ARAB PSYCHOLOGY

Excerpt from The Autonomist:

Although I'm weak in anthropology, I did get an 'A' in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life's challenges and survive to this day.

Rabbits are fast runners and fast breeders. Tigers are amazingly skilled hunting machines. Elephants are immensely tough and powerful. Monkeys are highly intelligent and adaptable. Frogs have poisonous skin. But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.

These types of organisms -- "lie-in-wait" predators -- must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike. They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy. For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability -- PC thinking.

It is no accident that the Muslims chose to openly start attacking the West on their own turf in the '60s and '70s, right around the time when PC ideology in our culture was starting to pick up steam and cloud our collective judgment. Would Muslims have attacked New York while U.S. Grant was president? Or London while King George III was on the throne? How about the Paris riots during Napoleon's time? I don't think so.

The Deceiver picked up on this latest dominant PC, therapeutic, Leftist strain in Western culture, and, patient and shrewd as he is, has successfully exploited it for the last few decades. The only time they seem to have paid any price was when the United States had good old-fashioned cowboys at the tiller -- Bush I and Bush II. They continue to try and deceive by maintaining their false cries of victimhood, blustering lies, and ridiculous charades, for they have internalized and mastered what Sun Tsu's considered the most valuable tactic in warfare:Deception.

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ELSEWHERE

Appalling British Conservative leader: "Laying himself bare to the men’s magazine GQ, David Cameron painted himself yesterday as an achingly trendy nappy-changing metrosexual who wins prizes for his vegetables and shares a hairdresser with Robbie Williams. But for the Tory Right, cringing as “Dave” declares his love of Shameless, a Channel 4 drama about an alcoholic father who abandons six children to live with another woman, there was one crumb of comfort. Asked which living politician he most admires, the Tory leader replied: “It’s got to be Margaret Thatcher.”"

Saudis waking up: "Saudi officials refuse to accept that Wahhabism, the extreme form of Islam which has dominated the kingdom for 70 years, provides a theological justification for terrorism by preaching the absolute renunciation of all non-Muslims. None the less, in the past year, the government has barred a thousand clerics from teaching, in the first concerted move to foster a more tolerant brand of Islam. Moderate imams have been deployed to enter the chatrooms of radical jihadi websites and persuade extremists that their ideology is wrong, as part of a campaign called al-Sakinah (Tranquillity)."

Rare commonsense: "[Black] U.S. Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson shed little light Monday on the future of public housing in hurricane-battered New Orleans, but said that 'only the best residents' of the former St. Thomas housing complex should be allowed into the new mixed-income development that replaced it, according to the information-restricted NOLA.com newslog. ... 'Some of the people shouldn't return,' Jackson said. 'The (public housing) developments were gang-ridden by some of the most notorious gangs in this country. People hid and took care of those persons because they took care of them. Only the best residents should return. Those who paid rent on time, those who held a job and those who worked.'"

Bush should stop grandstanding, get serious on gas prices: "President Bush seems desperate to find someone to blame for continuing high demand for gasoline, which is the result of high economic growth and continuing supply problems. He should take credit for his policies that have contributed to strong economic growth and put the blame for high gas prices where it belongs. He should be traveling across the country blaming the obstructionist minority in Congress that continues to block legislation that would increase domestic energy production. And the president should be building public support for pro-energy, pro-consumer policies."

Solzhenitsyn loses his marbles: "Nobel laureate and former Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accused the US and NATO of seeking to encircle Russia, and praised President Vladimir Putin for working to restore a strong state. In a rare interview, the reclusive 87-year-old author, who rose to prominence for his accounts of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's repression and labor camps, told the liberal weekly Moscow News that NATO's ultimate aim was the loss of Russia's sovereignty, according to a full text of the interview posted on the publication's internet edition".

Big upset for evolution timing research: "Variability in mitochondrial (mt)DNA is often used to infer population size, history, and diversity on the assumption that mtDNA is essentially evolutionary neutral. Bazin et al. compared a wide range of animal species for polymorphisms in allozymes, nuclear DNA, and mtDNA. Within-species allozyme and nuclear DNA variability correlated with expected species abundance and ecological variables, whereas essentially no difference was observed between a broad range of taxa in terms of mtDNA variability. Instead, mtDNA seem to have undergone recurrent fixation of beneficial mutations and loss of variability at linked loci. Thus, mtDNA is far from a neutral marker; its diversity is essentially unpredictable and may not reflect population history and demography."

GM eat your heart out: "Mazda Motor Corp today said its full-year net profit soared almost 46 per cent to a fifth consecutive record high and predicted further growth ahead led by robust sales in overseas markets. Japan's fifth largest car manufacturer, one-third owned by US giant Ford Motor, said net profit reached Y66.7 billion ($A773.24 million) in the 12 months to March. With sales rising in major markets in North America, Europe and China, Mazda forecast a sixth year of all-time high earnings. The Hiroshima-based company said operating profit jumped 48.8 per cent to Y123.4 billion ($A1.43 billion) on revenue which increased by 8.3 per cent to Y2.92 trillion ($A33.85 billion). Both operating and net income are all-time highs. Global vehicle shipments rose 4.0 per cent to 1.15 million units as sales of Mazda brands grew in China, Australia and the Middle East. Sales in China of Mazda brand vehicles jumped some 36 per cent from a year earlier to a record 130,000 units, giving it a 2.1 per cent share of the auto market there".

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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SAUDI ATTACK ON CONSERVATIVE BLOGGERS

Readers who logged on to TONGUE-TIED at various times in the last 12 hours or so found the blog "down". The firm hosting the blog -- Hosting Matters -- hosts a number of big-time conservative blogs such as LGF and Powerline and they came under a DOS (Denial of Service) attack from cyberjihadis in Saudi Arabia. Michelle Malkin has the details. Hosting Matters blocked the attack after a while and restored service, but as I write TONGUE-TIED is down again.

Readers who had bookmarked this site were able to continue reading, however.

In the four years I have had this blog up on blogspot, I cannot recall a successful DOS attack on them. Maybe they are too big for it, or something. They do have plenty of service outages, of course, but that always seems to be the result of their own bungling.

