Brookes News Update
US economy, market bubbles and Adventures in Paradise: No matter how many stock market bubbles there have been, or will be, investors and their advisers always treat the current one as permanent, sometimes even calling it a 'new era'
Australian economy and the wage-inflation myth: Regardless of what our economic commentators claim, wages are not the "key to inflation" any more than oil prices -- money supply is
Oil prices and the inflation myth: The media is once again feeding us myths about oil prices and the threat of oil-fuelled inflation, the latter tale being another pervasive economic fallacy
Inflation and economic growth: Mainstream economics sees inflation as general rises in commonly accepted price indices. Well, the mainstream is wrong -- again
Turkey, Israel and the Palestinians: why now? Turkey must take on a more direct political role and mediate between Israel and the Palestinians
The ACLU and CAIR -- liberals join with Muslim fanatics: Muslim fanatics are intimidating companies, threatening extortion, attacking free speech and generally carrying on as if they live in Saudi Arabia. So why is the ACLU helping them?
The Judge Roberts trap: It remains to be seen whether John Roberts is really the best man to fill the Constitutional shoes of the legendary William Rehnquist
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Mobile homes, campers wait at FEMA sites: "More than 9,000 mobile homes and campers meant for the victims of Hurricane Katrina are sitting unused at government staging areas while displaced families continue to live out of tents and shelters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says the backlog was inevitable: The temporary housing is easier to acquire than distribute because of the limited number of accessible roads, cleared lots and trucks to haul housing to the storm-ravaged region."
MSM lies: A small excerpt: "Media might serve its purposes in a complex society, but the chief purpose, contrary to myth, is certainly not to expose, reveal, alert, or awaken the populace. For that you're better off relying on your God-given eyes and ears and suspending belief about anything you haven't personally witnessed. The purpose of media is to control, parse, and muffle truth, and to punish any rogue reporter who goes after a "truth" that might unsettle the collective media stomach or smash the china-set of cherished beliefs. If you trusted the stampeding herd of what Hunter Thompson called the "press wizards," over the past century, you'd find yourself ruefully misinformed about major events. To cite just a few examples, they'd have told you that the Titanic didn't sink, Hitler had given up on being a dictator and only wanted peace, there was no famine and no liquidations under Stalin in the 1930s Soviet Union and, to cite a more recent example, one quarter of the United States non-IV-drug using population would be dead from AIDS by 1990, i.e. roughly 60 million people"
I love it! Dumb terrorists again: "On Sep. 2, 1999, Israel went off of daylight savings time to make it easier for Orthodox Jews to attend Selichot, a pre-sunrise penitential prayer that runs from a week before Rosh Hashana through Yom Kippur; but the Palestinian Authority refused to follow Israel, leading to a two-week period when the two were an hour apart. To try to undermine the Sharm el-Sheikh accords, signed on Sep. 4, 1999, two Palestinian terrorists a day later tried to attack Israelis. But the Islamists set the bomb timers to go off on one schedule and themselves kept another one. As a result, the bomb went off when they were still transporting it, leading to the deaths of both men but no Israelis".
Putin is fed up with the Islamists too: "Vladimir Putin declared in Brussels on Monday that radical Islamic groups are planning to systematically annihilate non-Moslems and to create a worldwide Caliphate. He added that western civilisation was at risk of being attacked by terrorists, these attacks being more than sporadic one-off attacks. Rather, they are, in the opinion of Vladimir Putin a "concerted effort and programme" by an organisation which has a global structure and which has the intention to commit murderous atrocities in the name of Islam".
Newsbusters has some good coverage of the media claim that the interview between GWB and the troops in Iraq was "staged"
Leftists will never understand this but GWB's tax cuts are financing his big spendning: The US budget deficit shrank to $319bn last year as better economic conditions boosted tax revenues. Despite falling from 2004's record $412bn figure, the federal deficit for the fiscal year ending last month was still the third highest on record. US Treasury Secretary John Snow hailed the fall, which was larger than had been projected, as "encouraging news".
The myth of the "Constitution-in-Exile" movement: "Last week, I wrote about the conspiracy-mongering regarding the existence and function of the Federalist Society that has become part of the judicial confirmation wars and has emerged as a major talking point against right-of-center judicial nominees. There is another conspiracy-mongering campaign that is designed to serve the same purpose and it has something to do with an alleged 'Constitution-in-exile' movement of conservatives and libertarians determined to bring about wholesale changes in the American legal and political structure."
There is a book just out called Righteous Gentiles: How Pius XII and the Catholic Church Saved Half a Million Jews from the Nazis. That should stir the religion-hating Lefties up.
There is a good and wide-ranging answer here to a lot of the rubbishy scare stories you hear about China.
There has been a very good email about the New Orleans problems going around. Nobody seems to know who actually wrote it but whoever did was pretty straight and down-to-earth. Snopes have reproduced it nicely because it has wrongly been attributed to George Carlin.
There is a good new blog called The liberal wrong -- with posts about Democrat elitism etc.
Message for Paul Engel: My emails to you are still getting bounced.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Sunday, October 16, 2005
MORE CRAP PSYCHOLOGY
Given the compulsive Leftism that permeates the social sciences, it is not surprising that the standards of scholarship in social science writing are normally so slight as to require a metaphorical microscope to find them. For many years I regularly wrote formal critiques of the most egregious examples of bad scholarship in psychology and sociology and I usually got them published in the academic journals concerned. It was however a great waste of time -- as both facts and reason are noted in the social sciences only insofar as they accord with Leftist prejudices. I think I should however keep the pot boiling to some extent so I do from time to time note on this blog and elsewhere how absurd various current claims from psychology are -- even if I can no longer be bothered to do a full formal critique of the particular article concerned. So I am going to make a few comments today on: Hastings, B.M. & Schaffer, B.A. (2005) "Authoritarianism and sociopolitical attitudes in response to threats of terror". Psychological Reports, 97, 623-630. It is fairly typical of the rubbish that psychologists produce in the guise of research so a critique of it might serve as a useful proxy for critiques of many similar such articles.
As is the usual fashion among psychologists, the authors make no attempt to sample any known population and proceed to base broad conclusions about human psychological processes on the answers to questionnaires given by 61 women and 10 men drawn from various classes at the small Mt. Aloysius College in Pennsylvania. The results are therefore of totally unknown generalizability. For the sake of the exercise, however, let us assume that there is some generalizability to their results and ask how those results were obtained.
What they did was to correlate several "scales" (standard collections of questions) with one another. They found that scales allegedly measuring Right-wing authoritarianism (the RWA scale), Democratic Values and Militarism tended to correlate with one another. They seem to think that this constitutes proof that conservative "authoritarians" are anti-democratic and militaristic. What a laugh! I won't bother reproducing any of the items of the three scales here but all three scales include many statements that would normally and uncontroversially be taken as indicating conservatism. So all that they have shown is in fact that people are consistent in their conservatism. People who express conservative views on one "scale" also tend to express conservative views on all three scales. Big deal! It is what scientists call an "artifactual" (researcher-induced) finding. I have been noting that sort of charade among psychologists for many years (see e.g. here).
The other thing they found, if I read it aright, is that people got more "authoritarian" (Read: "conservative") when they felt threatened. That is however just a regurgitation of the old New York adage: "A conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night". And everybody knows how conservative the armed forces are. As a former Army man myself, it has never surprised me (but has always pleased me) how many supportive emails I get with "mil" at the end of the sender's email address. So even if we take the Hastings & Schaffer results far more seriously than we should, we find that their final conclusion is little more than a commonplace. What would have been interesting is if they had explored WHY encounters with reality make people more conservative -- but that enquiry would have led them in very uncomfortable directions, I fancy.
********************************
Given the compulsive Leftism that permeates the social sciences, it is not surprising that the standards of scholarship in social science writing are normally so slight as to require a metaphorical microscope to find them. For many years I regularly wrote formal critiques of the most egregious examples of bad scholarship in psychology and sociology and I usually got them published in the academic journals concerned. It was however a great waste of time -- as both facts and reason are noted in the social sciences only insofar as they accord with Leftist prejudices. I think I should however keep the pot boiling to some extent so I do from time to time note on this blog and elsewhere how absurd various current claims from psychology are -- even if I can no longer be bothered to do a full formal critique of the particular article concerned. So I am going to make a few comments today on: Hastings, B.M. & Schaffer, B.A. (2005) "Authoritarianism and sociopolitical attitudes in response to threats of terror". Psychological Reports, 97, 623-630. It is fairly typical of the rubbish that psychologists produce in the guise of research so a critique of it might serve as a useful proxy for critiques of many similar such articles.
As is the usual fashion among psychologists, the authors make no attempt to sample any known population and proceed to base broad conclusions about human psychological processes on the answers to questionnaires given by 61 women and 10 men drawn from various classes at the small Mt. Aloysius College in Pennsylvania. The results are therefore of totally unknown generalizability. For the sake of the exercise, however, let us assume that there is some generalizability to their results and ask how those results were obtained.
What they did was to correlate several "scales" (standard collections of questions) with one another. They found that scales allegedly measuring Right-wing authoritarianism (the RWA scale), Democratic Values and Militarism tended to correlate with one another. They seem to think that this constitutes proof that conservative "authoritarians" are anti-democratic and militaristic. What a laugh! I won't bother reproducing any of the items of the three scales here but all three scales include many statements that would normally and uncontroversially be taken as indicating conservatism. So all that they have shown is in fact that people are consistent in their conservatism. People who express conservative views on one "scale" also tend to express conservative views on all three scales. Big deal! It is what scientists call an "artifactual" (researcher-induced) finding. I have been noting that sort of charade among psychologists for many years (see e.g. here).
The other thing they found, if I read it aright, is that people got more "authoritarian" (Read: "conservative") when they felt threatened. That is however just a regurgitation of the old New York adage: "A conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night". And everybody knows how conservative the armed forces are. As a former Army man myself, it has never surprised me (but has always pleased me) how many supportive emails I get with "mil" at the end of the sender's email address. So even if we take the Hastings & Schaffer results far more seriously than we should, we find that their final conclusion is little more than a commonplace. What would have been interesting is if they had explored WHY encounters with reality make people more conservative -- but that enquiry would have led them in very uncomfortable directions, I fancy.
********************************
ELSEWHERE
Interesting that the old Nazi pix that I put up on Friday via Calvin College would not come down for most of the day. Being a cautious old conservative, of course, I had foreseen that and gave backup links to where you could find the same pix on one of my own sites. What I had foreseen was that the links to the Calvin College site might overload their bandwidth but I think there was in fact more to it than that. I put the pix up on four different blogspot sites and and none of the four would bring in the pix from Calvin college. Being a skeptical old devil, however, I also posted the same links on three non-blogspot sites and the pix there always came down promptly over the same period. So I suspect that someone at Calvin College got a bit irked at anybody actually looking at what they have in their archive and blocked all blogspot sites from accessing the pix. Why am I not surprised?
No Pasaran linked to my comments about the Nazi propaganda posters but wisely used my site as source for the pic they used rather than relying on Calvin College.
Proof of the power of the individual: "Political friends and many former foes paid tribute yesterday to Lady Thatcher, the former Conservative Prime Minister, who celebrates her 80th birthday today. Michael Howard, the outgoing Tory leader, placed her alongside Winston Churchill in the gallery of national leaders".
French bungling: "Much has been said about the French social and economic model. There are those who would defend it to the last as the only hope against the deadly forces of globalisation, and those who want it buried as soon as possible, precisely so France can benefit from globalisation. Whichever camp you're in, the case of the state-owned Corsican ferry company SNCM, over whose fate the centre-right government and a couple of radical trade unions are currently scrapping, provides a textbook example of where the model can go catastrophically wrong.... The current crisis is the direct result of an exceptionally well-developed system of government protection that has manifestly had its day, and has been waiting to happen for more than 30 years - ever since a rival, commercial and efficiently run company, Corsica Ferries, appeared on the scene. Flying the Italian flag, which is far less onerous for shipping companies than the French, and employing mainly foreign sailors, Corsica Ferries makes good money. The SNCM, however, forced by its state-owned status to fly the French flag and employ unionised and militant French and Corsican sailors under a very generous French social regime, has been racking up ever-widening losses for years".
