Norway's bigotry
by Alan M. Dershowitz
In a recent interview, Norway's Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, "We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel." In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on "an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture." It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.
I can't remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any "occupation". The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews-many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s.
Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?
I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel.
Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway's former Prime Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.
The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway's anti-Semitism that "caused" the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.
The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with. The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded.
Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians. While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.
It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reason discourse, diplomatic resolution or political compromise.
I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism.
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.
Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don't expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the Ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, "those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo."
In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end. Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist.
Hamas believes that Israel's very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.
The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.
SOURCE
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Norway itself helped give Breivik the idea that terrorism works and is justified
BY BARRY RUBIN
One of the most sensitive aspects of the very sensitive subject of the murderous terrorist attack in Norway by a right-wing gunman is this irony: The youth political camp he attacked was at the time engaged in what was essentially (though the campers didn’t see it that way, no doubt) a pro-terrorist program.
The camp, run by Norway’s left-wing party, was lobbying for breaking the blockade of the terrorist Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without that entity needing do anything that would prevent it from being a terrorist base against Israel. They were backing and justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israelis and killing thousands of people like themselves.
Even to mention this irony is dangerous since it might be taken to imply that the victims “had it coming.” The victims never deserve to be murdered by terrorists, even any victims who think that other victims of terrorists “had it coming.” This is in no way a justification of that horrendous terrorist act. It’s the exact opposite: a vital but forgotten lesson arising from it that can and should save lives in future.
If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from enthusiastically considering them heroic underdogs, a local evil man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics. After all, it has already changed the Middle East and even been sanctified by Western media, intellectuals, and governments.
When Norway’s ambassador to Israel distinguishes between “bad” terrorism in Norway and “understandable” terrorism against Israelis that opens the door to a man in Norway who thinks his country is “occupied” by leftists and Muslims?
In this sense, the most important thing about the terrorist in Norway is not that he is right-wing or anti-Islam, The most important thing is that he believed terrorism would work on behalf of his cause. After all, if he had held all of the same beliefs but didn’t think deliberate murder was a good strategy, nobody would be dead from his actions.
Nevertheless, many people gave him the idea that terrorism would change minds, gain support, and bring victory. They weren’t those whose blogs he quoted a few times in a 1500-page manifesto and who explicitly rejected violence. They merely gave him programmatic ideas. It was the successful terrorists and their Western enablers who gave him the strategy he thought would work and implemented.
Oh, and one more thing: A young survivor of the terrorist attack at the camp in Norway explained:
“Some of my friends tried to stop [the gunman] by talking to him. Many people thought that it was a test … comparing it to how it is to live in Gaza. So many people went to him and tried to talk to him, but they were shot immediately.”
He’s right but in a very different manner from what he thought. It is more comparable to how it is to live in Israel being targeted by Palestinian or Lebanese terrorists who won’t be talked into sparing your life. But it is people like the victims in Norway who want Israelis ”to stop” the gunmen “by talking” to them.
More HERE
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Misleading Words
Thomas Sowell
Many years ago, the Saturday Evening Post was one of the best-known magazines in America. But somehow I learned that the Saturday Evening Post was actually published on Wednesday morning. That was a little disconcerting at first. But it was one of the most valuable lessons, that words do not necessarily reflect reality.
Recent statistics on the average wealth or net worth of blacks are a painful reminder that rhetoric favoring blacks does not mean that politicians using such rhetoric are actually helping blacks. The media seized upon the statistics published by the Pew Research Center to show that whites averaged far more net worth than blacks, and that this disparity was now greater than it was in years past. But what is even more revealing is that the net worth of blacks in 2009 was less than half of what it was in 2005.
What happened to cause such a sharp loss in such a few years? After all, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the White House in 2005, and the Democrats had control by 2009. There was now a black President of the United States, with much of the media celebrating the beginning of a new era in race relations.
What happened was that the political words had no relationship to the economic reality. But few people judge any administration's effect on blacks by what actually happens to blacks under that administration.
A finer breakdown of the data on the net worth of blacks shows that the most drastic loss of net worth was in the value of the homes owned by blacks. This occurred after years of both Democratic and Republican administrations pushing policies designed to enable more blacks to buy homes.
Much of the media rallied behind the idea that there should be more home ownership by blacks. Editorials rang out across the land, denouncing statistical disparities between rates of home ownership by blacks and whites as showing racial discrimination in the private sector that needed to be corrected by the government.
Even when it was shown that blacks, on average, did not meet the same financial standards as whites, both politicians and the media denounced those standards as too stringent.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for example, called for "fairer mortgage-lending standards" and declared that "lending institutions are being far more conservative than they have to be in determining the creditworthiness of minorities." The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston likewise declared that "unreasonable measures of creditworthiness" were not "appropriate to the economic culture of urban, lower-income, and nontraditional consumers."
The New York Times reported that "even within the same income group whites are nearly twice as likely as blacks to get loans." Many in the media treated that as proof positive that racial discrimination explained differences in mortgage loan approval rates. They were not talking about racial differences in net worth in those days -- much less taking note of the fact that blacks in the same income brackets as whites had far less net worth.
Racial discrimination was where it was at, as far as liberal politicians and most of the media were concerned. And the familiar "solution" was massive government intervention in the market. Government agencies, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Federal Reserve leaned on lenders to lower lending standards, and the Department of Justice threatened prosecutions for discrimination if the racial makeup of people approved for mortgage loans did not match their preconceptions.
It worked. In fact, it worked so well that many blacks got loans that they could not have gotten otherwise. Now the statistics tell us, belatedly, that blacks lost out, big time, from this "favor" done for them by politicians.
These lowered lending standards applied to many others besides blacks. Everybody lost out when the resulting risky mortgages led to a collapse of the housing market, followed by a collapse of the economy. Lofty words led to bitter realities.
The same mindset that led to these disasters is still prevalent in Washington. Indeed, the very people who spearheaded those political crusades -- Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd -- crafted new legislation offering the same kind of "solution" to our current problems, namely more massive government intervention in the economy. Words triumphed again.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
WWII Veteran Vows to Keep Flying American Flag After Vandal Torches It: "An 85-year-old veteran in New York City who says he still has traumatic dreams about World War II is extremely upset over the torching of his American flag. Harold Bernstein says his neighbors on Staten Island first noticed the recent vandalism, which apparently occurred in the middle of the night. Bernstein tells the Staten Island Advance that other flags on his block were untouched. He wonders: "Why did they pick on me?" He said if he'd encountered the culprit, he would have "strung them up there along with the flag." He vows to keep displaying it, even though it's scorched. Says the former Marine: "I fought for that flag."
Obama jacks up the cost of private health insurance again: "Private health insurers must now give birth control and other women's health tests for free, the Obama administration said Monday. ... The administration argues that the requirement, affecting most insurance plans, is aimed at encouraging women who might otherwise not be able to afford them to get critical services which can pre-empt the onset of disease. ... Coverage with no copays for the morning-after pill was likely to become the most controversial part of the change."
Congress out to spy on your ‘puter: "If Congress had to name laws honestly, it would be called the 'Forcing Your Internet Provider to Spy On You Just In Case You're a Criminal Act of 2011' -- a costly, invasive mandate that even the co-author of the Patriot Act, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), says 'runs roughshod over the rights of people who use the Internet.' But because it's disguised as the 'Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act,' the House Judiciary Committee approved it last week by a wide margin -- even though it's got little to do with child porn and won't do much to protect kids."
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, 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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Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Monday, August 01, 2011
Breivik wins again
In typical Leftist kneejerk fashion, the first appearance in court by Breivik was held in secret, which is contrary to Norwegian custom, as I understand it.
So the government of Norway itself has confirmed Breivik's complaint that Norway and other European countries suppress speech of which they disapprove. They were so afraid of Breivik's "loony" ideas that they forbad Norwegians from hearing anything about them.
So they're not even smart Fascists. It confirms my contention that the ultimate cause of Breivik's appalling rampage was not Breivik's mental limitations but rather the Leftist government of Norway. If words are suppressed, bullets may be the only thing that can replace them.
If only Norway had a First Amendment .....
Another writer looks ahead to Breivik's next court appearance:
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Unbelievable: Obama admin. trying to set up America for a second big bank crisis
The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.
The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.
The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!
In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.
The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."
Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.
Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.
Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."
Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?
CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.
The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."
As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."
The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.
The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.
Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.
If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.
Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?
Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.
Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.
As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.
Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.
The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.
In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.
In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry.
SOURCE
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Opposing the Health Law, Florida Refuses Millions
When it comes to pursuing federal largess, most of the states that oppose the 2010 health care law have refused to let either principle or politics block their paths to the trough. If Washington is doling out dollars, Republican governors and legislators typically figure they might as well get their share.
Then there is Florida. Despite having the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, the state has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.
In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott’s administration or the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.
While 36 states shared $27 million to counsel health insurance consumers, Florida did not apply for the grants. And in drafting this year’s budget, the Legislature failed to authorize an $8.3 million federal grant won by a county health department to expand community health centers.
In interviews, Mr. Scott, a Republican, and state legislative leaders were clear about their rationale. They said they detested everything about the federal health law, which was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in a case filed by the state. Unless ordered to do otherwise by an appellate court, they said, they had no intention of putting it in place, even if that meant leaving money on the table.
“There are a lot of programs that the federal government would like to give you that don’t fit your state, don’t fit your needs and ultimately create obligations that our taxpayers can’t afford,” said Mr. Scott, a former hospital company executive who rose to political prominence by financing an advertising campaign against the health care legislation.
State Representative Matt Hudson, the chairman of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, said his chamber’s leadership felt the same way.
“I do not believe that act is the right thing for the country or the right thing for Florida,” Mr. Hudson said, “and I am not going to start implementing things that I don’t believe in.” Asked whether states had the authority to stymie federal law, Mr. Hudson answered, “We’re not required to accept a grant.”
