FROM BROOKES NEWS

Muslim goons silence Danish journos while in Australia Premier Bracks helps Muslim bigots persecute Christians: If the Prime Minister of Denmark has the guts to stand up and defend free speech, why can't Liberal politicians do likewise and challenge Bracks' Muslim blasphemy laws and the Islamo-fascists behind them?
Incompetent economic commentator calls President Bush a dolt: The Bush-hating Kaletsky is not a good economist. Moreover, I would go so far as to call him a dolt
Paul Krugman's lousy economic thinking: Krugman and his ilk will continue to do all they can to poison the economic waters, such is their pathological hatred of Bush
How a Murdoch reporter swallowed communist Vietnamese anti-American agitprop: The Bush-hating Nason's mendacious reporting from the US is not, I regret to say, an aberration but part of a pattern of ideologically motivated deceit
A lying journalist v. President Bush: There is no other way of putting it: the Bush-hating Eccleston is a vicious lying bigot who ought to be fired
Why Democrats hate patriotism : Democrats are not only not patriotic, they despise and fear anyone who is
Victory of Hamas: not a bad thing after all: Hamas has no choice but to recognize Israel and renounce violence. If they don't, they will starve and will be removed by those who voted for them
Ask the Children why soldiers are dying. They understand: Over a year ago a brave young soldier was riding in a tank 20 miles somewhere outside Mosul, Iraq. While traveling down the well known course, a bomb went off under his vehicle -- changing his life forever
Eminent Domain. Peace for Neubert Purser?: Eminent Domain effectively allows the government to 'condemn' your land and take it from you and this can include your home as well state at the expense of consumers

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RECENTLY POSTED ON ICJS

Justifying Zionicide: The holocaust and the UN
Replacing Judaism
Too much tolerance
Saving Spielberg
Who's who in Hamas
Islamism's willing executioners
Munich ignores German blunders
Danish paper apologises to Muslims

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ELSEWHERE



Of course! The cartoon riots are all GWB's fault! "But eventually the focus of this conflict will shift back to the United States, the undisputed leader of "the West." With all his talk of freedom as a universal right, President Bush pretends to understand that U.S. support of corrupt dictatorships in places such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan contributes to the feeling that Muslims are under attack and helps give strength to fundamentalism and jihad."

Under-represented libertarians: According to the Cato Institute's David Boaz in the Wall Street Journal recently, Gallup polls show that around 20% of the US population are neither liberal nor conservative but libertarian - opposing the use of government either to "promote traditional values" or to "do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses." So where, he asks, are the libertarians in politics and the media? With big-government conservatives spending money like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store, there seems to be nobody to represent the country's libertarians. The Democrats vote against tax cuts and Social Security privatization. The Republicans want to ban abortion and gay partnerships. Media debate divides simply into either pro-Bush or (mostly) anti-Bush. What's a libertarian to do? Along with Gallup, exit polls suggest that Boaz is right, and that there are large numbers of unrepresented Americans who just hate government pushing them around. About 17m of those who voted for John Kerry did not think the government should do more to solve the country's problems. And 28m Bush voters support either gay marriage or civil unions. That's 45m people with broadly libertarian views. But, says Boaz, you'd never know it from watching TV, or listening to elected politicians".

While Ford and GM are going broke: "Shares of Toyota Motor Corp., the world's largest automaker by market value, may rise after the company yesterday said it expects to post another year of record earnings for the year ending in March. Shares of Toyota, which have gained 61 percent in the last 12 months, rose 6.7 percent to 6.530 yen in Tokyo yesterday. This year, profit may exceed last year's 1.17 trillion yen ($9.9 billion) and sales my also beat 18.55 trillion yen, Toyota Senior Managing Director Takeshi Suzuki said yesterday. The yen's weakness inflated the value of overseas sales, giving Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe funds for a record 1.4 trillion yen investment in new factories this year. The expansion may help the company overtake General Motors Corp., which is cutting jobs and shutting plants to stem losses. ``The automaker is expanding production to meet a strong demand and we can expect the company to have another good year of earnings,'' said Teruhisa Ishikawa, a manager at Mizuho Investors Securities Co. in Tokyo. ``The earnings figures were good.'' Toyota, the world's second-biggest automaker, yesterday said third-quarter profit rose 34 percent to a record 397.6 billion yen, buoyed by a weaker yen and increased sales of fuel-efficient cars in the U.S. and Asia. Sales gained 15 percent in the quarter to 5.3 trillion yen.

EU ignores world body: "The European Union put a brave face today on a WTO ruling that it had imposed unfair restrictions on genetically modified crops, insisting there is no need to change its current GM approval system. The bloc's executive arm said that since the United States along with Argentina and Canada filed the case in 2003, the EU had changed the way it approved GM foods for market and therefore the ruling was already dated. "For the moment, we see no consequences for our legislation which we consider to be toughest in the world," European Commission spokeswoman for environment issues Barbara Helfferich said. A WTO dispute settlement panel backed a complaint which charged that a European moratorium on imports of GMOs, in place since 1998, reflected business protectionism rather than concerns about the health of consumers or the environment, according to diplomats in Geneva."

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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ON APATHY

I was at university during the Vietnam war and the University of Queensland was as frantically antiwar as most universities were at that time. Like the USA, Australia both had conscription and had troops in Vietnam -- and the young treasures at university definitely did not want to get shot at. In such a climate, to be vocally pro-war was almost impossible (though I was) but one group of dissenters got around that by forming what they called "The Student Apathy Group" (SAG). Apathy was almost the only respectable way of dissenting from the prevalent Leftist line. Also studying at the time was a very good humoured Australian Army Major named Imre George Apathy -- of Hungarian origin and universally known as "Bob". When SAG heard that there was a real-life student Apathy on campus, they promptly made him their patron!

So I think it is clear that apathy can be useful at times. And it is in fact very prevalent. I was at a birthday BBQ recently with a small group of perfectly decent ordinary Australians where I supplied the sausages. At one point I said: "And you will be pleased to know that the sausages are halal" I got exactly the response I expected -- total incomprehension. I might as well have said that the sausages were "haram" (forbidden). It was just another indication that those of us who blog, read blogs or just keep up with current events are in fact well out of the mainstream. The average person is interested only in events that affect him or her directly and personally.

And I think that is a good thing. Australia has benefited greatly from economically rational economic policies introduced by both major political parties so Australians can afford to be apathetic. Whichever party gains power will almost certainly do a better job of managing the economy than do most of the world's governments. But apathy has its price. The U.S. economy is not as well managed as the Australian one -- witness the vast U.S. agricultural subsidies -- but Americans have a somewhat higher standard of living than Australians because they are so highly motivated and therefore work harder. By contrast, Australians would rather go to the beach most of the time. And they often do.

