Hey, I'm Anti-War, Too!
By Arlene Peck
Just because I am against war, doesn't mean that I can't see the necessity of fighting one... especially when I realize that I am watching a wave of savage 7th century barbarians climbing over the hill ready to kill everyone in sight. I just happen to be a little more basic in my thinking than what I am seeing in most of the press and for sure the political pundits in the EU and United Nations. We have an enemy that wants to kill us. And, when I say "us" I, am talking about our entire western culture. Israel doesn't have a thing to do about it except that they are a modern democratic country living in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by a savage culture that has been carefully nurtured on hatred and survives on submission. Do you remember when we lived 'normal' lives and were not consumed 24/7 with pictures of raging savages with fists raised shouting "Jihad" "Jihad?" ....
Maybe because I have actually been to the area a couple of dozen times and visited many of the Arab countries. including Lebanon in June of 1982, as a journalist covering the IDF and again in 1993, that I was able to see with my own eyes what a sick society the Jewish state is actually fighting. Now, I don't have to go so far to see what the Israelis live with every day. All one has to do is walk into any of your local mosques and listen to what they are saying... here! In America!
Last year, I spent a few hours listening to what this "gentle" nation was saying at a mosque here, in Los Angeles. Granted, they did not tell their well-dressed western audience to go out and kill everyone who is not one of them, as, I have no doubt, is the case with Imams in Arab countries. They were more sophisticated than that. They gave "sermons" telling the audience that their job was to go back to their homes and channel their "American" children into educational tracks leading to occupations such as journalism and politics , because those are the areas they need to `infiltrate' to get their point across. Folks, that is what scares the living bee-gees out of me! Because a lot of our media reporting looks like they have done just that!
I have a friend who told me about her return last year to her hometown of Dearborn, Michigan for a class reunion. She even went back to her school for the obligatory visit. Rhona was astounded! Gone were the cheerleaders and girls in tight jeans. Headscarves and clothes that completely covered the female students have now replaced them. Dearborn Michigan! That was her moment of truth....
More here
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ELSEWHERE
A good fatwa?: "A top Saudi Sunni cleric, whose ideas inspired Osama bin Laden, issued a religious edict Saturday disavowing the Shi'ite guerrilla group Hizbullah, evidence that a rift remained among Muslims over the fighting in Lebanon. Hizbullah, which translates as "the party of God," is actually "the party of the devil," said Sheik Safar al-Hawali, whose radical views made the al-Qaida leader one of his followers in the past. "Don't pray for Hizbullah," he said in the fatwa posted on his Web site. The edict, which reflects the historical stand of strict Wahhabi doctrine viewing Shi'ite Muslims as heretics, follows a similar fatwa from another popular Saudi cleric Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen two weeks into the conflict with Israel. "It is not acceptable to support this rejectionist party (Hizbullah), and one should not fall under its command, or pray for its victory," bin Jibreen said at the time"
Official discrimination against whites in Britain: "Companies that bid for multimillion-pound Government contracts will be rejected if they do not employ enough black and Asian workers, under new proposals seen by The Times. A powerful committee that includes seven ministers has drawn up plans to question competing companies about their attitudes to race before choosing which to employ. Firms will be asked to provide figures showing the numbers of their black and Asian employees. This figure will be compared with the proportion of people from ethnic minorities living near the company's offices and will be a factor when deciding the winning bid.... A spokesman for the British Chambers of Commerce said that the plans would hinder the competitive tendering process and make it more difficult and expensive. "Public tenders are already complicated enough," he said. "Lengthening the applications will only further dissuade businesses from applying for public work. "This will do nothing to ensure that government contracts go to the firms with the most competitive bids."
The latest excuse for government meddling: "Based on such findings that people often behave irrationally, some commentators suggest that the government could perhaps frame laws and regulations so that more of us tend to choose more 'rationally.' University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein and economics professor Richard Thaler call this strategy 'libertarian paternalism.' Citing the work of Tversky and Kahneman, Sunstein and Thaler point out that 'in many domains, people lack clear, stable, or well-ordered preferences. What they choose is a product of framing effects, starting points, and default rules, leaving the very meaning of the term 'preferences' unclear.'"
Wal Mart wins a Democrat heart: "Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen wants the state to do a better job at preparing students for careers at Wal-Mart. But he's not talking about stocking shelves or checking out customers at the retail giant. Instead, Bredesen wants to tailor community college programs to offer courses on retail management. Bredesen, a Democrat, pitched his proposal on how to address a management shortage at big-box retail stores on a recent trip to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. While no formal arrangement has been struck, Bredesen and Wal-Mart officials agreed to work on developing a curriculum. Bredesen told The Associated Press he would consider an arrangement where community colleges teach Wal-Mart-specific skills, if the company would agree to guarantee jobs for graduates with good grades. Wal-Mart spokesman Dennis Alpert said Bredesen's proposal came after hearing from company officials talk about a shortage of managers. The program would be a first for the world's largest retailer"
NM: Battle brewing over land theft: "A three-year-old land dispute between a Clovis property owner and the city grew more tangled last month when the owner declined the city's offer to purchase a strip of his land. His decline allows the city to seize the strip under the law of eminent domain, which gives government entities the right [sic] to acquire private lands for public use, with or without the owner's consent. City officials intend to construct a 30-foot open drainage channel across 1.3 acres of Daniel and Pauline Griego's 15-acre farm .... The Griegos earlier this year asked the city to consider building an underground drainage ditch instead of an open channel, acknowledging its higher cost but contending it would require less maintenance and offering to contribute land to the city."
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.
****************************
Monday, August 07, 2006
New research has shattered a favourite left-wing myth about race relations
Excerpt below from here
Dear me, another political illusion shattered. Every time some new research comes out, it seems to destroy yet another of those firm foundations on which we build our political assumptions. One of those foundations, to put it bluntly, is that conservatives are racist. This argument is advanced by the Left as if it were some sort of unchallengeable truth....
But some recent research shows a different picture. Shanto Iyengar, a professor of communications at Stanford University, has just completed some experiments in partnership with The Washington Post on the attitudes of people to giving aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina... Democratic voters, of course, voted to give more money to hurricane victims and for a longer period. Hardly surprising, that: Democrats, like Labor voters here, are keen on giving away other people's money and, for them, a natural disaster is as good an opportunity for doing so as anything else.
But wait, what's this? The research shows Democrats were prepared to give $1500 more to victims if they were white than if they were black. What, give less money to innocent victims just because they were black? I'm afraid so. Moreover, Democrats would give more money to whites than to other minorities such as Asians and Hispanics. So it was left-wingers who used race as the big test.
Republicans, on the other hand, were not influenced by race at all. The Republicans' view, as Iyengar put it, was more principled, as they supported individualism instead of handouts: "Independents and Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to be affected by racial cues." Even The Washington Post, on June 23, had to concede that this evident bias was disturbing.
But it gets worse. Iyengar's study matches perfectly with an earlier study by Franklin Gilliam Jr of the University of California, Los Angeles, that shows although Republican voters support tough treatment of criminals, Democrats and others "support harsher measures when the criminal suspect they encountered was non-white". Now that's not the way things are supposed to be. But if left-wingers and liberals use race in a way that right-wingers do not, in crime and now in something as deserving as hurricane relief, how about their attitudes on, say, social welfare? Surely, the Left would not discriminate on the grounds of race in that essential field?
Disturbingly, to use that ominous word, it turns out that Gilliam has done another study that looks at whether attitudes on welfare bludging are influenced by race and, you guessed it, they are influenced by it, but only if they are liberals. His exact words: "Depictions of white welfare queens also seem to induce whites who describe themselves as having liberal views about gender roles to arrive at extremely harsh views of African-Americans."
This has to stop. Unbridled research such as this will end up destroying all our cherished myths. Why, before you can say "chardonnay", we will be using facts and reality before we make political assumptions.
***********************
A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT
I am at it again, I am afraid. I have created yet another blog -- called Food & Health Skeptic. Together with one of the contributors to Wicked Thoughts, I have for over a month now been crossposting there articles that take a look at the latest food and health news, including the current "obesity" war. So far, all the articles there have also appeared either on Political Correctness Watch or on Wicked Thoughts but as from today, the postings there will mostly be original -- i.e. they will now be new postings rather than crosspostings from elsewhere. So if the ups and downs of what is said to be good and bad for you in foods and medicines are of interest to you, you now have a skeptic's view of it all. Links to stories that might be posted there are of course very welcome.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Free enterprise escaping the regulators: "One hundred workers count on Betsy Briones for their paychecks. But not one of them works for her. Briones is a so-called nonemployer, relying exclusively on contract or temporary workers. This arrangement, which allows employers to avoid the soaring costs of health insurance and other benefits, is booming in California, according to a Census Bureau report to be released today. The 63-year-old Briones runs a busy referral agency for in-home care workers out of her Los Angeles residence, placing caregivers with elderly or disabled clients. All of her caregivers are independent contractors and are responsible for obtaining their own benefits, she said. Los Angeles County - a hotbed for small business - seems to be the capital of this "free agent nation." It has more nonemployers than any other U.S. county, although their ranks are now growing even faster in the Inland Empire, according to the census report. California businesses have been hiring contract and temporary workers in construction, administrative and high-tech jobs for years, and the practice appears to be spreading to industries such as real estate brokerages, beauty salons and insurance agencies, the report said."
Two groups of haters join up -- Marxists and Muslims: "A radical anti-war coalition is joining forces with a U.S. Islamic lobby organization to stage a demonstration in front of the White House to protest "the current predicament of Muslims abroad and at home." A.N.S.W.E.R., a coalition led by socialist and communist activists, and Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation are co-sponsoring the "National Emergency March" Aug. 12 at Lafayette Park at 12 noon. A third co-sponsor is the National Council of Arab Americans. A number of leaders for A.N.S.W.E.R. - Act Now to Stop War and End Racism - were members of the Workers World Party and now belong to the Party for Socialism and Liberation , a Marxist-Leninist organization founded in 2004. Along with the "plight of the Palestinian people and the recent atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon," the Muslim group says it will focus on the war in Iraq and "the continuous violation of civil rights and civil liberties within the American Muslim community."
U.N. logic: "A Geneva-based agency charged with eliminating world racism added its name yesterday to the growing list of U.N. organs denouncing Israel's war against Hezbollah. Members of the agency argued that Secretary-General Annan expected them to condemn Israel. To critics who wondered how the charge of racism could be applied to a war between two groups of Semites, one panel member - also known as an "expert" - of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said Israel would not have "reacted with the same violence if there was no racism involved"
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Excerpt below from here
Dear me, another political illusion shattered. Every time some new research comes out, it seems to destroy yet another of those firm foundations on which we build our political assumptions. One of those foundations, to put it bluntly, is that conservatives are racist. This argument is advanced by the Left as if it were some sort of unchallengeable truth....
But some recent research shows a different picture. Shanto Iyengar, a professor of communications at Stanford University, has just completed some experiments in partnership with The Washington Post on the attitudes of people to giving aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina... Democratic voters, of course, voted to give more money to hurricane victims and for a longer period. Hardly surprising, that: Democrats, like Labor voters here, are keen on giving away other people's money and, for them, a natural disaster is as good an opportunity for doing so as anything else.
But wait, what's this? The research shows Democrats were prepared to give $1500 more to victims if they were white than if they were black. What, give less money to innocent victims just because they were black? I'm afraid so. Moreover, Democrats would give more money to whites than to other minorities such as Asians and Hispanics. So it was left-wingers who used race as the big test.
Republicans, on the other hand, were not influenced by race at all. The Republicans' view, as Iyengar put it, was more principled, as they supported individualism instead of handouts: "Independents and Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to be affected by racial cues." Even The Washington Post, on June 23, had to concede that this evident bias was disturbing.