More HERE
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ELSEWHERE
Felons to Join the Upper Caste in San Francisco: "Under liberalism, America has become a class-based society. Some are born into privilege as a result of their skin color, but you can also enter the favored caste by being in the country illegally, by affirming your homosexuality, or — since 9/11/01 — by being Muslim. If none of those approaches works for you, just commit a felony and then move to San Francisco: San Francisco’s Human Rights Board wants to add ex-cons to the protected classes list that includes a person’s race and sex when it comes to housing and seeking employment. Only the lower castes can be denied jobs and housing, not special people like felons. As always with tyrannical moonbattery, lawyers will benefit from the pernicious law; it sets up endless opportunities for nuisance suits by ex-cons who aren’t given whatever they want."
Poll: Obama approval at new low (40%): "US President Barack Obama's job approval rating slumped to a personal low of 40 percent in a public opinion survey out Friday, a possible reflection of the political war over US debt. The respected Gallup polling organization said Obama had previously slipped to 41 percent several times since taking office in January 2009, but noted his approval rating was 50 percent as recently as June 7."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. -- though he has quite a bit to say about Breivik, this time
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, 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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In typical Leftist kneejerk fashion, the first appearance in court by Breivik was held in secret, which is contrary to Norwegian custom, as I understand it.
So the government of Norway itself has confirmed Breivik's complaint that Norway and other European countries suppress speech of which they disapprove. They were so afraid of Breivik's "loony" ideas that they forbad Norwegians from hearing anything about them.
So they're not even smart Fascists. It confirms my contention that the ultimate cause of Breivik's appalling rampage was not Breivik's mental limitations but rather the Leftist government of Norway. If words are suppressed, bullets may be the only thing that can replace them.
If only Norway had a First Amendment .....
Another writer looks ahead to Breivik's next court appearance:
"There has been widespread support within Norway for a closed trial, to deny Breivik the platform he appears to be seeking. Given the scale of what has happened there is unquestionably something obscene about the prospect of watching him expound his lunatic worldview to an international audience.
But the fear that such exposure would necessarily boost Breivik’s cause, and encourage likeminded bigots elsewhere, must be resisted. In fact it is precisely on occasions like these that a vibrant public sphere matters most.
The belief that freedom of expression is the fundamental requirement of an open society is based on the idea that grievances like those which animate racist and xenophobic political groups throughout Europe are better aired in the context of civilized debate rather than allowed to fester in private societies.
Distasteful as it may seem to many of us, it is better in the long run for prejudices to be openly debated and defeated by better arguments. Otherwise the hatreds of these groups become self-reinforcing.
Prejudice and paranoia never survive the rigours of open debate, and the horrors of the massacre in Norway should not be allowed to obscure this important truth.
Source
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Unbelievable: Obama admin. trying to set up America for a second big bank crisis
The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.
The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.
The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!
In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.
The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."
Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.
Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.
Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."
Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?
CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.
The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."
As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."
The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.
The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.
Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.
If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.
Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?
Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.
Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.
As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.
Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.
The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.
In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.
In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry.
SOURCE
*****************************
Opposing the Health Law, Florida Refuses Millions
When it comes to pursuing federal largess, most of the states that oppose the 2010 health care law have refused to let either principle or politics block their paths to the trough. If Washington is doling out dollars, Republican governors and legislators typically figure they might as well get their share.
Then there is Florida. Despite having the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate, its second-highest rate of people without insurance and a $3.7 billion budget gap this year, the state has turned away scores of millions of dollars in grants made available under the Affordable Care Act. And it is not pursuing grants worth many millions more.
In recent months, either Gov. Rick Scott’s administration or the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature has rejected grants aimed at moving long-term care patients into their homes, curbing child abuse through in-home counseling and strengthening state regulation of health premiums. They have shunned money to help sign up eligible recipients for Medicare, educate teenagers on preventing pregnancy and plan for the health insurance exchanges that the law requires by 2014.
While 36 states shared $27 million to counsel health insurance consumers, Florida did not apply for the grants. And in drafting this year’s budget, the Legislature failed to authorize an $8.3 million federal grant won by a county health department to expand community health centers.
In interviews, Mr. Scott, a Republican, and state legislative leaders were clear about their rationale. They said they detested everything about the federal health law, which was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in a case filed by the state. Unless ordered to do otherwise by an appellate court, they said, they had no intention of putting it in place, even if that meant leaving money on the table.
“There are a lot of programs that the federal government would like to give you that don’t fit your state, don’t fit your needs and ultimately create obligations that our taxpayers can’t afford,” said Mr. Scott, a former hospital company executive who rose to political prominence by financing an advertising campaign against the health care legislation.
State Representative Matt Hudson, the chairman of the Health Care Appropriations Subcommittee, said his chamber’s leadership felt the same way.
“I do not believe that act is the right thing for the country or the right thing for Florida,” Mr. Hudson said, “and I am not going to start implementing things that I don’t believe in.” Asked whether states had the authority to stymie federal law, Mr. Hudson answered, “We’re not required to accept a grant.”
More HERE
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ELSEWHERE
Felons to Join the Upper Caste in San Francisco: "Under liberalism, America has become a class-based society. Some are born into privilege as a result of their skin color, but you can also enter the favored caste by being in the country illegally, by affirming your homosexuality, or — since 9/11/01 — by being Muslim. If none of those approaches works for you, just commit a felony and then move to San Francisco: San Francisco’s Human Rights Board wants to add ex-cons to the protected classes list that includes a person’s race and sex when it comes to housing and seeking employment. Only the lower castes can be denied jobs and housing, not special people like felons. As always with tyrannical moonbattery, lawyers will benefit from the pernicious law; it sets up endless opportunities for nuisance suits by ex-cons who aren’t given whatever they want."
Poll: Obama approval at new low (40%): "US President Barack Obama's job approval rating slumped to a personal low of 40 percent in a public opinion survey out Friday, a possible reflection of the political war over US debt. The respected Gallup polling organization said Obama had previously slipped to 41 percent several times since taking office in January 2009, but noted his approval rating was 50 percent as recently as June 7."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. -- though he has quite a bit to say about Breivik, this time
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, 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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Sunday, July 31, 2011
Government-protected cartel overturned
An order of monks — and anyone else — can sell caskets in Louisiana without having a state funeral home license, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
Acting on a suit filed by the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Tammany Parish in August, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval said "there is no rational basis" for the licensing requirement to be applied to those only wanting to sell caskets, such as the 38 monks.
The Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors had blocked the monks from selling caskets with simple white cloth interiors for $1,500 to $2,000, saying the abbey had neither a funeral director's license nor a funeral home license as required by state law.
But the judge said "the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry" and that the monks' constitutional rights were being violated by the ban.
"We are just thrilled for the abbey and for Louisiana consumers and the constitutional rights of all entrepreneurs," said Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Economic Justice, which represents the monks. "This is really a slam-dunk victory for the constitutional right to economic liberty."
Abbott Justin Brown, who heads the abbey, said the monks had about a dozen caskets ready and planned to resume selling them as soon as possible. The monks want to sell caskets to replace their previous lumber production business, which was largely wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The abbey gets no financial support from the Catholic church.
"This is an answer to about two years of prayers," Brown said.
The monks said they built and sold about 50 to 60 coffins before regulators told them they were violating the law. The suit was filed after the Legislature refused to give the abbey exemptions in 2008 and 2010.
An attorney for the funeral board, Michael Rasch, said the decision likely would be appealed.
Bullock conceded the legal fight likely isn't over. One federal circuit court struck down similar restrictions in Tennessee, while Oklahoma funeral regulations were upheld in another.
Bullock predicted that the disputes eventually would land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"This is a very important constitutional question, whether economic protectionism is a legitimate governmental interest," he said. "It's a divided question in law constitutional law today. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue."
Louisiana law applies only to caskets sold by retailers physically located in the state. Caskets are readily available for sale at internet sites.
SOURCE
***************************
Mystery of TWA Flight 800 Persists, 15 Years Later
Many eyewitnesses saw a missile, all officially ignored
Sunday, July 17th, marked the 15th anniversary of the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, New York at approximately 8:30 p.m., 12 minutes after it left New York’s Kennedy Airport heading for Paris, killing all 230 people aboard. To commemorate this tragic event, AIM gathered a group of people who have looked into this event, each bringing his own insights and knowledge of the case to the table. Those participating on AIM’s show on BlogTalkRadio, “Take AIM,” on July 14th included John Clarke, an attorney who has worked on this case in several capacities since 1997; Jack Cashill, a journalist and producer who has co-written a book and produced a documentary on the subject; and Retired Captain Mike Larkin, a former Air Force pilot who later became a TWA pilot for more than 30 years, and who often piloted TWA 800 from New York to Paris. I hosted the show, and have produced and written a documentary on the subject called TWA 800: The Search for the Truth.
There were a number of articles this year, since this anniversary was divisible by five, apparently making it more newsworthy. Most of the articles, like this AP story that ran in The Washington Post, focused on families and friends of the deceased, gathering for an ocean-side ceremony remembering the victims. While some of the stories, such as this one, did at least bring up the fact that there were questions raised at the time as to whether the plane was blown up by a bomb or missile, they ultimately accepted the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board which “concluded the plane was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, likely caused by a spark from a wiring short-circuit that ignited vapors in the tank.”
The eyewitnesses were explained away, according to the article, as having actually seen “a piece of the plane itself that had broken off in an initial blast that preceded an even larger explosion.” In fact, the findings were that following that “center fuel tank explosion,” the nose fell off, the fuselage rose approximately 3,000 feet, and the eyewitnesses actually saw burning fuel and debris coming down, not a missile flying towards the doomed flight. Or, “a piece of the plane that had broken off.” Regarding the eyewitnesses, there were more than 600, including 260 who saw something streaking toward the plane, of which 92 actually saw it rise from the surface.
I did a show and wrote about this last year as well, which focused on Ray Lahr and his lawsuit, litigated by John Clarke, challenging the findings of the NTSB. Lahr is a former Navy pilot, engineer and crash investigator, who spent more than 30 years with United Air Lines, including 20 years as a safety representative for the Air Line Pilots Association. AIM will continue to follow this story until hopefully, as former TWA pilot Mike Larkin said during this show, the President or Congress gets the courage to demand the release of all the evidence, including satellite images from that evening that he believes exist that would reveal the truth of what happened. According to Larkin, who was a friend and former roommate in the Air Force of the pilot of the downed TWA 800 flight, “definitely, a missile brought the airplane down.”
