes -- as the present upsurge of antisemitism on the Left also attests. Hitler's racism simply made him a normal Leftist of his era.

Good to see "The Australian" reporting at length on the U.N. abuse of the Iraq 'oil for food' program. The Australian media have almost totally ignored the story so far. Fun to note that the author of the article in "The Australian" is American-born conservative ex-blogger, James Morrow. Excerpt: "ABC viewers were shocked to learn last week that the man who spent six years administering the UN's Iraqi oil-for-food program stood accused of receiving millions of dollars in bribes from Saddam Hussein's regime. ... But the ABC that aired the story and tracked Sevan down in Noosa Heads was not Australia's taxpayer-financed broadcaster but the American television network. Meanwhile, Australia's ABC has remained virtually silent on the story"

Again in "The Australian", a good comment on the positive news from Iraq here: "There is violence and there is progress in Iraq. Most visitors understand that, and most Iraqis are using their freedom well. Municipal elections have been held in 17 cities so far; according to Iranian-born author Amir Taheri, they have all been won by democratic and secularist parties."

Incredible illogic: The leader of Australia's major Leftist party, Mark Latham, has championned the idiotic idea that if you read books to kids, that will somehow help the kids to learn how to read! Latham's words: "if we read three storybooks a night to our infant children, by the age of five they'll be able to read". He doesn't explain how or offer any evidence, of course. But it suits the teachers' unions who seem to have "Anything but phonics" as an article of faith -- regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. Brian Micklethwait would be aghast.

This book review in "The Australian" (by a feminist author) of After Theory by (Marxist) Terry Eagleton is rightly scathing: "What I hoped to find in After Theory was ideas about what type of thinking and writing might flourish in a post-theory world. I soon discovered that Eagleton doesn't seem to be the least interested in thinking, only in potted ideas. After Theory has a strange cover featuring an aircraft, possibly a bomber. Eagleton himself is so bombastic it's hard to read him straight... After Theory takes us into a vacuum where bits of past theories collide, supported only by vacuous commentary". Needless to say, Eagleton is a huge success in the academic world.

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ELSEWHERE

Amusing: "Elton John thinks there's something "incredibly racist" about viewer voting on Fox TV's "American Idol."" He is right of course. Most whites are heartily sick of blacks (as "white flight" has always shown) but there are few occasions on which they are allowed to show it these days. Anyobody who thinks that most people don't prefer people like themselves does not know much about human nature. And no amount of preaching will alter it.

Another triumph of socialized medicine: "Although he arrived in an ambulance with a note from a doctor recommending "urgent psychiatric attention", Mr Da Pos received no medical treatment and took his own life shortly after leaving the hospital."

"Scalpism": Israeli blogger David Boxenhorn has just made up a new word. He noted my big tease of Captain Clueless and sent me the following rather amusing email in response: "It is interesting that you brought up heightism in your email to Den Beste. I have long noticed that myself - it is VERY pronounced in hiring for leadership positions. How many short CEOs can you name? I bet that they're all entrepreneurs that weren't hired by anyone! Bill Gates is usually described as short; he's 5'10" - that's AVERAGE in the US, but very short for a CEO (yes, I know he isn't CEO anymore, but he's still Chairman). While we're on the subject, what about scalpism? Most men over 40 in the US are bald. No bald man has been elected since the advent of television! Can you imagine a short, bald guy being elected US President?"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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BLACK ISSUES

Dave Huber records how his local education "experts" in Wilmington, Delaware just cannot face the fact that NOTHING they have done in the last 25 years of trying has altered low black educational achievement. They will still say anything rather than acknowledge evidence that the problem lies with the blacks themselves.

An older but very good article on the immorality and destructiveness of "affirmative action" is here. It's more dangerous than you might think and its assumptions are constantly proved wrong.

Forget about blackness: Black author Debra Dickerson argues it's time blacks stop worrying about what whites think of them.

How to help Australia's blacks: "Incentives, including the subsidisation of transport costs, should be offered to those residents prepared to move and/or to take up employment outside remote communities. If, despite this support, Aborigines are not prepared to seek employment outside such communities, that could be treated as a refusal to undergo the normal work test and hence subject to reduced unemployment benefits... Employers should be encouraged to employ Aborigines by making such employment exempt from labour market regulations, including the minimum wage."