But it gets worse. Iyengar's study matches perfectly with an earlier study by Franklin Gilliam Jr of the University of California, Los Angeles, that shows although Republican voters support tough treatment of criminals, Democrats and others "support harsher measures when the criminal suspect they encountered was non-white". Now that's not the way things are supposed to be. But if left-wingers and liberals use race in a way that right-wingers do not, in crime and now in something as deserving as hurricane relief, how about their attitudes on, say, social welfare? Surely, the Left would not discriminate on the grounds of race in that essential field?
Disturbingly, to use that ominous word, it turns out that Gilliam has done another study that looks at whether attitudes on welfare bludging are influenced by race and, you guessed it, they are influenced by it, but only if they are liberals. His exact words: "Depictions of white welfare queens also seem to induce whites who describe themselves as having liberal views about gender roles to arrive at extremely harsh views of African-Americans."
This has to stop. Unbridled research such as this will end up destroying all our cherished myths. Why, before you can say "chardonnay", we will be using facts and reality before we make political assumptions.
***********************
A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT
I am at it again, I am afraid. I have created yet another blog -- called Food & Health Skeptic. Together with one of the contributors to Wicked Thoughts, I have for over a month now been crossposting there articles that take a look at the latest food and health news, including the current "obesity" war. So far, all the articles there have also appeared either on Political Correctness Watch or on Wicked Thoughts but as from today, the postings there will mostly be original -- i.e. they will now be new postings rather than crosspostings from elsewhere. So if the ups and downs of what is said to be good and bad for you in foods and medicines are of interest to you, you now have a skeptic's view of it all. Links to stories that might be posted there are of course very welcome.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Free enterprise escaping the regulators: "One hundred workers count on Betsy Briones for their paychecks. But not one of them works for her. Briones is a so-called nonemployer, relying exclusively on contract or temporary workers. This arrangement, which allows employers to avoid the soaring costs of health insurance and other benefits, is booming in California, according to a Census Bureau report to be released today. The 63-year-old Briones runs a busy referral agency for in-home care workers out of her Los Angeles residence, placing caregivers with elderly or disabled clients. All of her caregivers are independent contractors and are responsible for obtaining their own benefits, she said. Los Angeles County - a hotbed for small business - seems to be the capital of this "free agent nation." It has more nonemployers than any other U.S. county, although their ranks are now growing even faster in the Inland Empire, according to the census report. California businesses have been hiring contract and temporary workers in construction, administrative and high-tech jobs for years, and the practice appears to be spreading to industries such as real estate brokerages, beauty salons and insurance agencies, the report said."
Two groups of haters join up -- Marxists and Muslims: "A radical anti-war coalition is joining forces with a U.S. Islamic lobby organization to stage a demonstration in front of the White House to protest "the current predicament of Muslims abroad and at home." A.N.S.W.E.R., a coalition led by socialist and communist activists, and Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation are co-sponsoring the "National Emergency March" Aug. 12 at Lafayette Park at 12 noon. A third co-sponsor is the National Council of Arab Americans. A number of leaders for A.N.S.W.E.R. - Act Now to Stop War and End Racism - were members of the Workers World Party and now belong to the Party for Socialism and Liberation , a Marxist-Leninist organization founded in 2004. Along with the "plight of the Palestinian people and the recent atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon," the Muslim group says it will focus on the war in Iraq and "the continuous violation of civil rights and civil liberties within the American Muslim community."
U.N. logic: "A Geneva-based agency charged with eliminating world racism added its name yesterday to the growing list of U.N. organs denouncing Israel's war against Hezbollah. Members of the agency argued that Secretary-General Annan expected them to condemn Israel. To critics who wondered how the charge of racism could be applied to a war between two groups of Semites, one panel member - also known as an "expert" - of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said Israel would not have "reacted with the same violence if there was no racism involved"
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Sunday, August 06, 2006
FUMBLE-FINGERED RESEARCH ABOUT ANTISEMITISM MEANDERS TO A CORRECT CONCLUSION
There is an academic paper here that has recently (August 2006) found publication in the Journal of Conflict Resolution -- a peacenik journal containing articles of very "uneven" (polite academic word) quality. I myself had one article published in the same journal years ago but that article was essentially a reply to an incredibly stupid article that had previously appeared in the journal.
The authors of the recent study (by Kaplan and Small) had available to them a large body of survey data that allowed them to show whether people with anti-Israel attitudes also had generally antisemitic attitudes. No prizes for guessing what they found. But, obviously, neither of the authors concerned has ever done a proper course in statistics. If they had they could have expressed their findings in both a more informative and vastly simpler way -- by a single correlation coefficient. Instead they have categorized their data in a variety of arbitrary ways and presented cross tabulations of it in a whole series of tables and figures that take a lot of brain-strain to decipher even for me -- and I used to teach statistics at university level.
Unfortunately, their report does leave open the conclusion that the underlying correlation coefficient between the two variables may in fact be rather weak. They certainly need to clarify that.
Note that the research concerned comes from Yale! Just another episode in the dumbing down of American education. When even Harvard has to give 20% of its freshman intake remedial courses in the "3rs", one wonders how low standards can go. Maybe we have to be thankful that Kaplan and Small can at least read and write.
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THE POISONED FRUIT OF LEFTIST HATE SPEECH:
(Lifted from John Gibson)
How much hate is there for George Bush in the country today? A ton. Just look at the drubbing Rumsfeld took today at a Senate hearing. This was all about the war. Hillary Clinton had to bash Rummy - Bush's proxy for this war - even though she voted for the war and still supports it. But even a war supporter has to show he or she doesn't like Bush and his cohorts.
Then there is the new poll from Scripps Howard, the news chain. It shows that one-third of Americans now believe the U.S. government had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. This madness has long been afoot among the America haters in Europe and Canada and Arab nations. A best-selling book in France started it. Another in Germany contributed to this notion that the 9/11 attacks were not the work of Usama bin Laden, but instead it was George Bush. This notion has gained considerable currency despite the fact that bin Laden has admitted he did it.
Now they say, "Hey, the bin Laden tapes were faked." They also say the Twin Towers couldn't have been brought down by the two hijacked jets, that it must have been demolition explosives planted in the building by the U.S. government. They say the attack on the Pentagon was U.S. missiles, not American Flight 77.
You say, "Well, where is Flight 77? Where are the people that were on board?" I have personally interviewed every major purveyor of this garbage. None of them have an answer to the Flight 77 question - just more empty-headed questions that lead to truly sick conclusions that somehow Bush attacked his own country on 9/11. The truth is: People don't believe the 9/11 story because they hate George Bush and don't believe anything he says. If he says Usama did 9/11, they don't believe it. If he says the Twin Towers were felled by two hijacked jetliners, they don't believe it. If Bush says there were 19 hijackers and they took four airliners and crashed all four in the largest attack on American soil ever, they don't believe it.
So now we have one-third of the American people as blinded by hate as many Europeans and many Canadians and many Arabs. They're so blinded they cannot see or hear the hundreds if not thousands of experts who have told them exactly what happened on 9/11. Instead they rush to so-called evidence and so-called investigations that are much closer to alien spaceships than they are to observable and verifiable fact.
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ELSEWHERE
Nobody seems to know who drew the above brilliantly accurate cartoon. Any ideas? It sure sums up what scum most Arabs seem to be.
There is an amusing example here of Leftist "debate". Prolonged abuse with hardly a shred of rational argument in it. The egotistical motivation that underlies so much Leftism is extremely evident, though.
British ID card in trouble: "MPs attacked plans for identity cards as inconsistent and lacking clarity yesterday and called for a rethink of the technology to be used. The Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report expressing incredulity that the Home Office claimed to be able to produce firm estimates of the costs of running ID cards when fundamental technical decisions were still unclear. The Home Office has said that running costs would be 584 million pounds a year, whereas the London School of Economics, in a controversial report, has put the total costs of setting up and running ID cards at between 10.6 billion and 19.2 billion. The report called on the Government to disclose more information about how the scheme would operate, particularly the database on which personal details would eventually be held. The criticism comes after the admission by the Home Office last month that the introduction of identity cards as a voluntary measure was likely to be delayed past the target date of 2008 because of practical difficulties in implementing a scheme of that size".
Thanks for the sanctions: "A quick survey: We began our economic embargo against North Korea in 1950. We've had one against Cuba since 1962. We first applied economic sanctions to Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979 and are currently trying for international sanctions aimed at getting the government there to suspend uranium enrichment. We attached trade sanctions to Burma beginning in 1990 and froze the assets of Sudan beginning in 1997. President Bush ordered sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2003 and against Syria beginning in 2004. We have also led major international sanctions campaigns against regimes since brought down by force of arms: Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Saddam's Iraq, and Taliban Afghanistan. America's sanctions policy is largely consistent, and in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth. We wincingly accept the collateral damage that falls on civilian populations in the nations we target. But as the above list of countries suggests, sanctions have one serious drawback. They don't work."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
There is an academic paper here that has recently (August 2006) found publication in the Journal of Conflict Resolution -- a peacenik journal containing articles of very "uneven" (polite academic word) quality. I myself had one article published in the same journal years ago but that article was essentially a reply to an incredibly stupid article that had previously appeared in the journal.
The authors of the recent study (by Kaplan and Small) had available to them a large body of survey data that allowed them to show whether people with anti-Israel attitudes also had generally antisemitic attitudes. No prizes for guessing what they found. But, obviously, neither of the authors concerned has ever done a proper course in statistics. If they had they could have expressed their findings in both a more informative and vastly simpler way -- by a single correlation coefficient. Instead they have categorized their data in a variety of arbitrary ways and presented cross tabulations of it in a whole series of tables and figures that take a lot of brain-strain to decipher even for me -- and I used to teach statistics at university level.
Unfortunately, their report does leave open the conclusion that the underlying correlation coefficient between the two variables may in fact be rather weak. They certainly need to clarify that.
Note that the research concerned comes from Yale! Just another episode in the dumbing down of American education. When even Harvard has to give 20% of its freshman intake remedial courses in the "3rs", one wonders how low standards can go. Maybe we have to be thankful that Kaplan and Small can at least read and write.
**************************
THE POISONED FRUIT OF LEFTIST HATE SPEECH:
(Lifted from John Gibson)
How much hate is there for George Bush in the country today? A ton. Just look at the drubbing Rumsfeld took today at a Senate hearing. This was all about the war. Hillary Clinton had to bash Rummy - Bush's proxy for this war - even though she voted for the war and still supports it. But even a war supporter has to show he or she doesn't like Bush and his cohorts.
Then there is the new poll from Scripps Howard, the news chain. It shows that one-third of Americans now believe the U.S. government had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. This madness has long been afoot among the America haters in Europe and Canada and Arab nations. A best-selling book in France started it. Another in Germany contributed to this notion that the 9/11 attacks were not the work of Usama bin Laden, but instead it was George Bush. This notion has gained considerable currency despite the fact that bin Laden has admitted he did it.
Now they say, "Hey, the bin Laden tapes were faked." They also say the Twin Towers couldn't have been brought down by the two hijacked jets, that it must have been demolition explosives planted in the building by the U.S. government. They say the attack on the Pentagon was U.S. missiles, not American Flight 77.
You say, "Well, where is Flight 77? Where are the people that were on board?" I have personally interviewed every major purveyor of this garbage. None of them have an answer to the Flight 77 question - just more empty-headed questions that lead to truly sick conclusions that somehow Bush attacked his own country on 9/11. The truth is: People don't believe the 9/11 story because they hate George Bush and don't believe anything he says. If he says Usama did 9/11, they don't believe it. If he says the Twin Towers were felled by two hijacked jetliners, they don't believe it. If Bush says there were 19 hijackers and they took four airliners and crashed all four in the largest attack on American soil ever, they don't believe it.
