Putin marks 10 years of extraordinary achievement

The article below certainly presents another side to what we normally hear. It was written by an Australian Christian conservative. What is missing is a comparison with other post-Soviet economies -- such as the Baltic States. But while the Baltic States have done better in many ways, the economic crisis hit them hard -- which was much less so for Russia. Like the USA, Russia is at the moment propping up large private businesses rather than expropriating them

A decade ago this month, Boris Yeltsin handed the reins of Russia to Vladimir Putin. It was a good day for Russia and the world. Putin is Russia's finest leader since Peter the Great.

Western profiles of Putin usually begin with ''ex-KGB agent'' but that is misleading. As a spy in West Germany in the 1980s, Putin witnessed the superiority of the free market. After the 1989 revolutions, Putin moved to St Petersburg to join his friend and former university lecturer, the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak - the Milton Friedman of Russia - and was appointed to attract foreign investment to Russia's second largest city. When Yeltsin defied Soviet tanks in Moscow in 1991, Sobchak performed the same heroic feat in St Petersburg. During those momentous days, when Russia's fate was in the balance, Putin resigned from the KGB to work against the Soviet coup.

Putin stayed with free-market Sobchak until 1996, when he moved to Moscow, ended the Chechen revolt and in August 1999 was appointed Yeltsin's fifth prime minister in 17 months. Four months later, Yeltsin resigned as president and, under Russia's constitution, Putin became acting president.

He called an election, further entrenching the rule of law, in which 75 per cent of Russians voted, winning a 53 per cent majority in a field of 12 candidates. Four years later he was re-elected with a thumping 71 per cent mandate and has since enjoyed the highest approval rating of any political leader in the democratic world.

Putin inherited an economic catastrophe. In 1998, Russia defaulted on its foreign debt and the rouble collapsed. His first public commitment - to double the productive capacity of the Russian economy in 10 years - was met with derision, but has been fulfilled.

When Time magazine asked Putin how a lifelong KGB man raised in the Soviet Union become a believer in free markets, he replied: ''One doesn't have to be a particularly bright highbrow to see the obvious, that the market economy has major advantages over an administrative system.''

In the Putin decade, Russia followed the advice of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with average annual economic growth of 7 per cent. Foreign debt has been repaid before it fell due and international bond investors now bemoan the shortage of its public debt.

Real wages have grown at about 12 per cent a year. In 2001, Putin achieved the holy grail of progressive reform - a flat income tax of 13 per cent, creating a wave of incentive to work while reducing the appeal of the black market.

At the same time, he cut corporate tax from 35 to 24 per cent and gave small businesses a choice - pay 6 per cent of gross revenue in tax or 15 per cent of profits. The former Soviet Union now boasts the lowest taxes in Europe while achieving increases in government revenue.

Western critics predicted Putin would use the global financial crisis as a pretext to increase state control, but the reverse has been the case. Russia has embarked on a new round of privatisation, with 5500 state-owned enterprises earmarked for sale.

The World Bank reported: "Russia's strong short-term macroeconomic fundamentals make it better prepared than many emerging economies to deal with the crisis . . . prudent fiscal management and substantial financial reserves have protected Russia from deeper consequences of this external shock.'' Its sharemarket more than doubled last year, giving its investors the best returns of any bourse.

Putin's Russia has floated its currency and liberalised its current and capital accounts, completing the troika required for full integration into international capital markets. In 2000, Russia's economy was ranked 22nd in the world - now it is seventh. The power of oligarchs diminished under Putin, with the growing counterweight of parliament, the rule of law and a middle class that has exploded from 8 million to 55 million. Those living in poverty fell from 30 per cent to 14 per cent under his watch.

Yeltsin gave independence to 15 former Soviet republics and, although Putin is perceived as a tough guy, the empire is not striking back. John McCain wrongly attempted to characterise the Georgia skirmish as a "resurgence of the Soviet bear". South Ossetia was historically part of Georgia but during the Soviet era its population became dominated by ethnic Russians. Today the vast majority of South Osettians want to be part of Russia. Georgians launched an offensive to retake South Ossetia during the Beijing Olympics and Russia resisted. South Ossetia may be a complex story but comparisons with Budapest in 1956 are wrong.

While the Soviets repressed all religious faith, Putin happily wears a cross, admits to studying the Bible and has largely restored the prestige of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Russian media may be excessively pro-Putin but only a fraction more or less than the US media have been towards President Barack Obama. It is distressing and disturbing that several Russian journalists have been murdered during Putin's administration. In the absence of persuasive evidence to the contrary, I can only accept Putin's own logic that their deaths have caused him more damage than anything they could have written or spoken.

Russia is the largest geographic nation and the ninth most populous. It retains the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Everyone on Earth has an interest in Russia's stability and prosperity. It seems likely that Putin will stand again for president in 2012, as the constitution permits. In view of his extraordinary record of achievement in office, its hard for me to see how anyone of good faith could regret his continued influence in Russia and the world.

SOURCE

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Obama's 'fixes' will fail

By RALPH PETERS

On Christmas day, a terrorist known to our intelligence system tried to blow up 300 innocents on a US-bound flight. Our government's response is to take porno pictures of your wife and daughter. A radical-Islamist US Army major, known to our intelligence system, massacred his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Our government's response was to offer counseling sessions. A triple agent, known to our intelligence system, detonated a suicide bomb at a CIA outpost, killing seven Americans and a cousin of Jordan's king. Our government's response is to shift intelligence assets away from targeting terrorists to support development efforts.

Our president assures us that no individual is to blame. No one will be fired. It was only "the system," that elusive beast, that failed. Well, our intelligence system is made up of people. People failed. Starting at the top.

The dazzlingly incompetent Janet Napolitano, a "man-caused disaster" if ever there was one, needs to be removed from her job heading Homeland Security. White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan should be placed on double-secret probation and warned to pull up his grades. As for the National Counterterrorism Center chief who abandoned his post to go on a ski vacation the day after Christmas, I leave his fate to you, gentle reader. None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously -- until the public outcry spooked them.

To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.

The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs. That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.

First, you can't win by playing defense. Our unseemly protective measures relinquish the initiative to our enemies. Punishing law-abiding US citizens at airports is a disgrace, not a virtue. The only effective way to reduce the terrorist threat is to kill terrorists. Nothing else -- not even the humiliation of innocent air travelers -- will work.

Yet the politically correct group-think mentality in Washington is so pervasive and pernicious that even Robert Gates, who's been a great secretary of defense in so many ways, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this." Oh, really? Suppose we had killed young Umar Abdulmutallab on the ground with al Qaeda in Yemen? Might that not have protected Americans more effectively than making them miss their holiday flight connections?

Any program that takes intelligence assets away from finding and killing terrorists is a mistake. Improving crop yields in southern Afghanistan won't keep Americans safe from Islamist fanatics. What about this is hard to understand?

Problem No. 2 is the nature of our intelligence system itself: It's morbidly obese. The well-intentioned creation of new bureaucracies after 9/11 only worsened the problem, creating more layers of fat. I prescribe a rigorous diet and exercise -- not force-feeding the system more funding calories. Our intel system is vast, redundant, intractable, self-satisfied, cautious and slower than crosstown traffic during a presidential motorcade.

Our Islamist enemies are lean, really mean, agile, ruthless and, above all, imaginative. Ragtag fanatics are out-thinking us. Why? Because bureaucracy, although it has its place, hates fresh ideas. The terrorists grab a good concept and run with it. We staff it to death, then decide it's far too risky. Before launching an attack on a confirmed terrorist target in Afghanistan, our combat units need up to a dozen different permission slips. Think al Qaeda or the Taliban work that way? We're not being defeated. We're defeating ourselves.

As a former Military Intelligence officer, I know the answer isn't more inexperienced hires or throwing more money at well-connected defense contractors. The answer is to emphasize quality, and for our leaders to foster a culture of risk in the field and personal responsibility in the Cabinet. We need to be creative and willing to commit sins of commission, rather than waiting for terrorists to expose our sins of omission.

Instead, we'll continue to penalize honest citizens (handing al Qaeda a massive, continuing win). Those full-body scanners? If you don't think porn shots of innocent women will end up on the Internet, you probably believe that trying terrorist butchers in civilian courts will make al Qaeda respect us. We need to check under the burqas, not the halter tops.

SOURCE

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Fox does well with Sarah Palin signing



ALREADY entrenched as No.1 in the US cable television news wars, Fox News Channel today hired Sarah Palin as a contributor. The arrangement, first reported in the New York Times, has the potential of playing out as a big win for both parties.

