Tough test of Britishness widened

Mainly applicable to white immigrants from Eastern Europe. Not applicable to hordes of illegal Muslim immigrants of course

Britain has almost doubled the number of new arrivals who must sit new tests on the English language and British way of life. The Blair Government announced yesterday that the tests would be extended to all people seeking to stay in the country indefinitely, after first imposing it last year on applicants for British citizenship. About 200,000 people applied for citizenship last year but another 180,000 would have been covered by the new requirement on people seeking indefinite leave to remain, a status one step short of citizenship.

The so-called Britishness test has also been widened to cover questions about the nation's welfare system, a move lampooned by critics as training new arrivals how to apply for welfare.... The Britishness test involves 24 multiple-choice questions to be answered in 45 minutes, with applicants needing to get at least 18 correct. Sitting the test will cost $34 but failed applicants can sit it as many times as they want, unlike the tougher policy in The Netherlands where there is a maximum of three attempts.

People over 65 will be exempt from the tests, and those with poor English can opt to take a "skills for life" and language course rather than doing the test.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

France, steeped in genocidal blood, must face trial: "In April 1994 the French Embassy became the setting for the formation of the extremist Hutu Government that was to organise and carry out the meticulously planned genocide of the Tutsis. Witnesses spoke of these ministers, many now facing life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, sitting in plush embassy chairs comparing notes on where the killing was going best. Their host, the French Ambassador, later helped to evacuate those extremists to Paris, away from the apocalypse they had created. The ambassador then made a bonfire of two rooms piled high with documents linking his Government with that of the Hutu dictatorship of Juvenal Habyarimana... During the next three years Mitterrand had no compunction in sending in troops to save a brutal and corrupt regime. The Hutu army received millions of dollars of French weaponry; and the French elite training corps trained its Rwandan allies in how to dismember bodies, fire its new heavy artillery and use attack Gazelle helicopters."

Theologian rejects Christ. Allah OK: "To live peacefully with Muslims and Jews, Christians must put aside the notion that their faith requires the creation of a Christian kingdom on Earth, a Lipscomb University theologian told an interfaith gathering at the university. 'We are not going to get very far in our relationship with Jews or Muslims if we do not let go of this idea,' Lipscomb professor Lee Camp said at Tuesday's conference. The unusual gathering of several dozen clergy and lay people was devoted to resolving religious conflict in Nashville and around the world. 'We need to forsake the Christendom model,' Camp said. 'The most basic Christian commitment ... is that we say we believe in the Lordship of Jesus. But, if we claim that, how can a Muslim or Jew trust us, if we say Jesus is the Lord of all Lords?'" Update: Bill Hobbs says Dr Camp was maliciously misquoted.

Jihad against music: "Music is forbidden in Islamic law, although this law is often ignored. Muslim hardliners don't ignore it, and they don't want you to, either..... An Al Qaida-aligned cell has declared war on music and the Internet in the Palestinian Authority. The group, entitled "Swords of Islam," has claimed responsibility for attacking stores that offer music and Internet. About a dozen such stores have been bombed in the Gaza Strip."

A good start: "Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, began the first full week of his six-year term Monday by signing a decree to reduce his own salary and the salaries of top government officials by 10 percent. The money saved, which amounts to around $2.5 billion, will be spent on social programs and law enforcement. As VOA's Greg Flakus reports from Mexico City, the new president is also seeking more foreign investment to boost job growth in his country"

Ford in deep doo-doo: "Struggling Ford Motor says it has pledged substantially all of the company's assets--including factories, equipment and its highly profitable Ford Motor Credit arm--to obtain $18 billion in badly needed loans that will help finance its turnaround effort. It's the first time in Ford's 103-year history that it has been forced to pledge its core automotive assets as collateral to obtain financing. But the cost of borrowing money for Ford increased substantially last year after credit rating agencies cut the company's debt ratings to "junk status."

Democrats To Slash Missile Defense: "This has long been one of the most bizarre articles of faith among liberals -- that a purely defensive system to stop the incineration of entire cities is morally wrong. Don't buy the various claims they make about the system not working or being too expensive or, strangest of all, it being "destabilizing." Wouldn't want to "destabilize" that carefully-calibrated Balance of Terror in our favor or anything. As can "can't work," it can, and elements of the system work even now. As for too expensive -- well, how much is Los Angeles worth, exactly? Seems to me it's pretty pricey, and would be difficult to replace. The liberals are committed to spending trillions to stave off a farfetched threat of losing ten meters of shoreline, but won't spend a penny to defend against an increasingly-likely attack against the US via missile. We can simply use a smile as our nuclear umbrella".

Britain: Adulterer wins the right to privacy: "A high-profile figure in the sports world who had an affair with another man’s wife has won a court order banning the betrayed husband from naming him in the media. In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, Mr Justice Eady granted a temporary injunction to the adulterer — who is in the “public eye” but can be identified only as CC — against the husband, AB. The judge ruled that even a public figure engaging in an adulterous affair had a “right to privacy” under the European Convention on Human Rights to protect his wife and children. The order, which stands until further order or the main trial on February 12, gags the husband from spilling the beans about the affair from “revenge” or “spite” or to make money from the story... The judge, who could find no legal precedent from the 19th or 20th centuries, said that he was faced with “the striking proposition that a spouse whose partner has committed adultery owes a duty of confidence to the third party adulterer to keep quiet about it”. ... He added that since English law did not offer an enforceable right to privacy, CC’s claim was that publication would be a breach of confidence"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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FONT SHENANIGANS

I have had a complaint from one reader saying that the font size on this blog is too small and hard to read. I have sometimes wondered about that but thought that spectacles should solve any problem. Nonetheless, not being a rigid Leftist with a "one size fits all" ideology, I have decided to cater for those who would like a larger font. I have enlarged the font here by one pixel and I also now post all content on my old site at the same time as I post it on this site -- and I use a much larger font on my old site -- hopefully making it a good site for the partially blind. See HERE.

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THE CHILDISH LEFTIST MIND

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history's lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are "workers," "minorities," "the little guy," "women," and the "unemployed." They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims' plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the "root causes" of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: "Big Business," "Big Corporations," "greedy capitalists," U.S. Imperialists," "the oppressors," "the rich," "the wealthy," "the powerful" and "the selfish."

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is "In Government We Trust." To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone's material welfare, provide for everyone's healthcare, protect everyone's self-esteem, correct everyone's social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions.

