FOOD FADDISM DEMOLISHED FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL

Not that the food faddists will take any notice

Food faddism is important to many people because it gives them both the illusion of control and an ego boost. One of the few things they have absolute control over is what they put into their mouths so they like to think that gives them some larger control over their lives. Food faddism also gives them a feeling of wisdom and righteousness because they attribute some universal truth and validity to their fads. It makes them feel wiser than the poor sods who do not share their "enlightenment". This latter has become particularly pernicious in recent years as the faddists have increasingly been able to force their beliefs on others -- via the demonization of "obesity" -- which they (falsely) claim shortens lifespans.

So it is a timely corrective that one population which has a characteristically "unhealthy" diet has recently been shown also to be one of the longest lived! Details on FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC.

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POLITICAL SUPERSTITIONS

Excerpt from Christopher Chantrill

How do you spell superstition?  The professional atheists have been busy spelling it out lately, especially Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion and Sam Harris with The End of Faith. There is almost certainly no God, according to Dawkins.

The atheists worship a different God.  For Dawkins, it seems to be the power of Darwin's theory of natural selection.  For Sam Harris it seems to be the value of meditation and a rational ethics.  And don't think you can talk them out it.

We can thank the atheists at least for this: They are magnificently applying the principle of  "motivated skepticism" to the human God project.

Motivated skepticism?  That's the concept from the paper "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs" by Charles S. Taber and Milton Lodge. (Hat tip to TCS Daily Arnold Kling.)

Taber and Lodge observe that we humans have lots of faith in our own ideas and plans but not in other peoples' ideas.

"Physicists do it...Psychologists do it...Even political scientists do it...Research findings confirming a hypothesis are accepted more or less at face value, but when confronted with contrary evidence, we become "motivated skeptics" ... picking apart possible flaws in the study, recoding variables, and only when all the counterarguing fails do we rethink our beliefs[.]"

To understand the power of faith we have only to look at the 100 hour legislative marathon of the newly empowered House Democrats.  They are intent upon passing an increase in the minimum wage.  But the science is in on this, and it has been for over a century.  The minimum wage puts low-skilled people out of work.  Democrats are also intent upon adding new subsidies to college students.  But the science is in on subsidies. And the science is also in on drug price controls.

Why do they do it?  Faith, that's why.  Blind faith in the power of government and their own good intentions.

When a faith has been utterly exploded by science, rational folks like you and me usually call it "superstition."

...

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ELSEWHERE

Iranian brain-drain. I wonder why? "According to the IMF more than a 150,000 of the best young minds in Iran are leaving every year."

China now battling Muslims: "China has revealed the depth of its fear of Islamic-linked violence with police disclosing that they had killed 18 terrorists and captured another 17 after a fierce battle at a secret training camp in a remote northwestern region. It was the first time that China had announced the discovery of such a camp in its territory. Officials said that they had uncovered links between the activists and international terrorist groups, hinting at connections to al-Qa'ida. The clash in the Pamir mountains on Friday was one of the deadliest for years in the restive Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, where 8.5 million Muslims make up most of the population. One policeman was killed and a second wounded.... Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "There is a large amount of evidence, including evidence from this raid, that shows the movement is associated with international terrorist forces, and that it planned, organised and carried out a series of violent, terrorist activities in China."

Bungling British spooks: "The Director-General of Britain's security service MI5 told senior MPs there was no imminent terrorist threat to London or the rest of the country less than 24 hours before the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings in London, in which 56 people were killed. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller gave the assurance at a private meeting of Labour whips at the House of Commons on the morning of July 6. Last month Dame Eliza announced she was to retire in April. That announcement came weeks before details are expected to be made public of an MI5 operation in which two of the July 7 bombers were kept under surveillance but not arrested."

Australia: Huge rise in job openings after recent labour-market deregulation: "Australian total job vacancies in the three months to November rose 5.9 per cent, seasonally adjusted, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Job vacancies rose 21.4 per cent over the year to November. Seasonally adjusted job vacancies totalled 163,700 in the three months to November compared with an upwardly revised 154,600 in the previous quarter.

More Jimmy Carter deceit: "I became embroiled in a controversy with former President Jimmy Carter over the use of two maps in his recent book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." While some criticized what appeared to be the misappropriation of maps I had commissioned for my book, "The Missing Peace," my concern was always different.... In his book, Mr. Carter juxtaposes two maps labeled the "Palestinian Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000" and "Israeli Interpretation of Clinton's Proposal 2000." The problem is that the "Palestinian interpretation" is actually taken from an Israeli map presented during the Camp David summit meeting in July 2000, while the "Israeli interpretation" is an approximation of what President Clinton subsequently proposed in December of that year. Without knowing this, the reader is left to conclude that the Clinton proposals must have been so ambiguous and unfair that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was justified in rejecting them. But that is simply untrue."

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET: A FLAWED FIGURE

There is a neocon eulogy of the recently deceased Prof. Seymour Martin Lipset here. Despite the usual adjuration de mortuis nil nisi bonum, I feel that I should say a few words to set the record straight. Lipset was a very popular sociologist and political scientist but that which is popularly believed often turns out to be wrong in the long run and I believe that the positive view of Lipset's contribution is formed by his Leftist origins rather than by the lasting value of his ideas. He started out as a Trotskyite, as did the neocons.