For Fox, the addition gives its conservative political base one more reason to tune in, as Ms Palin is the darling of many sectors of the Republican Party. Fox has surged far ahead of rivals CNN and MSNBC , so it isn't necessarily fretting about losing its sizable advantage in the ratings. But it's always good business to give the people what they want, and they can't get enough of Ms Palin.

Ms Palin, for her part, now has an opportunity to appear as an expert commentator on political and family issues and stay in the public eye prior to the 2012 presidential election. Some have speculated that Ms Palin, who was the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008, is gearing up for a run against President Barack Obama in 2012. Ms Palin's bestselling book, Going Rogue, afforded her an opportunity to expound on a variety of issues while getting ample time on television news shows.

Ms Palin will appear on Fox News on a regular basis as a part of a multi-year deal. Ms Palin has been coy and noncommittal about her plans. She has enlivened the GOP with her willingness to defend the right-to-life point of view - and criticise Democrats, particularly Obama.

SOURCE (More detail here)

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ELSEWHERE

Cuban Doctors Manage to Defect Via Venezuela: "Around 500 Cuban doctors have defected to the United States while serving on aid missions in Venezuela, according to members of Cuban exile groups in Miami. The latest case occurred on Wednesday when seven Cuban physicians managed to leave Caracas’ Maiquetia International Airport, after being held there for several hours and after paying hundreds of dollars each to officials. “The Venezuelan and Cuban officials at Maiquetia systematically subject the doctors who want to leave to psychological pressure until finally they pay bribes,” Cuban doctor Keiler Moreno, who left Caracas five months ago, told Efe. The bribes can range from $300 to as much as $2,000. Sources with Miami’s massive Cuban exile community say that around 2,000 physicians and other health care personnel have defected since 2006 and requested visas to come to the United States. Of that number, 500 came through Venezuela and just in the last year, about 200 arrived in Miami. About 45,000 Cuban doctors and other health care workers are participating in Venezuela in the “Barrio Adentro” public health program designed to try and make up for the lack of such personnel in Venezuela. Although the Cuban doctors who arrive in the United States cannot practice medicine until they get the proper licenses, Dr. Moreno said that they prefer to confront that situation rather than remain in a system plagued by corruption.

A woman’s inalienable right to murder: "On January 7, 2010 the Associated Press released a story titled ‘Maine woman avoids prison for killing of husband.’ What is important about this case are not the details — admittedly unattractive — but the essential legal principle established by Waldo County Superior Court Justice Jeffrey Hjelm. Judge Hjelm established the legal precedent that any woman, based on her own internal and unverifiable thoughts and feelings, has the right to murder any man and suffer no legal consequences.”

Private property ownership issue in Maine: "With its idyllic views and wide expanses of pristine sand, Goose Rocks Beach has lured strollers, swimmers, and softball players for more than a century. Now, in a bare-knuckled lawsuit that has pitted neighbor against neighbor, beachfront residents are invoking Colonial law to affirm their private property rights on a 2-mile crescent that the public has used freely for decades. … Waterfront residents trumpet the suit as a principled stand for property rights, which have extended to the low-water mark since the reign of King Charles I. … But to many townspeople without a front-row view of the Atlantic, the court action is a selfish and cynical effort to hoard a precious piece of natural beauty.”

McCain: Wrong to give Nigerian bomb civilian's rights: "U.S. Senator John McCain says the Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day (December 25) should be tried as an enemy combatant in a military court. McCain told CNN Sunday that giving the man the right to an American lawyer that could help him legally withhold damaging information is a contradiction to the president’s view that America is at war with terrorists.”

SCOTUS to rule on Clinton movie, campaign funding: "Possibly coming soon: election-season Super Bowl-style television ads promoting congressional and presidential candidates, paid for by some of the largest U.S. corporations. It may happen. For decades, business and union money has been largely shut out of state, congressional and presidential campaigns. The Supreme Court may change that in a big way. The court has raised a range of high-stakes possibilities that could let corporations, unions and wealthy individuals pour money into elections in time for this year’s congressional races, not to mention the 2012 presidential contest. A ruling is expected as early as Tuesday.”

Yet another A380 failure: "A new Airbus A380 super jumbo has been grounded at a South Korean airport due to a mechanical fault, the latest in a series of glitches for the world's largest airliner, officials said yesterday. The Emirates plane was scheduled to take off late Sunday for Dubai but the flight was cancelled due to a technical defect, said airport officials in Incheon, west of Seoul. It was the first such case since the Dubai-based carrier launched the A380 service to South Korea last December. The carrier has seven A380s. "A technical problem has been detected in the plane's fuel system," said an official at the carrier's local public relations agency. The delay had forced some 420 passengers to stay at a hotel near the airport, he said, adding that the passengers would leave on another plane sent by the carrier overnight, after a 19-hour delay. Air France's new A380 was grounded more than once last month due to technical problems. Another owned by Singapore Airlines had to return to Paris last month for attention due to an electrical fault. A week ago a Qantas-operated A380 bound for Los Angeles was grounded at Melbourne airport due to a problem with its fuel gauge." [Fly on one at your own risk]

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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The catastrophe of good-sounding ideas

By THOMAS SOWELL

Ideas are such intangible things that it is hard to believe that they have had a huge impact on the lives of people who are not intellectuals and who, in many cases, have paid little attention to those ideas. Yet both secular and religious ideas have moved the emotions of many – and have moved leaders who moved armies.

When we look back on the Spanish Inquisition, on the Crusades of the past and the Jihads of the past and present, we see chilling examples of the effects of ideas. But the secular ideologies of the 20th century killed millions more people in Germany, Russia and China – and similarly in pursuit of higher goals, even if those ideals were used cynically by those with power, as in the past.

If there is any lesson in the history of ideas, it is that good intentions tell you nothing about the actual consequences. But intellectuals who generate ideas do not have to pay the consequences.

Academic intellectuals are shielded by the principles of academic freedom and journalists in democratic societies are shielded by the principle of freedom of the press. Seldom do those who produce or peddle dangerous, or even fatal, ideas have to pay a price, even in a loss of credibility.

Who blames Rachel Carson, an environmentalist icon, because her crusading writings against DDT led to the ban of this insecticide in countries around the world – followed by a resurgence of malaria that killed, and continues to kill, millions of people in tropical Third World countries?

Even political leaders have been judged by how noble their ideas sounded, rather than by how disastrous their consequences were. Woodrow Wilson – our only president with a Ph.D. – was an academic intellectual for years before entering politics, and his ideas about a war to end wars, making the world safe for democracy, and the right of self-determination of peoples, have been revered in utter disregard of what happened when Wilson's notions were put into practice in the real world.

No one today takes seriously the idea that the First World War was a war to end wars, and many now see it as setting the stage for a Second World War. Indeed there were those who predicted this result at the time. But they were not listened to, much less lionized, like Woodrow Wilson.

Like many intellectuals, Woodrow Wilson assumed that if things were bad, 'change' would automatically make them better. But the autocratic governments in Russia and Germany that Wilson abhorred were followed by totalitarian regimes so oppressive and murderous that they made the past despots look almost like sweethearts.

As for the self-determination of peoples, that turned out in practice to mean having whole peoples' fates determined by foreigners, such as Woodrow Wilson, who joined in the dismemberment of empires, with dire consequences in the 1930s, as Hitler picked off the small and vulnerable newly created nations, one by one – an operation that would have been far more dangerous if he had had to face the larger empires of which they had been part before the First World War.

To this day, we are still living with the consequences of carving up the Ottoman Empire to create far more unstable and dangerous states in the Middle East. But Woodrow Wilson's words sounded great – and that is what he and other intellectuals are judged by.

It may seem strange that so many people of great intellect have said and done so many things whose consequences ranged from counterproductive to catastrophic. Yet it is not so surprising when we consider whether anybody has ever had the range of knowledge required to make the sweeping kinds of decisions that so many intellectuals are prone to make, especially when they pay no price for being wrong.

Intellectuals and their followers have often been overly impressed by the fact that intellectuals tend, on average, to have more knowledge than other individuals in their society. What they have overlooked is that intellectuals have far less knowledge than the total knowledge possessed by the millions of other people whom they disdain and whose decisions they seek to override.

We have had to learn the consequences of elite preemption the hard way – and many of us have yet to learn that lesson.

SOURCE

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Democratic governors facing trouble

Like many Democratic governors today, Iowa's Chet Culver won in 2006 on the strength of ambitious and expensive promises such as universal preschool and a plan to bolster the state's alternative-energy industry.