With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism's irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism's distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind's relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia-to live what Jacques Barzun has called "the unconditioned life" in which "everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways"-the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world's economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal's attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda's principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

An excellent brief comment on the shambles that is the British Conservative Party here. It is such a straight-talking piece that even Britain's conservative "Sunday Telegraph" would not publish it, despite it being written by one of their regular columnists.

Crass Senator update: "The "icy exchange" between President Bush and Virginia Sen.-elect James Webb has occasioned a great deal of comment... With all respect to the many commenters, the copious commentary may be missing the most likely root of this exchange: Senator-elect Webb's son probably does not agree with his father's anti-war stance. If that's true, then the elder Webb has very good reason to fear being drawn into a conversation with the President that a more customary response to "How's your boy?" would have occasioned. If the Senator-elect had been drawn into the conversation that the President invited, Mr. Webb pŠre might well have faced the need to either admit that his son supports the war or to dissemble to the President. It's not surprising that the new Senator would choose to evade that choice after his original plan - completely avoiding the President at this gathering - was frustrated by Mr. Bush's attempt to be friendly.

Planned Parenthood covers up sex abuse: "Sexual activity with underage girls is illegal in all 50 states-yet Life Dynamics discovered that Planned Parenthood counselors are willing to cover up sexual crimes against underage girls by adult males! LDI encouraged a team of girls to call PP clinics and pretend to have been sexually abused by adult males. In case after case, PP counselors willingly ignored state law to cover up these molestations and violations of statutory rape laws! These conversations were taped by LDI. Each PP clinic that has covered up child molestation must be prosecuted!"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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Western aid to the Third World does not alleviate poverty

The humanitarian case for aid has been based on an analogy with the Western welfare state. The idea was that many people favour welfare to transfer wealth from the relatively rich to the relatively poor within a country, so they will favour welfare to transfer wealth from relatively rich countries to relatively poor ones.

But many commentators not necessarily hostile to foreign aid, I.M.D. Little and J.M. Clifford for example, disagreed. They emphasised that the humanitarian motive for giving aid may have justified transferring Western taxpayers' money to poor people, but not to poor governments: the latter may have no effects on the former.

With the likes of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Joseph Mobutu of the Congo, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and a host of other kleptocratic tropical gangsters in power, aid money has simply been stolen. Many African rulers rely on aid to feed their people while they destroy their livelihoods through a neglect of, and even by destroying, infrastructure.

According to New York University professor of economics William Easterly, despite more than $2billion in foreign aid being given to Tanzania for roads, the roads did not improve. What increased was the bureaucracy, with the government producing 2400 reports for the 1000 donor missions that visited each year....

But statistical studies of the effects of foreign aid on growth and poverty alleviation have not been favourable. A recent study found that foreign aid "appears to redistribute from the reasonably well-off in the West to most income groups in the Third World except the very poorest". This is consistent with the evidence from both poor and rich countries that the middle classes tend to capture government transfers. Another study found that, after correcting for the link between aid and income levels and growth, the effect of aid on growth is often negative. A survey of other such studies concludes that "there is now widespread scepticism that concessional assistance does have positive effects on growth, poverty reduction or environmental quality". In badly run developing countries, governments channel aid to small elites. Poor people in villages and shanty towns never see any aid. Infant and child death rates remain high and women still die in unattended childbirth in countries on which aid is focused.

Source

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THE LATEST ARTICLES UP ON ICJS

No tolerance for love and mercy in Bangladesh
Olmert's ill-timed Washington visit
Hezbollah's missiles back in Lebanon
Mideast: Lessons from classical warfare
ABC Current editorial policies etc
How Should Israel Respond to War Crimes
Jihad in cyberspace
A public broadcaster acknowledges its left-wing bias
Greg Price: Taking moral equivalence to an extreme
Scott has power to ensure we see the last latte at the ABC
Goings on in the Senate
No, sheik, sorry isn't good enough

See the video of a BBC interview on the Muslim Veil Row here. Do watch particularly the last question the BBC interviewer asks.

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ELSEWHERE

French Leftist rhetoric combines with capitalist deeds: "Yet Jospin, the socialist, pursued privatizations of state-owned enterprises with extraordinary vigor: during his five-year tenure, from 1997 to 2002, he privatized more than any of his "conservative" predecessors, and almost more than all of his predecessors combined. France Telecom, Air France, Cr,dit Lyonnais, Aerospatial-Matra, Banque Hervet--just some of the names of the more than 900 companies that saw shares floated on the stock market. With roughly 31 billion Euros ($40 billion) in privatization revenues, Jospin left his "conservative" predecessors, Prime Ministers Chirac (€13 billion in privatizations), Balladur (€17 billion) and Jupp, (€9.4 billion) in the dust. At perhaps no point was the irony more poignant than in 1999, when Jospin put his Communist Minister of Transportation, Jean-Claude Gayssot, in charge of ensuring a clean and proper near-majority privatization of Air France. Even as the French state continued to retain a slim majority of the shares until several years later, the symbolism was extraordinary..... The rhetoric aside, Air France's IPO took place on February 22, 1999.... In 2000, to the surprise of many American observers who had been misled by Jospin's rhetoric, his government implemented noticeable cuts in the value added tax (sales tax), the income tax, and even the corporate tax"

New "hate crimes" legislation? "With the Democrats taking control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives this January, we can expect the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and its pro-homosexual surrogates newly elected to Congress, to begin an aggressive push for passage of a "hate crimes" bill designed to provide federally protected status to the behavior of homosexuality.... The side-effect of this effort will be to criminalize criticism of homosexual conduct and to violate religious freedom and freedom of conscience. It is also likely that all attempts to pass a constitutional marriage amendment will be dead on arrival in the Senate. Newly-elected Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey (D) who defeated pro-family Senator Rick Santorum (R) has already indicated his plans to push for a hate crimes bill that includes "sexual orientation" and "gender identity." Casey's announcement is payback to HRC for its strong support of his race for the Senate. Gender identity, for those unfamiliar with the term, is code for an individual who thinks he is the opposite sex. (This includes cross-dressers, transvestites and transsexuals.) Sexually confused individuals will be a protected minority if Casey and his minions in the Senate have their way."

