Liberalism as Socially Motivated Cognition

Excerpt below from a post by Dr Helen. My own comment on the "study" that got her dander up is here

"I have mentioned a research study by the APA entitled, Political Conservatism as Socially Motivated Cognition, that appeared biased against conservatives. The study pointed out that there had been little research done on the traits of liberals--but they must have overlooked this article in Clio Psych's Journal from 2003. Here is an excerpt from the article that mentioned research on liberals from 1982--I guess the writers of the APA's biased article did not see fit to go back that far.

Research on the psychology of radical activists helps us to understand this mismatch between Chomsky's ideas and his personal style. In the 1970s, Stanley Rothman and Robert Lichter administered Thematic Apperception Tests to a large sample of "new left" radicals (Roots of Radicalism, 1982). They found that activists were characterized by weakened self-esteem, injured narcissism and paranoid tendencies. They were preoccupied with power and attracted to radical ideologies that offered clear and unambiguous answers to their questions. All of these traits can be found in the work of Chomsky and other anti-imperialist intellectuals.

And if you ever wondered why some liberals seem wishy-washy at times--this paragraph from the same article might explain things:

The unwillingness to offer alternatives reveals a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem. If they offered their own policy ideas they would be vulnerable to criticism. They would run the risk that their ideas would fail, or would not seem persuasive to others. This is especially difficult for anti-capitalists after the fall of the Soviet Union. It has also been difficult in the war against terrorism because Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are such unsympathetic figures. Psychologically, it is easier to blame America for not finding a solution than it is to put one's own ideas on the line.

Hmmm.... I don't agree here that it is lack of self-esteem that would cause liberals to seem spineless. I think it is their desire to avoid responsibility at any cost".

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ELSEWHERE

There is a useful summary here of the recent Steven Pinker lecture in which Pinker came out in favour of the argument that Western Jews are genetically more intelligent than other Westerners: "Though the moderator thanked him for a very 'even-handed' presentation on a controversial topic, to my ear what Pinker presented was a spirited endorsement of the Cochran-Hardy-Harpending (CHH) paper. The presentation generally seemed to fill the need to present these controversial ideas to a very interested audience by a trusted authoritative source. It didn't seem to me that Pinker added anything that Cochran or Harpending could not have provided themselves except proximity to NYC and comfortably strong Ashkenazik credentials. Overall Pinker emphasized the reasonableness of the authors' hypotheses, the generally better quality of the genetic evidence over the environmental, the non-rational basis of much of the opposition, and the paper's strong foundation in the current state of knowledge". There is another account of the talk here.

Media New Orleans backtrack "In the traditional winter/spring crush by major newspapers to publish investigative stories that land them on finalist lists for hotly contested journalism awards, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times both put forth front-page stories this weekend that dramatically contradict much of their own coverage of the disaster. The New York Times found that of 260 deaths it analyzed, "Of those who failed to heed evacuation orders, many were offered a ride or could have driven themselves out of danger," while the Los Angeles Times found that "the well-to-do died along with the poor." Despite media coverage that focused on poor blacks, of the 380 bodies formally identified in New Orleans thus far, the Los Angeles paper said, a disproportionate number were white -- as measured against the city's population"

A wonderful article here by a man who gave up journalism to join the Marines. Excerpt: "When people ask why I recently left The Wall Street Journal to join the Marines, I usually have a short answer. It felt like the time had come to stop reporting events and get more directly involved. But that's not the whole answer, and how I got to this point wasn't a straight line. It's a clich‚ that you appreciate your own country more when you live abroad, but it happens to be true. Living in China for the last seven years, I've seen that country take a giant leap from a struggling Third World country into a true world power. For many people it still comes as a surprise to learn that China is chasing Japan as the second-largest economy on the globe and could soon own a trillion dollars of American debt. But living in China also shows you what a nondemocratic country can do to its citizens. I've seen protesters tackled and beaten by plainclothes police in Tiananmen Square, and I've been videotaped by government agents while I was talking to a source. I've been arrested and forced to flush my notes down a toilet to keep the police from getting them.... When you live abroad long enough, you come to understand that governments that behave this way are not the exception, but the rule. They feel alien to us, but from the viewpoint of the world's population, we are the aliens, not them. That makes you think about protecting your country no matter who you are or what you're doing".

Now for the Senate: "House lawmakers opened the way for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as one of their last acts of an all-night session Monday bringing their legislative year to a close".

I have just posted here a challenge to the "anti-vilification" laws in the Australian State of Victoria that have been used to prosecute two Christian pastors for quoting the Koran(!)

The latest issue of Ovi Magazine is out. I have an article or two in there somewhere. It's a magazine to browse through rather than look for particular content. Could be handy during the Christmas break.

Jim Paine is continuing his monitoring of the disgusting but basically empty-headed Prof. Ward Churchill and his supposed "Indian" ancestry. It should be a wonder that an American university continues to employ such a chronic liar but I am afraid that it is not. Leftists have never rated the truth as very important.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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RACE IS REAL -- AGAIN

Even mentioning the word "race" makes one into something of a polecat these days but reality does not go away because it has become unfashionable and reality is my no. 1 interest in life. The only "reality" Leftists have in mind when they claim to be "reality-based" is their devotion to a theory! And the theory concerned -- evolution -- is a highly imperfect one!

Anyway, there are a few scientists -- mostly Asian -- who continue to do research on human genetics that includes mention of race. And they of course uniformly find that the allegedly "social" construct of race in fact has an overwhelmingly genetic basis. The more genetic markers they use, the more accurately they can tell what your racial origins are. I reproduce the abstract of the latest such study -- by Tang et al -- below. Note that they could even pick out Hispanics reliably on the basis of their genes -- presumably because Amerindians are distinct genetically and "Hispanics" are in fact mostly Amerindian.

"We have analyzed genetic data for 326 microsatellite markers that were typed uniformly in a large multiethnic population-based sample of individuals as part of a study of the genetics of hypertension (Family Blood Pressure Program). Subjects identified themselves as belonging to one of four major racial/ethnic groups (white, African American, East Asian, and Hispanic) and were recruited from 15 different geographic locales within the United States and Taiwan. Genetic cluster analysis of the microsatellite markers produced four major clusters, which showed near-perfect correspondence with the four self-reported race/ethnicity categories. Of 3,636 subjects of varying race/ ethnicity, only 5 (0.14%) showed genetic cluster membership different from their self-identified race/ethnicity. On the other hand, we detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ ethnicity-as opposed to current residence-is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population. Implications of this genetic structure for case-control association studies are discussed".