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Brookes News Update

The US economy: things about manufacturing and free trade that you have not been told: "Economists argue that when the NAICU (non-accelerating inflation rate of capacity utilisation) reaches 82 per cent inflation will pick up in the US economy. Their thinking is badly flawed
Unemployment and wages: facts the Liberal Party ignores and the unions refuse to debate: "Union leaders, labour politicians and most journalists argue that the Liberal Party's labour reforms will have terrible consequences for real wages. Not true. Labour reforms will create jobs for those able and willing to work
Mexico screwed up on illegal immigrants -- listen up Republicans: "Democrats abandon their pro-immigration policy in an attempt to beat bush in 06 and take the White House in 08
The myth of technological unemployment: another Liberal Party failure: "The fallacy that technology destroys jobs has re-emerged. This is based on the fallacy of composition, confusing the part with the whole. In fact, technology creates more and better paid jobs
Castro and "truly repellent" minorities: "The Boston elite's belief in witches eventually dissipated. Yet their belief in another fable, that 'we bullied poor little Castro into the arms of Mother Russia,' persists
Bracks' outrageous attack on the Australian dream: "The Victorian Labor Party is going to what it does best whenever it gets power -- it's going to rip off the little people. Its new zoning laws appear to be designed to help the better off at the expense of the least well off
The Iranian head fake: "Iran's dictator says he will use `whatever it takes' to destroy Israel and bring ruination to others in the non-Moslem world. And he means it
How the other half lives: "A luxurious cruise on the Queen Mary 2 sure beats a home for the aged

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ELSEWHERE

Given my great interest in 20th century history, I was quite floored when I recently received an press release from a Sgt. Gehlen of the U.S. Central Command public affairs office in Iraq. If you don't know why I was floored, Google "Reinhard Gehlen". A truly legendary surname. Sgt. Gehlen wanted to draw my attention to the recent Zarqawi Video.

Ex-Spanish premier calls on NATO to add Israel as member: "Former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called for far-reaching NATO reforms to combat Islamic extremism, including expansion of the alliance membership to include Israel, Japan and Australia. The appeal came in an article published Thursday. Writing for the Jerusalem Issue Brief series of the Jerusalem-based Institute for Contemporary Affairs, Aznar said "it is imperative to defend our values and way of life against a new threat: Islamic extremism and terrorism." The article was based on a presentation he made at the institute on March 16. To transform NATO from a military alliance against the now-extinct Eastern bloc into a force that can counter the current threat, he wrote, "NATO must refocus itself on fighting terror, the major threat today".

Newt Gingrich on immigration: "There has been a breakdown of will on the part of America's leaders to control our borders and ensure that new immigrants learn to be American. The thousands of people we now see marching in the streets of U.S. cities over immigration policy is the product of two decades of a fundamentally dishonest immigration system. For two decades, the U.S. government has failed to control the borders while many U.S. businesses have profited by breaking the law. In turn, the U.S. government failure to enforce the immigration laws has encouraged outright defiance of federal authority by certain state and local jurisdictions. Adding insult to this state of affairs is an immigration bureaucracy that has been slow, cumbersome, rude, heartless, and incompetent in the discharge of its duties. This dishonest system has lured millions to enter our country illegally and to obtain work here illegally...."

GOP fuel hypocrisy: ""Few things are less becoming in a political party than desperation, as Republicans are now demonstrating as they panic over rising oil and gas prices. If blaming private industry for Congress's own energy mistakes is the best the GOP can do, no wonder its voters may sit out the November election. Oil prices hit $75 a barrel last week, while gas has reached a national average of about $2.85 a gallon. The Republican response has been to put on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi fright wigs and shout about corporate greed and market manipulation. House Speaker Denny Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist fired off a letter to President Bush yesterday demanding the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department investigate 'price fixing' and 'gouging.' Senator Arlen Specter wants to go further and impose stricter 'antitrust' laws for oil companies, as well as a 'windfall profits' tax. Mr. Hastert also delighted the class warriors in the press corps by lambasting recently retired Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's pay 'unconscionable.' There's been unconscionable behavior all right, most of it on Capitol Hill. A decent portion of the latest run-up in gas prices-and the entire cause of recent spot shortages-is the direct result of the energy bill Congress passed last summer"

Pulitzer Prizes for traitors: "There's nothing wrong with caustic criticism, but two of the award winners went further, into areas that may hamper our battle against Islamist terrorism. The Washington Post's Dana Priest won a prize for revealing the existence of secret CIA-operated prisons in Eastern Europe, and the New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won for revealing the existence of a secret program to intercept communications between terrorists abroad and their domestic contacts. The full repercussions of these security breaches remain unknown because, just as in 1942, intelligence officers are loath to publicly reveal the harm done to their activities. But there is no doubt that these were among the government's most tightly held secrets and that, despite personal pleas from Bush, both newspapers decided to publish them anyway - to the approbation of their peers."

Abolish FEMA: "Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy" so far beyond repair that it should be scrapped, senators said Thursday. They called for creation of a new disaster relief agency as the next storm season looms on the horizon. The push to replace the beleaguered agency was the top recommendation of a hefty Senate inquiry that concluded that top officials from New Orleans to Washington failed to adequately prepare for and respond to the deadly storm, despite weather forecasts predicting its path through the Gulf Coast."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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JEWISH LEFTISM

Excerpt from Dennis Prager

Liberal Jews fear most religion. They identify religion -- especially fundamentalist religion and especially Christianity -- with anti-Semitism. Jews are taught from birth about the horrors of the Holocaust, and of nearly 2,000 years of European, meaning Christian, anti-Semitism. They therefore tend to fear Christianity and believe that secularism guarantees their physical security. That is what animates the ACLU and its disproportionately Jewish membership, under the guise of concern with the Constitution and "separation of church and state" (words that do not appear in the Constitution), to fight all public expressions of Christianity in America.

Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every "ism" of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew's belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian's belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.

The Jews' religious fervor emanates from the origins of the Jewish people as a religious people elected by God to help guide humanity to a better future. Of course, the original intent was to bring humanity to ethical monotheism, God-based universal moral standards, not to secular liberalism or to feminism or to socialism. Leftist Jews have simply secularized their religious calling.

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ELSEWHERE

Data on illegal immigrants kept secret: "Two federal agencies are refusing to turn over a mountain of evidence that investigators could use to indict the nation's burgeoning work force of illegal immigrants and the firms that employ them. The Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration routinely collect strong evidence of potential workplace crimes, including names and addresses of millions of people who are using bogus Social Security numbers, their wage records, and the identities of the bosses who knowingly hire them. But they keep those facts secret... The IRS doesn't fine even the most egregious employers who repeatedly submit inaccurate data about their workers. Social Security does virtually nothing to alert citizens whose Social Security numbers are being used by others... One internal study found that a restaurant company had submitted 4,100 duplicate Social Security numbers for workers. Other firms submit inaccurate names or numbers reports for nearly all of their employees. One child's Social Security number was used 742 times by workers in 42 states. "That's the kind of evidence we want," said Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney in Arizona. He regularly prosecutes unauthorized workers, but says it's hard to prove employers are involved in the crime".