I should perhaps declare a personal interest before going on. Despite the effusions about Lipset's good character, my own encounter with him was unimpressive, to say the least. He agreed to mark my Ph.D. dissertation and then not only failed to do so after many reminders but also failed to return his copy of the dissertation when requested to do so. This created such delays that my Ph.D. was not awarded until 1974, even though the dissertation was handed in in 1970. And why did he behave so badly? I guess it wouldn't be because the dissertation reported research results which undermined ideas that he was identified with, would it? Rather than use new data to develop his views -- as a real scientist would -- he resorted to the old Leftist strategy of denial, just as other Leftists for decades denied the evils of the Soviet State.

The central findings of the large and international program of resarch that I undertook to test a popular Lipset idea -- that working-class people are "authoritaraian" -- were finally published in Sociology and Social Research in 1983. Lipset had used selected public opinion poll data to test his ideas but I used much more closely targeted psychometric methods. I found that there was some tendency for the workers to be conservative on some social issues but NO evidence of them being "authoritarian". See here

Lipset's idea that America was saved from its "bad side" by great men is a typical example of selective Leftist attention to group differences. Leftists will trumpet how blacks have been damaged by slavery or how homosexuals need to be protected from discrimination but acknowledging that another group -- Americans of British and Northern European origin -- have particular strengths and virtues is absolutely taboo.

One only has to look at one of the "great" men that Lipset believed "saved" America -- Frankin Delano Roosevelt, the Fascist sympathizer who turned a normal cyclic depression into the Great Depression by his attacks on business and then delivered whole nations into the hands of the Soviets at Yalta. For some of the less-publicized facts about FDR see here and here and here. The truth of the matter is that America's prosperity and pre-eminence is the product of many millions of decent and hard-working individuals. To be even more precise, the success of America comes from the respect for the individual and for the rule of law which America's immigrants from Britain and Northern Europe brought with them and which they enshrined in America's way of life and institutions. But it is "racist" to say that, of course.

And Lipset's saying that "The United States is the only Protestant sectarian country in the world" is also absurd. "Sectarian" implies severe intolerance and discrimination towards people holding to other belief systems. In fact, America would have to be one of the countries with greatest freedom of religion. It is even safe to be a real conservative in America -- though not in American universities, of course.

I could go on to say more about Lipset's twisted ideas but I have no taste for cleaning out Augean stables.

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AN INTERESTING DEMOGRAPHIC HYPOTHESIS

Gangland slayings in the Palestinian territories this week have pitted the Islamist gunmen of Hamas against the secular forces of Fatah. The killings defy civilised norms: in December even children were targeted for murder. But the killings also defy political common sense. Ariel Sharon's wall cuts terrorists off from Israeli targets and what happens? The violence - previously justified with the cause of a Palestinian homeland - continues as if nothing had changed, merely finding its outlet in a new set of targets. This makes it appear that Palestinian violence has never really been about a "cause" at all. The violence is, in a strange way, about itself.

Gunnar Heinsohn, a social scientist and genocide researcher at the University of Bremen, has an explanation for why this might be so. Since its publication in 2003, his eccentric and eye-opening Sons and World Power* (not available in English) has become something of a cult book. In Mr Heinsohn's view, when 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population, violence tends to happen; when large percentages are under 15, violence is often imminent. The "causes" in the name of which that violence is committed can be immaterial. There are 67 countries in the world with such "youth bulges" now and 60 of them are undergoing some kind of civil war or mass killing.

Between 1988 and 2002, 900m sons were born to mothers in the developing world and a careful demographer could almost predict the trouble spots. In the decade leading up to 1993, on the eve of the Taliban takeover, the population of Afghanistan grew from 14m to 22m. By the end of this generation, Afghanistan will have as many people under 20 as France and Germany combined. Iraq had 5m people in 1950 but has 25m now, in spite of a quarter-century of wars. Since 1967, the population of the West Bank and Gaza has grown from 450,000 to 3.3m, 47 per cent of which is under 15. If Mr Heinsohn is right, then Palestinian violence of recent months and years is not explained by Israeli occupation (which, after all, existed 30 years ago) or poverty (the most violent parts of the Muslim world are not the poorest) or humiliation. It is just violence.

Mr Heinsohn's point is not that the West is "outnumbered". Nor is it that a Malthusian battle for scarce resources is under way. In El Salvador, for instance, the explosion of political killing in the 1970s and 1980s was preceded by a 27 per cent rise in per capita income. The problem, rather, is that in a youth-bulge society there are not enough positions to provide all these young men with prestige and standing. Envy against older, inheriting brothers is unleashed. So is ambition. Military heroism presents itself as a time-honoured way for a second or third son to wrest a position of respectability from an otherwise indifferent society. Societies with a glut of young men become temperamentally different from "singleton societies" such as Europe's, where the prospect of sending an only child to war is almost unthinkable. Europe's pacifism since 1945, in Mr Heinsohn's view, reflects an inability to wage war, not a disinclination.

Mr Heinsohn's theory accounts for the way "idealistic" wars of national liberation can shift imperceptibly into "pointless" civil wars - as in Ireland 90 years ago or in Africa after decolonisation or in Latin America in the 1980s or in Palestine in recent months. In a broader historical perspective, it explains how a half-dozen fast-growing European countries gradually seized control of almost the entire known world after 1485 and why the fast-growing North American colonies revolted in the 1770s, using as a pretext their "rather silly outrage over taxation without parliamentary representation in London".