Neal Boortz has an excellent fisking of an attempt by a twisted Leftist academic to blame the recent chaotic events in New Orleans on middle America. One excerpt: "Obviously Engle has a problem with achievement. In a word, she harbors great resentment toward those who have gone the extra mile to achieve success and wealth. Somehow she has convinced herself that the problems that afflicted the poor in New Orleans were due to the existence of gated communities and the presence of the evil rich. If there had been no wealthy neighborhoods in New Orleans the poor, somehow, wouldn't have suffered. Engle also finds great fault with the idea that people would go to extra lengths to protect themselves from crime. How hideously insensitive of the rich! How very un-American! No doubt were we to locate Ms. Engle's automobile wherever it is parked while she is out there community-building, we would find it to be unlocked; ditto for her home. After all, Engle certainly wouldn't want to do anything to protect herself from crime, would she? That would be a certain indicator of a complete lack of moral goodness on her part"
There are some new posts from Chris Brand here with a lot of news from Britain that I hadn't heard -- Tony Blair being investigated for "racism", for instance. I have said it before but I think that U.K. must now stand for the "Unhinged Kingdom"
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Interesting that the old Nazi pix that I put up on Friday via Calvin College would not come down for most of the day. Being a cautious old conservative, of course, I had foreseen that and gave backup links to where you could find the same pix on one of my own sites. What I had foreseen was that the links to the Calvin College site might overload their bandwidth but I think there was in fact more to it than that. I put the pix up on four different blogspot sites and and none of the four would bring in the pix from Calvin college. Being a skeptical old devil, however, I also posted the same links on three non-blogspot sites and the pix there always came down promptly over the same period. So I suspect that someone at Calvin College got a bit irked at anybody actually looking at what they have in their archive and blocked all blogspot sites from accessing the pix. Why am I not surprised?
No Pasaran linked to my comments about the Nazi propaganda posters but wisely used my site as source for the pic they used rather than relying on Calvin College.
Proof of the power of the individual: "Political friends and many former foes paid tribute yesterday to Lady Thatcher, the former Conservative Prime Minister, who celebrates her 80th birthday today. Michael Howard, the outgoing Tory leader, placed her alongside Winston Churchill in the gallery of national leaders".
French bungling: "Much has been said about the French social and economic model. There are those who would defend it to the last as the only hope against the deadly forces of globalisation, and those who want it buried as soon as possible, precisely so France can benefit from globalisation. Whichever camp you're in, the case of the state-owned Corsican ferry company SNCM, over whose fate the centre-right government and a couple of radical trade unions are currently scrapping, provides a textbook example of where the model can go catastrophically wrong.... The current crisis is the direct result of an exceptionally well-developed system of government protection that has manifestly had its day, and has been waiting to happen for more than 30 years - ever since a rival, commercial and efficiently run company, Corsica Ferries, appeared on the scene. Flying the Italian flag, which is far less onerous for shipping companies than the French, and employing mainly foreign sailors, Corsica Ferries makes good money. The SNCM, however, forced by its state-owned status to fly the French flag and employ unionised and militant French and Corsican sailors under a very generous French social regime, has been racking up ever-widening losses for years".
Neal Boortz has an excellent fisking of an attempt by a twisted Leftist academic to blame the recent chaotic events in New Orleans on middle America. One excerpt: "Obviously Engle has a problem with achievement. In a word, she harbors great resentment toward those who have gone the extra mile to achieve success and wealth. Somehow she has convinced herself that the problems that afflicted the poor in New Orleans were due to the existence of gated communities and the presence of the evil rich. If there had been no wealthy neighborhoods in New Orleans the poor, somehow, wouldn't have suffered. Engle also finds great fault with the idea that people would go to extra lengths to protect themselves from crime. How hideously insensitive of the rich! How very un-American! No doubt were we to locate Ms. Engle's automobile wherever it is parked while she is out there community-building, we would find it to be unlocked; ditto for her home. After all, Engle certainly wouldn't want to do anything to protect herself from crime, would she? That would be a certain indicator of a complete lack of moral goodness on her part"
There are some new posts from Chris Brand here with a lot of news from Britain that I hadn't heard -- Tony Blair being investigated for "racism", for instance. I have said it before but I think that U.K. must now stand for the "Unhinged Kingdom"
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Saturday, October 15, 2005
WHY I BLOG
Keith Burgess Jackson has suggested that I explain to all and sundry my motives for being such a dedicated blogger. I post daily to six blogs of my own and also contribute frequently to three other group blogs. So I suppose that is indeed in some need of explanation.
Unlike most bloggers I rarely make comments on my blogs about events in my life but, for some reason that is rather opaque even to me, I do put up a few reports of my personal doings on Majority Rights. It is a high-traffic blog but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think I do it because that blog is mainly concerned with something that has a high emotional component -- immigration. And as someone who thinks that most (but not all) immigration, is OK I qualify there as the extreme Leftist in the group! (My views on that subject are however mainstream in Australia). So many of my posts are designed to move my co-bloggers and readers of the blog generally towards a greater acceptance of some types of immigration -- legal and selective immigration in particular. And I feel that personal anecdotes are more persuasive in that sphere than are rational arguments.
But that brings me to what I think is Keith's central enquiry: Do I think my blogging makes any difference? And I can answer that very easily. I know it does because my readers often tell me so. I doubt that I have ever converted a single Leftist from his Leftism but a lot of people of conservative views email me to tell me how my blogs are a sort of emotional and intellectual lifeline for them in the sea of liberalism that surrounds them. I am seen as one of the few voices who will invariably speak the plain truth, no matter how unpopular and politically incorrect it may be. Rarely does a day go by when someone does not email me with a grateful message of that kind. And I in turn greatly appreciate and am encouraged by such feedback.
But there is also a certain sense in which I blog for posterity. As an atheist, I have no hope of immortality of any kind so the ancient Greek idea that the only immortality you can have is in men's minds has some resonance with me. And some Greeks even achieved it. Will Socrates or Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae ever be forgotten? And over the period of my lifetime I have already seen many of the views that I have held move from being absurdities to realities. So I think I already have some basis for feeling that, in the future, I will be recognized as someone who got it right when most others did not. I repeatedly find that my theories and assumptions about the world work out in practice (even on the stockmarket!) and I think that, as time goes by, my way of thinking will become more influential precisely because it does yield good predictions. So I actually hope for more influence in the future than I have in the present. So, like many scientists, my goal is to further human knowledge and understanding but my views on most things are so out of the mainstream among intellectuals now that only the future holds any promise of my achieving that. And since many scientists were ridiculed in their lifetime for putting forward what are now accepted truths, I don't think I am being totally unrealistic in that. In particular, I hope that my dissection of the motivations behind Leftism will one day win broad acceptance and thus reduce the evils that Leftists are forever trying to inflict upon us.
And how do I manage to write so much? One reason is that as a retired man I have the time for it. I spend about 12 hours a day in front of my computer screen. Another is that I am a born academic: Writing is what I have always done. And a third reason is that I find the world of ideas far more exciting than any other so I have few other interests in life. And there always seem to be women in my life who put up with that, rather surprisingly. Women are such fine creatures that I will never understand homosexuals.
************************
ELSEWHERE
Japan post office now to be privatized: "Japan's prime minister has scored a huge political victory after three decades of calling for reform of Japan's cash-rich postal system, which has long been a source of wasteful government spending. Friday's passage of postal reform legislation may now allow Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to focus on pressing domestic and diplomatic issues that have been pushed to the sidelines. Japan's upper house of parliament, which rejected the postal privatization bills two months ago triggering national elections, did an about-face on Friday. Upper House president Chikage Ogi announcing that the package of bills has passed by a vote of 134 to 100". [If the Japanese can do it, why can't everybody else?]
Over a week ago I pointed out the nonsense inherent in the claim by "humanist" dinosaur expert Gregory Paul that religion is bad for you. It is good to see that fellow unbeliever Theodore Dalrymple has just had a hefty swing at Mr Paul also.
Useless Australian "social work" bureaucracy kills kids: "Children as young as two weeks old are dying because the NSW Department of Community Services is failing to adequately protect children at risk. In a damning report tabled in state parliament yesterday, NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour slammed the performance of DOCS, saying children were dying unnecessarily. He found an under-resourced DOCS closed files of children at high risk and did not respond adequately to concerns about unborn children. In a number of cases, DOCS had failed to take steps to protect children after they were born, even though concerns were raised during pregnancy that the mother had a history of mental illness, drug abuse or other serious problems. "Children as young as two weeks, four weeks or six weeks of age are dying in circumstances which seem to be preventable," Mr Barbour said. The report came ahead of today's funeral of six-year-old Rose Villanueva-Austin, who died last month from a methadone overdose. DOCS officials admitted they had been told about Rose's circumstances but denied reports the department had been notified about problems in her family on up to 200 occasions".
Free markets, social welfare and migration: "Austrian utility and welfare theory observes that all transactions in a free market economy take place only when both parties believe they will be happier as a result of an exchange. People act in ways that maximize their personal well being, subjectively understood. In contrast, in centralized economies the only way the state can enforce its economic decisions is through the threat of force for noncompliance, or fear. We might say that capitalism is a happiness-based system where as communism (and all forms of interventionism) are fear-based systems."
Spaceships and small governments: "During its long life on syndication -- following a short-lived network run -- the original Star Trek became a massive cult phenomenon that used science fiction as a means to spread a multicultural, anti-capitalist, progressive gospel. With its post-money, post-war Earth and its valiant, UN-like Federation of Planets, it reflected the liberal passions of the 1960s. Now, nearly four decades later, another short-lived TV show, Joss Whedon's Firefly, has inspired similar cult adoration and made the leap to the big screen -- only this time the politics are reversed. The result is Serenity, a scrappy, energetic science fiction/western hybrid that is as libertarian as Star Trek was liberal, reminding viewers why even well-intentioned government intervention is more a problem than a solution."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots to read.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Keith Burgess Jackson has suggested that I explain to all and sundry my motives for being such a dedicated blogger. I post daily to six blogs of my own and also contribute frequently to three other group blogs. So I suppose that is indeed in some need of explanation.
Unlike most bloggers I rarely make comments on my blogs about events in my life but, for some reason that is rather opaque even to me, I do put up a few reports of my personal doings on Majority Rights. It is a high-traffic blog but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think I do it because that blog is mainly concerned with something that has a high emotional component -- immigration. And as someone who thinks that most (but not all) immigration, is OK I qualify there as the extreme Leftist in the group! (My views on that subject are however mainstream in Australia). So many of my posts are designed to move my co-bloggers and readers of the blog generally towards a greater acceptance of some types of immigration -- legal and selective immigration in particular. And I feel that personal anecdotes are more persuasive in that sphere than are rational arguments.
But that brings me to what I think is Keith's central enquiry: Do I think my blogging makes any difference? And I can answer that very easily. I know it does because my readers often tell me so. I doubt that I have ever converted a single Leftist from his Leftism but a lot of people of conservative views email me to tell me how my blogs are a sort of emotional and intellectual lifeline for them in the sea of liberalism that surrounds them. I am seen as one of the few voices who will invariably speak the plain truth, no matter how unpopular and politically incorrect it may be. Rarely does a day go by when someone does not email me with a grateful message of that kind. And I in turn greatly appreciate and am encouraged by such feedback.
But there is also a certain sense in which I blog for posterity. As an atheist, I have no hope of immortality of any kind so the ancient Greek idea that the only immortality you can have is in men's minds has some resonance with me. And some Greeks even achieved it. Will Socrates or Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae ever be forgotten? And over the period of my lifetime I have already seen many of the views that I have held move from being absurdities to realities. So I think I already have some basis for feeling that, in the future, I will be recognized as someone who got it right when most others did not. I repeatedly find that my theories and assumptions about the world work out in practice (even on the stockmarket!) and I think that, as time goes by, my way of thinking will become more influential precisely because it does yield good predictions. So I actually hope for more influence in the future than I have in the present. So, like many scientists, my goal is to further human knowledge and understanding but my views on most things are so out of the mainstream among intellectuals now that only the future holds any promise of my achieving that. And since many scientists were ridiculed in their lifetime for putting forward what are now accepted truths, I don't think I am being totally unrealistic in that. In particular, I hope that my dissection of the motivations behind Leftism will one day win broad acceptance and thus reduce the evils that Leftists are forever trying to inflict upon us.
And how do I manage to write so much? One reason is that as a retired man I have the time for it. I spend about 12 hours a day in front of my computer screen. Another is that I am a born academic: Writing is what I have always done. And a third reason is that I find the world of ideas far more exciting than any other so I have few other interests in life. And there always seem to be women in my life who put up with that, rather surprisingly. Women are such fine creatures that I will never understand homosexuals.