Still, I suppose all those Leftist "intellectuals" who cannot believe the evidence of their own eyes as they walk down the street (all those black skins are "socially constructed", don't you know?) are not going to be much moved by research of any kind. The PDF of the whole study is here

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ELSEWHERE

There is a post here which is a very good example of Leftist elitism. The writer dismisses the Iraq election on the grounds that Iraqis are too simple to have minds of their own. So a nice dictatorship is all that they are fit for. And did you know that the only reason American troops are in Iraq is "Bush's vanity"? A lot of these Leftists really are sick puppies.

Adult Stem Cell Research Discovery Could Change Entire Embryonic Debate: "Scientists at the University of Louisville say they have made a discovery of a certain kind of adult stem cell they say could drastically change the debate about embryonic stem cell research. The researchers have reportedly found stem cells from adult mice to change into brain, nerve, heart muscle and pancreatic cells. The ability to take on the characteristics of other cells is the primary selling point for using embryonic stem cells, which can only be obtained by destroying unborn children in their earliest days. The discovery could greatly expand the dozens of therapies and treatments already available from adult stem cells and the researcher say it could end the entire stem cell research debate. "We have found a counterpart for embryonic stem cells in adult bone marrow. This could negate the ethical concerns""

Michigan Brownshirts Rampage for Race Quotas: "Momentum continues to build for a noisy showdown over racial preferences in Michigan. Just how ugly the issue could become was starkly demonstrated last week in Lansing, the state capital. The state’s Board of Canvassers, a four-person body split by law between Democrats and Republicans, was meeting to decide whether to certify for the 2006 ballot a referendum that would ban the use of race in state hiring and admissions policies. But no sooner had the meeting started than a mob of mostly black students from Detroit schools, led by a radical national outfit calling itself By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), stormed the building, overturning tables, jumping on chairs, stomping their feet and yelling “They say Jim Crow – We say hell no.”"

If you have broadband (or a lot of patience) there are some excellent and revealing photos here which were taken outside the gates of San Quentin Prison on the evening of December 12, 2005 during a vigil marking the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams. They show the Left at their looniest and most intolerant and also show the media displaying their usual bias.

Hopeless British Tories: "But the Cameron thing is not a revival of Conservatism. Early indications are that the arrival of this apparently young, dynamic leader may well boost his party's standing in the polls. But in political terms, his accession marks the final demise of anything that might be recognised as a Tory Party. The political emptying-out of Conservatism, a process that has been proceeding in faltering fashion for some time, is now set to accelerate towards a conclusion. Many comparisons have been made between Cameron and prime minister Tony Blair. Here is one that seems to have escaped the notice of most commentators. We now effectively have a non-Tory leading the Conservative Party, to go with our non-Labourite leader of the Labour Party".

Apply zero tolerance to something that matters : "He was once in the Air Force, he says, refueling jet fighters. He once worked for a military contractor, building nose cones for missile defense systems. But he can't work for the city of Scottsdale. The city this week pushed Garrett Ross out of his job as a building inspector. This, because of a 4-year-old speeding ticket. Or more precisely, his failure to disclose said speeding ticket when he applied for his job in 2004. How the city and its bureaucrats managed to survive with such a hardened criminal in their midst is beyond me. Fortunately, they caught on last month. 'This letter is your notice that under the provisions of Sec. 14-74 of the Scottsdale Revised Code request that your presence is required at a Pre-Termination Hearing at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005 ... ,' said a Nov. 29 ungrammatical letter from Frank Gray, general manager of Planning and Development Services."

See here for America's first libertarian student newspaper, the Pennsylvania Independent. They aim to make sure the next generations of Americans value liberty, and hope to be the first in what is to be a rightward shift toward libertarian principles and values. It has some good articles.

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts -- on his usual themes of IQ and race.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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THE MASK SLIPS

Thomas Lifson gets it. Just an excerpt:

The past year has seen a spate of shocking statements revealing hatred and contempt for President Bush and his supporters on the part of important media figures who claim objectivity and sneer at conservatives unafraid to characterize themselves as such. Regrettably, we cannot credit a sudden outbreak of honesty for this phenomenon, and thereby anticipate improved news coverage from these folks. A pathology is at work.

A sudden loss of status and influence is a profound shock to most people who have spent their lives aimed at the acquisition and enjoyment of socio-political standing. Relieved of the ability to shape the consciousness and behavior of others, a certain number unburden themselves of the inner restraints which kept them from openly voicing the condescension and scorn they have for those whom they regard as their social, intellectual, and moral inferiors.

The rise of alternate media - talk radio, Fox News, and the internet - has not simply allowed competing voices to be heard in the public square, it has robbed many media grandees of the ultimate reward of their striving after careers as shapers of mass opinion. Some have become unbalanced mentally, and emotionally overwhelmed by the loss. They strike out with blind fury at their "enemies" (the subjects whom they have covered as "unbiased" journalists), and thereby let the mask of objectivity slip from their faces, revealing spiteful, arrogant and bigoted visages. By dismissing those who disagree with them as unworthy of consideration, they expose to light the long-hidden dark vision of the rest of humanity that enables them to regard themselves as worthy.

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ELSEWHERE



Another example of antisemitic stupidity from a black political leader: "A Dallas city councilman is accusing a councilwoman of making an insensitive religious comment during a heated argument Thursday. Councilwoman Maxine Thornton-Reese made a remark about Jews during a backroom debate regarding police response to burglar alarms, Councilman Mitchell Rsansky said. NBC 5 reported that both council members returned to the council chamber visibly shaken and that Rsansky told other members what Reese had allegedly said. Councilman Ron Natinsky described the comment as "you Jews controlling city hall," and said it was "fairly shocking." Anti-Defamation League representative Mark Briskman called on Reese to apologize. "This specific incident is very hurtful, very troubling, and I think it would be appropriate that there be an apology," Briskman said. Reese has promised a written response about her comment, NBC 5 reported".

House lawmakers call for new border fence : "The House called for construction of a fence along parts of the U.S. border from the Pacific Coast to the Gulf of Mexico as a bill aimed at shutting down illegal immigration moved forward Thursday. The two-layered fence, about 700 miles long, would be built in parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The provisions, passed 260-159, put priority on construction near Laredo, Texas. The city is across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where warring drug cartels have been blamed for more than 140 murders this year."