First Minneapolis `Lesbian' Fire Chief Gets Booted Over Harassment Charges: "Bonnie Bleskcheck, the nation's first openly-homosexual Fire Chief is on the verge of being fired from her post in Minneapolis. She had agreed to resign, but a city panel has rejected her closed door negotiations and is urging that she be officially fired from her position as Fire Chief. Bleskcheck has been sued by three female firefighters over discrimination and sexual harassment. A male firefighter has sued claiming he was denied advancement because he's not a homosexual. A 2003 complaint filed by another male firefighter claimed that her department gave preferential treatment to lesbians or those who associated with them."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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The case for economic turbulence

Is a volatile economy good for American workers? To judge by the news accounts of layoffs and downsizing and families grimly adjusting to straitened circumstances, the answer would seem to be no. Three in five jobs for 22- to 55-year-old workers last three years or less. In a typical quarter of the year, about one in 13 jobs ends. For certain obvious reasons, labor-market turbulence has a reputation as a wrecker of lives, families and pocketbooks.

But is it really? Economists Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have their doubts. On closer inspection, they note, job turnover and firm disappearance have positive effects, in the aggregate. A clerk's job at a retail warehouse is replaced by a computer, but the warehouse firm can use the savings to hire a better and better-paid office manager. As workers lose jobs in one niche or sector, they gain in another, moving on to better jobs and higher pay. In the software sector, new businesses are more productive, over a five-year period, than the firms they replace. This new-business productivity gain, the authors show, is true generally across sectors--generating efficiency, products and, most important, jobs. And new businesses tend to pay more.

In short, America is not becoming a nation of part-time Wal-Mart cashiers or burger flippers. In four of the five sectors studied by the authors--semiconductors, software, financial services, retail food and trucking--the growth rate for full-time jobs exceeds the growth rate for jobs in general. (Retail food is the exception.) Separate research, conducted by Ann Huff Stevens at the University of California, Davis, shows that the average tenure for employed U.S. male laborers has been broadly stable over the past 35 years....

The data in the book, based on a new U.S. Census program, is impeccable. Yet only in the final chapter do the authors move into the broader territory of public policy. They conclude that America's competition, deregulation and economic turbulence are largely desirable. By contrast, French labor policy, which tries to prevent firings and guarantee lifetime jobs, is counterproductive. Indeed job creation has largely stalled in Western Europe as older jobs are protected at the expense of the young and at the expense of women who wish to move into the work force more than their counterparts in earlier generations once did....

Arguably "volatility in the aggregate" was never the main concern in the first place but rather a shorthand for other worries, like comparative standard of living. In my view, the contemporary critics of labor markets are still more wrong than right. As Virginia Postrel has noted, Best Buy is full of people--few of them rich--buying flat-screen TVs. The obsession with measuring median wages misses a broader story about growing wealth, higher asset values, growing flexibility, growing buffers against risk, and growing opportunities for consumption.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

POLICE TO PROTECT MOSQUE AGAINST BIKINIS: "Police have been asked to protect Australia's largest mosque next weekend because of concerns that a bikini march staged to coincide with the anniversary of the Cronulla riots may get out of control. The caretaker of Lakemba Mosque, the Lebanese Muslim Association, says it is taking no risks, requesting at least 32 police officers to protect the place of worship on Saturday and Sunday. Association president Tom Zreik said he met police on several occasions to ensure there would be adequate numbers of officers present to defuse problems and arrest troublemakers. "We are treating this as something that is funny and hilarious but also taking precautions," Mr Zreika said of the bikini march. "Some people may see this as provocation and the last thing that we want is to see anyone being attacked." The organiser, Melbourne grandmother Christine Hawkins, has asked women nationally to dress in bikinis and colourful beachwear and rally outside large mosques to show their disgust at comments by leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Taj el-Din al Hilaly, who likened women to "uncovered meat".

Illegal aliens kill more than the Iraq terrorists: "While the military "quagmire" in Iraq was said to tip the scales of power in the U.S. midterm elections, most Americans have no idea more of their fellow citizens - men, women and children - were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began. Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research. Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001. Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq as of last week were reported at 2,863"

Pro-Communist Swedish government TV: "Yet here in Sweden, the government television channel (who has the nerve to -in true Orwellian fashion- characterize itself as "free television") have a 4 hour special theme night to celebrate ( they themselves use the Swedish word "fira", which means celebrate) Fidel Castro and his long rule as dictator of Cuba. First they are going to have a re-run of an uncritical interview with Castro, more than an hour long, produced by Swedish government television 30 years ago. Then they will have a panel discussion about him from 3 well-known admirers of Castro. Then they will have a Oliver Stone "documentary" where Castro will again be able to present his views. Then they will finish with an interview of Castro's former mistress".

Muslims still killing Christians when they can: "The US-based human rights group International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned a mob of 300 Muslims killed six Christians in early October while 15 others were left seriously wounded by the attack during a midnight worship service in Beshasha, a town located in the Agaro province in Ethiopia. On 14 October, a group of three hundred Muslims, carrying guns and knives approached the church where the Orthodox Christians were holding a midnight worship service. When the locked doors prevented the mob from entering the church they forced the congregation out of the church by pouring gasoline around the building."

Taleban still barbaric: "The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy. The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over. He was partly disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes. The remains were put on display as a warning to others against defying Taleban orders to stop educating girls."

Another media lie: "One of the most sensational news items over the Thanksgiving holiday came from the Associated Press, which reported on six Sunni civilians burned alive as they left Friday mosque services. The shocking dispatch received global coverage. The front cover of the Philadelphia Daily News blasted: "WORSHIPPERS BURNED ALIVE: Capping deadliest week of war, 6 Sunnis doused with kerosene, set afire as Iraqi soldiers reportedly stand idle." The Chicago Sun-Times blared: "Sunnis burned alive in revenge." The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia headlined: "Shiite militia burn Sunnis alive in revenge attacks." The Calcutta Telegraph in India echoed: "Shias burn Sunnis alive." .... Just a few small problems with the massively publicized story: "Police Capt. Jamil Hussein" is an unreliable, unauthorized spokesperson whom the military has warned the Associated Press about before. The incident cannot be verified. Readers of newspapers around the world that carried the story have not been informed of any of this by the Associated Press or any other mainstream media outlet. But those who follow the blogosphere have been unraveling the story over the past week at lightning pace"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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A GOOD MEMOIR FROM A FRIEND OF MILTON FRIEDMAN

I was probably the last person to go out to lunch with Milton. We met at his favorite restaurant in San Francisco, where I showed him a picture of him standing next to John Kenneth Galbraith, the premier Keynesian and welfare statist of the 20th century. Galbraith towered over the diminutive Friedman. Beneath the picture was a funny line by George Stigler: "All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman." Milton was so pleased with the photo and caption that he sent it to all his friends only two weeks before his passing.



