Kling Klanger
I greatly admire the writings on economics by Arnold Kling. His recent comment on IQ is deficient, however. He falls into the trap of regarding mental abilities as specific when the whole thrust of a century of research into IQ shows that they are general. Everybody has things that they are best at but in general a person who is good at solving one sort of problem will be good at solving many sorts of problems. IQ represents in fact precisely that general ability which Kling concedes is badly needed in today's world. IQ is therefore a useful sorting method for determining in advance who can handle college education. And the SAT that is much used for that purpose in the USA is in fact little more than an IQ test.
To be fair, Kling seeems to be talking about top talent rather than normal ability. He is correct that extreme ability in any field is poorly predicted by IQ tests. Once you get into the genius range (say the top 2%) IQ tests can no longer sort out who will be the highest achievers among that population.
But Kling seems to conclude from that that IQ tests are not GENERALLY useful -- which is false. There may of course be a few rare cases where a person of genius ability in some particular field cannot make it into the top 20% of IQ scorers and who might therefore in a strict system be barred from higher education. But making provision for exceptional cases is part of any form of administration. Teachers do it all the time already when they award marks. So that poses no great difficulty.
Footnote:
Perhaps an example of ability generalizing might be in order -- to show what I mean:
My own greatest ability is getting papers published in academic journals. I am exceptionally good at that -- which is why I have had hundreds published. Papers which I have taken only a day to write generally get accepted for publication whereas some of my unfortunate colleagues labour for a year over a paper and then get it knocked back.
So I am hopeless at other things, right? Yes. I am a total washout at sport for instance. But I am also reasonably good at many apparently unrelated things. I am good at fixing old locks, for instance, and I have been quite successful in business.
But I am no billionaire and any locksmith is better at fixing locks than I am. I have just the one special ability but, associated with that, I also have a range of lesser abilities in which I am no world-beater but in which I do better than most. And that is pretty much how abilities generally are related to one another.
Jesus put it rather bluntly: "To him that hath, more will be given him. And to him that hath not, what little he hath will be taken away".
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WHY THEY HATE AMERICA
Environmentalism, free trade and globalization don't bring people or nations together. Neither do feminism, human rights, cures for disease or the myriad of other common causes, all vying for our attention. There is only one cause that unites people and nations, today, like no other. That cause is anti-Americanism. The dislike or hatred of America and Americans is an obsession that unifies most people on the planet. That hatred crosses race, religious, gender and age barriers. It is an activity that produces almost sexual like pleasures among those that engage in it. They are in a word, obsessed. America is the root all evils- past, present and future.
It is hard for those who have such great hatred for America to opine on which gave them greater pleasure- the people who jumped to their deaths from the World Trade Center, or those who burned to death. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Ward Churchill has become a respected and sought after speaker to a certain segment of the population, justifying the deaths of all those `little Eichmanns'- to cheering audiences. Those who blame George Bush for the all the ills of the world make no apologies for their decit or despicable behavior. As Dr Sanity points out,
The chant, "Bush Lied, People Died" would be revised to, "3000 People Died on 9/11 before Bush Said Anything" . The former has the advantage of rhyming, but the latter is closer to truth in advertising. And, that is exactly why the people chanting the former cutesy phrase are so indignant and scream ragefully like stuck pigs about "cynical manipulation" when images of 9/11 are shown; or even when that horrible day is mentioned. They know all about it. The "cynical manipulation" they are referring to is entirely a product of their own minds.
Pesky truths! Of course, virulent anti Americanism is not just home grown (dysfunctional hate is rarely a confined and local phenomena). With great irony, the French and Germans feel compelled to lecture America on militarism, despite their own spectacular and bloody legacies. When you consider that US military intervention has been for the most part at the request of and as a result of European military and adventurism of all other varieties, their charges are laughable and accepted only as fact by the `useful idiots.'
Over the years, anti-Americanism has evolved from the minor religion of has-been Marxists, professional victims, radical Islamists and Third World tin pot dictators playing to the cameras, into what can best be described as new found religious status, elevated to unimaginable heights. Hugo Chavez, and other recently minted Latin American dictators-in-training are a few of the latest new apostles and saints of the left (Look for Castro to be canonized immediately upon death). Along with with Che Gueverra, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and every Middle Eastern dysfunctional despot, to name a few, are now the angels sitting on the shoulders of the leftists, all blessed and ordained by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and the religious orders of MoveOn, TruthOut and CounterPunch.
Of course, every religion needs demons and sin. The objective of the new religion is to put the US into the worst possible light, defined as evil and whose every motive is suspect and deadly. Equally as important is ignore those things that the US does well, or redefine those things into evil. For example, the MSM had virtually nothing to say when US soldiers were brutally murdered along with Iraqi children, as the soldiers were passing out gifts. In fact, the story was ignored and almost immediately forgotten. The pretend Quran desecration story, went on for weeks.
America is the hell and Mr Bush is the devil in this new religion. Of course, there can be no heaven or God- anti American ideology of the left precludes the need for a deity (If you are an anti-American, Jew hating radical Islamist, you can impose your beliefs at will with the cheers and encouragement of the `we feel your pain, for the most part' crowd. FGM is just `cultural expression.' Don't you know that?).
What the anti American religion pretends to offer it's millions, if not billions, of adherents, is the same as any other faith-meaning. Of course it is really no more than an illusion, a mirage, to mitigate an otherwise useless existence (When anti-Americanism is the focus of your life, that life is indeed meaningless). A life predicated on hate and rage is not real meaning at all. A life predicated on positive actions and efforts is a life with real meaning.
To be a successful adherent to this new faith requires a lot of mental gymnastics and leaps of faith. The High Priests of the anti-American religion would have you believe is that no matter how hypocritical, backward, bigoted, ignorant, corrupt, evil, murderous or cruel you or the regime you pledge allegiance to, you are better than the disgusting Americans.
The new religion of the left, anti-Americanism, was founded for one reason and one reason only: to counter the incoming high tide of truth. Revolutions today aren't about marxist or socialist agendas. Today's revolutionaries cannot hide the truth any longer. Today's revolutions are about power. Today's revolutionaries need to upend free societies, capitalism and market economies. That is what people want, from Africa to South America to Eastern Europe because those are the ideas that have liberated and empowered billions of people. The war of ideas is over and the socialist agenda has been soundly defeated on every front. The high tides of freedoms and the aspirations of free men can no more held be back than the high tides of the oceans. Todays' leaders of `the revolution' will be forgotten. Their proved excesses in death, destruction and the curtailing of human rights have guaranteed their legacy- and the legacy of their supporters....
Are there liberal voices today, demanding freedom for oppressed peoples? Of course not. The despots and totalitarian regimes found all over the world are reflective of what passes for liberal ideology. The failed economies, failed education systems and entrenched failed human and civil rights disasters all scar and identify these nations....
The religion of the left is as bereft of ideas as it is of political integrity. The sloganeering of `No to Terror! No to War!` is as relevant as saying `No to Cancer! No to Radiation!` Terror cannot be addressed with conversation any more than cancer can be cured by focusing on crystals and eating root of rutabaga. Terror and cancer must be addressed head on and aggressively. To believe otherwise is to delude oneself. The simple fact is, we cannot all just get `along.'...
For today's leftist, it is about `the color of one's skin' and not the `content of character. It is about image and not substance. The deliberate obfuscation continues and the blurring of reality continues. As the left indicts America as self absorbed and drunk with materialistic inclinations, they ignore yet another truth. In fact, the most self absorbed and materialistic regimes are the leaders of the most tyrannical regimes in Africa and the Arab world, where greed, corruption, excess and deceit are the defining adjectives of those regimes. Those levels of greed, excess, corruption and self serving attitudes rival the most fanatical religious extremists in their tenacious expressions by citizens of all strata in those countries- and these are the leaders the left reveres. For the left the truth is as toxic as is the sun to a vampire.
More here
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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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Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Grinning Peanut: Morally vicious, totally dishonest
It was Jimmy Carter who wrote speeches for Yasir Arafat, so that he could make a better impression (see Douglas Brinkley's biography of Carter). It was Jimmy Carter who hectored and bullied the Israelis incessantly at Camp David, and caused them to finally sign that terrible (from the point of view of Israel) agreement. By that agreement, in three tranches over a very short period, the entire Sinai, with its oil and critical airfields and infrastructure all put in by the Israelis, was handed over to Egypt.
And in return nothing tangible at all was given -- mere promises to discourage hostility toward Israel and to encourage a "peaceful" attitude. The antisemitism of Egyptian television and its press, that is so reminiscent of Der Stuermer in its depiction of Jews lying in wait to snatch a child in order to use his blood for some ritual, has not exactly been an example of what the Israelis had in mind, and what, under the Camp David Accords, was the only thing that they had a right to expect. Even that was denied them.
Shall we go into Carter's credulous acceptance of the "Palestinian people"? What about Carter knowing -- the documents have now been released, and it is clear that the American government knew all along, but was hiding it in order to protect Arafat -- that Arafat himself signed the order for the seizure and killing of two American diplomats in Khartoum by Black September? How could Carter, knowing that, proceed not merely to protect Arafat by not making this information public, but increase his efforts to help Arafat improve his image and polish his sinister message? ...
He's a guide to nothing. And an obvious antisemite. Not only in his indifference and cruelty toward Israel, demonstrated on so many occasions. No, that antisemitism is also demonstrated in the sympathy he gave to a self-serving letter from the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp guard and murderer, who had been found out and was in the process of being expelled. Carter found the daughter's letter convincing, and wrote that it was worthy of sympathetic consideration, and then had it sent on to the O.I.S. How often, by the way, does any President ever read any of the mail sent to him? And of the few letters that he actually reads, how often does he feel compelled to write a handwritten note urging that the letter's contents be favorably considered? And how often does that letter's contents, about a Nazi murderer who is being expelled by the Office of Special Investigations after a thorough and meticulous study, become the object of such remarkable presidential solicitude?