Footnote:

Yes. I did join the Australian Army (I became a sergeant) and I did volunteer for service in Vietnam. Incomprehensible, I know. Definitely not apathetic.

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ELSEWHERE

Iran has said that it going to commission a series of cartoons mocking Jews and the holocaust to see if the West reacts to those cartoons in the same way that it has acted about the cartoons of Mohammed. They needn't bother. The Western Left have been doing the same for a long time -- as we see here. And the reaction to the antisemitic Leftist cartoons? "Perfectly OK. Old boy" (To paraphrase). In fact, one such cartoon "was awarded first prize as the best political cartoon of the year" (See here).

Perhaps I have a weird sense of humour but I find the frantically hate-filled Leftist site "Try Works" (widely believed to be written by Ward Churchill) to be quite amusing. Every word on it seems to be written with bulging-eyed fury. And that does touch my sense of the ridiculous. In a recent post they have even called me a Nazi! How original! LOL! But he did reproduce in full the post of mine that he took exception to so I guess I should thank him for exposing my thoughts to an audience that would not normally see them! The "Tryworks" post was in fact picked up by another Leftist site called -- would you believe it? -- Angry Indian! So I guess I have given quite a few Leftists a little thrill of self-righteousness. Since they need that so badly, who am I to begrudge it to them? I note, however, that Churchill and his ilk do not appear to have commented on this post. Perhaps we should feel sorry for the poor old angry Leftists. After all: "Angry people are more likely to sustain injuries serious enough to require emergency medical care"

Good to see that black blogress, La Shawn Barber has taken a fair-minded look at the correlations between race and IQ. She clearly accepts that there ARE important and inherited difference between blacks and whites ON AVERAGE. And she points out that this is already a major public policy issue.

Incitement to violence finally earns a conviction: "Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has been sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of incitement of racial hatred and soliciting murder. Sentencing the hook-handed, one-eyed imam at London's Old Bailey court, Judge Anthony Hughes said Hamza used his authority to encourage his audiences that killing was a religious duty. I do not make the mistake of thinking that you represent Islamic thinking generally," he added, warning that Hamza could face further charges in relation to US claims that he supported an alleged terrorist camp in the Pacific north-west. He could also face losing his British passport, Hughes said, stating that Hamza's words, and their potential spread through followers, made him a "real danger" to the lives of innocent people around the world.

Last resort against Iran looming: "It is the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran's nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world's most pressing security problems. For five years the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear programme being diverted to produce an atomic bomb. Those efforts, however, are now faltering. US leaders are openly discussing the looming conflict. A recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Americans favoured military intervention to stop Iran building a bomb. Experts agree that America has the military capability to destroy Iran's dozen known atomic sites. US forces virtually surround Iran with military air bases to the west in Afghanistan, to the east in Iraq, Turkey and Qatar and the south in Oman and Diego Garcia. The US Navy also has a carrier group in the Gulf, armed with attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. B2 stealth bombers flying from mainland America could also be used".

What an imbecile! "A Republican lawmaker who once described Washington's combative U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, as everything a diplomat should not be, had some kind words for him while visiting U.N. headquarters on Monday. "I spend a lot of time with John on the phone. I think he is really working very constructively to move forward," said Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio."

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 CARTOONS. A SELECTION FROM THE MANY POINTS BEING MADE:

The man who orchestrated the anti-Denmark uprising was a Danish Imam: "Abu Laban's celebrated celeb status is about history in Denmark. Danes have no more patience for those who preach love in one language and war in another, those who publicly play the role of the victim, demand tolerance and then secretly incite hatred. While much of Europe has been asleep at the wheel, oblivious to the monumental threat radical Islam poses to its future, at least one country is increasingly awake. Denmark's first battle is domestic, unmasking the enemy's fifth column inside its borders".

As already pointed out on this blog, Mohammed actually appears quite commonly in Islamic art and has also appeared widely in international cartoons, including America's "South Park", for some time. Indeed there have even uncomplimentary ones of 'Islamic' origin. So why all the fuss now? Daily Kos has an interesting suggestion: Saudi Arabia's mismanagement of the Hajj which left hundreds dead and the Saudi rulers thus needing to deflect criticism. Denmark as a remote small target with little strategic or economic leverage over the Saudis was a suitable scapegoat. Hence the call from the Saudis to boycott Danish exports (which the Saudis hardly buy in any case).

Denmark's role in pioneering and promoting "alternative" energy technology would for conspiracy theorists be an additional motive for Saudi bullying (lots of Danish electricity demand is supplied by wind energy).

Note that South Park has portrayed Mohammed in it's episode Super Best Friends recently. South Park has been accused of defiling the "virgin" Mary as recently as December 2005 but there have been no burnings of US embassies by outraged Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans.

British police need political authorization to act against Muslim lawbreakers: "Protesters who carried placards at the weekend demonstrations in London calling for the beheading of people who insulted Islam, and who shouted terrorist slogans, could be prosecuted for incitement to murder, government sources said yesterday. Charles Clarke, Downing Street and other ministers sent out strong signals to the police and prosecuting authorities to take appropriate action against the demonstrators. Ministers and opposition politicians refrained from joining criticism of the police for failing to arrest people on the spot in the protests at the Danish cartoons. But, while insisting that they would not interfere with the operational independence of the police, they left the authorities in no doubt that they expected action to be taken".

Keith Burgess Jackson comments on Childish Leftists : "I got to wondering what leftist intellectuals think about the violence being perpetrated by Muslims in various parts of the world. After all, leftists profess to care about people. Won't they condemn it in no uncertain terms? Brian Leiter has five guest-bloggers, any one of whom could post something about the violence. Alas, nobody has. William Edmundson, Ph.D., J.D., has a really neat post about the Super Bowl and beer. I went to Crooked Timber. I found only one post, and I don't know what to make of it. I read the hundred or so comments. Perhaps I'm not getting it, but most of the commenters seem to think the violence is funny. Either that or they're using humor to evade responsibility. Many leftists don't know what to make of the Muslim violence. To condemn it would be to take a stand, and that seems so, well, grown-up and old-fashioned. The violence can't be blamed on President Bush, or you can be sure the Left would be all over this issue. Leftists hate Christianity, since they view it as an oppressor religion, but they refuse to say anything even remotely critical about Islam or Muslims, perhaps because that would make them (the critics) seem imperialistic. Better to joke about the violence. Better to retreat into irony and sarcasm. To take a stand would require careful thought and moral backbone, neither of which is conspicuous by its presence among leftists.

