Thoughts on David Irving

I note that The Wall St. Journal has editorialized in defence of imprisoned historian David Irving. Excerpt: "And just when the Danish government is under unprecedented attack for its refusal to intervene in the editorial decision-making of a private newspaper, it seems perverse to offer Muslim provocateurs an example of a European country catering to one set of sensitivities but not another".

The WSJ accompanies this defence, however, with vast aspersions on the character and competence of Irving. But any claim that Irving is incompetent is absurd. I have been studying the Hitler era for over 40 years and it is clear to me that NOBODY knows the period better or in more detail than Irving does. He was after all the only one of the many eminent historians consulted who immediately picked the Kujau "Hitler Diaries" as a fake.

So what of the aspersions on Irving's character? I think those aspersions show a lack of understanding too. I would like to venture a more nuanced view. For a start, Irving's earlier position (which he now appears to have recanted) that there was no holocaust at all is clearly absurd. He is undoubtedly right in pointing to the 6 million figure as the roughest of guesses but I am totally unmoved by that. Whether 6 million died or 1 million died, the loss that Hitler inflicted on the human gene pool by his attacks on Jewry is incalculable (I am avoiding moral language here. Outrage is the Leftist's usual substitute for thinking and I hope to do better than that).

So what motivates Irving's gnawing away at the details of the holocaust? I think the WSJ is right in saying that Irving wishes to rehabilitate Hitler as far as he can. But why would he do that? I think I know. I think that Irving has immersed himself so deeply in the Hitler period that it is alive to him. I think in fact that he has fallen under the spell of Hitler. Mainly because of their need to deny that Hitler was a socialist, almost nobody in the modern world understands why Hitler had such vast appeal to Germans or why Germany followed him fanatically to the bitter end. Both Roberts (1938) and Heiden (1939) -- prewar anti-Nazi writers -- portray Hitler as widely revered and popular among the Germans of their day. As Heiden (1939, p. 98) put it: "The great masses of the people did not merely put up with National Socialism. They welcomed it".

So why did they welcome it? It is simple. Socialism and nationalism have long been and long will be the two political ideas which have most emotional appeal to people. And Hitler offered both in one package. That package would be powerfully appealing to this day except for the way Hitler's follies discredited it.

But in his constant reading of material from the period, Irving lives in a world where Hitler's ideas have not yet been discredited and he has fallen victim to their appeal. Very few people these days seem to have read Mein Kampf but it is in fact (as it was meant to be) a very persuasive book if you read it without thought of what it led to. Hitler comes across as an enquiring, passionate and yet reasonable mind who offers persuasive explanations of what has gone wrong with the world. And I think he has persuaded Irving. It is a strange thing but, as we know from the example of Leftist intellectuals today, simplistic explanations often do attract intelligent people.

References:
Heiden, K. (1939) One man against Europe Harmondsworth, Mddx.: Penguin
Roberts, S.H. (1938) The house that Hitler built N.Y.: Harper.

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Eclectecon is an economist who does not know the difference between "forgo" and "forego" but has a good selection of cartoons about cartoonists and Muslims up at the moment.

The AFL-CIO sweatshop: "They work outside in the middle of February at poverty-level wages. They don't have health benefits or regular hours. Their pay is docked for taking bathroom breaks. And they have no one to speak up for their needs. Ask a labor leader if these workers are in desperate need of a union. Then see if he'd like to revise his thought when he learns they're employees of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters. With a ringing endorsement from AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, the Carpenters have taken to hiring the homeless to picket construction sites. Needless to say, there's no health care or pension plan contributions for these folks. In Las Vegas, the temp workers hired by the United Food and Commercial Workers union to protest outside Wal-Mart were paid a grand total of $6 an hour. The union was generous enough to cover bathroom breaks, but in the middle of a scorching desert summer with picketers dropping out from the heat, perhaps these part-time employees would have preferred health care."

English to run England again? "William Hague disclosed Tory ambitions to cut back the influence of Scottish MPs on laws affecting England during an attack on Gordon Brown and his powerbase yesterday. Mr Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, barely touched on international issues as he delivered a 20-minute tirade against the Chancellor for being bossy and "stuck in the past".... He opened a new line of attack on the Chancellor, the man most likely to lead Labour against the Tories at the next election, for his defence of Scottish MPs' power at Westminster. In a revival of his own policy as leader of the Conservative Party in the four years to 2001, Mr Hague added: "As Leader of the Opposition during the debates we had on devolution I feel no pleasure in pointing out that Scottish Labour MPs forcing through changes to England's laws does not make for a more harmonious United Kingdom. "Anyone who thinks that we can carry on legislating for England in exactly the same way as we did before devolution is clearly living in the past.""

Google still not Leftist enough. They defy the Bush administration and co-operate with the Chinese Communists but now the Chinese want more: "A state-run newspaper reported Tuesday that Google Inc. is under investigation for operating without a proper license in China and quoted an unnamed government official as saying the Internet giant needs to cooperate further with the authorities in blocking "harmful information" from its search results.... Dubbed the "eunuch edition" by some Chinese Internet users, the new search engine withholds results from Web sites the governing Communist Party finds objectionable, and returns limited results when users enter politically sensitive keywords. Google has defended its decision to launch the censored site, arguing that people in China can continue to use the Chinese version of its regular search engine, Google.com. It has also pointed out that the new search engine is the first in China to inform users when results have been removed because of the government's "laws, regulations and policies." But it appears Chinese authorities are now pressuring Google to cut off access in China to its regular search engine, and to stop telling users of the new site every time a search is censored.

"Yahoo" also does its share of political pandering. There is a story here noting that the words "allah" "binladen" "osama" and "raghead" (among others) were not allowed as part of Yahoo usernames -- until that got adverse publicity.

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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SOME GOOD QUOTES FROM WINDSCHUTTLE'S LATEST ESSAY

"The Western concept of freedom of speech is not an absolute. The limits that should be imposed by good taste, social responsibility and respect for others will always be a matter for debate. But this is a debate that needs to be conducted within Western culture, not imposed on it from outside by threats of death and violence by those who want to put an end to all free debate."

"The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture. Under Islam, the idea of objective inquiry had a brief life in the fourteenth century but was never heard of again. In the twentieth century, the first thing that every single communist government in the world did was suppress it."

"But without this concept, the world would not be as it is today. There would have been no Copernicus, Galileo, Newton or Darwin. All of these thinkers profoundly offended the conventional wisdom of their day, and at great personal risk, in some cases to their lives but in all cases to their reputations and careers. But because they inherited a culture that valued free inquiry and free expression, it gave them the strength to continue."

"Today, we live in an age of barbarism and decadence. There are barbarians outside the walls who want to destroy us and there is a decadent culture within. We are only getting what we deserve. The relentless critique of the West which has engaged our academic left and cultural elite since the 1960s has emboldened our adversaries and at the same time sapped our will to resist."

"The consequences of this adversary culture are all around us. The way to oppose it, however, is less clear. The survival of the Western principles of free inquiry and free expression now depend entirely on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies."