************************
ELSEWHERE
Japan post office now to be privatized: "Japan's prime minister has scored a huge political victory after three decades of calling for reform of Japan's cash-rich postal system, which has long been a source of wasteful government spending. Friday's passage of postal reform legislation may now allow Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to focus on pressing domestic and diplomatic issues that have been pushed to the sidelines. Japan's upper house of parliament, which rejected the postal privatization bills two months ago triggering national elections, did an about-face on Friday. Upper House president Chikage Ogi announcing that the package of bills has passed by a vote of 134 to 100". [If the Japanese can do it, why can't everybody else?]
Over a week ago I pointed out the nonsense inherent in the claim by "humanist" dinosaur expert Gregory Paul that religion is bad for you. It is good to see that fellow unbeliever Theodore Dalrymple has just had a hefty swing at Mr Paul also.
Useless Australian "social work" bureaucracy kills kids: "Children as young as two weeks old are dying because the NSW Department of Community Services is failing to adequately protect children at risk. In a damning report tabled in state parliament yesterday, NSW Ombudsman Bruce Barbour slammed the performance of DOCS, saying children were dying unnecessarily. He found an under-resourced DOCS closed files of children at high risk and did not respond adequately to concerns about unborn children. In a number of cases, DOCS had failed to take steps to protect children after they were born, even though concerns were raised during pregnancy that the mother had a history of mental illness, drug abuse or other serious problems. "Children as young as two weeks, four weeks or six weeks of age are dying in circumstances which seem to be preventable," Mr Barbour said. The report came ahead of today's funeral of six-year-old Rose Villanueva-Austin, who died last month from a methadone overdose. DOCS officials admitted they had been told about Rose's circumstances but denied reports the department had been notified about problems in her family on up to 200 occasions".
Free markets, social welfare and migration: "Austrian utility and welfare theory observes that all transactions in a free market economy take place only when both parties believe they will be happier as a result of an exchange. People act in ways that maximize their personal well being, subjectively understood. In contrast, in centralized economies the only way the state can enforce its economic decisions is through the threat of force for noncompliance, or fear. We might say that capitalism is a happiness-based system where as communism (and all forms of interventionism) are fear-based systems."
Spaceships and small governments: "During its long life on syndication -- following a short-lived network run -- the original Star Trek became a massive cult phenomenon that used science fiction as a means to spread a multicultural, anti-capitalist, progressive gospel. With its post-money, post-war Earth and its valiant, UN-like Federation of Planets, it reflected the liberal passions of the 1960s. Now, nearly four decades later, another short-lived TV show, Joss Whedon's Firefly, has inspired similar cult adoration and made the leap to the big screen -- only this time the politics are reversed. The result is Serenity, a scrappy, energetic science fiction/western hybrid that is as libertarian as Star Trek was liberal, reminding viewers why even well-intentioned government intervention is more a problem than a solution."
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots to read.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Friday, October 14, 2005
MORE REVEALING NAZI POSTERS FROM THE 1930s
Note the similarity to modern Leftist themes
The first poster below is about Nazi "compassion". It advertises the Nazi charity, the NSV. The text translates: "Health, child protection, fighting poverty, aiding travellers, people's community, helping mothers: These are the tasks of the National Socialist People's Charity: Join up"
The poster below shows how big the Nazis were on collective action rather than individuality. It translates as: "National Socialism -- the organized will of the nation". It depicts storm troopers and was a favourite Nazi poster
And this next one must be the most amusing peace poster of all time. Note the date. It was issued in the very year the war began. It promoted the 1939 Nuremberg Rally and the slogan translates as the "National Party Rally of Peace". But the rally (or "assembly") was cancelled when World War II began. The message of the imagery seems to be: "Peace -- or else!". We all know how vicious and aggressive peaceniks can be (see e.g. here) but this image expresses that with unusual clarity.
But most interesting of all is probably the last poster below. It shows not a Soviet hammer and sickle (standing for worker and peasant) but just a hammer. And the text tells us why. It translates idiomatically as: "Workers with the mind and with the hands, choose the frontline soldier: HITLER!" How modern! Leftists today don't give a damn about country people either. They claim to be an alliance between the intellectuals and the workers. The more things change ....
I am grabbing bandwidth off the German Propaganda Archive of Calvin College to put these pix up but if they do not come up, you can also find them here and here and here and here
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
The Dutch get tough: "The Netherlands is likely to become the first country in Europe to ban the burka, under government proposals that would bring in some of the toughest curbs on Muslim clothing in the world. The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned. The burka, traditional clothing in some Islamic societies, covers a woman’s face and body, leaving only a strip of gauze for the eyes. Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed and that natives and immigrants should have the courage to be critical of each other. She recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman".
Economic illiteracy: "Whenever I teach a seminar on basic economics, I always survey the audience: What proportion of the American labor force earns the minimum wage or less and what is the standard of living of the average American today relative to 100 years ago? Even among highly-educated groups such as journalists or congressional staffers, the median answer is depressingly similar -- they think 20% of the American work force earns the minimum wage or less. In fact, the actual number is something less than 3%. Usually a non-trivial portion of each group thinks that our material well-being is lower today than 100 years ago. Their median answer is that we are 50% better off than we were 100 years ago. In fact, the average American is at least five and maybe 30 times better off than we were in the good old days."
Blacks who say they are Indians: "For the better part of the 20th century, black Indians were permitted to vote in elections, sit on tribal councils, and receive benefits. Tribal leaders now insist that the Freedmen were never actually citizens and that they will never attain the honor of membership because they don't have Native American blood. In 1983, the Cherokee tribe established a rule requiring citizens to carry a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. This federal document is available to anyone whose ancestors are listed on the Dawes Roll - a 1906 Indian census that excludes Freedmen. In 2000, the Seminoles expelled all 2,000 black members and denied their families a cut of the reparations money - never mind that their ancestors joined the tribe in the 18th century, endured the march from Florida to Oklahoma in the 1830s, and have considered themselves Indian for generations".
A good article by an ex-Leftist here. Excerpt: "This war will be long and difficult, because it is much broader than Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not a matter of "taking out" an individual dictator or terrorist, but a matter of defeating a political movement aimed at conquest and power. "Taking out" Osama Bin Laden or any other individual dictator or terrorist is a part of the war, but it cannot substitute for victory. Victory means stopping the war drive of the Iranian mullahs, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and helping the Iranian people win the democracy and freedom they deserve. Victory means a fundamental transformation throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Defeat by such an enemy is unacceptable, unthinkable. The U.S.-led war against terrorism is justified and a noble effort, one that will change the course of history. Support our troops. Support their mission, which is the fight for liberty. There is no greater cause."
Lost Tooth Society says that atheism is a religion so therefore REMOVING crosses from public places violates the separation of church and state!
I have just put up a post on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE that needs a bit of thought, in my opinion.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Note the similarity to modern Leftist themes
The first poster below is about Nazi "compassion". It advertises the Nazi charity, the NSV. The text translates: "Health, child protection, fighting poverty, aiding travellers, people's community, helping mothers: These are the tasks of the National Socialist People's Charity: Join up"
The poster below shows how big the Nazis were on collective action rather than individuality. It translates as: "National Socialism -- the organized will of the nation". It depicts storm troopers and was a favourite Nazi poster
And this next one must be the most amusing peace poster of all time. Note the date. It was issued in the very year the war began. It promoted the 1939 Nuremberg Rally and the slogan translates as the "National Party Rally of Peace". But the rally (or "assembly") was cancelled when World War II began. The message of the imagery seems to be: "Peace -- or else!". We all know how vicious and aggressive peaceniks can be (see e.g. here) but this image expresses that with unusual clarity.
But most interesting of all is probably the last poster below. It shows not a Soviet hammer and sickle (standing for worker and peasant) but just a hammer. And the text tells us why. It translates idiomatically as: "Workers with the mind and with the hands, choose the frontline soldier: HITLER!" How modern! Leftists today don't give a damn about country people either. They claim to be an alliance between the intellectuals and the workers. The more things change ....
I am grabbing bandwidth off the German Propaganda Archive of Calvin College to put these pix up but if they do not come up, you can also find them here and here and here and here
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
The Dutch get tough: "The Netherlands is likely to become the first country in Europe to ban the burka, under government proposals that would bring in some of the toughest curbs on Muslim clothing in the world. The country’s hardline Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, known as the Iron Lady for her series of tough anti-immigration measures, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned. The burka, traditional clothing in some Islamic societies, covers a woman’s face and body, leaving only a strip of gauze for the eyes. Mrs Verdonk gave warning that the “time of cosy tea-drinking” with Muslim groups had passed and that natives and immigrants should have the courage to be critical of each other. She recently cancelled a meeting with Muslim leaders who refused to shake her hand because she was a woman".
Economic illiteracy: "Whenever I teach a seminar on basic economics, I always survey the audience: What proportion of the American labor force earns the minimum wage or less and what is the standard of living of the average American today relative to 100 years ago? Even among highly-educated groups such as journalists or congressional staffers, the median answer is depressingly similar -- they think 20% of the American work force earns the minimum wage or less. In fact, the actual number is something less than 3%. Usually a non-trivial portion of each group thinks that our material well-being is lower today than 100 years ago. Their median answer is that we are 50% better off than we were 100 years ago. In fact, the average American is at least five and maybe 30 times better off than we were in the good old days."
Blacks who say they are Indians: "For the better part of the 20th century, black Indians were permitted to vote in elections, sit on tribal councils, and receive benefits. Tribal leaders now insist that the Freedmen were never actually citizens and that they will never attain the honor of membership because they don't have Native American blood. In 1983, the Cherokee tribe established a rule requiring citizens to carry a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. This federal document is available to anyone whose ancestors are listed on the Dawes Roll - a 1906 Indian census that excludes Freedmen. In 2000, the Seminoles expelled all 2,000 black members and denied their families a cut of the reparations money - never mind that their ancestors joined the tribe in the 18th century, endured the march from Florida to Oklahoma in the 1830s, and have considered themselves Indian for generations".
A good article by an ex-Leftist here. Excerpt: "This war will be long and difficult, because it is much broader than Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not a matter of "taking out" an individual dictator or terrorist, but a matter of defeating a political movement aimed at conquest and power. "Taking out" Osama Bin Laden or any other individual dictator or terrorist is a part of the war, but it cannot substitute for victory. Victory means stopping the war drive of the Iranian mullahs, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and helping the Iranian people win the democracy and freedom they deserve. Victory means a fundamental transformation throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Defeat by such an enemy is unacceptable, unthinkable. The U.S.-led war against terrorism is justified and a noble effort, one that will change the course of history. Support our troops. Support their mission, which is the fight for liberty. There is no greater cause."
Lost Tooth Society says that atheism is a religion so therefore REMOVING crosses from public places violates the separation of church and state!
I have just put up a post on SOCIALIZED MEDICINE that needs a bit of thought, in my opinion.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Thursday, October 13, 2005
MORE DEBUNKING OF THE "CHE" GUEVARA MYTH
"The last time I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an American student wearing a Che Guevara T-Shirt and a beret caught my eye... I asked him politely what exactly he admired so much about that man. Here are the ten reasons he mentioned- and my response.
1.HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was for state capitalism. He opposed the wage labor system of "appropriating surplus value" (in Marxist jargon) only when it came to private corporations. But he turned the "appropriation of the workers' surplus value" into a state system. One example of this is the forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.
2. HE MADE CUBA INDEPENDENT. In fact, he engineered the colonization of Cuba by a foreign power. He was instrumental in turning Cuba into a temporary beachhead of Soviet nuclear power (he sealed the deal in Yalta). As the person responsible for the "industrialization" of Cuba he failed to end the country's dependency on sugar.
3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended up in failure and reduced the sugar harvest, Cuba's mainstay, by half in two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island's economy".
Much more here
*******************************
"The last time I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York, an American student wearing a Che Guevara T-Shirt and a beret caught my eye... I asked him politely what exactly he admired so much about that man. Here are the ten reasons he mentioned- and my response.
1.HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was for state capitalism. He opposed the wage labor system of "appropriating surplus value" (in Marxist jargon) only when it came to private corporations. But he turned the "appropriation of the workers' surplus value" into a state system. One example of this is the forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.
2. HE MADE CUBA INDEPENDENT. In fact, he engineered the colonization of Cuba by a foreign power. He was instrumental in turning Cuba into a temporary beachhead of Soviet nuclear power (he sealed the deal in Yalta). As the person responsible for the "industrialization" of Cuba he failed to end the country's dependency on sugar.
3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended up in failure and reduced the sugar harvest, Cuba's mainstay, by half in two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island's economy".
Much more here
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
I am very sorry to hear of the death of Arthur Seldon, founder of the (British) Institute of Economic Affairs, one of the earliest free-market think-tanks. I knew Arthur personally and he was everything they say of him here. I have also put up here a tribute to Arthur from Chris Tame, whom I also know. Chris is himself in precarious health these days so it is good to see that he is still in there fighting for the light.