Illegals bill drops felony provision : "The House Judiciary Committee chairman yesterday backed off his provision to make illegal aliens felons and instead proposed a misdemeanor charge for unlawful presence, angering some Republicans who wanted the higher penalty. The House is expected to vote today on a border enforcement and employee work verification bill, which calls for more U.S. Border Patrol agents, mandatory database checks of employees' eligibility to work, expanding expedited removal of illegal aliens and allowing sheriffs along the border to help enforce immigration law. Some Republicans already were threatening to try to block the bill if they didn't get a chance to vote on amendments such as ending birthright citizenship and allowing local authorities to aid federal immigration officials. Yesterday's change just fueled their determination."

Potomac Fever: "Congress is being criticized for funding pork projects and for a general lack of fiscal restraint. Many people agree that there is a spending problem in Washington, but not many understand the fundamental causes. Why have Republicans abandoned their pledge in the 1994 Contract with America to cut 'government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money?' Did the GOP simply decide that it was good politics to buy votes with lavish special-interest spending? That is one cause of the budget crisis, but not the core problem. With the extraordinarily high reelection rates in Congress, any political advantage gained from special-interest spending is not crucial. The real problem is the pro-spending mindset ingrained in long-time legislators. It's called 'Potomac Fever,' and it causes members of Congress to see themselves as philanthropists with unlimited means to solve every problem in society."

Federal telephone excise taxes and you: "Some readers undoubtedly know that they pay a three percent federal excise tax on telephone service. Fewer may recall that the tax was enacted in 1898 as a temporary tax to fund the Spanish-American War and remains in place to this day, which is as good a reason as those countless others to be cynical about any government promise. What even fewer may have heard is that there are finally some cracks in the federal tax machine, thanks to federal appeals courts which are marching one-by-one toward voiding at least the part of that tax that applies to 'toll telephone' or long distance service."

Skewed tax cut spin : "Here's what you get from the New York Times when you try to honor Americans' innate, you might think, right to enjoy the fruits of their labors. You get: '(T)he House passed (a) tax bill . . . that would drain the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years' -- a measure 'both unaffordable and gratuitous,' not to mention 'morally reprehensible.' All I can say is, let's hope that next year, the House and the Senate get really reprehensible. So low-down, so sleazy and gratuitous, that the whole tax-raising, tax-loving editorial page staff of the Times keels over in empurpled anguish. That might mean Congress, for the first time in a while, had done something profoundly constructive about the tax code's ongoing impositions. ... Washington mythology insists on two improbabilities: 1) that tax cuts benefit mainly 'the rich,' and 2) that they cause huge deficits. Republicans are elected to sneer at these improbabilities -- which, sometimes, they actually do."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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UCLA RESEARCH CONFIRMS THAT THE U.S. MEDIA TILT LEFT

The study appears to have been carefully done but some of the detailed results are a bit weird

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly. "I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are." "Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co?author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

U.N. arrogance reined in: ""For years, United Nations diplomats were notorious for running up millions of dollars in parking tickets, then just laughing at the city's attempts to collect. Diplomatic immunity meant there was little U.S. courts could do about it. But the city's thousands of foreign officials have largely changed their ways since a threatened crackdown three years ago. According to New York's finance department, diplomats have gotten 90 percent fewer tickets since late 2002, when the U.S. threatened to revoke the plates of scofflaws and subtract however much they owed in fines from the foreign aid their countries received. Those who do get citations have gotten better about paying them. Of the 11,771 parking violations issued to diplomats in the past three years, 87 percent have been paid or successfully appealed, the city said."

Both parties disingenuous about privacy rights : "What is interesting about the concern with this right to privacy is how it has become the mantra of the American left. And it is the American right, led on the court by Justice Antonin Scalia, that has strong objections to it. Does this not strike anyone as paradoxical? American conservatives have been identified as individualists, especially when it comes to their economic views. They used to champion capitalism and the right to private property. This right they identified in the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment. When recently the court ran roughshod over this right in its New London (Conn.) v. Kelo ruling, the American right still voiced some protest. Indeed, its greatest hero on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, was in the outspoken minority wishing to uphold that right. As to the right to privacy, we now have an American left -- which is notoriously anti-individualist and persistently demeans the right to private property -- declaring fidelity to it and insisting that it is part of the fabric of the Constitution"

An old-time ACLU member chides the Fascist ACLU of today: "In my judgment the ACLU of Michigan is deeply wrong to defend race preferences. We are disloyal to our own deepest principles when we do so. I may be in error about this. But if you believe that it is right to defend race preferences, say that forthrightly and give your reasons. That view will almost certainly be rejected by Michigan citizens, but at least you will then retain your good repute, and not besmirch that of the ACLU."

Mood in France turns Rightward: "The public mood in France has darkened and veered sharply to the Right in the two months since the Paris riots. Despite endless political hand-wringing over the failure of the French model of ethnic integration, the country is no closer to a national consensus about how to re-establish the core republican values of fraternity and equality. Indeed, the political centre of gravity has shifted in favour of Jean-Marie Le Pen, as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin scramble to head off the lethal challenge from the far Right. Support for Le Pen's National Front - or at least its anti-immigrant ideology - has risen since the riots, sparking fears there will be a repeat of the 2002 presidential election, when the wily demagogue trounced the Left and almost snatched the presidency..... One in four French are in favour of Le Pen's ideas, especially regarding defence of traditional values and immigration. And 63 per cent say there are "too many immigrants in France", a 4 per cent rise since 2003. As the electorate turns increasingly inwards, heavy-handed solutions to the crisis of the French suburbs proliferate. The political elite is sending a strong message that France effectively blames its immigrants for the troubles, with renewed crackdowns on non-French residents, asylum-seekers or the "sans papiers" - illegal immigrants"

Moronic TSA again: "Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered that her 9-month-old son's name was on the United States' "no fly" list of suspected terrorists. "We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled," Zapolsky said, recalling the July incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. "The desk agent started laughing...She couldn't print us out a boarding pass because he's on the no-fly list." Zapolsky, who did not want her son's name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. "But when I found out you can't actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed." She isn't alone. According to the Transportation Security Administration, more than 28,000 people have applied to the TSA redress office to get on the "cleared list," which takes note of individuals whose names are similar to those on the terrorism watch list, but even getting on that list does not guarantee an end to hassles related to the no-fly list".