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Brookes News Update

Did the KGB help plan America's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?: Was Jimmy's Carter's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the culmination of a very successful campaign by the Washington-based Marxist-Leninistm Institute of Policies Studies and the KGB to permanently cripple America's intelligence services?
Why is the Kroger Liberal Party giving Bracks' Muslim blasphemy laws a pass?: Once again, Michael Kroger, why are you allowing Bracks to get away with his pro-Muslim blasphemy laws? I think it's time we got some answers
GDP's gross misconceptions about the Australian and US economies: So how can an economy be adding jobs while manufacturing is shedding them and forecasts for consumption appear optimistic?
So-called ethics, wages and economic stupidity: Labour rents its services out to employers who use it, in combination with other factors, to produce other goods or services, each factor being paid up to the value of its marginal product
Democrats, isolation and the de-ghetto-izing effect of the New Media: If one analyzes just who still votes Democrat these days there are certain commonalities to those communities. Not least amongst them is near-total isolation from the real world
The New York Times and mainstream media hypocrisy: The New York Times has proven to be a dishonest, cowardly, treasonous and bigoted rag
Water. a simple comfort for the citizens of Baghdad: The US Army is supplying Iraqis with the basic services that Saddam's regime had run down

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Jason Malloy has done a HUGE review of Richard Lynn's latest book: Race differences in intelligence: An evolutionary analysis. Jason's review is a solid academic paper in its own right but is nonetheless highly readable. Jason does find a few points of contention in what Lynn writes but the vast body of scientific findings that Lynn marshalls puts the case for racial differences in IQ beyond any reasonable scholarly doubt -- though not of course beyond political doubt. Leftists want acclaim, not the facts so they will dispute anything, logic and evidence regardless.



Garrison Keillor, vulgarian: "Yellow-dog Democrats like Keillor spend a lot of time whining about how America's standing in the world has declined of late, but this is how he treats a guest who spends half his time combating anti-Americanism in France. Simply because BHL mentions a fact that has actually caught other eyes (the tendency of Americans to become riotously fat) he is addressed like this: 'Thanks pal. . Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was all that about? Were fat people involved?' One moans for shame that such a vulgar jerk is thought of, and even known overseas, as some kind of national entertainer."

About time: "Japanese Red Army founder Fusako Shigenobu was sentenced to 20 years in prison today for a 1974 siege of the French embassy in The Netherlands during her once-dreaded group's decade of global violence. The grey-haired 60-year-old raised her fist as the judge found her guilty of attempted murder, although he did give her the life sentence requested by prosecutors. "The verdict is not the end. It is only the beginning. Strong will shall keep spreading," Shigenobu said in a haiku poem read outside the courtroom by her lawyer. Shigenobu, a former soy-sauce company worker turned militant supporter of the Palestinian cause, had lived in the Middle East for about 30 years before resurfacing in Japan with her 2000 arrest. As her leftist radicalism lost support both in Japan and the Arab world, she announced the end of the Japanese Red Army in 2001 and has voiced regret over the group's victims, although not the cause."

A population on welfare limits your options: "Detroit's financial mess has put the Detroit Zoo on the endangered list. City council members said their vote was not to close the zoo, but some felt they were being bullied by a state deadline and lawmakers who look down on Detroit.... The Kilpatrick administration and the Zoological society proposed an agreement that council rejected on Monday. A spokesperson for the mayor said the process of closing the zoo has begun. But, she added, the door is still open to discussions with council members should they come up with an alternate plan."

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 have I put a picture of GWB at the top of my blog? It is NOT because I totally agree with him. His big government policies are completely antithetical to my libertarian views. I have just put the picture there as a counterweight to the Leftists who deride this thoroughly responsible, moderate and decent man as "Chimpoleon" etc.

SOME ECONOMICS

Sad to see that Ireland is slipping back into economic Fascism: "Ireland is commonly regarded around the world as a shining example of private markets at work. Yet, unnoticed by many, over the last five years, the country has been sliding into the abyss of rising government spending, indirect tax increases and more regulation and state involvement in the economy.... The whole premise of the European social model based on partnership agreements over wages, including the one practiced in Ireland, is supposed to ensure that the state protects the worker interests. This stated objective of the European corporatist model is not supported by the hard evidence. In fact, the cumulative wage growth in the US since 1996 was 55.7 percent - a full 24.6 percent higher than labor productivity gains alone, making US workers the greatest beneficiaries of total productivity growth. For the Eurozone, the cumulative wage growth was just 24.2 percent as opposed to 44.6 percent in the group of flexible labor market economies. Thus, less partnership-driven economies saw greater gains to workers, while more corporatist economies saw greater returns accruing to the capital owners - hardly the evidence in support of the "caring partnership" vision of our Taoiseach" [Prime Minister].

Friedman on Germany: "At the moment, of course, Germany cannot get out of the euro. What it has to do, therefore, is make the economy more flexible-to eliminate the restrictions on prices, on wages and on employment; in short, the regulations that keep 10 percent of the German workforce unemployed. This is far more urgent than it would otherwise be if Germany were not in the euro. This set of policies would open up the German potential. After all, Germany has a very able and productive workforce. It has high-quality products that are valued all over the world. It has every opportunity to be a productive, growing state. It just has to give its entrepreneurs a chance. It has to let them make money, hire and fire, and act like entrepreneurs."

The politics of economic nationalism : "The rhetoric of economic nationalism is scattered throughout this year's Economic Report of the President, and it pervades policy discussions among politicians and in the press. It comes so naturally that we hardly even notice it -- I'm sure I've slipped into it myself. So it's important to point out how unnatural it really is. ... Nationalism about the economy is a marketing tool for politicians, and it leads to loss of freedom and responsibility, with enormous quantities of resources channeled through government."

Is free trade really wrecking the union?: "The case for free trade really isn't about jobs at all, but rather living standards. In a free labor market, wages and salaries would adjust until all who wanted to work (at the prevailing market rates) could do so. In such a scenario, dropping tariffs wouldn't create jobs, it would merely shift workers from less to more productive lines. Now it's true, in our heavily taxed and regulated labor market, a worker needs to possess a minimum productivity to make him employable, and thus if his productivity goes up (because of free trade) then he is more likely to pass this threshold, so in that sense one could argue that free trade leads to net job growth. But I just wanted to correct the popular misconception that the case for free trade concerns jobs."

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ELSEWHERE

There is an amusing article here by a Muslim that holds out India as an example of Muslims and non-Muslims all getting along peacefully together. I guess most Indian writers might be reluctant to puncture that balloon but it is of course the most colossal nonsense. "Communal" (Hindu/Muslim) riots and violent clashes are endemic in India. Even Mahatma Gandhi could not stop it. It is true that Hindus and Mussulmen do get along in everyday life in India after a fashion but in India religion is a deadly serious matter. Reincarnation, for instance, is central to how a Hindu understands the world he lives in. If India has not produced Jihadis who go abroad to kill and maim, it is only because Indian Muslims have the more immediate worry of their Hindu neighbours.