So now we have one-third of the American people as blinded by hate as many Europeans and many Canadians and many Arabs. They're so blinded they cannot see or hear the hundreds if not thousands of experts who have told them exactly what happened on 9/11. Instead they rush to so-called evidence and so-called investigations that are much closer to alien spaceships than they are to observable and verifiable fact.
***************************
ELSEWHERE
Nobody seems to know who drew the above brilliantly accurate cartoon. Any ideas? It sure sums up what scum most Arabs seem to be.
There is an amusing example here of Leftist "debate". Prolonged abuse with hardly a shred of rational argument in it. The egotistical motivation that underlies so much Leftism is extremely evident, though.
British ID card in trouble: "MPs attacked plans for identity cards as inconsistent and lacking clarity yesterday and called for a rethink of the technology to be used. The Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report expressing incredulity that the Home Office claimed to be able to produce firm estimates of the costs of running ID cards when fundamental technical decisions were still unclear. The Home Office has said that running costs would be 584 million pounds a year, whereas the London School of Economics, in a controversial report, has put the total costs of setting up and running ID cards at between 10.6 billion and 19.2 billion. The report called on the Government to disclose more information about how the scheme would operate, particularly the database on which personal details would eventually be held. The criticism comes after the admission by the Home Office last month that the introduction of identity cards as a voluntary measure was likely to be delayed past the target date of 2008 because of practical difficulties in implementing a scheme of that size".
Thanks for the sanctions: "A quick survey: We began our economic embargo against North Korea in 1950. We've had one against Cuba since 1962. We first applied economic sanctions to Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979 and are currently trying for international sanctions aimed at getting the government there to suspend uranium enrichment. We attached trade sanctions to Burma beginning in 1990 and froze the assets of Sudan beginning in 1997. President Bush ordered sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2003 and against Syria beginning in 2004. We have also led major international sanctions campaigns against regimes since brought down by force of arms: Milosevic's Yugoslavia, Saddam's Iraq, and Taliban Afghanistan. America's sanctions policy is largely consistent, and in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth. We wincingly accept the collateral damage that falls on civilian populations in the nations we target. But as the above list of countries suggests, sanctions have one serious drawback. They don't work."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Saturday, August 05, 2006
TRUTH DOESN'T MATTER TO LEFTISTS
There is a blog here by what looks like a common or garden variety New York Jewish "Liberal" that takes Jonah Goldberg to task at some length for pointing out the undoubted historical affinity between Mussolini's Fascism and other varieties of Leftism. Does he challenge Goldberg on the facts? No. Because he cannot. The history is there.
He criticizes Goldberg one one ground only: That Goldberg rejects the claimed affinity between Israel and the Nazis. That what Goldberg says in that regard is also true does not seem to matter at all to our NYCJL. He detects an "inconsistency" there. What inconsistency? Apparently an inconsistency in propaganda. Our wise NYCJL seems to think that it looks bad to condemn false statements as "demonization" while making true statements that to the uninformed could also look like demonization.
But to the Left, "There is no such thing as truth", so the lack of interest in the truth of what Goldberg says is supremely unsurprising.
But for saying what I have above I will no doubt be condemned as a Nazi. I have always been an unwavering and vocal supporter of Israel but that truth won't matter either. Propaganda value is all that counts.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Americans back Israeli actions: "Israel's military campaign in southern Lebanon is still being backed by most American voters, according to a survey published yesterday that shows public opinion in the US once again sharply at odds with views in Europe. The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that 59 per cent believed that Israel’s actions were “justified”, although a quarter of this group stated that the military had behaved in an “excessively harsh” fashion. In contrast, a recent YouGov/Telegraph poll in Britain showed that only 17 per cent of those surveyed believed that Israel had made an “appropriate and proportional” response to the kidnapping of its soldiers."
The Bush tax cuts: "You are absolutely correct on the dollar amount, $1 trillion in just six years, but I believe the most important aspect of the tax cuts is not the dollar amount but rather the structural changes Bush has achieved. First, the president smashed the old model of governing on tax issues. Every 20 years a president would enter office and enact a major tax cut. In the remaining years Congress would pass and the president would sign tax increases. Bush changed this pattern dramatically by cutting taxes every year for six consecutive years.... every taxpayer received a [federal] tax cut. And while everyone is paying less in [federal] taxes, the rich are now paying a higher percentage of the federal tax burden than before the tax cuts went into place."
Democrat tells voters that their votes are his, not theirs: "Carl Romanelli, a Green Party candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate, said Monday that Republican donors probably gave him most of the $100,000 that he spent gathering signatures, to qualify for his placement on the Nov. 7 ballot. The Democratic front-runner in the race, Bob Casey, accused Republicans of 'trying to steal the election' by helping a candidate who would likely win voters who would otherwise have voted Democratic."
RINO scum: "A former state legislator who changed parties in 2003, enabling Democratic House Speaker Jim Black to stay in power, pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking $50,000 in campaign contributions to make the switch. Former Rep. Michael Decker, 61, could get up to five years in prison at sentencing Nov. 1. Prosecutors said Decker supported a particular candidate for speaker in exchange for the money. ... Decker switched to the Democratic Party just before the 2003 legislative session after 18 years as a GOP legislator. ... Decker switched back to the Republican Party after the session but was defeated in the 2004 primary."
Why am I not surprised? "Undercover investigators entered the United States using fake documents repeatedly this year -- including some cases in which Homeland Security Department agents didn't ask for identification. At nine border crossings on the Mexico and Canadian borders, agents 'never questioned the authenticity of the counterfeit documents,' according to Government Accountability Office testimony to be released Wednesday."
Army reserves short of equipment: "More than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's 34 brigades are not combat ready, mostly because of equipment shortages that will cost up to $21 billion to correct, the top National Guard general said Tuesday. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum spoke to a group defense reporters after Army officials, analysts and members of Congress disclosed that two-thirds of the active Army's brigades are not ready for war."
Capitalists happier: "A British psychologist has produced the first 'world map of happiness' and it seems if you are looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark. It is the happiest country in the world, while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, the report says.... He says the main factors that affected happiness were health provision, wealth and education and that his research produced the "first world map of happiness". "There is a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people," Mr White said. "However, when people are asked if they are happy with their lives, people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per capita, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy.".
EU protectionists lose one: "Britain's retailers were handed a reprieve yesterday when European Commission plans to impose punitive tariffs on leather footwear from China and Vietnam were rejected by a majority of EU states. Britain was among 13 countries to lodge a preliminary vote against a proposal to impose anti-dumping duties of 16 per cent and 10 per cent respectively on Chinese and Vietnamese shoe imports from early October.
Signing Statements: "It's a sad day for the legal profession when its largest organization, the American Bar Association (the largest voluntary professional association in the world), succumbs to Bush-hatred. How else to explain the ABA's recent report to the effect that President Bush's use of signing statements is unprecedented and unconstitutional? It is neither. See here. As I said the other day, a president swears under oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This implies that he or she must refuse to enforce unconstitutional provisions of a statute—and if this is so, then the president may announce as much in a signing statement."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
There is a blog here by what looks like a common or garden variety New York Jewish "Liberal" that takes Jonah Goldberg to task at some length for pointing out the undoubted historical affinity between Mussolini's Fascism and other varieties of Leftism. Does he challenge Goldberg on the facts? No. Because he cannot. The history is there.
He criticizes Goldberg one one ground only: That Goldberg rejects the claimed affinity between Israel and the Nazis. That what Goldberg says in that regard is also true does not seem to matter at all to our NYCJL. He detects an "inconsistency" there. What inconsistency? Apparently an inconsistency in propaganda. Our wise NYCJL seems to think that it looks bad to condemn false statements as "demonization" while making true statements that to the uninformed could also look like demonization.
But to the Left, "There is no such thing as truth", so the lack of interest in the truth of what Goldberg says is supremely unsurprising.
But for saying what I have above I will no doubt be condemned as a Nazi. I have always been an unwavering and vocal supporter of Israel but that truth won't matter either. Propaganda value is all that counts.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Americans back Israeli actions: "Israel's military campaign in southern Lebanon is still being backed by most American voters, according to a survey published yesterday that shows public opinion in the US once again sharply at odds with views in Europe. The Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that 59 per cent believed that Israel’s actions were “justified”, although a quarter of this group stated that the military had behaved in an “excessively harsh” fashion. In contrast, a recent YouGov/Telegraph poll in Britain showed that only 17 per cent of those surveyed believed that Israel had made an “appropriate and proportional” response to the kidnapping of its soldiers."
The Bush tax cuts: "You are absolutely correct on the dollar amount, $1 trillion in just six years, but I believe the most important aspect of the tax cuts is not the dollar amount but rather the structural changes Bush has achieved. First, the president smashed the old model of governing on tax issues. Every 20 years a president would enter office and enact a major tax cut. In the remaining years Congress would pass and the president would sign tax increases. Bush changed this pattern dramatically by cutting taxes every year for six consecutive years.... every taxpayer received a [federal] tax cut. And while everyone is paying less in [federal] taxes, the rich are now paying a higher percentage of the federal tax burden than before the tax cuts went into place."
Democrat tells voters that their votes are his, not theirs: "Carl Romanelli, a Green Party candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate, said Monday that Republican donors probably gave him most of the $100,000 that he spent gathering signatures, to qualify for his placement on the Nov. 7 ballot. The Democratic front-runner in the race, Bob Casey, accused Republicans of 'trying to steal the election' by helping a candidate who would likely win voters who would otherwise have voted Democratic."
RINO scum: "A former state legislator who changed parties in 2003, enabling Democratic House Speaker Jim Black to stay in power, pleaded guilty Tuesday to taking $50,000 in campaign contributions to make the switch. Former Rep. Michael Decker, 61, could get up to five years in prison at sentencing Nov. 1. Prosecutors said Decker supported a particular candidate for speaker in exchange for the money. ... Decker switched to the Democratic Party just before the 2003 legislative session after 18 years as a GOP legislator. ... Decker switched back to the Republican Party after the session but was defeated in the 2004 primary."
Why am I not surprised? "Undercover investigators entered the United States using fake documents repeatedly this year -- including some cases in which Homeland Security Department agents didn't ask for identification. At nine border crossings on the Mexico and Canadian borders, agents 'never questioned the authenticity of the counterfeit documents,' according to Government Accountability Office testimony to be released Wednesday."
Army reserves short of equipment: "More than two-thirds of the Army National Guard's 34 brigades are not combat ready, mostly because of equipment shortages that will cost up to $21 billion to correct, the top National Guard general said Tuesday. Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum spoke to a group defense reporters after Army officials, analysts and members of Congress disclosed that two-thirds of the active Army's brigades are not ready for war."
Capitalists happier: "A British psychologist has produced the first 'world map of happiness' and it seems if you are looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark. It is the happiest country in the world, while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, the report says.... He says the main factors that affected happiness were health provision, wealth and education and that his research produced the "first world map of happiness". "There is a belief that capitalism leads to unhappy people," Mr White said. "However, when people are asked if they are happy with their lives, people in countries with good healthcare, a higher GDP per capita, and access to education were much more likely to report being happy.".
EU protectionists lose one: "Britain's retailers were handed a reprieve yesterday when European Commission plans to impose punitive tariffs on leather footwear from China and Vietnam were rejected by a majority of EU states. Britain was among 13 countries to lodge a preliminary vote against a proposal to impose anti-dumping duties of 16 per cent and 10 per cent respectively on Chinese and Vietnamese shoe imports from early October.