If you follow this argument to its logical end point, then the religion of Islam, the focus of so much contemporary strategic discussion, is a great red herring. Islamic countries are certainly growing in importance. They will make up a quarter of the world a decade from now. Of the 27 biggest youth-bulge nations, 13 are Muslim. But if there is a clash between civilisations, it is not a civilisational clash. Religion can be a convenient rationalisation for violent people who do not want to think of themselves as conventional criminals, but this problem is not unique to Islam. In the New World 500 years ago, Mr Heinsohn notes, Spanish conquistadores, too, bowed down and prayed before carrying out slaughters.

In an interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung last autumn, Mr Heinsohn noted that if Germany had had the same kind of population growth as Gaza (9 children per woman) over recent decades, it would now have 550m people and 80m young men aged 15 to 30. "Do you think these 80m young Germans would be 10 times as pacifist as the 7m we have today?" he asked. "Or is it not much more likely that they would be throwing bombs in Prague and Gdansk and Wroclaw and - just like the Palestinians - saying: 'This is our land, and it was taken from us for historical reasons that we had nothing to do with'?"

Such a demographic perspective on the global unrest gives us grounds for optimism: In a few decades, the era of youth-bulge wars could be over. It is the meantime that poses problems. Should the west just wait for this wave to burn itself out? When the world is at peace, will it have been better to have kept our nose out of other people's business? Will it have been better to say we at least tried to steer the developing world through this crisis in a humane way? Iraq and Palestine are not the only places where these questions ought to be approached with a good deal of intellectual modesty.

Source

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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Leftist Delusions of "reality"

Not long ago, as I was listening to a BBC reporter describing the latest terrorist outrage in Baghdad-scores killed . deteriorating security situation . Iraqi government helpless . military untrained and disorganized . terrorists operating at will, etc.-it occurred to me that, even if all that the reporter had said were perfectly true it was also exactly what the terrorists would have said if they could have written his script for him. Did this matter? Was it just a coincidence that the "reality" of the Iraq war, endlessly repeated and identified as such by the news media, so closely resembled the terrorist "narrative," as our brainy students of textual deconstruction would put it? Or-the question seemed just worth asking-was reality itself being shaped by the terrorist narrative because of, first, the media's predisposition to believe it and, second, the lack of any persuasive rival narrative from those who continued to claim, in more or less vague terms, that "progress" was being made against the insurgency?

I don't know the answer to this question, but one indication of the importance of asking it came as the media themselves, perhaps emboldened by the success of their preferred party in the recent election, embarked on one of their periodic "reality" jags, proudly boasting of their own intimate relations with that elusive commodity and taking the occasion to pour scorn and contempt upon what they take to be the Bush administration's unfamiliarity with same. For even if we are willing to accept that the media's picture of the Iraq war is largely accurate, we cannot regard as credible the contention that not only the President of the United States but also the entire administration over which he presides and the generals advising it are merely delusional. Nor can I share the easy assumption of the substantial Bush-hating faction in and out of the media that our President is so stupid as to be utterly blind to things obvious and transparent to the likes of Frank Rich of The New York Times or Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's "Countdown."

Here is what the latter said, as transcribed by the Media Research Center, about some remarks President Bush made on his November trip to Vietnam: "It is a shame and it is embarrassing to us all when President Bush travels 8,000 miles only to wind up avoiding reality again . . But most importantly, important beyond measure, his avoidance of reality is going to wind up killing more Americans. And that is indefensible and fatal." Well, killing usually is fatal, though it is not always indefensible. But Mr. Olbermann's obvious passion has distorted more than his English. What had excited his wrath was the President's response to a question about the "lessons" of the Vietnam War in which he said that these, applied to the current war, included the fact that "the task in Iraq is going to take a while" and that "we'll succeed unless we quit." It is not so obvious to me as it apparently is to Keith Olbermann that these supposed lessons are misconstrued, but let's say that they are. How does that tell us anything about the President's grasp of "reality"? Does he really think that President Bush-or any American president in wartime-could have said anything else?

It may be, that is, that Iraq is like Vietnam, at least in being not only a losing struggle but an unwinnable one, but even if the commander-in-chief thought so, he would be mad to say so instead of quietly trying to find a way to extricate American forces-which is in fact what he seems to be doing. If Mr. Olbermann thinks otherwise, then he is the delusional one. The same affliction seems to trouble Frank Rich, who professes to believe that his president "isn't merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It's not that he can't handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn't know what the truth is." The blithe insouciance with which Mr. Rich issues such a serious charge is itself evidence of its ridiculously hyperbolical nature. Generally speaking, the rhetorical resort to the popularized language of psychotherapy should be treated as prima facie evidence of a lack of intellectual seriousness, and that applies in spades to any allegation of psychosis against one's political enemies.

If Mr. Rich actually thought that the President was a victim of mental illness, he would have used more sober language and consulted one or two more qualified diagnosticians than himself, rather than simply tossing off the accusation as part of his weekly anti-Bush rant.

Much more here

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ELSEWHERE

Why poverty? "Beginning with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet, everyone wants to do something to end poverty in the world. That's supposedly why the World Bank and myriad other expensive international institutions, plus the foreign-aid programs of developed nations, were created. But they've been at this effort for more than 50 years, and judging by the state of the underdeveloped world, there is little evidence of success. Even some of their own experts admit this. Why the poor results? A consideration of the reason for this colossal failure is necessary if we want to help the poor create prosperity. There is no reason why poverty should exist in the world today amid all the modern wonders in technology, agriculture, medicine, and more. Poverty persists because governments in poor countries do stupid things, many of them advised by their well-intentioned charitable donors. Lets point out a few of these obvious but persistent tragic mistakes..... The reasons for the donors' failure is that they allow ideology to prevail over common sense. They invest time, effort, and money trying to alleviate the effects of poverty rather than the obvious causes and thus perpetuate it. If we want to help the poor, let us use our heads more than our hearts.