But persistent budget woes have forced the 43-year-old Mr. Culver to trim virtually all aspects of government, including social programs he pledged to expand, and a stern re-election race is ahead this fall. "We're making tough cuts, which will result in pain," said Mr. Culver, whose poll numbers have tumbled as the economy has tanked. "We're not closing early-childhood centers, we're reducing some of the appropriations. We're not going back on our commitment to teachers, but there have been reductions in resources."

Mr. Culver is not alone: 37 governors are on the ballot, and fighting as much against a deep and lingering downturn as they are against political rivals. It's a challenge that almost defies partisanship, with Republicans such as California's Arnold Schwarzenegger confronting the worst budget crisis in a generation. The problems, however, may be most acute for Democrats. They are defending 19 seats while scaling back the kind of spending that strengthens their appeal to important groups such as minority voters, teachers and other unionized public employees.

"In a recession, there's a lot less money for governors to work with, and they get blamed for cutting social programs and not following through on campaign promises," University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said. "It's a particularly tough environment for Democratic incumbents, because they are seen as the party in power."

Democratic prospects can be tied in part to President Obama, whose popularity has dropped because of the jobless situation and a populist backlash against federal spending and rising deficits. Last year, Republicans captured governors' seats in New Jersey and Virginia from Democrats.

The outcome of governors' races this year will have a significant impact on Mr. Obama's political fortunes. Governors oversee the redistricting of their states' legislative and congressional districts after the 2010 census.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, once considered a rising Democratic star, just dropped his bid for re-election after one term. His poll numbers were weak, and he faced a strong challenge from former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, the likely Republican nominee. Colorado's budget shortfall has forced Mr. Ritter to make education cuts, and he's angered state employees by directing them to take furlough days.

More HERE

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The coverup and rapid forgiveness are the most interesting parts of Reid's racial comments about Obama

Reid said privately in 2008 that Obama could succeed as a black candidate partly because of his ‘light-skinned’ appearance and speaking patterns ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’”

Black conservatives with the Project 21 leadership network are speaking out about the recently-revealed racial comments about Barack Obama that were made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in 2008:

Mychal Massie (chairman of Project 21): "Harry Reid is a loathsome individual whose apology was based on exposure not repentance. Reid's comments are proof positive that the racial animus of the past is alive and prevalent among liberals today, notwithstanding the fact that their standard-bearer is a black man."

Robert A. George: "How nice to see that, when it comes to race in America, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has such, ahem, 'enlightenment' (pun intended). Thank goodness no jive-talkin' darky ever thought about running for president! No way Reid could have supported him!!" (This quote comes from Robert's "Ragged Thots" blog. The entire post can be seen here)

Bob Parks: "The hazard of being an apologist is having your own words thrown back in your face. Obama demanded the Republicans drum Senator Trent Lott out of their party in 2002 when Lott gave inappropriate praise to centenarian and reformed segregationist senator Strom Thurmond on his birthday. The underlying problem here is that boneheaded racist statements by politicians are all too common, and only conservatives seem to get called on them and punished. Republicans did strip Lott of his leadership post. Obama is absolving the Democrats of acting against Reid. This is a dangerous trend." (More can be found on Bob's "Black and Right" web site)

Lisa Fritsch: "Why would Harry Reid apologize now when it seems clear he felt it and meant it at the time? It was less likely 'a poor choice of words' than an honest reflection of Reid's character."

R. Dozier Gray: "Black people historically have a lot of forgiveness in their hearts for people who make statements like the one Reid made. I might have forgiven him long ago had he sought to be accountable when he realized that what he said was stupid instead of when he realized that a book featuring it was coming out. But the black 'leadership' will likely let this slide. Power is usually more important to them than this sort of soft racism from a political ally. Truth be told, some of the policies advocated by Reid and his allies are more damaging than a few of his random racial comments."

Darryn "Dutch" Martin: "In the grand scheme of things, what Reid said, his apology and Obama's acceptance of it is irrelevant. What is striking is that Reid said it in 2008, a Time magazine reporter knew it and didn't make it public until 2010! Why wasn't it reported as soon as it became known? Would the mainstream media exercise such restraint and bury a newsworthy quote if a conservative public figure made a similar linguistic faux pas? I think not."

Reid is no stranger to using the race card for political gain. In December 2009, for example, Reid compared those who opposed a government takeover of health care to lawmakers who opposed abolishing slavery and civil rights legislation.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Democrats close ranks around Reid: "Democrats on Sunday rallied to the defense of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from a political firestorm caused by his newly reported remarks during the 2008 presidential campaign describing Barack Obama as "light-skinned" who chose to speak "with no Negro dialect." "I think if you look at the reports as I have, it was all in the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. "It definitely was in the context of recognizing in Senator Obama a great candidate and future president." Mr. Reid apologized to Mr. Obama on Saturday, and the president issued a statement accepting the apology and saying he considered the matter closed. The Nevada Democrat, a pivotal figure in Mr. Obama's hopes of passing a health care reform bill and other top agenda items, said later Sunday that he had no intention of resigning his leadership post or his Senate seat, as Republican lawmakers began demanding Sunday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said Mr. Reid should not resign and defended his remark as just a "mistake." While Democrats rallied to the Senate leader's side, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele mocked Mr. Kaine's defense and he called on Mr. Reid to resign. "If [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell had said those very words, then this chairman and this president would be calling for his head, and they would be labeling every Republican in the country a racist for saying exactly what this chairman's just said," Mr. Steele said."

Interagency gaps let bomb suspect retain visa: "U.S. visa-revocation procedures broke down in a welter of interagency uncertainty in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a failure that current and former officials say allowed the Nigerian Islamist known to U.S. intelligence to board an airliner with a homemade bomb on Christmas Day. However, the visa shortcomings were not the main focus of President Obama's recent comments on the security and intelligence failures related to the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. "The system isn't broken, but what failed fundamentally in this case was the lack of focus on the potential threat threads tied to attack-planning directed at the United States," said Juan Zarate, who was a counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush. He is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "That's not a technological problem — this was a failure of forcing the existing system to concentrate on the potential reality of that threat," he said."

CA: Queer marriage appeal begins today: "A historic trial over California’s Proposition 8 starts today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, promising to feature clashing witness testimony over equal rights, the meaning of bigotry and the purpose of marriage. The outcome could affect not only California but also the broader national question of equal rights for gays and whether their federal constitutional rights supersede a state’s right to ban same-sex marriage.”

2009: China surpasses Germany as world’s largest exporter: "China overtook Germany as the world’s top exporter last year, data compiled by Global Trade Information Services Inc. show. China shipped products worth $958 billion in the first 10 months of 2009, while Germany sold goods worth $918 billion to customers abroad, according to an Internet database operated by Columbia, S.C.-based GTI. Exports from China exceeded German shipments every month since April last year, data show. China has already slipped past Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy and is forecast to overtake Japan this year, assuming the No. 2 spot behind the United States.”

Media Inflated Civilian Deaths at Gaza School, Ignored Israeli Account "On January 6, 2009, there was an infamous explosion near the U.N.-run Fakhura school at the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, as the Israeli military did battle with Hamas fighters. The Israeli military’s official account of the incident, released in February 2009, contended that 12 people died outside the school, nine of whom were identified as Hamas members. But, as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNC, and PBS reported the incident, all cited a substantially higher account of the death toll which was claimed by Palestinian officials and the U.N. as being "more than forty" or "dozens,"claiming that many civilians – who were sheltering inside the school to escape the danger of Israeli airstrikes – were among the dead. While most news shows did relay the Israeli account that the explosion occurred because their troops were battling Hamas members, these news shows never reported to viewers the official Israeli account that nearly all who died were Hamas members. In fact, some earlier reports had cited the number of Hamas members in the group as being as low as two. Many news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC also referred to the incident – which caused damage to the school wall but no deaths within the school building – as an Israeli "attack on the school".

Big win for the big top over animal rights frauds: "An animal rights group that prosecuted one of the US’s most famous circuses for elephant abuse has had its claims rejected by a federal judge. District judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in favour of Feld Entertainment, the owner of Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey circus, after a nine-year case initiated by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). The animal rights organisation had accused the circus of ill-treating its Asian elepants, which are one of its biggest attractions. The case was supported by the Animal Welfare Institute, the Fund for Animals, the Animal Protection Institute and a former Ringling Bros employee, Tom Rider, who worked at the circus as a “barn man” or elephant handler between 1997 and 1999. It was dismissed in 2001, but was reinstated two years later after an appeal court ruled that if Tom Rider could prove he was “aesthetically injured” by the circus’s treatment of its elephants, the case could continue... Judge Sullivan, however, dismissed the plaintiffs’ case after it emerged that Rider had been paid tens of thousands of dollars by the animal rights groups involved."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

****************************

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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"GREENIE WATCH" BLOCKED IN BRITAIN -- FOR "HATE SPEECH"

I guess I do hate frauds. A reader writes: "I am a frequent reader of your Blog and tried to access it from computers in internet cafes while in the UK last summer. Your site, Greenie Watch, is censored in the UK from public computers such as libraries, internet cafes, etc. It seems your site contains or promotes hate speech and is banned. I presume but don't know if private parties can access your site."