Tom Gross has a good selection of defamatory cartoons about Jews and Christians from the Arab world. But I guess "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not part of their religion.

Newslinker asks: Why isn't anyone talking about what Islamists did to images of Budda back in 2001? No Buddhists firebombed or beheaded people in retaliation of the desecration of images of their guru? FLASHBACK from March 2001: "Ignoring an international outcry, Afghanistan's puritanical Taliban Islamic militia began demolishing statues across the country on Thursday, including two towering ancient stone Buddhas".

Chris Brand also has a summary of the cartoon upheavals, mainly from a British viewpoint.

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ELSEWHERE

U.S. roads more dangerous than Afghanistan: "More U.S. troops have died in off-duty motorcycle accidents since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, than have been killed in combat in Afghanistan over that same time, according to safety records. Military commanders in North Carolina say the deaths are largely the result of boredom, bonus pay, and adrenalin to burn off after troops return from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 350 troops have died on bikes since the 2001 terrorist attacks. That's compared to 259 killed while serving in Afghanistan".

Memri has the transcript of an intervierw with Camelia Sadat, daughter of the late Egyptian President, in which she tells of forced marriage at the age of 12 to an abusive husband. And Sadat was generally held to be an enlightened and moderate Muslim. Not to his own daughter, he wasn't.

Surprise, surprise! "At least $US700 million in funds from the Palestinian Authority's coffers have been squandered or stolen by officials over the past few years, an internal investigation revealed yesterday. Palestinian Attorney-General Ahmed al-Moghani cited 50 cases of "financial and administrative corruption" and said 25 officials had been arrested so far. He said 10 officials had fled abroad but the authority was seeking their extradition. "The amount of money that was squandered and stolen is more than $US700 million," Mr Moghani told reporters. "Some of these millions were transferred into personal accounts here and abroad".

I have just done an update to my Picture page -- adding quite a few new pictures. There is even a picture there for steam buffs! All the links to other galleries on the site are also now working.

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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MUSLIM DOUBLE STANDARDS



Fox News Channel "Special Report" anchorman Brit Hume said Sunday that violent demonstrations by radical Muslims protesting five-month-old cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Mohammed betray a "howling double standard." "This is really a disgrace," Hume told the panel on "Fox News Sunday." "And it is a disgrace because of the obvious, howling double standard involved here." "What is striking about this is what offends these Muslims who are protesting and these imams," Hume complained. "Does the slaughter of innocent people in many parts of the world in the name of Allah offend them? Is that a sacrilege worthy of protest? "No, not in the least," he said.

Hume noted that there has also been no outrage on the Arab street over "the kinds of slurs against Christians and against the Jewish faith that are regularly spread abroad in the Arab world by the mass media and by many of these imams themselves."

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Zombietime points out that there have in fact been many pictorial representations of Mohammed in the past that have not drawn protests. He reproduces many of them.

Spineless Europeans: "EU officials said Friday that they had no plans to halt aid to Palestinians despite threats by gunmen to the bloc's headquarters in Gaza. European parliamentarians have also voted to keep aid going. On Thursday, about a dozen gunmen connected to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party surrounded the EU Commission's office in Gaza City. They demanded that the governments of Denmark, France, Germany and Norway apologize for cartoons of Mohammed published in newspapers in those countries. Armed Palestinians also threatened a "tough response" for further reprints of the cartoons in front of the French cultural center. Despite the threats, EU officials said they were not going to suspend aid -- at least for now. "If the situation gets more complicated then obviously for us it will not be easy to deal with it," European Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said

ACLU summarized: "Instead of defending our liberties, this radical organization threatens our freedom in courtrooms around the country. The ACLU will not defend the rights of the unborn child, opting instead to sacrifice babies on the altar of something called "choice." The ACLU is, in fact, one of the most vocal proponents of all forms of abortion. If a public high school student wants to hold a prayer meeting at school, the ACLU is the first in line trying to sabotage the project. In the vocabulary of the ACLU, there is no such thing as religious liberty. Instead, the organization routinely fights for freedom FROM religion-not freedom to exercise religion. If a mayor wants to place a Christmas display on the grounds of City Hall, the ACLU is at the ready to put a stop to it. If a judge wants to post the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, the ACLU is prepared to fight the idea-all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The method in Leftist unreason: "there is a method in the madness of the Left. There has always been a method in it. The Left is not engaged in an "argument," it is engaged in a revolution in the name of all that is just and right and good. Therefore, it does not aim to out-argue its opponents, but to shame them, to drive them from the field in ignominy, to make them figures of ridicule, moral indignation, and revulsion.... watch Ted Kennedy in action. His attacks on Judge Alito, like his earlier attacks on Judge Bork, were not intended as arguments, and certainly showed little regard for fact. They were all bluster, moral indignation, character assassination, ridicule, ostracism. If words could kill, his were the words of an assassin. This leftist tactic has worked for over one hundred years, because there are not many people who can stand unafraid before it. Most do not want to attract attention to themselves, lest its indignation and vituperation and moral ridicule be turned loose upon them. The tirades in which these words are launched-Senator Kennedy's neck muscles bulge, his flesh turns bright red, his voice rises ever higher so as to forbid anybody-anybody-from interrupting him-are meant to enforce acquiescence, not consent. They are meant to intimidate, not to present an argument."

There is a very well-informed article here about the effects of minimum wage legislation. Excerpt: "Only three things can happen in a business when the government forces wages up. Employers can reduce their costs, most likely by laying off workers or letting some go through attrition. They can raise prices to recoup the higher cost of labor. Or they can settle for lower profits. Advocates of raising the minimum wage have focused lately on studies showing little or no adverse effect on employment from the mandate. But far less attention has been paid to findings that price increases, at least in the short term, may be the most likely reaction of employers. And price increases have to be paid by someone.... The bottom line: A policy most people think is a slam-dunk to help the poor actually only benefits about one-fourth of poor families while hurting the rest and helping almost as many affluent families as it does the poor".

California Democrats love Communist Cuba: "Assemblywoman Nicole Parra and her father traveled to Cuba in early December on what has reportedly become an annual event organized by one of California's most powerful lobbyists and political fundraisers. Parra, D-Hanford, and other participants said the trip was arranged by Darius Anderson, founder of one of Sacramento's premiere lobbying firms and a top fundraiser for former Gov. Gray Davis. Since travel to communist Cuba is generally prohibited except under a license from the U.S. government, Anderson's repeated trips there with lawmakers, business people and others raise a number of questions.... The San Francisco Chronicle reported last December that the Anderson trips to Cuba have become an annual affair. Parra said she and her father, former Kern County Supervisor Pete Parra, paid for the trip, about $3,000 each plus airfare to Miami, out of personal funds. The trip was a personal, educational vacation, Nicole Parra said. At least one other lawmaker who attended, Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, said she used campaign funds, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. Four other Assembly members were among the 100 people on the five-day trip, including the powerful speaker of the Assembly, Fabian Nunez, said Nunez spokesman Steven Maviglio."