More HERE
***************************
Even watered down central planning is a failure
The Communists thought that they could plan and control everything. They failed. And the democratic Left can't get their version of it to work either
Robert Samuelson recently described the current economic upheaval as "the crisis of the old order," a collapse of the economic dogmas and institutions of the past few decades. I was particularly struck by one of the items he lists as the pillars of the old order, "faith in routine economic expansion." Except that this doesn't describe what he's really talking about. What he's actually talking about is faith that government officials can manage and control economic growth. "Economists exaggerated their understanding and control. They seem to have exhausted conventional policy approaches." Specifically, he points out that the usual theories of monetary and fiscal "stimulus" have failed. "Central banks such as the Federal Reserve have held interest rates low. Budget deficits are high." Yet here we are.
If anything, Samuelson's summary is understated. Mohamed El-Erian puts it in more alarming terms.
I don't know about you, but whenever I am in an airplane experiencing turbulence, I draw comfort from the belief that the pilots sitting behind the cockpit's closed door know what to do. I would feel very differently if, through an open door, I observed pilots who were frustrated at the poor responsiveness of the plane's controls, arguing about their next step, and getting no help whatsoever from the operator's manuals.
So it is unsettling that policymakers in many Western economies today resemble the second group of pilots.
Ben Bernanke printed massive sums of money and pumped it into the economy, and when that didn't work, he printed more money and pumped it into the economy, heedless of the inflationary risk. He's beginning to look like an incompetent car mechanic: he jams his foot on the accelerator and nothing happens, so instead of taking his foot off the gas, he just keeps it jammed there, guaranteeing that when the engine does spring back to life the car will lurch forward uncontrollably.
Similarly, Obama's economic advisors assumed that the fiscal stimulus would produce the neat little "multiplier" they learned in their Keynesian economics textbooks, so that spending $800 billion would automatically lead to at least $400 billion in new, additional economic activity, an amount that ought to have guaranteed a decent year of growth in 2010. But the multiplier didn't multiply, the growth never happened, and now the ratings agencies are demanding that the US replace this stimulus with contraction, cutting trillions of dollars in future spending to compensate for the money squandered on the stimulus.
In both realms, monetary policy and fiscal policy, the past few years have given the lie to Washington's assumption that competent economic management at the Fed and the Treasury could stimulate growth, maintain it, and burst any speculative bubbles with a brief, painless "soft landing."
This system can be thought of as Central Planning Lite. By the time Communism collapsed in 1989, it was no longer plausible to claim that full-blown socialism or full-blown central planning were the wave of the future. But our political and intellectual leaders were not quite willing to give up on the dream, so they insisted that we could have a watered down Third Way between capitalism and communism. Instead of having the government take over all industries and provide for everyone's needs directly, we would have a welfare state in which the government merely provides a "safety net" of subsidies. And instead of direct central planning, we would have indirect central planning. Rather than outright edicts, we would use subsidies and tax breaks to steer economic activity into the channels our political leaders prefer, such as "green" technology. And at the center of it all, instead of having Gosplan dictating steel production quotas, we would have the Federal Reserve Board dictating interest rates. This is a form of central planning for credit, in which the Fed attempts to direct how much and on what terms bankers will lend.
The debt ceiling debate, which is driven not so much by the immediate prospect of default but by the long-term unsustainability of the federal debt, shows what happens when the welfare state comes crashing down. And the Fed's failure to encourage lending and stimulate economic growth, despite yanking on all of the levers it can reach, shows the illusion of monetary central planning.
The failure of Central Planning Lite cannot just be attributed to incompetence or politicization, to shovel-ready jobs that are not shovel-ready, or bailouts organized as favors to political pressure groups. After all, Ben Bernanke was a respected and impartial economist. But the job of central planning is inherently impossible; even the smartest person can't do it.
In discovering this fact, we are emerging from a specific illusion created by one man: Alan Greenspan. When he stepped down as Fed Chairman, I noted the irony that the onetime champion of the gold standard had instead established the Greenspan Standard: the markets' faith that economic contractions would be moderated, growth would continue steadily, and inflation would be kept at bay, all because of one man. It was the illusion that a brilliant, dedicated, all-knowing "maestro" could control the markets and make Central Planning Lite work.
Yet we can now see that in seeking to mitigate the effects of previous economic downturns, Greenspan helped set the stage for a monetary expansion and the resulting housing bubble, and when he handed his power over to the sorcerer's apprentice, all hell broke loose. In dictating an expansion of credit, the central planners at the Fed replaced the individual plans of bankers, investors, and borrowers, deliberately overriding any signals that might have warned of excessive risk and called for a contraction of credit. Yet the central planners did not, in fact, know how to understand and control the easy money forces they had unleashed. So is it any wonder that they have been unable to marshal those same forces to summon up a recovery?
If any good is to come from our current economic ideal, it will be a hard-earned skepticism about any claims that Congress can design an economic stimulus package, or that a gifted maestro at the Federal Reserve can summon economic growth at his command. It will be the death of Central Planning Lite.
SOURCE
***********************
When thugs fall out
Ousted Fatah official Muhammad Dahlan over the weekend launched a scathing attack on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, accusing him of dictatorship and financial corruption.
He said that more than $1 billion have gone missing from a fund that was handed over to Abbas after he was elected president in 2005.
Dahlan’s attack on Abbas came after PA security forces raided the former Fatah commander’s home in Ramallah on Thursday, arresting his bodyguards and confiscating weapons and armored vehicles.
Dahlan was at home during the raid, which was carried out by dozens of security officers, but was not detained thanks to his parliamentary immunity.
Shortly thereafter, Dahlan left for Jordan through the Allenby Bridge, where he gave a series of interviews to Arab media outlets in which he strongly condemned Abbas, 76, and accused him of financial corruption and seeking to destroy Fatah.
“Abbas does not recognize any law, morals or values,” Dahlan said, referring to the raid on his home and last month’s decision to expel him from the Fatah Central Committee. “Abbas feels that he’s above the law.”
Dahlan said that the dispute between Fatah and Hamas, and Israel’s presence in the West Bank, gave Abbas a “free hand to practice dictatorship against the Palestinian people, silence people and deny them their salaries.”
Dahlan said that the dispute with the PA president erupted after he demanded to know what had happened to $1.3b. that was in the account of the Palestinian Investment Fund.
The PIF was established in 2000 as an independent Palestinian investment company “committed to maximizing the assets’ value for its shareholder: the Palestinian people.”
“Yasser Arafat worked strenuously to save this money for the ‘black day.’ Mahmoud Abbas thinks that the people don’t know where this money is and who received it. Now he’s admitting that there is only $700 million in the fund. But the real sum should be about $2b.”
Dahlan, who headed the PA Preventive Security Force in the Gaza Strip after the signing of the Oslo Accords, also claimed that Abbas was furious with him because he had been badmouthing the PA president’s two sons, Yasser and Tareq, who are wealthy businessmen.
Senior Fatah officials in Ramallah said that if Dahlan returned to the West Bank, he would be immediately arrested and charged with “financial corruption, murder, extortion and collaboration with outside forces.”
The officials said that the offenses were committed during the period that Dahlan was in charge of the Preventative Security Force in the Gaza Strip.
The Abbas-Dahlan rivalry has caused significant damage to Fatah, one official told The Jerusalem Post. “Hamas is already celebrating the infighting in Fatah and is now saying that the accusations against Dahlan prove that Hamas was right when it kicked the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza Strip in 2007.”
The dispute is also threatening to spark a confrontation between Fatah supporters in the West Bank and those in the Gaza Strip. Dahlan continues to enjoy widespread support among many Fatah cadres in the Strip.
Over the weekend, Dahlan supporters in the Gaza Strip expressed outrage over Abbas’s measures against the former Fatah commander. Some pointed out that Abbas and Dahlan had been strong political allies for many years.
SOURCE
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, 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)
****************************
An order of monks — and anyone else — can sell caskets in Louisiana without having a state funeral home license, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
Acting on a suit filed by the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Tammany Parish in August, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval said "there is no rational basis" for the licensing requirement to be applied to those only wanting to sell caskets, such as the 38 monks.
The Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors had blocked the monks from selling caskets with simple white cloth interiors for $1,500 to $2,000, saying the abbey had neither a funeral director's license nor a funeral home license as required by state law.
But the judge said "the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry" and that the monks' constitutional rights were being violated by the ban.
"We are just thrilled for the abbey and for Louisiana consumers and the constitutional rights of all entrepreneurs," said Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Economic Justice, which represents the monks. "This is really a slam-dunk victory for the constitutional right to economic liberty."
Abbott Justin Brown, who heads the abbey, said the monks had about a dozen caskets ready and planned to resume selling them as soon as possible. The monks want to sell caskets to replace their previous lumber production business, which was largely wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The abbey gets no financial support from the Catholic church.
"This is an answer to about two years of prayers," Brown said.
The monks said they built and sold about 50 to 60 coffins before regulators told them they were violating the law. The suit was filed after the Legislature refused to give the abbey exemptions in 2008 and 2010.
An attorney for the funeral board, Michael Rasch, said the decision likely would be appealed.
Bullock conceded the legal fight likely isn't over. One federal circuit court struck down similar restrictions in Tennessee, while Oklahoma funeral regulations were upheld in another.
Bullock predicted that the disputes eventually would land before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"This is a very important constitutional question, whether economic protectionism is a legitimate governmental interest," he said. "It's a divided question in law constitutional law today. The Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue."
Louisiana law applies only to caskets sold by retailers physically located in the state. Caskets are readily available for sale at internet sites.
SOURCE
***************************
Mystery of TWA Flight 800 Persists, 15 Years Later
Many eyewitnesses saw a missile, all officially ignored
Sunday, July 17th, marked the 15th anniversary of the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, New York at approximately 8:30 p.m., 12 minutes after it left New York’s Kennedy Airport heading for Paris, killing all 230 people aboard. To commemorate this tragic event, AIM gathered a group of people who have looked into this event, each bringing his own insights and knowledge of the case to the table. Those participating on AIM’s show on BlogTalkRadio, “Take AIM,” on July 14th included John Clarke, an attorney who has worked on this case in several capacities since 1997; Jack Cashill, a journalist and producer who has co-written a book and produced a documentary on the subject; and Retired Captain Mike Larkin, a former Air Force pilot who later became a TWA pilot for more than 30 years, and who often piloted TWA 800 from New York to Paris. I hosted the show, and have produced and written a documentary on the subject called TWA 800: The Search for the Truth.