Any readers who encounter such problems should ask the proprietor of the computer service concerned to unblock access. Point out that the blog is an academic one that makes no mention of minorities other than climate skeptics.

In the meantime, there are ways around the block. There are two mirror sites that are unlikely to be blocked. See here.

Historic German economic failures seen as successes

So the attempts to imitate them were failures too

In the case of the Third Reich, the widely held perception even now is that whatever else may be said about his regime, Hitler managed to bring about a dramatic revival of the German economy. After 1933 Hitler and his finance minister Hjalmar Schacht stabilized the economy and managed to solve the huge unemployment crisis that had destroyed the Weimar Republic’s legitimacy. This was partly due to Schacht’s imaginative monetary policy and partly to massive public works programs, such as the autobahnen. There was a sharp move away from free markets to a much more interventionist economy that worked better than what had gone before. During World War II this economy was able to achieve great success in terms of war production, notably under Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer.

Obviously there is some truth in this account, or else it would not be credible. There was indeed a sharp move in the direction of a more state-controlled economy. In fact few people realize just how interventionist—even socialist—the policies of the Nazi state were (although the full name of the party should give some indication of this). However, the picture overall is mostly wrong. Adam Tooze conclusively debunked this account in his masterful work, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Tooze shows that the public works programs had little effect on unemployment and wasted resources; that the 1930s saw constant financial and foreign-exchange crises for the Reich; that by 1939 the condition of the German economy was desperate and that this was in fact a major factor in Hitler’s increasingly aggressive policy; that the supposed success of Speer simply did not happen; and that overall the regime was so crippled by its economic incompetence that it is nothing short of a miracle that it had as much military success as it did.

Fortunately, while Nazi Germany’s economic policy and its supposed success had some influence in the 1930s (not least among some New Dealers), it had none after 1945. However, an earlier episode in German economic history had much greater consequences and influence—both entirely malign. When war broke out in July 1914 the German government and High Command planned and hoped for a short and decisive war. Things of course did not work out that way and by the fall of 1916 it was clear that this strategy had failed, while the British blockade grew ever more stringent. In the face of impending defeat, the German Empire’s government was effectively taken over by the military in the person of the army’s quartermaster general (and effective chief of staff) Erich Ludendorf. His thinking and policy were set out in his 1935 work and apologia, Der Totale Krieg (The Total War).

Ludendorf argued, first, that all the human and physical resources of a nation made up its military capacity, or Wehrkraft. To ensure victory and survival in the zero-sum game of nations, all these resources had to be controlled and directed to a single purpose. Who was to do this? The answer for him was simple: Since the goal was victory in conflict, it had to be the military. What this meant in practice was a form of planned economy in which all economic activity was directed by the general staff through a series of planning boards and detailed regulations and targets.

The main point was to remove the profit motive—Ludendorf never tired of ranting against unpatriotic profit seekers and selfish individualists—and replace it with structured command relations. In one sense the aim was to transform the entire economy and society into an army, with the typical command-and-control structure of the modern military. In another sense the goal was to turn German industry into one giant corporation by a process of planning and cartelization. One important aspect of the regime created by Ludendorf, just as for Nazi Germany, was a close alliance between the military, the political and bureaucratic classes, and the managerial elite of large corporations, or at least some of them.

Ludendorf’s policy was a disaster. Production actually declined or was wasted, and the financial methods led to severe inflation, which of course became even worse after the war. The policy also led to increasing resistance from the population, as his ever-more-furious outbursts revealed. Eventually the increasingly desperate situation led to the gamble of the huge spring offensive of 1918. Its failure meant the war was definitively lost.

However, the policy of Germany after 1916 was not seen at the time or for long after as the enormous mistake that it was, even from the High Command’s point of view. Instead it was thought to have been a huge success. Strangely this view became even more widespread after 1918—not least among the victorious powers. A myth took hold: that the organization of the economy under Ludendorf was a model for other nations in peacetime.

This belief had disastrous consequences. It certainly did in Germany itself since it provided much of the basis for the economic policies of the Third Reich, as well as providing yet another justification for slave labor and the systematic plunder of subject populations. In milder form this received view had a major impact in both Great Britain and the United States during the interwar years.

However, its most significant effect was felt in the east. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 they had no real idea of what socialism would look like. Their initial effort, so-called war communism, proved utterly catastrophic and was reversed with the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921. What followed was a huge debate as to what kind of model to adopt. The “center” argument that eventually triumphed under Stalin was to adopt the supposedly successful model of the World War I German war economy. So the Soviet economy was in many ways the product of a mistaken idea about Germany’s war economy and how it had worked.

Misunderstandings of what is actually happening in economic affairs do not only have immediate consequences. When they shape the politicians’ and public’s view of history, their effects can be immense, sometimes comically, but more often tragically.

SOURCE

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Walmart: The research

Economists Jerry Hausman and Ephraim Leibtag argue that we systematically overstate the rate of price inflation because we don’t account for Walmart’s and other big-box companies’ impact correctly. Walmart claims to save consumers $2,500 per capita per year. This is probably an overestimate, but studies I have done with Charles Courtemanche of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro do suggest that Walmart increases our options.

Critics claim that Walmart can deliver low prices because it destroys jobs, lowers labor standards, and squeezes suppliers. The data, however, do not support the first two, while the third is misleading. Retail labor market studies by University of Missouri economist Emek Basker show that Walmart modestly increases retail employment. Critics are quick to counter by questioning the quality of those jobs, correctly noting that Walmart pays less than its unionized competitors. However, this should be qualified. Union pay scales restrict the labor pool from which unionized stores can hire: If the union contract specifies minimum compensation of $12 per hour, then people whose labor cannot produce at least that much in revenue will not be hired. Since Walmart is an open shop, it has no such artificial floor for the productivity of the people it can hire. Those who would not be employable under union conditions are made better off despite the illusion of exploitation.

The company’s critics correctly point out that the last several decades have seen a large gap open between manufacturing and retail wages. But these data must be interpreted with caution because immigration and changing labor participation have altered the distribution of the workforce. People who are today earning Walmart’s “Every Day Low Wages,” as the critics call them, might not have participated in the labor force several decades ago and their wages would not have appeared in the official data.

Supposedly, Walmart drives small local mom-and-pop retailers out of business, spreading economic havoc and weakening a community’s social fabric. In a paper published in Economic Inquiry, West Virginia University economists Andrea M. Dean and Russell S. Sobel fail to detect a statistically significant effect of Walmart on self-employment, the number of small businesses, or bankruptcy among small businesses. It is true that Walmart causes some businesses to close, particularly in sectors that directly compete with the company. However, these businesses can be replaced by businesses in other sectors. In a summary of their research that appeared in the Spring 2008 Regulation magazine, Dean and Sobel offer the example of Main Street in Morgantown, West Virginia, which was decimated by Walmart but which soon recovered as clothiers and electronics stores were replaced by small businesses in other industries.

They also discuss the obvious objection that perhaps Walmart’s wake leaves a swath of low-value, low-wage businesses. They show, however, that Walmart penetration does not appear to reduce the values of small businesses. Stacy Mitchell, author of The Big-Box Swindle, argues that Dean and Sobel’s result relies on an incorrect interpretation of Census data. For their part, Dean and Sobel say Mitchell misunderstands the data. If they are correct, the effects of Walmart’s penetration are consistent with what economists believe about technology and economic growth as well as with Joseph Schumpeter’s well-known concept of “creative destruction.” Walmart’s expansion allows people to produce more with fewer resources and less labor, which frees those resources and that labor to move into other occupations.

Walmart also allegedly uses its raw bargaining strength to extract concessions from suppliers. It is usually able to get lower prices, but it also provides something of great value in return: access to its supply chain and logistical support. While anecdotes of Walmart’s hard bargaining abound, a 2001 Journal of Retailing study by Paul N. Bloom and Vanessa G. Perry found that while dealing with Walmart can hurt financial performance for companies that do only a small share of business with the company, “large-share suppliers to Wal-Mart perform better than their large-share counterparts reporting retailers other than Wal-Mart as their primary customers.” Bloom and Perry note that Walmart offers access to broad markets and that companies taking advantage of this prosper as a result.