More here
The Grinning Peanut is shameless: "Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. "I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia. "I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don't detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed." [Or is he just insane?] "Carter said he was pleased the book has stimulated discussion of an issue that has been "omitted from the public consciousness" for at least the last six years" [Israel and the Palis have been "omitted from the public consciousness"????. See here for how "accurate" the Peanut's book is]
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ELSEWHERE
So, is a volatile economy good for America?: "Economic populism is one of the more striking features of our politics today. Wal-Mart is excoriated by liberal intellectuals and labor unions. Sen. Jim Webb recently argued that in "the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future." CNN's Lou Dobbs characterizes this troubling future as a result of a "War on the Middle Class." ... A disquiet with our turbulent economic times is at the root of the political concern over economic security. And it has yielded an economic dialogue shrouded in pessimism and unease. But is it entirely warranted? To answer that, it helps to know if the overall economic turbulence is beneficial or not. The authors of the new book, "Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?" are not ideological gun-slingers. Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have studied the overall impact of America's dynamic economy on jobs, workers and firms by examining in depth five major economic sectors -- semiconductors, software, retail food, trucking and financial services. They are careful not to overstate or inflate claims. And what they find, given the current climate of opinion about American economic change, is surprising: "The analysis of literally millions of worker histories and hundreds of career paths for workers and job ladders for firms leads to the reassuring finding that although turbulence imposes short run costs, in the long-run job change leads to improved jobs for most workers."
2006 U.S. warming strengthened the economy: "While we keep hearing from environmentalists about alleged negative effects from global warming, it seems that it can have positive effects. As is explained here,warmer weather might be the main reason for the stronger than expected U.S. economy. This is because warmer weather means that activities supressed by winter weather will take place after all. Moreover -and this is not mentioned in the story- the warmer weather is a key reason for why oil prices have fallen so much, as less heating is needed. Lower oil prices have been a key factor in boosting the purchasing power of U.S. consumers."
Electricity failing badly in black-run South Africa: "South Africa's major banks have signalled that they can no longer rely on parastatal provider Eskom for electricity after countrywide blackouts this week, and will be implementing measures to guarantee uninterrupted power. One of SA's largest retail banks, First National Bank (FNB), will spend R50m this year alone to buy backup generators and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units to guard against the adverse effects of power outages similar to those that hit most of the country this week. The emergency power suppliers would be installed in all FNB branches across the country.... Branches in the Western Cape made of more than half of the recipients due to the province's intermittent power outages... Maroga said Eskom was experiencing unplanned outages of 4600MW due to technical generating plant problems..... An investigation by the energy regulator last year into the six major power outages in Cape Town found negligence, inadequate maintenance and the failure to adhere to licence conditions as the "root causes" of the rolling blackouts. "There was also a trend that indicated ill-discipline in certain areas and non-conformance to procedures"
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
It was Jimmy Carter who wrote speeches for Yasir Arafat, so that he could make a better impression (see Douglas Brinkley's biography of Carter). It was Jimmy Carter who hectored and bullied the Israelis incessantly at Camp David, and caused them to finally sign that terrible (from the point of view of Israel) agreement. By that agreement, in three tranches over a very short period, the entire Sinai, with its oil and critical airfields and infrastructure all put in by the Israelis, was handed over to Egypt.
And in return nothing tangible at all was given -- mere promises to discourage hostility toward Israel and to encourage a "peaceful" attitude. The antisemitism of Egyptian television and its press, that is so reminiscent of Der Stuermer in its depiction of Jews lying in wait to snatch a child in order to use his blood for some ritual, has not exactly been an example of what the Israelis had in mind, and what, under the Camp David Accords, was the only thing that they had a right to expect. Even that was denied them.
Shall we go into Carter's credulous acceptance of the "Palestinian people"? What about Carter knowing -- the documents have now been released, and it is clear that the American government knew all along, but was hiding it in order to protect Arafat -- that Arafat himself signed the order for the seizure and killing of two American diplomats in Khartoum by Black September? How could Carter, knowing that, proceed not merely to protect Arafat by not making this information public, but increase his efforts to help Arafat improve his image and polish his sinister message? ...
He's a guide to nothing. And an obvious antisemite. Not only in his indifference and cruelty toward Israel, demonstrated on so many occasions. No, that antisemitism is also demonstrated in the sympathy he gave to a self-serving letter from the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp guard and murderer, who had been found out and was in the process of being expelled. Carter found the daughter's letter convincing, and wrote that it was worthy of sympathetic consideration, and then had it sent on to the O.I.S. How often, by the way, does any President ever read any of the mail sent to him? And of the few letters that he actually reads, how often does he feel compelled to write a handwritten note urging that the letter's contents be favorably considered? And how often does that letter's contents, about a Nazi murderer who is being expelled by the Office of Special Investigations after a thorough and meticulous study, become the object of such remarkable presidential solicitude?
More here
The Grinning Peanut is shameless: "Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians. "I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia. "I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don't detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed." [Or is he just insane?] "Carter said he was pleased the book has stimulated discussion of an issue that has been "omitted from the public consciousness" for at least the last six years" [Israel and the Palis have been "omitted from the public consciousness"????. See here for how "accurate" the Peanut's book is]
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ELSEWHERE
So, is a volatile economy good for America?: "Economic populism is one of the more striking features of our politics today. Wal-Mart is excoriated by liberal intellectuals and labor unions. Sen. Jim Webb recently argued that in "the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future." CNN's Lou Dobbs characterizes this troubling future as a result of a "War on the Middle Class." ... A disquiet with our turbulent economic times is at the root of the political concern over economic security. And it has yielded an economic dialogue shrouded in pessimism and unease. But is it entirely warranted? To answer that, it helps to know if the overall economic turbulence is beneficial or not. The authors of the new book, "Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America?" are not ideological gun-slingers. Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger and Julia Lane have studied the overall impact of America's dynamic economy on jobs, workers and firms by examining in depth five major economic sectors -- semiconductors, software, retail food, trucking and financial services. They are careful not to overstate or inflate claims. And what they find, given the current climate of opinion about American economic change, is surprising: "The analysis of literally millions of worker histories and hundreds of career paths for workers and job ladders for firms leads to the reassuring finding that although turbulence imposes short run costs, in the long-run job change leads to improved jobs for most workers."
2006 U.S. warming strengthened the economy: "While we keep hearing from environmentalists about alleged negative effects from global warming, it seems that it can have positive effects. As is explained here,warmer weather might be the main reason for the stronger than expected U.S. economy. This is because warmer weather means that activities supressed by winter weather will take place after all. Moreover -and this is not mentioned in the story- the warmer weather is a key reason for why oil prices have fallen so much, as less heating is needed. Lower oil prices have been a key factor in boosting the purchasing power of U.S. consumers."
Electricity failing badly in black-run South Africa: "South Africa's major banks have signalled that they can no longer rely on parastatal provider Eskom for electricity after countrywide blackouts this week, and will be implementing measures to guarantee uninterrupted power. One of SA's largest retail banks, First National Bank (FNB), will spend R50m this year alone to buy backup generators and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) units to guard against the adverse effects of power outages similar to those that hit most of the country this week. The emergency power suppliers would be installed in all FNB branches across the country.... Branches in the Western Cape made of more than half of the recipients due to the province's intermittent power outages... Maroga said Eskom was experiencing unplanned outages of 4600MW due to technical generating plant problems..... An investigation by the energy regulator last year into the six major power outages in Cape Town found negligence, inadequate maintenance and the failure to adhere to licence conditions as the "root causes" of the rolling blackouts. "There was also a trend that indicated ill-discipline in certain areas and non-conformance to procedures"
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Monday, January 22, 2007
Illegal Alien Sex Offenders
There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. "It is clear," she says, "that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally." What's more, she adds, "Then they gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again." If ever there was an argument for building a border fence, this is it. But other than two stories on WorldNetDaily, generated by an appearance on CNN, we haven't found any coverage of these extraordinary statistics.
Yet, as reported by Wes Vernon in a new AIM Report, the Bush Administration is embarked on a controversial and secretive plan to effectively erase U.S. borders and establish a North American Union to facilitate the flow of people and goods from Mexico into the U.S.
The study investigated 1,500 cases of "serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestations committed by illegal immigrants" between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Of the 1,500 cases examined, illegal immigrant offenders were located in 36 states with the highest number of sexual offenders in California, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Schurman-Kauflin reports that according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records, sex offenders comprise two percent of illegals apprehended. Using the statistics by ICE and the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, Schurman-Kauflin estimates there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders currently residing in the United States. Also using the two-percent figure, this means that 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. every day.
Of the 1,500 sex offenders examined in this study, each sex offender averaged four victims for a total of approximately 6,000 victims over the 88-month period. Using these statistics, Schurman-Kauflin estimated that there were 960,000 sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Particularly disturbing was that 22% of the victims of sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants had physical or mental handicaps, and all disabled victims were under the age of 18.
Of the 1,500 cases examined, 35% were child molestations, 24% were rapes, and 41% were sexual homicides and serial murders; 617 cases. Of the child molestations, 47% of the victims were Hispanic and 36% were Caucasian. In 82% of the cases, the victims were known to their attackers, and 18% were molested by strangers. Of those victims molested by strangers, Schurman-Kauflin reports that "the illegal immigrants typically gained access to the victims after having worked as a day laborer at or near the victims' homes. Victims ranged in age from one-year-old to 13-years-old, with the average age being six." Although nearly 30% of the victims of sex crimes by illegal immigrants were illegal immigrants themselves, 70% of the victims were Americans.
In the 358 rape cases investigated, the women were often brutally attacked, and over 70% of the time the rape victims were beaten by their attackers. In addition, in .007% of the cases, the victims were gang-raped by two or more illegal immigrant sex offenders. The study also found that although serial rapists only accounted for three percent of all illegal immigrant rapists, serial rapists averaged five victims, and two of serial rapists examined in this study were confirmed HIV positive. In six percent of the cases of sexual homicide and serial murder, the bodies of the victims were mutilated. Caucasians were the most likely victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants. The average age of all victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants was 42, but the victims varied in ages from 16 to 81.
Although the illegal immigrant sex offenders came from various countries around the world, the highest number came from Mexico; El Salvador was the country of origin for the next highest number of illegal immigrant sex offenders. In another testament to how poor security remains along the U.S.-Mexico border, the report found that nearly 63% of the illegal immigrant sex offenders had been deported at least once before prior to committing a sex crime in the U.S. The illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes here in the U.S. typically have committed more crimes than simply entering this country illegally. "Only two percent of the offenders in this study have no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally."
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Iran wavering?: "Iran's supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country's nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran. Alarmed by mounting US pressure and United Nations sanctions, officials close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei favour the appointment of a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities. The move would be a snub to the bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose threats to destroy Israel have left Iran increasingly isolated and facing a serious economic downturn".