Signing Statements: "It's a sad day for the legal profession when its largest organization, the American Bar Association (the largest voluntary professional association in the world), succumbs to Bush-hatred. How else to explain the ABA's recent report to the effect that President Bush's use of signing statements is unprecedented and unconstitutional? It is neither. See here. As I said the other day, a president swears under oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This implies that he or she must refuse to enforce unconstitutional provisions of a statute—and if this is so, then the president may announce as much in a signing statement."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Friday, August 04, 2006
THE GENETICS OF CRIME BECOMING CLEARER
If it's all due to "poverty", how come most poor people are not criminals?
Why do some people from deprived or abusive backgrounds become violent criminals, while others, whose upbringing appears to have been equally disadvantageous, go on to lead productive, law-abiding lives? Might there be ways to spot high-risk individuals before they commit serious offences, perhaps even in childhood? ...
Even those most wedded to a sociological model of offending accept that a relatively small proportion of those convicted of criminal offences account for a very large proportion of total crime. David Farrington's study of every male born in Britain in 1956 found that as many as one third had been convicted of at least one non-traffic offence by the age of 30. But he and his colleagues also discovered that as few as 5 per cent were responsible for at least half of all known crime committed by the 1956 cohort. Other research suggests a group this small commits more than 70 per cent of all recorded offences, and more than 70 per cent of violent ones...
Moffitt cited several studies to propose that there is "a very small group of males who display high rates of antisocial behaviour across time." The same 5 per cent of boys first appear on the criminological radar screen in early childhood-being prone to aggression and violence, disobedience, recklessness, lying and theft. Even at primary school, they are likely to face exclusion and other sanctions. In adolescence, they are the youths who commit the more serious and violent crimes, and in adulthood they do not, like most of their peers, cease such behaviour.... The causes of "life-course persistent antisocial behaviour" are, wrote Moffitt, likely to lie "early in life, in factors that are present before or soon after birth." ...
In childhood, between the ages of three and 13, the Dunedin boys with the worst conduct problems at home and school also displayed "neurological abnormalities, low intellectual ability, reading difficulties, hyperactivity, poor scores on neuropsychological tests, and slow heart rate." ... In Dunedin, the 10 per cent of boys whose antisocial behaviour had started before adolescence were about three times as likely as the "adolescence- limited" group to be convicted of crimes after the age of 26, and they "tended to specialise in serious offences." ... Not only were they committing much more crime, their lives were in much worse shape in other ways. At 26, they were much more likely than the "adolescence-limited" group to be abusing alcohol, and to have suffered symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and depression. They were more likely to have abused their partners, and while they had fathered more children, they were less likely to be helping to rear their offspring. More than half had no high-school qualifications, and only one of them had attended college....
Studies of twins and adopted children had already established that antisocial behaviour is likely to be partly inherited. Identical twin pairs, who share the same genes, have been shown to be more likely to share antisocial traits than fraternal, non-identical ones. The children of criminals, even when adopted at an early age by non-abusive and non-criminal families, are more likely than average to become offenders themselves....
More here
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Hypocrisy in Connecticut: Senator Joe Lieberman, Senate Candidate Ned Lamont, and Gubernatorial Candidate John DeStefano are mouthing off at Wal-Mart. Paid Critics notes that all three have in the past either benefited from or endorsed Wal-Mart! Lamont even is/was a shareholder in Wal-Mart! Leftists really hate low prices for the average man. Only the rich Leftist elite should be allowed to have all the good stuff!
Cheaper cars coming: "General Motors Corp. said last year that the company plans to purchase $1 billion in Indian-made parts by 2008, according to a Wall Street Journal article."
The "power crisis" is a fake: "Hot weather like this current heat wave, increases demand dramatically for ice cream and ice cubes, so the sellers crank up their production. Voila! No shortages. Electricity, on the other hand, is a government protected MONOPOLY for a handful of politically-connected companies who have EXCLUSIVE TERRITORIES that shut out competitors. We consumers have NO CHOICE but to buy electricity from the government-protected monopoly, and pay the government-approved PRICE, which guarantees a MINIMUM PROFIT to the power company. Thus, the power companies have NO INCENTIVE to build more generating plants or even modernize their existing plants because they are guaranteed a minimum profit margin and suffer no threat of losing business. Electricity is produced, distributed and sold in America exactly the same way as it is done in Communist Cuba, North Korea, China, or Socialist Russia."
Journalist protects Leftist thugs: "A freelance video journalist was jailed Tuesday for refusing to give a grand jury his unsold footage from a 2005 protest in which anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car. Joshua Wolf, 24, could remain behind bars until next summer, when the grand jury investigating the incident is due to expire. Wolf had sold footage of the protest to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site. Investigators are seeking portions of his videotape that haven't been broadcast."
The Episcopal Church's female "bishop" sure knows how to preach the Gospel: "In a homily right after her election at the general convention, Jefferts Schori casually referred to "our mother Jesus." Telling a national magazine that there could be ways to heaven other than Jesus is, of course, contrary to what Jesus himself said on the matter: "I am the way, and the truth, and the light. There is no way to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). [Jesus was female??? The Episcopal Church sure has hit the "self-destruct" button]
Nutty Presbyterians: "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, according to a book to be released later this month by Westminster John Knox Press-a division of the denominational publisher for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is the third book on the subject by David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of theology at Claremont School of Theology who is also a well-published and prominent process theologian".
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
If it's all due to "poverty", how come most poor people are not criminals?
Why do some people from deprived or abusive backgrounds become violent criminals, while others, whose upbringing appears to have been equally disadvantageous, go on to lead productive, law-abiding lives? Might there be ways to spot high-risk individuals before they commit serious offences, perhaps even in childhood? ...
Even those most wedded to a sociological model of offending accept that a relatively small proportion of those convicted of criminal offences account for a very large proportion of total crime. David Farrington's study of every male born in Britain in 1956 found that as many as one third had been convicted of at least one non-traffic offence by the age of 30. But he and his colleagues also discovered that as few as 5 per cent were responsible for at least half of all known crime committed by the 1956 cohort. Other research suggests a group this small commits more than 70 per cent of all recorded offences, and more than 70 per cent of violent ones...
Moffitt cited several studies to propose that there is "a very small group of males who display high rates of antisocial behaviour across time." The same 5 per cent of boys first appear on the criminological radar screen in early childhood-being prone to aggression and violence, disobedience, recklessness, lying and theft. Even at primary school, they are likely to face exclusion and other sanctions. In adolescence, they are the youths who commit the more serious and violent crimes, and in adulthood they do not, like most of their peers, cease such behaviour.... The causes of "life-course persistent antisocial behaviour" are, wrote Moffitt, likely to lie "early in life, in factors that are present before or soon after birth." ...
In childhood, between the ages of three and 13, the Dunedin boys with the worst conduct problems at home and school also displayed "neurological abnormalities, low intellectual ability, reading difficulties, hyperactivity, poor scores on neuropsychological tests, and slow heart rate." ... In Dunedin, the 10 per cent of boys whose antisocial behaviour had started before adolescence were about three times as likely as the "adolescence- limited" group to be convicted of crimes after the age of 26, and they "tended to specialise in serious offences." ... Not only were they committing much more crime, their lives were in much worse shape in other ways. At 26, they were much more likely than the "adolescence-limited" group to be abusing alcohol, and to have suffered symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and depression. They were more likely to have abused their partners, and while they had fathered more children, they were less likely to be helping to rear their offspring. More than half had no high-school qualifications, and only one of them had attended college....
Studies of twins and adopted children had already established that antisocial behaviour is likely to be partly inherited. Identical twin pairs, who share the same genes, have been shown to be more likely to share antisocial traits than fraternal, non-identical ones. The children of criminals, even when adopted at an early age by non-abusive and non-criminal families, are more likely than average to become offenders themselves....
More here
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Hypocrisy in Connecticut: Senator Joe Lieberman, Senate Candidate Ned Lamont, and Gubernatorial Candidate John DeStefano are mouthing off at Wal-Mart. Paid Critics notes that all three have in the past either benefited from or endorsed Wal-Mart! Lamont even is/was a shareholder in Wal-Mart! Leftists really hate low prices for the average man. Only the rich Leftist elite should be allowed to have all the good stuff!
Cheaper cars coming: "General Motors Corp. said last year that the company plans to purchase $1 billion in Indian-made parts by 2008, according to a Wall Street Journal article."
The "power crisis" is a fake: "Hot weather like this current heat wave, increases demand dramatically for ice cream and ice cubes, so the sellers crank up their production. Voila! No shortages. Electricity, on the other hand, is a government protected MONOPOLY for a handful of politically-connected companies who have EXCLUSIVE TERRITORIES that shut out competitors. We consumers have NO CHOICE but to buy electricity from the government-protected monopoly, and pay the government-approved PRICE, which guarantees a MINIMUM PROFIT to the power company. Thus, the power companies have NO INCENTIVE to build more generating plants or even modernize their existing plants because they are guaranteed a minimum profit margin and suffer no threat of losing business. Electricity is produced, distributed and sold in America exactly the same way as it is done in Communist Cuba, North Korea, China, or Socialist Russia."
Journalist protects Leftist thugs: "A freelance video journalist was jailed Tuesday for refusing to give a grand jury his unsold footage from a 2005 protest in which anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car. Joshua Wolf, 24, could remain behind bars until next summer, when the grand jury investigating the incident is due to expire. Wolf had sold footage of the protest to San Francisco television stations and posted it on his Web site. Investigators are seeking portions of his videotape that haven't been broadcast."
The Episcopal Church's female "bishop" sure knows how to preach the Gospel: "In a homily right after her election at the general convention, Jefferts Schori casually referred to "our mother Jesus." Telling a national magazine that there could be ways to heaven other than Jesus is, of course, contrary to what Jesus himself said on the matter: "I am the way, and the truth, and the light. There is no way to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). [Jesus was female??? The Episcopal Church sure has hit the "self-destruct" button]
Nutty Presbyterians: "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, according to a book to be released later this month by Westminster John Knox Press-a division of the denominational publisher for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action is the third book on the subject by David Ray Griffin, a professor emeritus of theology at Claremont School of Theology who is also a well-published and prominent process theologian".
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Colorado Governor Signs Immigration Bill
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed a tough package of immigration laws Monday that could force 1 million people receiving state and federal benefits to prove they are legal U.S. residents. To handle an expected avalanche of people seeking waivers so they can keep getting government benefits while they line up the documents they need, Owens designated 32 driver's license bureaus as places to apply and opened an office at the Capitol to process their requests. A waiver would extend the deadline for producing the required identification until March 1. The law requires government agencies to verify that adults older than 18 are entitled to the benefits.
Other bills included measures passed during a special session this month requiring employers to verify that they do not employ illegal immigrants before they can receive grants from the state Economic Development Commission. ''This legislation will make a positive difference in the future of Colorado,'' Owens said.
Under emergency rules adopted Monday, the state will grant temporary waivers to an estimated 4,000 people in nursing homes or people with chronic health problems and accept some other forms of ID. The federal government has barred the state from imposing stricter limits on food stamps and Medicaid, Owens said, adding that he believes the state should be allowed to make its own rules for those programs.
More here
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REPORT FROM ZIMBABWE
Parliament re-opened on Tuesday this week but all attempts to watch the full event on state run TV were in vain. There was a power cut just a few minutes after the special repeat broadcast began and the night went dark and quiet - again.
Those few brief minutes however had been more than enough to raise eyebrows. A number of "cultural reforms" have been undertaken by Zimbabwe's parliament which now resembles a safari lodge. A stuffed leopard and two antelope heads hang on the walls and a leopard skin adorns the ceremonial chair used by Mr Mugabe. Two enormous elephant tusks now frame the Presidential chair and it was between these two great teeth that Mr Mugabe stood to address the House. Near him sat Mrs Mugabe on a high backed green leather chair which had been carefully placed on a striking zebra skin. Hardly had these images registered and before the speech began, the electricity went off.