Sense from Germany: "German Chancellor Angela Merkel compared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Adolf Hitler as Tehran vowed to resume the enrichment of uranium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons. Amid growing fears that the Iranians are intent on acquiring an "Islamic bomb", Ms Merkel warned that the world must not repeat the mistakes it made in appeasing the Nazis".

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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A DAY TO BE REMEMBERED:



Today is the birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan. A wonderful man. There will never be another like him. He is my only hero and I know I am one of millions in missing him.

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HOW BRITISH!

I received the following email from my old friend, Rafe Champion, who is mostly to be found blogging at Catallaxy these days.

"In case anyone is wondering about the cartoons that detonated the current agitation, here is a copy from a British libertarian/anarchist site. They were sourced from a Danish site that has been down since 31 Jan. In my view it is generally undesirable and bad manners to lampoon other people's religions, although I can't be sure where good humoured satire stops and offensive lampooning starts. However you can tell when it has gone too far and this means that people who produce works of art like the Piss Christ should be subjected to polite but firm criticism from all fair-minded and reasonable people who think that art and civility matter. There is no place for legislation or violence in response to lapses in taste. As Hayek pointed out, in a free society we have to put up with a lot of things that we don't like."

I must confess to being amused. I think that Rafe must be, like me, the product of a British culture that is now almost dead in Britain itself. What true Muslim who has ever existed would see "polite but firm criticism" as an appropriate response to mockery of their prophet?

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ELSEWHERE

Chronic stupidity at the Defense Dept.: "At a time when our Army and Marines bear by far the heaviest load of our nation's security burdens, OSD proposes reducing the number of soldiers to free up funds for wasteful Cold-War-era weapons systems. Our ground forces are being driven hard, with many soldiers and Marines already on their third assignments to Iraq or Afghanistan. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps do the bleeding and dying. And even as we're able to gradually reduce our troop levels in Iraq, the need for robust land forces to cope with other looming crises is indisputable. Yet, instead of beefing up the forces that do the actual fighting, the Pentagon self-justification process known as the "Quadrennial Defense Review," or QDR, is about to call for increasing the buy of the F/A-22, a pointless air-to-air fighter with a $280-million-per-copy price tag, while acquiring high-tech destroyers designed to defeat a vanished Soviet navy.... OSD wants a force that's all fantasy and no fight, a military designed to cope with a threat that might come someday - if we wish hard enough - but that ignores the gory reality our soldiers and Marines are facing every day right now"

Rabbi Aryeh Spero: "There is a madness in today's liberal thinking. It insists on policies that tie our hands to defend ourselves while giving free reign to the jihadists intent on killing us. It is dangerous because it is becoming the law, and thinking, of the land, and the Western world. Never before in history has a country and civilization made it impossible to defend itself from its enemies. Never before in history have the elites running a society done as much to cause national suicide..... Basically, the Left, i.e., the enemies of America living within America, have made it impossible to fight jihadism. We can't kill the enemy, we can't spy on the enemy, we can't interrogate the enemy, we can't find the enemy guilty. The terrorist in the eyes of the liberal is more sacred than the President of the United States. In effect, liberalism has tied us up so -- emotionally, legally, political-correctly -- that we are now defenseless: made so not by the enemy but by ourselves, self-induced. This is madness. We will be murdered by outsiders because those within are opting for suicide. Our military and domestic police strength is meaningless if tied up in legalisms forbidding its use. As to the enemy, he can do what he wants, and cannot be criticized for it."

Bigmouth Leftist failure tells Blair what to do: "Lord Kinnock, the former Labour party leader, has privately advised Tony Blair to fix a date to leave Downing Street, as the prime minister prepares for a climbdown on his flagship education reforms. The Labour peer believes that "clock is ticking" on Blair's reign and that there is "nothing left for him to achieve". Kinnock gave his advice to Blair at a private meeting before Christmas, but he refused to comment publicly yesterday".

UK proposal to police Web hits hurdles : "Another government tech policy has been defeated by the British House of Lords, with members rejecting plans to give police more power over terrorism-related content on Web sites. The government's original plans would have allowed police to act after deciding information on the Internet is related to terrorism. But this was changed by the House of Lords so that police would have to ask judges before telling Internet service providers to remove Web pages, according to the BBC. The government was defeated by 148-147 vote. The bill received a third reading and will now return to the House of Commons."

Exposing pseudo-sophisticated opposition to the war for what it is: "For Stein to advocate opposition to American soldiers while nonchalantly admitting his own lack of service is a remarkable display of arrogance -- a 'wussy' thing to do, one might say. To one who comes from similar circumstances as Stein, but has chosen to serve his country, the thought of such a spineless argument provokes disgust. ... Stein is one of many pseudo-intellectuals who feel that their education and socio-economic status excuse them of the responsibility to serve. They act as if they were entitled to freedom's blessings, just in order to indulge themselves."

Cable rate increases: "We should have learned by now that government is a terrible steward of competition. Its natural impulse is to regulate or manage, when the best it could do is get out of the way. This is especially true when rapid technological change disrupts an industrial sector, like telecommunications, that for decades operated under a restrictive regulatory regime based on the premise all we needed was one provider. With deployment of high-speed fiber optic networks, broadband providers, phone companies and even power companies are poised to enter the local video market, finally offering American families a competitive alternative that will drive innovation in the industry and deliver lower prices. The problem is outdated rules governing the industry prevent cable competition."

The story of how venal American politicians are now doing their best to STOP the conversion of Vietnam to capitalism is here. Excerpt: "Nativists argue that we should protect the catfish farmers in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana from their Vietnamese competitors for the simple reason that they're Americans, even if it means denying consumers safer, cheaper, better-tasting catfish. But because of the players involved, the catfish wars aptly illustrate the absurdity of nativist thinking. Thirty years after the last U.S. troops died in Vietnam, that country is inching its way toward capitalism. With petty politics and protectionist trade barriers, it's now the U.S. government that's standing in its way".

If you have not yet seen the comic-book version of the Koran, it's time you did!