Special health care for Muslims? "Muslims should be provided with faith-based services - including male circumcision - on the NHS, says one healthcare expert. Professor Aziz Sheikh is also calling for women patients to see same-sex medics, better access to prayer facilities in hospitals and more information so Muslims can avoid alcohol and pig-derived drugs. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the University of Edinburgh professor also claims Muslims should be given health advice on attempting the Hajj pilgrimage-to Mecca which he insisted was a 'religious obligation and not a holiday'. The BMJ contrasts his opinions with those of Professor Aneez Esmail, of Manchester University, who says in another article that it would not be practical to meet everyone's demands for special services based on religious identity. He warned some faith groups might support practices which may be unacceptable to the majority - such as female circumcision and the refusal to accept blood transfusions."
MA: Job program for welfare recipients falls flat: "A central piece of the state's sweeping welfare reform, which sought to enlist Massachusetts companies to hire and train welfare recipients, has failed to attract employers and is virtually defunct, records show. The program began with fanfare a decade ago, with the expectation that thousands of private employers would be lured through wage subsidies and tax breaks to actively recruit and hire welfare recipients. But statistics show that business participation in the state's Full Employment Program has fallen dramatically from its peak of 500 employers in 1998 to only 32 businesses today, and the state has stopped enrolling new companies. Now, with the number of people on the welfare rolls up since 2001, state officials are pledging to find ways to revamp the program and address concerns of employers."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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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There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. "It is clear," she says, "that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally." What's more, she adds, "Then they gradually commit worse crimes and are continually released back into society or deported. Those who were deported simply returned illegally again." If ever there was an argument for building a border fence, this is it. But other than two stories on WorldNetDaily, generated by an appearance on CNN, we haven't found any coverage of these extraordinary statistics.
Yet, as reported by Wes Vernon in a new AIM Report, the Bush Administration is embarked on a controversial and secretive plan to effectively erase U.S. borders and establish a North American Union to facilitate the flow of people and goods from Mexico into the U.S.
The study investigated 1,500 cases of "serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestations committed by illegal immigrants" between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Of the 1,500 cases examined, illegal immigrant offenders were located in 36 states with the highest number of sexual offenders in California, Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.
Schurman-Kauflin reports that according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records, sex offenders comprise two percent of illegals apprehended. Using the statistics by ICE and the conservative estimate of 12 million illegal immigrants in this country, Schurman-Kauflin estimates there are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders currently residing in the United States. Also using the two-percent figure, this means that 93 sex offenders and 12 serial sex offenders are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. every day.
Of the 1,500 sex offenders examined in this study, each sex offender averaged four victims for a total of approximately 6,000 victims over the 88-month period. Using these statistics, Schurman-Kauflin estimated that there were 960,000 sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants between January, 1999 and April, 2006. Particularly disturbing was that 22% of the victims of sex crimes committed by illegal immigrants had physical or mental handicaps, and all disabled victims were under the age of 18.
Of the 1,500 cases examined, 35% were child molestations, 24% were rapes, and 41% were sexual homicides and serial murders; 617 cases. Of the child molestations, 47% of the victims were Hispanic and 36% were Caucasian. In 82% of the cases, the victims were known to their attackers, and 18% were molested by strangers. Of those victims molested by strangers, Schurman-Kauflin reports that "the illegal immigrants typically gained access to the victims after having worked as a day laborer at or near the victims' homes. Victims ranged in age from one-year-old to 13-years-old, with the average age being six." Although nearly 30% of the victims of sex crimes by illegal immigrants were illegal immigrants themselves, 70% of the victims were Americans.
In the 358 rape cases investigated, the women were often brutally attacked, and over 70% of the time the rape victims were beaten by their attackers. In addition, in .007% of the cases, the victims were gang-raped by two or more illegal immigrant sex offenders. The study also found that although serial rapists only accounted for three percent of all illegal immigrant rapists, serial rapists averaged five victims, and two of serial rapists examined in this study were confirmed HIV positive. In six percent of the cases of sexual homicide and serial murder, the bodies of the victims were mutilated. Caucasians were the most likely victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants. The average age of all victims of sexual homicide by illegal immigrants was 42, but the victims varied in ages from 16 to 81.
Although the illegal immigrant sex offenders came from various countries around the world, the highest number came from Mexico; El Salvador was the country of origin for the next highest number of illegal immigrant sex offenders. In another testament to how poor security remains along the U.S.-Mexico border, the report found that nearly 63% of the illegal immigrant sex offenders had been deported at least once before prior to committing a sex crime in the U.S. The illegal immigrants who commit sex crimes here in the U.S. typically have committed more crimes than simply entering this country illegally. "Only two percent of the offenders in this study have no history of criminal behavior, beyond crossing the border illegally."
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Iran wavering?: "Iran's supreme leader is considering a change of policy on the country's nuclear programme in an effort to defuse growing tension with the West, according to senior sources in Tehran. Alarmed by mounting US pressure and United Nations sanctions, officials close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei favour the appointment of a more moderate team for international negotiations on the supervision of its nuclear facilities. The move would be a snub to the bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose threats to destroy Israel have left Iran increasingly isolated and facing a serious economic downturn".
Special health care for Muslims? "Muslims should be provided with faith-based services - including male circumcision - on the NHS, says one healthcare expert. Professor Aziz Sheikh is also calling for women patients to see same-sex medics, better access to prayer facilities in hospitals and more information so Muslims can avoid alcohol and pig-derived drugs. Writing in the British Medical Journal, the University of Edinburgh professor also claims Muslims should be given health advice on attempting the Hajj pilgrimage-to Mecca which he insisted was a 'religious obligation and not a holiday'. The BMJ contrasts his opinions with those of Professor Aneez Esmail, of Manchester University, who says in another article that it would not be practical to meet everyone's demands for special services based on religious identity. He warned some faith groups might support practices which may be unacceptable to the majority - such as female circumcision and the refusal to accept blood transfusions."
MA: Job program for welfare recipients falls flat: "A central piece of the state's sweeping welfare reform, which sought to enlist Massachusetts companies to hire and train welfare recipients, has failed to attract employers and is virtually defunct, records show. The program began with fanfare a decade ago, with the expectation that thousands of private employers would be lured through wage subsidies and tax breaks to actively recruit and hire welfare recipients. But statistics show that business participation in the state's Full Employment Program has fallen dramatically from its peak of 500 employers in 1998 to only 32 businesses today, and the state has stopped enrolling new companies. Now, with the number of people on the welfare rolls up since 2001, state officials are pledging to find ways to revamp the program and address concerns of employers."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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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Sunday, January 21, 2007
DEEDS SHOW UP THE "COMPASSION" OF THE LEFT
Their deeds have been doing that since the gory French and Russian revolutions
People who lay claim to the compassion of others merrily advocate pulling out of Iraq the better to let the Sunnis and Shi'ites butcher one another, as though that conflict was rooted in the people's desires and not propelled from the top down. What are they to us, after all? Just more surly brown people.
The same people who lay claim to having an abundance of compassion have no problem, it seems, with igniting a bloodbath. Because they can point their fingers and say it was someone else who started it. They wash their hands of it, and do not notice that they are washing them in blood.They have no problem saying they believe in human freedom but also cheerfully advocate closing off free trade. Even though there is ample evidence that free trade policies do more to lift the world's poor out of misery than do all the handouts and debt-relief measures they advance as solutions. Those ideas serve only to reward poor governance. But they wash their hands again, this time in the blood of the starving poor they don't really notice. They advocate endless negotiations with tyrannical regimes despite the fact that those negotiations in the past have never solved anything. And they wash their hands in yet more rivers of blood in the aftermath when the negotiated "solution" fails.
Because the realpolitik is easier than morality. Pushing the problems off to future generations is easier than dealing with the situations today. Pressing the next war onto other's sons and daughters or grandchildren is easier than dealing with hard facts. For these are not the people who volunteer to defend or fight for their country. These are the people who look to others to do that when their ideas and policies are found wanting. But they will screech and point fingers at their defenders when the time comes and ignore the other players in the war and their depredations. Indulging in feel good policies at home is easier - oh, so much easier - than making lasting change in the rest of the world. Scolding has always been easier than doing. Screeching has always been easier than actually solving problems.
More here
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ELSEWHERE
Conservatives most compassionate: "It's tempting to say that Arthur Brooks, in his definitive new book on American charitable giving, has shown that there is nothing oxymoronic about the term "compassionate conservative." That, at least, is the conclusion that critics have drawn from Brooks's demonstration that conservatives, despite the myth that they lack compassion, give significantly more to charity than liberals do. But in fact Brooks has shown something even more significant: that "compassionate conservative" is not only overly defensive, but actually redundant. When it comes to charitable donations, volunteer activity, and even donating blood, it's liberals, not conservatives, who should feel compelled to prove their compassion.... So perhaps the times are, again, a-changing. We will only know that they have truly changed, however, when liberals stop using "compassion" as a synonym for expanded government, and when conservatives--the most charitable Americans--no longer feel forced to defend their virtue against those who lack it.
Obama 'was educated in madrassa': "Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager. The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away. It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination... the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him... Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim."
Blacks benefit from crackdown on illegal immigrants: "Stark evidence now exists that a crackdown on illegal immigration greatly benefits poor blacks. We have a teachable moment in the immigration debate, if only the movement to protect our borders has the wit to capitalize on it, and add a vital and potent constituency. It is one thing for theorists like me point out the basic economics, but it is quite another to have real people in a real town demonstrating that economic laws really work.... Today, a Wall Street Journal article describes the effects of a crackdown on illegal immigrants and how it affected one company in particular. "After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local [Stillmore, GA] chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant.... For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200."
European Airbus in trouble: "Long delays to the A380 Superjumbo will send Airbus spiralling into the red this year, parent group EADS said today. The aerospace company said that compensation payments, writedowns and a string of "unforeseen" charges at the aircraft maker will be booked into the 2006 accounts. But shares in EADS fell 4 per cent in Paris, as figures confirmed that Airbus lost the annual battle for aircraft orders to fierce rival Boeing last year for the first time since 2000. Despite record deliveries, Airbus received only 790 net orders compared with 1,044 at Boeing."