Australian Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson identifies welfare payments as the major cause of problems for Australia's blacks: "Automatic and unconditional welfare payments must end to encourage young indigenous people to seek work. Rather than just alluding to problems of "welfare dependency", "boredom", "hopelessness" and so on, Collins says unconditional welfare payments are a problem "that's got to be addressed".

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ELSEWHERE

There is an excellent new blog here by a British policeman. Really good reading. It certainly exposes the follies of policing in Britain under their present crazy laws.

David's Medienkritik reproduces some shots from an appallingly antisemitic program being shown on GERMAN public TV. You'd think they'd learn.

Property rights essential to economic growth: "Bernard Heitger looked at data from different countries from 1975-1995. He found that compared with the more traditional determinants of economic growth -- such as physical and human capital accumulation and the growth rate of the working-age population -- the impact of property rights is quite remarkable.... It seems reasonable to classify property rights among the ultimate sources of economic growth"

Minimum wages destroy jobs: "The reauthorization of the 1996 Welfare Reform law has been put on hold over a dispute about raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 an hour. How quickly we forget. The proposed minimum wage boost would hurt the very ones who are most needful of jobs -- the poor."

A bit optimistic: "It is here that the importance of a free press arises most clearly. For however much journalists might be willing to commit malpractice, when they compete with one another for readers, listeners, or viewers, they cannot afford to be sloppy for very long. Competition is a kind of quality management device."

French duplicity in the run up to the Iraq war: ""The problem with you Americans," de Villepin hectored a visiting United States senator in Paris last December, "is that you don't read Machiavelli." His meaning, the senator's aide told me, was crystal clear. De Villepin and Chirac had lied to the United States during the Iraq crisis, and if we didn't like it, we should get over it. That's how the "big boys" played politics."

Hypocrite Moore: "Hollywood film producer Michael Moore, who has been an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush and his policies since he was first elected in 2000, is in hot water over outsourcing his web site design and servers to non-American companies. Moore, who has championed the cause of keeping American jobs within the borders of the United States during the recent debate over outsourcing, has himself granted a company named PLANK the job of developing and designing the look and operation of Moore's web site. Despite his vehement objections to outsourcing American jobs, Moore still hired the Montreal-based company to create his web site. In addition, the web host server for Moore's web site is also Canadian-owned by Webcore Labs, whose home office is located in Calgary, Alberta."

Anybody who thinks that it is impossible to roll back te size of government should read this account of what New Zealand did in the 1980s: "We achieved an overall reduction of 66 percent in the size of government, measured by the number of employees. The government?s share of GDP dropped from 44 to 27 percent". The Left would expect a catastrophe as a result of that but in fact of course it made New Zealanders far better off than ever before. (Via Tim Worstall)

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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EDUCATION

The economics of teacher quality: "As a result of unionization, pay differentials between high-aptitude and low-aptitude teachers have disappeared over the past 50 years. According to a new study, one unfortunate consequence of this pay compression has been to push high-aptitude teachers out of the teaching profession."

More school failure: "Teenagers from poor households in England are being offered cash payments of up to 30 pounds a week to stay on at school or college as part of a new national drive to 'smash' the UK's high post-16 drop-out rate, the government announced yesterday. But it defended the high costs of the scheme to the taxpayer, in the face of evidence that nearly threequarters of the ultimate beneficiaries would be likely to stay in full-time education anyway."

School vouchers do work: "Caroline Minter Hoxby has just published a paper in the Swedish Economic Policy Review claiming that the performance of Milwaukee's public schools (measured in terms of test scores per dollar of spending) improved quite dramatically during the heat of the battle over vouchers (in the late 90's), and that the gains of that time do not seem to have fallen back... She attributes the gains to the voucher program"

M.E.Ch.A.: "Deliberately teaching young Hispanics that they are entitled to everything American without having to work for it or assimilate into our country's culture is counter productive to everything America stands for and should not be tolerated in our public school system. It is an insult to all legal immigrants who work hard to become Americans and love this land, to watch their adopted homeland tolerate the very tyranny they came here to escape."

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America's 'mercenary' Army: "Thirty years ago, the volunteer army was a great experiment. Today, even the military has embraced it. The quality of recruits is higher than it was, and morale is strong. And the American people seem to like it, too. In a poll last year for ABC News and the Washington Post, 97 percent of the American people said they were either very proud or somewhat proud of the armed forces. Pretty good for mercenaries". The conversion to a volunteer military was of course set up by Republican President Nixon.