There were a number of articles this year, since this anniversary was divisible by five, apparently making it more newsworthy. Most of the articles, like this AP story that ran in The Washington Post, focused on families and friends of the deceased, gathering for an ocean-side ceremony remembering the victims. While some of the stories, such as this one, did at least bring up the fact that there were questions raised at the time as to whether the plane was blown up by a bomb or missile, they ultimately accepted the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board which “concluded the plane was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, likely caused by a spark from a wiring short-circuit that ignited vapors in the tank.”
The eyewitnesses were explained away, according to the article, as having actually seen “a piece of the plane itself that had broken off in an initial blast that preceded an even larger explosion.” In fact, the findings were that following that “center fuel tank explosion,” the nose fell off, the fuselage rose approximately 3,000 feet, and the eyewitnesses actually saw burning fuel and debris coming down, not a missile flying towards the doomed flight. Or, “a piece of the plane that had broken off.” Regarding the eyewitnesses, there were more than 600, including 260 who saw something streaking toward the plane, of which 92 actually saw it rise from the surface.
I did a show and wrote about this last year as well, which focused on Ray Lahr and his lawsuit, litigated by John Clarke, challenging the findings of the NTSB. Lahr is a former Navy pilot, engineer and crash investigator, who spent more than 30 years with United Air Lines, including 20 years as a safety representative for the Air Line Pilots Association. AIM will continue to follow this story until hopefully, as former TWA pilot Mike Larkin said during this show, the President or Congress gets the courage to demand the release of all the evidence, including satellite images from that evening that he believes exist that would reveal the truth of what happened. According to Larkin, who was a friend and former roommate in the Air Force of the pilot of the downed TWA 800 flight, “definitely, a missile brought the airplane down.”
More HERE
***************************
Even watered down central planning is a failure
The Communists thought that they could plan and control everything. They failed. And the democratic Left can't get their version of it to work either
Robert Samuelson recently described the current economic upheaval as "the crisis of the old order," a collapse of the economic dogmas and institutions of the past few decades. I was particularly struck by one of the items he lists as the pillars of the old order, "faith in routine economic expansion." Except that this doesn't describe what he's really talking about. What he's actually talking about is faith that government officials can manage and control economic growth. "Economists exaggerated their understanding and control. They seem to have exhausted conventional policy approaches." Specifically, he points out that the usual theories of monetary and fiscal "stimulus" have failed. "Central banks such as the Federal Reserve have held interest rates low. Budget deficits are high." Yet here we are.
If anything, Samuelson's summary is understated. Mohamed El-Erian puts it in more alarming terms.
I don't know about you, but whenever I am in an airplane experiencing turbulence, I draw comfort from the belief that the pilots sitting behind the cockpit's closed door know what to do. I would feel very differently if, through an open door, I observed pilots who were frustrated at the poor responsiveness of the plane's controls, arguing about their next step, and getting no help whatsoever from the operator's manuals.
So it is unsettling that policymakers in many Western economies today resemble the second group of pilots.
Ben Bernanke printed massive sums of money and pumped it into the economy, and when that didn't work, he printed more money and pumped it into the economy, heedless of the inflationary risk. He's beginning to look like an incompetent car mechanic: he jams his foot on the accelerator and nothing happens, so instead of taking his foot off the gas, he just keeps it jammed there, guaranteeing that when the engine does spring back to life the car will lurch forward uncontrollably.
Similarly, Obama's economic advisors assumed that the fiscal stimulus would produce the neat little "multiplier" they learned in their Keynesian economics textbooks, so that spending $800 billion would automatically lead to at least $400 billion in new, additional economic activity, an amount that ought to have guaranteed a decent year of growth in 2010. But the multiplier didn't multiply, the growth never happened, and now the ratings agencies are demanding that the US replace this stimulus with contraction, cutting trillions of dollars in future spending to compensate for the money squandered on the stimulus.
In both realms, monetary policy and fiscal policy, the past few years have given the lie to Washington's assumption that competent economic management at the Fed and the Treasury could stimulate growth, maintain it, and burst any speculative bubbles with a brief, painless "soft landing."
This system can be thought of as Central Planning Lite. By the time Communism collapsed in 1989, it was no longer plausible to claim that full-blown socialism or full-blown central planning were the wave of the future. But our political and intellectual leaders were not quite willing to give up on the dream, so they insisted that we could have a watered down Third Way between capitalism and communism. Instead of having the government take over all industries and provide for everyone's needs directly, we would have a welfare state in which the government merely provides a "safety net" of subsidies. And instead of direct central planning, we would have indirect central planning. Rather than outright edicts, we would use subsidies and tax breaks to steer economic activity into the channels our political leaders prefer, such as "green" technology. And at the center of it all, instead of having Gosplan dictating steel production quotas, we would have the Federal Reserve Board dictating interest rates. This is a form of central planning for credit, in which the Fed attempts to direct how much and on what terms bankers will lend.
The debt ceiling debate, which is driven not so much by the immediate prospect of default but by the long-term unsustainability of the federal debt, shows what happens when the welfare state comes crashing down. And the Fed's failure to encourage lending and stimulate economic growth, despite yanking on all of the levers it can reach, shows the illusion of monetary central planning.
The failure of Central Planning Lite cannot just be attributed to incompetence or politicization, to shovel-ready jobs that are not shovel-ready, or bailouts organized as favors to political pressure groups. After all, Ben Bernanke was a respected and impartial economist. But the job of central planning is inherently impossible; even the smartest person can't do it.
In discovering this fact, we are emerging from a specific illusion created by one man: Alan Greenspan. When he stepped down as Fed Chairman, I noted the irony that the onetime champion of the gold standard had instead established the Greenspan Standard: the markets' faith that economic contractions would be moderated, growth would continue steadily, and inflation would be kept at bay, all because of one man. It was the illusion that a brilliant, dedicated, all-knowing "maestro" could control the markets and make Central Planning Lite work.
Yet we can now see that in seeking to mitigate the effects of previous economic downturns, Greenspan helped set the stage for a monetary expansion and the resulting housing bubble, and when he handed his power over to the sorcerer's apprentice, all hell broke loose. In dictating an expansion of credit, the central planners at the Fed replaced the individual plans of bankers, investors, and borrowers, deliberately overriding any signals that might have warned of excessive risk and called for a contraction of credit. Yet the central planners did not, in fact, know how to understand and control the easy money forces they had unleashed. So is it any wonder that they have been unable to marshal those same forces to summon up a recovery?
If any good is to come from our current economic ideal, it will be a hard-earned skepticism about any claims that Congress can design an economic stimulus package, or that a gifted maestro at the Federal Reserve can summon economic growth at his command. It will be the death of Central Planning Lite.
SOURCE
***********************
When thugs fall out
Ousted Fatah official Muhammad Dahlan over the weekend launched a scathing attack on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, accusing him of dictatorship and financial corruption.
He said that more than $1 billion have gone missing from a fund that was handed over to Abbas after he was elected president in 2005.
Dahlan’s attack on Abbas came after PA security forces raided the former Fatah commander’s home in Ramallah on Thursday, arresting his bodyguards and confiscating weapons and armored vehicles.
Dahlan was at home during the raid, which was carried out by dozens of security officers, but was not detained thanks to his parliamentary immunity.
Shortly thereafter, Dahlan left for Jordan through the Allenby Bridge, where he gave a series of interviews to Arab media outlets in which he strongly condemned Abbas, 76, and accused him of financial corruption and seeking to destroy Fatah.
“Abbas does not recognize any law, morals or values,” Dahlan said, referring to the raid on his home and last month’s decision to expel him from the Fatah Central Committee. “Abbas feels that he’s above the law.”
Dahlan said that the dispute between Fatah and Hamas, and Israel’s presence in the West Bank, gave Abbas a “free hand to practice dictatorship against the Palestinian people, silence people and deny them their salaries.”
Dahlan said that the dispute with the PA president erupted after he demanded to know what had happened to $1.3b. that was in the account of the Palestinian Investment Fund.
The PIF was established in 2000 as an independent Palestinian investment company “committed to maximizing the assets’ value for its shareholder: the Palestinian people.”
“Yasser Arafat worked strenuously to save this money for the ‘black day.’ Mahmoud Abbas thinks that the people don’t know where this money is and who received it. Now he’s admitting that there is only $700 million in the fund. But the real sum should be about $2b.”
Dahlan, who headed the PA Preventive Security Force in the Gaza Strip after the signing of the Oslo Accords, also claimed that Abbas was furious with him because he had been badmouthing the PA president’s two sons, Yasser and Tareq, who are wealthy businessmen.
Senior Fatah officials in Ramallah said that if Dahlan returned to the West Bank, he would be immediately arrested and charged with “financial corruption, murder, extortion and collaboration with outside forces.”
The officials said that the offenses were committed during the period that Dahlan was in charge of the Preventative Security Force in the Gaza Strip.
The Abbas-Dahlan rivalry has caused significant damage to Fatah, one official told The Jerusalem Post. “Hamas is already celebrating the infighting in Fatah and is now saying that the accusations against Dahlan prove that Hamas was right when it kicked the Palestinian Authority out of the Gaza Strip in 2007.”
The dispute is also threatening to spark a confrontation between Fatah supporters in the West Bank and those in the Gaza Strip. Dahlan continues to enjoy widespread support among many Fatah cadres in the Strip.
Over the weekend, Dahlan supporters in the Gaza Strip expressed outrage over Abbas’s measures against the former Fatah commander. Some pointed out that Abbas and Dahlan had been strong political allies for many years.
SOURCE
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, 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)
****************************
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Leftists DON'T condemn terrorism
Most terrorism is OK to them. They only condemn it when it hits them. Fundamentalist Islam is by far the chief source of terrorism in the world today but Leftists go to great length to cover up and excuse that -- and nowhere is that permissiveness towards Islamic terrorism more pronounced than in Norway
Breivik's manifesto has become the center of the international discussion of his actions largely as a result of the sources he cited.