Israeli military saves endangered species: "An idea inspired by the biblical tale of Noah's Ark to give elderly zoo animals a dignified but useful end to their lives, has led to an unlikely boost in numbers for several endangered species. They are contentedly grazing on the scrubland surrounding bases of the Israel Defence Force's northern command, keeping down vegetation where bushfires are a constant threat to ammunition and explosive stores. Eland, Africa's largest species of antelope, as well as the rare desert oryx and Atlas mountain goats are among the species to have benefited from the brainwave of Major Ofer Cohen, 20 years ago... Major Cohen persuaded his seniors to give a home to eight greying eland, which were about to be withdrawn from Tel Aviv zoo, and set them free within the heavily patrolled perimeter fences of a military exercise area. "Eland were just perfect - they are very selective eaters and we found that they eat exactly the right amount of vegetation," Major Cohen told The Times. Now the Eland are thriving, their numbers have risen to 400 and they have been joined by oryx and the goats from North Africa."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
Their deeds have been doing that since the gory French and Russian revolutions
People who lay claim to the compassion of others merrily advocate pulling out of Iraq the better to let the Sunnis and Shi'ites butcher one another, as though that conflict was rooted in the people's desires and not propelled from the top down. What are they to us, after all? Just more surly brown people.
The same people who lay claim to having an abundance of compassion have no problem, it seems, with igniting a bloodbath. Because they can point their fingers and say it was someone else who started it. They wash their hands of it, and do not notice that they are washing them in blood.They have no problem saying they believe in human freedom but also cheerfully advocate closing off free trade. Even though there is ample evidence that free trade policies do more to lift the world's poor out of misery than do all the handouts and debt-relief measures they advance as solutions. Those ideas serve only to reward poor governance. But they wash their hands again, this time in the blood of the starving poor they don't really notice. They advocate endless negotiations with tyrannical regimes despite the fact that those negotiations in the past have never solved anything. And they wash their hands in yet more rivers of blood in the aftermath when the negotiated "solution" fails.
Because the realpolitik is easier than morality. Pushing the problems off to future generations is easier than dealing with the situations today. Pressing the next war onto other's sons and daughters or grandchildren is easier than dealing with hard facts. For these are not the people who volunteer to defend or fight for their country. These are the people who look to others to do that when their ideas and policies are found wanting. But they will screech and point fingers at their defenders when the time comes and ignore the other players in the war and their depredations. Indulging in feel good policies at home is easier - oh, so much easier - than making lasting change in the rest of the world. Scolding has always been easier than doing. Screeching has always been easier than actually solving problems.
More here
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Conservatives most compassionate: "It's tempting to say that Arthur Brooks, in his definitive new book on American charitable giving, has shown that there is nothing oxymoronic about the term "compassionate conservative." That, at least, is the conclusion that critics have drawn from Brooks's demonstration that conservatives, despite the myth that they lack compassion, give significantly more to charity than liberals do. But in fact Brooks has shown something even more significant: that "compassionate conservative" is not only overly defensive, but actually redundant. When it comes to charitable donations, volunteer activity, and even donating blood, it's liberals, not conservatives, who should feel compelled to prove their compassion.... So perhaps the times are, again, a-changing. We will only know that they have truly changed, however, when liberals stop using "compassion" as a synonym for expanded government, and when conservatives--the most charitable Americans--no longer feel forced to defend their virtue against those who lack it.
Obama 'was educated in madrassa': "Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager. The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away. It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination... the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him... Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim."
Blacks benefit from crackdown on illegal immigrants: "Stark evidence now exists that a crackdown on illegal immigration greatly benefits poor blacks. We have a teachable moment in the immigration debate, if only the movement to protect our borders has the wit to capitalize on it, and add a vital and potent constituency. It is one thing for theorists like me point out the basic economics, but it is quite another to have real people in a real town demonstrating that economic laws really work.... Today, a Wall Street Journal article describes the effects of a crackdown on illegal immigrants and how it affected one company in particular. "After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local [Stillmore, GA] chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant.... For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200."
European Airbus in trouble: "Long delays to the A380 Superjumbo will send Airbus spiralling into the red this year, parent group EADS said today. The aerospace company said that compensation payments, writedowns and a string of "unforeseen" charges at the aircraft maker will be booked into the 2006 accounts. But shares in EADS fell 4 per cent in Paris, as figures confirmed that Airbus lost the annual battle for aircraft orders to fierce rival Boeing last year for the first time since 2000. Despite record deliveries, Airbus received only 790 net orders compared with 1,044 at Boeing."
Israeli military saves endangered species: "An idea inspired by the biblical tale of Noah's Ark to give elderly zoo animals a dignified but useful end to their lives, has led to an unlikely boost in numbers for several endangered species. They are contentedly grazing on the scrubland surrounding bases of the Israel Defence Force's northern command, keeping down vegetation where bushfires are a constant threat to ammunition and explosive stores. Eland, Africa's largest species of antelope, as well as the rare desert oryx and Atlas mountain goats are among the species to have benefited from the brainwave of Major Ofer Cohen, 20 years ago... Major Cohen persuaded his seniors to give a home to eight greying eland, which were about to be withdrawn from Tel Aviv zoo, and set them free within the heavily patrolled perimeter fences of a military exercise area. "Eland were just perfect - they are very selective eaters and we found that they eat exactly the right amount of vegetation," Major Cohen told The Times. Now the Eland are thriving, their numbers have risen to 400 and they have been joined by oryx and the goats from North Africa."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Saturday, January 20, 2007
BREATHTAKING LEFTIST HYPOCRISY
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a national organization of low- and moderate-income persons, has been around since the early 1970s. The organization claims about 175,000 member families in 80 cities and advocates left-wing populist approaches to a variety of issues including public housing, jobs, wages, taxes, and voter registration. ACORN has been calling for "living wages," which would raise wages for low-skilled workers and boost union membership by wiping out the price advantage non-union jobs have over union jobs.
While advocating living wages, though, ACORN has opposed paying even minimum wages to its own workers. This was made apparent back in 1995, when ACORN sued the state of California to be exempted from paying its own workers the minimum wage. According to the December 21, 1995 ruling of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District: "ACORN contends that California's minimum wage laws ... are unconstitutional as applied to ACORN because they restrict ACORN's ability to engage in political advocacy. According to ACORN, this adverse impact will be manifested in two ways: first, ACORN will be forced to hire fewer workers; second, its workers, if paid the minimum wage, will be less empathetic with ACORN's low and moderate income constituency and will therefore be less effective advocates.
"Leaving aside the latter argument's absurdity (minimum wage workers are ipso facto low-income workers) as well as irony (an advocate for the poor seeking to justify starvation wages), we find ACORN to be laboring under a fundamental misconception of the constitutional law." A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute noted, "ACORN pays a wage of $5.67 per hour, less than half the level demanded by many proposed 'living wage' ordinances that ACORN supports."
Despite ACORN's demands that all workers be allowed to organize, ACORN has tried to prevent its own workers from joining unions. In March 2003, after firing workers who had tried to organize, ACORN lost its final appeal of a National Labor Relations Board ruling, which found ACORN had violated the rights of its employees to unionize.
More here
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ELSEWHERE
In case you thought tinfoil hats were a joke: There's a whole community of people who really think they help.
What a "fascist"! "He was a man of faith who didn't hesitate to mix religion with politics. He headed an assertive political organization with the word "Christian" in its name. He believed his moral values should be reflected in US law and legally imposed on those who resisted them. He invoked "God Almighty" in his speeches and compared himself to Moses, the prophet Amos, and other biblical heroes. He condemned public policies he opposed in overtly religious terms -- as "a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ," for example. He shrugged off those who called him an extremist. "Was not Jesus an extremist?" he asked. He wasn't one to fetishize church-state separation. "I want it to be known . . . throughout this nation that we are Christian people," he declared. "We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus." He was what some today might call a religious fanatic, a theocrat, or (as a US senator said of the president last year) a "moral aytollah." He was, in many circles, decidedly unpopular. He was also a Nobel laureate for peace and a champion of human dignity. He was an American hero. He was Martin Luther King Jr.
Strange partners: "Segolene Royal, the French Socialist candidate in this spring's presidential elections, has been thrown on the defensive over her personal taxes, a public spat with her partner and worries in the party that her unconventional campaign is running out of steam after the muscular one launched on Sunday by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate. Fran‡ois Hollande, 52, Ms Royal's partner and the father of her four children, is her party leader but the pair disagreed last week when he promised stiff tax rises for the middle classes. He had not consulted Ms Royal, 53, who slapped him down in public and called him "bloody stupid" in private. Yesterday pressure from opponents forced the couple to disclose that they paid the annual wealth tax, which is levied on households with total assets worth more than 750,000 Euros. The image of wealth does not help Ms Royal's stance as champion of the poor."
Jimmy Carter Interceded on Behalf of Nazi SS Guard: "A former U.S. Justice Department official disclosed to Arutz-7 that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's advocacy extended beyond the Palestinians, when he interceded on behalf of a Nazi SS man. Neil Sher, a veteran of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, described a letter he received from Carter in 1987 in an interview with Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer. The letter, written and signed by Carter, asked that Sher show "special consideration" for a man proven to have murdered Jews in the Mauthausen death camp in Austria".
L.A. Hispanics don't like blacks: "Prudhomme was murdered because he identified himself as black (he was in fact mixed-race) in a neighborhood occupied by one of the many Latino street gangs in Los Angeles County. Incredibly, even though these gangs are fundamentally criminal enterprises interested mainly in money, gang experts inside and outside the government say that they are now engaged in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" -- racial terror that is directed solely at African Americans. "The way I hear these knuckleheads tell it, they don't want their neighborhoods infested with blacks, as if it's an infestation," says respected Los Angeles gang expert Tony Rafael"
"Roundness standards"? Insane bureaucracy: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday exempted the succulent but misshapen UglyRipe tomato from roundness standards that had prevented its sale outside Florida"
Wal-Mart haters lose: "Maryland's first-in-the-nation law to compel Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care suffered another setback yesterday, providing fresh incentive for legislative leaders in Annapolis to explore ways to boost insurance coverage that do not involve the retailing giant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld a lower court finding that struck down Maryland's legislation. A divided three-judge panel ruled that the state's Fair Share Health Care Act was incompatible with federal rules that promote uniform treatment of employees."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a national organization of low- and moderate-income persons, has been around since the early 1970s. The organization claims about 175,000 member families in 80 cities and advocates left-wing populist approaches to a variety of issues including public housing, jobs, wages, taxes, and voter registration. ACORN has been calling for "living wages," which would raise wages for low-skilled workers and boost union membership by wiping out the price advantage non-union jobs have over union jobs.
While advocating living wages, though, ACORN has opposed paying even minimum wages to its own workers. This was made apparent back in 1995, when ACORN sued the state of California to be exempted from paying its own workers the minimum wage. According to the December 21, 1995 ruling of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District: "ACORN contends that California's minimum wage laws ... are unconstitutional as applied to ACORN because they restrict ACORN's ability to engage in political advocacy. According to ACORN, this adverse impact will be manifested in two ways: first, ACORN will be forced to hire fewer workers; second, its workers, if paid the minimum wage, will be less empathetic with ACORN's low and moderate income constituency and will therefore be less effective advocates.