Sweatshops

Another common refrain is that Walmart and other large retailers obtain their goods from third-world “sweatshops.” In an important 2006 study published in the Journal of Labor Research, economists Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek showed that “sweatshop” labor paid better than the alternatives. In a June 4, 2008, article for the Library of Economics and Liberty, Powell summarizes this research and points out that criticisms of “sweatshop wages” (like those aimed at a factory in Honduras making clothes for Kathie Lee Gifford in 1996) invariably compare the wages and working conditions to American rather than Honduran working conditions—a comparison he calls “irrelevant” because of restrictions on international labor mobility. Sweatshops are a blessing, not a burden. As Powell points out, sweatshop wages more than double the average in some countries. Unfortunately, boycotts and legislation will not improve working conditions around the world.

More HERE

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To Solve Budget Woes, California Should Expand Privatization Idea

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered his final State of the State Address this week amid the harshest economic downturn since the Great Depression. With less than one year to go before he is termed out of office, Schwarzenegger and the state that elected him face monumental challenges. The address was lean on any innovative ideas that could pull the Golden State out of its fiscal nosedive. But the Governor unveiled two banner proposals, the first his plan for a constitutional amendment to mandate greater spending on universities than prisons, the second his plan to privatize prisons.

According to the Governor, 30 years ago 10 percent of the state’s general fund was allocated to higher education, 3 percent to prisons. Now, prisons receive almost 11 percent of the budget, and higher education 7.5 percent. “Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future,” explained Schwarzenegger. “What does it say about a state that focuses more on prison uniforms than caps and gowns? It simply is not healthy.” Schwarzenegger boldly vowed, “…never again do we spend a greater percentage of our money on prisons than on higher education.”

State Senator George Runner disputes these numbers, reporting that in the most recent budget, the state spent 7.3 percent of the general fund on prisons and 9.7 percent on higher education. The Governor’s staff then admitted that excluded from the numbers in his speech was state spending on community colleges. Most community college students and teachers would consider themselves part of higher education in California.

But even going with the Governor’s numbers, in order to invert the current ratio of greater spending on prisons than higher education, the state must either increase spending on education—an impossibility considering a $20 billion budget shortfall—or decrease spending on prisons. The Governor proposed privatizing prisons to cut costs and thereby meet his goal to spend more on education than incarceration.

Schwarzenegger reasoned, “California spends $50,000 per prisoner. By comparison to the ten largest states, they spend $32,000 only. They spend less and yet you do not see federal judges taking over their prison health care system. Why do we have to spend so much more than they do?”

California’s prison system has been a chronic headache for Schwarzenegger and the legislature, making headlines as the federal judiciary took over the prisons and ordered the state to rectify prison overcrowding. Last year a federal judge ruled the state must release almost a quarter of the state’s prisoners. By privatizing the prison system, Schwarzenegger believes the state will save billions of dollars. He encouraged the legislature to “find more cost-effective ways to run our prison system and allow private prisons to compete with public prisons. Competition and choice are always good.”

Such talk of competition and choice is exactly what will help pull California’s government out of its budget plight. But privatizing prisons is only half of the equation. If competition leads to lower costs in the prison system, why not privatize a whole slew of other similarly poorly-run government programs?

Like most areas in the public sector where government encroaches, the death of competition leads to poor quality at high costs. The state’s education system could certainly use some privatization and competition to spur long-overdue reform. Many parents pay double for their children’s education: they pay exorbitant taxes on a failing school system and pay for tuition to a private school that will actually provide a quality education. If competition will save prisons money, school choice will save taxpayers money.

The Governor’s restrictive constitutional amendment plan (requiring an emergency declaration or two-thirds vote in the legislature to suspend) will leave the state no choice in prioritizing public safety, which should be the first obligation of government.

From a proper-role-of-government perspective, the problem with Schwarzenegger’s proposal is that he intends to privatize the one area of society for which government is responsible: the execution of justice. Running the prison system can certainly be contracted out and save the state money. But since the chief responsibility of government is public safety—not education—the Governor is incorrect in altering the constitution to mandate greater spending on higher education. Yes, any society should place a high priority on ensuring its children are equipped to be successful. But the state should encourage families to provide the best education for their children by creating the least burdensome tax and regulation system.

But setting aside the misguided belief that government should provide education over public safety, Schwarzenegger’s plan to inject privatization and competition into mismanaged government programs is an idea long past due. Too bad Governor Schwarzenegger waited until his last year in office to embrace the free market principles he once trumpeted.

SOURCE

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The Gitmo Obsession

by Charles Krauthammer

On Wednesday, Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indicted by a Michigan grand jury for attempted murder and sundry other criminal charges. The previous day, the State Department announced that his visa had been revoked. The system worked.

Well, it did for Abdulmutallab. What he lost in flying privileges he gained in Miranda rights. He was singing quite freely when seized after trying to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. But the Obama administration decided to give him a lawyer and the right to remain silent. We are now forced to purchase information from this attempted terrorist in the coin of leniency. Absurdly, Abdulmutallab is now in control.

And this is no ordinary information. He was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen, and just days after he was lawyered up and shut up, the U.S. was forced to close its embassy in Yemen because of active threats from the same people who had trained and sent Abdulmutallab.

This is nuts. Even if you wanted ultimately to try him as an ordinary criminal, he could have been detained in military custody -- and thus subject to military interrogation -- without prejudicing his ultimate disposition. After all, every Guantanamo detainee was first treated as an enemy combatant and presumably interrogated. But some (most notoriously Khalid Sheik Mohammed) are going to civilian trial. That determination can be made later.

John Brennan, President Obama's counterterrorism adviser, professes an inability to see any "downsides" to treating Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal -- with a right to remain silent -- a view with which 71 percent of likely voters sensibly disagree.

The administration likes to defend itself by invoking a Bush precedent: Wasn't the shoe bomber treated the same way? Yes. And it was a mistake, but in the context of the time understandable. That context does not remotely exist today.

Richard Reid struck three months after 9/11. The current anti-terror apparatus was not in place. Remember: This was barely a month after President Bush authorized the creation of military commissions and before that system had been even set up. Moreover, the Pentagon at the time was preoccupied with the Afghan campaign that brought down the Taliban in two months. The last major Taliban city, Kandahar, fell just two weeks before Reid tried to ignite his shoe on an airplane.

To be sure, after a few initial misguided statements, Obama did get somewhat serious about the Christmas Day attack. First, he instituted high-level special screening for passengers from 14 countries, the vast majority of which are Muslim with significant Islamist elements. This is the first rational step away from today's idiotic random screening and toward, yes, a measure of profiling -- i.e., focusing on the population most overwhelmingly likely to be harboring a suicide bomber.

Obama also sensibly suspended all transfers of Yemenis from Guantanamo. Nonetheless, Obama insisted on repeating his determination to close the prison, invoking his usual rationale of eliminating a rallying cry and recruiting tool for al-Qaeda. Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there'd be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London?

Jihadism's list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden's 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions. Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom -- in 1492.

This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women) and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?

Nevertheless, Obama will not change his determination to close Guantanamo. He is too politically committed. The only hope is that perhaps now he is offering his "recruiting" rationale out of political expediency rather than real belief. With suicide bombers in the air, cynicism is far less dangerous to the country than naivete.

SOURCE

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Liberal agenda could be on hold as Dems face election carnage

The retirements of longtime Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., will likely chill the liberal agenda of the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate as they seek to avoid widespread losses in 2010.

Political experts believe the prospect of significant Republican gains in November will leave Democrats divided over what to do next when it comes to passing their biggest legislative priorities, including global warming legislation and an immigration reform bill. "Obama is going to make the argument that now is the time to act," said University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato. "But the congressional Democrats who are threatened are going to be saying, 'Sorry Mr. President, we have given you enough tough votes for this term.' "

The bills Democrats are most likely to abandon in the face of this daunting political landscape are the global warming bill, which would cap carbon emissions and fine those who pollute, and legislation that would make it easier for employees to unionize. Immigration reform, which was already considered unlikely, will also come off the table, political analysts say.

Veteran Democratic strategist Doug Schoen believes that in the short term, Democrats will push hard to pass their health care reform bill, preferably in the coming weeks. "Longer term, they will have to move to the center, otherwise they will face a tsunami," he said.