Kaczynski, like his fellow eco-terrorist Jason Jay Lee, who took several people hostage at the Discovery Channel in Maryland last September, was influenced by the writings of former US vice president Al Gore. A well worn copy of Gore's book Earth in the Balance was reportedly found by federal agents when they searched Kaczynski's cabin in Montana in 1996. Lee claimed that he was "awakened" to the need to commit terrorism to save the environment after he watched Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Aside from Kaczynski, (whom he plagiarized without naming), certain parts of Breivik's manifesto read like a source guide to leading conservative writers and bloggers in the Western world. And this is unprecedented. Never before has a terrorist cited so many conservatives to justify his positions.
Breivik particularly noted writers who focus on critical examinations of multiculturalism and the dangers emanating from jihadists and the cause of global jihad. He also cited the work of earlier political philosophers and writers including John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson.
Breivik's citation of conservative writers, (including myself and many of my friends and colleagues in the US and Europe), has dominated the public discussion of his actions. The leftist dominated Western media - most notably the New York Times -- and the left wing of the blogosphere have used his reliance on their ideological opponents' arguments as a means of blaming the ideas propounded by conservative thinkers and the thinkers themselves for Breivik's heinous acts of murder.
For instance, a front page news story in the Times on Monday claimed, "The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam."
The reporter, Scott Shane named several popular anti-jihadist blogs that Breivik mentioned in his manifesto. Shane then quoted left-leaning terrorism expert Marc Sageman who alleged that that the writings of anti-jihad authors "are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged."
That is, Shane quoted Sageman accusing these writers of responsibility for Breivik's acts of murder.
Before considering the veracity of Sageman's claim, it is worth noting that no similar allegations were leveled by the media or their favored terror experts against Gore in the wake of Lee's hostage taking last year, or in the aftermath of Kaczynski's arrest in 1996. Moreover, Noam Chomsky, Michael Scheuer, Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer, whose writings were endorsed by Osama Bin Laden, have not been accused of responsibility for al Qaeda terrorism.
That is, leftist writers whose works have been admired by terrorists have not been held accountable for the acts of terrorism conducted by their readers.
Nor should they have been. And to understand why this sort of guilt-by-readership is wrong, it is worth considering what separates liberal democracies from what the great Israeli historian Jacob Talmon referred to as totalitarian democracies. Liberal democracies are founded on the notion that it is not simply acceptable for citizens to participate in debates about the issues facing their societies. It is admirable for citizens in democracies to participate in debates - even heated ones -- about their government's policies as well as their societies' cultural and moral direction. A citizenry unengaged is a citizenry that is in danger of losing its freedom.
One of the reasons that argument and debate are the foundations of a liberal democratic order is because the more engaged citizens feel in the life of their societies, the less likely they will be to reject the rules governing their society and turn to violence to get their way. As a rule, liberal democracies reject the resort to violence as a means of winning an argument. This is why, for liberal democracies, terrorism in all forms is absolutely unacceptable.
Whether or not one agrees with the ideological self-justifications of a terrorist, as a member of a liberal democratic society, one is expected to abhor his act of terrorism. Because by resorting to violence to achieve his aims, the terrorist is acting in a manner that fundamentally undermines the liberal democratic order.
Liberal democracies are always works in progress. Their citizens do not expect for a day to come when the debaters fall silent because everyone agrees with one another as all are convinced of the rightness of one side. This is because liberal democracies are not founded on messianic aspirations to create a perfect society.
In contrast, totalitarian democracies - and totalitarian democrats -- do have a messianic temperament and a utopian mission to create a perfect society. And so its members do have hopes of ending debate and argument once and for all.
As Talmon explained in his 1952 classic, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, the totalitarian democratic model was envisioned by Jean Jacques Rousseau the philosophical godfather of the French Revolution. Rousseau believed that a group of anointed leaders could push a society towards perfection by essentially coercing the people to accept their view of right and wrong. Talmon drew a direct line between Rousseau and the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century - Nazism, fascism and communism.
Today, those who seek to silence conservative thinkers by making a criminal connection between our writings and the acts of a terrorist are doing so in pursuit of patently illiberal ends to say the least. If they can convince the public that our ideas cause the mass murder of children, then our voices will be silenced.
Another aspect of the same anti-liberal behavior is the tendency by many to pick and choose which sorts of terrorism are acceptable and which are unacceptable in accordance with the ideological justifications the terrorists give for their actions. The most recent notable example of this behavior is an interview that Norwegian Ambassador Svein Sevje gave to Maariv on Tuesday. Maariv asked Sevje whether in the wake of Breivik's terrorist attack Norwegians would be more sympathetic to the victimization of innocent Israelis by Palestinian terrorists.
Sevje said no, and explained, "We Norwegians view the occupation as the reason for terror against Israel. Many Norwegians still see the occupation as the reason for attacks against Israel. Whoever thinks this way, will not change his mind as a result of the attack in Oslo."
So in the mind of the illiberal Norwegians, terrorism is justified if the ideology behind it is considered justified. For them it is unacceptable for Breivik to murder Norwegian children because his ideology is wrong. But it is acceptable for Palestinians to murder Israeli children because their ideology is right.
There is only one point at which political philosophy merges into terrorism. That point is when political thinkers call on their followers to carry out acts of terrorism in the name of their political philosophy and they make this call with the reasonable expectation that their followers will fulfill their wishes. Political thinkers who fit this description include the likes of Muslim Brotherhood "spiritual" leader Yousef Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin, al Qaeda in Yemen leader Anwar Awlaki and other jihadist leaders.
These leaders are dangerous because they operate outside of the boundaries of democratic polemics. They do not care whether the wider public agrees with their views. Like Mao -- who murdered 70 million people -- they believe that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun not out of rational discourse.
Revealingly, many not particularly liberal Western democracies have granted these terrorist philosophers visas, and embraced them as legitimate thinkers. The hero's welcome Qaradawi enjoyed during his 2005 visit to Britain by then London mayor Ken Livingstone is a particularly vivid example of this practice. The illiberal trajectory British politics has veered onto was similarly demonstrated by the government's 2009 refusal to grant a visa to Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Wilders has been demonized as an enemy of freedom for his criticism of Islamic totalitarianism.
The Left's attempts to link conservative writers, politicians and philosophers with Breivik are nothing new. The same thing happened in 1995, when the Left tried to blame rabbis and politicians for the sociopathic Yigal Amir's assassination of then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The same thing happened in the US last winter with the Left's insistent attempts to link the psychotic Jared Loughner who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents, with Governor Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.
And it is this tendency that most endangers the future of liberal democracies. If the Left is ever successful in its bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism against their opponents, their victory will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.
SOURCE
************************
Bad economic news for America
And for the anti-business morons running the country
Fears that a recovery in the world’s biggest economy is running out of steam were heightened as official figures showed GDP in the US rising 1.3pc in the second quarter, against expectations of a 1.8pc rise.
In a chastening statement, the Commerce Department also downgraded first-quarter growth from an initial estimate of 1.9pc to just 0.4pc. The news helped the Dow to its biggest weekly decline in a year.
The Commerce Department also said household spending had risen at an annual rate of just 0.1pc in the second quarter, prompting fears that high unemployment and a lack of wage growth could mean any resurgence in consumer spending is unlikely to materialise at all in 2011.
“The economy is stuck in a very slow growth scenario,” said Julia Coronado, chief economist for BNP Paribas in New York. “Consumers are still very cautious and vulnerable. This is a very challenging report for policymakers.” That view was echoed by economist Nouriel Roubini: “ This isn’t a soft patch,” he said.
In a further blow to the economy, officials also revised down GDP numbers going back to 2003. The new figures showed the US economy contracted 5.1pc between the final quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, compared with a previous reading of 4.1pc.
Volatility in stock markets came as figures from trade group Investment Company Institute showed that investors last week pulled more cash from money-market mutual funds than in any other week this year as fears grew over the debt situation.
US inflation figures also showed consumer prices, stripping out food and energy, climbing at 2.1pc between April and June, the fastest pace since the last quarter of 2009.
“This is the worst of all worlds for the Fed,” John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg. “A little too much inflation, not enough growth, that is a tough scenario.”
More HERE
**************************
The unfeeling psychopath is now getting ratted out even by his own supporters
Peggy Noonan
Nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."
Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they don't care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR, deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The "Analytics Department" is looking for "predictive Modeling/Data Mining" specialists to join the campaign's "multi-disciplinary team of statisticians," which will use "predictive modeling" to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
This wasn't the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of '92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
SOURCE
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, 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)
****************************
Most terrorism is OK to them. They only condemn it when it hits them. Fundamentalist Islam is by far the chief source of terrorism in the world today but Leftists go to great length to cover up and excuse that -- and nowhere is that permissiveness towards Islamic terrorism more pronounced than in Norway
Breivik's manifesto has become the center of the international discussion of his actions largely as a result of the sources he cited.
Kaczynski, like his fellow eco-terrorist Jason Jay Lee, who took several people hostage at the Discovery Channel in Maryland last September, was influenced by the writings of former US vice president Al Gore. A well worn copy of Gore's book Earth in the Balance was reportedly found by federal agents when they searched Kaczynski's cabin in Montana in 1996. Lee claimed that he was "awakened" to the need to commit terrorism to save the environment after he watched Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth."
Aside from Kaczynski, (whom he plagiarized without naming), certain parts of Breivik's manifesto read like a source guide to leading conservative writers and bloggers in the Western world. And this is unprecedented. Never before has a terrorist cited so many conservatives to justify his positions.
Breivik particularly noted writers who focus on critical examinations of multiculturalism and the dangers emanating from jihadists and the cause of global jihad. He also cited the work of earlier political philosophers and writers including John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson.
Breivik's citation of conservative writers, (including myself and many of my friends and colleagues in the US and Europe), has dominated the public discussion of his actions. The leftist dominated Western media - most notably the New York Times -- and the left wing of the blogosphere have used his reliance on their ideological opponents' arguments as a means of blaming the ideas propounded by conservative thinkers and the thinkers themselves for Breivik's heinous acts of murder.