I am continuing to follow news about the racial tensions in Sydney on my Australian Politics blog (mirrored here).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald

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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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SOME MORE ENLIGHTENMENT ON THE GENETICS OF RACE



A little striped fish is helping scientists solve one of the biggest mysteries in biology - which genes are responsible for differences in human skin, eye and hair colour. The large, international team of scientists have found a gene that makes African zebrafish of a lighter-than-normal colour - and say the same gene helps explain the light-coloured hair, skin and eyes of many Europeans. While they stress they have not found a genetic basis for race, [what is it that they have found, then?] they say just a tiny change in a single amino acid plays a major role in causing the distinctive light European colouring. The gene is called SLC24A5, Keith Cheng of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues said. "Our results suggest that SLC24A5 explains between 25 and 38 per cent of the European-African difference in skin melanin index," the scientists wrote in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Cheng's team was originally looking for genes involved in cancer. They were using zebrafish, a favoured tool of genetic researchers because they are small, reproduce quickly and are well understood. They found a gene that appeared to make some zebrafish "golden" - with lighter-than-usual stripes. Under a microscope, the skin of these fish have smaller, fewer structures called melanophores. In people of European descent, pigment granules called melanosomes are fewer, smaller, and lighter than those from people of West African ancestry. The melanosomes of East Asians fall in between. This suggested gene variations may be responsible and may be similar in vertebrates - which include fish, mice and people.

Scientists know that more than 100 genes are involved in pigment production, so the process is complex. But most of the genes identified so far are found in unusual conditions such as albinism, which causes very light skin and eyes. "...the genetic origin of the striking variations in human skin colour is one of the remaining puzzles in biology," the researchers wrote. But researchers have published several maps of the human genome and made them available to anyone. Cheng's team made use of them. They zeroed on on SLC24A5. Penn State pharmacologist Victor Canfield found that all vertebrates have a version of the gene. They found that one version appears to be the "base" version and is found in most people of African and East Asian descent. Europeans have a mutant version that differs by only a few letters of the genetic alphabet

Source. (The scientific abstract is here)

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ELSEWHERE



Iraqi voters decide their own future: "Iraqis streamed to the polls amid minimal violence yesterday in a legislative vote many hoped would heal a nation wracked by sectarian conflict and bring minority Sunnis back into the political process. Electoral officials briefly extended voting owing to the massive turnout, which preliminary estimates put at between 60 and 80 per cent, higher than October's referendum, with Sunni Arabs casting ballots in unprecedented numbers".

The "no idea" Democrats: "To this day, Democrats have yet to offer a coherent strategy for winning the war in Iraq, and it is clear that they have none. Their attacks on Bush's 'failed' strategy have rung hollow all these years because they never had anything better to offer. And now their top leaders have revealed that their real goal all along was not to win, but to cut and run. They only waited this long to announce it because they have concluded that the poll numbers finally are in their favor. While Americans disapprove of the Bush administration's execution of the Iraq war effort, will they really embrace surrender as the alternative? Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi think so. We don't. The American people, rightly disturbed by serious administration mistakes, still want America to win this war. Unfortunately, the Democrats are quickly removing themselves as a serious foreign policy alternative to the Republicans, and that is damaging not only to them, but to the republic."

British legal piranhas get their comeuppance: "Some of the country's most successful law firms, which grew rich by exploiting sick miners, were told by the Government last night to repay more than 50 million pounds that they "outrageously" sliced from their clients' compensation. Ministers lambasted the firms for deducting money from payments to elderly pitmen suffering from chronic chest diseases as a result of their work".

A sincere Leftist agrees with neoconservatism: "What is neoconservative foreign policy? The best thumbnail definition is the one given by Paul Berman in his hugely influential Terror and Liberalism (2003) and quoted by Oliver Kamm: "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others." It is that coupling, of national security with the promotion of freedom, that has given neoconservative foreign policy its potency, and why it is likely to last through a change of power in the United States after George W Bush - certainly if the Republican victor is John McCain, probably if the Democratic victor is Hillary Clinton."

There is a good article here about the many different attempts by the Irish government to create "affordable" housing by legislation and regulation -- attempts which simply drove the price of housing up, of course. Making things difficult for builders is not a good way to encourage them to build.

Pinter: Just another postmodernist hypocrite: 'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false." ...



Harold Pinter, explaining the difference between drama and politics in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the lofty realm of dramatic art, Pinter asserted, there can be nothing so clear-cut as truth. It is, however, a very different matter when it comes to American foreign policy. There, the distinction between true and false is as clear as that between day and night. It's simple. Every- thing the United States says is false, and everything its critics say is true.... But it's not Pinter's solipsism I really object to. It's the way he used his award to pour verbal kerosene on the crackling flames of anti-Americanism.... Truth and falsehood are indeed hard to distinguish in Pinter's drama, and his Nobel soliloquy was no exception. First, the true part. Thousands were indeed killed by US-backed dictatorships, especially in Central and South America. What is demonstrably false is that this violence is comparable in scale with that perpetrated by Communist regimes at the same time...."

I am continuing to follow news about the racial tensions in Sydney on my Australian Politics blog (mirrored here).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald

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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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Brookes News Update

Central economic planning makes a comeback: It looks as if the Australian Labor Party is about to put industry policy, aka central planning, back on the drawing board
Our rightwing failed on labour market reform and minimum wages: When it comes to debates about the minimum wage Australia's rightwing is in dire need of support. As I am here to help, I shall do what I can to assist them. After all, it is Christmas
Why the Palestinians should be terrified of Iran?: The Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia either become colonial subjects of Iran or they put themselves under the protection of Israel's nuclear umbrella
A socialist economist spews garbage on tariffs: Evan Jones, a socialist 'economist', made the absurd argument that tariffs lower prices
America's Ship of Fools: By failing to privatize we are sticking our kids with the impossible task of paying for our increasingly greater numbers of elderly citizens
Businesses do not pay wages -- consumers do: The nature of wages and purchasing power is something politicians, particularly Liberal politicians, seem incapable of grasping, not that most businessmen or CEOs are much better
Why are only Jews deported?: Critics of Israel love selective mentioning of UN resolutions, but they do not like when people actually read the original text of the resolutions

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ELSEWHERE



Iran is being run by a full-on fruitcake: "Iran's hard-line president lashed out with a new outburst at Israel on Wednesday, calling the Nazi Holocaust a "myth" used as a pretext for carving out a Jewish state in the heart of the Muslim world. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments drew quick condemnations from Israel, the United States and Europe, which warned he is hurting Iran's position in talks aimed at resolving suspicions about his regime's nuclear program. The White House said his remarks showed why Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Germany, one of three European Union countries leading the nuclear talks, called his statements "shocking and unacceptable.""