(Left to Right above: George Stigler, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith)

Source

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EVALUATING THE NEW FOUNTAIN OF WISDOM FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY

From what we know so far, the Baker Commission is going to recommend that we cut troop levels in Iraq, attempt to make nicey-nice with our determined enemies in Iran and Syria, and demand Israeli concessions to serve as the deus ex machina to bring about peace in our time. In a word, oy vey!

Coming from a commission headed by James Baker, the latter recommendation is especially jarring. During his tenure as Secretary of State, I believe his most famous quote regarding Israel and the Jews was (and pardon his French), "F*ck the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway."

Whether or not Baker is an anti-Semite or merely a non-comprehending putz is a disputable but largely academic matter. A report from America's putative best minds that focuses on the six million Jews in the region rather than the one billion Muslims is fatally suspect. Of course, it's more politically expedient and just plain easier to focus on the Jews. Regardless of what idiocies the Baker Commission pukes out, our government won't have to put itself on alert for a gaggle of flying rabbis determined to terrify airliners.

More here

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JIHAD IN WEST AFRICA

Two centuries before the current American foreign policy, or before there was Zionism, or "Iraq" and "Palestine" to blame, long before "poverty" was pulled up as a root-cause, and the why-do-they-hate-us brigade not only did not exist, but would have been impossible to call into being, Muslims in West Africa were on the Jihad warpath. A Muslim cleric, or mallam, Usman dan Fodio, led a Jihad against local non-Muslim rulers from 1804 to 1810. This led to the establishment of the so-called Caliphate of Sokoto, and to the spread, enforced spread by military conquest, of Islam.

The results of that can be seen in West Africa. There one can find Christian neighborhoods that are well-tended, neat, prettified even with simple touches (a few flowers), and then the sullen, dirty, rundown areas of Muslims. The comparison is remarkable.

And everywhere Christians are under assault. They have been under assault, most famously, in Nigeria, where in 1967 the Christian Ibos, far more advanced and industrious than their Muslim overlords, rebelled and declared the independence of the State of Biafra. The proximate cause were the mass murders by Muslims of Christian Ibo all over northern Nigeria. But the Western world did nothing to help the Christian Ibo, while the Muslims -- including Egyptian pilots and planes that strafed Ibo villages, killing tens of thousands of helpless villagers -- did provide aid.

More here

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DEMOCRAT HATRED OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION ON SHOW

Democrats

-- have tried to prevent us from listening on terrorists' phone calls
-- have sought to stop us from properly interrogating captured terrorists
-- have tried to stop us from monitoring terrorists' financial transactions
-- have revealed the existence of secret national security programs
-- have opposed vital components of the Patriot Act
-- have sought to confer unmerited legal rights on terrorists
-- have opposed profiling to identify the terrorists in our midst
-- have impugned and demeaned our military
-- have insinuated that the president is a war criminal
-- have forced the resignation of a committed defense secretary
-- have repeatedly tried to delegitimize our war effort
-- want to quit the battlefield in the midst of war.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

An arrogant Leftist priest: "Last week, Andrew M. Greeley, the well-known liberal priest and sociologist of all things Catholic, gave a celebrity interview to his fans. Though his main interlocutor was Robert Orsi, the chairman of the religion department at Harvard, Father Greeley also took some questions from the audience.... a middle-aged woman in the back of the room asked Father Greeley about the changing face of the Catholic Church. The greatest growth in the world-wide Catholic population, she noted, has been coming for some years from new believers in South America and Africa, and the trend shows no signs of abating. What effect would this have on the church? "We will depend on them for vitality," Father Greeley predicted. "But they will continue to depend on us for the ideas." To judge by a murmuring restlessness in the crowd, more than a few audience members were surprised such a remark. It seemed--how to put it?--patronizing. Do people in the Global South have no ideas of their own? Is theirs a faith of pure emotion?"

Bush supports Georgia bid to join NATO: "President George W Bush vowed on Tuesday to maintain U.S. support for Georgia's aspiration to join the NATO alliance despite strong Russian opposition that has sparked tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi, Reuters news agency reports. Speaking just before the first NATO summit on former Soviet soil, Bush said in a speech at the University of Latvia that the alliance would keep its door open to new members and hoped to issue additional invitations at its next summit in 2008."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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HOW THE DEMOCRAT CONGRESS WILL (NOT) WORK

In the Senate, there is no such thing as a majority. Ever since the elder Bush's administration, the filibuster has become routine. No longer reserved for civil-rights issues or for egregious legislation, it now is used to counter even motions for recess and adjournment. Members of the Senate are no longer subjected to the indignity of standing on their feet and reading a telephone book. Rather, the gentlemen's filibuster applies. The majority leader phones the minority leader and asks if a filibuster is in effect. With his feet up on his desk, the Republican replies that it is and the Democrat, despite his majority, does not even think about bringing up his bill for consideration unless he has a good shot at the 60 votes required to shut off debate. In the Senate, 51 votes determine who gets the corner office, but to pass legislation, one needs 60.

In the House of Representatives, with its 435 members, the Republican Party needed a simple majority - 218 - to rule. The Democrats need considerably more. The normal rules of a mathematical majority do not take into account the fractious nature of the Democratic Party. Where the Republican majority best resembled the Prussian Army - disciplined, unified and determined - the Democratic majority in the upcoming Congress is disunited, dispersed and divided into myriad caucuses and special interest groups. One could purchase the Republican majority wholesale by making a deal with the speaker and the majority leader. But to get the Democratic majority in line, one has to buy it retail -- caucus by caucus.

First, one has to go to check with the Black Caucus -- hat in hand -- to see if one's bill has enough liberal giveaways to round up its forty or so votes. Thence to the Hispanic Caucus for a similar screening. Then, with one's legislation weighted down with liberal provisions added by these two groups, one has to sell it to the Democratic Leadership Council moderates and, even worse, to the Blue Dog Democrats -- the out and out conservatives. If you are fortunate enough to pass these contradictory litmus tests, you then have to go to the environmentalists, the labor people, and even the gays to see that your bill passes muster. Only then can you begin to hope for House passage.