Crazy "rights" still dangerous: "Over the last couple of years I have explored FDR's Second Bill of Rights because recently some heavy hitters in politics and legal theory (e.g., Cass Sunstein) have made a point of championing these ultimately phony rights. With the Democrats back in power in Washington, it is not unreasonable to suppose that securing and expanding FDR's list of rights-as distinct from those laid out by the American founders in the Declaration of Independence-will once again dominate the federal government's agenda.... FDR's list included some lulus, I must say, but among them what's worth discussion in our day are the so-called economic rights. Take, for example, "The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment." Notice immediately that to secure any such alleged right what would be required is for those who supposedly have them to gain the willing or unwilling services of other people. ... The sorts of rights FDR and his followers promote are instruments of more or less Draconian tyranny. Because they are peddled as well intentioned efforts to do us good, resistance to them is difficult to articulate without seeming to be mean. But resistance to them is nonetheless imperative-it is a large measure of the vigilance that's the price of liberty.

Another large Christian country: "President Putin celebrated Orthodox Christmas in a monastery outside the Russian capital as senior figures in his Government attended a service in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the city, led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. National television broadcast footage of Mr Putin crossing himself and lighting a candle at the New Jerusalem monastery, which was turned into a museum after the 1917 Revolution and regained its status only in the 1990s. Despite a career as a KGB officer in the officially atheist Soviet Union, Mr Putin is a publicly devout Orthodox Christian and has cultivated links with the Church's leader, Patriarch Alexy II. In his Christmas message to the country, Mr Putin said: "This holiday brings joy and good expectations in the homes of millions of people, unites everyone on the basis of traditional moral values and strengthens moral principles and accord in society." The Church has enjoyed a significant resurgence since 1991 and says that two thirds of the 144-million strong population are observant."

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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Multiculturalism doesn't make vibrant communities but defensive ones

(Excerpt from an article by Steve Sailer )

"In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us".

-Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam

It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000 academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard's Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that his latest research discovery-that ethnic diversity decreases trust and co-operation in communities-was so explosive that for the last half decade he hadn't dared announce it "until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it `would have been irresponsible to publish without that.'" In a column headlined "Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity," Lloyd summarized the results of the largest study ever of "civic engagement," a survey of 26,200 people in 40 American communities:

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. `They don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions,' said Prof Putnam. `The only thing there's more of is protest marches and TV watching.'

Lloyd noted, "Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, `the most diverse human habitation in human history.'" As if to prove his own point that diversity creates minefields of mistrust, Putnam later protested to the Harvard Crimson that the Financial Times essay left him feeling betrayed, calling it "by two degrees of magnitude, the worst experience I have ever had with the media." To Putnam's horror, hundreds of "racists and anti-immigrant activists" sent him e-mails congratulating him for finally coming clean about his findings.

Lloyd stoutly stood by his reporting, and Putnam couldn't cite any mistakes of fact, just a failure to accentuate the positive. It was "almost criminal," Putnam grumbled, that Lloyd had not sufficiently emphasized the spin that he had spent five years concocting. Yet considering the quality of Putnam's talking points that Lloyd did pass on, perhaps the journalist was being merciful in not giving the professor more rope with which to hang himself. For example, Putnam's line-"What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us"-sounds like a weak parody of Bertolt Brecht's parody of Communist propaganda after the failed 1953 uprising against the East German puppet regime: "Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?"

Before Putnam hid his study away, his research had appeared on March 1, 2001 in a Los Angeles Times article entitled "Love Thy Neighbor? Not in L.A." Reporter Peter Y. Hong recounted, "Those who live in more homogeneous places, such as New Hampshire, Montana or Lewiston, Maine, do more with friends and are more involved in community affairs or politics than residents of more cosmopolitan areas, the study said."

Update:

The original reports of Putnam's findings are here and here.

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Brookes News Update

The US economy, consumer spending and the GDP fallacy: It has become the received wisdom that increased consumption more than offset the spending decline that the Clinton recession brought about. This is dangerous nonsense and that can only end in another recession
Imports and trade deficits: the good and the bad: The protectionist injunction against "free trade at any cost" is ridiculous. Free trade never takes place "at any cost". Trade only occurs up to that point where the cost of trading exceeds the benefits
Augusto Pinochet: the untold story: Even now the media cannot tell the truth about Allende's efforts to turn Chile into a Stalinist Gulag. As for leftists, history also teaches us that when they get even a small taste of their own medicine, their moaning and whining and sniveling becomes a worldwide cause celebre
US elections reveal a growing discontent: Congress appears to be that problem. They are out of control making promises they can't keep, spending the growth in revenues from a good economy as fast as they can on pork for their financial supporters
Opening the doors of Islam: The neurosis of Islamofascism can only be eradicated from within Islam by Moslems themselves. Ijtihad is how they are going to do it, how they are going to open the doors of Islam after being closed for a thousand years and bring it into the 21st century
Will the US dollar collapse?: The US dollar is having a hard time of it. But why is this so? Why has the dollar been falling? The basic argument is that the trade deficit is unsustainable and is driving down the dollar. But this does not tell us what is driving the deficits

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ELSEWHERE



Israel 'has plans for Iran nuke strike': "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said. Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear "bunker busters". Two other sites, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, would be targeted with conventional bombs, the Sunday Times said. [STACLU has a lot of discussion about how much credence can be attached to this story]

The right minimum wage: "Democrats consider the minimum-wage increase a signature issue. But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly"

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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US Attacked: National Guard Routed

How utterly disgusting. If this was a diversion, as one scenario suggests, we can only hope that something even more dangerous wasn't smuggled in. And if you need a better example of an alleged super power so hobbled by political correctness and weak political leadership that it can hardly protect itself, let alone wage a war - you may be waiting a long time for better than this.