What happened to limited government? "For some reason, Republicans are scratching their heads and wondering why their poll numbers are crashing, their public support waning, and the fact they might lose seats in Congress during the mid-term elections. Well, here is a reason or two why; over the last six years our Republican-controlled government has produced the highest levels of government spending in history, soaring deficits, excessive government regulation that intrudes even further into the lives of regular Americans, the belief that the best way to solve the problems of a massive, government bureaucracy is to make it even larger, and the systematic replacement of the promises made to the Conservative base with lip service."

Bombs rule: "The 'occupation' to which Hamas refers is not the one that occurred after the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza (which it left last year). Hamas is talking about the 'occupation' that resulted from the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The position of the Palestinian Authority, which was created as a result of negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, is clear: All Israel must do to stop the terrorist attacks -- excuse me, the perfectly legitimate acts of self-defense -- is cease to exist. Not a lot of room for negotiation there."

The ACLU has lost another Ten Commandments case: "The American Civil Liberties Union suffered another defeat in its quest to bar the Ten Commandments from the public square today as the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled a display of the Decalogue in Kentucky is constitutional. In the case ACLU of Kentucky v. Mercer County, Kentucky, the court voted 9-5 to uphold the Foundations of American Law and Government display at the county courthouse. The display includes the Ten Commandments, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Charta, the Star-Spangled Banner, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, and a picture of Lady Justice."

Fascist Hillary: "In her recent address to the Economic Club of Chicago, Senator Hillary Clinton advocated a version of the New Deal's state-corporatism that was patterned on Mussolini's fascist Italy of the 1920s. State-corporatism, as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler, was the economic aspect of Fascism. What the New Deal termed "saving capitalism from itself" and liberals today call "industrial policy" is just fascist state-corporatism under different names. Fascism's essential economic feature is centralized planning, euphemistically called "harmonizing." Activities of businesses and labor unions are to be coordinated by government planning boards. Individual economic liberty must be subordinated to the national interests as defined by the ruling party.

Muslim "thinkers" at work: "On Saturday past in New York City, the Muslim population of the United States revealed exactly how and where they stand for all of Americans to see. This was not just a small group, this was a large crowd; perhaps not as large as the crowd of illegals marching in California but large enough to let everyone here know what they stand for. In front of the Israeli Consulate in New York City, they demonstrated.... The Islamic Thinkers Society marched outside the Israeli consulate Saturday, on the Sabbath and chanted, "The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real holocaust is on its way!" We have given to the Islamic world time and again in terms of troops and aid and this is the thanks we receive."

Turkey's Islamist Dailies Spread Anti-American, Antisemitic Incitement: "Since the AKP rose to power in Turkey, the country's Islamist media has freely disseminated venomous anti-American and antisemitic allegations, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. This campaign has been led by Islamist Turkish dailies such as Vakit, Milli Gazete, and Yeni Safak (which is close to the AKP government and especially to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan). These newspapers have published stories about the U.S.'s alleged use of chemical and low-grade nuclear weapons in Iraq and U.S. soldiers' alleged systematic rape of Iraqi girls, and have blamed the U.S. for the December 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia and for the August 1999 Istanbul earthquake."

Strange Justice has just put up a good post about the craziness that passes for justice in Britain these days.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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STRANGE NEW IQ STUDY

We read:

"Girls have big advantage over boys on timed tests

"Vanderbilt University researchers Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock discovered that females have a significant advantage over males on timed tests and tasks. Camarata and Woodcock found the differences were particularly significant among pre-teens and teens....

Though males and females showed similar processing speed in kindergarten and pre-school, females became much more efficient than males in elementary, middle and high school." The researchers found that males scored lower than females in all age groups in tests measuring processing speed, with the greatest discrepancy found among adolescents. However, the study also found that males consistently outperformed females in some verbal abilities, such as identifying objects, knowing antonyms and synonyms and completing verbal analogies...

The researchers found no significant overall intelligence differences between males and females in any age groups. The research will be published in the May-June 2006 issue of the journal Intelligence. Camarata and Woodcock compiled their results through an evaluation of three sets of data collected from 1977 to 2001 as part of the Woodcock-Johnson Series of Cognitive and Achievement Tests."

Source

That is a really strange set of findings. Higher mental speed on a whole range of indices is normally associated with higher IQ so girls should have shown up as more intelligent but they did not. Among adults, males show up as having slightly higher IQ scores than females but not in this study. And strangest of all is that males outperformed females on verbal abilities. Probably the least disputed finding in the whole of IQ research is that FEMALES score highest on verbal abilities, with males doing best on visuospatial abilities.

So what the heck is going on here? It would be easy to dismiss the study as too much of an outlier to be anything but a product of poor methodology but I believe that the results are not as mysterious if we are aware of Lynn's huge summary of all the past research on these questions.

What Lynn showed was that results obtained with schoolchildren are not the same as the results obtained with adults. And I am now going to say why. And I am going to say why in a way that will offend a lot of people. But I am going to say it that way because it is true and the truth concerned helps us to see a particular finding in a way that all scientists seek -- as being part of a larger pattern. And that fact is that maturation speed is inversely correlated with final level obtained. Since that is a hopelessly academic way of saying anything, however, I will now say it in another brutally frank way: Chimpanzees, blacks and women grow up faster than white males and the faster they mature, the lower is the intelligence level that they finally reach on average.

Yes. I know that most people will accuse me of being worse than Hitler for saying that but, as the old Scottish saying has it: "Facts are chiels that winna ding" (Roughly translated: "Facts are children that cannot be disciplined"). I am sorry to be the messenger of a deeply unpalatable truth but somebody somewhere some day has to tell it to the general public.

And the authors of the study above do note that their results vary with age so that is clearly the decisive factor. In other words, if the study had been repeated with adults, the results would have been different. Females scored equally with males on average simply because males had not reached their peak at the ages studied.

There are still some puzzling parts of the study, though. Although the slower maturation of males explains the male/female parity in average IQ at the ages studied and perhaps explains the higher female processing speed observed, the unprecedented findings with verbal abilities remain to be explained. My best guess is that the tasks used to assess verbal abilities were atypical -- though it does not sound as if they were. Maybe Richard Lynn or J.P. Rushton may be able to shed some light on it in due course.

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ELSEWHERE



Film Banned for Anti-Guevara Sentiment: "Movie star Andy Garcia's controversial new movie The Lost City has been banned in parts of South America because it depicts romantic revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara in a terrible light. The Ocean's Twelve star spent years trying to get the project made, only for film festival bosses and cinema chains to shun the movie because it tells the truth about the Marxist guerilla leader and the Cubans slayed as he fought to revolutionize the country and hand Fidel Castro leadership. Garcia, who wrote, directed and stars in the film, says, "There have been festivals that wouldn't show it. That will continue to happen from people who don't want to see the image of Che be tarnished and from people who support the Castro regime. He still has a lot of supporters out there. Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for the kids and the poor. It's a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro came to power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities."