Source

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Brookes News Update

Is the US economy facing an imminent recession?: I think it's fair to draw the conclusion that it is the current monetary squeeze that's exerting a downward pressure on prices and imports and not increasing competition. Unfortunately America's thoroughly corrupt media would see this as an opportunity to destroy the Bush administration
Greenspan's price rule caused the US recession - and it's going to happen: The problem today, as always, is that nothing has been learnt from history. Monetary policy has been loose and the destructive price rule still rules
Steve Bracks' green stupidity and economic illiteracy: When it comes to economic reasoning and genuine conservation the obtuse Steve Bracks and his equally slow-witted colleagues are at a complete loss. Unfortunately the Liberal Party of Victoria isn't any better than Bracks' ignorant and destructive team
Labor thrashes the Liberal Party on wages and deregulated labour markets: For some weird reason many Liberal politicians seem to believe they are qualified to discuss economic policies despite the fact that they could not tell the difference between an isoquant and an icicle
The American Truth Forum exposes Islamic penetration of the universities: Many professors are no longer American their aim is teach children to hate America. Moreover, The number of imams at major universities is growing at a rapid rate. It does not seem to matter whether there is a substantial Muslim society at the school or not. What is the need for imams?
Is moderate inflation good for an economy?: The only ideal monetary setup is the one that eradicates inflation. This means, however, that the central bank must stop its monetary pumping. Better still, abolish the central bank
Are cut-and-run Democrats changing their tune?: Why did the media wait? Those "experts" now exposing the Democrats' exit strategy as a deadly fantasy were available to reporters before the election and yet they were ignored until the Democrats won both houses. Is this more evidence that the media runs interference for the Democrats?
Thanksgiving: Blessings and Challenges: Youngsters need to see that just because their lives are not heaven on earth, that doesn't mean they don't have a reason to rejoice. For they live in a country where anything is possible - where a poor child can grow up to become leader of the free world

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ELSEWHERE

Raising the Federal Minimum Wage should show how stupid that is: "Controversy remains in the United States (and elsewhere) over the effects of the minimum wage mainly because past changes in the U.S. minimum wage have usually been too small to have large and easily detectable general effects on employment and unemployment. The effects of an increase to $7.25 per hour in the federal minimum wage that many Democrats in Congress are proposing would be large enough to be easily seen in the data. It would be a nice experiment from a strictly scientific point of view, for it would help resolve the controversy over whether the effects of large increases in the minimum wage would be clearly visible in data on employment, training, and some prices.... The effects of the French minimum have been carefully studied by two excellent economists, Guy Laroque and Bernard Salanie, in a series of articles, such as " Labor Market Institutions and Employment in France," Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2002. They find that the relatively high minimum in France explains a significant part of the low employment rate of married women in France. Salanie has also argued that the high French minimum wage is important in explaining the dismal employment prospects of young persons in France, and the huge unemployment rate of Muslim youths there, estimated to be about 40 per cent.

EU strongarms little Switzerland: "But the EU, knowing that little Switzerland depends far more on them than vice versa, told the Swiss that they cannot just cherry pick the advantages of the EU, while completely opting out of paying money to the EU budget. So the EU told the Swiss: pay us a billion swiss franc per year, or we'll institute trade barriers that would harm the Swiss economy even more. Pure blackmail, in other words. The EU will thus get to enjoy the benefits of free trade with Switzerland and cherry pick another billion swiss francs, while the Swiss will have to pay up a billion swiss francs in "protection money" to the Don Corleones of Brussells." [Imagine the shrieks of "American imperialism" if Washington tried this]

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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A MOST UNUSUAL BOOK

I rarely read a book that changes my opinion of anything. I learn new facts every day but those facts usually confirm conclusions I have come to long ago. The book The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor has however changed my mind about something that I thought I had long ago decided.

I am a very literary person. I am known for reciting on some social occasions large slabs of the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer -- in the original Middle English, of course. And I even know by heart a bit of "Beowulf" in the original Anglo-Saxon. And every year I celebrate with some ceremony the birth of the world's greatest lyric poet -- Robert Burns.

So I have always been secure in my belief that literature is NOT important. The great poems of the past and classical literature generally have always seemed to me to be something that are simply to be enjoyed. If you don't happen to enjoy that sort of thing, go and read "The Phantom" and good luck to you.

So when I discovered that my son had learnt almost nothing about the great literature of the past during his High School years, I started to read him some of the wonderful poems of the past, not because I thought it would be good for him but because I thought he had been deprived of a great enjoyment. And, fortunately, he does enjoy hearing bits from our vast literary heritage that modern Leftist education had hidden from him.

Dr Kantor in her book has however made clear something that I had not taken much account of: The literature of the past introduces us to different worlds from the one we live in now. I had always known that but had taken it for granted that everyone would somehow have visited different mental worlds in some way. Dr. Kantor, however, has pointed out what really goes on in so-called "Literature" courses these days -- an attack on literature rather than an introduction to it and an appreciation of it. So the many different environments and value-sets we encounter in literature are NOT any more available to most of the young. Young people these days have been deprived of the perspective on human values and human arrangements generally that the literature of the past can give.

And that deprivation is vital to the Left. There is nothing more destructive of Leftist nonsense than a knowledge of history -- which is why they regularly distort history if they have to mention it at all. They even tell us that the socialist Hitler was a Rightist! But the Left cannot well distort something that was in fact written in the past. The Medieval England that Chaucer describes was not written ABOUT the past but rather IN the past. It is eyewitness testimony to what people were like then and what arrangements they had between themselves and what values moved them. And it is certainly clear from Chaucer that people have remained basically the same under the skin over the last 600 years. What differs is their values and social arrangements.

So the past is a natural experiment that tells us how various policies and arrangements work out long-term and, given the evils of the French revolution and Communist Russia, one can understand why Leftists hate people to know about the past. Those who know the past should readily be able to see the follies and shallowness of Leftist ideas and there is nothing like the imaginative literature of the past to bring the past alive in our minds.

The book does what all literature courses once did: Introduces you to the main works of the past and explains words and allusions that are not familiar today so that you can understand them readily. Parents should buy this book for their kids at least. Anybody who reads it and absorbs it will end up knowing more about the great literature of English than most professors of English these days do. And they will certainly have a very different perspective on what is important.