For instance, a front page news story in the Times on Monday claimed, "The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam."
The reporter, Scott Shane named several popular anti-jihadist blogs that Breivik mentioned in his manifesto. Shane then quoted left-leaning terrorism expert Marc Sageman who alleged that that the writings of anti-jihad authors "are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged."
That is, Shane quoted Sageman accusing these writers of responsibility for Breivik's acts of murder.
Before considering the veracity of Sageman's claim, it is worth noting that no similar allegations were leveled by the media or their favored terror experts against Gore in the wake of Lee's hostage taking last year, or in the aftermath of Kaczynski's arrest in 1996. Moreover, Noam Chomsky, Michael Scheuer, Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer, whose writings were endorsed by Osama Bin Laden, have not been accused of responsibility for al Qaeda terrorism.
That is, leftist writers whose works have been admired by terrorists have not been held accountable for the acts of terrorism conducted by their readers.
Nor should they have been. And to understand why this sort of guilt-by-readership is wrong, it is worth considering what separates liberal democracies from what the great Israeli historian Jacob Talmon referred to as totalitarian democracies. Liberal democracies are founded on the notion that it is not simply acceptable for citizens to participate in debates about the issues facing their societies. It is admirable for citizens in democracies to participate in debates - even heated ones -- about their government's policies as well as their societies' cultural and moral direction. A citizenry unengaged is a citizenry that is in danger of losing its freedom.
One of the reasons that argument and debate are the foundations of a liberal democratic order is because the more engaged citizens feel in the life of their societies, the less likely they will be to reject the rules governing their society and turn to violence to get their way. As a rule, liberal democracies reject the resort to violence as a means of winning an argument. This is why, for liberal democracies, terrorism in all forms is absolutely unacceptable.
Whether or not one agrees with the ideological self-justifications of a terrorist, as a member of a liberal democratic society, one is expected to abhor his act of terrorism. Because by resorting to violence to achieve his aims, the terrorist is acting in a manner that fundamentally undermines the liberal democratic order.
Liberal democracies are always works in progress. Their citizens do not expect for a day to come when the debaters fall silent because everyone agrees with one another as all are convinced of the rightness of one side. This is because liberal democracies are not founded on messianic aspirations to create a perfect society.
In contrast, totalitarian democracies - and totalitarian democrats -- do have a messianic temperament and a utopian mission to create a perfect society. And so its members do have hopes of ending debate and argument once and for all.
As Talmon explained in his 1952 classic, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, the totalitarian democratic model was envisioned by Jean Jacques Rousseau the philosophical godfather of the French Revolution. Rousseau believed that a group of anointed leaders could push a society towards perfection by essentially coercing the people to accept their view of right and wrong. Talmon drew a direct line between Rousseau and the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century - Nazism, fascism and communism.
Today, those who seek to silence conservative thinkers by making a criminal connection between our writings and the acts of a terrorist are doing so in pursuit of patently illiberal ends to say the least. If they can convince the public that our ideas cause the mass murder of children, then our voices will be silenced.
Another aspect of the same anti-liberal behavior is the tendency by many to pick and choose which sorts of terrorism are acceptable and which are unacceptable in accordance with the ideological justifications the terrorists give for their actions. The most recent notable example of this behavior is an interview that Norwegian Ambassador Svein Sevje gave to Maariv on Tuesday. Maariv asked Sevje whether in the wake of Breivik's terrorist attack Norwegians would be more sympathetic to the victimization of innocent Israelis by Palestinian terrorists.
Sevje said no, and explained, "We Norwegians view the occupation as the reason for terror against Israel. Many Norwegians still see the occupation as the reason for attacks against Israel. Whoever thinks this way, will not change his mind as a result of the attack in Oslo."
So in the mind of the illiberal Norwegians, terrorism is justified if the ideology behind it is considered justified. For them it is unacceptable for Breivik to murder Norwegian children because his ideology is wrong. But it is acceptable for Palestinians to murder Israeli children because their ideology is right.
There is only one point at which political philosophy merges into terrorism. That point is when political thinkers call on their followers to carry out acts of terrorism in the name of their political philosophy and they make this call with the reasonable expectation that their followers will fulfill their wishes. Political thinkers who fit this description include the likes of Muslim Brotherhood "spiritual" leader Yousef Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Hamas founder Sheikh Yassin, al Qaeda in Yemen leader Anwar Awlaki and other jihadist leaders.
These leaders are dangerous because they operate outside of the boundaries of democratic polemics. They do not care whether the wider public agrees with their views. Like Mao -- who murdered 70 million people -- they believe that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun not out of rational discourse.
Revealingly, many not particularly liberal Western democracies have granted these terrorist philosophers visas, and embraced them as legitimate thinkers. The hero's welcome Qaradawi enjoyed during his 2005 visit to Britain by then London mayor Ken Livingstone is a particularly vivid example of this practice. The illiberal trajectory British politics has veered onto was similarly demonstrated by the government's 2009 refusal to grant a visa to Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Wilders has been demonized as an enemy of freedom for his criticism of Islamic totalitarianism.
The Left's attempts to link conservative writers, politicians and philosophers with Breivik are nothing new. The same thing happened in 1995, when the Left tried to blame rabbis and politicians for the sociopathic Yigal Amir's assassination of then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The same thing happened in the US last winter with the Left's insistent attempts to link the psychotic Jared Loughner who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her constituents, with Governor Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.
And it is this tendency that most endangers the future of liberal democracies. If the Left is ever successful in its bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism against their opponents, their victory will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.
SOURCE
************************
Bad economic news for America
And for the anti-business morons running the country
Fears that a recovery in the world’s biggest economy is running out of steam were heightened as official figures showed GDP in the US rising 1.3pc in the second quarter, against expectations of a 1.8pc rise.
In a chastening statement, the Commerce Department also downgraded first-quarter growth from an initial estimate of 1.9pc to just 0.4pc. The news helped the Dow to its biggest weekly decline in a year.
The Commerce Department also said household spending had risen at an annual rate of just 0.1pc in the second quarter, prompting fears that high unemployment and a lack of wage growth could mean any resurgence in consumer spending is unlikely to materialise at all in 2011.
“The economy is stuck in a very slow growth scenario,” said Julia Coronado, chief economist for BNP Paribas in New York. “Consumers are still very cautious and vulnerable. This is a very challenging report for policymakers.” That view was echoed by economist Nouriel Roubini: “ This isn’t a soft patch,” he said.
In a further blow to the economy, officials also revised down GDP numbers going back to 2003. The new figures showed the US economy contracted 5.1pc between the final quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, compared with a previous reading of 4.1pc.
Volatility in stock markets came as figures from trade group Investment Company Institute showed that investors last week pulled more cash from money-market mutual funds than in any other week this year as fears grew over the debt situation.
US inflation figures also showed consumer prices, stripping out food and energy, climbing at 2.1pc between April and June, the fastest pace since the last quarter of 2009.
“This is the worst of all worlds for the Fed,” John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg. “A little too much inflation, not enough growth, that is a tough scenario.”
More HERE
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The unfeeling psychopath is now getting ratted out even by his own supporters
Peggy Noonan
Nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."
Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they don't care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR, deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The "Analytics Department" is looking for "predictive Modeling/Data Mining" specialists to join the campaign's "multi-disciplinary team of statisticians," which will use "predictive modeling" to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
This wasn't the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of '92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
SOURCE
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, 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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Friday, July 29, 2011
"Psycho-analysing" terrorist Breivik
There are by now innumerable psychological assessments of Breivik online. Practically every publication you log on to has one. And they are all rather laughable when one looks at the things upon which the various diagnoses are based:
Breivik played violent computer games. So do a billion other men. Breivik did not relate well to women. That's also true of millions of American men -- particularly if you ask American women. Breivik lived with his mother well into adulthood. That too is common these days. It's almost the norm in Italy and Japan. He liked dressing up and giving himself titles. So do the freemasons. And so it goes: Things that do not cause terrorism in millions of others suddenly caused terrorism in Breivik? What a heap of nonsense!
My Ph.D. is in psychology, my academic specialty is political psychology and I have had over 100 papers in that field published in the academic journals -- including papers on what would seem to be relevant phenomena, such as neo-Nazism and psychopathy. So can I do better? Perhaps. To make any diagnosis when you have never even met the person is a very bad start but I will try.
So, for starters, is Breivik mad? Is he insane? There is general agreement that he is not and I agree with that. He shows no signs of delusions and has normal reality contact. He is not psychotic.
The one glaringly salient fact about Breivik is that he is a one-off. People with broadly conservative views are almost never terrorists. Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh is the nearest comparable case and there are considerable differences beteeen him and Breivik. Breivik is much more intellectual, for a start.
And that one salient fact is in my view the key to Breivik. Terrorism is not the product of personality. It is ideologically motivated. Personality plays some part but ideology is the overwhelming influence behind terrorist deeds. Nearly two years ago, U.S. army Major Nidal Hasan stood up at Ft. Hood shouting "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is great" -- before opening fire methodically from two handguns, killing 13 and wounding 32. Very similar behaviour to Breivik and with the motive being clearly ideological, in his case the ideology of fundamentalist Islam.
And there is no denying where Breivik got most of his ideas. He got them from fairly mainstream conservative sources. What he says in his manifesto about the Left and about Islam could be duplicated from many mainstream conservative sources. Indeed, he quotes such sources at length in his manifesto.
So how come hundreds of millions of conservatives have ideas similar to Breivik but only Breivik used them as a basis for a terrorist attack?
To answer that we have to move from ideology to sociology. I taught sociology for some years in a major Australian university so perhaps I have a few ideas in that department too.
And what seems to be the key sociological context is Norwegian society itself. Norwegians are very self-righteous and politically correct and one result of that is that Norway's penal code (Straffeloven, section 135 a) prohibits "hate speech" and defines it as publicly making statements that threaten or ridicule someone or that incite hatred, persecution or contempt for someone due to their skin colour, ethnic origin, homosexual life style or orientation or, religion or philosophy of life. So criticism of Muslims is illegal in Norway.