The Supremes vs "We the People": "Since 5 'supreme' people in our entire nation declared the demise of U.S. private property rights, and since this was not an issue upon which the nearly 290 million American citizens were permitted to vote, 'appointed' power becomes dangerously problematic. Most people are now realizing that America is no longer operating Constitutionally, but rather according to the dictates and profits of elitist intellectuals. Historically speaking, freedom is, and always has been, based upon land and gun rights."

Schizophrenia inborn: "For the first time, scientists have confirmed in human brains what they had already suspected: A large gene that regulates many brain functions is abnormal in people with schizophrenia. The finding, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides clues to how the gene, neuregulin-1, might disrupt brain development and function and put people at risk for all sorts of thinking problems."

I have recently put up another article by wicked Swedish economist Lennart Sjoberg. It deals with the amazing mental contortions accomplished by "fellow-travellers" with totalitarian regimes -- people who were not themselves citizens of the countries concerned but who nonetheless could never find anything to criticize in the deeds of Hitler, Stalin etc.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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ANGER AT BRITAIN'S WARPED WELFARE STATE

From an article by a Labour party member of the British pariament:

This is not about race. Immigration and bogus asylum seekers act like the barium meal of an X-ray, showing up the weakness of the body politic. Yet the revolt of working-class voters is not limited to areas of high immigration. Race merely acts as a flashpoint. In my constituency, Birkenhead, where black faces are still a rarity, the revolt is just as fundamental as in London and other multicultural centres.

Many on the Left imagine that support for the BNP and other extremists represent a cry for the reinstatement of Old Labour values of nationalisation and high state spending. In fact, the objection is much more fundamental. It represents a clash between people's sense of fairness, grounded in a collective social ethic, and what they see as the foreign idea of individualised rights....

Housing remains a flash point. The working-class sense of fairness is mocked by allocation policies that put at the top of the list groups who, in the local community's eye, have less claim than other groups. A policy of housing the homeless is noble. It is the way it is carried out which is so objectionable. I have never heard a constituent - even one who has waited in the housing queue for decades - argue against a policy that looks after the homeless. What so many of my constituents object to, as I do, is the way the homeless jump to the top of the queue and are able to choose the best homes. This policy strikes at the very sense of fairness that working people hold. Fairness demands that those who have striven longest should rise to the top of the queue and take the best housing. The accommodation they vacate should then be offered to the homeless.

In parts of the East End, the housing flashpoint is colour. In Birkenhead, it centres on the advantage that single parents or the homeless have in sweeping the weekly housing jackpots. The objection is the same. Dench and Gavron detail the ways current social housing policy favours the family in crisis against the family that has strengthened the local community.

The values that welfare preaches are equally objectionable to decent poorer families of any colour. Within the living memory of many voters, welfare has been reshaped from a system whose values reflected a working-class collective culture to one based on individual rights. In place of effort and contribution, a welfare system has been rolled out preaching and practising inalienable rights that individuals gain simply by turning up and asking for help....

Political correctness on individualised rights now runs deep in the Parliamentary Labour Party. It will take a considerable amount of courage to realign welfare with the collective values that are crucial to underpinning strong and sustainable communities. Moreover, altruism is sustainable in the longer run only if it is buttressed by a widespread sense of fairness.

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ELSEWHERE

Britain's minority government: "Public support for Labour has slumped to its lowest point since the 1987 general election defeat of Neil Kinnock by Margaret Thatcher. The ICM survey for the Guardian newspaper showed the party had suffered a five-point slump over the past month to 32% - fewer than a third of voters. It is not David Cameron's Tories who benefited from the slide in popularity however but the Liberal Democrats under new leader Sir Menzies Campbell. Despite the personal scandals which surrounded the exit of Charles Kennedy and the search for his successor, the party was up three points to 24%. The Conservatives were on 34%, a two-point lead over the governing party but unchanged from last month. Backing for the British National Party stood at 2%"

Help needed: "Right Wing News has just posted about a woman by the name of Andrea Clarke. Andrea Clarke is a woman with a heart condition and despite her wishes and the wishes of her family, the hospital she's at is about to pull the plug on the respirator and dialysis that are keeping her alive. This is despite the fact that her sister claims that a doctor at that hospital says Andrea has a chance to recover. During the Terri Schiavo controversy, there were big arguments over what Terri wanted, whether Terri was braindead, and who really represented Terri Schiavo's wishes. In this case, Andrea Clarke can speak for herself, no one is claiming she's braindead, and her family doesn't want to see her die. Andrea's sister believes that getting the word out about what's happening may literally mean the difference between life and death for her sister. So spread the word.

It had to happen: Spanish socialists claim that monkeys must be considered as human beings, with all legal and moral protection applicable to humans, human rights included. First Amendment rights for monkeys not included so far. No. It's not a joke.

Some good sense from a black writer: "African-Americans should be among the top supporters of today's domestic surveillance program. Why? Because without it, a terrorist could unwittingly inflict more devastation on the black community than even the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have inflicted historically. Today's most significant terrorist threats are color blind in the sense they want to hurt and kill as many Americans - black, white or otherwise - as possible. But the reality is that terrorists will most likely target major U.S. cities. And, although blacks make up about 12 percent of our country's population, Census Bureau figures show that we make up the majority of many large cities."

British immigrant urges assimilation: "George Alagiah, one of the BBC's most senior news broadcasters, has urged immigrants to do more to assimilate into the British way of life. Alagiah, 50, who was born in Sri Lanka, believes that too many arrivals are finding themselves isolated because they are putting loyalty to their homeland before their allegiance to Britain. The journalist contrasts the attitudes of new immigrants with those of previous generations who showed a greater willingness to embrace their new home".

Conservatism works best in Catholicism too: "In a nutshell, Catholicism in France is in a state of collapse. Its numbers are in free fall and the only signs of vitality are among those who attend the old rite. The majority of those who go to the new mass, the post-VaticanII liturgy in the vernacular, are over 55. Traditionalists comprise about 5 per cent (and growing rapidly) of the French church but 13 per cent of practising Catholics under 55. More than 70 per cent of traditionalist families have four or more children. Nearly 90 per cent are under 55 and their average age is 26 and falling steadily".

Chris Brand has been blogging up a storm again -- about what he sees as the current exciting times in Britain

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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SERVICE OUTAGE

Blogger.com has been having a lot of trouble in the last 24 hours. It has been hard to get posts up and I did not manage to get up today's offering here until several hours later than usual. So forgive me if I once again preach the little sermon I always do on such occasions:

ALL blogs have some downtime. Blogs hosted on blogspot are well-known for it but other hosting services have their failures too. As any systems expert will tell you, however, the key to system reliability is redundancy and I have taken that onboard as the way to beat all the service outages that regularly have all us bloggers weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. So what I do is put up extra copies ("mirrors") of my various blogs. As an old computer hand from way back (I wrote my first computer program in 1967), it takes me only a couple of minutes to do, so I do it. It is compiling the blog that takes the time. Putting up another copy of it is no trouble at all.