I imagine the National Guard was operating under ROE's [rules] that prevented them from firing back. But, yes, armed men from Mexico entered the US, attacked a National Guard position and the National Guard turned tail and ran, probably their only alternative under President Bush's wonderful border enforcement policy.

Americans should be as outraged as they are sad, because if this precipitates any change, it'll likely be seen as a rationale for taking the Guard off the border, not giving them the ability to fight back. Face it, this administration probably fears gunning down some illegal more than it does allowing them to enter the country at will.

From Riehl World

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The betrayed children of the welfare society

These neglected children are kids like Michael Oher, who turned up recently in The New York Times in Michael Lewis's "Ballad of Big Mike." Of kids like Michael you can too often write:

"that Michael's father had been shot and killed and tossed off a bridge, that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and that his life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first 16 years inside a closet... Big Mike, as he was called, was essentially homeless and so had made an art of sleeping on whatever floor the ghetto would provide for him. "

Yes, read the whole thing. It's a compelling story, and for you sophisticated ironists there is even irony in it. African American Michael Oher is doing fine now as a stand out left offensive tackle at Ole Miss thanks to a bunch of rich white conservative football fans of a school in the Old South.

But why should we continue spending five percent of GDP every year on government schooling and $200 billion a year on welfare when a nice kid like Michael Oher completely falls through the safety net? What combination of personal and institutional heedlessness does it take to produce a 16-year-old like Michael Oher, utterly unschooled and utterly unsocialized? How many more are there like him? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

It would be interesting to apply the "Enron Test" to the case of Michael Oher and the other victims of the welfare state. Suppose that Michael Oher had been neglected not by his mother, the local government child services bureaucracy, and the local school bureaucracy but by the late Ken Lay and the evil Enron corporation. What would our Democratic friends say then? For the heedless bureaucrats of the welfare state it's not the money. It's power that frees them from accountability.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Charitable nation: "Americans are better people than Europeans. Hold on, it gets better. Religious Americans are better than non-religious Americans. And religious Americans tend to be politically conservative. This admittedly tendentious rendering of reality is how some on the right are interpreting Who Really Cares? by Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. Brooks doesn't really deal with what makes one person 'better' or 'worse' than any other. But it's fair to say that how much a person gives -- of either his money or time -- is usually considered an important indicator of character. It turns out that by this yardstick alone, my little talk-radio-ready summary is basically correct."

Iran admits its nuke program may be used for weapons: "Iranian top nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday that Iran is committed to peaceful use of nuclear technology. "We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty," he said. "But," he warned, "if we are threatened, the situation may change."

People running from over-regulated Leftist New York: "Advocates for more pro-growth policies in New York will get new ammunition today with the release of a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the Empire State was one of only a handful of states that lost population this year, with thousands of people moving away to other parts of America and not being replaced by new residents. The state lost more than 9,500 people between July 2005 and July 2006, putting its total statewide population at 19.3 million, according to the federal statistics. Only states like Michigan, which has been hard-hit by the decline in the domestic auto industry, and hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, which lost 4.9% of its population due to the storm, saw a more dramatic decline, the bureau estimated".

Leftist dishonesty about American wage rates: "Some economists and journalists-I'll call them "the real-wage pessimists"-have claimed that average real wages have fallen during substantial time periods over the last 30 or so years.... Start with the person's hourly wage rate. Many of the real-wage pessimists don't carefully estimate that but, instead, settle for looking at average weekly wages. But comparing average weekly wages over time will give a much more pessimistic view than is justified. Why? Part-time jobs as a percentage of total jobs have increased over time.... there is another reason that average weekly earnings understate the growth in hourly wages: the average work week, even for full-time workers, has fallen steadily... The third factor typically left out by the real-wage pessimists is the growing fraction of compensation paid in the form of benefits. Reynolds points out that between 1973 and 2005, total compensation per hour (including health insurance, retirement, and other benefits as part of compensation), rose by almost 40 percent.

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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ISLAMIC "BEDROOMS"

"Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters. But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters....

Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule -- and the horrid reality that it represents -- because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.

Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.

The fact that Taliban militants' spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman's ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.

The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture's addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide.

There is a basic and common sense empirical human reality: wherever humans construct and perpetuate an environment in which females and their sexuality are demonized and are pushed into invisibility, homosexual behaviour among men and the sexual abuse of young boys by older men always increases. Islamic-Arab culture serves as a perfect example of this paradigm, seeing that gender apartheid, fear of female sexuality and a vicious misogyny are the structures on which the whole society functions."

More here. Dr. Sanity has some extended comments on the above.