The underlying Muslim problem: "It is my belief that a substantial part of what drives Islamism is a cultural dysfunction broadly defined by a terrible fear of sexuality resulting in a vile hatred of women. In other words, the awesome power of female sexuality scares the daylights out of fundamentalist Muslims. My theory might explain why Islamist suicide bombers often wrap their penises in tinfoil so that it's still usable -- ready to deflower (subtext: despoil) virgins galore after Allah supposedly greets what's left of them in "Paradise." My theory might also explain why situational (prison-style) homosexuality, though officially punishable by death, is widespread in the fundamentalist Muslim world. It certainly explains why the practice of forced clitoridectomy; the destruction of a woman's clitoris, is rampant in the Arab Muslim world."

Tony Blair's "Enabling Act" (On March 23 of 1933, Hitler got the German parliament to pass a similar Act): "Some have called it the Henry VIII bill; one MP thought Stalin would be a more appropriate dictator to put his name to it. A leading academic refers to it as the "abolition of parliament bill". You get the point. The bill's real title is bland and boring to the point of soporific, which may be why it hasn't been much noticed; but underneath the benign facade of the legislative and regulatory reform bill lurks a machinery that would give the government the power to pass far-reaching laws without the bother of getting the approval of parliament. On the surface, the bill is aimed at removing regulatory burdens on business by using short-cut procedures which wouldn't require parliamentary debate. The same process would also put into law uncontroversial recommendations by Britain's law commissions, the government's legal thinktanks. All that seems not only reasonable, but positively helpful to the efficiency of law-making. But look again, and Henry VIII comes into the picture. What the government has inserted into the bill is a way of allowing laws to be passed by a minister's order, which bypasses parliament altogether.... It will become possible for the government, by ministerial order, without a debate in parliament, to create new criminal offences, punishable with less than two years imprisonment. It could also, according to Cambridge law professor John Spencer (who is not alone in his analysis), introduce house-arrest, give the police stronger powers of arrest and interrogation, set up new courts, and in effect re-write the rules on immigration, nationality, divorce, inheritance and the appointment of judges."

Extraordinary! "Wearing vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls around the country from one soldier's funeral to another, cheering respectfully to overshadow jeers from church protesters. They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders, and they are more than 5,000 strong, forming to counter anti-gay protests held by the Rev. Fred Phelps at military funerals. Phelps believes American deaths in Iraq are divine punishment for a country that he says harbors homosexuals. His protesters carry signs thanking God for so-called IEDs -- explosives that are a major killer of soldiers in Iraq. The bikers shield the families of dead soldiers from the protesters, and overshadow the jeers with patriotic chants and a sea of red, white and blue flags. "The most important thing we can do is let families know that the nation cares," said Don Woodrick, the group's Kentucky captain. "When a total stranger gets on a motorcycle in the middle of winter and drives 300 miles to hold a flag, that makes a powerful statement.""

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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BLOGGER.COM MALFUNCTION

I am rather peeved that I am not being allowed to post on "Socialized Medicine" at the moment. The error message I get is:

553 Permission denied.blog/28/14/4/socglory/archives/2006_02_01_socglory_archive.html

Any clues to what it is all about?

Fortunately the Mirror Site is up and running.

Update

Miracles do happen! I got a same-day reply from blogger.com in response to my email complaining of the above problem. And they fixed the problem too! Below is the reply:

"Thanks for writing in. I've just checked the blog you mentioned, and I was able to post and republish without a problem. A small number of users are seeing a 553 Permission denied error when publishing to Blog*Spot. If this happens to you, log out of Blogger, clear your Blogger.com cookies, and log back in. We are working to fix this problem. For further updates on Blogger issues, please see our Blogger Status page here: http://status.blogger.com/ Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns!"

I used to check the Status page when problems arose but it was rarely updated and never told me anything relevant to the mess of the day so I no longer do.

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BLACK AGGRESSION

That populations of African ancestry worldwide are characterized by enormously high levels of aggression, violence and crime is beyond question. It happens in Africa. It happens in Britain and it happens in the USA. It can of course be suppressed. Apartheid South Africa and pre-1960 America certainly kept it down to much lower levels than it is these days. But the extremity of the measures needed to suppress it tells a tale in itself.

The only really interesting question is why the levels of black aggression are so high. The kneejerk Leftist explanation is of course that it is all due to white "racism". How that explains the huge levels of violence in the all-black countries of Africa is not mentioned. Generations have now grown up in Africa who have scarcely even SEEN a white man and the violence seems to have escalated rather than diminished. So I propose simply to ignore here brain-dead Leftist "explanations".

The higher level of black aggressiveness COULD be explained as an outcome of the exhaustively-documented black/white difference in average IQ. Stupid people have fewer ways of getting what they want so often resort to violence as a last resort. For that reason, Australia's prisons are full of dumb whites. Lynn, however, points to statistical studies showing that the higher level of black aggressiveness cannot be explained by IQ differences alone. He shows that there must be personality differences involved as well and goes on to make a carefully-reasoned case for saying that Blacks are more psychopathic than whites. In a slightly earlier work, Lynn interprets psychopathy as being itself the manifestation of two more basic traits. To quote Itzkoff's summary of Lynn:

"He demonstrates convincingly that from all the available research, psychopaths along with low intelligence are responsible for society's problems with crime, drug addiction, unwed mothers, drug abuse, rape, child abuse, unemployment, etc. These people are the underclass. And they result from the combination of two behavioral traits. They almost universally have low conscientiousness and agreeableness or altruism. (Lynn explains that "altruism" would be a better term than "agreeableness" but that term has now "stuck" as the common descriptor for this behavioral trait). That is, people who are both highly unconscientious and disagreeable are pathological, and both of these traits are highly heritable."

So there is a reasonable case for saying that many blacks have personality deficits on top of ability deficits. And the results are all to obvious in the form of massive black crime -- often crime of the most callous sort.

What the above analysis overlooks to some extent, however, is that whites can be pretty aggressive and violent too. Neither Hitler nor Stalin were blacks and the recent barbarities in the former Yugoslavia are surely second to none in brutality. The obvious difference is, of course, that aggression is not a daily experience amongst most whites, whereas it certainly is a constant undertow in most black populations. It can certainly be argued that the occasional explosive outbursts of aggression that characterize white populations are in fact worse than the constant bubbling of aggression that characterizes black populations but I am here concerned with the factual rather than the evaluative aspects of the matter.

And it would seem that there is at least one place where whites have a pretty high level of constant aggression too: Scotland in general and Glasgow in particular. Glasgow is an enormously violent place in some ways. Knifing people to death in drunken Saturday night brawls is an old tradition among the Glasgow "Jimmies". Yet Glaswegians do not at all come across as particularly aggressive people. In 1977 I personally did a doorknock survey of a random sample of Glaswegians -- including slum-clearance suburbs such as Easterhouse. And, accent aside, they seemed to me to be no different from the average Anglo-Australian. And the results of the survey tended to confirm that lack of distinctiveness. On the two major personality variables that I measured (aggressive dominance and ambition), Glaswegians were found to be no different from Londoners.