There is an interesting article here on the admissions policies of Ivy League universities such as Harvard. Rather amusing that, like that great imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, they look for the "all-round man" rather than intellectual excellence alone. The original intent of the policy was of course to keep Jews out. Harvard had a very good relationship with the Nazi regime in the 1930s. I myself went to a government-run Australian university that admitted people on the basis of high-school examination results only and seem to have done pretty well in all sorts of ways despite such a "handicap". I consider my life to have been something of a "dream run" in fact. I have sure had a lot of fun. As the article itself concludes, if you have the drive and the ability, that is all that matters in the end.
Tony Blair gets tough on crime: "Signalling a big expansion of what he called summary justice through on-the-spot fines and anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), he said: "You cannot do it by the rules of the game that we have at the moment. You just can't." Using words that will infuriate the legal profession, he said: "Half of them end up getting off at the end of it . . . It's too complicated, too laborious. The police end up completely hidebound by a whole series of restrictions and difficulties. It doesn't work." .... He told his monthly press conference: "If you are a police officer patrolling the streets, and someone throws a brick through a window, or abuses an old lady on the way to the shops . . . If you have to take that person all the way through a long court process, you are not going to do it.... "The reason I introduced fixed penalties was I said `we have had enough of that'. You give them a fixed-penalty notice then they have to come to court to challenge it. That's summary justice. It's tough and it's hard but in my judgment it's the only way to deal with it." The Government is preparing a series of laws to be enforced by fixed penalties or Asbos. Mr Blair cited plans to use Asbo-style orders to evict drug dealers instantly from council houses and flats.
Mike Adams at his hilarious best. Just one excerpt: "Republican women are simply more attractive than Democratic women. It certainly feels good - after years of keeping it in - to state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Those who don’t immediately accept this revelation as true can just click on this link. Of course, I knew that Republican women were more attractive than Democratic women, long before I saw the above link. But I didn’t know that it was proper to discuss the difference until just before my speech at Ohio University. That was when three very attractive women came into the room to take their seats and I asked innocently “Are you ladies all Democrats who are here to heckle me?” Their blue-eyed blond leader responded with this far more intelligent question: “Do we look like Democrats to you?” .... The public discussion of this issue will help Republicans answer some important questions. For example: “Should we assume that being gay often causes one to be a Democrat? Isn’t it more likely that the lack of exposure to attractive women causes Democrats to be gay?” And “Do Democratic women consider compliments in the workplace to be sexual harassment simply because they rarely hear them?”"
Anything rather than sack some bureaucrats: "San Diego is more than $1.4 billion in arrears on its pension payments. Its bond rating is so low that it cannot issue bonds for needed public works. Last month city leaders acknowledged that a plan to help deal with the crisis by selling city land was almost unworkable because city bureaucrats had overvalued the city's assets by more than $600 million and the city's inventory of real estate assets actually includes land it sold, never owned or hopes to buy. "Simply put," said Jesse Knight Jr., the president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, "San Diego is a mess." The budget crisis doesn't just humiliate San Diegans -- it's cutting into their quality of life. The crisis has forced the elimination of a citywide day-care program for children from middle-to-lower-income families. Public library hours have been slashed, and plans for a new central library in the rejuvenating downtown district have been shelved. The city's sewer system is so decrepit that it could face federal fines. Police are jumping ship to nearby cities that offer bigger salaries and the promise of a real pension. In 2004, for the first time in seven years, the region's population actually fell -- by 600. And road repairs have ground to a standstill".
I occasionally have a look at blog rankings. The "Truth Laid Bear" ranking for this blog is here. I seem to be no. 647 out of 19 million blogs at the moment so I can't grouch. I got into the top 200 a year or two ago but that was when there were only a measly 2 or 3 million blogs in existence. All these rating systems have huge holes in them, however. The two blogs with relatively high readership that I blog on -- Tongue-Tied and Majority Rights -- seem to be unknown to the "Truth Laid Bear". Technorati seems to be the most erratic of the blog evaluation systems, however. It used to show this blog as having links from nearly 500 other blogs but as of today, that has plummeted to 239. Believe it if you want to. I am pleased to say that Greenie Watch and PC Watch have picked up a few readers lately -- with "Greenie Watch" now getting about 400 hits a day and "PC Watch" now getting about 650 hits a day.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
I am very sorry to hear of the death of Arthur Seldon, founder of the (British) Institute of Economic Affairs, one of the earliest free-market think-tanks. I knew Arthur personally and he was everything they say of him here. I have also put up here a tribute to Arthur from Chris Tame, whom I also know. Chris is himself in precarious health these days so it is good to see that he is still in there fighting for the light.
There is an interesting article here on the admissions policies of Ivy League universities such as Harvard. Rather amusing that, like that great imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, they look for the "all-round man" rather than intellectual excellence alone. The original intent of the policy was of course to keep Jews out. Harvard had a very good relationship with the Nazi regime in the 1930s. I myself went to a government-run Australian university that admitted people on the basis of high-school examination results only and seem to have done pretty well in all sorts of ways despite such a "handicap". I consider my life to have been something of a "dream run" in fact. I have sure had a lot of fun. As the article itself concludes, if you have the drive and the ability, that is all that matters in the end.
Tony Blair gets tough on crime: "Signalling a big expansion of what he called summary justice through on-the-spot fines and anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), he said: "You cannot do it by the rules of the game that we have at the moment. You just can't." Using words that will infuriate the legal profession, he said: "Half of them end up getting off at the end of it . . . It's too complicated, too laborious. The police end up completely hidebound by a whole series of restrictions and difficulties. It doesn't work." .... He told his monthly press conference: "If you are a police officer patrolling the streets, and someone throws a brick through a window, or abuses an old lady on the way to the shops . . . If you have to take that person all the way through a long court process, you are not going to do it.... "The reason I introduced fixed penalties was I said `we have had enough of that'. You give them a fixed-penalty notice then they have to come to court to challenge it. That's summary justice. It's tough and it's hard but in my judgment it's the only way to deal with it." The Government is preparing a series of laws to be enforced by fixed penalties or Asbos. Mr Blair cited plans to use Asbo-style orders to evict drug dealers instantly from council houses and flats.
Mike Adams at his hilarious best. Just one excerpt: "Republican women are simply more attractive than Democratic women. It certainly feels good - after years of keeping it in - to state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Those who don’t immediately accept this revelation as true can just click on this link. Of course, I knew that Republican women were more attractive than Democratic women, long before I saw the above link. But I didn’t know that it was proper to discuss the difference until just before my speech at Ohio University. That was when three very attractive women came into the room to take their seats and I asked innocently “Are you ladies all Democrats who are here to heckle me?” Their blue-eyed blond leader responded with this far more intelligent question: “Do we look like Democrats to you?” .... The public discussion of this issue will help Republicans answer some important questions. For example: “Should we assume that being gay often causes one to be a Democrat? Isn’t it more likely that the lack of exposure to attractive women causes Democrats to be gay?” And “Do Democratic women consider compliments in the workplace to be sexual harassment simply because they rarely hear them?”"
Anything rather than sack some bureaucrats: "San Diego is more than $1.4 billion in arrears on its pension payments. Its bond rating is so low that it cannot issue bonds for needed public works. Last month city leaders acknowledged that a plan to help deal with the crisis by selling city land was almost unworkable because city bureaucrats had overvalued the city's assets by more than $600 million and the city's inventory of real estate assets actually includes land it sold, never owned or hopes to buy. "Simply put," said Jesse Knight Jr., the president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, "San Diego is a mess." The budget crisis doesn't just humiliate San Diegans -- it's cutting into their quality of life. The crisis has forced the elimination of a citywide day-care program for children from middle-to-lower-income families. Public library hours have been slashed, and plans for a new central library in the rejuvenating downtown district have been shelved. The city's sewer system is so decrepit that it could face federal fines. Police are jumping ship to nearby cities that offer bigger salaries and the promise of a real pension. In 2004, for the first time in seven years, the region's population actually fell -- by 600. And road repairs have ground to a standstill".
I occasionally have a look at blog rankings. The "Truth Laid Bear" ranking for this blog is here. I seem to be no. 647 out of 19 million blogs at the moment so I can't grouch. I got into the top 200 a year or two ago but that was when there were only a measly 2 or 3 million blogs in existence. All these rating systems have huge holes in them, however. The two blogs with relatively high readership that I blog on -- Tongue-Tied and Majority Rights -- seem to be unknown to the "Truth Laid Bear". Technorati seems to be the most erratic of the blog evaluation systems, however. It used to show this blog as having links from nearly 500 other blogs but as of today, that has plummeted to 239. Believe it if you want to. I am pleased to say that Greenie Watch and PC Watch have picked up a few readers lately -- with "Greenie Watch" now getting about 400 hits a day and "PC Watch" now getting about 650 hits a day.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
HITLER THE PEACENIK
An amazing snippet of history
I am always pointing out how Leftist Hitler was -- despite the hugely successful Leftist "big lie" to brand him as a Rightist. I am putting up below a picture of a Nazi propaganda poster of the 1930s that you won't believe unless you are aware of how readily all Leftists preach one thing and do another. It reads "Mit Hitler gegen den Ruestungswahnsinn der Welt".
And what does that mean? It means "With Hitler against the armaments madness of the world". ("Ruestung" could more precisely be translated as "military preparations" or "arms buildup" but "armaments" is a bit more idiomatic in English.)
So the preaching of "peace" by the bloodthirsty Soviet regime of the cold war period had its parallel with the Nazis too.
******************************
An amazing snippet of history
I am always pointing out how Leftist Hitler was -- despite the hugely successful Leftist "big lie" to brand him as a Rightist. I am putting up below a picture of a Nazi propaganda poster of the 1930s that you won't believe unless you are aware of how readily all Leftists preach one thing and do another. It reads "Mit Hitler gegen den Ruestungswahnsinn der Welt".
And what does that mean? It means "With Hitler against the armaments madness of the world". ("Ruestung" could more precisely be translated as "military preparations" or "arms buildup" but "armaments" is a bit more idiomatic in English.)
So the preaching of "peace" by the bloodthirsty Soviet regime of the cold war period had its parallel with the Nazis too.
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Maybe my being an Australian is responsible for my puzzlement but I CANNOT understand the uproar among conservatives (e.g. here) over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme court. She is not a famous legal brain but since when has the court been about the law at all? Were Thurgood Marshall or Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed for anything but their rusted-on Leftism? Was the Grutter v. Bollinger decision a legal marvel or a defiance of the clear meaning of the 14th Amendment? Was Roe v. Wade anything to do with the constitution at all, considering that the constitution does not even mention the word abortion? SCOTUS has long been a political body rather than a legal one and GWB is appointing the most reliably conservative lawyer he knows. Conservatives should be applauding him for treating the court as the political joke it has long been and presumably always will be. Maybe my Australian bluntness prevents me from understanding the mythologies involved.
British government admits its welfare system is crazy: "Benefit cheats will face lie detector tests and have their shopping habits tracked under plans to tackle the massive abuse of a welfare system that David Blunkett last night conceded was "crackers". The Work and Pensions Secretary will unveil an anti-fraud strategy later this week which will include controversial measures such as cross-checking utility and credit card bills and voice recognition software to detect when callers are lying to government agencies. But as ministers prepared to tighten up the system, a damning report from a powerful Commons committee exposed how bureaucratic bungling and benefit fraudsters were costing taxpayers close to 3 billion pounds annually. Although the government's main focus is on tackling cheats, the report highlights how half the wastage is actually down to administrative errors. The new crackdown on incapacity benefits is being driven by Downing Street and Tony Blair is believed to have ordered ministers to slash benefits by as much as 40 pounds a week, as well as introducing American-style time limits for claims".
Think twice about buying at Target: "Target Corporation will continue to ban the Salvation Army from their 1,351 stores this Christmas season. The Army will not be allowed to place their red kettles in front of Target stores. Despite increased need caused by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Target continues to bar the Salvation Army. Many observers feel that the ban by Target is a result of pressure put on the company by homosexual groups. Homosexual activists have targeted the Salvation Army for years because of the Army's refusal to recognize their lifestyle. Target is a supporter of various homosexual causes. While Target contributes to homosexual groups, the company publicly states that they will not contribute to any religious groups. For Target, homosexual organizations are worthy of financial support, Christian and Jewish organizations are not".