Experts are predicting gains of 20 seats or more in the House for the GOP. And Dorgan's retirement puts at least nine Senate Democratic seats in reach of Republicans. If those predictions are close to the mark, Democrats in both chambers will have to work with a much smaller majority, which will make it harder, if not impossible, to move their agenda.

Lawmakers may look to Dorgan as a warning sign. The three-term senator watched his once-high poll numbers plummet in recent months as the Democratic health care bill made its way through the Senate. In a hypothetical matchup with Republican Gov. John Hoeven, Dorgan trailed by 22 points. In the same poll, conducted in December by Rasmussen Reports, 64 percent of voters said they opposed the sweeping Democratic health care reform bill that Dorgan voted for. The Cook Political Report now lists Dorgan's seat in the "Lean Republican" category.

In the House, there has been a string of Republican and Democratic retirements, but it is the GOP that stands to gain in 2010, according to election analysis data. The Democrats who are calling it quits are vulnerable moderates from districts that lean Republican.

There are many more politically vulnerable House Democrats who have been unwilling to sacrifice their jobs by voting for legislation that is unpopular with their constituents. That isn't likely to change. "There are still a core group of Democrats here who are not suddenly going to lay down and roll over because of Democratic retirements," political analyst Stu Rothenberg said. "If anything, it will only enhance their position, and leaders will have to find a way to pass bills."

SOURCE

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Ideological Profiling: Is it Ethnic Profiling?

The recent terrorist attempt to down a U.S. airliner and the failure of Homeland Security to prevent him from boarding the plane has raised serious questions, not only about the competence of DHS officials, but the adequacy of our screening techniques. One prevalent fear is that we are wasting much time and limited resources casting too wide a net in our screening procedures for reasons of political correctness. The fear seems to be that narrowing our focus to those proven most likely to commit a terrorist act could result in profiling members of a specific minority group in ways that some condemn as racial or ethnic stereotyping.

The truth, however, is quite the contrary. The sort of ideological filtering that occurs in screening for terrorists is not racial or ethnic profiling at all. And even the staunchest defenders of political correctness should not object to it. Let me illustrate this from personal experience. The fact is, I would liked to have entitled this column “The Day I was Profiled as a Terrorist.” But, had I done so, few readers would have taken me seriously. Let me explain.

In 1985, while in Graduate School, I had the opportunity to participate in two separate academic conferences in the United Kingdom — one in Dublin, Ireland and the other in Aberdeen, Scotland — with ten days in between to be a tourist. To get myself from Ireland to London after the Dublin conference, I purchased an overnight bus/ferry package. We exited the ferry in England by walking en masse up a wide ramp. Stationed on it were British immigration officials selectively stopping some of us for questioning.

To my surprise, I was one of those stopped. Of course, I had nothing to fear since my reasons for being in the country were entirely legitimate, and this was easily determined after the official viewed my US passport and asked me some routine questions. Even though I had a beard at the time, it was nicely trimmed. I thought I looked reasonably respectable and told myself that my being singled out then was a random event.

Years later, however, after seeing Gerry Adams on the news, I put two and two together. Though he has since denied any IRA associations, there can be little doubt that his image did trigger those associations. When I walked up the ramp of that ferry, I, too, shared a certain look then associated with a group of young men who had entered England to commit acts of terrorism. Simply put, I looked far too much like Gerry Adams. Had it been explained to me that I was stopped for questioning because some suspected IRA terrorists looked like me, or vice versa, I do not think that I would have been offended; I would have probably thought that stopping me was reasonable.

Was it ethnic profiling? I doubt it. I have no reason to believe that English authorities had conjured up some grand theory positing that there was something in the genetic make-up of an Irishman that made him predisposed to commit acts of terrorism. If there was profiling, it was ideological, not ethnic. Some young Irishmen, who looked like me, had joined an organization whose ideology condoned acts of terrorism. And is not the situation the same in the case of radical Muslim extremists?

In singling out Middle Eastern men for increased attention from airport security, we are not presupposing some grand racial theory that says they have something in their genes making them predisposed to commit acts of terrorism. That would, indeed, be ethnic profiling of the worst kind. Instead, we are simply doing the same sort of sagacious ideological profiling that the British authorities were doing with the IRA. We are similarly saying that some members of a particular ethnic group have adopted an ideology—that associated with a particular branch of Islam—that condones terrorism. And we have every right to protect ourselves against their murderous behavior.

Finally, given the Homeland Security memo that surfaced a few months ago telling law enforcement officials to focus on members of certain groups who are politically right of center, I fear I must give Gerry Adams ample warning. Were he to fly to this country today, there is a chance that he might be singled out and questioned by Homeland Security. Simply put, he looks far too much like Victor Morawski.

SOURCE

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Time to abolish TSA as we know it

Which is harder: For an uninvited guest to sneak into a state dinner at the White House, or for a properly ticketed passenger to board an airplane? You're not alone if you have to think about your answer. Despite that, the airplane in question will not necessarily be safe.

This is how American aviation security works -- or rather doesn't work. In order to provide an illusion of security, we have made air travel impractical for nearly any trip that is less than a full day's drive. If you are satisfied with this, then by all means let's put some new functionary in charge at the Transportation Security Administration without any further thought. If you see a problem here, then perhaps it's time to re-think everything -- including the TSA's existence as we know it.

We have learned much recently about post-9/11 airport security policies. We do not have a system that failed -- we have a system that is designed to fail. For example:

* All it takes to shut down air traffic all along the East Coast is for one concerned bystander in Newark, N.J., to tell an inattentive (absent, sleeping?) TSA worker that someone just walked right past him when he wasn't looking. That was enough to force some 10,000 people to go back through a security line.

* As Jeffrey Goldberg demonstrated in a November 2008Atlantic Monthlypiece, anyone who can print out a fake boarding pass and carry a bottle labeled "saline solution" can enter our "secure" terminals with dangerous chemicals.

* Who can blame former Vice President Al Gore for using private jets after his experience in 2002, when he was given the full-body pat-down twice on a single trip to Wisconsin?

* In March, TSA employees detained an aide to Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, simply because he was carrying $5,000 in cash and checks.

But, you might say, aren't these inconveniences, and TSA's $7 billion annual budget, just the price we pay for safety? Hardly, because we're not getting safety. A Nigerian man with documented terrorist ties, whose name was already on a watch list, known both to the British government and to ours as a threat, was given a visa and allowed to board a U.S.-bound plane wearing explosive underpants. Had he lit his drawers on fire in the bathroom and not in his seat, we'd be watching memorial services for 300 passengers today.

In short, we have turned our airports into something out of "1984," and we're not safer for having done so. Do we even need the theatrical presence of uniformed TSA screeners when flight crews can be trained to screen their own planes just as well? But the point is simply that anything would be better than what we have now: Minimum security bought with maximum hassle.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

U.S. Job Losses in December Dim Hopes for Quick Upswing: "The nation lost 85,000 jobs from the economy in December, the Labor Department reported Friday, as hopes for a vigorous recovery ran headlong into the prospect that paychecks could remain painfully scarce into next year. “We’re still losing jobs,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “It’s nothing like we had in the free fall of last winter, but we’re not about to turn around. We’re still looking at a really weak economy.” The disappointing snapshot of the job market intensified pressure on the Obama administration to show results for the $787 billion spending bill it championed last year to stimulate the economy. At a news conference, Mr. Obama acknowledged the December data as a setback, while outlining plans to deliver $2.3 billion in tax credits to spur manufacturing jobs in clean energy. “We have to continue to explore every avenue to accelerate the return to hiring,” the president told reporters. Most economists assume the unemployment rate — which held steady at 10 percent in December — will worsen in coming months. The nation would then confront the highest jobless rate in a generation on the eve of November elections that will determine the balance of power in Congress."

China space program shoots for moon: "China's aerospace industry firms - which for decades have supplied dangerous missile technologies and equipment to Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, and which have been sanctioned ceaselessly by four successive U.S. presidents for their transgressions - will find the United States in a new suppliant posture. The atrophying U.S. space program suggests that America will be forced to cooperate with China in space, or else cede the high frontier of space to China altogether. October's launch of the experimental Ares 1-X heavy lift rocket, while flawless, may well mark the end rather than the beginning of America's next-generation Constellation manned-space program. The space shuttle is scheduled for retirement this year and until Constellation gets off the ground, future American astronauts will rely on Russians - or Chinese - to get into orbit - if they want to get there at all. The Pentagon is clearly alarmed by the prospect. The chief of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin Chilton, told reporters Nov. 3, "With regard to China's [space] capabilities, I think anyone who's familiar with this business ... would have to be absolutely amazed at the advancement that China has made in such a short period of time, whether that be in their unmanned program or the manned program." Senior Chinese space officials have told their state media that China could be on the moon by 2022 at the outside. Other authoritative Chinese space engineers see a moon landing as a next step in the Tiangong program that will launch three Chinese space stations into Earth orbit between 2011 and 2015."