On Australian Politics I have more on the recent stabbings of beachgoing Anglo-Australians by Lebanese Muslims

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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Brookes News Update

US economy: the inverted yield curve and recession : The inverted yield curve is emerging because the Fed has been reining in the money supply. So does this mean a recession?
Australian economy: Senator Nick Minchin screws up on tax cuts: Anyone who thinks Government ministers actually know anything about economics need look no further than Finance Minister Nick Minchin. This man thinks tax cuts are inflationary
Economic illiteracy and executive pay : The reality is that the exploitation of shareholders by management on the scale claimed by critics of executive pay is just another leftist spectre
Leftwing journalist smears Bush on NSA wiretaps: Michael Gawenda, former editor of 'The Age', is proof positive that leftism is a disease of the intellect, one of the symptoms of which is a brazen contempt for facts that conflict with reality
A lefty film reviewer praises a nasty piece of anti-capitalist propaganda: It's obviously the 'The Constant Gardener's' ideological leitmotif - and the evidence be damned - that ideological buffoons like Tom Ryan find so attractive
Bin Ladin is a Democrat: Democrats have lied about, slandered and sought to undermine and betray America in its war against Islamic fascist mass murderers. No wonder Osama Bin Ladin chose to merely read from one of their scripts
Poor people get hammered by tax increases: Poor people get hammered when government raises taxes. You see that means the rich don't have the money to invest and grow jobs and the economy
Green fascism and corporate CEOs: What we have is a particularly squalid attempt by a multinational corporation to use the greens' destructive ideology to exploit the power of the state at the expense of consumers

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ELSEWHERE

Disgraceful: The U.S. State Dept. sides with the Muslim hysterics: "The United States blasted the publication by European newspapers of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as unacceptable incitement to religious or ethnic hatred. "These cartoons are indeed offensive to the beliefs of Muslims," State Department spokesman Justin Higgins said when queried about the furore sparked by the cartoons which first appeared in a Danish newspaper. "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility," Higgins told AFP. "Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable. We call for tolerance and respect for all communities and for their religious beliefs and practices."

Taranto comments on a speech by NAACP leader Julian Bond -- and shows how thoroughly the MSM suppress mention of hate-speech emanating from black leaders. They deliberately whitewash blacks (to coin a phrase).

Black conservatives were pretty appalled by the Julian Bond speech: "Bond is said to have called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and predecessor Colin Powell "tokens." He also compared the Bush Administration's judicial nominees to the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and said "The Republican Party would have the American flag and the [Nazi] swastika flying side by side." "If Julian Bond's comments are indicative of the NAACP, the group has truly lost its way. I believe the NAACP has positioned itself on the far left of the political spectrum, and Mr. Bond's comments give me no reason to think otherwise," said Project 21 member Jimmie Hollis."

Public servants live better than the public itself : "For 50 years, public-sector unions, health care lobbyists, and social services advocacy groups have doggedly been amassing power in state capitols and city halls, using their influence to inflate pay and benefits for their workers and to boost government spending. The bill for that influence is now coming due, and it is overwhelming state and local budgets."

No hope for Europe: "The fertility rates in the western industrialized countries are well below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman. For the European Union as a whole, the estimated 2005 fertility rate was 1.47 babies per woman. In some countries, the rate is even lower. However, in France, approximately one birth in three is to a Muslim family. Stripped of the Muslim influence, the fertility rate of the native-born or traditionally European French would be 1.2, similar to the rates in Italy and Spain."

Immigration of little benefit to Australia: "An abiding and unshakeable belief of Australian business is that immigration is good for the economy and we need a lot more of it than we're getting. But is the belief soundly based? According to a Productivity Commission paper on Economic Impacts of Migration and Population Growth, not really. The economic benefits are "very small"."

No cash for condemners: "The New York Times terms it 'odd.' Other accounts deem it 'unusual.' The Volkoh Conspiracy blog wonders if Atlas is, in fact, shrugging. However, the announcement that BB&T, the nation's ninth largest bank holding company, will not participate in private economic development projects that involve eminent domain action should not shock. The decision is consistent with the corporation's values, harnesses widespread public unease with the Kelo eminent domain ruling, and is another manifestation of symbol-laden stakeholder capitalism."

The last good train service in Britain to be scrapped: "The Gatwick Express, a dedicated rail service from London Victoria, is to be replaced by a slower stopping train to reduce overcrowding on services to commuter towns near the airport. he Government believes that the express is taking up too much capacity on the Brighton main line, which carries 32,000 commuters a day. Many Gatwick Express trains run half-empty, even in peak periods, while commuters from Three Bridges, Haywards Heath and other Sussex towns often have to stand all the way to or from London. But airlines using Gatwick are furious that their passengers will have to fight their way with heavy luggage on to already crowded trains stopping only briefly at the airport. At present, empty trains sit for several minutes at Gatwick station, allowing passengers plenty of time to board".

There is a new Australian Christian blogger. His interests seem to be mainly political. He has an interesting point here about the famous antisemitic "Protocols" being a projection of what Leftists wanted to 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).

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

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 MOHAMMED CARTOONS



I guess most readers have heard about Europe's cartoon uproar by now. Without much support from other governments, the Danish government has been defending the right to free speech in Denmark. That right is under attack because a Danish newspaper printed cartoons about Mohammed. As a result, Muslims have of course started putting pressure on Denmark -- including calls for a boycott of Danish goods and services (Since a major Danish export is ham and bacon, that has its amusing side). So it is encouraging that quite a few European newspapers have now defied Muslim hysteria and reprinted the cartoons. Even the BBC has broadcast glimpses of them. Maybe Europeans are finally getting fed up with the constant demands for special treatment by Muslims. An unusually feisty British reader writes:

"What is vastly more offensive than any cartoon could ever be, is:-

* The Personality Cult demanding special respect for a criminal thug, intolerant aggressive war-monger against peaceful people, inciter and practitioner of rape, piracy, pillage, slavery, nastiest-possible desecration of others' most sacred things, and of deceit. (All extensively documented as he died the Emperor of his warlord empire-on-earth.)

* The book he would have you know to be the flawless, unchangeable Last word of God, which just happens to be one of the nastiest and most stupid books ever written. Why would a real God be so obsessed with details of sex, warmongering and financial arrangements? And make so many glaring self-contradictions in the process?

* The Jihad Denial pretending away of the many millions of murders of peaceful Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, etc, a still-ongoing global genocide directly inspired by the cult of that thug and his nasty book. That's the GENUINE Islam.

The Mohammedo-Fascists' preoccupation with not being offended stands in the most stupendous contrast to their own tradition of being maximally nasty about the most sacred things of peaceful Hindus, Buddhists, etc: ... which started with Mohammed's own desecration of other peoples' sacred idols in Mecca. Why should such a thug be worthy of any special respect himself?