A good idea: "There's a simple solution to the North Korea problem: build a few nuclear power plants in SOUTH Korea - near ther border - and GIVE electricity to the NORTH Koreans FREE for as long as they need it; IN RETURN, the NORTH Koreans would have to abandon their own nuclear ambitions, and stop developing and selling ballistic missiles. The NORTH Koreans get a virtually unlimited supply of electricity - FREE, and the world gets safer as a result - AND: we can check the safety of the SOUTH Korean plants easily! BONUS: it makes the "two Koreas" more dependent and reduces the threat of war and instability.
A Leftist confronts reality: "I’d argue that a strong defence of pluralistic, democratic societies needs to be an essential, perhaps a defining, component of any genuinely progressive politics in today’s world. Yet reading the voices of much of the self-proclaimed “left” in the London papers in the aftermath of the bombings, I was struck by how ossified many of them have become, how analyses crafted at the height of the cold war have lingered as paltry interpretive frameworks for political fissures bearing little if anything in common with that “twilight conflict.” .... But theirs is also a truncated analysis. They assume that groups like al-Qaida are almost entirely reactive, responding to western policies and actions, rather than being pro-active creatures with a virulent homegrown agenda, one not just of defence but of conquest, destruction of rivals, and, ultimately and at its most megalomaniacal, absolute subjugation. It misses the central point: that, unlike traditional “third-world” liberation movements looking for a bit of peace and quiet in which to nurture embryonic states, al-Qaida is classically imperialist, looking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own, looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image.... Moreover, many of those who reflexively blame the west do not honestly hold up a mirror to the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, and the racism and sexism and anti-semitism that is rife in many parts of it".
There is a good comparison here of the Iraq campaign with various other events in recent history. The comparison of deaths in Iraq and deaths in Detroit is rather telling. See here for background on the John Glenn speech that is also included.
See here for a history of French fruitcake Foucault's love-affair with the Iranian revolution. (The Left's support for Islamists isn't new, any violent anti-Westerners will do!)
The latest Carnival of the Vanities is now up with the posts usefully categorized.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Maybe my being an Australian is responsible for my puzzlement but I CANNOT understand the uproar among conservatives (e.g. here) over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme court. She is not a famous legal brain but since when has the court been about the law at all? Were Thurgood Marshall or Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed for anything but their rusted-on Leftism? Was the Grutter v. Bollinger decision a legal marvel or a defiance of the clear meaning of the 14th Amendment? Was Roe v. Wade anything to do with the constitution at all, considering that the constitution does not even mention the word abortion? SCOTUS has long been a political body rather than a legal one and GWB is appointing the most reliably conservative lawyer he knows. Conservatives should be applauding him for treating the court as the political joke it has long been and presumably always will be. Maybe my Australian bluntness prevents me from understanding the mythologies involved.
British government admits its welfare system is crazy: "Benefit cheats will face lie detector tests and have their shopping habits tracked under plans to tackle the massive abuse of a welfare system that David Blunkett last night conceded was "crackers". The Work and Pensions Secretary will unveil an anti-fraud strategy later this week which will include controversial measures such as cross-checking utility and credit card bills and voice recognition software to detect when callers are lying to government agencies. But as ministers prepared to tighten up the system, a damning report from a powerful Commons committee exposed how bureaucratic bungling and benefit fraudsters were costing taxpayers close to 3 billion pounds annually. Although the government's main focus is on tackling cheats, the report highlights how half the wastage is actually down to administrative errors. The new crackdown on incapacity benefits is being driven by Downing Street and Tony Blair is believed to have ordered ministers to slash benefits by as much as 40 pounds a week, as well as introducing American-style time limits for claims".
Think twice about buying at Target: "Target Corporation will continue to ban the Salvation Army from their 1,351 stores this Christmas season. The Army will not be allowed to place their red kettles in front of Target stores. Despite increased need caused by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Target continues to bar the Salvation Army. Many observers feel that the ban by Target is a result of pressure put on the company by homosexual groups. Homosexual activists have targeted the Salvation Army for years because of the Army's refusal to recognize their lifestyle. Target is a supporter of various homosexual causes. While Target contributes to homosexual groups, the company publicly states that they will not contribute to any religious groups. For Target, homosexual organizations are worthy of financial support, Christian and Jewish organizations are not".
A good idea: "There's a simple solution to the North Korea problem: build a few nuclear power plants in SOUTH Korea - near ther border - and GIVE electricity to the NORTH Koreans FREE for as long as they need it; IN RETURN, the NORTH Koreans would have to abandon their own nuclear ambitions, and stop developing and selling ballistic missiles. The NORTH Koreans get a virtually unlimited supply of electricity - FREE, and the world gets safer as a result - AND: we can check the safety of the SOUTH Korean plants easily! BONUS: it makes the "two Koreas" more dependent and reduces the threat of war and instability.
A Leftist confronts reality: "I’d argue that a strong defence of pluralistic, democratic societies needs to be an essential, perhaps a defining, component of any genuinely progressive politics in today’s world. Yet reading the voices of much of the self-proclaimed “left” in the London papers in the aftermath of the bombings, I was struck by how ossified many of them have become, how analyses crafted at the height of the cold war have lingered as paltry interpretive frameworks for political fissures bearing little if anything in common with that “twilight conflict.” .... But theirs is also a truncated analysis. They assume that groups like al-Qaida are almost entirely reactive, responding to western policies and actions, rather than being pro-active creatures with a virulent homegrown agenda, one not just of defence but of conquest, destruction of rivals, and, ultimately and at its most megalomaniacal, absolute subjugation. It misses the central point: that, unlike traditional “third-world” liberation movements looking for a bit of peace and quiet in which to nurture embryonic states, al-Qaida is classically imperialist, looking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own, looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image.... Moreover, many of those who reflexively blame the west do not honestly hold up a mirror to the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, and the racism and sexism and anti-semitism that is rife in many parts of it".
There is a good comparison here of the Iraq campaign with various other events in recent history. The comparison of deaths in Iraq and deaths in Detroit is rather telling. See here for background on the John Glenn speech that is also included.
See here for a history of French fruitcake Foucault's love-affair with the Iranian revolution. (The Left's support for Islamists isn't new, any violent anti-Westerners will do!)
The latest Carnival of the Vanities is now up with the posts usefully categorized.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
A SHORT HISTORY OF TWO ACTS OF INTERNATIONAL BASTARDRY
I grew up with Melanesians (Greek for "black islanders") around and rather like them. They originate from the island of New Guinea, which is much larger than Britain and is in fact the world's second largest island. It is located immediately to the North of Australia. Melanesians (or TIs, as we called them) are generally in my observation a people of excellent physique, good-natured and not afraid of hard work. They have one large fault however: They cannot get on with one-another. More precisely, there are at least 400 different tribes of them, all speaking different, though related, languages. And what governs their relationship with one-another is whether you are a "wantok" (Pidgin for "one talk" -- i.e. same tribe) or not. You have great obligations towards your wantoks but all others are totally fair game for anything. So when people of different "wantoks" mix -- as they do in the city of Port Moresby, the level of crime and violence is incredible. Which is why Port Moresby was recently rated as the world's worst city to live in.
At war's end in 1945, the Western half of New Guinea was a Dutch colony and the Eastern half was an Australian colony (Yes. Australian, not British). And that is when the first act of international bastardry occurred. The Dutch had been kicked out by the Japanese during World War 2 and nobody much wanted them back, so all the wiseheads of the world decided that W. New Guinea should be "given" to Indonesia, a huge, mostly Muslim archipelago immediately to the West of New Guinea, which was at the time ruled by a Left-leaning despot -- Sukarno. Sukarno was doing a bit of saber-rattling over Indonesia's "claim" to the place and the Melanesian population was still pretty much in the stone age. The fact that Sukarno's Javanese could hardly be a more different race to the Melanesians (both genetically and culturally) was not of course considered. There was a farcical "act of free choice" wherein the Melanesians were supposedly "consulted" but it consisted mainly of rounding up a few Melanesians for the newsreel cameras who would mumble something vaguely approving. And the Melanesians have been fighting the Indonesians ever since in an effort to get them out -- but with no international support and virtually no technology, they've got Buckley's. And the Indonesians have behaved as you would expect Muslims to behave.
So we come to the second act. When Australia got its first Leftist postwar government under Gough Whitlam in 1972, Whitlam promptly "gave" Eastern New Guinea its independence (translation: said "f*** off. The only help you will get from us in future will be money") even though there was no visible agitation for it and even though many foresaw the anarchy that would result. Eastern New Guinea (or Papua New Guinea as it is now known) had been making steady progress under Australian administration and tribal warfare had been pretty-well eliminated. And it was foreseeable that when educational levels had risen to something approaching Western standards, there could be a peaceful and orderly transition to self-government. But Whitlam wanted to play the big Leftist hero so he cast the Melanesians off to sink or swim. And they mostly sunk.
And how do we know that they would have done better with a longer period of Australian administration? We know because one part of Melanesia is still under Australian administration: The Torres Straits Islands -- only a few miles South of Papua New Guinea. And they are perfectly peaceful and prosperous, have considerable local self-government and the same voting rights as any other Australian. And I have actually been there to look around so I am not exactly talking through my hat. They show what might have been in New Guinea if it had not been for an arrogant show-off Leftist bastard.
**********************
ELSEWHERE
Even alcoholism is substantially genetic: "Alcoholism is a major health concern and genetic factors play an important role in the development and maintenance of alcohol drinking behaviors. In a new study appearing on October 3 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Subhash Pandey and colleagues from The University of Illinois show that decreased function of the CREB gene transcription factor in an area of the brain called the central amygdala is involved in anxiety and excessive alcohol drinking behavior."
Taiwan shows the way: "Since the late 1980s, the Chinese government in Taipei has gone from martial law to free-wheeling elections, as the 23 million people on Taiwan have created China's first full democracy. In recent decades, they have also leapt from deep poverty to the ranks of the world's wealthier polities. The usual U.N. databases do not include Taiwan, but according to the CIA World Factbook, Taiwan's per capita income these days is about $25,000--which in U.N. rankings would place it in the neighborhood of such highly developed nations as Italy and New Zealand, with almost 20 times the per capita income of Red China. Taiwan has achieved this despite being evicted from the U.N. in the 1970s, to be replaced by the communist government. For Taiwan, there has been no place at the perennial U.N. conferencing on "sustainable development." Taiwan was cut out of the U.N. picture years before the U.N. began its drumbeat for global taxation to support U.N. "millennium development goals." And lo! Taiwan has blossomed beyond the wildest dreams of the U.N. aidocrats"
FDR's affirmative action ...for whites: "A large case in point cited by Katznelson was the GI Bill of Rights, which, properly celebrated for its educational benefits, low-cost mortgages, and business loans, substantially bypassed black veterans. According to Katznelson, Southern Democrats in Congress also saw to it that some of FDR's New-Deal legislation would simply not apply to blacks. He returns repeatedly to the fact that in the 1930's and 40's, maids and farm workers accounted for the great bulk of black employees. Yet the Wagner Act and other labor laws failed to protect union-organizing efforts in these occupations, which also went uncovered by Social Security or the new minimum-wage laws. By the late 40's, white America was receiving an avalanche of benefits from the New Deal and veterans' programs, while black America, which needed far more, got far fewer".
Instapundit has already mentioned this but in case you missed it, there is an interesting and detailed story here of how the Left-leaning media edit photographs to create a false impression. Excerpt: "The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn't tell you the whole truth. Because the whole truth -- that the girl was part of a group of naive teenagers recruited by Communist activists to wear terrorist-style bandannas and carry Palestinian flags and obscene placards -- is disturbing, and doesn't conform to the narrative that the Chronicle is trying to promote. By presenting the photo out of context, and only showing the one image that suits its purpose, the Chronicle is intentionally manipulating the reader's impression of the rally, and the rally's intent. Such tactics -- in the no-man's-land between ethical and unethical -- are commonplace in the media, and have been for decades. It is only now, with the advent of citizen journalism, that we can at last begin to see the whole story and realize that the public has been manipulated like this all along".
The latest ratings of "world's best cities to live in" are of course rather arbitrary but it is pleasing (and in my view perfectly correct) that Australia has four cities in the top 10. And I have no problem with their finding that 9 out of 10 of the worst cities are either African or Muslim either.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
I grew up with Melanesians (Greek for "black islanders") around and rather like them. They originate from the island of New Guinea, which is much larger than Britain and is in fact the world's second largest island. It is located immediately to the North of Australia. Melanesians (or TIs, as we called them) are generally in my observation a people of excellent physique, good-natured and not afraid of hard work. They have one large fault however: They cannot get on with one-another. More precisely, there are at least 400 different tribes of them, all speaking different, though related, languages. And what governs their relationship with one-another is whether you are a "wantok" (Pidgin for "one talk" -- i.e. same tribe) or not. You have great obligations towards your wantoks but all others are totally fair game for anything. So when people of different "wantoks" mix -- as they do in the city of Port Moresby, the level of crime and violence is incredible. Which is why Port Moresby was recently rated as the world's worst city to live in.