"The United Nations has long been a bastion of hope for the naive idealists who seek a Star Trek-like nirvana under a benevolent global government. But recent stories revealing widespread corruption in its Iraqi Oil-for-Food program demonstrate that the U.N. is little better than a third-rate banana republic where bureaucrats line their own pockets and bribery, kickbacks, and pay-offs are the order of the day."

Leftists have different brains: "Did you hear the one about the researchers who did brain scans of people watching political commercials? It's no joke: A team at UCLA is using MRI machines to study the brain's response to political images. Subjects lie down in scanners while campaign spots play on the inside of goggles, and computers map which parts of their brains are activated. Early results confirm what many have always suspected -- Democrats and Republicans have different kinds of brains. So far, for example, they've discovered that Democrats show more activity in the part of the brain that responds to danger". Wimps? See also here

Theodore Dalrymple says that so-called human rights drive out kindness, decency, tolerance and all sense of mutual obligation: "People who stand on their rights are seldom much concerned with the rights of others. There is no logical reason why this should be so, but it is a fact of human psychology. `It's my right!' is a call not of freedom, but of egotism... There is little doubt that the idea of rights has expanded dramatically in the last few years, so that no sphere of human existence is left untouched by them. This expansion is the end product of decades of what one might call resentment studies: the academic view of the human past and present as nothing but oppression, of minorities by majorities and of majorities by minorities.... The principal beneficiaries have been the lawyers, rather than those to whom the supposed rights have been granted".

Mark Steyn on Western support for terrorists: "That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: you can choose what side of the war you want to fight on. Just tick 'home team' or 'enemy' when the draft card arrives..." ..and you can even get the dole while you side with the enemy.

A Pakistani journalist writes: "Muslims of all hues and lands protest their so-called image problem, blaming it not on themselves, but on their detractors and perceived enemies, specifically the much-maligned Western media. It does not occur to them that their negative image could, by and large, be a reflection of reality".

There are some good comments here on the stupidity of the Leftist response to the 9/11 events.

My recipe for today is for a mustard sauce to liven up most fried meat. See here or here. That is the end of my recipe collection for now but if any readers have a family favourite recipe that they think should be more widely known, do send it in and I will post it up if I like the look of it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ICONOCLASM

Iconoclasm was an early Christian doctrine that was revived by early Protestants but these days it refers to upsetting popular beliefs. Leftists aspire to it but usually end up preaching false beliefs instead

There is a brilliant article here on the "aging population" problem. Because of better health-care and many bourgeois women considering themselves too grand to have children, there are going to be far more elderly and far fewer young people in the world of the future. So who is going to support all those old people? Almost everyone thinks that it is a blindingly obvious problem and it is one reason why people wink at illegal immigration but this article looks at the statistics a bit more deeply and shows that any problem is vastly exaggerated. For once I won't try to summarize the article. I will say what I rarely do: "Read the whole thing". It looks like the whole scare is another pratfall for the social engineers.

This article says that the Dalai Lama is a bit of a fraud who just says whatever he thinks will make his audience feel good. There is no doubt that Buddhism as it was practiced in Tibet before the Chinese takeover was a very harsh and primitive affair compared with what Westerners do who think they practice Buddhism. I myself like the original teachings of the gentle Buddha but the superstitious version practiced in Tibet is something else again. It's a lot like mediaeval Christianity was.

Serbs say that Clinton bombed the wrong side. He should have helped the Christian Sebs against the Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars rather than the other way around. It makes some sense but, from my experience of Yugoslavs, they deserve one-another. They seem a touchy and aggressive lot and none of them seem to realize that aggression just leads to counter-aggression.

"To hear the TV Turnoff folks tell the tale, we're mesmerized from infancy onwards by the bright blinking lights and dazzling displays. In fact, this year's televisual fast has benefited from a recently released study the purports to show a link between watching TV and developing attention deficit disorder. Even though the authors of the study flatly state, 'We have not in fact studied or found an association between television viewing and clinically diagnosed ADHD,'

Shopping malls are icons of Austrian, not American, cultural imperialism: "Austrian architect Victor Gruen brought the mall concept to this country and designed the first enclosed American mall, drawing on ideas from socialist theory."