And, of course, BUY DANISH goods if you see them anywhere. There is an unusually sensible Muslim comment here. One of the cartoons concerned is reproduced above and they are all here -- where it rightly comments: "These cartoons are much less offensive than what is routinely printed in every American newspaper about presidents, presidential candidates, and other pols".

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ELSEWHERE

A good comment from Dick McDonald: "Yesterday when I asked a Floridian guest to the RAID rally why he was blaming Republicans for running up the national debt and borrowing from China to pay for tax cuts for the rich and sticking our children with this enormous burden, he had no earthly idea what our external debt was. When I told him the debt was a mere $4.6 trillion in a country worth $120-180 Trillion, he breathed a sigh of relief. When I explained that we were only obligated to China for a mere $250 Billion out of the $4.6 Trillion, his leftist propaganda started to drain from his body. When I informed him that China with a 10% growth rate(which I doubt they can sustain for long) and a GDP of $1.6 Trillion will take many years to catch the US with a $12.5 Trillion GDP and a 4% growth rate, the leftist liquid drained from his eyes. Facts have a way of doing that. Too bad Americans live in a vacuum of myths written by scriptwriters at the NYT. Fill your quiver with facts and you will eventually decimate our enemy. It will take an effort."

More TSA stupidity: ""Margaret Jackson is the blond, bespectacled, fiftyish chairman of Qantas Airlines. She seems as Australian as kangaroos and koalas: cheerful, plucky, and no-nonsense. Only someone completely bonkers could suspect her of being an Islamic terrorist a la the 9/11 hijackers. Which means, of course, that the TSA did. A screener named Bill rifled Maggie's briefcase last year at Los Angeles International Airport. In it he found the sorts of papers you might expect an airline's CEO to carry, specifically, cross-sections and diagrams of an aircraft. Well. The nitwits who strive to protect us from deadly nail clippers and grandmothers in sandals came out swinging. According to Maggie, our man Bill asked her, 'Why have you got all of this?' She told him, 'I'm the chairman of an airline. I'm the chairman of Qantas.' And this black guy, who was, like, eight foot tall, said, 'But you're a woman'. Boy, nothing gets past the TSA these days."

Beware of ad hominem fallacies: "An opinion piece -- whether an individual op-ed or a column -- exists to promote a point of view by argument. It does not seek to establish a fact, but to win people over to a particular viewpoint or opinion. Therefore, the strength of the argument is the key factor in determining the effectiveness of the piece. A sloppily constructed, poorly thought-out argument will convince no one -- while a tightly constructed, coherent, and well-written argument can sway minds. That is why opinion pieces are considered intellectual ammunition in the war of ideas. The only valid response to a persuasive argument is an equally persuasive argument towards a different conclusion. Yet the witch hunters' central argument has nothing to do with the virtues of the arguments presented by Bandow and others. Their argument is, essentially, that because the writer has not disclosed information about his income, he is essentially untrustworthy and his opinions should not be given the time of day. This argument is flawed enough to make it invalid. In logic, that's called a fallacy."

Praise be to tax competition!: "Tax competition occurs when a government uses its tax system to try to attract capital, business activity, or wealthy individuals from other countries. At its most obvious this could be a 'tax haven' with very low (or even zero) tax rates, but it could include more subtle provisions such as tax breaks for specific businesses relocating into a country. Game theory suggests that if the low-tax countries successfully attract international investment then other governments will respond, leading to a competitive spiral of tax reductions as they all compete for mobile capital."

Smarter Muslims don't like Islam?: "An increasing number of Muslims living in Norway have over the past few years chosen to send their children to private Christian schools, NRK reports. At the Christian Regnbuen school in Oslo, 20 out of a hundred students are Muslims. Other private schools in Oslo, like St Sunniva and Kristelig Gymnasium, also have many Muslim students. - I believe they feel that their faith is taken more seriously here, that Christian schools have greater respect and understanding for their faith than they find in public schools, says Dean Lars Bjoerge Holm at Kristelig Gymnasium to Dagsavisen".

Phrenology lives! There is a satirical graphic of a Leftist brain 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).

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

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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A SMALL VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH IN BRITAIN

The prosecution of two British National Party men for hate speech has failed. The jury acquitted them on some charges and failed to agree on others. It seems that you may now say critical things about Islam in private conversations in Britain. It's not much and even that limited freedom is still under attack: The British government says it is going to try the men again on the charges that the jury could not agree about. There is a good comment on the case and the verdict at Majority Rights.

ANOTHER HISTORIC NAZI POSTER

This one would be from the March 5, 1933 election when Hitler had become Chancellor but Marshall Hindenburg was still President



Translated, the poster reads: "The Marshall and the corporal fight alongside us for peace and equal rights"

Can you get a more Leftist slogan than that? Modern-day Leftists sometimes try to dismiss Hitler's socialism as something from his early days that he later outgrew. But when this poster was promulgated he was already Chancellor (Prime Minister) so it was far from early days. Once again we see what a barefaced lie it is when Leftists misrepresent Hitler as a Rightist. He campaigned and gained power as a democratic Leftist. The March 5, 1933 election was the last really democratic election prewar Germany had.

Another example of the easy transition from Fascism to modern Leftism: "Where have we seen this story before? An influential European writer and thinker, celebrated in his mature years for works of sophisticated philosophical nuance, turns out to have been an anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler creep in his 20s. The standard query immediately presents itself: Will the nefarious politics destroy the reputation? Marta Petreu's An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), inevitably hurtles humanists of a certain age back to other names and scandals — de Man, Heidegger, Eliade — with its exposé of the expatriate Romanian anointed by Susan Sontag in her 1968 introduction to The Temptation to Exist as "the most distinguished figure" then writing in the lyrical, aphoristic, antisystematic tradition of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein".

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ELSEWHERE

A reader writes: "Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain states that "All human lives ought to be equally valued". Meanwhile Allah's Last Testament is bursting full of vivid declarations of the utter worthlessness of the lives of unbelievers, and invocations to fight and slay them; and the military career of the Prophet was rich in examples of putting those principles into practice. Can I therefore take it as read that the MCB accepts that the Qur'an is not the word of God/Allah and that the Prophet's personal example is incompatible with the MCB's own conception of human rights? Or is the Prophet's well-documented approval of deceit involved here?

Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts. Among his news is that the masterly essay by philosopher Neven Sesardic on fraudulent argument among philosophers is now available online. As Sesardic says, there is no topic on which philosophers of science go so conspicuously off the rails as the issue of racial differences in IQ. The philosophers concerned are positively Stalinist in the way they lie about the subject. But I guess there are other ways in which they like Stalin too. They essentially claim that the psychometricians ignore differences in environment, whereas psychometricians have always gone to great trouble to account for the role of the environment! Even my 1972 paper on the subject addressed that issue from the outset. The most surprising thing is that Sesardic did actually get his article published in an academic journal of philosophy. I guess truth still interests some philosophers. Update: I was delighted to receive an email from Neven Sesardic advising me that a revised and expanded version of his essay is now one chapter in his recent book Making Sense of Heritability.