"Leaving aside the latter argument's absurdity (minimum wage workers are ipso facto low-income workers) as well as irony (an advocate for the poor seeking to justify starvation wages), we find ACORN to be laboring under a fundamental misconception of the constitutional law." A 2003 study of ACORN by the Employment Policies Institute noted, "ACORN pays a wage of $5.67 per hour, less than half the level demanded by many proposed 'living wage' ordinances that ACORN supports."
Despite ACORN's demands that all workers be allowed to organize, ACORN has tried to prevent its own workers from joining unions. In March 2003, after firing workers who had tried to organize, ACORN lost its final appeal of a National Labor Relations Board ruling, which found ACORN had violated the rights of its employees to unionize.
More here
**********************
ELSEWHERE
In case you thought tinfoil hats were a joke: There's a whole community of people who really think they help.
What a "fascist"! "He was a man of faith who didn't hesitate to mix religion with politics. He headed an assertive political organization with the word "Christian" in its name. He believed his moral values should be reflected in US law and legally imposed on those who resisted them. He invoked "God Almighty" in his speeches and compared himself to Moses, the prophet Amos, and other biblical heroes. He condemned public policies he opposed in overtly religious terms -- as "a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ," for example. He shrugged off those who called him an extremist. "Was not Jesus an extremist?" he asked. He wasn't one to fetishize church-state separation. "I want it to be known . . . throughout this nation that we are Christian people," he declared. "We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus." He was what some today might call a religious fanatic, a theocrat, or (as a US senator said of the president last year) a "moral aytollah." He was, in many circles, decidedly unpopular. He was also a Nobel laureate for peace and a champion of human dignity. He was an American hero. He was Martin Luther King Jr.
Strange partners: "Segolene Royal, the French Socialist candidate in this spring's presidential elections, has been thrown on the defensive over her personal taxes, a public spat with her partner and worries in the party that her unconventional campaign is running out of steam after the muscular one launched on Sunday by Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate. Fran‡ois Hollande, 52, Ms Royal's partner and the father of her four children, is her party leader but the pair disagreed last week when he promised stiff tax rises for the middle classes. He had not consulted Ms Royal, 53, who slapped him down in public and called him "bloody stupid" in private. Yesterday pressure from opponents forced the couple to disclose that they paid the annual wealth tax, which is levied on households with total assets worth more than 750,000 Euros. The image of wealth does not help Ms Royal's stance as champion of the poor."
Jimmy Carter Interceded on Behalf of Nazi SS Guard: "A former U.S. Justice Department official disclosed to Arutz-7 that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's advocacy extended beyond the Palestinians, when he interceded on behalf of a Nazi SS man. Neil Sher, a veteran of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, described a letter he received from Carter in 1987 in an interview with Israel National Radio's Tovia Singer. The letter, written and signed by Carter, asked that Sher show "special consideration" for a man proven to have murdered Jews in the Mauthausen death camp in Austria".
L.A. Hispanics don't like blacks: "Prudhomme was murdered because he identified himself as black (he was in fact mixed-race) in a neighborhood occupied by one of the many Latino street gangs in Los Angeles County. Incredibly, even though these gangs are fundamentally criminal enterprises interested mainly in money, gang experts inside and outside the government say that they are now engaged in a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" -- racial terror that is directed solely at African Americans. "The way I hear these knuckleheads tell it, they don't want their neighborhoods infested with blacks, as if it's an infestation," says respected Los Angeles gang expert Tony Rafael"
"Roundness standards"? Insane bureaucracy: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday exempted the succulent but misshapen UglyRipe tomato from roundness standards that had prevented its sale outside Florida"
Wal-Mart haters lose: "Maryland's first-in-the-nation law to compel Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care suffered another setback yesterday, providing fresh incentive for legislative leaders in Annapolis to explore ways to boost insurance coverage that do not involve the retailing giant. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld a lower court finding that struck down Maryland's legislation. A divided three-judge panel ruled that the state's Fair Share Health Care Act was incompatible with federal rules that promote uniform treatment of employees."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Friday, January 19, 2007
ANOTHER MISLEADING ANALYSIS OF CONSERVATISM BY LEFTIST PSYCHOLOGISTS
Psychology Today has just put out a big article on the psychology of politics. It purports to explain why people hew to the Left or the Right.
It bases its conclusions, however, on research that has no scholarly worth whatsoever. The two main pieces of research it relies on to support the differentiations it proposes are by Jost et al and Block et al. Both pieces of research are within my area of academic specialization so the gaping flaws in both are more evident to me than they might be to others. I have previously pointed out how intellectually discreditable both studies are. See here and here. I was actually one of the authors whose research the Jost et al. article purported to summarize!
Jost et al. showed vividly the usual Leftist talent for ignoring large bodies of evidence that did not suit their preconceptions. Their article must in fact rate as one of the most dishonest meta-analyses ever reported. They were very clearly guilty of "motivated cognition" -- exactly what they accused conservatives of. Leftist projection and leftist denial do usually go hand in hand.
Michelle Malkin and Jim Lindgren note the absurd "sampling" in the Block study. It seems unlikely that there were any actual conservatives among the individuals studied! That is not the first time Leftist psychologists have perpetrated such an absurdity in their mendacious claims to "explain" conservatism, however. See, for instance, here.
Given the very dubious basis of the generalizations offered in the Psychology Today article, the generalizations offered by the article should detain no-one. Whether any of the statements made are true is simply unknown.
Sadly, many in the blogosphere have assumed that there is some respectable evidential basis for the article. Cinnamon Stillwell and Fausta sum up some of the blogospheric reactions.
For an account of the psychology of conservatism based on the actual history of conservatism, see here
*************************
LEFTIST ANTISEMITE DENIES THAT ANTISEMITISM IS A PROBLEM
The good old Leftist "Denial" tactic. And he does his denial in a Jewish-owned newspaper -- but the NYT is Leftist long before it is Jewish. And self-hating Jews are a familiar phenomenon. Excerpt from Soccer Dad below
James Traub profiled Abe Foxman in this week's NY Times magazine in piece titled Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?.
Assuming a mocking and dismissive tone toward his subject, Traub paints Foxman as a petty autocrat who's looking for antisemites under every bed. If one sentence sums up Traub's opinion of Foxman it's:
In contrast, Foxman's critics and opponents are described in complimentary terms. Tony Judt is "highly regarded"; J. J. Goldberg, is the editor of a "leading" American Jewish weekly; Mearsheimer and Walt are "distinguished figures."
Aside from the snide tone pervading the article, it's filled with mistakes and omissions. One of Traub's themes is that antisemitism is no longer problem. The need for the ADL is therefore diminished if not gone therefore:
To dispove the notion that antisemitism is a problem Traub writes:
And while anti-semitism has clearly not disappeared in the United States, it is mild compared to the rest of the world. Three years ago a survey in Europe chose Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. And let's not forget the Durban conference on racism. There is plenty of antisemitism still around and citing two Pew polls doesn't refute that.
Traub like any good liberal finds fault with Foxman for making common cause with evangelical Christians while being cool to Black leaders and ignoring the great alliance between Jews and Blacks. While it is true that at one point Foxman did foster evangelical support for Israel, that seemed to come to an end in 2005. And as far as the black-Jewish alliance it's folly to blame it on Foxman for moving right and away from civil rights. In recent years, the civil rights movement has made common cause with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. All have shown varying degrees of antipathy to Jews.....
Though Foxman is not above criticism, the viciousness with which Traub goes after Foxman is astounding. Given the sloppiness of his reporting, it's fair to ask whether it is Traub who has a problem. With semites.
**************************
ELSEWHERE
No connection? "Unemployment [in Britain] has fallen to the lowest level since last spring but wage increases have remained muted, official figures showed today."
Britain resists EU attack on democracy: "Britain is aiming to scupper German plans to revive the European constitution in a direct assault on the main project of the EU presidency of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Such a campaign, if successful, would free Tony Blair's successor from his promise to hold a referendum on the document... The British Government is keen to avoid holding a referendum on the constitution, despite Mr Blair's pledge three years ago to do so. Under the German timetable a referendum would coincide with the next general election and cause problems for Mr Blair's successor. .. A senior British official told The Times that the Government will argue that the EU is working well within its existing treaties and does not need a constitution nor a fresh round of referendums... The British position is at loggerheads with Mrs Merkel's dream of restoring the bulk of the rejected document, including sections that would create a European foreign minister and end the British veto in home affairs and justice policy."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
Psychology Today has just put out a big article on the psychology of politics. It purports to explain why people hew to the Left or the Right.
It bases its conclusions, however, on research that has no scholarly worth whatsoever. The two main pieces of research it relies on to support the differentiations it proposes are by Jost et al and Block et al. Both pieces of research are within my area of academic specialization so the gaping flaws in both are more evident to me than they might be to others. I have previously pointed out how intellectually discreditable both studies are. See here and here. I was actually one of the authors whose research the Jost et al. article purported to summarize!
Jost et al. showed vividly the usual Leftist talent for ignoring large bodies of evidence that did not suit their preconceptions. Their article must in fact rate as one of the most dishonest meta-analyses ever reported. They were very clearly guilty of "motivated cognition" -- exactly what they accused conservatives of. Leftist projection and leftist denial do usually go hand in hand.
Michelle Malkin and Jim Lindgren note the absurd "sampling" in the Block study. It seems unlikely that there were any actual conservatives among the individuals studied! That is not the first time Leftist psychologists have perpetrated such an absurdity in their mendacious claims to "explain" conservatism, however. See, for instance, here.
Given the very dubious basis of the generalizations offered in the Psychology Today article, the generalizations offered by the article should detain no-one. Whether any of the statements made are true is simply unknown.
Sadly, many in the blogosphere have assumed that there is some respectable evidential basis for the article. Cinnamon Stillwell and Fausta sum up some of the blogospheric reactions.
For an account of the psychology of conservatism based on the actual history of conservatism, see here
*************************
LEFTIST ANTISEMITE DENIES THAT ANTISEMITISM IS A PROBLEM
The good old Leftist "Denial" tactic. And he does his denial in a Jewish-owned newspaper -- but the NYT is Leftist long before it is Jewish. And self-hating Jews are a familiar phenomenon. Excerpt from Soccer Dad below
James Traub profiled Abe Foxman in this week's NY Times magazine in piece titled Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?.