This explanation of the Columbine school killings seems reasonable. It was not about "bullying" or anything else that could have been "fixed". Eric Harris was just a common or garden variety psychopath -- a "moral imbecile". Such types typically do crazy things that go against their own self-interest -- but it makes sense to them because they lack normal emotions.

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ELSEWHERE

News Flash! The Jews were behind the Madrid bombings

Bureaucratic viciousness: "The market is often accused of under-providing safety. Consider, however, that the Department of Agriculture is refusing to let a Kansas beef producer test its cattle for mad cow disease. Yes, you read that right. The producer, Creekstone Farms, is losing $40,000 a day because it exports its beef to Japan where such tests are required. The testing of individual cattle, however, runs contrary to the DOA/industry message that American beef is perfectly safe without expensive testing."

Happiness and health in a prosperous society: "Between the media's emphasis on crises and grievances, and the fears engendered by 9/11, it is common to hear that things are going to hell, that our parents had it better. But objectively, almost everyone in today's United States or European Union lives better than his or her parents did." But there are still lots of unhappy people around who seem unable to count their blessings -- Why? I have myself previously commented on that here and here and here and here. There is also a short article on the subject here

Ordinary workers are "rich": "As you filed your income tax return last week it probably did not occur to you that you are 'rich.' But, in fact, Internal Revenue Service data reveals that more Americans than ever may now be classified as 'rich,' at least based on the way Democrats define the term. The chart breaks down the income taxes paid by different earners and shows that the 'rich' includes millions of two-income couples simply living paycheck to paycheck. By simply working in a two-income family, with each person earning just $10 an hour, you are among the wealthiest half of Americans -- based upon family income. You are also among the half that actually pays income taxes -- while the other half regularly complains that you are not doing enough for them."

My recipe for today is for a Thai version of marinated and grilled chicken. See here or here. Probably a bit better for you than fried chicken -- Hey! Maybe I'll get called "racist" for saying that. It has happened!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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HUNTINGTON

For a modern and forward-looking country like the US, where today even the Cold War is seen as irrelevant ancient history, to fully understand the depth of Islamic history requires a major intellectual leap. But Samuel Huntington got it pretty right over a decade ago. If what we see now is not a clash of civilizations what is?

Samuel Huntington on 'the denationalisation of the American elite': "The central distinction between the public and elites is not isolationism versus internationalism, but nationalism versus cosmopolitanism... Yes, the number of dead souls is small but growing among America's business, professional, intellectual and academic elites... they also have decreasing ties with the American nation."

And Huntington's critique of Mexican immigration into the USA has attracted bitter criticism and the usual accusations of racism from Mexicans: "Jose Murat, governor of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, wrote an editorial for Universal (March 27th, 2004) assaulting Professor Huntington. The editorial's title was "Huntington, nueva ola fascista" ["Huntington, New Fascist Wave."]. Bear in mind that Mexican governors are big immigration boosters. Simply put, Governor Murat would like to get as many Oaxacans out of Oaxaca as possible, so they won't be hanging around demanding jobs or social services. Murat would prefer Uncle Sam provide those benefits north of the border."

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ELSEWHERE

I suppose it is predictable that peaceniks would be frothing at the mouth over Teddy bears being made out of old military camouflage material and given to Iraqi children but the reasoning they give for their opposition is typically dishonest: "the scheme is insensitive and could traumatise the Iraqi children." If Iraqis were going to be traumatized by the sight of military camouflage, they would be well and truly traumatized by now! Kids like uniforms, in fact.

Osama and al-Qaida are only a small part of the Islamic problem: "Terrorism isn't going to end, regardless of what Bin Laden decides. There are too many groups, too many weapons and potential weapons, and one all-consuming ideological motive... In July 2002, long after 9/11, an Egyptian national walked into Los Angeles International Airport with a gun and killed two Israeli citizens at the El Al counter. On his application for asylum in the United States, Hesham Mohamed Hedayet had written that in Egypt he'd confessed to being a member of al-Gama'a al-Islameya, but apparently, unless a man has Osama Bin Laden's phone number in his PalmPilot or a big "AQ" tattooed across his chest, it takes the FBI almost a year to decide he is, in fact, a terrorist.... When Tenet says that al-Qaida's influence is only recently spreading, he is telling us that no one in his office has briefed him on Sayyid Qutb's writings, the bible for a very widespread and potent ideological trend that declared war on Jews, Crusaders, and infidel Muslim rulers long before Osama Bin Laden first sprouted whiskers."