At war's end in 1945, the Western half of New Guinea was a Dutch colony and the Eastern half was an Australian colony (Yes. Australian, not British). And that is when the first act of international bastardry occurred. The Dutch had been kicked out by the Japanese during World War 2 and nobody much wanted them back, so all the wiseheads of the world decided that W. New Guinea should be "given" to Indonesia, a huge, mostly Muslim archipelago immediately to the West of New Guinea, which was at the time ruled by a Left-leaning despot -- Sukarno. Sukarno was doing a bit of saber-rattling over Indonesia's "claim" to the place and the Melanesian population was still pretty much in the stone age. The fact that Sukarno's Javanese could hardly be a more different race to the Melanesians (both genetically and culturally) was not of course considered. There was a farcical "act of free choice" wherein the Melanesians were supposedly "consulted" but it consisted mainly of rounding up a few Melanesians for the newsreel cameras who would mumble something vaguely approving. And the Melanesians have been fighting the Indonesians ever since in an effort to get them out -- but with no international support and virtually no technology, they've got Buckley's. And the Indonesians have behaved as you would expect Muslims to behave.
So we come to the second act. When Australia got its first Leftist postwar government under Gough Whitlam in 1972, Whitlam promptly "gave" Eastern New Guinea its independence (translation: said "f*** off. The only help you will get from us in future will be money") even though there was no visible agitation for it and even though many foresaw the anarchy that would result. Eastern New Guinea (or Papua New Guinea as it is now known) had been making steady progress under Australian administration and tribal warfare had been pretty-well eliminated. And it was foreseeable that when educational levels had risen to something approaching Western standards, there could be a peaceful and orderly transition to self-government. But Whitlam wanted to play the big Leftist hero so he cast the Melanesians off to sink or swim. And they mostly sunk.
And how do we know that they would have done better with a longer period of Australian administration? We know because one part of Melanesia is still under Australian administration: The Torres Straits Islands -- only a few miles South of Papua New Guinea. And they are perfectly peaceful and prosperous, have considerable local self-government and the same voting rights as any other Australian. And I have actually been there to look around so I am not exactly talking through my hat. They show what might have been in New Guinea if it had not been for an arrogant show-off Leftist bastard.
**********************
ELSEWHERE
Even alcoholism is substantially genetic: "Alcoholism is a major health concern and genetic factors play an important role in the development and maintenance of alcohol drinking behaviors. In a new study appearing on October 3 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Subhash Pandey and colleagues from The University of Illinois show that decreased function of the CREB gene transcription factor in an area of the brain called the central amygdala is involved in anxiety and excessive alcohol drinking behavior."
Taiwan shows the way: "Since the late 1980s, the Chinese government in Taipei has gone from martial law to free-wheeling elections, as the 23 million people on Taiwan have created China's first full democracy. In recent decades, they have also leapt from deep poverty to the ranks of the world's wealthier polities. The usual U.N. databases do not include Taiwan, but according to the CIA World Factbook, Taiwan's per capita income these days is about $25,000--which in U.N. rankings would place it in the neighborhood of such highly developed nations as Italy and New Zealand, with almost 20 times the per capita income of Red China. Taiwan has achieved this despite being evicted from the U.N. in the 1970s, to be replaced by the communist government. For Taiwan, there has been no place at the perennial U.N. conferencing on "sustainable development." Taiwan was cut out of the U.N. picture years before the U.N. began its drumbeat for global taxation to support U.N. "millennium development goals." And lo! Taiwan has blossomed beyond the wildest dreams of the U.N. aidocrats"
FDR's affirmative action ...for whites: "A large case in point cited by Katznelson was the GI Bill of Rights, which, properly celebrated for its educational benefits, low-cost mortgages, and business loans, substantially bypassed black veterans. According to Katznelson, Southern Democrats in Congress also saw to it that some of FDR's New-Deal legislation would simply not apply to blacks. He returns repeatedly to the fact that in the 1930's and 40's, maids and farm workers accounted for the great bulk of black employees. Yet the Wagner Act and other labor laws failed to protect union-organizing efforts in these occupations, which also went uncovered by Social Security or the new minimum-wage laws. By the late 40's, white America was receiving an avalanche of benefits from the New Deal and veterans' programs, while black America, which needed far more, got far fewer".
Instapundit has already mentioned this but in case you missed it, there is an interesting and detailed story here of how the Left-leaning media edit photographs to create a false impression. Excerpt: "The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn't tell you the whole truth. Because the whole truth -- that the girl was part of a group of naive teenagers recruited by Communist activists to wear terrorist-style bandannas and carry Palestinian flags and obscene placards -- is disturbing, and doesn't conform to the narrative that the Chronicle is trying to promote. By presenting the photo out of context, and only showing the one image that suits its purpose, the Chronicle is intentionally manipulating the reader's impression of the rally, and the rally's intent. Such tactics -- in the no-man's-land between ethical and unethical -- are commonplace in the media, and have been for decades. It is only now, with the advent of citizen journalism, that we can at last begin to see the whole story and realize that the public has been manipulated like this all along".
The latest ratings of "world's best cities to live in" are of course rather arbitrary but it is pleasing (and in my view perfectly correct) that Australia has four cities in the top 10. And I have no problem with their finding that 9 out of 10 of the worst cities are either African or Muslim either.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Monday, October 10, 2005
CHARLES MURRAY AGAIN POINTS OUT SOME UNPOPULAR TRUTHS
Just a small excerpt in case you have not seen the article yet -- dealing with the causes of the impoverished and criminal American underclass:
"Why has the proportion of unsocialized young males risen so relentlessly? In large part, I would argue, because the proportion of young males who have grown up without fathers has also risen relentlessly. The indicator here is the illegitimacy ratio--the percentage of live births that occur to single women. It was a minuscule 4% in the early 1950s, and it has risen substantially in every subsequent decade. The ratio reached the 25% milestone in 1988 and the 33% milestone in 1999. As of 2003, the figure was 35%--of all births, including whites. The black illegitimacy ratio in 2003 was 68%. By way of comparison: The illegitimacy ratio that caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to proclaim the breakdown of the black family in the early 1960s was 24%.
But illegitimacy is now common throughout the population, right? No, it is heavily concentrated in low-income groups. Perhaps illegitimacy isn't as bad as we used to think it was? No, during the last decade the evidence about the problems caused by illegitimacy has grown stronger. What about all the good news about falling teenage births? About plunging welfare rolls? Both trends are welcome, but neither has anything to do with the proportion of children being born and raised without fathers, and that proportion is the indicator that predicts the size of the underclass in the next generation".
**************************
ELSEWHERE
On "reparations", Eleanor Spreitzer writes: "Who got hurt more? -- If African Americans can sue because their-great-great-great-great-granddaddies were thrown on a boat and shipped over here - can African Africans sue because theirs weren't?"
I am pretty surprised that the no. 1 story on the blogosphere at the moment (according to Technorati) is this one -- about the Catholic Church no longer accepting the literal truth of the Bible. But that's been true for centuries. The church has always contended that the Bible needs interpreting and that it alone has the authority to do so. There was some guy called Martin Luther who disagreed with that, though.
Good to see that the hyper-correct Cressida Dick (former head of London Police's "Diversity Directorate", frequenter of official homosexual meetings and resolute enemy of "hate speech") seems likely to be prosecuted over the deliberate police murder of a Brazilian electrician on a London train.
Good comment from Barone: "I am struck by the sublime indifference of most critics of Bush's Iraq policy to the fate of the Iraqi people. They are totally unexultant about the overthrow of a vicious dictatorship and seem to have no interest at all in what would happen to Iraqis if we leave suddenly. Hitchens has argued persuasively that no one deserves the label of liberal who is so indifferent to whether others live in freedom or under tyranny. In this passage Bush reminded Americans more hardheadedly about our own self-interest. But of course many of his critics are more interested in hurting Bush than they are in preventing the emergence of an anti-American tyranny in Iraq."
The physical basis of psychopathy uncovered? "Study findings have provided evidence of a structural brain deficit in pathological liars, with the prefrontal cortex implicated as an important component underlying deceitful personality. Yaling Yang, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA, and colleagues found that pathological liars, compared with both mentally healthy individuals and those with antisocial personality disorders, had a 22-26% increase in prefrontal white matter as well as slightly reduced gray matter. This finding suggests the "prefrontal cortex is a key component in lying and if during the developmental stage an individual developed more white matter in this region, they may be more prone to have excessive lying behavior," Yang explained to MedWire News. He added that slightly reduced prefrontal gray matter has previously been associated with the behavioral pattern of breaking rules in order to gain an advantage. The significance of the increase in white matter is that it gives people the cognitive capacity to lie in order to conduct this type of behavior, he said".
There is a petition to the U.S. government demanding accountability from the U.N. here that some readers may like to sign. It is being organized by Jay McFarland.
A good rant here: Excerpt: "One of the fundamental problems with the Left is that they have apparently trained themselves to ignore distinctions, such as the distinction between producers and parasites. The Left has also shown themselves to be blind to the sequence of cause and effect. Both of these bad habits appear to benefit the adherents of the "primacy of the parasite" ideologies that were invented by such parasites as Marx and Mohammed"
The Australian government has just appointed a new chief to its major public broadcaster -- Steven Skala. He is "a rising leader in Melbourne's influential Jewish community" so we may be able to hope for some reduction in the pro-terrorist bias of the organization concerned.
We may have reform coming at the BBC too. There is an excellent and extensive article on the Leftist bias at the BBC here: Excerpt: "The growing cacophony of voices accusing the BBC of being less than impartial in its news coverage scored an important victory this week when Britain's public broadcaster appointed an independent panel to examine whether its reporting of the Middle East had been coloured by a pro-Palestinian bias."
A deeply disillusioned Leftist confronts the antisemitism and pro-Fascism of most of the modern Left. He attributes it to their failures with socialism: "The temptation in times of defeat is to believe in everything rather than nothing; to go along with whichever cause sounds radical, even if the radicalism on offer is the radicalism of the far right. In 1878, George Eliot wrote that it was "difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [Jews] which had not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print". So it is again today. Outside the movies of Mel Gibson, Jews aren't Christ killers any longer, but they can't relax, because now they are Nazis, blood-soaked imperialists, the secret movers of neoconservatism, the root cause of every atrocity from 9/11 to 7/7".
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Just a small excerpt in case you have not seen the article yet -- dealing with the causes of the impoverished and criminal American underclass:
"Why has the proportion of unsocialized young males risen so relentlessly? In large part, I would argue, because the proportion of young males who have grown up without fathers has also risen relentlessly. The indicator here is the illegitimacy ratio--the percentage of live births that occur to single women. It was a minuscule 4% in the early 1950s, and it has risen substantially in every subsequent decade. The ratio reached the 25% milestone in 1988 and the 33% milestone in 1999. As of 2003, the figure was 35%--of all births, including whites. The black illegitimacy ratio in 2003 was 68%. By way of comparison: The illegitimacy ratio that caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to proclaim the breakdown of the black family in the early 1960s was 24%.
But illegitimacy is now common throughout the population, right? No, it is heavily concentrated in low-income groups. Perhaps illegitimacy isn't as bad as we used to think it was? No, during the last decade the evidence about the problems caused by illegitimacy has grown stronger. What about all the good news about falling teenage births? About plunging welfare rolls? Both trends are welcome, but neither has anything to do with the proportion of children being born and raised without fathers, and that proportion is the indicator that predicts the size of the underclass in the next generation".
**************************
ELSEWHERE
On "reparations", Eleanor Spreitzer writes: "Who got hurt more? -- If African Americans can sue because their-great-great-great-great-granddaddies were thrown on a boat and shipped over here - can African Africans sue because theirs weren't?"
I am pretty surprised that the no. 1 story on the blogosphere at the moment (according to Technorati) is this one -- about the Catholic Church no longer accepting the literal truth of the Bible. But that's been true for centuries. The church has always contended that the Bible needs interpreting and that it alone has the authority to do so. There was some guy called Martin Luther who disagreed with that, though.
Good to see that the hyper-correct Cressida Dick (former head of London Police's "Diversity Directorate", frequenter of official homosexual meetings and resolute enemy of "hate speech") seems likely to be prosecuted over the deliberate police murder of a Brazilian electrician on a London train.