There is a slogan on the cover of the book that I rather like: "Dead white males rock!"

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ELSEWHERE



A Leftist "intellectual" above -- courtesy of Zombietime

People deserting Taxachusetts: "Massachusetts single-family home sales dropped 14.9 percent on a volume basis in October, and the October median sale price of a single-family home in the Bay State fell 6.9 percent, to $312,000 from $335,000, when compared to the same month last year, a real-estate data firm said today. The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, said the October home price decrease was the sixth straight monthly drop when compared to the same months last year. The number of single-family home sales in October fell to 4,313 from 5,068, the Warren Group said".

Salvation Army banned at Target but welcome at Wal-Mart again: "Associates at more than 3,900 Wal-Mart stores, Sam's Clubs and Neighborhood Markets across the country today staffed the Red Kettles to celebrate the company's 20-plus year tradition of rolling out the red carpet for The Salvation Army's bell ringers. Wal-Mart Stores chief executive officer Lee Scott led the kick-off of the "Bells Ringing Across America" celebration with a $1 million donation from the Wal-Mart and Sam's Club Foundation."

A Democrat with a brain: "Sen. Joe Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's incoming chairman, wants to get tough with Mexico, calling it an 'erstwhile democracy' with a 'corrupt system' responsible for illegal immigration and drug problems in the U.S. Biden, D-Del., was in Columbia on Monday in his first postelection trip to this first-in-the-South presidential primary state as he continues to line up support for his presidential bid."

Tax issue presents dilemma for Dems: "After six years of railing against Republican tax cuts for the rich and fiscal irresponsibility, Democrats will find themselves come January under enormous pressure to pass a hugely expensive tax cut -- without any way to make up the revenue. The alternative minimum tax, which slaps an extra income tax on many higher-income people, has become a political monster for Democrats, threatening to clobber prosperous professionals in such Democratic strongholds as California and New York."

Repeal the Internet Poker Ban: "Recently, Congress took a radical step to protect our nation. Under the guise of protecting our country from terrorists trying to attack our harbors, it passed a ban on Internet poker games. Of course, it may be the case that someplace, somewhere, someone actually believes that Internet poker players are third-world terrorists out to destroy our way of life. Unfortunately, one of these people is a United States Senator."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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WARNING: Internet Explorer 7 update

I have received the following from a reader:

After being prompted by my computer to download and install the latest Windows update, it asked me to also upgrade my browser to IE7 (I was using IE6).I like to use IE most of the time because I run so many websites, and I like to see them through the same viewer as the majority of the population. So I decided to go ahead and update IE. After it finished, I was no longer able to launch an IE browser. In fact, any time I attempted to, it froze my entire computer. I even tried right clicking the IE icon on my desktop, so I could check on the settings and THAT made my computer freeze too. At first I thought it killed my internet connection, but fortunately I was able to connect using Mozila FireFox so I could do a quick search. What I discovered was that hundreds (probably thousands) of people have posted similar problems in the past week, meaning it is likely affecting MILLIONS of people. I simply did a Windows System Restore to yesterday's restore point, and all is good again. If you haven't updated to IE7 yet, I would suggest waiting for a few months and making sure the general word on the street is a "go" before trying it.

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WHAT A CONVERT TO ISLAM FOUND

In a fascinating memoir due in stores in February, "My Year Inside Radical Islam," Gartenstein-Ross describes how he was drawn to Islam because he saw it as a religion of peace. Over time, however, he watched himself and those around him seduced into a fanaticism that required them to loathe not only non-Muslims, but also Muslims who belonged to the wrong sect, listened to music or shaved. He had expected an open, accepting religion, only to hear sheikhs arguing that Muslims who leave the religion should be killed, that it is acceptable to kill civilians for jihad and that good Muslims should work to replace democratic governments with Shariah law....

He believes Americans need a more fact-based understanding of Islam, which requires the media to do a better job of reporting what Muslims think and say -- instead of papering over radical rhetoric. Once when a local reporter visited Al Haramain to write a piece on Ramadan, a co-worker refused to shake her hand, launched a defense of sorts of Algerian terrorists and lambasted a French policy that prohibited schoolgirls from wearing the hijab in class. The comments never made the story. Gartenstein-Ross writes, "And so, as I often did, the reporter chose not to acknowledge that a real clash of values existed here."

Islam's approach to homosexuality is another area that the left ignores in deference to multiculturalism. (Think of Bay Area liberals who voice outrage at the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but are silent about the Shariah policy on homosexuals -- 100 lashes or death.) Ditto the status of women.

Gartenstein-Ross also takes issue with those rose-colored-glass wearers who deny that there is any theological basis for Islamic extremism. "It's important to note that they do have an argument," he told me, if only to be able to engage them in argument and understand where they get their ideas.

Source

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BUSH GETS IT BUT CAN HE DO IT WITH A DEFEATIST CONGRESS?

President Bush said Tuesday he is not ready to abandon the battlefield in Iraq to sectarian insurgents whose violent attacks on innocent Iraqis are part of a broad goal to overthrow governments and send coalition forces running....

Insurgents "seek to convince America and our allies that we cannot defeat them and that our only hope is to withdraw and abandon an entire region to their domination," he said. "If we allow the extremists to do this, then 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act."....

"Extremists are using terror to stop the spread of freedom. Some are Shiite extremists, others are Sunni extremists, but they represent different faces of the same threat. And if they succeed in undermining fragile democracies and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their goals," Bush said in a speech at the NATO summit in Riga, Latvia....

Source

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ELSEWHERE

I have just put up some more mentions of recent events in my life for anyone who might be interested -- including mention of a talk I gave about global warming. See here or here.



Leftist arrogance and elitism vividly displayed above -- courtesy of Zombietime

Return of the Luddites: "For years, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, exercising a lock on the party's economic policies, argued that the economy could achieve sustained growth only if markets were allowed to operate unfettered and globally. Overcoming protests from labor unions, a traditional constituency, the Clinton administration vigorously supported free trade agreements like Nafta and agreed to China's admission into the World Trade Organization. This approach coincided with a period of economic prosperity, low unemployment and falling deficits. Over time, this combination - called Rubinomics after the Clinton administration's Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin - became the Democratic establishment's accepted model for the future. Not anymore. With the Democrats having won a majority in Congress, and disquiet over globalization growing, a party faction that has been powerless - the economic populists - is emerging and strongly promoting an alternative to Rubinomics."