Chris also notes that the book Affirmative Action Hoax now has a companion site here. Both book and site use impeccable science to expose the lie that blacks and whites have the same genetic potential. As the book shows, affirmative action is a huge fraud on whites.

Prager on the Hamas victory: "It is a sad day for humanity when a people choose to elect terrorists as their leaders. But for those of us who believe that clarity is the prerequisite to moral progress, the landslide victory of the terrorist organization Hamas in Palestine has a silver lining.... the Palestinian vote reveals the falsity of the worldwide Left's view of the Palestinians as committed to peace. It likewise reveals the falsity of the Left's belief that Palestinian terror is supported by a small minority of the Palestinian population. That is one reason why the Bush doctrine -- we need to spread democracy everywhere possible, including, or even especially, in the Arab world -- is so valid. You cannot deal with any problem in life -- from the most personal to the most macro -- by engaging in wishful thinking and denying reality. Thanks to this election, the mask has been removed. When given the opportunity to express themselves, most Arabs and many Muslims elsewhere support terror and seek the annihilation of Israel. That is why the Hamas victory is such a defeat for the world's Left -- university professors, news media, socialist parties, the European Union, the United Nations, "peace" activists, editorial writers, and all other apologists for the Palestinians.... On just about every issue, the Left lives in a childlike fantasy realm. Their views are expressions of what they wish for, not what actually is".

Jonah Goldberg on the Hamas victory: "Today, various pragmatists, optimists and apologists for the Palestinians say they weren't voting for mass murder and terror, but for honest government and efficient social services. Fatah, the "party" of that terrorist carbuncle Yasser Arafat, was corrupt and incompetent while Hamas has successfully delivered much-needed social services. Hamas ran on "change and reform," proclaim the apologists, not terrorism. Fine, but that was equally true of the Nazis, who traded soup kitchens for indoctrination. Fascist movements have always gained popularity by delivering for the needy, the forgotten and the left out. They have always captured the imagination of the middle class by promising to reform the government, root out corruption, make the trains run on time. And fascist movements have always promised, as Hamas has, to bring about a moral and national restoration."

China Hand has just put up some new posts about Hainan, the big island off the China coast that, unlike Taiwan, remained under Communist control. The contrast with Taiwan is stark, even though Hainan has obvious potential. China Hand's site has been "hacked" in some way, however, so you would be best to load the mirror site.

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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THE ARROGANCE OF YAHOO

I have long had an impression of Yahoo as an arrogant organization and I am now sure of it. I have had an account with them for some years which I made use of in a minor way. Now they have suddenly deleted it without explanation and for no apparent cause. I sent them an enquiry to find out why but such grand pooh-bahs as Yahoo don't talk to little people like me, of course. I think it should be a warning to others not to rely on their services. I had both an email address with them and a website there -- and both suddenly vanished without even a puff of smoke. It could happen to you too.

As it happens, only a very few people had the email address concerned and I was using the website mainly as a backup. The only thing I had in their webspace that was not available elsewhere was some humorous content. And I must say that their arrogance is rivalled only by their childishness. There are heaps of webhosts that offer "free" (advertiser supported) webspace and many of them are more generous in what they offer than Yahoo is. So what they gain from sending me elsewhere for no apparent reason would seem to be nil. People reading my stuff will now see other people's advertisers rather than Yahoo's advertisers. Clever! I of course always have everything backed up to disk before I post it and you can now see here what used to be on Yahoo. For more of the humorous content see also here. It will be interesting to see how the new host works out. But there are plenty of other hosts if that lot does not work out in some way.

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist ex-Congressman complains of bureaucracy: "During the time I served in Congress, constituents would often say that members of Congress should try to live under the laws they pass. I'm no longer a Congressman, and I have a typical horror story about trying to live under one of the laws passed by the current Congress. Congress this past spring added something called the "Real ID" bill to another piece of legislation... The "Real ID" bill set new national standards for obtaining a driver's license, something previously governed exclusively by state law. Thus, the Republican Congress created a vast new bureaucratic system... This summer, my wife and I applied for diver's licenses in Virginia. My application was granted but my wife's application was rejected even though she served 31 years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Major General in April. My wife, Kathy, had obtained driver's licenses in numerous states during her various assignments for the military and had never been rejected. The Virginia DMV contacted the Social Security Administration to verify her social security number. Kathy and I were married seven years ago but she did not notify the Social Security Administration of her name change, so they could not verify her Social Security number under her married name. Thus, she was rejected for a driver's license even though the U.S. Army had issued her an ID card with both her married name and her social security number".

Don't forget the Gipper: ""Twenty-five years ago...Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States promising less intrusive government, lower tax rates and victory over communism... [O]ver this 25-year period prosperity has been the rule, not the exception, for America-in stark contrast to the stagflationary 1970s. Perhaps the greatest tribute to the success of Reaganomics is that, over the course of the past 276 months, the U.S. economy has been in recession for only 15. That is to say, 94% of the time the U.S. economy has been creating jobs (43 million in all) and wealth ($30 trillion). More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s... Where Republicans have most strayed from the Reagan vision has been on controlling federal spending. But most still adhere to his tax-cutting lessons, with a few prominent exceptions (notably Senator John McCain). They should all recall the Gipper's words in his inauguration speech 25 years ago: 'It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government'."

The Enron trial begins this week and "Enron" appears in any case to have become a perennial Leftist swear-word so this 2002 post is worth keeping in mind as a roundup of what that debacle actually shows. Excerpt: "Like other anti-free-market commentators, Krugman also spreads the false tale that Enron's chairman, Ken Lay, was a free-market disciple. This too is, well, baloney. Lay was a member of the group of extreme anti-capitalist ideologues known as the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was also a strong supporter of the Kyoto global-warming treaty. He supported this treaty (which the Bush administration refused to sign on to), because he wanted his company to profit from another Byzantine regulatory scheme concocted by the government"

Inequality in NYC: "New York still has its economic problems, to be sure. But "income inequality" isn't one of them. The liberal groups complain that, in the Big Apple, the richest 20 percent of residents have average incomes that are nine times those of the poorest families. If that ratio is the problem, one quick "solution" would be to drive out all those millionaires - that would cut the average income of the top 20 percent. Of course, it would also deprive the city and state of billions of tax dollars that pay for schools, hospitals, subways and other services. In other words, we're lucky to have all those wealthy people here. Let's try to keep them. Beyond having lots of very rich folks, New York's population is unusual in another way: Every year, 100,000 or so poor immigrants move here. They choose the tough challenge of a new life, knowing it's likely to be a better one. We could reduce the number of poor New Yorkers in these statistics by shutting our doors to these new Americans. But that would mean turning our backs on a proud history as a beacon for hopeful people all over the world"

Bring back segregation! "District 10 supervisor candidate Charlie Walker yesterday called for creation of a separate San Francisco school system for African Americans. Separating blacks from whites is necessary because current education of African Americans is not working, Walker told the Sentinel. "I am hoping seriously that we consider separating blacks from whites because it's not working," Walker reflected. "What good did it do us to demonstrate to get our freedom when we didn't get nothing out of it. "The women, the gays, the Asians, the Latinos - they got it and we're still sitting around here. In San Francisco alone, 42% of our people are unemployed."