Good comment from Barone: "I am struck by the sublime indifference of most critics of Bush's Iraq policy to the fate of the Iraqi people. They are totally unexultant about the overthrow of a vicious dictatorship and seem to have no interest at all in what would happen to Iraqis if we leave suddenly. Hitchens has argued persuasively that no one deserves the label of liberal who is so indifferent to whether others live in freedom or under tyranny. In this passage Bush reminded Americans more hardheadedly about our own self-interest. But of course many of his critics are more interested in hurting Bush than they are in preventing the emergence of an anti-American tyranny in Iraq."
The physical basis of psychopathy uncovered? "Study findings have provided evidence of a structural brain deficit in pathological liars, with the prefrontal cortex implicated as an important component underlying deceitful personality. Yaling Yang, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA, and colleagues found that pathological liars, compared with both mentally healthy individuals and those with antisocial personality disorders, had a 22-26% increase in prefrontal white matter as well as slightly reduced gray matter. This finding suggests the "prefrontal cortex is a key component in lying and if during the developmental stage an individual developed more white matter in this region, they may be more prone to have excessive lying behavior," Yang explained to MedWire News. He added that slightly reduced prefrontal gray matter has previously been associated with the behavioral pattern of breaking rules in order to gain an advantage. The significance of the increase in white matter is that it gives people the cognitive capacity to lie in order to conduct this type of behavior, he said".
There is a petition to the U.S. government demanding accountability from the U.N. here that some readers may like to sign. It is being organized by Jay McFarland.
A good rant here: Excerpt: "One of the fundamental problems with the Left is that they have apparently trained themselves to ignore distinctions, such as the distinction between producers and parasites. The Left has also shown themselves to be blind to the sequence of cause and effect. Both of these bad habits appear to benefit the adherents of the "primacy of the parasite" ideologies that were invented by such parasites as Marx and Mohammed"
The Australian government has just appointed a new chief to its major public broadcaster -- Steven Skala. He is "a rising leader in Melbourne's influential Jewish community" so we may be able to hope for some reduction in the pro-terrorist bias of the organization concerned.
We may have reform coming at the BBC too. There is an excellent and extensive article on the Leftist bias at the BBC here: Excerpt: "The growing cacophony of voices accusing the BBC of being less than impartial in its news coverage scored an important victory this week when Britain's public broadcaster appointed an independent panel to examine whether its reporting of the Middle East had been coloured by a pro-Palestinian bias."
A deeply disillusioned Leftist confronts the antisemitism and pro-Fascism of most of the modern Left. He attributes it to their failures with socialism: "The temptation in times of defeat is to believe in everything rather than nothing; to go along with whichever cause sounds radical, even if the radicalism on offer is the radicalism of the far right. In 1878, George Eliot wrote that it was "difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [Jews] which had not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print". So it is again today. Outside the movies of Mel Gibson, Jews aren't Christ killers any longer, but they can't relax, because now they are Nazis, blood-soaked imperialists, the secret movers of neoconservatism, the root cause of every atrocity from 9/11 to 7/7".
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Sunday, October 09, 2005
HAIL THE CHIEF!
I am not terribly surprised to be reporting this, but the man who wrote the first program for the first personal computer (Bill Gates wrote the first BASIC compiler for the Altair) seems to be winning still. While Google are off with the fairies trying to break the grip of Microsoft on word processing and such things, they have taken their eye off the ball of their basic business -- searches. MSN Search now seems to index at least twice as many web pages as Google does (which would not be hard) and MSN does it much more quickly. Google can take a month or more to get a new page consistently available on their system, whereas MSN search gets it all up with systematic promptness. I have just installed the MSN Search toolbar on my browser and they will be my first port of call for searches from now on.
I am basically an investor in low-tech stocks but if I were an investor in hi-tech stocks, I would not be buying Google at the moment -- though hopefully, they may wake up to themselves in due course. Hubris tends to be self-correcting.
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Patrick West correctly points out that Leftists have always celebrated "the community" (Gemeinschaft) and idealize a sense of community. Yet now they also celebrate "diversity" and "multiculturalism", which are antagonistic to the development of a sense of sharing or community. But Leftists never have had much concern for consistency, principle or logic. As long as they sound good at the time is all that matters to them.
Al Gore has repeated his "brownshirt" (Nazi Storm Troops) slur on conservative bloggers and there is even one Leftist blogger who seems to think that he has gone bonkers. America had a narrow escape indeed in 2000.
Those pesky genetics again: "Two New Jersey research teams are reporting discoveries about the biological nature of psychiatric disorders that may bring them closer to the ultimate goal of finding cures for complex diseases, such as autism and schizophrenia. Scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) have unveiled new information regarding the genetic, cellular and neurological bases of susceptibility to these diseases. Using data drawn from the Rutgers Cell and DNA Repository on 518 families, each with multiple autistic children, James Millonig and Linda Brzustowicz, assisted by Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom, led a team that further substantiates the link between autism and Engrailed 2 (EN2), a gene important in central nervous system development. Their research is presented in the November issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG)..... A second team led by Brustowicz and Bonnie Firestein, an assistant professor in Rutgers' department of cell biology and neuroscience, implicated a gene called CAPON in schizophrenia. A report of their research is available in the online journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine.... Researchers agree that there are environmental contributors to susceptibility to psychiatric disorders, but based on inheritance patterns of these diseases seen in families, the genetic component appears to be quite strong...."
I like it: "An advisory panel composed of over 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives has recommended ending all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The NEA is the federal government's chief source of funding for nonprofit theatre groups, dance companies, and arts presenters. The CPB is a major funder of noncommercial broadcast programming of the performing arts. The Republican Study Committee recommended that the two agencies be eliminated as part of its "RSC Budget Options 2005" report."
Raising the tax on hiring is the way to encourage job creation? "Louisiana is preparing to cut unemployment benefits, raise unemployment taxes on employers and trim spending on job training next year because of the mounting jobless claims after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, state officials said yesterday. Nationally, the number of job losses blamed on Katrina and Rita rose to 363,000 last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported yesterday".
Crusade misrepresentation again: "In 1979 I was taking a course on "Comparative Religion" at a highly respected, fully accredited, Christian (Baptist) four year liberal arts college. When we got to the section on Islam, we were solemnly informed that NO successful evangelism could begin with Muslims until Christians apologized for the Crusades. Not being the sophisticated, gentle soul you all know today I immediately threw up my hand to ask, "When do THEY apologize for the conquest of Christian lands in the Mid-east, Africa and the Byzantine Empire? When do THEY apologize for invading Spain, France, Hungary, and other parts of Christendom?" As I recall, the professor sputtered and mumbled and decided that it was time to move on to the next issue and I just wondered if the mush that passed for "Christian" scholarship had any intellectual credibility at all."... the Crusades were in effect a defensive war against a militant Islam"
A sad personal story about "white flight": "By this time all the good liberals who had nodded approvingly as all these changes were forced upon American society by judges, lawyers and bureaucrats were sitting in their suburban homes and school districts, smugly regarding the whites who remained in the cities as lowlifes and racists who were responsible for the problem in the first place: if it wasn't for the irrational prejudice of these neanderthal whites, the nice colored people wouldn't have anything to be upset about and things would be fine. It was always the liberals who kept the most distance between themselves and the blacks that were most anxious to make sure that everybody knew they weren't bigots. By the mid-`70s, the neighborhood was reduced to pimps and gangbangers driving around at 18 miles an hour with the lights off, the tax base was gone, the schools were shot, and Carter was president".
Antidemocratic Leftists: "When California lawmakers narrowly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would veto it. Not because he opposes legal rights for gay and lesbian couples -- he doesn't -- but because he opposes treating California elections as meaningless. Five years ago, Californians went to the polls and approved Proposition 22, a ballot initiative confirming the traditional definition of marriage. Unless they change their minds or are overruled by the Supreme Court, Schwarzenegger said, their decision ought to be binding. As his spokesperson put it in a statement, ''We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote." Needless to say, liberal supporters of gay marriage had a fit.... today liberalism all too often displays a strong antidemocratic streak, and nowhere is it more blatant than on the issue of same-sex marriage."
See here for an excellent new blog from Germany (in English) by the noted Dutch author Leon de Winter.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
I am not terribly surprised to be reporting this, but the man who wrote the first program for the first personal computer (Bill Gates wrote the first BASIC compiler for the Altair) seems to be winning still. While Google are off with the fairies trying to break the grip of Microsoft on word processing and such things, they have taken their eye off the ball of their basic business -- searches. MSN Search now seems to index at least twice as many web pages as Google does (which would not be hard) and MSN does it much more quickly. Google can take a month or more to get a new page consistently available on their system, whereas MSN search gets it all up with systematic promptness. I have just installed the MSN Search toolbar on my browser and they will be my first port of call for searches from now on.
I am basically an investor in low-tech stocks but if I were an investor in hi-tech stocks, I would not be buying Google at the moment -- though hopefully, they may wake up to themselves in due course. Hubris tends to be self-correcting.
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Patrick West correctly points out that Leftists have always celebrated "the community" (Gemeinschaft) and idealize a sense of community. Yet now they also celebrate "diversity" and "multiculturalism", which are antagonistic to the development of a sense of sharing or community. But Leftists never have had much concern for consistency, principle or logic. As long as they sound good at the time is all that matters to them.
Al Gore has repeated his "brownshirt" (Nazi Storm Troops) slur on conservative bloggers and there is even one Leftist blogger who seems to think that he has gone bonkers. America had a narrow escape indeed in 2000.
Those pesky genetics again: "Two New Jersey research teams are reporting discoveries about the biological nature of psychiatric disorders that may bring them closer to the ultimate goal of finding cures for complex diseases, such as autism and schizophrenia. Scientists at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) have unveiled new information regarding the genetic, cellular and neurological bases of susceptibility to these diseases. Using data drawn from the Rutgers Cell and DNA Repository on 518 families, each with multiple autistic children, James Millonig and Linda Brzustowicz, assisted by Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom, led a team that further substantiates the link between autism and Engrailed 2 (EN2), a gene important in central nervous system development. Their research is presented in the November issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics (AJHG)..... A second team led by Brustowicz and Bonnie Firestein, an assistant professor in Rutgers' department of cell biology and neuroscience, implicated a gene called CAPON in schizophrenia. A report of their research is available in the online journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine.... Researchers agree that there are environmental contributors to susceptibility to psychiatric disorders, but based on inheritance patterns of these diseases seen in families, the genetic component appears to be quite strong...."
I like it: "An advisory panel composed of over 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives has recommended ending all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The NEA is the federal government's chief source of funding for nonprofit theatre groups, dance companies, and arts presenters. The CPB is a major funder of noncommercial broadcast programming of the performing arts. The Republican Study Committee recommended that the two agencies be eliminated as part of its "RSC Budget Options 2005" report."
Raising the tax on hiring is the way to encourage job creation? "Louisiana is preparing to cut unemployment benefits, raise unemployment taxes on employers and trim spending on job training next year because of the mounting jobless claims after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, state officials said yesterday. Nationally, the number of job losses blamed on Katrina and Rita rose to 363,000 last week, the U.S. Labor Department reported yesterday".
Crusade misrepresentation again: "In 1979 I was taking a course on "Comparative Religion" at a highly respected, fully accredited, Christian (Baptist) four year liberal arts college. When we got to the section on Islam, we were solemnly informed that NO successful evangelism could begin with Muslims until Christians apologized for the Crusades. Not being the sophisticated, gentle soul you all know today I immediately threw up my hand to ask, "When do THEY apologize for the conquest of Christian lands in the Mid-east, Africa and the Byzantine Empire? When do THEY apologize for invading Spain, France, Hungary, and other parts of Christendom?" As I recall, the professor sputtered and mumbled and decided that it was time to move on to the next issue and I just wondered if the mush that passed for "Christian" scholarship had any intellectual credibility at all."... the Crusades were in effect a defensive war against a militant Islam"
A sad personal story about "white flight": "By this time all the good liberals who had nodded approvingly as all these changes were forced upon American society by judges, lawyers and bureaucrats were sitting in their suburban homes and school districts, smugly regarding the whites who remained in the cities as lowlifes and racists who were responsible for the problem in the first place: if it wasn't for the irrational prejudice of these neanderthal whites, the nice colored people wouldn't have anything to be upset about and things would be fine. It was always the liberals who kept the most distance between themselves and the blacks that were most anxious to make sure that everybody knew they weren't bigots. By the mid-`70s, the neighborhood was reduced to pimps and gangbangers driving around at 18 miles an hour with the lights off, the tax base was gone, the schools were shot, and Carter was president".