So if this blog is unavailable when you try to log on, you have an alternative! You can find the posts elsewhere! Bookmark this site and you will always be able to find a second copy of any of my blogs.

ANZAC DAY TODAY

Australia's national day, when we remember those who have fallen for their country in our many wars. I have put some comments up about it on AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Being myself an ex-"Digger" (Australian slang for a member of the Army), it is certainly meaningful to me. I rarely go to the traditional Dawn service, however, as I think it is primarily an occasion for those who have lost loved-ones in war. And, blessedly, the only close relative of mine (my uncle Freddy) who died in war, died when I was too young to remember him -- though he was much beloved by older members of the family.

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A GOOD RANT FROM DICK MCDONALD

Some mornings I get up to find I am in an alternative universe. A universe populated with Marxist lunatics directing uneducated and misleading refugees of Pravda who in turn fill the propaganda pipeline with lies, deceptions and omissions. Spend a moment with me reviewing the present views of these moonbats:

1. Almost 60% of Americans believe the economy is in the tank. The reality is America's economy is blowing the doors off the barn. Guess who is misleading the public?

2. America is going bankrupt according to our moon bats. With a country worth $150 to $250 Trillion and a piddling, insignificant, smaller than a gnat $4.9 Trillion external debt, the deliriously misinformred are misleading the public.

3. Islam is believed by these loons to be a "Religion of Peace" irrespective of the fact that Muslims keep telling and showing us they are going to behead us all.

4. The loons fib that we can wait until 2042 before Social Security will go bankrupt; clearly ignoring the $13 Trillion unfunded liability presently hidden from public view. $13 trillion, almost three times larger our ENTIRE external debt. It is a fact the system is more than bankrupt right NOW.

5. One of America's two major political parties ran a traitor for President in 2004; and he almost won. Hailed as a hero in North Vietnam, he fictionalize atrocities and blamed his brother warriors for crimes they never committed. His testimony in front of Congress handed America her first loss in war. The depths to which our MSM will stoop is too far to measure.

6. Following Kerry's treason, I wake up each morning to an entire industry exclusively devoted to losing the Iraq war; never ending innuendos and lies with accompanying visuals. These are truly leftist traitors giving aid and comfort to America's enemies. And Hollywood's patriotism is so lacking, not one motion picture has been made supporting the war; just treasonous excuses and anti-American pap. And Americans are expected to be proud of their "Free Speech"; where exactly do I find that practiced in the good old USA?.

Read the rest here

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ELSEWHERE

Royal Prince is a patriot: "Prince Harry has threatened to quit the Army unless he is sent to the front line, it was reported today. The Prince and his older brother, Prince William, have both previously made it clear they are determined to see active service with their units. Harry, 21, was commissioned earlier this month as a Second Lieutenant in the Household Cavalry's Blues and Royals, the Army's oldest and most senior regiment. The Blues and Royals have been deployed in almost every major Army operation of the past two decades, including the Falklands, both Gulf wars, Bosnia and Kosovo. The Mail on Sunday reported that Harry told senior officers at Sandhurst before passing out on April 12: "If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform." Harry said in an interview to mark his 21st birthday last September: "The last thing I said was there's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country. "That may sound very patriotic, but it's true."

French protest against Islamization: "A far-right French politician launched his 2007 presidential campaign on Sunday denouncing what he called the Islamisation of the country and declaring Islam incompatible with France's secular values. Philippe de Villiers, head of the anti-immigrant Movement for France (MPF) party, also charged that Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport was endangered by Islamist radicals who he said had infiltrated the ground staff there. Villiers has stirred up controversy in recent weeks with increasingly tough statements about Muslims, which critics call racist and officials describe as exaggerated. France's 5 million Muslims make up the largest such minority in Europe. "I am the only politician who tells the French the truth about the Islamisation of France," he said in a Europe 1 radio interview kicking off his campaign for the election next year.... Saying France had to fight what he called its Islamisation, he said Paris should stop all mosque construction, impose a citizen's charter demanding the strict separation of religion and state and freedom to change religions and demand strict respect for the equality of men and women.

Yahoo info helped China jail user? "Yahoo Inc. turned over a draft e-mail from one of its users to Chinese authorities, who used the information to jail the man on subversion charges, according to the verdict from his 2003 trial released Wednesday by a rights group. It was the third time the U.S.-based Internet company has been accused of helping put a Chinese user in prison. Jiang Lijun, 39, was sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for subversive activities aimed at overthrowing the ruling Communist Party. Hong Kong-based Yahoo Holdings Ltd., a unit of Yahoo Inc., gave authorities a draft e-mail that had been saved on Jiang's account, Reporters Without Borders said, citing the verdict by the Beijing No. 2 People's Court. The Paris-based group provided a copy of the verdict, which it said it obtained this week."

Los Angeles to hide its parasites: "For decades, the 20-square-block area in the shadows of L.A.'s downtown skyscrapers has been vexing locals and shocking visitors. Thousands of homeless crowd through a few, small streets of businesses looking for handouts by day and burrowing in cardboard encampments and doorways by night. In recent years, this skid row section has put a grimy, drug-and-crime infested face on what has become -- by sheer numbers -- the US capital of homelessness: a countywide count of 88,000 homeless each night. That number, once roughly equal with New York, has been rising in recent years while Manhattan's has fallen as homelessness and related struggles such as drugs, prostitution, and alcoholism in Times Square have dropped.... Earlier this month, Mr. Yaroslavsky announced approval of a $100 million plan that would remove downtown homeless concentrations, and set up five regional centers intended only for temporary shelter...".

Wicked Thoughts has just put up a collection of Hollywood "wisdom" on matters political.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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BIRTH ORDER DOES NOT AFFECT IQ

The study partially summarized below is of considerable interest in its own right but has broader implications as well. It does of course once more show that environmental effects on intelligence which were once thought important are not in fact important but, as well as that, it shows large holes in the research procedures of previous birth-order studies generally. The notorious Frank Sulloway is of course known for his frantic pursuit of the quite absurd claim that birth-order determines your politics. According to Sulloway, my younger brother should be a leftist -- because he is a younger brother. Like another younger brother among my relatives, however, my younger brother is "so far Right he is almost out of sight". But Sulloway did not take all the precautions in his research that have been shown as important below so it is no surprise on those grounds alone that he came to strange conclusions. ALL the existing birth-order research must now be considered to be of negligible worth

A recent study provides some of the best evidence to date that birth order really doesn't have an effect on intelligence. The findings contradict many studies over the years that had reported that older children are generally smarter than their younger siblings. This new study, based on a large, nationwide sample, suggests a critical flaw in that previous research, said Aaron Wichman, lead author of the new study and a teaching fellow in psychology at Ohio State University.