And yet, of all Western countries, Muslim aggression against the host country would seem to be at its peak in Norway and Sweden, two of the world's most permissive countries. Permissiveness is NOT the key to restraint and as the old proverb has it: "Give them an inch and they will take a mile". Because Norway and Sweden not only put up with Muslim lawlessness but actually protect it from view, the misbehaviour has escalated in those countries to quite appalling levels. Rapes in those countries in recent years have almost entirely been the doing of Muslims, for instance.
And the average Norwegian is not oblivious to that, for all the clampdown on mentioning it by Norway's Leftist government. Norwegian experts say that Breivik's attitude to Muslims is in fact common among ordinary Norwegians. Leftist reality denial doesn't work for long.
So the pressure towards retaliation against Muslims is in proportion to the Muslim outrages committed. Muslim behavior is at a peak of unacceptability in Norway and that generates a peak head of steam for retaliation against Muslims. Muslims are not as indulgently treated in other countries (even Britain locks some Muslim haters up) so their behaviour is better and that in turn means that resentment against them does not build up so much.
So Breivik was simply the point at which the Norwegian dam burst. When any dam bursts it is always possible in retrospect to say where the weak point was but that is rarely apparent in advance. The point at which the dam bursts can be essentially random.
So we come back to the question: Why was Breivik the weak point? I think it was essentially random. Other Norwegians would have eventually done something similar if Breivik had not.
One thing that I do notice, however, is that a lot of his mental characteristics seem rather adolescent. So we have adolescent mental characteristics combined with a very capable adult brain. And adolescents make great warriors, warriors who are largely heedless of their own wellbeing in fighting for what they are told is the common good. The undoubted heroism of the Hitler Youth in the closing stages of WWII is an obvious example of that and armies generally do recruit heavily from teenagers.
And it is clear that Breivik saw himself as self-sacrificing in what he did. He acted for what he saw as the general wellbeing by attacking the protectors of Muslims at their weakest point: Their children.
And I see no reason to doubt the account Breivik gives of his motivation: It was self-sacrifice for the common good, a very Norwegian motivation. He wanted Norwegians freed from the very real oppressive burden of their Muslim minority.
****************************
Ideals Versus Realities
Thomas Sowell
Many of us never thought that the Republicans would hold tough long enough to get President Obama and the Democrats to agree to a budget deal that does not include raising income tax rates. But they did -- and Speaker of the House John Boehner no doubt desires much of the credit for that.
Despite the widespread notion that raising tax rates automatically means collecting more revenue for the government, history says otherwise. As far back as the 1920s, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon pointed out that the government received a very similar amount of revenue from high-income earners at low tax rates as it did at tax rates several times as high.
How was that possible? Because high tax rates drive investors into tax shelters, such as tax-exempt bonds. Today, as a result of globalization and electronic transfers of money, "the rich" are even less likely to stand still and be sheared like sheep, when they can easily send their money overseas, to places where tax rates are lower.
Money sent overseas creates jobs overseas -- and American workers cannot transfer themselves overseas to get those jobs as readily as investors can send their money there.
All the overheated political rhetoric about needing to tax "millionaires and billionaires" is not about bringing in more revenue to the government. It is about bringing in more votes for politicians who stir up class warfare with rhetoric.
Now that the Republicans seem to have gotten the Democrats off their higher taxes kick, the question is whether a minority of the House Republicans will refuse to pass the Boehner legislation that could lead to a deal that will spare the country a major economic disruption and spare the Republicans from losing the 2012 elections by being blamed -- rightly or wrongly -- for the disruptions.
Is the Boehner legislation the best legislation possible? Of course not! You don't get your heart's desire when you control only one house of Congress and face a presidential veto.
The most basic fact of life is that we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available. It is not idealism to ignore the limits of one's power. Nor is it selling out one's principles to recognize those limits at a given time and place, and get the best deal possible under those conditions.
That still leaves the option of working toward getting a better deal later, when the odds are more in your favor.
There would not be a United States of America today if George Washington's army had not retreated and retreated and retreated, in the face of an overwhelmingly more powerful British military force bent on annihilating Washington's troops.
Later, when the conditions were right for attack, General Washington attacked. But he would have had nothing to attack with if he had wasted his troops in battles that would have wiped them out.
Similar principles apply in politics. As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavors."
What does "rational" mean? At its most basic, it means an ability to make a ratio, as with "rational numbers" in mathematics. More broadly, it means an ability to weigh one thing against another.
There are a lot of things to weigh against each other, not only as regards the economy, but also what the consequences to this nation would be to have Barack Obama get re-elected and go further down the dangerous path he has put us on, at home and abroad. Is it worth that risk to make a futile symbolic vote in Congress?
One of the good things about the Tea Party movement is that it resisted the temptation to actually form a third political party, which has been an exercise in futility, time and time again, under the American electoral system.
But, if the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party becomes just a rule-or-ruin minority, then they might just as well have formed a separate third party and gone on to oblivion.
Writers can advocate things that have no chance at the moment, for their very writing about those things persuasively can make them possible at some future date. But to adopt the same approach as an elected member of Congress risks losing both the present and the future.
SOURCE
***************************
'Swift Boat' Veteran Who Defended Kerry Stripped of Silver Star
One crook defends another
A Vietnam veteran who defended Sen. John Kerry against "Swift Boat" attacks in the 2004 presidential race has been stripped of his Silver Star by the Navy -- more than a year after he was sentenced to prison on a child pornography charge.
But the Silver Star wasn't stripped from Wade Sanders because of the child porn conviction, per se.
Military officials told Fox News the medal was revoked in 2010 after Navy investigators looked into his record and found administrative errors surrounding how the award was created. Sources said Sanders was responsible for those administrative errors and may have lied.
The case indirectly stemmed from the child porn conviction because the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) only looked into his record after the child pornography charge.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced his decision in a memo last August, though it has only now received greater media attention.
"Had the subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself been known to the secretary of the Navy in 1992, those facts would have prevented the award of the Silver Star medal to Wade R. Sanders," Mabus said in the memo, without going into detail.
The decision is the latest blow to Sanders, a decorated Navy veteran who in 2004 stood onstage as Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination for president -- Sanders was among several Vietnam veterans who defended the nominee against criticism of his service by other "Swift Boat" members.
Several years after the campaign, Sanders was hit with the child pornography case in federal court in southern California.
An FBI agent claimed to have found several images and videos of underage naked girls on his computer. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2009 to more than three years in prison. At the time, Kerry and others officials presented letters to the court testifying on behalf of his character and service.
Sanders' lawyers had argued that he obtained the graphic images because he was doing research on child pornography. Further, they claimed he was driven to conduct that research in part because of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"He's not a pedophile," Knut Johnson, his defense attorney, told FoxNews.com. "Wade did a lot of great things for his country and his community."
It's unclear exactly what the justification was for the Silver Star in 1992, though a 2009 court document said it was awarded for "gallantry in action."
Sanders also had been awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. According to military officials, those awards were found to be legitimate.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
New York Times Reader Kills Dozens in Norway: "The New York Times wasted no time in jumping to conclusions about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who staged two deadly attacks in Oslo last weekend, claiming in the first two paragraphs of one story that he was a "gun-loving," "right-wing," "fundamentalist Christian," opposed to "multiculturalism." True, in one lone entry on Breivik's gaseous 1,500-page manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence," he calls himself "Christian." But unfortunately he also uses a great number of other words to describe himself, and these other words make clear that he does not mean "Christian" as most Americans understand the term. (Incidentally, he also cites The New York Times more than a half-dozen times.)"
Shut down the Postal Service: "The Postal Service has announced that it is closing 3,700 post offices across the country due to financial troubles. I’ve got a better idea. How about closing the Postal Service itself and turning over the delivery of first-class mail entirely to the private sector? After all, the Postal Service is a monopoly. That means the government has granted it an exclusive privilege to deliver first-class mail without fear of competition."
Bollywood vs. jihad: "Islamic fundamentalists have long worried about the threat that Bollywood poses to their puritanical demands. ... They have ample reason to be worried: About 3 billion people, or half the planet, watches Bollywood, and many of them live in the Islamic world. By depicting assimilated, modernized Muslims, Bollywood -- without even trying -- deromanticizes and thereby disarms fanatical Islam. If you can have Munni and Sheila in this world, why on earth would you want to strap bombs to your waist and blow yourself up for the sake of 72 theoretical virgins?"
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, 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)
****************************
There are by now innumerable psychological assessments of Breivik online. Practically every publication you log on to has one. And they are all rather laughable when one looks at the things upon which the various diagnoses are based:
Breivik played violent computer games. So do a billion other men. Breivik did not relate well to women. That's also true of millions of American men -- particularly if you ask American women. Breivik lived with his mother well into adulthood. That too is common these days. It's almost the norm in Italy and Japan. He liked dressing up and giving himself titles. So do the freemasons. And so it goes: Things that do not cause terrorism in millions of others suddenly caused terrorism in Breivik? What a heap of nonsense!
My Ph.D. is in psychology, my academic specialty is political psychology and I have had over 100 papers in that field published in the academic journals -- including papers on what would seem to be relevant phenomena, such as neo-Nazism and psychopathy. So can I do better? Perhaps. To make any diagnosis when you have never even met the person is a very bad start but I will try.
So, for starters, is Breivik mad? Is he insane? There is general agreement that he is not and I agree with that. He shows no signs of delusions and has normal reality contact. He is not psychotic.
The one glaringly salient fact about Breivik is that he is a one-off. People with broadly conservative views are almost never terrorists. Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh is the nearest comparable case and there are considerable differences beteeen him and Breivik. Breivik is much more intellectual, for a start.
And that one salient fact is in my view the key to Breivik. Terrorism is not the product of personality. It is ideologically motivated. Personality plays some part but ideology is the overwhelming influence behind terrorist deeds. Nearly two years ago, U.S. army Major Nidal Hasan stood up at Ft. Hood shouting "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is great" -- before opening fire methodically from two handguns, killing 13 and wounding 32. Very similar behaviour to Breivik and with the motive being clearly ideological, in his case the ideology of fundamentalist Islam.
And there is no denying where Breivik got most of his ideas. He got them from fairly mainstream conservative sources. What he says in his manifesto about the Left and about Islam could be duplicated from many mainstream conservative sources. Indeed, he quotes such sources at length in his manifesto.