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ELSEWHERE



False prophets are always with us. In March 2005, Peak oil prophets (including "expert" geologist Colin Campbell) predicted that oil prices would hit $200 per barrel within two years. Currently oil prices are $59 per barrel. Are they expecting prices to treble in the next three months?

Dangerous lack of realism: "Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been."

Homosexual marriage challenged in Massachusetts: "Gay marriage in Massachusetts, the only state to recognize same-sex marriage, is moving closer to becoming a ballot issue in the 2008 election. State lawmakers voted Tuesday to advance a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and woman. The measure still needs approval of the next legislative session before it can get on the ballot. Supporters and opponents of gay marriage vowed to step up their campaigns in the meantime."

Military surrendering to homosexuals: "The Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the Pentagon adopted its 'don't ask, don't tell' policy on gays says he no longer opposes allowing them to serve openly. John Shalikashvili, who retired in 1997 after four years as the nation's top military officer, had argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units. He said he has changed his mind after meeting with gay servicemen."

British navy being phased out: "Almost half of the British Royal Navy's warships would be mothballed to slash Ministry of Defence costs, the British Daily Telegraph reported today. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Government had admitted that 13 warships were in a state of "reduced readiness" and six further destroyers and frigates were being proposed for cuts, the paper said. The move comes as ministers reportedly try to cut the defence budget by 250 million pounds ($621m) and amid major armed forces commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What this means is that we are now no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug-out canoes. "The Dutch now have a better navy than us,'' said an unnamed senior officer. It was likely that the six destroyers and frigates would eventually be sold or scrapped, while there were also fears that two new aircraft carriers promised in 1998 would never be built, the paper said."

Boeing ends best-ever year: "Boeing said overnight it took firm orders for 1044 commercial aircraft in 2006, topping its previous record of 1002 orders for the year before and likely beating European rival Airbus for the first time since 2000. Sales were boosted by strong demand from European, Middle Eastern and Asian airlines, confounding analysts who had expected a slowdown in sales from 2005. Boeing was also helped by the outstanding success of its new lightweight 787 Dreamliner, which is set to enter service next year. Airbus, dogged by production and management problems, has badly lagged Boeing in orders for the past 12 months, notching only 635 orders by the end of November."

Duke lacrosse players go back to college: "Two college "jocks" accused in a sex case that exposed race and class divisions in the US are to be allowed to return to their studies at one of country's top universities. The decision by Duke University to readmit the pair comes as the case, sparked by the claims of a black stripper, unravels amid charges of unethical conduct by the prosecutor... Duke University cancelled its lacrosse team's season after the stripper, known as "Precious", complained that she had been gang-raped during a team party on March 13. Forty-six players submitted to DNA testing. Three - Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans - were charged, even though police found no DNA match with samples taken from the woman.... Questions soon emerged about the story told by the stripper, a 28-year-old who studied at a predominantly black college nearby and worked as an exotic dancer part time. A second stripper called the alleged victim's claims a "crock", and a taxi driver disclosed that one of the accused had been in his cab at the time of the supposed attack."

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LEFTISM

Ever since the 1950 book "The authoritarian personality", Leftist psychologists have been saying that it is conservatives who are anti-democratic -- ignoring great democrats like Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. So the events decribed below by Taranto are another little dose of reality for them -- not that reality has ever mattered much to them, of course.

Massachusetts voters may get to decide on the future of same-sex marriage after all. Yesterday the state Legislature voted 62-134 (only one-fourth of votes are required) to advance a constitutional amendment that would reverse a Supreme Judicial Court ruling imposing such marriages on the state. The measure needs the same approval from the Legislature's next session to get to the 2008 ballot.

Proponents of same-sex marriage had urged the Legislature not to vote on the measure, notwithstanding a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court that it was obliged to do so. Although the court held that it did not have the authority to enforce its own ruling, "But the court's criticism of the legislature appeared to be enough to make some lawmakers decide to allow a vote . . ., even legislators who support same-sex marriage and hope the amendment will ultimately be defeated":

"Certainly, the court ruling changed the atmosphere this week, in that legislators took a second look at their job description, at their oath of office, at a higher obligation actually, to uphold the constitution," said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment.

[Gay-rights activist Arline] Isaacson said the court's decision "really tipped the scales against us."

An editorial in yesterday's Boston Globe urged the Legislature not to vote:

There has been much gnashing of teeth over whether the voters will be heard if the Legislature declines to vote on the amendment today. By now, legislators have debated the question in multiple constitutional conventions in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It is hard to say that the matter has not been aired. Last September, legislators took a final vote on a more lenient amendment--which denied marriage but explicitly established civil unions as an alternative--and defeated it, 157 to 39. That cleared the way for today's harsher version of the ban, which needs only 25 percent of the convention to advance.

The voters also have been heard at the polls in two separate statewide elections, where not one of the proponents of gay marriage was defeated and their margin in the Legislature increased. Governor-elect Deval Patrick was the only major-party candidate to steadfastly support gay marriage in the November election, and he won in a landslide.

Patrick also lobbied the Legislature not to vote on the measure.

Now, there is something very odd about this whole episode. The Globe and others seem to be against democracy rather than just for same-sex marriage. Why not urge the Legislature to do its duty and vote, and to vote the amendment down? Or why not welcome the opportunity to persuade voters to approve same-sex marriage by rejecting the amendment?