So I think that in Glasgow we have a very clear case of a difference being solely attitude-driven -- attitudes which are themselves in turn tradition-driven. I found that Glaswegians were as different to Londoners in attitudes as they were similar in personality. And the tradition at work in the Glasgow fighting is really no mystery. Clan warfare was long endemic in Scotland until the accursed English suppressed it. But attitudinal remnants of that warfare survive. To this day you can hear in Glasgow derisive words such as "Choochtah" applied to Highlanders. In short, I think a culture of pugnacity was long ago generated in Scotland (presumably due to rivalry over very scarce resources) and that the persistence of culture has ensured that considerable remnants of that pugnacity survive into modern times.

That similar traditions would be at work among blacks is obvious. They really are victims of "three strikes and you are out". They are disadvantaged by their abilities, their personalities and their attitudes. Changing ability and personality is is not at present within our reach but there are some possibilities for changing attitudes. So those who aim to improve the situation of blacks should concentrate on the attitudes that blacks have. The attitudes that are at present being inculcated in blacks (that they are helpless "victims") would however seem to be the exact reverse of what is required if improvements in black welfare are seriously desired.

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Still no free speech in Hitler's homeland: "Right-wing British historian David Irving has been sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for denying the Holocaust 17 years ago, despite his claim to have changed his views. Irving, 67, had pleaded guilty at the trial in Vienna on a charge dating from 1989 of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry but insisted that he no longer questioned the existence of gas chambers at the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp. Irving, a controversial figure who has had brushes with the law in several countries, appeared stunned by the three-year sentence. "I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal," he said as he walked out of court."

Perverse Leftist judges in Italy too: "A panel of Italian judges upheld the November acquittals of three North Africans on international terror charges, ruling that recruiting suicide bombers to fight against U.S. soldiers is not terrorism, a lawyer said Thursday. The verdict by the Milan judges, released Wednesday, echoes an earlier one in the case when a lower court judge ruled the actions of the three men were those of guerrillas, not terrorists."

MSM coverup of Saddam's WMDs: "Tape recordings released over the weekend show that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program at least as recently as 2000 - but the press has decided the bombshell development isn't newsworthy. Speaking at the Intelligence Group Summit in Arlington, Va., Saddam tapes translator Bill Tierney revealed that in one recorded conversation, the Iraqi dictator can be heard discussing a plan to enrich uranium using a technique known as plasma separation.... News that Saddam had an ongoing enrichment program comports with the account of Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, the nuclear physicist who ran Iraq's nuclear centrifuge program. After turning himself in to U.S. forces in July 2003, Dr. Obeidi revealed that he had successfully hidden centrifuge parts and blueprints from U.N. weapons inspectors on Saddam's orders. Despite the staggering implications of the audiotaped uranium revelation, only one mainstream media outlet had covered the news as of Monday morning. Noting that Saddam's enrichment program was "totally unknown to U.N. weapons inspectors," the Washington Times editorialized on Monday: "It is apparent that the American public has much more to learn about . . . . precisely when Saddam's nuclear weapons programs actually stopped.""

Madsen Pirie says that British food has improved way out of sight in recent years and he attributes it to McDonalds! How incorrect can you get?

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 precentor and the dragon

What is a precentor? Give up? A precentor is a senior official of a cathedral or other large ecclesiastical establishment. It is a minor part of our European Christian background and culture so I like to know about such things. The precentor originally led the singing and he is still usually in charge of a cathedral's musical affairs -- though he also is a senior administrator generally -- often the next down in seniority to the Dean.

I met a precentor last Sunday. Anne and were were in town for a stroll and noticed a service in progress at the metropolitical cathedral of St John (Anglican) so we popped in for a biscuit and a sip of wine. (Just joking! Atheists don't take communion). Anyway the music was good, the service was delightfully mediaeval and we had a quick chat with the precentor afterwards. In the absence of the Dean (who was over at the CATHOLIC cathedral in some good cause!) the Precentor celebrated the Eucharist so also had hand-shaking duties afterwards.

I must admit that I was a bit fuzzy about what precentors actually did -- partly because the duties of precentors do vary -- so I was pleased to meet a live one and find out what he did. He was indeed 2IC to the Dean.

After church we strolled down to the Botanical Gardens for another sit-down and had a very fat dragon (an 18" long lizard) come up to us in an apparent quest for food. A very pleasant Sunday morning!

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The destruction of Rhodesia

This is just a post for those interested in 20th century history. If you don't know anything about the Rhodesia controversy, however, something I wrote over 30 years ago might provide a useful quick update. Now that Zimbabwe (Rhodesia's successor State) is one of the most brutal and mismanaged countries on earth an email I received recently is interesting:

"At some time in the early to mid-1990s, Ian Smith gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. The auditorium was packed, the lobby was packed, and the crowd spilled out of the building. It was the largest turn-out for such a gathering that I have seen in 20+ years. Most of those in attendance were too young to remember the "Unilateral Declaration of Independence" of 1965, and could barely remember the betrayal of 1980. However, they had some inkling of what this man had done and what he had tried to do, and were there to see a living remnant of 20th century history. Smith was completely forthright about what his goal had been: the defense of Western Civilisation -- nothing more and certainly nothing less. The respect accorded him verged on reverence, and he was thronged with autograph seekers.

Yes, Mrs. Thatcher should have dismissed the advice she was given in 1980 (along with the advisors who offered it) and retained Muzorewa. But the real villain of the piece is the clueless Harold Wilson and the gaggle of parlour pinks who surrounded him and ran his government in the swinging '60s. They got the praise of the Wise and Good, their honours and their pensions, but the horrific price was paid by the immiserated unfortunates down in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe."

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ELSEWHERE



The more things change, the more they remain the same: "The Muhammad cartoon protest took a new direction in Pakistan this week as demonstrators took to the streets in Islamabad brandishing signs that proclaimed "God Bless Hitler." Tens of thousands of people took part in the latest round of protests, which took place throughout Pakistan - with gunfire and rioting erupting in some precincts. By midweek, three people, including an 8-year-old boy, had been killed.... Despite wide coverage of the Pakistani protests, the incendiary pro-Nazi placards were ignored in Western media accounts. But a photograph posted to the Web site of the German TV news station N-TV.de shows several Pakistani women clad in traditional Muslim garb holding aloft a large white poster with a message spelled out in English: "God Bless Hitler."

The Muslims have won: "For the past two weeks, Patrick Sookhdeo has been canvassing the opinions of Muslim clerics in Britain on the row over the cartoons featuring images of Mohammed that were first published in Denmark and then reprinted in several other European countries. "They think they have won the debate," he says with a sigh. "They believe that the British Government has capitulated to them, because it feared the consequences if it did not. "The cartoons, you see, have not been published in this country, and the Government has been very critical of those countries in which they were published. To many of the Islamic clerics, that's a clear victory. "It's confirmation of what they believe to be a familiar pattern: if spokesmen for British Muslims threaten what they call 'adverse consequences' - violence to the rest of us - then the British Government will cave in. I think it is a very dangerous precedent." Dr Sookhdeo adds that he believes that "in a decade, you will see parts of English cities which are controlled by Muslim clerics and which follow, not the common law, but aspects of Muslim sharia law".