For once California makes sense to me: "Every day for the past year, Los Angeles County jail officials, who oversee the largest local jail system in the world, have been releasing prisoners before their sentence is up: as many as 600 in a day, and 47,000 in a year -- nearly enough to fill Dodger Stadium. While the offenders are nonviolent -- drunken drivers, shoplifters, car thieves -- the early releases have stirred controversy over whether the savings in tax dollars is worth what many see as a threat to public safety. As agencies report drops in violent crime, so-called 'quality-of-life' crimes are soaring. To critics, the trend goes hand in hand with weakening deterrence." Top priority should be given to keeping violent offenders inside for as long as possible -- as I argue at some length here (short PDF).

Dennis Prager: I have contempt for the United Nations. It is one of the great obstacles to goodness and decency on this planet... I regard the European Union with similar revulsion. With little opposition, Europe murdered nearly every Jewish man, woman and child in its midst, and a half-century later provides cover for those in the Middle East who seek to do to the Middle East's Jews exactly what the Nazis did to the European Jews. For the European Union to condemn Israel's killing of a Hamas leader, when Hamas's avowed aim is another Jewish genocide, is so loathsome as to border on the incredible. For Germany and France (who, unlike America, have almost never shed blood for the liberty of others) to do everything they can to undermine America's attempt to liberate Iraq is similarly repugnant

Another vicious dictator the Leftists will never condemn (He's black): "'Zimbabwe never had food shortages before. Mugabe has caused this famine' ... A flicker of Esinathi Dube's deep-set eyes is the only significant sign of life in a room where starvation has brought a pervasive fear of death. Her eldest daughter, Agnes, succumbed in February; Esinathi predicts that she will soon follow. Another daughter, Sipho, lies at her side weeping away the pain of hunger. "Agnes was a strong girl but she died because she did not eat," says Esinathi. "We could not afford to buy food and the hospitals turned us away when we looked for help...Every street of Makokoba, on the outskirts of Bulawayo, has a house like Esinathi's that has lost a family member to starvation."

I am not sure whether to classify The wicked one's latest posting as a joke or not. It sounds eerily reasonable.

My latest recipe is for a superior sort of baked meatball. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

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SOME ECONOMICS AGAIN

What wonderful morality! "In 1975, the Ethiopian government nationalised the land. It meant that food production was controlled not by the profit motive but by need. It put people before profits. The result was that the people starved.

What if other countries stopped "outsourcing"? "Just as American firms have been increasing their presence overseas, foreign firms have been seeking access to American markets and talent by locating here. According to the Organization for International Investment, California has been the state benefiting most from this trend, garnering more than 700,000 jobs from foreign firms' "insourcing" to the United States. Nationwide, the creation of such insourced jobs is outpacing those outsourced by U.S. firms 2 to 1, and the pay for these jobs averages 16.5 percent more than that at all U.S. firms. Creating anti-outsourcing policy based on unemployment fears makes as much sense as bemoaning the loss of American careers in the stenographer pool, slide-rule assembly line or coal shoveling. The loss of such jobs has netted us more and better-paying jobs and extended higher living standards"

Cafe Hayek points out that jobs are being destroyed all the time so why don't we protect them all? "Any - ANY - change in the pattern of consumer spending eliminates some jobs and creates others. Do we condemn the spaying of dogs because it reduces the demand for dog catchers? Ought we to stymie research on electrical cars because, if successful, such cars will cause many workers to lose their jobs in oil fields? Should we denounce the Atkins diet because it will eliminate some jobs in factories making pasta and chocolate? Are the jobs threatened with elimination by spaying, electrical cars, the Atkins diet, and the multitude of other economic changes having nothing to do with international trade, less important to workers who hold them than are jobs held by people working in industries that compete with foreign suppliers?"

Fewer workers, more production: "How should the public, economists, politicians and workers measure the relative success and failure of a particular industry? By its profits? Its stock price? By its total employment? This may seem a rather elementary question, yet a proper and clear answer would go a long way in silencing what has been the loudest protectionist cry in recent memory."