Child abuse by Planned Parenthoiod: "In the "Shared Stories" section of the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate web site, the group published a letter in which a young girl praises Planned Parenthood for not telling her parents that she was raped by her 17-year-old boyfriend when she was just 11 years old. Neither the letter itself nor Planned Parenthood made any mention of Planned Parenthood alerting law enforcement to this sexual abuse of an 11-year-old child."

French intransigence: "French farmers were accused of holding Europe and the world to ransom yesterday after official figures obtained by The Times revealed just how far European Union subsidies are skewed in their favour. Three times as many French farmers receive large subsidies from the EU than those of any other country. In total, France receives almost twice as much direct subsidies for its farmers as any other member state, and they are mostly channelled to large farmers rather than traditional small-scale land holders. Despite the huge discrepancies France steadfastly refuses to countenance any reduction in farm subsidies, bringing the EU budget negotiations in Brussels and the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong, both climaxing this week, to the brink of collapse".

Iraqis defy terrorists: "One anecdote from Mosul," said General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he spoke at the National Defense University earlier this month. "There was a police recruiting station. Forty young men lined up to sign up to become Iraqi policemen. A vehicle-borne IED explodes -- kills or badly injures 12 of them. The next day, the 28 remaining return to the same spot to sign up to be policemen. "And that kind of courage," the general told his audience, "is being shown across Iraq by literally thousands and thousands of Iraqis who want to serve their country.""

Tax bills soaring in socialist Scotland: "MSPs exploded ministers' claims that council tax rises next year could be pegged at 2.5 per cent, saying it was possible they could even reach 6.6 per cent. A devastating report from the Scottish Parliament's cross-party finance committee on the Executive's draft budget for the next financial year also said that, despite ministerial protestations to the contrary, councils were facing a funding shortfall of 85 million pounds, as well as having to find 58.5 million in efficiency savings".



The execution of thug Tookie Williams has brought forth the usual Leftist lies about capital punishment having no deterrent effect. Mike Tremoglie gives you the facts.

The "Dark Ages" myth: "Some of the "Dark Ages" innovations that show the folly of considering Greek and Roman culture the apex of civilization until recent times: The perfection and widespread use of waterwheels, windmills, and pumps, the invention of the compass, stirrups, the crossbow, canons, effective horse harnesses, eyeglasses, clocks, chimneys, violins, double-entry bookkeeping, and insurance? This list doesn't begin to do justice to this era that historians of science now refer to as an age of remarkable innovation and discovery. Perhaps the most revealing instance involves the "story" that in order to gain backing for his great voyage west, Columbus had to struggle against ignorant and superstitious churchmen who were certain that the earth was flat. Truth was that all educated Europeans, including bishops and cardinals, knew the earth was round. What produced church opposition to the Columbus voyage was that Columbus believed the circumference of the earth was only about one-fifth of its actual distance. Thus, the church scholars who opposed him did so because they knew that he and his sailors were bound to perish at sea. And they would have done so had the Western Hemisphere not been there to replenish their food and water". (See also here and here).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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THE LATEST U.S. IMMIGRATION STATISTICS

Between January 2000 and March 2005, 7.9 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) settled in the country, making it the highest five-year period of immigration in American history. Nearly half of post-2000 arrivals (3.7 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens. Immigrants account for 12.1 percent of the total population, the highest percentage in 8 decades. If current trends continue, within a decade it will surpass the high of 14.7 percent reached in 1910.

Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, three-and-a-half times the rate for natives. Since 1990, immigration has increased the number of such low-skilled workers by 25 percent, while increasing the supply of all other workers by only 6 percent. Immigrants were once significantly more likely to have a college degree, but the new data show that natives are now as likely as immigrants to have a bachelor's or graduate degree.

The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 29 percent, compared to 18 percent for native households. The poverty rate of immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 18.4 percent, 57 percent higher than the 11.7 percent for natives and their children. Immigrants and their children account for almost one in four persons in poverty. Immigrants make significant economic progress the longer they live in the United States, but even immigrants who have lived here for 15 years still have dramatically higher rates of poverty, lack of health insurance, and welfare use than natives.

The low educational level of many immigrants, and resulting low wages, are the primary reasons so many live in poverty, use welfare programs, or lack insurance - not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.

Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2005, there were 10.3 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.

Recent immigration has had no significant impact on the nation's age structure. Without the 7.9 million post-2000 immigrants, the average age in America would be virtually unchanged at 36 years.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Major Leftist German newsmagazine Spiegel is condemning America for the execution of the murderous Tookie Williams. The Left have always liked murderers. No mention of Tookie's victims, of course.

The stupid Left again: Spiegel has another an article on "THE EMPIRE OF SHADOW - The worldwide operations of the U.S. Secret Intelligence Service", and the picture on the cover shows ... members of the Canadian military!" Reminds one of the recent case when the American Left mistook British soldiers for Americans, despite the different uniforms

Government Intervention Makes Houses More Expensive: "Escalating prices that have made houses unaffordable for many people in Washington are mostly the result of homeowners using political and regulatory means to block construction of new housing, economic studies show. . . . Economists increasingly are concluding that the shortage of affordable housing in Washington and other major U.S. cities on the East and West coasts is a result more of man-made restrictions on development than high construction costs or other market forces."

Hooray! 20 years for Muslim animal: "A Muslim father was sent to jail for at least 20 years yesterday for ordering his sons to kill a teenager who was going out with his daughter in defiance of his wishes. Chomir Ali, 44, recruited his sons to murder Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, 19, after discovering that his only daughter, Manna Begum, also 19, was pregnant by him. Mr Ghorbani-Zarin, an Iranian Muslim who was studying at Oxford Brookes University, was found in November last year with his body tied to the driver's seat of his car. He had been stabbed 46 times. Mujibar Rahman, 19, and his brother, Mamnoor, 16, were given minimum terms of 16 and 14 years respectively. Ali, a waiter from Bangladesh who settled in Oxford, and his sons were found guilty of murder at Oxford Crown Court last month. Mr Justice Gross, who passed sentence yesterday at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, said: "Far from vindicating your family's honour, you have permanently dishonoured your family with the stain of murder."