Most previous studies compared children from different families, so what they were finding were differences between large and small families, not differences between siblings, according to Wichman. "Third- and fourth-born children all come from larger families, and larger families have disadvantages that will impact children's intelligence," he said. "In reality, if you look at these larger families, the fourth-born child is just as intelligent as the first-born. But they all don't do as well as children from a smaller family.".....

But then the researchers analyzed the data using a variable that could take into account environmental differences between families. That variable was the mother's age at the birth of her first child. "Mother's age encapsulates many variables that could negatively effect the child-rearing environment. The younger a mother was at the birth of her first child, the lower we would expect intelligence scores to be within a family," Wichman said. That's because younger mothers would tend to have less education, more children, lower income, and other factors that would negatively affect the intelligence of their children. When the researchers controlled for mother's age at first birth, the effect of birth order on intelligence was nearly eliminated.

The results, though, are clear, Wichman said. "Birth order may appear to be associated with intelligence, but that's only because larger families don't have the advantages of smaller families," he said. "When examined within families, there is no evidence of any significant association between birth order and intelligence. It's not your birth order that is important - family environment and genetic influences are the really important factors."

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ELSEWHERE

Blacks protest against illegals: "Some African American groups plan to join members of the Minuteman Project tomorrow to protest illegal immigration, which organizer Ted Hayes called the "biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery." The protest is to start at 1 p.m. today in Leimert Park and is organized by Hayes' Crispus Attucks Brigade and the American Black Citizens Opposed to Illegal Immigration Invasion. Hayes, a homeless activist, said most homeless people in Los Angeles are black and that illegal immigration compounds the problem because African Americans refuse to work for the "slave wages" that many illegal immigrants accept."

Bizarre! Australia welcomes Al Qa'ida fellow-travellers: "Australia has granted asylum to five men who claim their membership of an organisation accused of ties to al-Qa'ida would expose them to persecution in their home countries. The men from Syria, Egypt and India sought protection on the basis of their membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Syria and is considered the father of terrorist groups including al-Qa'ida. Osama bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri adopted the organisation. And earlier this month, The Weekend Australian revealed that one of the five asylum-seekers, Ahmad al-Hamwi, who arrived in Australia 10 years ago, was a senior al-Qa'ida bagman linked to 1993 World Trade Centre bomber Ramzi Yousef. US terror expert Steven Emerson said the practice of allowing Muslim Brotherhood members into Australia was "extremely dangerous"."

YMCA booted out by HAMAS: "The leadership of a West Bank Palestinian city now controlled by Hamas has warned a local Young Men's Christian Association to close its offices and leave town or face likely Muslim violence, WorldNetDaily has learned. The move highlighted long-standing fears Hamas would use its win in last January's Palestinian parliamentary elections to impose an anti-Christian, anti-Jewish hard-line Islamist regime in the West Bank and Gaza. "The face of the new Hamas government is coming to the forefront now that they finally took over and have a lot more confidence. They want to create a territory free of Christians and Jews," said a Christian leader associated with the YMCA in Qalqiliya, a West Bank town under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority."

Fox news increases the GOP vote: "Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gain 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News. The results are robust to town-level controls, district and county fixed effects, and alternative specifications. We also find a significant effect of Fox News on Senate vote share and on voter turnout. Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican".

Conservative Australian Anglicans thrive: "Moore Theological College, which trains clergy for the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, is expanding so quickly it will soon outgrow its Newtown premises. The college's director of property planning, Doug Marr, said the rapid growth in trainee minister numbers had forced a search for new premises. The preferred option is the Lindfield campus of the University of Technology, Sydney. There have been discussions about the college buying it, although it would need to sell its premises on Carillon Avenue. "We've had huge growth in the last 20 years," Mr Marr said. "The number of ministers in training has grown enormously . . . we're running out of space." The number of full-time, undergraduate students this year is 314. That has grown from 303 last year, 287 in 2004 and 235 in 2001. Strong demand for training at the college comes as other denominations find it difficult to attract people to vocations. The state's biggest Catholic seminary, The Seminary of the Good Shepherd, at Homebush, has 42 seminarians"

"Carnival of the Vanities" has been having troubles without Sid's steadying hand on it but the latest edition is just up here

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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"Racist" party is Leftist

The following letter from Lord Tebbitt about the British National Party appeared in the London "Daily Telegraph". Norman Tebbitt has himself been described as a "hardline rightwinger". He was a Minister in several portfolios under Margaret Thatcher and chairman of the Conservative Party

"Sir - It is of some comfort that the Labour Party at least, even if not yet the Tories, has woken up to the threat posed by the BNP, because it has ceased to understand or listen to its own supporters when they express their concerns about multiculturalism, the levels of immigration and lack of integration that are affecting our great cities.

However, it remains of concern that even The Daily Telegraph (Comment, April 18) persists in so misunderstanding the BNP as to describe it as "an extreme Right-wing party". I have carefully re-read the BNP manifesto of 2005 and am unable to find evidence of Right-wing tendencies.

On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to "use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality", to institute worker ownership, to favour workers' co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.

Certainly the BNP poses as a patriotic party opposed to multiculturalism, and it has racist overtones, but there is no lack of patriotic Left-wing regimes; opposition to multiculturalism is now mainstream and racialism was not unknown even in the Soviet Union. So what is "extreme Right-wing" about the BNP?"

The Ku Klux Klan were all Democrats, Hitler was a socialist, Karl Marx was an antisemite, the Soviets persecuted the Jews and the main support for the White Australia Policy was the Australian Labor party -- and it still is!. Any pattern there? Nah!

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ELSEWHERE

BNP winning support: "The British National Party is on course to make significant gains in the local elections in England in two weeks time, according to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph today. It shows that seven per cent of voters are ready to back the far-Right party and that 24 per cent have considered voting BNP in the past or are thinking of doing so now. In the eyes of almost three-quarters of potential BNP supporters, Britain "almost seems like a foreign country".... The strong showing for the BNP, which has already achieved more success than any other far-Right party, will alarm all the mainstream parties. At the general election last year, the BNP won 4.3 per cent of the vote across the 116 seats it contested. It polled 16.9 per cent in the Barking constituency.... The BNP has said it is putting up more candidates than ever before - 356 - for the local elections. At present it has 15 councillors across England and hopes to win up to 40 seats on May 4.