Assuming a mocking and dismissive tone toward his subject, Traub paints Foxman as a petty autocrat who's looking for antisemites under every bed. If one sentence sums up Traub's opinion of Foxman it's:
The A.D.L., for all its myriad activities, is a one-man Sanhedrin doling out opprobrium or absolution for those who speak ill of Israel or the Jews.
In contrast, Foxman's critics and opponents are described in complimentary terms. Tony Judt is "highly regarded"; J. J. Goldberg, is the editor of a "leading" American Jewish weekly; Mearsheimer and Walt are "distinguished figures."
Aside from the snide tone pervading the article, it's filled with mistakes and omissions. One of Traub's themes is that antisemitism is no longer problem. The need for the ADL is therefore diminished if not gone therefore:
The A.D.L.'s world became increasingly binary - "good for the Jews," "bad for the Jews."with Foxman becoming sole arbiter and - shock of shocks - moving to the right.
To dispove the notion that antisemitism is a problem Traub writes:
And yet a Pew Global Attitudes Poll in 2004 found that anti-Semitism had declined in much of the West and was lowest in the United States. A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years.According to the FBI's uniform crimes statistics for 2005 there were 900 hate crimes classified as anti-Jewish and 3200 hate crimes classified as anti-Black. Given that there are roughly 7 times as many Blacks as Jews, that means that Jews suffer hate crimes at nearly twice the rate as Blacks in the United States according to the most recent statistics.
And while anti-semitism has clearly not disappeared in the United States, it is mild compared to the rest of the world. Three years ago a survey in Europe chose Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. And let's not forget the Durban conference on racism. There is plenty of antisemitism still around and citing two Pew polls doesn't refute that.
Traub like any good liberal finds fault with Foxman for making common cause with evangelical Christians while being cool to Black leaders and ignoring the great alliance between Jews and Blacks. While it is true that at one point Foxman did foster evangelical support for Israel, that seemed to come to an end in 2005. And as far as the black-Jewish alliance it's folly to blame it on Foxman for moving right and away from civil rights. In recent years, the civil rights movement has made common cause with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. All have shown varying degrees of antipathy to Jews.....
Though Foxman is not above criticism, the viciousness with which Traub goes after Foxman is astounding. Given the sloppiness of his reporting, it's fair to ask whether it is Traub who has a problem. With semites.
**************************
ELSEWHERE
No connection? "Unemployment [in Britain] has fallen to the lowest level since last spring but wage increases have remained muted, official figures showed today."
Britain resists EU attack on democracy: "Britain is aiming to scupper German plans to revive the European constitution in a direct assault on the main project of the EU presidency of Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. Such a campaign, if successful, would free Tony Blair's successor from his promise to hold a referendum on the document... The British Government is keen to avoid holding a referendum on the constitution, despite Mr Blair's pledge three years ago to do so. Under the German timetable a referendum would coincide with the next general election and cause problems for Mr Blair's successor. .. A senior British official told The Times that the Government will argue that the EU is working well within its existing treaties and does not need a constitution nor a fresh round of referendums... The British position is at loggerheads with Mrs Merkel's dream of restoring the bulk of the rejected document, including sections that would create a European foreign minister and end the British veto in home affairs and justice policy."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Thursday, January 18, 2007
HOW DESPERATE CAN THE LEFT GET?
Post about MSM columnist James Carroll excerpted from NewsBusters
Carroll was just clearing his throat with his obligatory Vietnam riff. The heart of his column is a condemnation of capitalism. According to Carroll, since the days of [Martin Luther] King: "economic justice . . . if anything, is even further from fulfillment."
Can I get another "really" on that? Capitalism certain to self-destruct? That same capitalism that is exploding in India and China, literally lifting billions out of poverty? What does Carroll posit as an alternative to capitalism? You guessed it: "socialism, compared with the possible anarchy, is benign."
********************************
BBC ISRAEL-HATRED
One of the biggest stories in the Middle East is the civil disorder in Gaza. Last week on his website, the journalist Stephen Pollard reproduced an internal memo from the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to his colleagues. It contained a passage in which Bowen explains "the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.
"The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building - and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led Government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile."
Now this is certainly one explanation of the reason why members of Fatah and Hamas are killing each other. No one can object that this argument is put before the BBC's audience. But for the BBC's Middle East editor to believe that it constitutes the sole explanation and to offer it up alone to his colleagues? Now that's a different matter.
Here are a few alternatives to Bowen's offering. Some of us argue that instead of the tough Israeli security measures causing Hamas and Fatah militants to kill people and each other, the killing of people by Hamas and Fatah militants causes the tough security measures. Hamas in particular is a dangerous, intolerant, murderous organisation that threatens the lives of innocent people and needs to be resisted.
And what about this? Fatah and Hamas are engaged in a power struggle and an ideological dispute. Fatah claims that its rivals have been plotting to assassinate President Mahmoud Abbas because the President supports the so-called Prisoners' Document. This document proposes a unified resistance to Israel, but Hamas is suspicious of the terms of such unity and believes that its vague language could mean recognition of Israel.
Or this? In a superb column last week in the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell pointed out that are there are 67 countries in the world where 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population and 60 of them are undergoing some sort of civil war or mass killing. Gaza has just such a youth bulge. Perhaps the violence has no political cause; it is just, well, boys being boys.
I know, I know. You may regard these alternatives as absurd, even offensive. I don't, but that's not my point. If you want to report the Middle East in an unbiased fashion, then these arguments must be put before the BBC audience. And how can they be if the Middle East editor doesn't even acknowledge them?
More here
***************************
ELSEWHERE
Was antisemitism the catalyst for the Great Depression? There is a post here suggesting that it was the trigger, though not the total cause.
The above is of course a reference to Speaker Pelosi and the usual leftist claim to be innovators.
Reply to the pessimists: "Last week was not a good one for America's detractors. The price of oil fell to US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the world should ask George W Bush is, "If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor"? The US economy and US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As I wrote last week, the whole Iraq debacle might disappear from the public's radar screen in time for America's next presidential election.... There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society".
Damned if you do, damned if you don't: "For years, liberals have hectored President Bush for not committing enough troops to Iraq. Now, peanut-gallery liberals pivot 180 degrees and browbeat him for proposing precisely that. Appearing May 30, 2004 on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' for instance, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi flatly and repeatedly told Tim Russert that 'we need more troops on the ground.' In fact, Speaker Pelosi suggested that we commit 300,000 troops (President Bush's current proposal would raise the level to merely 160,000)."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
Post about MSM columnist James Carroll excerpted from NewsBusters
Carroll was just clearing his throat with his obligatory Vietnam riff. The heart of his column is a condemnation of capitalism. According to Carroll, since the days of [Martin Luther] King: "economic justice . . . if anything, is even further from fulfillment."
Really? In the America of 4.5% unemployment? Where colleges fight for the privilege of awarding scholarships to minority high school students with decent grades? Where the biggest food-related problem for our poor is not hunger but obesity?
Carroll goes so far as to predict the end of capitalism:
"If the 20th century seemed a time of capitalism's ascendancy, the new century seems an era of its certain self-destruction."
Can I get another "really" on that? Capitalism certain to self-destruct? That same capitalism that is exploding in India and China, literally lifting billions out of poverty? What does Carroll posit as an alternative to capitalism? You guessed it: "socialism, compared with the possible anarchy, is benign."
But why the false choice between socialism and anarchy? Why not the real choice: between the grinding hopelessness of socialism and the freedom and opportunity of free markets?
********************************
BBC ISRAEL-HATRED
One of the biggest stories in the Middle East is the civil disorder in Gaza. Last week on his website, the journalist Stephen Pollard reproduced an internal memo from the BBC's Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, to his colleagues. It contained a passage in which Bowen explains "the way that Palestinian society, which used to draw strength from resistance to the occupation, is now fragmenting.
"The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building - and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led Government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile."
Now this is certainly one explanation of the reason why members of Fatah and Hamas are killing each other. No one can object that this argument is put before the BBC's audience. But for the BBC's Middle East editor to believe that it constitutes the sole explanation and to offer it up alone to his colleagues? Now that's a different matter.
Here are a few alternatives to Bowen's offering. Some of us argue that instead of the tough Israeli security measures causing Hamas and Fatah militants to kill people and each other, the killing of people by Hamas and Fatah militants causes the tough security measures. Hamas in particular is a dangerous, intolerant, murderous organisation that threatens the lives of innocent people and needs to be resisted.
And what about this? Fatah and Hamas are engaged in a power struggle and an ideological dispute. Fatah claims that its rivals have been plotting to assassinate President Mahmoud Abbas because the President supports the so-called Prisoners' Document. This document proposes a unified resistance to Israel, but Hamas is suspicious of the terms of such unity and believes that its vague language could mean recognition of Israel.
Or this? In a superb column last week in the Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell pointed out that are there are 67 countries in the world where 15 to 29-year-olds make up more than 30 per cent of the population and 60 of them are undergoing some sort of civil war or mass killing. Gaza has just such a youth bulge. Perhaps the violence has no political cause; it is just, well, boys being boys.
I know, I know. You may regard these alternatives as absurd, even offensive. I don't, but that's not my point. If you want to report the Middle East in an unbiased fashion, then these arguments must be put before the BBC audience. And how can they be if the Middle East editor doesn't even acknowledge them?
More here
***************************
ELSEWHERE
Was antisemitism the catalyst for the Great Depression? There is a post here suggesting that it was the trigger, though not the total cause.
The above is of course a reference to Speaker Pelosi and the usual leftist claim to be innovators.
Reply to the pessimists: "Last week was not a good one for America's detractors. The price of oil fell to US$56 a barrel. The same financial markets that swooned in July while Israel fought Hezbollah have forgotten the meaning of risk. The question the world should ask George W Bush is, "If you so dumb, how come you ain't poor"? The US economy and US markets are looking more buoyant than ever. As I wrote last week, the whole Iraq debacle might disappear from the public's radar screen in time for America's next presidential election.... There has been an inordinate amount of nonsense written about US decline, complete with Russian and Chinese designs to benefit from America's embarrassment in Iraq. The reality could not be more different. Neither Moscow nor Beijing has the remotest desire to see the US withdraw from the region or lose power, for two reasons. The first is that America's presence in the region ensures that little wars will remain little. The second is economic. America's economy and particularly the appetite of American consumers for imports remains the locomotive of the world economy, most emphatically of China's. China's trading relationship with the United States is an irreplaceable pillar of national prosperity, and the means to generate the national savings China requires to establish what President Hu Jintao calls "the harmonious society".