Another reason for the Left to hate Wal-Mart: "The U.S. economy entered its fifth year of expansion in November, with non-farm payroll employment, a broad economic indicator, having expanded by 4.5 million jobs (3.4 percent) since bottoming in May 2003. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, the nation's largest private employer, has been creating new jobs at a much higher rate. Data obtained from Wal-Mart show the retail giant expanding employment by 15 percent in the same two-and-a-half-year period. That's only part of the incredible success story being told by the Arkansas-based retailer. The Wal-Mart employment effect, rarely examined by economists, is so strong that it is counter-cyclical. In other words, the retailer has created new jobs in every recession since it went public in 1971... this point is clear: A corporation that adds new jobs in periods of recession, while many others are laying off workers, is good for the U.S. economy.

Australia buys Boeing: "QANTAS says it will acquire 115 Boeing 787 aircraft as part of its fleet renewal program in a deal worth up to $24 billion. Qantas will take delivery of acquire of the first 65 aircraft from 2008 at a list price of $13 billion. "Obviously with the 115 aircraft it gets up to about $23 to $24 billion," chief executive Geoff Dixon said".

Spengler has some scathing comments on irrelevance to mainstream America of the latest films out of Hollywood -- including comments about Spielberg's film on the massacre of Israeli athletes by Arabs at the Munich Olympic games. He points out that the script for the Spielberg film was written by "the world's worst playwright" -- homosexual Marxist Tony Kushner. Kushner was not even fazed by the downfall of the Soviets, whom he supported until their downfall. Reliapundit has an extended reply to Kushner's raving.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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MORE ON "PATHOLOGICAL" RACISM

Taranto has a good comment on the latest psychiatric proposal. Excerpt:

The Washington Post reports that some psychiatrists are urging the creation of a new diagnosis that would cover people who display "extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice":

"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.

What about black people who entertain paranoid conspiracy theories about white people? The Post doesn't address this question, so we have to turn to an NBC report, in which our old friend Alvin Poussaint shows up singing a somewhat different tune:

Dyan French, also known as "Mama D," is a New Orleans Citizen and Community Leader. She testified before the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday. "I was on my front porch. I have witnesses that they bombed the walls of the levee, boom, boom!" Mama D said, holding her head. "Mister, I'll never forget it."

"Certainly appears to me to be an act of genocide and of ethnic cleansing," Leah Hodges, another New Orleans citizen, told the committee. . . .

Harvard's Alvin Pouissant [sic] says such conspiracy theories are fueled by years of government neglect and discrimination against blacks: slavery, segregation and the Tuskegee experiments, during which poor blacks were used to test the effects of syphilis. "If you're angry and you've been discriminated against," Pouissant says, "then your mind is open to many ideas about persecution, abandonment, feelings of rejection.

Now, maybe there's some subtlety here that doesn't come across in the two quotes, but it certainly sounds as though Poussaint is saying behavior that is normal in blacks is a sign of mental illness in whites..

I should perhaps note here that psychologists have been trying at least since 1950 to pathologize racism but the evidence for its pervasiveness is such that, as even the Washington Post noted, most psychologists and psychiatrists these days regard some form of negative feeling towards minorities as normal and natural.

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put online an article written in 1980 by Herb London, a conservative professor. It gives an account of his experiences in the 1960s and 1970s with student radicals. The brownshirts he describes are of course now the professors. See here or here

The mask of the British Left has now slipped right off: "Before you go to a left-wing meeting, brace yourself for the likelihood that everyone you meet in the hall will be standing on their head. Do not be surprised to see communists supporting fascism, feminists throwing their arms around misogynists and liberals volunteering to be advocates for tyranny. It's been like this since 9/11.... Anyone who now believes CND [Committee for Nuclear Disarmament] is as much against proliferation [of nuclear weapons] as for unilateral disarmament would have been surprised by this autumn's annual conference. Among the guests was the startling figure of Dr Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli, the then Iranian ambassador. Iran is building the nuclear power stations CND once protested against - an odd project for a country with one of the largest reserves of oil in the world. Not only the US government but the United Nations and the European Union suspect the Islamic Republic wants the bomb. The obvious course for those sincere about nuclear disarmament is to oppose Tehran as vigorously as they oppose a replacement for Trident [U.S. nuclear missile submarine]. But there's the rub. Standing by its principles would, if only for a moment, have put CND on the same side as George W Bush and Tony Blair, and that would never do.... Members of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran exiled in London gazed with astonishment on CND's dalliance with a "fascistic" state. The invitation to the ambassador was an "outrage", the party said. CND was insulting "the people of Iran who are struggling to get rid of this brutal regime", and the countless thousands who have died in the attempt.

Keith Burgess Jackson on Leftist projection: "Once again, we see the stereotype of the dumb (or at least the intellectually uncurious) conservative. Liberals are smart; conservatives are dumb. Liberals think; conservatives emote. Liberals debate one another in search of truth and justice; conservatives flock together. In fact, the success of conservatism as a political movement lies precisely in its willingness to debate, discuss, and think. It's liberals who emote (their hearts bleed even for murderers); it's liberals who act like herd animals (John Kekes calls their unexamined assumptions "the liberal faith"); and it's liberals who are too dumb to figure out how to win elections. How smart can you be if you keep nominating northeastern elitists-people whose patriotism is suspect, who believe in a Nanny State that punishes the productive and rewards the unproductive, who are hostile or indifferent to religion, and who think the United States is the world's problem rather than the solution to the world's problems?"

Good riddance to Tookie: "With the execution of former gang leader and convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams virtually assured to occur tonight, members of the black leadership network Project 21 are calling on the public to remain calm as justice is administered. They are also critical of those who seek to elevate Williams to hero status despite his conviction and his history steeped in violence. "There can be no clemency for someone directly responsible for the murders of four innocent people and indirectly responsible for the deaths of possibly thousands more"

Wow! Hits on my Australian Politics blog have quadrupled over the last couple of days. My coverage of the fightback against Muslim aggression by young Australians is no doubt responsible. There is such a lot of garbage being spouted in the media about it that my habit of calling a spade a spade must be a welcome change for people who are trying to figure out what is really going on.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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WHY LEFTIST JOURNALISTS DESPISE ISRAEL

Some excerpts from a talk by Andrew Bolt

Disdain for wealth: The neo Marxist theory that wealth is never created, it is expropriated. Therefore if there is a wealthy country next to a poor, then the wealthy must have exploited the poor. Poverty is always someone else's "fault". Thus here, if Israel is rich and the Palestinians are poor it must be Israel which is to blame.