Pew Survey: Leftists much less moral: "There is a partisan divide in how people judge these behaviors. A majority of Republicans say seven of the ten behaviors are morally wrong; while a majority of Democrats and independents say just three of the behaviors (adultery, underreporting taxable income; drinking excessively) are morally wrong. Independents are the least inclined of the three partisan groups to view the behaviors as morally wrong and most prone to see them as "not a moral issue."" [The ten moral issues were: Married people having an affair; Not reporting all income on taxes; Drinking alcohol excessively; Having an abortion; Smoking marijuana; Homosexual behavior; Telling a lie to spare someone's feelings; Sex between unmarried adults; Gambling; Overeating]

American generosity: "U.S. foreign aid from private sources totaled $71.2 billion in 2004, a sum more than 3? times greater than the foreign aid the U.S. government provided that year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute. "America is often criticized as being stingy in its foreign aid, but that assessment doesn't take into account the extent of private giving," the institute said. The study, titled Index of Global Philanthropy, was presented yesterday at a United Nations conference".

Government Financing Clowns -- Literally: "Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers. The spending choices are allowable under the guidelines of the Assistance to Firefighters grant administered by the Homeland Security Department, which has awarded nearly 250 grants since February totaling more than $25 million out of the current spending pot of $545 million."

A vacation to the magical kingdom of capitalism: "On a recent trip to Florida I had the chance to see a good contrast between public works projects and private enterprises. This consisted of traveling through two public airports, Boston Logan and Orlando International and visiting two private entertainment parks, Walt Disney World and Sea World. I could linger long on the deficiencies of the public airports and rail against various aspects of their design, but instead I'd rather focus on the positive aspects of what I saw in the private capitalist dream that is Walt Disney World."

An end run around class action lawsuits: "Alan Kaplinsky is one proud man. For years, the Philadelphia lawyer has been advising financial institutions, leading their defense in class-action lawsuits brought by consumers -- and, more importantly, designing ways to limit such suits by writing arbitration clauses into many credit-card agreements and banking contracts. These clauses, often found in the fine print, have met with mixed results in court, with some judges upholding them, some not. Now, Kaplinsky has found a way to one-up the courts, at least in Utah, where a new law specifically allows these clauses in all consumer loan contracts, including credit-card agreements."

Russia: Surge in race killings as Hitler's birthday nears: "Russia is struggling to contain an upsurge in racist murders and attacks as skinheads in the country prepare to mark Adolf Hitler's birthday. The past week alone has seen a slew of race-hate crimes perpetrated despite condemnation from politicians and threats of heavier jail sentences. Four Roma have been murdered and one Vietnamese man killed, and there have been at least seven 'punishment beatings' of foreigners. Anti-racism activists are warning that Russia's estimated 60,000 skinheads appear to be attacking their victims with increasing impunity and that the problem has spun out of control."

Strange Justice has the latest on the very dubious Duke university "rape" prosecution.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

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 Pages are here or here or here.

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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION



Minutemen to build private fence: "Chris Simcox, President of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, today announced plans by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps ("MCDC") to work with local Arizona land owners to build border security fencing on private land along the border with Mexico. At present, six private land owners have partnered with the Minutemen for the commencement of construction of border fencing on their land. Surveillance cameras on the fencing will be monitored via computer by registered Minutemen across the country. Two construction companies to date have offered to inaugurate groundbreaking, coordinate volunteer construction crews and donate the use of the necessary heavy construction equipment. Simcox says those involved in the planning hope to keep costs near $150 per foot."

Illegal alien population CAN be reduced "Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative - a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force - is unworkable. One study fancifully suggested that the cost of such a deportation strategy would be $206 billion over the next five years. But mass forced removal is not the only alternative to mass legalization. A third way is to seek attrition of the illegal population through law enforcement, encouraging illegal aliens to give up and leave of their own accord. A new analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies uses a variety of federal government data to demonstrate that such a strategy of attrition, combined with a stronger border security effort such as the administration's Secure Border Initiative (SBI), can significantly reduce the size of the illegal alien population at a reasonable cost. The report, by CIS Senior Policy Analyst Jessica Vaughan, finds that, according to the government's own cost estimates, an attrition strategy could cut the illegal population by nearly half in five years, with an additional investment of less than $2 billion, or $400 million per year - an increase of less than 1 percent of the President's 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security ($42.7 billion)".

GA: Perdue signs immigration bill: "Georgia's governor signed a sweeping immigration bill Monday that supporters and critics say gives the state some of the toughest measures against illegal immigrants in the nation. 'I want to make this clear: we are not, Georgia's government is not, and this bill is not, anti-immigrant,' Gov. Sunny Perdue said at the signing. ... The law requires verification that adults seeking many state-administered benefits are in the country legally."



Some law enforcement happening: "Federal immigration authorities rounded up more than 1,000 illegal immigrants at dozens of sites and charged nine individuals of the firm that employed them, federal law enforcement officials announced Wednesday. Seven current and former managers of IFCO Systems, which has offices in several states, were arrested and charged in connection with the employment of illegal immigrants, said U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby in Albany, New York."

The left splits over immigration: "Most liberals have celebrated the recent pro-immigration marches, seeing in them a new kind of civil rights movement. They've supported calls to legalize many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. Many have delighted in the fissures opening up on the right, where nativists are pitted against laissez-faire business interests hungry for cheap labor. Yet there are fault lines on the left as well, with a small but notable number of progressive commentators warning that by championing rights for illegal immigrants and expanded legal immigration, liberals are working against the interests of low-skilled American workers."

Stupid propaganda: "The statistics are quite illuminating. Seventy-five percent of all farm workers in this country were born in Mexico. When one includes farm workers from other parts of Latin America, more than half of these workers (53%) are here illegally. Only 23% of farm workers were born in the United States. ... When it comes down to it this is really a question of supply and demand. Americans love their lettuce. In order to satiate this demand, agricultural employers need to find people willing to pick lettuce in order for it to get to market. But if we are to rely solely on the American labor force to pick our lettuce that demand will not be met. There are simply not enough Americans willing to go to Arizona to work in 100 degree weather on their hands and knees to pick lettuce for $7.25 an hour without health insurance and limited access to clean drinking water." [So how come I can buy all the lettuce I want in Australia for a couple of dollars each even though we have NO illegals to pick it?]

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ELSEWHERE



Iran: Police to arrest women in "un-Islamic" dress: "Iran's Islamic authorities are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From today police in Tehran will be under orders to arrest women failing to conform to the regime's definition of Islamic morals by wearing loose-fitting hijab, or headscarves, tight jackets and shortened trousers exposing skin. ... The clampdown coincides with a bill before Iran's conservative-dominated parliament proposing that fines for people with TV satellite dishes rise from 60 pounds to more than 3,000 pounds. Millions of Iranians have illegal dishes, enabling them to watch western films and news channels. ... The new campaign will hold taxi agencies accountable for their passengers' attire, police will be able to impound cabs carrying women dressed 'inappropriately.' Agencies guilty of repeat offences will be closed."