The images of our leaders sitting amongst elephants and kudu, zebra and leopard are particularly ironic now as the country plunges back in time and people ravage the environment in order to survive. Our lavishly decorated safari parliament is about as far away from the reality of life in Zimbabwe as you can possibly imagine.
Every morning the sound in urban and rural Zimbabwe is that of wood chopping. All day every day you see lines of women walking with bundles of great long tree branches balanced on their heads and men with hand carts and wheel barrows piled high with newly chopped indigenous wood. All day, every day and in every direction you see smoke. Some is from urban householders cooking outside on open fires. More is from incessant uncontrolled fires streaming across the horizon, consuming everything in their path.
More here
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A FUNERAL WE MIGHT SEE SOON
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ELSEWHERE
I like it!: "Palestinian protesters stormed the U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a protest against Israel's bombing of a building in southern Lebanon that killed around 60 people, witnesses and U.N. staff said. Hundreds of members of Islamic Jihad militant group, some throwing stones and others firing rounds from assault rifles, attacked the compound at the end of a rally, witnesses said. At least two people were wounded."
Warren's piece: "Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe 'pops up' isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had 'resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties,' i.e., between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah. Christopher's piece needs to be read to be believed. It needs to be read as an example of the fatuousness of liberal elite opinion about the world we live in."
Social network sites face US ban: "Children in the US could be banned from using social networking sites in schools and libraries by a new law. The Deleting Online Predators Act tries to limit the access paedophiles have to the networking sites which have become hugely popular with minors. The act has already been approved by a large majority in the House of Representatives. Critics say the act is too broad and could mean a huge number of websites are cut off from users."
Genes for brain size have now been discovered -- and they have a huge effect on IQ! How pesky for the Left. (HT Chris Brand)
I think most readers of this blog will agree that I am rather prone to speaking unpopular truths. I was therefore rather pleased to find that there was a John Rae of long ago who also got into hot water for doing that. See here. Ray or Rae is an old Celtic name.
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed a tough package of immigration laws Monday that could force 1 million people receiving state and federal benefits to prove they are legal U.S. residents. To handle an expected avalanche of people seeking waivers so they can keep getting government benefits while they line up the documents they need, Owens designated 32 driver's license bureaus as places to apply and opened an office at the Capitol to process their requests. A waiver would extend the deadline for producing the required identification until March 1. The law requires government agencies to verify that adults older than 18 are entitled to the benefits.
Other bills included measures passed during a special session this month requiring employers to verify that they do not employ illegal immigrants before they can receive grants from the state Economic Development Commission. ''This legislation will make a positive difference in the future of Colorado,'' Owens said.
Under emergency rules adopted Monday, the state will grant temporary waivers to an estimated 4,000 people in nursing homes or people with chronic health problems and accept some other forms of ID. The federal government has barred the state from imposing stricter limits on food stamps and Medicaid, Owens said, adding that he believes the state should be allowed to make its own rules for those programs.
More here
****************************
REPORT FROM ZIMBABWE
Parliament re-opened on Tuesday this week but all attempts to watch the full event on state run TV were in vain. There was a power cut just a few minutes after the special repeat broadcast began and the night went dark and quiet - again.
Those few brief minutes however had been more than enough to raise eyebrows. A number of "cultural reforms" have been undertaken by Zimbabwe's parliament which now resembles a safari lodge. A stuffed leopard and two antelope heads hang on the walls and a leopard skin adorns the ceremonial chair used by Mr Mugabe. Two enormous elephant tusks now frame the Presidential chair and it was between these two great teeth that Mr Mugabe stood to address the House. Near him sat Mrs Mugabe on a high backed green leather chair which had been carefully placed on a striking zebra skin. Hardly had these images registered and before the speech began, the electricity went off.
The images of our leaders sitting amongst elephants and kudu, zebra and leopard are particularly ironic now as the country plunges back in time and people ravage the environment in order to survive. Our lavishly decorated safari parliament is about as far away from the reality of life in Zimbabwe as you can possibly imagine.
Every morning the sound in urban and rural Zimbabwe is that of wood chopping. All day every day you see lines of women walking with bundles of great long tree branches balanced on their heads and men with hand carts and wheel barrows piled high with newly chopped indigenous wood. All day, every day and in every direction you see smoke. Some is from urban householders cooking outside on open fires. More is from incessant uncontrolled fires streaming across the horizon, consuming everything in their path.
More here
***************************
A FUNERAL WE MIGHT SEE SOON
***************************
ELSEWHERE
I like it!: "Palestinian protesters stormed the U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a protest against Israel's bombing of a building in southern Lebanon that killed around 60 people, witnesses and U.N. staff said. Hundreds of members of Islamic Jihad militant group, some throwing stones and others firing rounds from assault rifles, attacked the compound at the end of a rally, witnesses said. At least two people were wounded."
Warren's piece: "Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe 'pops up' isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had 'resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties,' i.e., between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah. Christopher's piece needs to be read to be believed. It needs to be read as an example of the fatuousness of liberal elite opinion about the world we live in."
Social network sites face US ban: "Children in the US could be banned from using social networking sites in schools and libraries by a new law. The Deleting Online Predators Act tries to limit the access paedophiles have to the networking sites which have become hugely popular with minors. The act has already been approved by a large majority in the House of Representatives. Critics say the act is too broad and could mean a huge number of websites are cut off from users."
Genes for brain size have now been discovered -- and they have a huge effect on IQ! How pesky for the Left. (HT Chris Brand)
I think most readers of this blog will agree that I am rather prone to speaking unpopular truths. I was therefore rather pleased to find that there was a John Rae of long ago who also got into hot water for doing that. See here. Ray or Rae is an old Celtic name.
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Two follies
Despite being midwinter, it was a beautiful day in Brisbane yesterday: A cloudless blue sky, no wind and a temperature of something like 80 degrees in the old money. I could not stay indoors on a day like that so I got the Humber Super Snipe out of the garage and took a drive down to Wynnum -- a Brisbane bayside suburb. I went for a walk along the esplanade and bought a take-away coffee and cake to enjoy as I sat in the shade looking out to sea.
As I was sitting there, I was thinking about this report. It is a report about the great difficulties that the U.S. immigration authorities put in the way of many LEGAL immigrants to the USA. It seems that the U.S. authorities go to as great a length in avoiding their duties with legal immigrants as they do with illegal immigrants. They make it as hard for legal immigrants as they make it easy for illegal immigrants -- which is the exact reverse of what any sane person would want.
So the first thought that occurred to me was how heedless of all experience you have to be to think that governments can do anything well. As a libertarian, I would think that of course.
My second thought was about the people specifically highlighted in the article -- refugee Jews. They belong to the group that many nutters on both Left and Right believe runs America. If Jews run America, how come the American authorities give needy Jews such a hard time?
It seems to me that the influence Jews have in America is proportional to their numbers multiplied by their intellectual clout -- no more and no less. In other words, their influence is greater than their numbers alone would suggest but they are still only one piece on the chessboard of competing interests.
***************************
Brookes News Update
US economy and the trade deficit: Many economists will tell you that there is nothing wrong with trade deficit. After all, they will say, trade is mutually beneficial, so those foreigners who sell to Americans are benefiting as much as those Americans who buy the products. This is a superficial view that completely misses the point
Productivity, wages and jobs - more economic stupidity from the media, part II: Anti-market journalists argue than only heavily regulated labour markets can deliver higher wages. But US economic history completely refutes this statist belief. It was recognized at the time that American workers enjoyed higher real wages than highly unionized Europeans. This article explains why this was so
The Labor Party is itching to meddle with the Australian economy and the trade deficit: The Labor Party thinks it knows how to cure our trade deficit. It's deluding itself. The real problem is not the deficit but a monetary policy that gravely distorted the price structure. No amount of meddling by politicians can correct this. Only the market can make the final and necessary adjustments
Democratic Senator Murtha is not a war hero: It seems that Senator Murtha has a lot in common with Senator John Kerry. He stands accused of inventing his Vietnam heroics and lying about his military awards. Now Murtha has the nerve to try and demoralise the troops
Marxists never learn: The collapse of communism has, as expected, taught our Marxists nothing. They are incorrigible cultists, completely impervious to facts and carefully reasoned arguments. These cultists now argue that instead of capitalism causing the immiseration of the proletariat, it is exploiting Third World peasants. In other words, peasants have been substituted for Western workers
The Democrats: The 'Party of Death's' ploy: The federal government's abortion policy has decimated the African-American population. While blacks make up only about 12 percent of the population, they account for more than 40 percent of abortions
Conservatives who support same-sex marriage?: Republicans are Republicans and conservatives are conservatives. This has now raised the question of homosexual marriage vs. traditional values
*************************************
ELSEWHERE
The major Australian public broadcaster (the ABC) recently put up a children's program about Lebanon that gave the impression that Israel was to blame for all the suffering. Under pressure, they have now apologized for the misrepresentation and removed the story from their website. Some details here. The original story (with emendations) is reproduced here. Two conservative Senators helped in motivating the backdown.
Israeli PM rejects call to end Lebanon war: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected mounting international pressure to end its war against Hezbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon, as world powers squabbled over the urgency of a cease-fire.... But despite an international outcry over an air strike on Sunday that killed 54 civilians, most of them children, Mr Olmert said there would be no cease-fire for now. "The fighting continues. There is no cease-fire and there will not be any cease-fire in the coming days," Mr Olmert told local officials, drawing sustained applause. Despite its pause in air raids from early on Monday, Israel says it may still use aerial strikes to target Hezbollah leaders and rocket launchers and back up ground operations."
There is an article here about an evangelical preacher who refuses to support conservative political causes. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the most fundamentalist Christians (Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses etc.) oppose involvement in "the world" and Christ himself said to Pilate that "My kingdom is not of this world". But this guy is a fraud. He also says that Christians should not take a stance on moral issues like homosexuality. He must never have read Romans chapter 1. REAL fundamentalists have ALWAYS taken strong moral stances.
Who did this guy forget to pay off?: ""Immigration agents had prepared a nasty surprise for the Garcia Labor Company, a temporary worker contractor, when they moved against it on charges of hiring illegal immigrants. They brought a 40-count federal indictment, part of a new nationwide strategy by immigration officials to clamp down on employers of illegal immigrant laborers. Maximino Garcia, the president of the company, which provides low-wage laborers to businesses from Pennsylvania to Texas, stood before a federal judge here on Tuesday to answer conspiracy charges of aiding illegal immigrants and money laundering. If convicted, Mr. Garcia, who pleaded not guilty, could serve 20 years in jail and forfeit his headquarters building and $12 million. . . . Hiring illegal immigrants 'has been a low-risk, high-reward enterprise,' said Brian M. Moskowitz, the agency's [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] special agent in charge for Ohio and Michigan. 'We want to send the message that your cost of business just went up because you risk your livelihood, your corporate reputation and your personal freedom.'"
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Despite being midwinter, it was a beautiful day in Brisbane yesterday: A cloudless blue sky, no wind and a temperature of something like 80 degrees in the old money. I could not stay indoors on a day like that so I got the Humber Super Snipe out of the garage and took a drive down to Wynnum -- a Brisbane bayside suburb. I went for a walk along the esplanade and bought a take-away coffee and cake to enjoy as I sat in the shade looking out to sea.
As I was sitting there, I was thinking about this report. It is a report about the great difficulties that the U.S. immigration authorities put in the way of many LEGAL immigrants to the USA. It seems that the U.S. authorities go to as great a length in avoiding their duties with legal immigrants as they do with illegal immigrants. They make it as hard for legal immigrants as they make it easy for illegal immigrants -- which is the exact reverse of what any sane person would want.