Fear of Muslims cows the U.S. media: "The Phoenix is Boston's leading ''alternative" newspaper, the kind of brash, pull-no-punches weekly that might have been expected to print without hesitation the Mohammed cartoons.... But the Phoenix isn't publishing the Mohammed drawings, and on February 10, in a brutally candid editorial, it explained why. ''Our primary reason," the editors confessed, is ''fear of retaliation from . . . bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. . . . Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and . . . could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy. As we feel forced, literally, to bend to maniacal pressure, this may be the darkest moment in our 40-year-publishing history." The vast majority of US media outlets have shied away from reproducing the drawings, but to my knowledge only the Phoenix has been honest enough to admit that it is capitulating to fear".

The Muslim/Jewish difference: "Muslim fundamentalists have decided that even if you never saw or heard of the cartoons, you deserve to be hit with rocks, have your car wrecked and your embassies destroyed.... Could you picture a Jew killing anybody for such meaningless reasons? If a Jew gets mad he might sneak into your house and steal your Lipitor or he would make a deal with your doctor to lie about your cholesterol number, or just when you have fasted a whole day on Yom Kippur he would sneak into your house and steal all the pastrami sandwiches. I never saw a Jew going into meaningless fights. That is why you seldom see Jewish football players. A Jew is not going to take a chance in spraining his neck or tearing a ligament in his knee just because he was fighting with somebody about catching a ball. He would rather go to a store and buy another ball and avoid the whole problem.... Jews are never known to get into unnecessary physical battles. That is why people are never afraid of being attacked by a Jew. Did you ever hear anybody say, "Don't go into that neighborhood, it is very dangerous, there are a lot of Jews there"?

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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FREEDOM OF SPEECH INCLUDES THE RIGHT TO DENY THE HOLOCAUST

Although I have always been and always will be the most unwavering supporter of the State of Israel, I don't believe that Israel is well-served by muffling free speech -- even idiotic free speech. So I reproduce below a press release from the U.K. Libertarian Alliance

"At 9:30am on Monday the 20th February 2006, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, will appear on Sky News to defend freedom of speech in general, and in particular the right of controversial historian David Irving to say anything he likes about the holocaust. Mr Irving is awaiting trial in Austria for the supposed crime of denying or minimising the holocaust. Commenting ahead of the broadcast, Dr Gabb says:

"Either freedom of speech means the right to say anything at all about politics, religion, science or history, among much else - or it means nothing at all. "There are those who say they believe in freedom of speech, but then insist that the promotion of "hatred" does not come within the meaning of free speech. The Libertarian Alliance utterly rejects this supposed distinction. What some call the promotion of hatred others call telling the truth. In any event, we believe in the right to promote hatred by any means that do not fall within the Common Law definition of assault.

"Whenever the State involves itself in arguments about the truth, disputes between opinions become disputes between opinions and power. And the State has neither special ability nor the right to decide what opinions may be true or false. "Whatever we may think about what he claims, whatever we may think about the motivation for his claims, the claims Mr Irving makes regarding the holocaust are a matter to be settled by historical debate - not by the criminal law....

"We also note with distaste that those journalists throughout Europe who are congratulating each other on how brave and liberal they have been over the anti-Moslem cartoons have not said a word for the freedom of Mr Irving to express himself. "The Libertarian Alliance believes in freedom of speech for all - WITH NO EXCEPTIONS."



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ELSEWHERE

Truth, self-seeking and science: "Newspaper articles recently criticized corporate funding of a few journalists. Monsanto gave money to the Hudson Institute to support a biotech book written by Michael Fumento; Phillip Morris apparently supported Steven Milloy, the author of 'Junk Science.' ExxonMobil contributes to think tanks that question the global-warming scare. The underlying idea is that corporate money is tainted because any research it funds will be self-interested: motivated not by the search for truth but concern for profits. Complex issues of disclosure are involved in some of these journalism cases -- questions I shall not examine. Of greater interest is the implied argument that research funded by the government is pure and disinterested. That needs scrutiny. Government agencies have their own interest, entangled with their mission. In particular they seek to expand, or at least sustain, their share of the budget."

Editorial in "The Times" of London: "Many Americans venturing overseas feel that they are held to be culpable merely for the sound of their accent. When an anti-American film opens in Turkey, it becomes an overnight hit. All this also makes it a hard time to be a friend of America. But it is, therefore, a critical time to stand up to those who would caricature the country. And in doing so to cut through the emotive, hyperbolic and infantile manner in which the US is portrayed, not just in the Middle East, but also throughout Europe.... If Europeans want the US to take more account of their concerns, they should take more trouble to appreciate America's instinct and intent. Neither is always right, but there is far more thought in US policy than the moaners would credit. There is a grave danger in this visceral hostility. The number of Americans who believe the US should mind its own business and let other countries get along on their own has leapt in only three years from 30 per cent to 42 per cent. Mr Bush has set himself against this new isolationism and against trade protectionism, for which there is an increasingly powerful lobby in the US. The worst that could happen is that critics of American engagement might just get their wish.

Leave it to reformed Leftist Christopher Hitchens to rile up a crowd of New York Leftists: "The catcalls started almost from the moment the prickly Brit began defending the Iraq adventure during Wednesday night's squabble at the Ethical Culture Society. "Make zoo noises!" Hitchens taunted. "Bear in mind, if you had been listened to, Bosnia would part of greater Serbia, Afghanistan would be run by the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein would still be in charge of Iraq." For good measure, he added: "British intelligence was quite right to say that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Niger. That you can look up." To which a peacenik screamed: "F- you!" "Shut up," Hitchens retorted. "You're rude and silly. And ugly." Afterward, a deeply satisfied Hitchens smoked a cigarette. "I know how to hurt their feelings because I know what they're going through. ... I have a real relish for inflicting pain on them."

Interview with the proprietor of ErosBlog: "Most of my readers want the government out of their bedroom and out of their expressive life, sure. And they may assume I'm a 'liberal' because I'm a free speech absolutist, radically sex-positive, and so forth. But your typical 'liberal' who is a fellow traveler with me on sex and free speech issues might still turn out to think -- as Democrats often do -- that it's perfectly okay to have government goons with guns running around robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. And they usually think it's perfectly okay to further constrain the already-limited choices of poor women 'for their own good' or 'to prevent exploitation' by regulating or prohibiting participation in various sex work trades. I despise that sort of arrogant urge to control other people at gunpoint -- and, as you know, every law boils down to a command that's enforced at gunpoint."