Damned if you do, damned if you don't: "For years, liberals have hectored President Bush for not committing enough troops to Iraq. Now, peanut-gallery liberals pivot 180 degrees and browbeat him for proposing precisely that. Appearing May 30, 2004 on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' for instance, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi flatly and repeatedly told Tim Russert that 'we need more troops on the ground.' In fact, Speaker Pelosi suggested that we commit 300,000 troops (President Bush's current proposal would raise the level to merely 160,000)."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
G*OGLE DANGERS
I am very careful not to post any language on any of my sites that could fall foul of G*ogle's "wipe-off" rules. Certain content on a site causes them to erase that site from their database. And it's not just political sites that suffer. The technical site Javalobby was wiped by G*ogle recently because spammers had posted huge amounts of pornographic links in their Comments facility. When I read it, I felt rather thankful that I do not allow comments on this site. And on other sites where I do allow comments, I have maximum precautions against comment spammers.
I suspect that G*ogle don't even like criticism of themselves, so I use a strategic asterisk in their name -- hoping that might stymie the search for their own name that they undoubtedly do.
Another problem: G*ogle fosters antisemitism. If students ever use G*ogle to search for "Zionism" for a school or university project they will find that the top articles are anti-Zionist, and indeed antisemitic. Web guru Andre Oboler has tackled the problem in: Expert Search to combat antisemitism and racism. People can use this tool if they need to undertake research.
***********************
The left's intellectual disintegration.
There used to be a time when the left proudly carried the banner of reason and science; and disdainfully viewed religion as a superstition or at best an antiquated myth. In the name of science they advanced an agenda on several fronts. In economics, central planning was described as a rational systematic alternative to the chaotic free-for-all of the market. In human relations, what was previously viewed as a moral failing was now a condition amenable to social engineering. Social science, we were assured there was such a thing, would provide the guidance and justification for the socialistic regulations required for a better world. To maintain this stance, left-wing intellectuals felt compelled to provide substantiation, evidence, and rational arguments. That time has long since past.
The facade of science is gone - reality stubbornly refused to go along. Socialism was a glaring failure that brought poverty, misery, and wholesale death. Yet, despite this, the dream remains. The left seems strangely indifferent to evidence that undermines their worldview. Communism was responsible for over 100 million deaths and the enslavement of over 1 billion more. But on the left, this hasn't hurt the popularity of communism's remaining standard-bearer: Fidel Castro.
Rational debate no longer exists among the vanguard of today's left. Exposing a flawed argument engenders few signs of discomfort. Contradictions curiously fail to perturb in the slightest the left's steadfast adherence to fixed doctrine. For example, America and Britain are singularly condemned for the sins of slavery as if it were unique to our history or a particularly egregious example. However, it was Anglo-American tradition of individual liberty which is exceptional in history, not the remnants of slavery which existed everywhere and through out history. Islam, which invented the race-based slave trade centuries before America's discovery, condemned people to slavery from Africa, India, and Europe, exceeding the British slave trade by orders of magnitude. And it was the West that led the abolitionist movement worldwide. But the left shrugs. All of this is deemed irrelevant since in absolute terms the West's history remains blemished.
Not only is evidence summarily dismissed, but what spews forth often has little relation to the subject matter. By being barraged by "rhetorical spam" the listener is overwhelmed with dubious claims in the hope that something will stick. No shame accompanies wrong, arbitrary, or ridiculous statements. This technique was ubiquitous in response to recent military actions in Iraq. For example, every major intelligence agency, including France, Germany and Russia, incorrectly believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, leftists continually repeated the mantra that Bush is a liar. On top of that, they yammer about Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam, Iraqis getting bio-agents from "us", and nefarious neocon Zionist conspiracies. It becomes impossible to have an intelligent discussion under these circumstances.
Not surprisingly, civil and reasonable discussions are now the exceptions. The far left is reduced to chanting: racist imperialist war-mongering America. No they won't say they hate America - they realize you can't say that yet. But are we to believe that imperialist, racist, and war-mongering describe a country one could love? Of course not, but apparently most imagine a confession is required before you can point to the obvious conclusion.
Much more here
************************
ELSEWHERE
Second thoughts in Iran: "Amid the chaos of confused global weather fronts, uncommonly cold temperatures have gripped Tehran in recent weeks. This freeze provides a suitable metaphor for the rapidly cooling feelings many Iranians have towards President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just as the Iranian capital has been shivering in the winter freeze Ahmadinejad has started to feel the unmistakable chill of public disaffection. Having become accustomed to the warmth of mass acclaim at a series of nationwide open-air rallies, the Islamist firebrand is now discovering the limits of his popularity.... voters have started to turn against a man whose political strength lay in his populist appeal. Last month, rising discontent over his government's failing economic policies led to a drubbing at the polls. In nationwide council elections, candidates supporting the president gained just 20% of the vote. Only two Ahmadinejad loyalists - including his sister Parvin - won seats on the 15-member Tehran city council, often seen as a key indicator of political trends across the country. The results coincided with a political comeback for Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's most powerful rival and his defeated opponent in the 2005 presidential election. Rafsanjani, a sharp critic of the president's strident anti-Western rhetoric, topped the poll in elections to the experts' assembly, a clerical body empowered to supervise and appoint Iran's supreme leader."
When will they ever learn? "The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP. Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver-a mere 2 percent-of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them-Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota-Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats."
Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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.
****************************
I am very careful not to post any language on any of my sites that could fall foul of G*ogle's "wipe-off" rules. Certain content on a site causes them to erase that site from their database. And it's not just political sites that suffer. The technical site Javalobby was wiped by G*ogle recently because spammers had posted huge amounts of pornographic links in their Comments facility. When I read it, I felt rather thankful that I do not allow comments on this site. And on other sites where I do allow comments, I have maximum precautions against comment spammers.
I suspect that G*ogle don't even like criticism of themselves, so I use a strategic asterisk in their name -- hoping that might stymie the search for their own name that they undoubtedly do.
Another problem: G*ogle fosters antisemitism. If students ever use G*ogle to search for "Zionism" for a school or university project they will find that the top articles are anti-Zionist, and indeed antisemitic. Web guru Andre Oboler has tackled the problem in: Expert Search to combat antisemitism and racism. People can use this tool if they need to undertake research.
***********************
The left's intellectual disintegration.
There used to be a time when the left proudly carried the banner of reason and science; and disdainfully viewed religion as a superstition or at best an antiquated myth. In the name of science they advanced an agenda on several fronts. In economics, central planning was described as a rational systematic alternative to the chaotic free-for-all of the market. In human relations, what was previously viewed as a moral failing was now a condition amenable to social engineering. Social science, we were assured there was such a thing, would provide the guidance and justification for the socialistic regulations required for a better world. To maintain this stance, left-wing intellectuals felt compelled to provide substantiation, evidence, and rational arguments. That time has long since past.
The facade of science is gone - reality stubbornly refused to go along. Socialism was a glaring failure that brought poverty, misery, and wholesale death. Yet, despite this, the dream remains. The left seems strangely indifferent to evidence that undermines their worldview. Communism was responsible for over 100 million deaths and the enslavement of over 1 billion more. But on the left, this hasn't hurt the popularity of communism's remaining standard-bearer: Fidel Castro.
Rational debate no longer exists among the vanguard of today's left. Exposing a flawed argument engenders few signs of discomfort. Contradictions curiously fail to perturb in the slightest the left's steadfast adherence to fixed doctrine. For example, America and Britain are singularly condemned for the sins of slavery as if it were unique to our history or a particularly egregious example. However, it was Anglo-American tradition of individual liberty which is exceptional in history, not the remnants of slavery which existed everywhere and through out history. Islam, which invented the race-based slave trade centuries before America's discovery, condemned people to slavery from Africa, India, and Europe, exceeding the British slave trade by orders of magnitude. And it was the West that led the abolitionist movement worldwide. But the left shrugs. All of this is deemed irrelevant since in absolute terms the West's history remains blemished.
Not only is evidence summarily dismissed, but what spews forth often has little relation to the subject matter. By being barraged by "rhetorical spam" the listener is overwhelmed with dubious claims in the hope that something will stick. No shame accompanies wrong, arbitrary, or ridiculous statements. This technique was ubiquitous in response to recent military actions in Iraq. For example, every major intelligence agency, including France, Germany and Russia, incorrectly believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, leftists continually repeated the mantra that Bush is a liar. On top of that, they yammer about Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam, Iraqis getting bio-agents from "us", and nefarious neocon Zionist conspiracies. It becomes impossible to have an intelligent discussion under these circumstances.
Not surprisingly, civil and reasonable discussions are now the exceptions. The far left is reduced to chanting: racist imperialist war-mongering America. No they won't say they hate America - they realize you can't say that yet. But are we to believe that imperialist, racist, and war-mongering describe a country one could love? Of course not, but apparently most imagine a confession is required before you can point to the obvious conclusion.
Much more here
************************
ELSEWHERE
Second thoughts in Iran: "Amid the chaos of confused global weather fronts, uncommonly cold temperatures have gripped Tehran in recent weeks. This freeze provides a suitable metaphor for the rapidly cooling feelings many Iranians have towards President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Just as the Iranian capital has been shivering in the winter freeze Ahmadinejad has started to feel the unmistakable chill of public disaffection. Having become accustomed to the warmth of mass acclaim at a series of nationwide open-air rallies, the Islamist firebrand is now discovering the limits of his popularity.... voters have started to turn against a man whose political strength lay in his populist appeal. Last month, rising discontent over his government's failing economic policies led to a drubbing at the polls. In nationwide council elections, candidates supporting the president gained just 20% of the vote. Only two Ahmadinejad loyalists - including his sister Parvin - won seats on the 15-member Tehran city council, often seen as a key indicator of political trends across the country. The results coincided with a political comeback for Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's most powerful rival and his defeated opponent in the 2005 presidential election. Rafsanjani, a sharp critic of the president's strident anti-Western rhetoric, topped the poll in elections to the experts' assembly, a clerical body empowered to supervise and appoint Iran's supreme leader."
When will they ever learn? "The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP. Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal sliver-a mere 2 percent-of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them-Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota-Democratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats."
Chris Brand has just done a new lot of posts on his usual themes of race, IQ and political correctness -- with particular emphasis on the British scene.
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
LEADING MUSLIM SAYS LIBERALISM IS THE ENEMY
Excerpt below from Riehl World followed by an extended extract of the speech concerned. The translation is in rather mangled English but you should get the idea:
Reports are surfacing that Hassan Abbasi is one of the Iranians recently arrested in Iraq. See Gateway Pundit, the Jawa Report and American Thinker for links and news.