So the first thought that occurred to me was how heedless of all experience you have to be to think that governments can do anything well. As a libertarian, I would think that of course.
My second thought was about the people specifically highlighted in the article -- refugee Jews. They belong to the group that many nutters on both Left and Right believe runs America. If Jews run America, how come the American authorities give needy Jews such a hard time?
It seems to me that the influence Jews have in America is proportional to their numbers multiplied by their intellectual clout -- no more and no less. In other words, their influence is greater than their numbers alone would suggest but they are still only one piece on the chessboard of competing interests.
***************************
Brookes News Update
US economy and the trade deficit: Many economists will tell you that there is nothing wrong with trade deficit. After all, they will say, trade is mutually beneficial, so those foreigners who sell to Americans are benefiting as much as those Americans who buy the products. This is a superficial view that completely misses the point
Productivity, wages and jobs - more economic stupidity from the media, part II: Anti-market journalists argue than only heavily regulated labour markets can deliver higher wages. But US economic history completely refutes this statist belief. It was recognized at the time that American workers enjoyed higher real wages than highly unionized Europeans. This article explains why this was so
The Labor Party is itching to meddle with the Australian economy and the trade deficit: The Labor Party thinks it knows how to cure our trade deficit. It's deluding itself. The real problem is not the deficit but a monetary policy that gravely distorted the price structure. No amount of meddling by politicians can correct this. Only the market can make the final and necessary adjustments
Democratic Senator Murtha is not a war hero: It seems that Senator Murtha has a lot in common with Senator John Kerry. He stands accused of inventing his Vietnam heroics and lying about his military awards. Now Murtha has the nerve to try and demoralise the troops
Marxists never learn: The collapse of communism has, as expected, taught our Marxists nothing. They are incorrigible cultists, completely impervious to facts and carefully reasoned arguments. These cultists now argue that instead of capitalism causing the immiseration of the proletariat, it is exploiting Third World peasants. In other words, peasants have been substituted for Western workers
The Democrats: The 'Party of Death's' ploy: The federal government's abortion policy has decimated the African-American population. While blacks make up only about 12 percent of the population, they account for more than 40 percent of abortions
Conservatives who support same-sex marriage?: Republicans are Republicans and conservatives are conservatives. This has now raised the question of homosexual marriage vs. traditional values
*************************************
ELSEWHERE
The major Australian public broadcaster (the ABC) recently put up a children's program about Lebanon that gave the impression that Israel was to blame for all the suffering. Under pressure, they have now apologized for the misrepresentation and removed the story from their website. Some details here. The original story (with emendations) is reproduced here. Two conservative Senators helped in motivating the backdown.
Israeli PM rejects call to end Lebanon war: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has rejected mounting international pressure to end its war against Hezbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon, as world powers squabbled over the urgency of a cease-fire.... But despite an international outcry over an air strike on Sunday that killed 54 civilians, most of them children, Mr Olmert said there would be no cease-fire for now. "The fighting continues. There is no cease-fire and there will not be any cease-fire in the coming days," Mr Olmert told local officials, drawing sustained applause. Despite its pause in air raids from early on Monday, Israel says it may still use aerial strikes to target Hezbollah leaders and rocket launchers and back up ground operations."
There is an article here about an evangelical preacher who refuses to support conservative political causes. Nothing wrong with that. Some of the most fundamentalist Christians (Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses etc.) oppose involvement in "the world" and Christ himself said to Pilate that "My kingdom is not of this world". But this guy is a fraud. He also says that Christians should not take a stance on moral issues like homosexuality. He must never have read Romans chapter 1. REAL fundamentalists have ALWAYS taken strong moral stances.
Who did this guy forget to pay off?: ""Immigration agents had prepared a nasty surprise for the Garcia Labor Company, a temporary worker contractor, when they moved against it on charges of hiring illegal immigrants. They brought a 40-count federal indictment, part of a new nationwide strategy by immigration officials to clamp down on employers of illegal immigrant laborers. Maximino Garcia, the president of the company, which provides low-wage laborers to businesses from Pennsylvania to Texas, stood before a federal judge here on Tuesday to answer conspiracy charges of aiding illegal immigrants and money laundering. If convicted, Mr. Garcia, who pleaded not guilty, could serve 20 years in jail and forfeit his headquarters building and $12 million. . . . Hiring illegal immigrants 'has been a low-risk, high-reward enterprise,' said Brian M. Moskowitz, the agency's [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] special agent in charge for Ohio and Michigan. 'We want to send the message that your cost of business just went up because you risk your livelihood, your corporate reputation and your personal freedom.'"
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
The common enemy of the Western world
According to a pair of Gallup polls released last week, 83 percent of Americans say Israel is justified in taking military action against Hezbollah, while 76 percent disapprove of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. Yet when asked which side in the conflict the United States should take, 65 percent answer: neither side. Indeed, 3 in 4 Americans say they are concerned that the US military will be drawn into the fighting, or that it will increase the likelihood of terrorism against the United States. Gallup's numbers suggest two things. First, that most Americans, sizing up the warfare in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, recognize that Hezbollah is the aggressor and that Israel is fighting in self-defense. And second, that most Americans believe this fight has nothing to do with the United States.
Welcome to Sept. 10. For years Osama bin Laden had preached that it was "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" Americans. His adherents had responded by blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and slamming a boat laden with explosives into the USS Cole. Yet most Americans paid no attention to Al Qaeda and its threats -- until 3,000 people lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. Has nothing been learned from that experience?
Hezbollah's barbaric assault on Israel -- kidnapping and murdering soldiers who weren't engaged in hostilities, firing waves of missiles into cities and towns, packing rockets with ball bearings meant to maximize suffering by shredding human flesh -- is part and parcel of the radical Islamist jihad against the free world. Nothing to do with the United States? It has *everything* to do with the United States. Hezbollah hates Americans at least as implacably as Al Qaeda does, and rarely misses an opportunity to say so.
More here
********************
ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS
Revolutionaries push pan-Arabism based on faith
Israel's continuing ordeal
Propaganda for young minds, courtesy of our ABC
The Lebanese war is not a game
Media bias and the threat to democracy
Report from Haifa
ABC SBS Bias
Proportional response and prisoners
Editorial: Foes must accept the Jewish state
Submission to UN Human Rights Council
To the National Association of Democratic Lawyers
The Opening Round of Iran's War Against the West
Solidarity Briefing
Hilali to lose advisory position
Proportionality
Address by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Statement from the G-8
Israel update
Communal solidarity tefillah Melbourne
Lettter from David Frankfurter
Fearing our own strength
Some media points
Analysis: Israel at war
Terror in Bombay
The Wisdom of Jonathan Netanyahu
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Hate crime in Australia: "The mufti of Australia has condemned an overnight attack on a Sydney synagogue. A rabbi and his young family were inside a house attached to the Parramatta Synagogue in Mason Street when it was attacked about 9pm (AEST) yesterday. Projectiles were hurled at the roof of the synagogue, and blocks of concrete were thrown at two cars, smashing windows. Shortly after the incident witnesses told police they saw a group of about 10 Middle Eastern men laughing and running down a nearby street."
The antisemitic U.N.: "If the intemperate United Nations response to Israel's defense of its citizens, or U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's off-the-cuff, before-any-investigation charge that Israel deliberately targeted U.N. peacekeepers surprises you, check out a small sample of facts National Center policy analyst Ryan Balis collected about the United Nations' shameful legacy vis-a-vis Jews and Israel"
The Iranian menace: "On July 29, 2006, the London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a detailed article on assistance extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, as reported by a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer who had trained Hizbullah naval units. According to the officer, Hizbullah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit. He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hizbullah in the July 14, 2006 firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hizbullah construct underground facilities - including command and control rooms - which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hizbullah fighters. In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hizbullah in its fight against Israel."
Chaos looming in British public services: "A huge rise in immigration from Eastern Europe next year could cause chaos in schools and hospitals and spark a public backlash, according to a leaked government report. It also gives warning that ministers may be forced to abandon their refusal to grant housing and welfare benefits, creating what it describes as an extra "pull factor", attracting further immigrants. The arrival of hundreds of thousands from abroad is already forcing down wages for low-paid workers with "serious implications" for social discord, the report insists. A "step change" in the level of immigration when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU next year could make things worse, it says."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
According to a pair of Gallup polls released last week, 83 percent of Americans say Israel is justified in taking military action against Hezbollah, while 76 percent disapprove of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. Yet when asked which side in the conflict the United States should take, 65 percent answer: neither side. Indeed, 3 in 4 Americans say they are concerned that the US military will be drawn into the fighting, or that it will increase the likelihood of terrorism against the United States. Gallup's numbers suggest two things. First, that most Americans, sizing up the warfare in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, recognize that Hezbollah is the aggressor and that Israel is fighting in self-defense. And second, that most Americans believe this fight has nothing to do with the United States.
Welcome to Sept. 10. For years Osama bin Laden had preached that it was "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" Americans. His adherents had responded by blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and slamming a boat laden with explosives into the USS Cole. Yet most Americans paid no attention to Al Qaeda and its threats -- until 3,000 people lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. Has nothing been learned from that experience?
Hezbollah's barbaric assault on Israel -- kidnapping and murdering soldiers who weren't engaged in hostilities, firing waves of missiles into cities and towns, packing rockets with ball bearings meant to maximize suffering by shredding human flesh -- is part and parcel of the radical Islamist jihad against the free world. Nothing to do with the United States? It has *everything* to do with the United States. Hezbollah hates Americans at least as implacably as Al Qaeda does, and rarely misses an opportunity to say so.
More here
********************
ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS
Revolutionaries push pan-Arabism based on faith
Israel's continuing ordeal
Propaganda for young minds, courtesy of our ABC
The Lebanese war is not a game
Media bias and the threat to democracy
Report from Haifa
ABC SBS Bias
Proportional response and prisoners
Editorial: Foes must accept the Jewish state
Submission to UN Human Rights Council
To the National Association of Democratic Lawyers
The Opening Round of Iran's War Against the West
Solidarity Briefing
Hilali to lose advisory position
Proportionality
Address by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Statement from the G-8
Israel update
Communal solidarity tefillah Melbourne
Lettter from David Frankfurter
Fearing our own strength
Some media points
Analysis: Israel at war
Terror in Bombay
The Wisdom of Jonathan Netanyahu
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Hate crime in Australia: "The mufti of Australia has condemned an overnight attack on a Sydney synagogue. A rabbi and his young family were inside a house attached to the Parramatta Synagogue in Mason Street when it was attacked about 9pm (AEST) yesterday. Projectiles were hurled at the roof of the synagogue, and blocks of concrete were thrown at two cars, smashing windows. Shortly after the incident witnesses told police they saw a group of about 10 Middle Eastern men laughing and running down a nearby street."
The antisemitic U.N.: "If the intemperate United Nations response to Israel's defense of its citizens, or U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's off-the-cuff, before-any-investigation charge that Israel deliberately targeted U.N. peacekeepers surprises you, check out a small sample of facts National Center policy analyst Ryan Balis collected about the United Nations' shameful legacy vis-a-vis Jews and Israel"
The Iranian menace: "On July 29, 2006, the London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a detailed article on assistance extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, as reported by a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer who had trained Hizbullah naval units. According to the officer, Hizbullah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit. He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hizbullah in the July 14, 2006 firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hizbullah construct underground facilities - including command and control rooms - which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hizbullah fighters. In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hizbullah in its fight against Israel."