For my Burns Night celebrations last month we had our clootie dumpling (clootie dumpling is a sort of plum pudding) in a slightly decadent way. To my knowledge most Scots just sprinkle sugar on it but I decided that a rum sauce would go nicely with it. And the sauce was such a great success that I doubt that anybody tasted the actual clootie dumpling! I have therefore put the recipe for the sauce up on my recipe blog. (Mirror site 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).

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

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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REPUBLICANS ARE RACISTS! -- BUT

The latest "Republicans are racists" screech is here. This version of the screech is dressed up in the language of social psychology, however. I know that language very well. I have myself written many academic publications in it and have come to similar conclusions. When the screech ends ""We have 50 years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting", the article is quite right. The correlation between expressions of conservative attitudes and expressions of racially negative attitudes does not always emerge but mostly it does.

For an intelligent person, WHY that happens is the interesting question, however. That the finding might arise because conservatives are more honest in saying what they really think or that it might arise because Leftists are more deluded (including self-deluded) is never to my knowledge examined. Instead, complicated Freudian explanations for the correlation are offered that fall apart when closely examined.

I have myself done umpteen surveys of what people say about their thinking (attitude surveys) and have come to the commonsense conclusion that "You can't trust 'em". People "put their best foot forward" when answering surveys and often do not say what they really think. Psychologists do have some ways of coping with that. They include in their surveys "lie scales" or "social desirability scales" -- sets of questions that try to detect how frank and honest the respondent is being. I myself routinely included such scales in my surveys. But the most common such scales -- the ones I used -- examine lying about one's behaviour and one cannot assume that lying about behaviour and lying about attitudes are the same. To do so assumes a generality that may not exist. I hate to state the obvious, but people may lie about one thing and not another. You can never tell.

And that people who do not in general lie might lie about particularly sensitive issues such as race should, I hope, be supremely obvious. And given the always tense relationship between Leftists and the truth (as evidenced by the long history of Leftists denying the evils of the Soviet empire) that the liars concerned might be mostly Leftists seems in only marginal need of proof.

So my final conclusion is that attitudes surveys are unreliable sources of information. I rely on behaviour. And when history's most infamous racist said this,

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

I think you can see why. The expressed attitudes associated with a given behaviour may vary greatly with time and place. Expecting a permanent link between one set of expressed attitudes and one set of behaviours is something that only a psychologist would be stupid enough to do. Which is why I study history these days instead of psychology.

The truth of what I have just said has however begun to seep into some psychological skulls and some do therefore make an effort to use brain scans rather than expressed attitudes as a source of information about what people think. The limitations of using such gross measurements of such finely articulated phenomena as brain processes should, I hope, be obvious to all but some of the findings so far have at least been amusing. Such procedures have on some occasions shown fanatical Leftists to be "prejudiced". How awful! I say more about such studies here.

The link I have just given does deal with the work of Banaji -- the main protagonist in the latest screech -- but I might perhaps make one additional observation. At best, Banaji's research technique shows who has bad feelings about blacks. And on her results many Leftists do but there is nonetheless a preponderance of Republicans. Again however, the interesting question to non-simplistic people is: WHY? There is an old saying that "a conservative is a liberal who was mugged last night" so perhaps the technique is detecting those who have had REASON to be negative about blacks. And that such people might vote for a party that panders less to blacks would surprise only a psychologist.

Leftist psychologists are very keen to point the finger at possible instances of "motivated social cognition" ("bias" to you and me) so Michelle Malkin's comment on the latest screech does a good job of lobbing that ball back into their court. Or to put Michelle's point in the language of academic psychology: One wonders what precautions were taken to avoid a Rosenthal effect. But of course who needs such precautions when you know the answer before you start?

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing news report from Sweden here. The article does not explicitly say so but apparently the Swedish police preferred the word of a Muslim doorman to the word of one of Sweden's most prominent Leftists. Make of that what you will. A possible case of the pot calling the kettle Afro-American, I think.

Marginal Revolution on Islam and modernity "In my view all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings compatible with modernity and all religions of reasonable age and numbers contain traditions and teachings incompatible with modernity. Call it the completeness theorem. It's how religions adapt and evolve to modernity that is important. Religions are constantly changing, emphasizing certain features, downplaying others, creating new interpretations. Given enough time, I believe that any religion will evolve towards compatability with modernity because it's the memes that combine modernity and religion which will survive and prosper. The problem is that Christianity has had hundreds of years to adapt itself to modernity while Islam has had modernity thrust upon it. Fish don't walk overnight and neither do religions. Nevertheless there are Islamic leaders who, under the pressure of current events, see the direction in which Islam must move and who are actively encouraging evolution in that direction".

Tibor R. Machan on Roe and privacy: "One reason that Roe v. Wade is still with us is that legal scholars and jurists are arguing about the wrong issue. The question isn't whether the US Constitution contains any reference to a right to privacy. Let's assume it does. Let's assume that the Ninth Amendment, as argued in Griswold v. Connecticut and some other cases, implicitly refers to the right to privacy every human beings has. Why would this be relevant? Some might argue that if one has the right to privacy, a woman who has an abortion is doing something private, something no one else has the authority to regulate or ban. But this simply will not do. If a pregnant woman is carrying a child -- as pro-life folks call it, 'an unborn child' -- she has no authority to have a procedure that will kill this child. Wherever one locates a human being, inside the pregnant woman or in a crib or at some hotel, unless he has threatened to attack someone, no one is justified killing him. Only self-defense justifies killing another human being, period. ... Privacy, then, is really quite irrelevant to the debate surrounding Roe v. Wade. The relevant question to be answered is, 'Is the being to be killed in an abortion a human being or is it human only potentially?'"

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)

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