Bush admin respects liberties: "After a delay of more than a year, a government board appointed to guard Americans' privacy and civil liberties during the war on terror has been told the inner workings of the government's electronic eavesdropping program. Members say they were impressed by the protections.... Board members said that they were impressed by the safeguards the government has built into the NSA's monitoring of phone calls and computer transmissions, and that they wished the administration could tell the public more about them to ease distrust. "If the American public, especially civil libertarians like myself, could be more informed about how careful the government is to protect our privacy while still protecting us from attacks, we'd be more reassured," said Lanny Davis , a former Clinton White House lawyer who is the board's lone liberal Democrat. Alan Raul, a former Reagan White House lawyer and the board's vice chairman, said he also was impressed. "We found there was a great appreciation inside government, both at the political and career levels, for protections on privacy and civil liberties," said Raul, author of a book of civil liberties. "In fact, I think the public may have an underappreciation for the degree of seriousness the government is giving these protections"

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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A MAN WHO PUTS HIS MONEY WHERE HIS MOUTH IS



Jeff McInturff is a 39-year-old emergency room doctor who twice put his life on hold for stints in the war in Iraq. Moved to re-enlist in the army after the horror of Sept. 11, McInturff first served with the Army Reserve in Kuwait in 2004, troubled only by the notion that he felt underutilized working at a combat support hospital. A year later, he was in southern Iraq for an additional four months, tending to sick and injured detainees at a prison camp. McInturff did all that as a statement about his commitment to his country and to the cause. While he has remained steadfast in his support for the war, the country has changed around him.

A recent visit to McInturff's four-bedroom home in a Granite Bay gated community found a doctor more determined than ever to support the war and more frustrated at American impatience with the military campaign.

On the heels of an election that swept the Democrats into power in the Congress and suggested the nation had moved toward the political center, McInturff's views seem practically missing in action in the media in recent weeks. He doesn't support a military withdrawal. He doesn't want to hear talk of a timetable. "Patience is a big issue," he said, seated with his back to a living room window that looks out to a wooded meadow where wild turkeys and peacocks roam. "Fortitude and patience are what win wars. I don't know if it's a consequence of our current lifestyle in which everything is fast -- made-to-use, ready-to-eat. We live in a very fast society. It's good for our lifestyle, but it makes us ill-prepared for the long haul."...

At one point in his first four-month assignment, McInturff succumbed to feelings that he wanted to quit, to go back to his hospital job in Roseville and say farewell to the military. It was at Thanksgiving two years ago that he was jolted out of that mood. "I was sitting at a table with an enlisted soldier from Kentucky. He was telling me about his life -- he ran a pet store and he just bought a house. I was feeling down because I felt like medically I was being underutilized. I didn't feel like I was accomplishing much. "As I was talking to him I realized here this kid was the embodiment of the American dream, starting without much, he had built up his life and was serving his country. During that dinner I realized I can't walk away. It sounds silly, but I felt like I couldn't leave this guy's health care to someone else. That's when I stifled that desire to get out."

McInturff has never wavered in his belief that the United States must be in it for the long haul, that victory must be the only answer. Asked what argument he would make to the many who have changed their minds about Iraq, McInturff thought for a moment and said, "What I would ask those individuals to do is try to set aside our whole purpose for going to war and ask yourself today, 'Do I want to win this war? If you don't want to win this war then you have to ask yourself why and what are the consequences if we choose to walk away. I think the clear consequences are more Iraqi deaths. You're going to see increasing influence over Iraq by neighboring countries like Iran and Syria, which I think we can all agree isn't beneficial."

When it is mentioned that many Americans no longer see victory as a possibility, McInturff replied, "Realistically, we have to have a long-term vision. I mean, our own democracy took a long time to find itself. One hundred years after we had a supposedly great start, we fell apart into a civil war. We had a great functioning democracy, and yet we started killing each other in untold numbers. While democracy is clearly the best alternative I've seen, it's not without its flaws and foibles. "We've really only given these people three years to establish one. There's no adding water and, bingo, instant democracy."

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The Democrat anti-Wal-Mart craze gets crazier: "Former Sen. John Edwards is to spend an hour at the Manchester Barnes & Noble tonight promoting his new book. We find his choice of venue very interesting. In Manchester, the local Wal-Mart store sits right behind the Barnes & Noble. It has more floor space, a parking lot several times the size of Barnes & Noble's, and is easier to access by car or public transportation. But Edwards would not be caught dead inside a Wal-Mart. Saying that the company pays its employees too little, Edwards has embarked on an anti-Wal-Mart crusade. He instructs his staff members and all Americans not to shop at Wal-Mart. ... So naturally Edwards is holding his book signing at Barnes & Noble instead of Wal-Mart. Which is too bad for his anti-low-wages campaign, because in Manchester Wal-Mart pays hourly employees more than Barnes & Noble does. The Barnes & Noble where Edwards will hawk his book pays $7 an hour to start. The Wal-Mart that sits just yards away pays $7.50 an hour. From 7 to 8 p.m., Edwards will bring business to a retailer that pays wages he thinks are so immorally low that they should be illegal. Meanwhile, right behind him, thousands of Granite Staters will be supporting a business that pays an Edwards-approved starting wage, but which Edwards wants everyone to boycott."

How Democrats support the troops: "The National Commander of The American Legion called on Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) to apologize for suggesting that American troops would not choose to fight in Iraq if they had other employment options. "Our military is the most skilled, best-trained all-volunteer force on the planet," said National Commander Paul A. Morin. "Like that recently espoused by Sen. John Kerry, Congressman Rangel's view of our troops couldn't be further from the truth and is possibly skewed by his political opposition to the war in Iraq." According to Rangel, "If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career, or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq.... Rangel was responding to a question during an interview yesterday on Fox News Sunday about a recent study by the Heritage Foundation which found that those enlisting in the military tend to be better educated than the general public and that military recruiting seems to be more successful in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods than in poor ones."