A good summary of Bombay: "And, yes, the poverty is in your face from the moment you step outside the seething, decrepit international airport into the outstretched arms of the swarming touts and beggars. Yet there's a perverse good humour to the hustling. And not just at the airport, either, where we visitors invariably feel at our most vulnerable. What resonates about Mumbai is not the grinding poverty in which most of its 18 million residents live, but the good cheer with which they face what must be the harsh realities of daily life, and the optimism with which they clearly perceive their future. Everyone works. They have to. India has no social security safety net to speak of, at least not one provided by the state. It's one reason family is everything, and why India's upwardly mobile poor tend to arrive in Mumbai with assorted aunts and grandparents in tow, or have them join them as soon as they can. It infuses the city with a sense of purpose and industriousness. And fun. If that sounds a bit like a contradiction, then, that's exactly what Mumbai is. Or maybe a contrast in extremes".

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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Brookes News Update

The Clinton economy has lessons for President Bush: The greatest fear is that when the next recession strikes it might give the Democrats the key to the White House. Given their current views on defence and the economy the result could be a disaster for the US
Gittins and the Lowry Institute get it badly wrong about China and economic growth: China is not consuming the world's resources. Gittins and the Lowry Institute fell into the old error of confusing a recent increase in the demand for oil and other resources with a long-term increase in their prices
Liberal Party blue bloods scared to challenge Bracks' Muslim blasphemy law: While Bracks tramples on free speech at the behest of Muslim thugs the Liberal Party's blue bloods leave the little people to do the fighting
The Party of Lincoln vs the Congressional Democrats: Abraham Lincoln's inspiring defence of the Republican Party in those short days before the Civil War is just as potent and as relevant today
Protecting Muslim thuggery from criticism: Lefty journalists and their fellow-travellers will do whatever it takes to protect Muslim thugs from criticism"
Islamofascists are making us all Israelis: Islamic Jihadiis are primitive but they do understand repercussions. They are trained and 'educated' in mosques. This might be an opportune time to remind the Imams responsible for initiating these 'missions', that they also are vulnerable
Why journalists cannot be trusted with their country's secrets: Australian journalists have shamelessly lied about the Bush administration's NSA spying program. But they are also hostile to Australia's intelligence activities
Anti-market ethicist smears free trade: Simon Longstaff is an ignorant and insufferable anti-market gasbag who labours under the delusion that being the executive director of St James Ethics Centre qualifies him to make statements on economic theory
Market economics, fundamentalism and Australia's 'free-market club': Anti-market activists smear market economics by using the terms "market fundamentalism" and "economic fundamentalist". And our Free Market Club helps them, bless their tiny hearts

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ELSEWHERE



There is a rather extraordinary email here to David Horowitz from a far-Leftist professor. Only if you know what egomaniacs committed Leftists are can you understand it.

Crazy British justice again: "Thousands of criminals are escaping justice as blunders by police and crown prosecutors cause chaos in the courts. An astonishing 53,000 cases - around one in every 25 - were dropped because defendants simply failed to turn up in court. A scathing report by public spending watchdogs today reveals that 173 million pounds was wasted last year on 784,000 pointless magistrates' court hearings which could not proceed. Mistakes such as lost case files and lack of properly-prepared evidence meant offenders were "getting away with their crimes scot-free" as cases collapsed, critics said. The report raises fresh concerns over the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, which is already under fire over low detection rates by police and sky-high reconviction rates for offenders leaving jail".

Mark Steyn on comparative birthrates: "My interest in demography dates back to September 11, 2001, when a demographic group I hadn't hitherto given much thought managed to get my attention. I don't mean the, ah, unfortunate business with the planes and buildings and so forth, but the open cheering of the attacks by their co-religionists in Montreal, Yorkshire, Copenhagen and elsewhere. How many people knew there were fast-growing and culturally confident Muslim populations in Scandinavia? Demography doesn't explain everything but it accounts for a good 90 per cent.... Why is this newspaper published in the language of a tiny island on the other side of the earth? Why does Australia have an English Queen, English common law, English institutions? Because England was the first nation to conquer infant mortality. By 1820 medical progress had so transformed British life that half the population was under the age of 15. Britain had the manpower to take, hold, settle and administer huge chunks of real estate around the planet".

The continuing decay of the man the USA nearly had as President: "Former Vice President Al Gore has apparently decided to become the Professor Irwin Corey of environmentalism, gibberish and misinformation. He is currently traversing the world giving comfort to Saudi princes over our alleged mistreatment of Arab men shortly after 9/11. While speaking to a Saudi audience, Gore told them that Arabs had been "indiscriminately" rounded up by U.S. law enforcement after the Islamist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.... During his speech in the Philippines, Gore claimed that up to two million Manila residents might have to be evacuated from the city from floods caused by melting glaciers and polar icecaps. Morphing between an Irwin Corey speech and the rantings of Chicken Little, former Vice President Gore's ominous warnings about Manila were scoffed at by Philippino environmental experts. Fernando Siringan, Ph.D., a marine geologist from the University of the Phillipines (UP) was troubled by Gore's factually inaccurate speech. According to Siringan, too much use of ground water by the typical Manila household is the reason why the city is sinking-not that the sea is rising. Dr. Arcilla noted that while global warming could contribute to the rise in sea levels, it would only be in millimeters, while Manila faces the more serious problem of overuse of groundwater-which has nothing to do with global warming, melting icecaps or glaciers"

Fighting back against the new union "Wal-Mart" laws: "America's retailers announced last week that they aren't especially keen to follow the steel, airline and perhaps auto industries into bankruptcy court. If Big Labor really wants a fight over mandated health insurance, it now has one. The announcement came in the form of two federal lawsuits filed by the Retail Industry Leaders Association against the state of Maryland and Suffolk County, New York. At issue are the "Wal-Mart" laws that both jurisdictions recently passed, which would require a few large companies to pay more for their workers' health care. The lawsuits argue the statutes are "discriminatory," which may be the legal understatement of the year since both target only a few employers."

Google protest: "As lovers celebrated Valentine's day worldwide on Tuesday, Internet hunk Google lost hundreds of sweethearts who broke off with the web search engine in outrage over the censoring of information related to Tibet to placate China. Over 2,000 people from all over the world joined the Google boycott campaign launched by Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a rights organisation based in New York that does not accept Beijing's annexation of Tibet. SFT has created a new web site, www.NoLuv4Google.com, asking people to boycott Google on Valentine's Day and express their anger with Google at the new 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).

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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 CLEARER EXAMPLES OF GOOGLE CENSORSHIP:

My post about Google yesterday got an unusually big response from readers. Apparently I am far from alone in being dubious about Google. I wouldn't put it past them to arbitrarily delete this blog. So do take note of my mirror sites now in case that happens.

A New Zealand reader duplicated my three searches of yesterday and was given links to my backup copies for two of the blogs concerned but nothing at all for the third blog. In all three cases however, Google could not find the blogspot sites! I myself have just repeated the searches and got nothing at all for all 3 blogs. Very bad!