The Speech:
The Anglo-Saxons, the English, the Americans, the Australians and the Canadians have a doctrine. Every nation's proverbs are its doctrine. This doctrine is convulsively dirty. They say if they tried to invade you, and you felt you can not resist, greet it, so that you can enjoy it!!!!
You be surprised, the basis of the knowledge of the international relations in the circle of Anglo-Saxons is this filthy English reportage and sayings!!! They instill this to nations that when you are being invaded, you know you can't resist, so therefore, greet it, so that you can enjoy it. Today the mechanism of invasion and attack on nations and people has four key topics:
The first key topic is: Human rights.
The second key topic is: Liberalism. They have translated it into freedom.
The third key topic is democracy and acceptance of people's vote.
And the fourth key topic is Civil Society.
They invade countries with these four key slogans. You need to pay attention when they(Iraqis) attacked Iran, there was nothing to fool our people to itself. The background of the invasion had no accepting premise, therefore our youths went, stood up, resisted and threw out the enemy. There is not a single span of our homeland in the hand of the enemy now.
But why is the groundwork for the West invasion has been accepted in the Islamic world now? Because many of the Islamic countries' leaders are screaming the same four mottos that are groundwork for invasion. There is no basic difference between the democracy which America talks about and those that our leaders speak of. There is no difference between the civil society that Jacque Chirac talks about than those that the Islamic leaders speak of. There is no difference in liberalism and freedom loving of what they say and what is happening in our homeland.
You guys have the free trade zones in this country. The free trade zone means the base of operations for liberal democracy!!! There is a marked difference between what our leaders say and what they do. You saw our great supreme leader, in the past three days, attacked liberal democracy three times!!! And that shows, no one, has belief in what he is saying!! The free trade zone, the free economic zones, that are being opened one day after another in our country, these are the main bastions of liberalism!!! One who has the smallest economic knowledge has to know that the innate nature of these free zones is liberalism!!! In regard to these free trade zones, it looks like what ever our leaders say, the rest do whatever they please!!! Why acceptance of the enemy's attack plan has become a normalcy? Because our President talks of civil society!!! And civil society is exactly that same excuse that the west has come here for!!! And it says we have come to bring reforms to everyone. Reforms in the Greater Middle-East.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Why Europe is only good for talk: "Defense budgets in Europe are dropping. The US defense budget is larger than the next 20 largest defense budgets in the world combined. The European solution is to solve problems multilaterally, and not by military means. Why? If a military solution is required, then Europe must follow the American lead and be in America's shadow. This is a dignity issue. If international problems are addressed multilaterally, then Europe has 27 EU nations, and in international forums like the UN, Europe has more than 30 votes, and the US just one."
Saddam Half Brother, Ex-Official Hanged: "Saddam Hussein's half brother [above] and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed... Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. "They (the government) called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened," al-Faroon said. The executions reportedly occurred in the same Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in north Baghdad where the former leader was hanged two days before the end of 2006"
A Christian Exodus from the Arab World: "Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East. In some countries, members of an unpopular Christian minority are already fighting for their survival -- or fleeing for their lives. In New Baghdad, the driver of a minibus, a Shiite named Ali, set out at 7 a.m. on the last Sunday before Christmas. A few hours earlier he had received a call on his mobile phone with instructions to pick up five passengers for a long trip outside the city... The five young men traveling in Ali's red Kia were the last seminary students at the Chaldean Catholic Babel College to leave Baghdad. Four priests have been abducted since mid-August, and two others were murdered. Father Sami, the director of the seminary, was kidnapped in early December. The community managed to raise $75,000 to buy his freedom, but after hesitating for weeks, Emmanuel III, the Chaldean patriarch, decided to withdraw the teaching institutions of his community from Baghdad. He ordered the evacuation of the city's four Catholic churches, the Hurmis monastery and the college in the city's Dura neighborhood, but chose to remain behind in the city as the lonely shepherd of a rapidly shrinking congregation."
A Democrat "Watergate" the MSM mostly ignore: "The more we learn about Sandy Berger's brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don't know and may never learn. On Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee released its report on Mr. Berger's pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives. The committee's 60-page report makes it clear that Mr. Berger knew exactly what he was doing and knew that what he was doing was wrong. According to interviews with National Archives staff, Mr. Berger repeatedly arranged to be left alone with highly classified documents by feigning the need to make personal phone calls, and he used those moments alone with the files to stuff them in his pockets and briefcase. One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice."
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).
**************************
"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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.
****************************
Excerpt below from Riehl World followed by an extended extract of the speech concerned. The translation is in rather mangled English but you should get the idea:
Reports are surfacing that Hassan Abbasi is one of the Iranians recently arrested in Iraq. See Gateway Pundit, the Jawa Report and American Thinker for links and news.
Hassan Abbasi known by his friends as "The Dr. Kissinger of Islam," is the guru of the Islamic Republic's revolutionary guard corps which puts volunteers and recruits through rigorous training in four camps funded and run by the Revolutionary Guard.
This is said to be a translation of a speech by Abbasi, also available in pdf. It's a must read for Liberals, as Abbasi explains that the real enemy of the jihadists is Western Liberalism. So if you know any Liberals who can read and might actually understand it for those few seconds each day when they aren't hating on President Bush ... pass the link on.
The Speech:
The Anglo-Saxons, the English, the Americans, the Australians and the Canadians have a doctrine. Every nation's proverbs are its doctrine. This doctrine is convulsively dirty. They say if they tried to invade you, and you felt you can not resist, greet it, so that you can enjoy it!!!!
You be surprised, the basis of the knowledge of the international relations in the circle of Anglo-Saxons is this filthy English reportage and sayings!!! They instill this to nations that when you are being invaded, you know you can't resist, so therefore, greet it, so that you can enjoy it. Today the mechanism of invasion and attack on nations and people has four key topics:
The first key topic is: Human rights.
The second key topic is: Liberalism. They have translated it into freedom.
The third key topic is democracy and acceptance of people's vote.
And the fourth key topic is Civil Society.
They invade countries with these four key slogans. You need to pay attention when they(Iraqis) attacked Iran, there was nothing to fool our people to itself. The background of the invasion had no accepting premise, therefore our youths went, stood up, resisted and threw out the enemy. There is not a single span of our homeland in the hand of the enemy now.
But why is the groundwork for the West invasion has been accepted in the Islamic world now? Because many of the Islamic countries' leaders are screaming the same four mottos that are groundwork for invasion. There is no basic difference between the democracy which America talks about and those that our leaders speak of. There is no difference between the civil society that Jacque Chirac talks about than those that the Islamic leaders speak of. There is no difference in liberalism and freedom loving of what they say and what is happening in our homeland.
You guys have the free trade zones in this country. The free trade zone means the base of operations for liberal democracy!!! There is a marked difference between what our leaders say and what they do. You saw our great supreme leader, in the past three days, attacked liberal democracy three times!!! And that shows, no one, has belief in what he is saying!! The free trade zone, the free economic zones, that are being opened one day after another in our country, these are the main bastions of liberalism!!! One who has the smallest economic knowledge has to know that the innate nature of these free zones is liberalism!!! In regard to these free trade zones, it looks like what ever our leaders say, the rest do whatever they please!!! Why acceptance of the enemy's attack plan has become a normalcy? Because our President talks of civil society!!! And civil society is exactly that same excuse that the west has come here for!!! And it says we have come to bring reforms to everyone. Reforms in the Greater Middle-East.
***********************
ELSEWHERE
Why Europe is only good for talk: "Defense budgets in Europe are dropping. The US defense budget is larger than the next 20 largest defense budgets in the world combined. The European solution is to solve problems multilaterally, and not by military means. Why? If a military solution is required, then Europe must follow the American lead and be in America's shadow. This is a dignity issue. If international problems are addressed multilaterally, then Europe has 27 EU nations, and in international forums like the UN, Europe has more than 30 votes, and the US just one."
Saddam Half Brother, Ex-Official Hanged: "Saddam Hussein's half brother [above] and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were both hanged before dawn Monday, Prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon said, two weeks and two days after the former Iraqi dictator was executed... Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, had been found guilty along with Saddam in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims after a 1982 assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail north of Baghdad. "They (the government) called us before dawn and told us to send someone. I sent a judge to witness the execution and it happened," al-Faroon said. The executions reportedly occurred in the same Saddam-era military intelligence headquarters building in north Baghdad where the former leader was hanged two days before the end of 2006"
A Christian Exodus from the Arab World: "Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East. In some countries, members of an unpopular Christian minority are already fighting for their survival -- or fleeing for their lives. In New Baghdad, the driver of a minibus, a Shiite named Ali, set out at 7 a.m. on the last Sunday before Christmas. A few hours earlier he had received a call on his mobile phone with instructions to pick up five passengers for a long trip outside the city... The five young men traveling in Ali's red Kia were the last seminary students at the Chaldean Catholic Babel College to leave Baghdad. Four priests have been abducted since mid-August, and two others were murdered. Father Sami, the director of the seminary, was kidnapped in early December. The community managed to raise $75,000 to buy his freedom, but after hesitating for weeks, Emmanuel III, the Chaldean patriarch, decided to withdraw the teaching institutions of his community from Baghdad. He ordered the evacuation of the city's four Catholic churches, the Hurmis monastery and the college in the city's Dura neighborhood, but chose to remain behind in the city as the lonely shepherd of a rapidly shrinking congregation."
A Democrat "Watergate" the MSM mostly ignore: "The more we learn about Sandy Berger's brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don't know and may never learn. On Tuesday, the House Government Reform Committee released its report on Mr. Berger's pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives. The committee's 60-page report makes it clear that Mr. Berger knew exactly what he was doing and knew that what he was doing was wrong. According to interviews with National Archives staff, Mr. Berger repeatedly arranged to be left alone with highly classified documents by feigning the need to make personal phone calls, and he used those moments alone with the files to stuff them in his pockets and briefcase. One incident is particularly suggestive. By his fourth and final visit to review documents and prepare for testimony before the 9/11 Commission, the Archives staff had grown suspicious of how Mr. Berger was handling the documents, so they numbered each one he was given in pencil on the back of the document. When one of them--No. 217--was apparently removed from the files by Mr. Berger, the staff reprinted a copy and replaced it for his review. According to the report, Mr. Berger then proceeded to slip the second copy "under his portfolio also." In other words, he stole the same document twice."
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) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".
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 -- Details here and here
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