Any deeds to match the words?: "Obama is giving a good imitation now of a man getting a late education. Maybe the education will take. It's too soon to say. He said late Thursday that he won't fire anybody. "Ultimately, the buck stops with me. When the system fails, it's my responsibility." Smooth talk is easy for Mr. Obama, and he often confuses words with deeds. He's taking responsibility for what happened aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on final approach over Detroit, but it's not clear what that means. He's not likely to fire himself (perhaps to spare us Joe Biden). So nobody pays a price for some serious sleeping on the job. Sleeping on the job is serious, but not that serious."

US spies in info overload: "US intelligence officials, under pressure to better track terrorist threats, are hampered by their own vast bureaucracy and an overwhelming flow of information, analysts say. President Barack Obama ‘has now discovered that he’s inherited an intelligence community in the United States which is bloated, bureaucratic and even with the best of intentions has become so large it finds it very hard to put together the pieces,’ Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, told AFP. … News photos of Obama meeting a room full of top intelligence officials illustrated the problem, said Riedel, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘There are two dozen people in that room. Why are that many people trying to run the show? Why doesn’t he have an intelligence senior official who he goes to who is in charge of everything?’ he said.”

Israeli jets bomb Gaza smuggling tunnels: "Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip Thursday night targeted tunnels and a weapons-making shop, Palestinian sources said. One person was killed and two injured, Palestinians told The Jerusalem Post. The airstrikes came after the firing of a Katyusha rocket that landed near Ashkelon earlier in the night, the Israeli military said.”

With jobs, sometimes less really is more: "A government job is not productive in the sense that any new wealth occurs, so the private sector has the burden of supporting yet another government employee. This means less money is available for private businesses to hire the productive labor which pays for the government job. So how does adding another government job stimulate the economy? I’m puzzled when people applaud these jobs. If we see a couple struggling to support their kids who suddenly decide to solve their problem by creating more kids, would we applaud this?”

The Obamas’ sacrifice: "We are lucky to have President and Mrs. Obama in the White House. They have sacrificed wealth and its comforts … for us. I know that because they keep telling us. John Dietrich has been keeping track. The president has repeatedly stressed the need for us to tighten our belts. He has informed us, ‘We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times. …’ During the campaign, his wife told us that we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. … Please. The Obamas are part of the Washington elite, who have always indulged their champagne tastes while advising the rest of us to make do with less. The American people don’t need any lectures from the Obamas — or anyone else living large on the taxpayer dime — about sacrifice.”

Freedom to Build: Frontier Centre looks at Canada’s homeless problem: "The Frontier Centre for Public Policy today released a backgrounder on Canada’s homeless population. It examines the role of regulation in reducing the supply of low-cost housing. ‘Freedom to Build,’ written by researcher Fergus Hodgson. … The study notes that the policy responses to affordable housing, while numerous, have not addressed the primary cause: the restrained supply of private housing, which for the last two decades has been a significant reason the homeless proportion of the population has grown so rapidly.”

Phantom zip codes also found in Virginia: "As much as $9.5 million in federal stimulus dollars went to 14 zip codes in Virginia that don’t exist or are in other states, Old Dominion Watchdog (http://virginia.watchdog.org) reports. The fake zip codes were listed on Recovery.gov, the federal Web site that is supposed to track how the stimulus money is being used. The phony zip codes are a new wrinkle in Recovery.gov’s increasingly tattered credibility. In November, Ed Pound, director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, said a rash of phantom congressional districts found on the website were the result of confusion by fund recipients, who apparently didn’t know who their congressman was. But who would give millions of dollars to somebody who doesn’t even know their own zip code?"

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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THE CONSEQUENCES OF OBAMA: TERRORISM IS BACK

Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that the "chickens came home to roost" on 9-11. He was wrong. But they have now, indeed, come home to roost as we witness the results of the unilateral disarmament President Obama has practiced in the war on terror. Beset once more by terrorism on our soil and in our airspace, we find ourselves suddenly overmatched by those who the Bush Administration kept away from our shores for seven years.

This new onset of terrorism is not the product of any change in the international environment or some new "systemic" flaw in our intelligence operations. It is due to the policy of President Obama in letting down our guard and inhibiting those charged with our protection.

Under Obama, the hunters have become the hunted as America inverted her priorities. Those who have been working to keep us safe have, themselves, come under scrutiny for profiling, harsh interrogation techniques, and a failure to give terrorists constitutional rights they don't have.

The result is predictable: Timidity and caution have become the order of the day in our intelligence community. In a world where hunch, guesswork, and a willingness to leap to conclusions by imagining the worst are vital to success, a cover your butt mentality has taken over. If you come to the wrong conclusion, if you profile without adequate justification, if you accuse incorrectly, you are finished. Your career and your pension will be gone. Guess right and you are accorded anonymity. Guess wrong and you're through.

The failure of the intelligence operatives to pass along the information about the Ft. Hood shooter or the airline bomber did not flow from a blind spot or a lack of co-ordination, they stemmed from terrorism of a different sort -- the terror of making a mistake and falling on the harsh mercies of Eric Holder.

Now Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutall sits, lawyered up, in a federal prison. His interrogation will proceed, if at all, under the watchful eye of his counsel. He will not finger other operatives nor warn us of other impending attacks. He will receive the full panoply of constitutional rights, none of which he is entitled to.

Barack Obama does not seem to understand that these terrorists come here to use our laws and our system, not to protect us, not even to shelter themselves, but to destroy us.

Abdulmutall should be interrogated by the military, without benefit of counsel. The evidence we obtain should not be admissible in a court of law nor used as the basis for his sentencing. But it must be used to ward off future threats and attacks.

But Obama is a true believer. His persistence in downgrading the war on terror to a criminal investigation will continue. And we will experience more and more attacks. Because pessimism is the bodyguard of liberalism, he will explain to us that the world has become more threatening and that he is doing all he can to keep us safe. But the truth will be that it will have been his policies and priorities that are leaving us exposed. And the attacks will continue.

SOURCE

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When War Is Not Metaphor

My dinner partner at the holiday table was home on leave from Army Ranger training. He had been living outdoors, learning to be at home in the rain and the mud, eating to lose weight and build muscle through rigorous sleep-deprived maneuvers. He could run, jump and do push-ups in numbers that would embarrass the regulars at the local gym who pump iron and swim their laps in the comfort of indoor luxury.

He was looking forward to deploying to Afghanistan. I wasn't sure I heard him right, so I asked him to repeat himself. Yes, he was looking forward to deploying to Afghanistan. He had been an ROTC cadet at one of our elite Eastern universities. He was sure that none from his class could be happier than he was. He wanted to be an Army Ranger because it would give his life meaning and purpose. He wasn't sure many of his classmates in other professions would say that. He wanted a part of ensuring the future of his country.

With neither sentiment nor arrogance, he talked of taking seriously the defense of country. He regards al-Qaida-trained terrorists as a deep and lethal threat to everything he holds dear...

President Obama observed the obvious in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, but it was a needed reminder: "Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leader to lay down their arms." He reminded his Norwegian hosts that many of their countrymen feel "deep ambivalence about military action today."

What he didn't talk about was the deep ambivalence many Americans as well feel toward military action. It's those ambivalent Americans the president yielded to in granting the Christmas Day bomber a civil rather than a military trial. Why the man with explosives in his underwear should be dealt with differently than, say, the eight Nazi saboteurs who arrived on the Atlantic shore in 1942 with explosives in a suitcase is a puzzle. They got their day in a military court, and though they never managed to detonate a single bomb, six were executed in the electric chair, one was sentenced to life in prison and the other was sentenced to 30 years.

Some of our most squeamish citizens cannot grasp the reality that the war on terror is not metaphor, that neither a saboteur nor a terrorist is entitled to the rights of a common criminal. Their arguments are weak and predictable. "We have nothing to be ashamed of, little to fear and much to be proud of treating captured foreign terrorists as we would treat any upstanding American who tried to blow up an airplane full of people," writes Michael Kinsley in The New York Times.

Such reasoning is easy for those who intend no sacrifice, and patently absurd. There's a huge difference, obvious to most of us, between a domestic shooter serving his own ends and a terrorist recruited in the Third World, radicalized in London and trained in Yemen to blow up innocents and spread fear. Our law recognizes such difference, and only a fancy double-talker would try to equate them.