Disdain for personal achievement: Anti Capitalism. Israeli kibbutzim no longer reflect socialist ideology. They are actually a hub of capitalism at work. Because in capitalism, individuals are respected with their individual motivations, the "grand plan" intellectuals mentioned above find this problematic.

Disdain for Christianity: Anti Christianity. Maurice Samuel wrote in 1941 that any attack on the Jews is a proxy attack on Christianity. He maintained that Hitler actually hated Christians for the same reasons that he hated Jews. Christianity is against "grand schemes" which subordinate ordinary people in favour of the big cause. In Christianity even the most humble person is supervised by G-d and it is the same with Judaism. Judaism and Christianity stand in the way of the great totalitarian movements. There is no such thing as an individual somehow "falling below G-d's radar". The anti Christian tendencies among journalists in the feral organistions play against Israel.

Revival of paganism and tribalism: This means the rise of the Greens. Israel is fighting the noble savage - people who are tribal and brown. The closer to the land the more noble. The more industrialized a nation, the more sinister. It is an unfortunate obervation that in a dispute between a person of a whiter skin, and a person of darker skin favour will be shown by the journalist to the darker skin. The darker the skin the more sympathy, the more the anti racism racism.

Hidden admiration of violence: The Left has a perverse respect for violence. They preach peaceful negotiation at one level, but simultaneously favour violent overthrow by some vanguard of perceptive people, ie they like their militarism. Journalists don't see fit to condemn this. For example the writers festival invited Tariq Ali who supports violent overthrow.

Contempt for democracy: Totalitarianism has a perverse appeal to the far left. Thus the imposition of democracy on others is too often disparaged, unappreciated or simply ignored.

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ELSEWHERE

Another diagnosis of Leftism. Excerpt: "According to author Phillip K. Dick, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Using this benchmark to judge the sanity of the Left, it becomes apparent that they have, indeed, lost their cats-eyes and pearly whites. The modern Liberal is madder than a haberdasher at a Lewis Carroll tea party. How did this happen? ... To understand why the radical fringe is so at odds with reality, it is necessary to understand the philosophical underpinnings of what they believe. There are numerous intellectual influences at the core of the modern Left, and each of these contribute to the final architecture of the asylum that is Liberalism. We need to look at a few of them to get the general idea. 1. Man Is Inherently Good: Rousseau is the primary originator of the modern version of this belief. This concept is at odds with the Christian worldview, which holds that Man has a fallen nature, and will sink to the level of barbarism if his appetites are not constrained. This particular view of man as originally perfect has a number of consequences; the Anti-Americanism often displayed by the left stems from the belief that our system is corrupting to the individual, and must be destroyed to free Man to realize his potential. Remember the students chanting "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has gotta go!"? The idea here is that our civilization is at the root of suffering and evil, and by ridding ourselves of it we will be free to be righteous. Radical Environmentalism is another consequence of this particular concept. Many Environmentalists believe that a return to a state of nature will be a return to paradise

"Experts" more wrong than right "People who make prediction their business-people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables-are no better than the rest of us. When they're wrong, they're rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either.... the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an expert's predictions actually has an inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over good ones".

The Koran: A New Mein Kampf? "Last week in New York Oriana Fallaci said that "the Koran is the Mein Kampf of this movement. The Koran demands the annihilation or subjugation of the other, and wants to substitute totalitarianism for democracy..You will find that all the evil that the sons of Allah commit against themselves and against others is in it." This statement has caused considerable controversy. Some maintained: "There are moderate Moslems.Tarring the whole religion is counterproductive.If there are no moderate muslims, as Fallaci says, then we are doomed." But of course, Fallaci did not say that there were no moderate Muslims; she said that there was no moderate Islam. As Ibn Warraq has said, "There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate." .... Any cursory glance at the statements of jihadists shows them to be filled with Koran quotes and appeals to other Muslims that they represent "pure Islam." Nor are these jihadists misrepresenting what the Koran says. They take the book's many martial verses at face value. Over 100 Koranic verses exhort believers to wage jihad against unbelievers. "When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly" (Koran 47:4). This is emphasized repeatedly. Jews and Christians are among those to be fought"

Death penalty is Biblical: "No passage in the Bible -- Old *or* New Testament -- disapproves of the death penalty, which is why the bishops do not cite one. The Sixth Commandment (in Catholic reckoning, the Fifth) is clearly no bar to capital punishment. The penalty for those who violate "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13) is made explicit just a few lines later: "Whoever strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21:12). The text goes on to specify that this applies only to deliberate murder, not unintentional killing. Accidents are not capital crimes. But for a willful killer, there can be no sanctuary: "Take him even from My altar and put him death" (Exodus 21:14)."

The Left never stop their old evidence-disregarding chant of "no connection" between Saddam and terrorism. Just some of the evidence for a connection is summarized here

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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Psychiatrists Debate Pathologizing Racism, Depathologizing Pedophilia

(Post lifted from Majority Rights)

Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

Psychiatric Association Debates Reclassifying Pedophilia

In a step critics charge could result in decriminalizing sexual contact between adults and children, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) recently sponsored a symposium in which participants discussed the removal of pedophilia from an upcoming edition of the psychiatric manual of mental disorders.

This reminds me of the time the "psychiatrists" decided, within a few year span during the early 1970s, to take homosexuality off of their list of pathologies and then pathologize "homophobia". In that few year span leading "psychiatrists" managed to declare their recently-former-selves to have been suffering from a "psychiatric" disorder.

But never mind -- there is work to be done here right? Having marched forward and transcended minor setbacks to progresss in psychiatric treatment, like lobotomy we're now poised for far more precise treatment of "phobias" using Oxytocin.

Let the cranial injections begin!

And I don't suppose we are allowed to mention the use of psychiatry as a tool of state repression in the old Soviet Union!

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ELSEWHERE

Leftists are so keen to project their own hate-filled attitudes onto conservatives that it is very annoying for them that there are in fact practically no hate crimes committed by identifiable conservatives. But, no problemo! The Left just invent such crimes. Michelle Malkin has a good coverage of the latest such fraud, the Mirecki case.

Right-to-Organize or right to force others to join unions?: "With the nation's labor unions divided and shrinking, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has organized 100 demonstrations nationwide this week to assert that the right of American workers to form unions is being systematically violated. Eleven Nobel Peace Prize winners, including the Dalai Lama and Lech Walesa, are backing the protest against violations of the right to unionize in the United States and other nations."