There are extensive details here of how Google has censored "Jihad Watch" and below are a couple more examples that were emailed to me which resulted from queries made using Google Blog Search:





Google seems to have got its act together after the two searches immediately above were done but it does look as if certain search terms have to be "approved" by someone in authority at Google before responses to them can be allowed. It does inspire the thought that if a big-time blogger like Michelle can be so censored, what hope is there for little guys like me? Go MSN Search!

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RACIST BABIES

I was not going to comment on this article (summarizing research by David J. Kelly reported in Developmental Science and Yair Bar-Haim reported in Psychological Science ) but perhaps I should. What it shows is that babies are "racist" from 3 months old. White babies prefer white faces and black babies prefer black faces. But it all depends on exposure. White babies exposed to an equal mix of black and white faces in their early weeks show no preference.

That finding was actually highly predictable from what we already knew about developmental psychology. It is a safety mechanism for babies to know when they are in the "wrong" hands and they turn on their alarm (cry) when they detect it. Any mother who has given her babe to a stranger to hold will have experienced that. So babies learn rapidly what is normal to them and prefer that. And, like all human beings, babies are quick to generalize (Read, 1983; Hamill, Wilson & Nisbett, 1980) in search of safety. The one thing they know much about is faces and they usually know more than one safe face so it helps to find what is general to the "safe" faces. And if there is a prominent feature (such as colour) that is NOT general, they react accordingly.

The reason why I am making this comment, however, is the wrongheaded response that could arise from the findings. It could be argued that the findings present a perfect case for "diversity". Perhaps all white babies need to be given extensive exposure to blacks from early on. That would of course be a fairly Orwellian proposal but, surprisingly enough, it has been tried. White babies in South Africa are normally cared for most of the time by black nannies and maids. And yet white South Africa produced what is arguably the second most racist (apartheid) government of the 20th century! As any conservative will tell you, nothing about human society is simple. And it is certainly hard to predict.

For a more systematic account of what goes on in racial generalizations, see here and here

References:
Hamill, R., Wilson, T.D. & Nisbett, R.E. (1980) Insensitivity to sample bias: Generalizing from a-typical cases. J. Personality & Social Psychology 39, 578-589.
Read, S.J. (1983) Once is enough: Causal reasoning from a single instance. J. Personality & Social Psychology 45, 323-334.

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ELSEWHERE



Famous homosexual bishop is a drunk (but that's fine of course): "The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson, has started treatment for alcoholism. "I am writing to you from an alcohol treatment center where on February 1, with the encouragement and support of my partner, daughters and colleagues, I checked myself in to deal with my increasing dependence on alcohol," Robinson wrote in an e-mail to clergy Monday that was released Tuesday by the Diocese of New Hampshire. Robinson's assistant, the Rev. Tim Rich, said Tuesday there was no crisis that led to Robinson's decision to seek treatment but rather a growing awareness of his problem".

Stupid airline "security" in Australia: "American rocker and writer Henry Rollins was reported to the National Security hotline during his recent Australian tour because of a book he was reading on a flight to Brisbane. A furious Rollins was informed he was "nominated as a possible threat" for reading Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia, writes Kathy McCabe. The incident happened on a flight from Auckland on the recent Big Day Out tour. Rollins told Australian fans during his tour that he received a letter from a "nice woman" who worked "in one of those government areas that deals with anti-terrorism matters." He posted the letter on his website. "Please tell your Government and everyone in your office to go f... themselves. Baghdad's safer than my hometown and your PM is a sissy," he wrote".

Crazy Leftist judges in Germany: "German fighter jets have been banned from shooting down hijacked passenger aircraft, even if it looks as if they are about to be used in a terrorist attack against crowded buildings or football stadiums. The ruling yesterday, imposed by the Constitutional Court, weakens the ability to guard the airspace over the 12 German football stadiums that will be used to stage the World Cup, which will run from June 9 to July 9".

I have just put online here an interesting email from Canada's "Western Standard" newspaper. Apparently they published the Mohammed cartoons and are under attack over it. They must be the first Canadian newspaper to have the courage of their convictions.

There is a pretty pathetic example of Texas justice just up on Strange Justice

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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GOOGLE IS REALLY SICK

It's not just Chinese material they censor but also stuff appearing on their own Western blogspot blogs

Paste the following search string into Google: "Nothing in their present policies will affect illegally acquired firearms". MSN Search (http://search.msn.com/) finds it here:

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_gunwatch_archive.html#113318688717459799

But when I tried last night, Google did not find it, even though it is on one of their own blogspot blogs! And it is not just any old blog. According to Technorati, it is a blog that 28 other sites link to. You sure must have to be big-time to attract the attention of Google!

Or try the string of text: "MORE PUBLIC HOSPITAL NEGLIGENCE". MSN Search correctly found it here:

http://socglory.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_socglory_archive.html#113595149870927208

but Google could not find it at all. And 13 other sites link to that blog according to Technorati

Or try the following string of text: "UC SECRECY ABOUT CORRUPT DEAL". MSN Search does not record the blogspot site concerned (http://edwatch.blogspot.com) but it does instead record a backup copy here:

http://jonjayray.bravehost.com/eddec05.html

Google did not record it at all. Yet, according to Technorati, 21 sites link to that blog.

I think Google is on the skids. All the blogs above are mine and they are of course very anti-Leftist. Is that why they are ignored even though they have lots of links leading to them? And my blogs are not just raves either. I have a massive academic background in the field I cover. When will I be good enough for Google? And note that all the searches are of 2005 posts. Google have had plenty of time to find the stuff.

Bill Gates owns MSN Search and it seems that he is a lot less evil than Google. Isn't competition great? So scrap your Google toolbar and get a MSN toolbar.

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ELSEWHERE

An interesting snippet: "My father used to shoot Marxist Chinese propaganga, and I was shocked to see Farenheit 9/11 packed with the most basic techniques of Eisenstein and Griffith. Being a Marxist for 25 years, I developed quite an appreciation for Soviet cinema. Tarkovsky is probably the best of the non-propaganda auters. Eisenstein was the best Marxist propagandist, while, all the way over in the U.S, D.W Griffith did a hell of a job for the anti-black, anti-semitic Klansmen propaganda with Birth of a Nation. Propaganda probably alienates people, so I'll knock that off, but, short of going to Yale University, I have yet to see a good Propaganda course taught. I mention the science of propaganda because it is practically inseparable from Soviet film". [The name of the writer "Xuefei24p" suggests that he is Chinese]



Instinctive allies: "Both the Left and the mujahedin envision a totalitarian state that cleanses the world of evil by force, establishing a just society at the price of an unspecified number of dead. Both are advocates of a supremacist ideology that is immune to self-criticism and unable to tolerate criticism from others. And now as the European Union contemplates new laws that will, in the words of Franco Frattini, who bears the Orwellian designation of EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security, "give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," the marriage of the European Left and Islamic jihad can proceed all the more speedily"

Two religions of death: "Both Islam and Marxism were concocted by the uberparasites of their times, Karl the First Trustifarian and the Big Moh'. Both doctrines must deny the Right to Life -- and thus the subsidiary Rights of Liberty, Property, Free Speech, Et Cetera -- of all persons. Both ideologies must do so in order to establish and maintain the reign of terror and death, in order to control and exploit the productive population, that their parasitic adherents need to sustain their otherwise useless lives. To accept the concept of the Right to Life that underlies the society of consent is for the Marxist and the Mullah the first step in an act of suicide."