"Unless those who wish to outlaw "outsourcing" can clearly demonstrate why it is that an economy benefits from higher costs of production versus lower costs, then they have no argument at all.. Should they succeed in forcing their views into law, we can be sure that the ultimate outcome will that which befalls any society that gives into protectionism: a lower standard of living and, in the end, even more joblessness."

Free trade good for welfare spending: "The richer the country it becomes, the more likely it can afford higher levels of taxation. It is because of free trade, in part, that today's world can invest so much in welfare states"

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ELSEWHERE

As a follow-up to my posts on the U.N. yesterday, here is some more on "Kofigate": The U.N.'s "Oil for bureaucrats" program: Safire says all the money passed through Paris; The Christian Science Monitor gives details of how it worked and says 10 billion was ripped off; The Economist says everybody involved with the program is on the nose. And with billions of dollars involved, Kofi-gate isn't small potatoes either, at least when compared to some of history's major financial scandals. And these are the people who believe that Israel is "poison"!

Dumb teachers: I was alerted to this report by Dick McDonald. About 50% of Philadelphia middle-school teachers "don't know the subjects they're teaching well enough to pass a new federally-mandated test". There have been plenty of previous reports of incompetent teachers too. American education is another example of the destruction wreaked wherever Leftists get control of anything. Before the Communists took over in 1917, Russia was the world's fourth largest industrial economy. Today they are more like a Middle-Eastern economy -- with their main exports being the oil and gas that nature put underground for them. At least they can feed themselves these days.

Schoolteacher Dave Huber has seen forced desegregation of schools close up and points out how it has not remotely done what it was supposed to do: Improve black educational achievement. He documents the desperate twists and turns of the Left now that their failure is plain for all to see.

Democrats for Bush has got to be a good blog. I'd say he needs all the help and encouragement he can get.

C.J. Maloney is outraged that New York City Council is trying to make pharmacies stock "morning after" pills. It does seem an odd role for a municipality.

Michael Darby has put up some poems for us to read and reflect on in connection with Australia's only truly national day -- Anzac day (this Sunday).

My recipe for today is for Asian fruit and pork canapes. Slow to make but they go down fast! See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

********************************

The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion

Comments? Email me or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.

********************************

Aha! "The day after John F. Kerry said he would make all of his military records available for inspection at his campaign headquarters, a spokesman said the senator would not release any new documents". Useful Fools gives us a good clue to what he is trying to cover up. He was on active duty in the Navy reserve from 1970-1972 -- at a time when he was aiding and abetting the enemy in Paris and elsewhere.

THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations: "It was in the middle of the 1970s that the late Daniel Moynihan entered and exited as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Upon his leaving he gave three definitions of that organization: 'A theater of the absurd, a decomposing corpse, and an insane asylum.' Then, giving his remarks support, he quoted a leading British journalist of the time who said that the U.N. was among 'the most corrupt and corrupting creations in the whole history of human institutions.'"

The U.N. today: "Whatever the sum involved, it vanished from the UN-administered Iraq Oil For Food programme, and unlike last year's petty looting, those at the centre of suspicion aren't lowly bureaucrats but a tight cluster of high-up insiders centred on the office, family and inner circle of Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself."

UN fraud on terror: "I simply cannot understand why President Bush keeps appealing to United Nations for its help and cooperation when that institution has proven itself to be incapable of doing anything significant in the field of human rights let alone international terrorism... I base this judgment on a long dead-letter UN resolution dated Dec. 9, 1994, passed by the General Assembly almost a decade ago, about which little is heard. In fact, few people even know it exists. And why should they, since the resolution died the day it passed? To discuss this resolution is to prove beyond a shadow of doubt the UN is a fraud, a betrayer of our hopes to establish a rule of law among nations."

The strange logic of the UN elite: "In Australia there have been calls for full recognition of same sex couples in Federal law. This was in response to the finding by the United Nations Human Rights Committee that Australia had breached Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by refusing to give a war widower's pension to Edward Young who had been the homosexual companion of a deceased war veteran. It is worth noting that only one (Finland) of the twelve countries represented on the Committee that heard this matter gives national legal recognition to same sex couples and that homosexual behaviour is illegal in three of these countries (India, Benin and Mauritius)."

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