Waco: "Every year the weeks between February 28 and April 19 are a kind of secular Lent for me, a period of being particularly conscious of everything that's wrong with the world. This span of time corresponds to the 51-day siege imposed by federal troops on a religious community near Waco, Texas. Critics try to justify the raid and firestorm on the grounds that the murdered people were cult members, victims of brainwashing. Of course, defining a "cult" is a bit tricky. Maybe David Koresh and his followers had laughable beliefs - but hey, check out what kind of stuff the more popular denominations believe. Most churches are equal opportunity indoctrinators of very peculiar illogic. To pretend that one has cornered the market on validity is nonsense. We have a thing called freedom of religion, and wrong-headedness is not a capital offense. The people of Mount Carmel didn't deserve to be turned into crispy critters because they were spiritual zealots.

Branch Davidian scapegoats finally released: "Thirteen years after the Branch Davidians' armed standoff with federal agents ended in an inferno that killed nearly 80 people, six sect members who were sent to prison are about to be released from custody. Most of those who will be freed over the next two months escaped from the compound near Waco as it burned to the ground on April 19, 1993 -- 51 days after a shootout that erupted when federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to arrest religious leader David Koresh for stockpiling guns and explosives."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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SOME ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BACKGROUND

An Oregon reader responds to my recent mention of an NYT article about illegal immigrants being pulled up by local rather than Federal police and then being handed over to immigration authorities:

"Back in the seventies and eighties I would get calls, usually in the middle of the night, to help local police book non-English speaking arrestees. Most but not all were Mexicans, and usually they had been picked up for trivial offenses. But the police needed all the pertinent information, such as their street address in Mexico.... Anyway, in those days if someone was illegal they were always handed over to the federal immigration authorities to be deported, but then the practice was abandoned, probably because too many people felt sorry for the poor Mexicans. After all, all they want to do is make a living, right? Wrong. Some certainly do, but in the local crime reports the majority of offenders goes by Manuel or Jesus or Jose. Not long ago a huge methamphetamine-importing gang was busted here - all Mexican, mostly illegal, with a few white trash hangers-on.

What did surprise me was the provenance of the news article, because the New York Times is a leftist rag, and Westchester and Putnam counties, just to the north of the City, are very wealthy liberal enclaves. They were even when I lived there, now 35 years ago. So it says something for the country's mood that the police in such areas are now getting federal immigration into the loop. What most foreigners don't understand about America is that there is no chain of command in law enforcement: local police do not have to cooperate with federal authorities unless they choose to, so when they do there is usually some incentive involved: perhaps a federal grant, or other favors in return. If nothing else, this increase in cooperation could do wonders for local crime rates, too; this may be part of the Putnam county authorities' reasoning".

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"TO HIM THAT HATH, MORE WILL BE GIVEN HIM"

As most readers here will know, I have seven blogs which I update daily. I may be the only septablogger there is (I just made that word up -- but on good linguistic principles!). But in accordance with the wise words of Christ in the parable of the talents, it appears that I have now become an octoblogger!

After many years of sterling service, the founder of TONGUE-TIED, Scott Norvell, wants to take a backseat from now on. That means that instead of doing around half of the posts there, I will be doing nearly all of them. But, as one person doing the work of two, I need all the help I can get. So I am hoping that readers here will be sending me lots of links to stories that might be of interest to TONGUE-TIED readers. It would be particularly good if readers would keep an eye on their local media for cases of censorship etc. I personally can only possibly keep up with the major media.

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ELSEWHERE

Germany ends Nazi secrecy: "Germany's decision to grant access to a massive archive of Nazi Holocaust records means thousands of Australian Jewish families may finally get conclusive information about the fate of relatives. The archives, boxed away in a former Nazi SS barracks in the German town of Bad Arolsen, contain information on 17.5 million concentration camp prisoners, forced labourers and other victims of the Third Reich. In Jerusalem, Holocaust specialist Shlomo Aharonson, a historian at Hebrew University, said the archives were supposed to contain all the names of those who died in World War II, both Jews and non-Jews. Citing privacy concerns, Germany had for decades resisted releasing the records, but yesterday Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries announced the Government had relented. The announcement ends a 20-year effort by the Holocaust Museum, the US, France, Poland and some other countries to pry open the archives. Until now, only the international Red Cross had been permitted to sort through the information, with families and historians denied direct access for the past 60 years".

Australians are rich! (Thanks to a healthy economy): Every Australian is now worth an average of $316,000, with a soaring sharemarket and house prices behind an unprecedented wealth boom. According to a Treasury survey, Australia's private wealth kitty is now $6.5 trillion - the biggest ever, and a rise of nearly 10 per cent in the past year. But while world-leading levels of private share ownership and investment property purchases are two of the reasons behind the wealth boom, experts say the biggest influence is much less personal. Professor Mark Wooden from the Melbourne Institute, a conservative think-tank, said the population naturally grew wealthier as the economy expanded.

Hate-preaching in Britain: "Muslim students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as "filth". The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University. The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course."

OK to maim babies if you are a Muslim: "A Bangladeshi woman who shook a baby boy so violently that he suffered brain damage walked free from court yesterday because a judge conceded that she did not know how to behave in the West. Rahella Khanom, 24, caused the five-month-old boy in her care to suffer fractures to his breast bone and ribs as she tried to rid him of evil spirits, Southwark Crown Court was told. The injuries inflicted on the child over several weeks had caused one side of his brain to shrink. It was believed that the boy would have been screaming in agony for eight weeks because his injuries went untreated"

BBC blows the people's money on favoured sons: "The BBC suffered a backlash from licence fee-payers yesterday as radio listeners accused stars of failing to provide value for money after learning of their salaries through a series of leaks. Executives are braced for further revelations after Jeremy Paxman was the latest well-known name to find his apparent earnings revealed. He is reported to earn about 800,000 pounds for fronting Newsnight and a further 240,000 for hosting University Challenge on BBC Two. Scotland Yard said that it was ready to assist an internal inquiry by the BBC into the source of the leak, which is suspected to be the work of a disgruntled former employee.... However the figures, not challenged by the traditionally secretive corporation, have disclosed information consistently denied through Freedom of Information requests.... The BBC was also forced to defend an 80,731 pound spend on Christmas parties. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is expected to be asked about the revelations when she answers questions about the BBC's demand for an increased licence fee at a House of Lords committee today.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and 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 Pages are here or here or here.

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