Germany and Russia cosy up: "It's all about gas: former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will lead the shareholders committee for a German- Russian gas-pipeline project to pump gas under the Baltic Sea, OAO Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller said today. On September 8, 2005, Schroeder - then still German chancellor - attended the signing of the contract for the pipeline, together with Putin. The pipeline had a clear political background - the contract needed the approval of the German as well as the Russian government. The deal increased Germany's already dangerous reliance on Russian gas deliveries. I guess the two chaps used the opportunity to also discuss Schroeder's future role at Gazprom. This is a conflict of interest if there ever was one".

Why the Islamofascists are so bloodthirsty: "Why do these rebels revel in killing civilians? I think they are exploiting a cultural obsession with death that has its origins very much in the West. Indeed, they seem to define themselves in direct opposition to what they perceive as a cowardly Coalition. The Coalition tries to avoid risky operations; the insurgents take outrageous risks. The Coalition promises to avoid taking casualties; the insurgents kill as many as they can. The Coalition suppresses images of the dead; the insurgents kill their victims for the cameras. This insurgency is best understood, not as a band of freedom fighters or evil incarnate, but as a movement with an intuitive grasp of the West's fearful psychology. Insurgents who pay attention to our debates about the war will notice one thing: We are terrified by death. The authors of the war promised this would be a "clean" invasion in which few would die, while their anti-war opponents obsess over numbers of dead and images of the dead. Both sides have helped to turn death into the defining issue, so it is not surprising that the insurgents should focus on that same issue".

Congress looking at illegal immigration: "The House next week will likely pass a big border security measure that's not nearly stringent enough for some conservative lawmakers. Instead, buoyed by grass-roots sentiment, these lawmakers are pushing plans that would radically alter the government's relations with illegal immigrants. The proposals range from not counting noncitizens in the census to denying U.S. citizenship to illegal immigrants' American-born children. "Now is the time for bold steps, not incrementalism," Arizona Republican J.D. Hayworth said. Legislatively, the odds are against the most dramatic proposals actually becoming law, especially because of opposition in the Senate."

I have just put up here my view of the recent Miss World competition results. Blondes appear to be "out". Even the Russian and Icelandic entries had dark hair!

On Australian Politics I am tracking the revolt against Muslim arrogance and aggression on Sydney's beaches.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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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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EXISTENTIALISM

Excerpt from a novel about Africa

Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another - not even for his wife - would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls - young existentialist girls - you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, non-existentialist people around one.

From p.76 of "Morality for beautiful girls" by Zimbabwe-born Scotsman, Prof. Alexander McCall Smith

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ELSEWHERE

Fun! A conservative New Zealand blogger started up a fake-Leftist site called Progressive Essays. The amusing part was that the content on the blog in fact consisted of recycled speeches by Hitler and various other Nazis and Fascists of history. Apparently no one spotted the difference. It was routinely linked as just another Leftist blog!

Bible OK after all: "A federal appeals court reinstated a California man's death sentence, ruling Thursday that jurors did not invalidate their deliberations by considering biblical arguments in favor of vengeance. The Los Angeles jurors in the 1979 case of Stevie Lamar Fields unanimously agreed that death was the appropriate punishment after their foreman circulated biblical and other religious passages - "an eye for an eye," for example - that seemed to require it.... A federal trial judge in Los Angeles reversed Fields' sentence five years ago, citing jury misconduct. The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate it appears to be the first of its kind and could make Fields, now 49, a candidate for execution in the near future".

Holocaust denial at Reuters: "Yesterday we noted that a Reuters dispatch, titled "Iran's President Questions Holocaust," included this sentence: "Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust." A later version of the dispatch, however, deleted the words "Historians say" and presented the Holocaust as fact: "The Nazis killed some 6 million Jews during their 1933-1945 rule." But today, Reuters has a new formulation: "Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Regarding this widely-accepted view, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA . . .". Reuters, of course, famously forbade its "reporters" from referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as an act of terrorism. "We're trying to treat everyone on a level playing field," said Stephen Jukes, the "global news editor," in September 2001. Apparently Reuters thinks Holocaust deniers are entitled to a "level playing field," even if that means downgrading a historical fact to a "widely accepted view."

European-born Muslims the most dangerous: "There was a real difference between those Muslims who had moved to Europe and those who were born there. Those who had moved here would say to me: "Things are much worse where I came from. Here I can sit and talk to you without worrying about the police." By contrast, the people born in Europe did not take that view -- they were much more likely to say: "Europe has made all these promises to us and hasn't kept them." They were much angrier, and scored much higher in all the alienation tests I used."

An acidic but accurate comment from Michael Graham : ""Americans have never been against sin in and of itself. Rather, we've always believed in sinning the right way. Racism, for example, is utterly evil, unless it involves denying slots at Ivy League schools to people who've made the tragic lifestyle decision of being white, Asian or Jewish-in which case, racism becomes the Lord's work."

Another French absurdity: "The notion of a notoriously bureaucratic French government stage-managing innovations in the high-tech sector -- typically known for fierce competition and a libertarian ethos -- seems paradoxical. But in France, business remains a risk-averse activity in which industry looks to the government for succor. Proponents say this is precisely what makes the initiative necessary: France has proven skilled at research but weak at transforming ideas into money -- a step requiring government orchestration"

California is another country: "Diplomats gathered in Montreal for the largest discussion of climate change since the Kyoto Protocol was signed eight years ago. The U.S. pulled out of Kyoto, but the state of California sent a delegation to Montreal to make its own deals".

A has-been on an ego trip: "Former US president Bill Clinton took to the podium at the UN climate talks Friday here to ram home a grim message about global warming and demand the United States move quickly away from the fossil fuels causing the problem. In a show-stealing appearance rumoured to have ired the US delegation, Clinton defended the UN's Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases that was ditched by his successor, President George W. Bush, and said the switch to cleaner energy would create millions of jobs for the American economy".



A sentimental loss: "Britain's capital bid a fond farewell yesterday to the Routemaster double-decker bus that for half a century has been as synonymous with London as Big Ben. Other more recent double-deckers will continue to run, but the revered red Routemasters are in a league of their own. Loved by tourists and locals alike, the distinctive vehicles have run since 1956. But they are seen as expensive antiques and have been gradually retired since the 1980s. The last Routemaster - the number 159 - travelled from Oxford St to Brixton bus garage in south London last night, ringing in the end of an era.... The buses will not completely disappear. A few will continue on two London heritage routes".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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

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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