Sometimes Chicago gets it right: "The death of Malachi Ritscher was reported by a local television station as just another frustration for commuters driving into Chicago one morning when police were told that a statue was burning and slowing-up traffic along the Kennedy expressway. This was not how the anti-war activist had envisaged media coverage when on November 3, he set up a video-camera and a small sign reading "thou shalt not kill" next to Chicago's Flame of the Millennium sculpture. He then doused his body in petrol and set himself on fire... Like the Czech student Jan Palach in 1969, or Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc in South Vietnam in 1963, he had chosen the most dramatic and agonising form of suicide to draw attention to his protest against the Iraq war... What Mr Ritscher had not reckoned with was that people would continue to be more concerned with TV sport - and getting to work on time - as they drove past his flaming body.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, 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)

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THE 'EURABIA' MYTH

A dissenting view by RALPH PETERS. I tend to agree with him. I said something similar at the end of my leading post on 14th August

A RASH of pop prophets tell us that Muslims in Europe are reproducing so fast and European societies are so weak and listless that, before you know it, the continent will become "Eurabia," with all those topless gals on the Riviera wearing veils. Well, maybe not. The notion that continental Europeans, who are world-champion haters, will let the impoverished Muslim immigrants they confine to ghettos take over their societies and extend the caliphate from the Amalfi Coast to Amsterdam has it exactly wrong. The endangered species isn't the "peace loving" European lolling in his or her welfare state, but the continent's Muslims immigrants - and their multi-generation descendents - who were foolish enough to imagine that Europeans would share their toys.

In fact, Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds. Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica. The historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened - even when the threat's concocted nonsense - they don't just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.

And Europeans won't even need to re-write "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" with an Islamist theme - real Muslims zealots provide Europe's bigots with all the propaganda they need. Al Qaeda and its wannabe fans are the worst thing that could have happened to Europe's Muslims. Europe hasn't broken free of its historical addictions - we're going to see Europe's history reprised on meth...

Sound impossible? Have the Europeans become too soft for that sort of thing? Has narcotic socialism destroyed their ability to hate? Is their atheism a prelude to total surrender to faith-intoxicated Muslim jihadis? The answer to all of the above questions is a booming "No!" The Europeans have enjoyed a comfy ride for the last 60 years - but the very fact that they don't want it to stop increases their rage and sense of being besieged by Muslim minorities they've long refused to assimilate (and which no longer want to assimilate)....

Far from enjoying the prospect of taking over Europe by having babies, Europe's Muslims are living on borrowed time. When a third of French voters have demonstrated their willingness to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front - a party that makes the Ku Klux Klan seem like Human Rights Watch - all predictions of Europe going gently into that good night are surreal.

More here

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NOTHING TRUMPS A FARMER

If we want the Muslims reined in, maybe we should get farmers onto the job

In the hot-off-the-press New Yorker (Nov. 27th issue), James Surowiecki nicely explains how politics prevents the use of economically and environmentally sound approaches to supplying fuel for Americans' automobiles.

To make a long story short, the political power of U.S. sugar farmers -- power that greedily burdens American consumers with policies that restrict the importation of sugar -- keeps the price of sugar in the U.S. so high that making ethanol from sugar is prohibitively expensive. And this result, according to Surowiecki, is unfortunate: "ethanol distilled from sugarcane is much cheaper to produce and generates far more energy per unit of input-eight times more, by most estimates-than corn does." But Uncle Sam's protection of sugar growers from foreign competition (along with some nefarious doings of the corn-growers' lobby) artificially makes producing ethanol from corn more attractive than producing ethanol from sugar cane. Here's Surowiecki:

"The favors granted to the sugar industry keep the price of domestic sugar so high that it's not cost-effective to use it for ethanol. And the tariffs and quotas for imported sugar mean that no one can afford to import foreign sugar and turn it into ethanol, the way that oil refiners import crude from the Middle East to make gasoline. Americans now import eighty per cent less sugar than they did thirty years ago. So the prospects for a domestic-sugar ethanol industry are dim at best.

We could, of course, simply import sugar ethanol. But here, too, politics has intervened: Congress has imposed a tariff of fifty-four cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol in order to protect corn producers from competition. A recent study by Amani Elobeid and Simla Tokgoz, scientists at Iowa State University, projected that if the tariffs were removed prices would fall by fourteen per cent and Americans would use almost three hundred million gallons more of ethanol.

But that isn't likely to happen anytime soon: the Bush Administration proposed eliminating the ethanol tariff this past spring, but Congress quickly quashed the idea-Barack Obama was among several Midwestern senators who campaigned in support of the tariff-and the sugar quotas appear to be as sacrosanct as ever. Tariffs and quotas are extremely hard to get rid of, once established, because they create a vicious circle of back-scratching-government largesse means that sugar producers get wealthy, giving them lots of cash to toss at members of Congress, who then have an incentive to insure that the largesse continues to flow. More important, protectionist rules flourish because the benefits are concentrated among a small number of easy-to-identify winners, while the costs are spread out across the entire population. It may be annoying to pay a few more cents for sugar or ethanol, but most of us are unlikely to lobby Congress about it."

Note that the newly sainted Barack Obama is no less a scoundrelly politician than is anyone else who succeeds in that profession of predators.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Capitalism creates jobs: "Today, the statistics bureau of Europe's two freest economies, Estonia and Latvia released their employment data. In Estonia, unemployment has fallen to 5.4% from 7.0% a year ago, while in Latvia, unemployment has fallen from 8.7% to 6.2%. In both cases, this occurred despite a significant increase in labor force participation. Total employment rose a full 6.2% in Estonia and by 7.2% in Latvia. While this rate of increase is unsustainable because first of all, there is a cyclical element in the Baltic boom (Both Estonia and Latvia have pegged their currencies to the euro and is therefore forced to adopt the loose monetary policy of the ECB) and secondly because Estonia and Latvia will soon run out of potential workers, this illustrates that low taxes and low welfare benefits will help to increase employment, contrary to the assumptions of certain leftist economists."

British welfare madness: "The welfare state cost 79 billion pounds last year, more than is spent on the entire education system, twice as much as on law and order and almost as much as on the NHS. It totals nearly 3,000 pounds a household a year.There are 51 different benefits, with 39 per cent of households claiming one or more. Although the Chancellor often boasts about his record on unemployment, there are 5.4 million people of working age who are out of work and living on benefits. Many of those are registered disabled; Britain has more long-term sick than any European country besides Poland. The benefits system has become so generous that being "on welfare" is no longer a mark of even relative poverty. Households with incomes of up to 66,350 pounds - which puts them in the richest fifth - can be entitled to welfare.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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