More HERE

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More return to fight after leaving Gitmo

One in five terror suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison has returned to the fight, according to a classified Pentagon report expected to stoke an already fierce debate over President Barack Obama's plan to close the military prison. The finding reflects an upward trend on the recidivism rate, although human rights activists who advocate closing the prison have questioned the validity of such numbers.

Early last year, the Pentagon reported that the rate of released detainees returning to militancy was 11 percent. In April, it was 14 percent. The latest figure was 20 percent, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not been declassified and released.

Critics of the reports say there is so little information in the assessments that they are nearly impossible to verify independently. Civil rights advocates say the number of fighters suspected of or confirmed as returning to the battlefield is likely to be much smaller.

According to a senior administration official, the White House has not been presented with information that suggests that any of the detainees transferred during the Obama administration has returned to the fight.

Meanwhile, Republicans say the rising number suggests the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot be closed because that would mean either releasing hardened terrorists back into the fight or moving them into U.S. prisons, which many Americans oppose. "Guantanamo remains the proper place for holding terrorists, especially those who may not be able to be detained as securely in a third country," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

Although Obama said Tuesday that he still wants to close the detention facility, Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell suggested Wednesday that such plans were on hold. Congress has put severe limits on the endeavor. "We are right now left without either the money or the authority to move detainees from Guantanamo Bay," Morrell said.

Under significant political pressure, Obama has said he won't release any more detainees to Yemen because of al-Qaida's grip on that nation. Nearly half of the remaining 198 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are from Yemen.

More HERE

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Following the Irish Example

While American politicians continue to indulge the unsustainable excesses of a federal government already littered with unnecessary functions, other nations have wisely begun to read the handwriting on the wall.

What does it say? “Cut, cut, cut!”

Take Ireland, which (like America) found itself buried under a mountain of deficit spending in 2009 as the global economic recession crippled income and revenue growth. Making matters worse, a huge speculative housing boom swept across the nation just prior to the bottom falling out of the global economy, which has made its recession even more severe. In fact Ireland’s unemployment rate is currently 12.8% – the third highest rate in all of Europe.

Things got so bad that at one point last year, the Irish government was borrowing €400 million ($575 million) a week just to keep its head above water, with its deficit rapidly approaching 20% of its gross domestic product. At that level, “the very financial survival of Ireland would have been at risk,” according to the country’s finance minister.

Sound familiar? It’s almost exactly what’s happening in America, albeit on a smaller scale. Yet while American politicians are pushing new socialist spending sprees and bigger government power grabs in 2010, Ireland’s government is doing exactly what the country’s businesses and families have been forced to do as a result of the downturn – find ways to make ends meet.

In addition to slashing salaries for more than 400,000 government workers (including its top administration officials), Irish leaders have also shown a willingness to trim back numerous social welfare programs. All told, the Irish cuts will save as much as $6 billion this year – and as much as $22 billion over the next four years.

Ireland is not making these decisions in a vacuum. In fact, the country has already learned the hard way that unchecked government growth does not translate into “recovery.” During the 1980’s, a massive expansion of government debt (and a failure on the part of political leaders to make cuts when they were necessary) spawned anemic economic growth, soaring interest rates and an unemployment rate that soared to nearly 20%. Irish economists refer to this period as “the lost decade.” “In the 1980s, we saw what can happen when you ignore the problem of overspending,” Alan Ahearne, a special adviser in Ireland’s Finance Ministry, told The Washington Post in December. “We’re not going to make that mistake again.”

American politicians, on the other hand, are tripping over themselves in a headlong rush to make precisely that same mistake – on a much larger scale. Not content with a dramatic expansion of the size and scope of the federal government, President Barack Obama and his Congressional allies are planning to pour billions of additional taxpayer dollars down the sinkhole of state government bureaucracies in 2010 – this in spite of clear and compelling evidence that such spending has failed miserably to stimulate economic “recovery.”

Meanwhile, a seemingly un-scalable mountain of government debt grows even higher – while the taxpayers’ ability to repay it is further hamstrung. In fact, according to a recent report from the Heritage Foundation, Obama’s budget proposals would impose $13 trillion in deficit spending over the coming decade, bringing annual budget deficits in America to more than $2 trillion and the U.S. public debt to more than $20 trillion.

This is beyond reckless – it is courting economic calamity on an unprecedented scale. Yet unlike leaders in Ireland, politicians in America appear incapable of grasping the fundamental reality that nations cannot borrow their way out of debt – or borrow their way into prosperity. The longer America’s current leaders refuse to acknowledge this self-evident truth, the deeper the hole gets for the American taxpayers.

SOURCE

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Some REAL hopey change

Politicians, businessmen and labor union spokesmen have whined about the decline in U.S. manufacturing. Before looking into what they say is the sad decline in U.S. manufacturing, let's examine what has happened in agriculture. In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, only about 41 percent of our labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2008, less than 3 percent of Americans are employed in agriculture. What would you have Congress do in the face of this precipitous loss of agricultural jobs? One thing Congress could do is outlaw all of the technological advances and machinery that have made our farmers the world's most productive. Our farmers are so productive that if needed, they could feed the entire world.

Let's look at manufacturing. According to Dr. Mark Perry's Department of Labor employment data, in his article "Manufacturing's Death Greatly Exaggerated", U.S. manufacturing employment peaked at 19.5 million jobs in 1979. Since 1979, the manufacturing workforce has shrunk by 40 percent and there's every indication that manufacturing employment will continue to shrink. Before you buy into the call for Congress to do something about manufacturing job loss, there are some other facts to be considered.

According to the Federal Reserve, the dollar value of U.S. manufacturing output in November was $2.72 trillion (in 2000 dollars). Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220. Output per worker is three times as high as it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimates that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion (in 2008 dollars). If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy, with its own GDP, it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth richest economy. The GDPs are: U.S. ($14.2 trillion), Japan ($4.9 trillion), China ($4.3 trillion), U.S. manufacturing ($3.7 trillion), Germany ($3.7 trillion), France ($2.9 trillion) and the United Kingdom ($2.7 trillion).

These facts put a lie to claims we hear about how we are a country that "doesn't produce anything anymore," and how we have "outsourced our production to China," and there's been a "demise of U.S. manufacturing." U.S. manufacturing has gone through the same kind of labor-saving technological innovation as agriculture. Should we discard that innovation in the name of saving jobs?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Israel says tests on Iron Dome missile shield have been a success: "Israel has announced the successful testing of its Iron Dome anti-missile system, said to be capable of intercepting rockets launched by militants in Gaza and South Lebanon. The shield, which fires missiles at incoming threats that it identifies by radar, is being called a “gamechanger” in the way that Israel can conduct its defences. The system can estimate where a missile will land, targeting those that will hit populated areas while ignoring missiles heading for open ground, military experts said. Iron Dome would stop missiles with a range of between 4 and 70 kilometres (2.5 and 45 miles), spanning smaller mortar shells from Gaza to the Iranian-made Fajr rockets fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon."

The French discover Churchill: "President Sarkozy may have cooled to Gordon Brown, but France has just fallen for the charms of another British leader — Sir Winston Churchill. “Le Vieux Lion,” as the British leader was known, has found new popularity thanks to two bestselling books — a fresh translation of his Second World War memoirs and a prize-winning biography. Enthusiasm for Churchill is being fed by new interest in the war era among a generation born since France preferred to forget the trauma of the Nazi occupation. Recent war documentaries, including a spectacular colour series on the France2 channel last autumn, have brought the period closer to modern France, said François Kersaudy, author of the new biography Winston Churchill. “The younger generation knew very little about Churchill but they are beginning to discover him through the memoirs,” Mr Kersaudy told The Times. His book, which won the Grand Prix for political biography last year, depicts the Prime Minister as a towering figure in European history."

'Wrong type of snow' halts Anglo-French train AGAIN: "A Eurostar train broke down in the Channel Tunnel today, leaving 256 passengers stranded, after the wrong type of snow affected its electrical system. A rescue team was immediately despatched to rescue those on board, with all other services halted as a precaution. The train was towed from the tunnel by a diesel locomotive this morning. Eurostar 9113 ground to a halt around six miles from the British entrance to the tunnel at Folkstone after heavy snow in northern France affected the electrics. As happened during severe delays over Christmas, the snow melted as it entered the warmth of the Tunnel, so causing severe condensation which affected the train’s electrics, said engineers in France. The breakdown follows a three-day halt to Eurostar services just before Christmas after the wrong type of ‘fluffy’ snow caused a series of stoppages.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

****************************

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" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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