Chaos looming in British public services: "A huge rise in immigration from Eastern Europe next year could cause chaos in schools and hospitals and spark a public backlash, according to a leaked government report. It also gives warning that ministers may be forced to abandon their refusal to grant housing and welfare benefits, creating what it describes as an extra "pull factor", attracting further immigrants. The arrival of hundreds of thousands from abroad is already forcing down wages for low-paid workers with "serious implications" for social discord, the report insists. A "step change" in the level of immigration when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU next year could make things worse, it says."
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Monday, July 31, 2006
Majority Rights
For anybody who is wondering what has happened to the "Majority Rights" blog, it is down for technical, not political reasons. Why? From what I gather, it has a "blue-eyed beauty" thread that is both gargantuan (with heaps of graphics) and very active (it has been going for months) and that blows the Bluehost cache. So Bluehost very arrogantly just took the whole blog down.
Update
Now back in action here.
For anybody who is wondering what has happened to the "Majority Rights" blog, it is down for technical, not political reasons. Why? From what I gather, it has a "blue-eyed beauty" thread that is both gargantuan (with heaps of graphics) and very active (it has been going for months) and that blows the Bluehost cache. So Bluehost very arrogantly just took the whole blog down.
Update
Now back in action here.
The Virtue of Riches
How wealth makes us more moral -- a few excerpts from here
For many Americans, riches are so disreputable that taking them away is a goal in itself. The left used to offer the misery of the poor as a reason for redistribution, but these days an increase in inequality is just as likely to be the rallying cry for higher taxation.... Even those who think wealth is good (or at least harmless) often implicitly suggest that the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of moral goals are separate questions. They would do well to read Benjamin Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. The author, a professor of political economy at Harvard, has written an economic tome that is accessible to the average reader without failing to offer something new to specialists as well: a compelling argument that rising incomes make us not just richer people, but better ones.
Friedman's definition of "better" will irritate libertarian-minded readers, who will quarrel with his decision to count support for generous government expenditures among the "moral consequences" of economic growth-or, at least, with his implication that such support is among the positive effects. But most of the consequences he discusses would impress nearly everyone. When earnings are growing, Friedman says, people are more tolerant of minorities, more welcoming to immigrants, more solicitous of their fellow citizens, more supportive of democratic institutions, and just plain better specimens of humanity.
This result is not surprising to anyone who has been around normally rapacious Wall Street bankers at bonus time, but Friedman provides historical evidence for the intuition. In painstaking detail, he outlines the economic history of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany since the industrial revolution. Over and over, he shows that during periods of economic stagnation, societies become more xenophobic, less tolerant of dissent, and more willing to embrace anti-democratic government actions. It is no accident, he argues, that communism and fascism were embraced by countries in economic crisis-or that the Palmer raids and the PATRIOT Act arrived during periods of rising financial insecurity for America's vast bourgeoisie.
Economists have long known that what they call the "wealth effect" can stimulate spending: If people feel richer because the value of their home or stock portfolio has gone up, or because they think their income is likely to rise in the future, they will loosen up and spend more. Friedman suggests that people don't merely become more willing to treat themselves to home entertainment systems and $4 cups of coffee as their wealth grows; they also become more generous to others. "With rising incomes," he says, "more people become willing to donate time and money. And among those who do so, rising incomes also allow people to feel able to do more."
But direct charity is only one of the ways we become more generous. Even more important is the tolerance that growing wealth brings for competition from others. There is a growing recognition that trade is a vastly more effective way to reduce global poverty than foreign aid; even Oxfam, a reliably left-wing nongovernmental organization, has jumped on the free trade bandwagon with a campaign against agricultural subsidies. Better still, trade benefits domestic consumers. Yet progress on that front is nearly impossible unless economic prosperity is rising fast enough to ease the fears of those who are threatened by a more open market....
*************************
ELSEWHERE
The Protocols of Pat Buchanan: "Since the outbreak of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives have made themselves true exponents of populism: the Jew-baiting, conspiracy-driven demagoguery of 1890s agrarians. In two columns, posted at WorldNetDaily this week, Buchanan accused President Bush of being a puppet of nefarious Jewish warmongers. Outlets of the Hate America Right - especially Paul Craig Roberts and LewRockwell.com - have joined him, and then some. Nothing sets Buchanan's imagination racing like a Bush-backed Israeli war. On Tuesday, Pat asked, "Who is whispering in his ear?" His answer: bloodthirsty Hebrews."
Our taxes at work - for Hezbollah: "The leading news item on the ABC [Australia's public broadcaster] "Insiders" - the updated score of casualties caused by Israeli action in South Lebanon. What about a week by week count of the number of rockets fired into Israel and the resulting casualities, complete with dramatic footage of debris and injured children? Oh dear no, we are just providing a balanced report on the news".
Ahmadinejad orders foreign words out of Persian language: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issued a new order for the Persian language to be purged of foreign words that have crept into everyday usage, the country's language watchdog said on Saturday... He was confirming a report in the Hambestegi newspaper, which said the ultra-nationalist president "has obliged officials to use all cultural means to encourage and educate people to use accurate spoken and written Persian"... In the past, the Persian Academy has coined terms to replace English words such as "helicopter" and "mobile phone". Their new equivalents, already used by state media, are "rotating wings" and "companion phone". But the effort has also triggered many jokes, with one popular sitcom on state television coming up with the term "stretchy bite" as an alternative to "pizza". The first attempt to take the Persian language back to its roots was made under one of Iran's former kings, Reza Pahlavi (1925-1941), who ordered the Academy to find replacements for numerous Arabic words.
The American Left as "crisis cult": "Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin proposes an interesting framework for understanding the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American Left at his very interesting website One Cosmos. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic anthropologist Weston LaBarre, he posits that the left has become a "crisis cult" such as are found in societies whose bedrock assumptions break down in the face of the superior strength of foreign cultures impinging on their territory... Godwin explains: "...progressives are having to cope with a catastrophic collapse of their world and all of its comforting myths. As each myth crumbles in succession, they become increasingly frantic in papering over reality with the downright strange beliefs of their progressive crisis cult.". Thus come delusional assertions: Bush is an idiot despite degrees from Yale and Harvard; Republicans are questioning the patriotism of Democrats; the monitoring of international phone calls signals the onset of totalitarianism; and (my favorite) Air American founder Sheldon Drobny's assertion that Karl Rove is behind the anti-Semitic posts at Daily Kos. I think it is almost unquestionable that the Left's belief systems have proven incongruent with the real world. Communism didn't work and only survives as a pretext for despotism in North Korea and China. Welfare is a trap, and poor people's lot in America has improved since access to it was term-limited. Higher taxes on "the rich" depress economic growth and throw people out of work. The list could go on..."
N.Y. County law to back up unenforced Federal law: "Any businesses or groups doing business with Suffolk County would be required to submit an annual affidavit affirming that none of their employees are in the U.S. illegally, under a proposal by the county executive. The rule, suggested by County Executive Steve Levy, would be the first of its kind in New York state. Businesses, social service agencies, local governments and any other groups with county contracts would be required to submit the affidavits. The county law would be intended to back up an existing federal statute requiring employers to document that their employees are not in the country illegally. If the proposal was approved, a first violation would carry fines of up to $2,000 and six months in jail. A second violation would come with a fine of up to $2,000 per day for each illegal employee. A third violation would bar the company from any further contracts with the county.
There is a survey here which people who use computers at work may like to have a go at.
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
How wealth makes us more moral -- a few excerpts from here
For many Americans, riches are so disreputable that taking them away is a goal in itself. The left used to offer the misery of the poor as a reason for redistribution, but these days an increase in inequality is just as likely to be the rallying cry for higher taxation.... Even those who think wealth is good (or at least harmless) often implicitly suggest that the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of moral goals are separate questions. They would do well to read Benjamin Friedman's The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. The author, a professor of political economy at Harvard, has written an economic tome that is accessible to the average reader without failing to offer something new to specialists as well: a compelling argument that rising incomes make us not just richer people, but better ones.
Friedman's definition of "better" will irritate libertarian-minded readers, who will quarrel with his decision to count support for generous government expenditures among the "moral consequences" of economic growth-or, at least, with his implication that such support is among the positive effects. But most of the consequences he discusses would impress nearly everyone. When earnings are growing, Friedman says, people are more tolerant of minorities, more welcoming to immigrants, more solicitous of their fellow citizens, more supportive of democratic institutions, and just plain better specimens of humanity.
This result is not surprising to anyone who has been around normally rapacious Wall Street bankers at bonus time, but Friedman provides historical evidence for the intuition. In painstaking detail, he outlines the economic history of the United States, Britain, France, and Germany since the industrial revolution. Over and over, he shows that during periods of economic stagnation, societies become more xenophobic, less tolerant of dissent, and more willing to embrace anti-democratic government actions. It is no accident, he argues, that communism and fascism were embraced by countries in economic crisis-or that the Palmer raids and the PATRIOT Act arrived during periods of rising financial insecurity for America's vast bourgeoisie.
Economists have long known that what they call the "wealth effect" can stimulate spending: If people feel richer because the value of their home or stock portfolio has gone up, or because they think their income is likely to rise in the future, they will loosen up and spend more. Friedman suggests that people don't merely become more willing to treat themselves to home entertainment systems and $4 cups of coffee as their wealth grows; they also become more generous to others. "With rising incomes," he says, "more people become willing to donate time and money. And among those who do so, rising incomes also allow people to feel able to do more."
But direct charity is only one of the ways we become more generous. Even more important is the tolerance that growing wealth brings for competition from others. There is a growing recognition that trade is a vastly more effective way to reduce global poverty than foreign aid; even Oxfam, a reliably left-wing nongovernmental organization, has jumped on the free trade bandwagon with a campaign against agricultural subsidies. Better still, trade benefits domestic consumers. Yet progress on that front is nearly impossible unless economic prosperity is rising fast enough to ease the fears of those who are threatened by a more open market....
*************************
ELSEWHERE
The Protocols of Pat Buchanan: "Since the outbreak of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives have made themselves true exponents of populism: the Jew-baiting, conspiracy-driven demagoguery of 1890s agrarians. In two columns, posted at WorldNetDaily this week, Buchanan accused President Bush of being a puppet of nefarious Jewish warmongers. Outlets of the Hate America Right - especially Paul Craig Roberts and LewRockwell.com - have joined him, and then some. Nothing sets Buchanan's imagination racing like a Bush-backed Israeli war. On Tuesday, Pat asked, "Who is whispering in his ear?" His answer: bloodthirsty Hebrews."
Our taxes at work - for Hezbollah: "The leading news item on the ABC [Australia's public broadcaster] "Insiders" - the updated score of casualties caused by Israeli action in South Lebanon. What about a week by week count of the number of rockets fired into Israel and the resulting casualities, complete with dramatic footage of debris and injured children? Oh dear no, we are just providing a balanced report on the news".
Ahmadinejad orders foreign words out of Persian language: "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issued a new order for the Persian language to be purged of foreign words that have crept into everyday usage, the country's language watchdog said on Saturday... He was confirming a report in the Hambestegi newspaper, which said the ultra-nationalist president "has obliged officials to use all cultural means to encourage and educate people to use accurate spoken and written Persian"... In the past, the Persian Academy has coined terms to replace English words such as "helicopter" and "mobile phone". Their new equivalents, already used by state media, are "rotating wings" and "companion phone". But the effort has also triggered many jokes, with one popular sitcom on state television coming up with the term "stretchy bite" as an alternative to "pizza". The first attempt to take the Persian language back to its roots was made under one of Iran's former kings, Reza Pahlavi (1925-1941), who ordered the Academy to find replacements for numerous Arabic words.