Antidemocratic Leftists: "When California lawmakers narrowly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage last month, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he would veto it. Not because he opposes legal rights for gay and lesbian couples -- he doesn't -- but because he opposes treating California elections as meaningless. Five years ago, Californians went to the polls and approved Proposition 22, a ballot initiative confirming the traditional definition of marriage. Unless they change their minds or are overruled by the Supreme Court, Schwarzenegger said, their decision ought to be binding. As his spokesperson put it in a statement, ''We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote." Needless to say, liberal supporters of gay marriage had a fit.... today liberalism all too often displays a strong antidemocratic streak, and nowhere is it more blatant than on the issue of same-sex marriage."
See here for an excellent new blog from Germany (in English) by the noted Dutch author Leon de Winter.
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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.
********************************
Saturday, October 08, 2005
ANOTHER AMUSING "FAKE BUT ACCURATE" CLAIM
We all remember how popular with the Left was the claim that the forged documents used by Dan Rather to attack GWB's military service were "fake but accurate". Given the Leftist tendency to KNOW things regardless of the evidence, it should not be surprising that another "fake but accurate" claim has emerged. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Alan Wolfe, a Professor of Political Science, gives a reasonably fair review of how the "authoritarian personality" theory of Adorno (a prominent Marxist theoretician) and his colleagues was discredited academically not long after it was published. The rather hilarious claim of the theory was that it is conservatives who are authoritarian (Lenin and Stalin were really just misunderstood) and that conservatives are psychologically disturbed.
The theory is of course utter catnip to Leftists. They just cannot resist it regardless of the evidence against it -- so it has retained a following to this day among many Leftist academics in the social sciences. Alan Wolfe is one of those. Most authors who still refer to the theory seem unaware of the swingeing criticisms that it has attracted but Wolfe cannot claim that excuse. So it seems that he has a NEED for the theory -- which doesn't say much for his own mental health. A debunked theory is the only way he can make sense of his world. He finds the theory to offer an excellent explanation of current Republican politics generally and of the dreaded John Bolton in particular.
Given his disregard for the facts, I was not the least surprised at this passage in Wolfe's pathetic whine: "One item on the F scale, in particular, seems to capture in just a few words the way that many Christian-right politicians view the world in an age of terror: "Too many people today are living in an unnatural, soft way; we should return to the fundamentals, to a more red-blooded, active way of life.""
That sounds more like a description of Greenie thinking to me but there is a bigger problem with that observation by Prof. Wolfe than you might think: The item quoted is NOT in fact in the F scale. Table 7 of chapter VII in The Authoritarian Personality gives the final form of the F scale and that item is not included. So I think we have to say of Prof. Wolfe that he is both fake AND inaccurate. You can find a detailed account of why the Adorno claims are the reverse of the truth here. (Hat Tip to California Conservative for the link to Wolfe's howl).
*******************************
We all remember how popular with the Left was the claim that the forged documents used by Dan Rather to attack GWB's military service were "fake but accurate". Given the Leftist tendency to KNOW things regardless of the evidence, it should not be surprising that another "fake but accurate" claim has emerged. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Alan Wolfe, a Professor of Political Science, gives a reasonably fair review of how the "authoritarian personality" theory of Adorno (a prominent Marxist theoretician) and his colleagues was discredited academically not long after it was published. The rather hilarious claim of the theory was that it is conservatives who are authoritarian (Lenin and Stalin were really just misunderstood) and that conservatives are psychologically disturbed.
The theory is of course utter catnip to Leftists. They just cannot resist it regardless of the evidence against it -- so it has retained a following to this day among many Leftist academics in the social sciences. Alan Wolfe is one of those. Most authors who still refer to the theory seem unaware of the swingeing criticisms that it has attracted but Wolfe cannot claim that excuse. So it seems that he has a NEED for the theory -- which doesn't say much for his own mental health. A debunked theory is the only way he can make sense of his world. He finds the theory to offer an excellent explanation of current Republican politics generally and of the dreaded John Bolton in particular.
Given his disregard for the facts, I was not the least surprised at this passage in Wolfe's pathetic whine: "One item on the F scale, in particular, seems to capture in just a few words the way that many Christian-right politicians view the world in an age of terror: "Too many people today are living in an unnatural, soft way; we should return to the fundamentals, to a more red-blooded, active way of life.""
That sounds more like a description of Greenie thinking to me but there is a bigger problem with that observation by Prof. Wolfe than you might think: The item quoted is NOT in fact in the F scale. Table 7 of chapter VII in The Authoritarian Personality gives the final form of the F scale and that item is not included. So I think we have to say of Prof. Wolfe that he is both fake AND inaccurate. You can find a detailed account of why the Adorno claims are the reverse of the truth here. (Hat Tip to California Conservative for the link to Wolfe's howl).
*******************************
ELSEWHERE
Econbrowser has an excellent article pointing out why oil shale is an energy asset of last resort. Nuclear power and ethanol are alternatives to petroleum products that are both already available via well-tested technology, environmentally-friendly and cheap. Using Brazilian production methods, ethanol is already competitive with gasoline if oil prices stay as high as they are now. See the fourth post down here
Good stuff: "President George W. Bush last night reiterated his Government's determination to win the war on terror, likening Islamic extremism to the ideology of communism that was defeated by the US during the Cold War. In a major speech on the US commitment to continue the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan - and to prevent terrorism from "outlaw regimes" such as Iran and Syria - Mr Bush said he would fight extremists who wanted to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world"."
India is of course famous for its bureaucracy, though it has been considerably reduced in recent years, to India's great economic benefit. This hilarious story about the New Delhi rat-catchers suggests that reform still has some way to go however.
Justice? Crooks Scam Terrorists' Families: "The latest criminal racket in the Middle East is to scam money out of the families of al Qaeda terrorists that have gone to Iraq and, well, disappeared. Several thousand Saudi Arabian men have gone to Iraq to fight for al Qaeda, or at least said they did. Not surprising for the country that supplied 15 or the 19 terrorists who carried out the 911 attacks. But this has provided opportunities for crooks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. When these fellows find out about a young man who has gone off on jihad to Iraq, they contact his parents with the news that their son is in trouble, and that money can make it all better. The story varies, from the kid getting kidnapped, or arrested, in Syria or Iraq. The families, whether they approved of their lad's terrorist intentions or not, are usually eager to get him back. Money is sent, and the scammers are never heard from again".
The lesson of Katrina: "The Katrina hurricane has finally awakened the media and the public to one huge reality that few were formerly willing to accept -- the important difference between socialistic bureaucracy and a free market. Anyone who is aware of the reports on Katrina knows that most of the early rescues and help came from individuals and groups who saw what was needed and did what they could to help. The bureaucracies all waited for 'go-ahead' orders. 'Government at all levels failed the people,' Senator Susan Collins told the national press."
No excuse for excuses: "A decent society should be able to evacuate its weakest from a disaster zone, and Louisiana showcased the mismanagement only patronage politics buys. But it's not unreasonable to expect that, once sheltered, survivors would designate a latrine rather than smearing feces on the walls. And no historical grievance means the self-designated victims are owed a free flatscreen TV. The makeshift communities at the Superdome and Convention Center seemed to lack any civilizational impulse, firing even on the helicopters sent to save them. Far from rallying to maintain order, they contributed to the chaos or stood numb awaiting aid. Liberals will say that instinct was cheated from them -- no plantation boss wants the field hands to organize. More likely, the dividends of victimhood provide an unfortunate incentive to segregate from the social order."
Swedes turn blind eye to antisemitism: "Anti-Semitism is perceived as a minor problem in Sweden, restricted to marginal neo-Nazi and other extreme-Right groups. Anti-Jewish ferment among parts of the country's Arab and Muslim population is largely denied and ignored. Nevertheless, the phenomenon exists and manifests itself among some Arab and Muslim pupils in suburban schools, on Muslim websites in Swedish, and in attacks on Jews and their institutions. . a wave of anti-Semitic violence has swept over Europe. Most attention has been paid to the arsons and other violent attacks in France and other countries such as Germany and Belgium. But Swedish Jewry, too, has felt this phenomenon. Swedish Jewry seems, however, to have been the only segment of society not just to be affected by the violence, but also to notice it."
Hitchens on the lessons of Bali: "The return of murderous nihilism to Bali is highly instructive. It shows, first, that the fanatics of Islamism don't know how to stop. And it also shows that they never learn. How can Jemaah Islamiyah, which almost ruined Indonesia's economy by its filthy attack three years ago, possibly have tried to repeat the same crime in the same place? If we look for answers to this question, we shall find answers that completely discredit the current half-baked apologies for terrorism."
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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Econbrowser has an excellent article pointing out why oil shale is an energy asset of last resort. Nuclear power and ethanol are alternatives to petroleum products that are both already available via well-tested technology, environmentally-friendly and cheap. Using Brazilian production methods, ethanol is already competitive with gasoline if oil prices stay as high as they are now. See the fourth post down here
Good stuff: "President George W. Bush last night reiterated his Government's determination to win the war on terror, likening Islamic extremism to the ideology of communism that was defeated by the US during the Cold War. In a major speech on the US commitment to continue the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan - and to prevent terrorism from "outlaw regimes" such as Iran and Syria - Mr Bush said he would fight extremists who wanted to "enslave whole nations and intimidate the world"."
India is of course famous for its bureaucracy, though it has been considerably reduced in recent years, to India's great economic benefit. This hilarious story about the New Delhi rat-catchers suggests that reform still has some way to go however.
Justice? Crooks Scam Terrorists' Families: "The latest criminal racket in the Middle East is to scam money out of the families of al Qaeda terrorists that have gone to Iraq and, well, disappeared. Several thousand Saudi Arabian men have gone to Iraq to fight for al Qaeda, or at least said they did. Not surprising for the country that supplied 15 or the 19 terrorists who carried out the 911 attacks. But this has provided opportunities for crooks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. When these fellows find out about a young man who has gone off on jihad to Iraq, they contact his parents with the news that their son is in trouble, and that money can make it all better. The story varies, from the kid getting kidnapped, or arrested, in Syria or Iraq. The families, whether they approved of their lad's terrorist intentions or not, are usually eager to get him back. Money is sent, and the scammers are never heard from again".
The lesson of Katrina: "The Katrina hurricane has finally awakened the media and the public to one huge reality that few were formerly willing to accept -- the important difference between socialistic bureaucracy and a free market. Anyone who is aware of the reports on Katrina knows that most of the early rescues and help came from individuals and groups who saw what was needed and did what they could to help. The bureaucracies all waited for 'go-ahead' orders. 'Government at all levels failed the people,' Senator Susan Collins told the national press."
No excuse for excuses: "A decent society should be able to evacuate its weakest from a disaster zone, and Louisiana showcased the mismanagement only patronage politics buys. But it's not unreasonable to expect that, once sheltered, survivors would designate a latrine rather than smearing feces on the walls. And no historical grievance means the self-designated victims are owed a free flatscreen TV. The makeshift communities at the Superdome and Convention Center seemed to lack any civilizational impulse, firing even on the helicopters sent to save them. Far from rallying to maintain order, they contributed to the chaos or stood numb awaiting aid. Liberals will say that instinct was cheated from them -- no plantation boss wants the field hands to organize. More likely, the dividends of victimhood provide an unfortunate incentive to segregate from the social order."
Swedes turn blind eye to antisemitism: "Anti-Semitism is perceived as a minor problem in Sweden, restricted to marginal neo-Nazi and other extreme-Right groups. Anti-Jewish ferment among parts of the country's Arab and Muslim population is largely denied and ignored. Nevertheless, the phenomenon exists and manifests itself among some Arab and Muslim pupils in suburban schools, on Muslim websites in Swedish, and in attacks on Jews and their institutions. . a wave of anti-Semitic violence has swept over Europe. Most attention has been paid to the arsons and other violent attacks in France and other countries such as Germany and Belgium. But Swedish Jewry, too, has felt this phenomenon. Swedish Jewry seems, however, to have been the only segment of society not just to be affected by the violence, but also to notice it."
Hitchens on the lessons of Bali: "The return of murderous nihilism to Bali is highly instructive. It shows, first, that the fanatics of Islamism don't know how to stop. And it also shows that they never learn. How can Jemaah Islamiyah, which almost ruined Indonesia's economy by its filthy attack three years ago, possibly have tried to repeat the same crime in the same place? If we look for answers to this question, we shall find answers that completely discredit the current half-baked apologies for terrorism."
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald
**************************
Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). 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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