Twin threats to European culture : "Europe is facing two distinct threats to its culture and liberties. These twin threats are very different on the surface, and have little in common, though there are aspects that are deeply intertwined. The twin threats are Europeanism and Jihadism.... The problem that we face is not to ask ourselves why the eurofanatics want to destroy our culture, or why the Jihardists are so violent, but to understand the way in which over the past 70 odd years both groups have put together ideologies that are both so successful and so inimical to our way of life.... The key similarity is the capture by our opponents, of the academic and intellectual high ground. Our government and media, by necessity, take advice on both subjects from experts. And these experts are those that have been trained in our institutions of higher education. It is hard to blame a minister or a journalist if, due to time constraints and the pressure of deadlines, they defer their serious thinking to those who have spent their life's work studying these areas of public policy."

Scott Norvell, the main blogger at Tongue Tied (I just fill in there) is doing a great job of following the cartoon upheavals and all the frantic apologies being uttered by gutless weasels everywhere. The following post gave me a laugh: "Following the lead of the Iranians, a group of Israeli graphic artists has announced their own contest for the best anti-Semitic cartoon. "We'll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew-hating cartoons ever published!" said organizer Amitai Sandy. "No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!" Among the prizes: the famous Matzo-bread baked with the blood of Christian children".

Democrat flip-flops over "spying": "In what can only be called a major reversal, two Democratic leaders, Rep. Jane Harman and former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, admitted the controversial NSA surveillance program was necessary for fighting terrorism... Please don't miss the significance of this turnaround. It is reminiscent of the many flip-flops the Democrats made over the U.S. invasion of Iraq. One month they approved, the next they were appalled at the thought, the next they were on board again".

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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Gun-toting USA is the LEAST violent

"Historians, world leaders and assorted pundits with Yankee bashing in mind have long cultivated the idea that America is a violent place. Not so, says Gallup, which released a report yesterday revealing that the nation is not necessarily Dodge City: The impact of crime is lower in the U.S. than in Britain, and in many cases Canada. "The U.S. is often seen from abroad as a relatively lawless society, with murders and gun-related crimes aplenty. But a series of Gallup surveys in Great Britain, Canada and the U.S. suggest the image is somewhat distorted," noted David W. Moore of the Gallup News Service.

It's close, but the United States emerged as the least crime-ridden. In three polls of 3,025 persons -- about 1,000 in each country -- 32 percent of the Americans said they or someone in their households had been a victim of crime of some type within the previous year. Among Canadians, the figure was 33 percent; among Britons, 36 percent. About 71 percent of both Canadians and Britons, compared with 67 percent of Americans, said there had been more crime in their respective countries in the previous 12 months.

Gallup also asked respondents whether they had been mugged, assaulted or had property stolen, among five other unpleasant experiences. Overall, Britain proved the most dangerous, with a quarter of the respondents reporting that they or a family member had been a victim of crime. Canada and the United States were tied at 21 percent. On specific crimes, 22 percent of the British reported their home, car or property had been vandalized. The figure was 17 percent among Canadians and 15 percent among Americans."

More here:

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ELSEWHERE



Is this the last word on the cartoon Jihad? If not, it should be. Bill Kristol, writing in "The Weekly Standard", says that the "anguish" caused by the Danish cartoons is phony -- and he says it very sarcastically. I have an idea that this might be the first time the cartoons have been reproduced in an American newspaper too.

I have just put up here an English translation of the latest article -- "Rejsende i islam" -- from Denmark on the cartoons issue. The article is from the now "infamous" Jyllands Posten itself. It gives a fairly detailed account of how the uproar was provoked by Denmark's Imams -- with enthusiastic help from peak Muslim bodies in Arab countries.

Islamofascists not primarily religious: "We were in a London mosque, discussing the sermons the sheik delivers at Friday congregations. I had asked why God almost never featured in (or, at best, got a cameo role) in sermons that focused almost exclusively on political issues. For the sheik, what mattered was "the sufferings of our brethren under occupation." In other words: In our Islam, we don't do God - we do Palestine, Kashmir and Iraq! Here we have a religion without a theology, a secular wolf disguised as a religious lamb. How did this neo-Islam - a political movement masquerading as religion - come into being, and how can those who know little about Islam distinguish it from the mainstream of the faith?"

A British biologist on the genetics of the male/female difference: "Some have a dream that, one fine day, there will be equal numbers of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research. But I think this dream is Utopian; it assumes that if all doors were opened and all discrimination ended, the different sexes would be professionally indistinguishable. The dream is sustained by a cult of political correctness that ignores the facts of life—and thrives only because the human mind likes to bury experience as it builds beliefs. Here I will argue, as others have many times before, that men and women are born different.

Whites to be a minority in London in only 4 years time: "Whites will be an ethnic minority in Britain by the end of the century. Analysis of official figures indicate that, at current fertility rates and levels of immigration, there will be more non-whites than whites by 2100. It would be the first time in history that a major indigenous population has voluntarily become a minority, rather than through war, famine or disease. Whites will be a minority in London by 2010. In the early 1950s there were only a few tens of thousands of non-whites in the UK. By 1991 that had risen to 3 million - 6 per cent of the population. The population of ethnic minorities has been growing at between 2 and 4 per cent a year. Net immigration has been running at record levels, with 185,000 newcomers last year".

Why are the Oscars and Hollywood no longer relevant?: "It is hard to come up with a more appropriate sentiment for a media and entertainment culture that ignores the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the ongoing intimidation of the Danes even as it prepares to honor the following: Moral equivalency in the war against terror (Munich); Racial tension (Crash); A deeply flawed writer (Capote); the wholesale breaking of marriage vows (Brokeback Mountain); And, let's have one more round of applause for ourselves, another retelling of the McCarthy hearings that fails to note the communist threat was real (Good Night and Good Luck)".

A French Leftist says American Leftists are empty-headed: "Nothing made a more lasting impression during my journey through America than the semi-comatose state in which I found the American left.... But at the end of the day, my progressive friends, you may coin ideas in whichever way you like. The fact is: You do have a Right. This Right, in large part thanks to its neoconservative battalion, has brought about an ideological transformation that is both substantial and striking. And the fact is that nothing remotely like it has taken shape on the other side--to the contrary, through the looking glass of the American "left" lies a desert of sorts, a deafening silence, a cosmic ideological void... "

There is a good article here about the sad state of modern Britain. Some of the things he says are a bit over the top but most of it is pretty right -- the low standards of service and civility, the tax-driven high prices, the crowding, the Kafka-esque idea of what constitutes justice etc.

There is an interesting site called Watching America which translates foreign news about the U.S., to enable Americans (and all English speakers) to read what is being written about them and their country throughout the world. Much of the content is available nowhere else in English.

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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