We wondered if the Globe had ever urged the Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage before the Supreme Judicial Court mandated it. The answer appears to be no, and in fact the Globe's view seems to be that this actually is the purview of the courts rather than the Legislature. In a July 8, 2003, editorial titled "For Gay Marriage," the paper argued that that wasn't the place:

Opponents say the Legislature should decide all issues dealing with marriage licenses. But the court is being asked for its opinion on a constitutional matter of fundamental rights--its proper purview--and it should deliver such an opinion.

Gay-rights activists are fond of likening their cause to the civil rights movement. But although civil-rights activists won many of their victories through litigation, perhaps the most important one was a legislative action, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voters in dozens of states have passed ballot initiatives designed to prevent same-sex marriage, and antigay bigotry is not the only motivating force. The resistance in Massachusetts to putting same-sex marriage to any sort of democratic test only reinforces the perception that its proponents have contempt for the consent of the governed.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist gobbledegook from Anthony B. Pinn, Rice University religion professor and atheist -- on black American humanism: "I argue here for the possibility of a humanist theology, a theology that holds community rather than God as the center of life altering questions, accompanied by an understanding of religion and theology as centered on the problem of evil, or theodicy. Christian theology as done within African American communities is premised upon a sense of redemptive suffering as the best response to moral evil in the world. Furthermore, this theological stance is intimately tied to the Christian tradition, complete with a God who is concerned for and working on behalf of the oppressed. It continues to be my belief that, although important in many ways, this theological stance and its narrow perception of religion may not be the best means of achieving the social transformation or liberation sought by the African American community. I conclude that a theological stance on moral evil requires an alternate religious system-African American humanism. This is not meant to dismiss Christian approaches out of hand, rather, to broaden the possibilities, the religious terrain, and to foster conversation concerning liberating ways of addressing the problem of evil. Humanist theology, and humanism as a religion, nonetheless need further explication." [How the Devil does an atheist get to be a professor of religion??]

Transfers to African Governments Triple: "The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion." [Money down the drain]

Private Police Services Expand: "Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places -- and trying to expand their terrain. The 'company police agencies,' as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets." [Making up for inadequate government services]

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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BLOGS+GOOGLE = INFLUENCE

The small readership of most blogs would strongly suggest that no blogs other than the top three or four could possibly have much influence on anything. That however overlooks something: Google and other search engines. Because they are heavily interlinked (well over 1,000 other blogs link to this one) blogs tend to have a high page-ranking in response to any search. That means that what blogs say on any given topic tends to pop up on the first page of any set of search results.

And who are big users of searches? Journalists. Like most people they Google their own name and they also of course Google any topic they are "researching". Googling is a lot easier that getting out of your chair and going to look in person at what you are talking about. So what blogs say tends to get picked up by journalists (and Right-wing radio commentators too) and, in their constant search for something new to report, the blog-origin information or perspective may rapidly find its way into what they write or say. They may not like what the blog says but they like being "scooped" by other journalists even less.

So it is not mainly a matter of blogs and the MSM competing. What has developed is a symbiosis between blogs and the MSM.

I had an amusing example of how blogs affect journalists recently. My Greenie Watch blog usually gets only about 400 hits a day so you might think that it is one of those many blogs that are destined to flower in the desert, forever unnoticed by almost anyone. Yet it is not so. I get all sorts of email from people and organizations I mention in it. The amusing example: On October 4, 2005, I put up there a post that had a good laugh at a delightfully-named British journalist called Andrew Buncombe (pronounced "bunkum"). It mocked the old polar bear scare that he was doing his best to promote in "The Independent", a very "Green" British mainstream newspaper.

Recently, however, the Bush administration threw the Greenies a bone by commissioning a report into whether the bears were "endangered" or not. This was hailed as a great triumph by Greenies, and Buncombe was one of those elated. So what was one of the first things he did when he learnt of the new move? He emailed me suggesting that I now owed him an apology for the bad things I had previously said about him! He had obviously been stewing for over a year in response to my comments and took the first opportunity he had to shoot back at me! Commissioning a report into an allegation was a very small triumph but Buncombe clutched at it like a drowning man to save his self-esteem!

So whether journalists just google their own name or the topic they are writing about, they do read what is on blogs and they do take notice of what they read there. Whether it just generates heartburn in them or leads them to follow up the matter in their own articles depends on their intellectual quality, of course.

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"ZOMBIETIMING": BLOG POWER ON THE RISE

Excerpt from a BBC broadcast below -- talking about what to expect in 2007:

Tim Jackson: I think the biggest trend is going to be something which I call "zombietiming." And it's exceptionally bad news for journalists, because it's a trend in which people out there on the Web will be checking facts of television, radio and newspapers, and hauling people to account when they get them wrong.

Lawrence Pollard: So, we could all be out of a job. Thank you, Tim. We'll hear more from that in a minute.... And so finally, we come to Tim Jackson for our last big trend of 2007. Now, Anna's just been telling us how 2007 will become less cynical, but Tim: you're predicting we're going to grow more skeptical. You've got the best name for a trend: "zombietiming." And now this goes back, I gather, to the enormous amount of argument in blogging sites and on the Internet over the reporting of a rocket attack during the Lebanon War. Basically, um, whether or not a Red Cross ambulance had been hit by an Israeli rocket, and if it had been reported properly by the news agencies and so.... This is a story that just mushroomed and went on and your point is that this is going to go on and grow and it's going to become one of the big things of 2007.