The American Left as "crisis cult": "Clinical psychologist Robert Godwin proposes an interesting framework for understanding the increasingly bizarre behavior of the American Left at his very interesting website One Cosmos. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic anthropologist Weston LaBarre, he posits that the left has become a "crisis cult" such as are found in societies whose bedrock assumptions break down in the face of the superior strength of foreign cultures impinging on their territory... Godwin explains: "...progressives are having to cope with a catastrophic collapse of their world and all of its comforting myths. As each myth crumbles in succession, they become increasingly frantic in papering over reality with the downright strange beliefs of their progressive crisis cult.". Thus come delusional assertions: Bush is an idiot despite degrees from Yale and Harvard; Republicans are questioning the patriotism of Democrats; the monitoring of international phone calls signals the onset of totalitarianism; and (my favorite) Air American founder Sheldon Drobny's assertion that Karl Rove is behind the anti-Semitic posts at Daily Kos. I think it is almost unquestionable that the Left's belief systems have proven incongruent with the real world. Communism didn't work and only survives as a pretext for despotism in North Korea and China. Welfare is a trap, and poor people's lot in America has improved since access to it was term-limited. Higher taxes on "the rich" depress economic growth and throw people out of work. The list could go on..."
N.Y. County law to back up unenforced Federal law: "Any businesses or groups doing business with Suffolk County would be required to submit an annual affidavit affirming that none of their employees are in the U.S. illegally, under a proposal by the county executive. The rule, suggested by County Executive Steve Levy, would be the first of its kind in New York state. Businesses, social service agencies, local governments and any other groups with county contracts would be required to submit the affidavits. The county law would be intended to back up an existing federal statute requiring employers to document that their employees are not in the country illegally. If the proposal was approved, a first violation would carry fines of up to $2,000 and six months in jail. A second violation would come with a fine of up to $2,000 per day for each illegal employee. A third violation would bar the company from any further contracts with the county.
There is a survey here which people who use computers at work may like to have a go at.
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
Sunday, July 30, 2006
European Regulators Disregard Fairness, Undermine Property Rights (Again) ... While the U.S. Government Remains Silent
The European Commission (EC), in all its zeal to control competition worldwide by targeting successful U.S. corporations, has once again shown its anti-American stripes, disregard for fairness and contempt for intellectual property rights. This week, the EC issued an unprecedented ruling and levied yet another astronomical fine totaling $357 million against Microsoft Corporation for what the Commission said was the U.S. software giant's failure to comply with its 2004 "antitrust" order....
If this were just another ho-hum antitrust case, there would be little cause for alarm. Even if this was just about slapping Microsoft on the hand for some supposed offense, few would take notice. But clearly this case has significant ramifications. Indeed, the EC's latest action is further evidence that it cares for nothing more than controlling worldwide competition, and undermining property rights and the foundation of free-enterprise that is intellectual property.
You see, Microsoft's competitors want access to its valuable source code, which is the core of the company's business, so they can further profit from Microsoft's success by plundering its intellectual property. Failing to acquire free access to the source code, in which Microsoft invested tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to develop, under the terms of the company's 2001 court-approved settlement with the U.S. government and state plaintiffs, those competitors are now colluding with all-too-willing, power-hungry EC regulators. As the EC's arrogance grows, so does the threat to the U.S. economy. All successful U.S. companies, their employees and consumers worldwide beware!
The long-term impact of the EC's actions is nauseating to consider: It is a simple fact of economics - without private property rights, no incentive to innovate exists. No incentive to innovate, no innovation. No innovation, less jobs. Less jobs, less money for consumers to buy new products -- new products that won't exist because the incentive to innovate is eliminated.
It goes without saying that unchecked power in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats is the most dangerous threat to individual freedom and free enterprise. Bit by bit they will undoubtedly and mercilessly claim one right after another until competition is eliminated, innovation is crushed, taxes are beyond oppressive and economies become trampled under the feet of unmotivated, apathetic consumers and business owners...
If the EC's unprecedented, self-appointed powers continue unchecked, coupled with its growing anti-American sentiment, no American company -- large or small -- expanding business overseas is safe from the foreign regulatory body's wrath or cynical manipulation.
More here
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Radioblogger has a good chart of the decline in the circulation of the L.A. Times. I wonder when the morons who own the paper will realize that turning your paper in a propaganda sheet is not good for business. Rupert Murdoch has been so successful in part because he realizes that BALANCE is good for business.
Just the title of the following book would seem to recommend it: "The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat"
What's wrong with the Democrats?: "The Democrats' fundamental weakness is that even after four decades of their strenuously celebrating the moral supremacy of every organized minority, our political system remains, more or less, one of majority rule. It's hard to win a majority if you don't personally want to be part of the majority because your ego centers around visualizing yourself as better than the average American. If you don't like the American majority, either in principle or in person, the majority won't like you. The GOP, in contrast, presents itself as the party of normal American voters, whose demographic transformation lags decades behind the raw population totals."
Troubles of transition: "To get a good sense of the practical consequences of socialist economies, whatever the new label they have been given, it would be valuable for proponents to get a close look at what has happened in the former Soviet bloc countries. Even though nearly two decades have passed since the Soviet system has collapsed, the signs of socialism are everywhere. That's in part because these societies have not yet managed to generate the wealth that would be required so as to replace all the horrible leftovers of the socialist system with what a free and prosperous country can produce. Rows of dilapidated apartment houses, factory buildings, government offices, schools and the like are strewn across these countries with little evidence that purging them soon is very likely. After all, even though the Draconian type socialist planned economy is now part of the miserable past in most of these places, a robust recovery has not yet taken place, so that people, companies, and communities could afford to get rid of the remains of the socialist era."
San Francisco acts against graffiti: "Carlos Romero left his spray-painted graffiti marks around San Francisco for years, tagging everything from fences and walls to street signs and trash cans with such monikers as CREAM and QUESO (which in Spanish means cheese).... San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced Monday that his office obtained a civil injunction and $20,000 in financial penalties against Romero, whom Herrera called "one of San Francisco's most prolific graffiti vandals." The case marks the first time the city has filed a civil lawsuit against a graffiti tagger. "We want to send a message to vandals that we are going to do whatever it takes to go after them," Herrera said... Earlier this month, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a new effort to streamline the city's efforts to clean up graffiti by centralizing all removal and abatement through the city's Department of Public Works, rather than having several city departments respond to the problem. The hope is that public property will be cleaned more quickly. Newsom also earmarked $475,000 in his 2006 proposed budget to help pay for the new plan. As for Romero, officials are confident he won't strike again. In a news release announcing the settlement, Herrera even called the young man, who still lives with his mother, a "reformed tagger." He has a day job at the Pottery Barn that could help cover the costs."
In case you have not seen it already, there is a great video link here to a powerful attack on Islamic "civilization" that originally aired on Al Jazeera television. The female speaker is Wafa Sultan, an Syrian-Arab psychiatrist now living in Los Angeles.
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).
**************************
"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.
****************************
The European Commission (EC), in all its zeal to control competition worldwide by targeting successful U.S. corporations, has once again shown its anti-American stripes, disregard for fairness and contempt for intellectual property rights. This week, the EC issued an unprecedented ruling and levied yet another astronomical fine totaling $357 million against Microsoft Corporation for what the Commission said was the U.S. software giant's failure to comply with its 2004 "antitrust" order....
If this were just another ho-hum antitrust case, there would be little cause for alarm. Even if this was just about slapping Microsoft on the hand for some supposed offense, few would take notice. But clearly this case has significant ramifications. Indeed, the EC's latest action is further evidence that it cares for nothing more than controlling worldwide competition, and undermining property rights and the foundation of free-enterprise that is intellectual property.
You see, Microsoft's competitors want access to its valuable source code, which is the core of the company's business, so they can further profit from Microsoft's success by plundering its intellectual property. Failing to acquire free access to the source code, in which Microsoft invested tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to develop, under the terms of the company's 2001 court-approved settlement with the U.S. government and state plaintiffs, those competitors are now colluding with all-too-willing, power-hungry EC regulators. As the EC's arrogance grows, so does the threat to the U.S. economy. All successful U.S. companies, their employees and consumers worldwide beware!
The long-term impact of the EC's actions is nauseating to consider: It is a simple fact of economics - without private property rights, no incentive to innovate exists. No incentive to innovate, no innovation. No innovation, less jobs. Less jobs, less money for consumers to buy new products -- new products that won't exist because the incentive to innovate is eliminated.
It goes without saying that unchecked power in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats is the most dangerous threat to individual freedom and free enterprise. Bit by bit they will undoubtedly and mercilessly claim one right after another until competition is eliminated, innovation is crushed, taxes are beyond oppressive and economies become trampled under the feet of unmotivated, apathetic consumers and business owners...
If the EC's unprecedented, self-appointed powers continue unchecked, coupled with its growing anti-American sentiment, no American company -- large or small -- expanding business overseas is safe from the foreign regulatory body's wrath or cynical manipulation.
More here
***********************************
ELSEWHERE
Radioblogger has a good chart of the decline in the circulation of the L.A. Times. I wonder when the morons who own the paper will realize that turning your paper in a propaganda sheet is not good for business. Rupert Murdoch has been so successful in part because he realizes that BALANCE is good for business.
Just the title of the following book would seem to recommend it: "The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat"
What's wrong with the Democrats?: "The Democrats' fundamental weakness is that even after four decades of their strenuously celebrating the moral supremacy of every organized minority, our political system remains, more or less, one of majority rule. It's hard to win a majority if you don't personally want to be part of the majority because your ego centers around visualizing yourself as better than the average American. If you don't like the American majority, either in principle or in person, the majority won't like you. The GOP, in contrast, presents itself as the party of normal American voters, whose demographic transformation lags decades behind the raw population totals."
Troubles of transition: "To get a good sense of the practical consequences of socialist economies, whatever the new label they have been given, it would be valuable for proponents to get a close look at what has happened in the former Soviet bloc countries. Even though nearly two decades have passed since the Soviet system has collapsed, the signs of socialism are everywhere. That's in part because these societies have not yet managed to generate the wealth that would be required so as to replace all the horrible leftovers of the socialist system with what a free and prosperous country can produce. Rows of dilapidated apartment houses, factory buildings, government offices, schools and the like are strewn across these countries with little evidence that purging them soon is very likely. After all, even though the Draconian type socialist planned economy is now part of the miserable past in most of these places, a robust recovery has not yet taken place, so that people, companies, and communities could afford to get rid of the remains of the socialist era."
San Francisco acts against graffiti: "Carlos Romero left his spray-painted graffiti marks around San Francisco for years, tagging everything from fences and walls to street signs and trash cans with such monikers as CREAM and QUESO (which in Spanish means cheese).... San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced Monday that his office obtained a civil injunction and $20,000 in financial penalties against Romero, whom Herrera called "one of San Francisco's most prolific graffiti vandals." The case marks the first time the city has filed a civil lawsuit against a graffiti tagger. "We want to send a message to vandals that we are going to do whatever it takes to go after them," Herrera said... Earlier this month, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a new effort to streamline the city's efforts to clean up graffiti by centralizing all removal and abatement through the city's Department of Public Works, rather than having several city departments respond to the problem. The hope is that public property will be cleaned more quickly. Newsom also earmarked $475,000 in his 2006 proposed budget to help pay for the new plan. As for Romero, officials are confident he won't strike again. In a news release announcing the settlement, Herrera even called the young man, who still lives with his mother, a "reformed tagger." He has a day job at the Pottery Barn that could help cover the costs."
In case you have not seen it already, there is a great video link here to a powerful attack on Islamic "civilization" that originally aired on Al Jazeera television. The female speaker is Wafa Sultan, an Syrian-Arab psychiatrist now living in Los Angeles.
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).
**************************
"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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