Tim Jackson: Absolutely. We all know that journalists work under tremendous time pressure. Like tennis players or policemen or soldiers, they have to find the right balance between doing the best job they can and getting it done in time, finishing it by the deadline. ... What the newspapers failed to grasp is that something has changed in the world of journalism. It used to be the case that readers decided a newspaper that they trusted, and then relied on the reporter once they picked their newspaper or their television station or their radio station. Now it seems to be the case that story by story, journalists have to expect that if they're making a controversial claim, they've got to back it up with proof. And the reason I call this trend "zombietiming" is because the Web site that brought together all this information is called zombietime.com. ...

Mary Meehan: ... There is just this lack of trust out there. That lack of trust drives bloggers' needs to prove the media wrong and bust the myths and expose the lies -- y'know, be it lies or not -- and they have the power and the platform now to do it. They just don't trust something they can't see through. It's that transparency that they demand and expect. And they're gonna expose it if they can't get at it.

Source

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ELSEWHERE



France still in deep trouble: "A car burns after a huge police operation involving 25,000 officers failed to quell one of the most entrenched new year rituals in France, with vandals - many of them children - setting on fire 313 vehicles throughout the country. The worst-hit region was Alsace, where 106 vehicles were set ablaze, including 28 in Strasbourg. The attacks are seen as a product of tension on the suburban estates that are home to the bulk of France's five-million-strong immigrant community. Most of the cars were burnt in areas with unemployment rates of up to 40 per cent. The national average is 8.7 per cent."

As this review of "Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews", by David Pryce-Jones shows, French antisemitism did not end with the Dreyfus case in the 19th century. It shows that throughout the 20th century France was relentlessly pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Their reward is of course Arabs setting their suburbs on fire -- so there is some justice after all.

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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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AMERICANS AS THE NEW JEWS

Implications of a British survey

I have written at some length here about why the Jews have been hated for so long by so many but there is no doubt that, particularly among Leftists, that hatred goes back to the fact that Jews are both distinctive and successful -- in a word: envy. Hatred of success and prominence in others is in fact at the heart of most Leftism so envy is a most important motive, not only in politics but also in everyday life -- as Schoeck pointed out and explained at length long ago. It would be almost true to say that the power of envy can never be underestimated.

And, without a doubt, despite their vast generosity not only with money but even with the blood of their young men, America is the world's most hated nation today. You can murder vast numbers of people -- as Saddam did and as Robert Mugabe is doing right to this day -- and nobody gives a damn. Even genocide in Sudan doesn't seem to be bothering anyone much. But be powerful, successful and demonstrably so much better than the norm and you will be hated.

I am saying nothing original in saying that. It is a common explanation of anti-Americanism. But now I think we have some rather clear proof of it. There was a recent opinion poll reported in Britain that, as expected, put America first as the most hated nation -- with 15% of the population nominating the USA as their prime hate object. Even more people dislike America than dislike the ghastly North Korea.

The interesting thing, however, is which nation was the most admired? It was the country most similar to America -- Australia was chosen by 18% of the respondents. The major difference between America and Australia is power and influence. Politically and culturally, America dominates the world whereas Australia is a bit-player. And it is no good saying that America is also more warlike. Australians have fought alongside Americans in all major wars since World War I -- and Australians have even been in some wars America has not -- such as the Boer war and recently in East Timor.

The power of envy to distort thinking is truly awesome. Fortunately, America, like Israel, is rather good at defending itself whenever it has a mind to -- which just makes it even more hated, of course.

A good quote from V.D. Hanson: "We gave the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars for housing, schools, and security and they hate us; Saddam gave them a few thousand dollars as bounty for suicide murderers and they loved him"

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Where The New York Times Is Coming From

Post lifted from George Reisman

Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times. The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror.

December 11, 2006, Augusto Pinochet, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies at 91

September 10, 1976, Friday, . . . Mao Tse-tung Dies in Peking at 82; Leader of Red China's Revolution

March 6, 1953, Friday, Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State; RUTHLESS IN MOVING TO GOALS

January 24, 1924, Thursday, ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODY AS IT LIES IN STATE; Wait Hours in Snow and Zero Temperature Outside Moscow Nobles' Club. COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson. LENIN CALLED A CHRISTIAN Archbishop Summons Synod to Declare Founder of Bolshevism Member of Church. ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN'S BODY

In these headlines we find utter condemnation of a dictator who was relatively mild as dictators go, but who was Anti-Communist; his leading characteristic was allegedly rule by "Terror."

In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers. Thus Mao was the "Leader of Red China's Revolution"; Stalin allegedly transformed "Russia Into Mighty Socialist State"; and Lenin's funeral was described as a phenomenon of near worshipful enthusiasm: ".COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson."

It is patterns such as this that lead some people to think that the reporting of The New York Times is colored by its politics and that the color of its politics is red.

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Other grim statistics missed by the Media

Excerpt from a post by Gateway Pundit

The US has sadly lost 3,000 soldiers to date in the 45 months that America has been fighting the War in Iraq.

This grim milestone was presented by the AP and others today- without any historical context, of course.
So for the sake of truth, here are a couple other grim statistics that the media won't be mentioning in their grim milestone reports:

US Military Losses during the Clinton Years and in the Iraq War:

That's right! During the Clinton years, the US military lost an average of 939 soldiers each year. During the War in Iraq the US has lost an average of 800 soldiers each year- down each of the last two years!
These results were taken from Iraq Coalition Casualties, and Murdoc Online - the Official Department of Defense Report.

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)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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