So how come hundreds of millions of conservatives have ideas similar to Breivik but only Breivik used them as a basis for a terrorist attack?
To answer that we have to move from ideology to sociology. I taught sociology for some years in a major Australian university so perhaps I have a few ideas in that department too.
And what seems to be the key sociological context is Norwegian society itself. Norwegians are very self-righteous and politically correct and one result of that is that Norway's penal code (Straffeloven, section 135 a) prohibits "hate speech" and defines it as publicly making statements that threaten or ridicule someone or that incite hatred, persecution or contempt for someone due to their skin colour, ethnic origin, homosexual life style or orientation or, religion or philosophy of life. So criticism of Muslims is illegal in Norway.
And yet, of all Western countries, Muslim aggression against the host country would seem to be at its peak in Norway and Sweden, two of the world's most permissive countries. Permissiveness is NOT the key to restraint and as the old proverb has it: "Give them an inch and they will take a mile". Because Norway and Sweden not only put up with Muslim lawlessness but actually protect it from view, the misbehaviour has escalated in those countries to quite appalling levels. Rapes in those countries in recent years have almost entirely been the doing of Muslims, for instance.
And the average Norwegian is not oblivious to that, for all the clampdown on mentioning it by Norway's Leftist government. Norwegian experts say that Breivik's attitude to Muslims is in fact common among ordinary Norwegians. Leftist reality denial doesn't work for long.
So the pressure towards retaliation against Muslims is in proportion to the Muslim outrages committed. Muslim behavior is at a peak of unacceptability in Norway and that generates a peak head of steam for retaliation against Muslims. Muslims are not as indulgently treated in other countries (even Britain locks some Muslim haters up) so their behaviour is better and that in turn means that resentment against them does not build up so much.
So Breivik was simply the point at which the Norwegian dam burst. When any dam bursts it is always possible in retrospect to say where the weak point was but that is rarely apparent in advance. The point at which the dam bursts can be essentially random.
So we come back to the question: Why was Breivik the weak point? I think it was essentially random. Other Norwegians would have eventually done something similar if Breivik had not.
One thing that I do notice, however, is that a lot of his mental characteristics seem rather adolescent. So we have adolescent mental characteristics combined with a very capable adult brain. And adolescents make great warriors, warriors who are largely heedless of their own wellbeing in fighting for what they are told is the common good. The undoubted heroism of the Hitler Youth in the closing stages of WWII is an obvious example of that and armies generally do recruit heavily from teenagers.
And it is clear that Breivik saw himself as self-sacrificing in what he did. He acted for what he saw as the general wellbeing by attacking the protectors of Muslims at their weakest point: Their children.
And I see no reason to doubt the account Breivik gives of his motivation: It was self-sacrifice for the common good, a very Norwegian motivation. He wanted Norwegians freed from the very real oppressive burden of their Muslim minority.
****************************
Ideals Versus Realities
Thomas Sowell
Many of us never thought that the Republicans would hold tough long enough to get President Obama and the Democrats to agree to a budget deal that does not include raising income tax rates. But they did -- and Speaker of the House John Boehner no doubt desires much of the credit for that.
Despite the widespread notion that raising tax rates automatically means collecting more revenue for the government, history says otherwise. As far back as the 1920s, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon pointed out that the government received a very similar amount of revenue from high-income earners at low tax rates as it did at tax rates several times as high.
How was that possible? Because high tax rates drive investors into tax shelters, such as tax-exempt bonds. Today, as a result of globalization and electronic transfers of money, "the rich" are even less likely to stand still and be sheared like sheep, when they can easily send their money overseas, to places where tax rates are lower.
Money sent overseas creates jobs overseas -- and American workers cannot transfer themselves overseas to get those jobs as readily as investors can send their money there.
All the overheated political rhetoric about needing to tax "millionaires and billionaires" is not about bringing in more revenue to the government. It is about bringing in more votes for politicians who stir up class warfare with rhetoric.
Now that the Republicans seem to have gotten the Democrats off their higher taxes kick, the question is whether a minority of the House Republicans will refuse to pass the Boehner legislation that could lead to a deal that will spare the country a major economic disruption and spare the Republicans from losing the 2012 elections by being blamed -- rightly or wrongly -- for the disruptions.
Is the Boehner legislation the best legislation possible? Of course not! You don't get your heart's desire when you control only one house of Congress and face a presidential veto.
The most basic fact of life is that we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available. It is not idealism to ignore the limits of one's power. Nor is it selling out one's principles to recognize those limits at a given time and place, and get the best deal possible under those conditions.
That still leaves the option of working toward getting a better deal later, when the odds are more in your favor.
There would not be a United States of America today if George Washington's army had not retreated and retreated and retreated, in the face of an overwhelmingly more powerful British military force bent on annihilating Washington's troops.
Later, when the conditions were right for attack, General Washington attacked. But he would have had nothing to attack with if he had wasted his troops in battles that would have wiped them out.
Similar principles apply in politics. As Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavors."
What does "rational" mean? At its most basic, it means an ability to make a ratio, as with "rational numbers" in mathematics. More broadly, it means an ability to weigh one thing against another.
There are a lot of things to weigh against each other, not only as regards the economy, but also what the consequences to this nation would be to have Barack Obama get re-elected and go further down the dangerous path he has put us on, at home and abroad. Is it worth that risk to make a futile symbolic vote in Congress?
One of the good things about the Tea Party movement is that it resisted the temptation to actually form a third political party, which has been an exercise in futility, time and time again, under the American electoral system.
But, if the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party becomes just a rule-or-ruin minority, then they might just as well have formed a separate third party and gone on to oblivion.
Writers can advocate things that have no chance at the moment, for their very writing about those things persuasively can make them possible at some future date. But to adopt the same approach as an elected member of Congress risks losing both the present and the future.
SOURCE
***************************
'Swift Boat' Veteran Who Defended Kerry Stripped of Silver Star
One crook defends another
A Vietnam veteran who defended Sen. John Kerry against "Swift Boat" attacks in the 2004 presidential race has been stripped of his Silver Star by the Navy -- more than a year after he was sentenced to prison on a child pornography charge.
But the Silver Star wasn't stripped from Wade Sanders because of the child porn conviction, per se.
Military officials told Fox News the medal was revoked in 2010 after Navy investigators looked into his record and found administrative errors surrounding how the award was created. Sources said Sanders was responsible for those administrative errors and may have lied.
The case indirectly stemmed from the child porn conviction because the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) only looked into his record after the child pornography charge.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced his decision in a memo last August, though it has only now received greater media attention.
"Had the subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself been known to the secretary of the Navy in 1992, those facts would have prevented the award of the Silver Star medal to Wade R. Sanders," Mabus said in the memo, without going into detail.
The decision is the latest blow to Sanders, a decorated Navy veteran who in 2004 stood onstage as Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination for president -- Sanders was among several Vietnam veterans who defended the nominee against criticism of his service by other "Swift Boat" members.
Several years after the campaign, Sanders was hit with the child pornography case in federal court in southern California.
An FBI agent claimed to have found several images and videos of underage naked girls on his computer. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2009 to more than three years in prison. At the time, Kerry and others officials presented letters to the court testifying on behalf of his character and service.
Sanders' lawyers had argued that he obtained the graphic images because he was doing research on child pornography. Further, they claimed he was driven to conduct that research in part because of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"He's not a pedophile," Knut Johnson, his defense attorney, told FoxNews.com. "Wade did a lot of great things for his country and his community."
It's unclear exactly what the justification was for the Silver Star in 1992, though a 2009 court document said it was awarded for "gallantry in action."
Sanders also had been awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. According to military officials, those awards were found to be legitimate.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
New York Times Reader Kills Dozens in Norway: "The New York Times wasted no time in jumping to conclusions about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who staged two deadly attacks in Oslo last weekend, claiming in the first two paragraphs of one story that he was a "gun-loving," "right-wing," "fundamentalist Christian," opposed to "multiculturalism." True, in one lone entry on Breivik's gaseous 1,500-page manifesto, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence," he calls himself "Christian." But unfortunately he also uses a great number of other words to describe himself, and these other words make clear that he does not mean "Christian" as most Americans understand the term. (Incidentally, he also cites The New York Times more than a half-dozen times.)"
Shut down the Postal Service: "The Postal Service has announced that it is closing 3,700 post offices across the country due to financial troubles. I’ve got a better idea. How about closing the Postal Service itself and turning over the delivery of first-class mail entirely to the private sector? After all, the Postal Service is a monopoly. That means the government has granted it an exclusive privilege to deliver first-class mail without fear of competition."
Bollywood vs. jihad: "Islamic fundamentalists have long worried about the threat that Bollywood poses to their puritanical demands. ... They have ample reason to be worried: About 3 billion people, or half the planet, watches Bollywood, and many of them live in the Islamic world. By depicting assimilated, modernized Muslims, Bollywood -- without even trying -- deromanticizes and thereby disarms fanatical Islam. If you can have Munni and Sheila in this world, why on earth would you want to strap bombs to your waist and blow yourself up for the sake of 72 theoretical virgins?"
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, 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)
****************************
Thursday, July 28, 2011
People from the higher latitudes of the world have bigger brains
I reproduce below the results of a small study of an old skull collection. Given the limits of the basic data, the generalizability of the findings is uncertain but they are interesting nonetheless -- in that they confirm other findings about the effect of latitude on IQ.
The authors were apparently rather embarrassed by their findings so they have presented their findings in a very politically correct way. A lot of the presentation is blatantly speculative and certainly over-interpreted. They talk, for instance, about Arctic brains in blithe indifference to the fact that they had zero data on Arctic brains! So I reproduce below only the more factual bits.
The finding that eyes are bigger in Northern latitudes is a genuine contribution to knowledge but saying that bigger eyes lie behind larger brain size is tendentious. The larger brain of the North is much more likely to be a result of the generally greater survival challenge in Northern latitudes.
In support of that it may be noted that the spectacular visual acuity of Australian Aborigines is found among a people who tend to have somewhat smaller brains than Europeans.
It should be noted that the present "native" population of the British Isles is of peri-Baltic origin (North German and Scandinavian) so should be at the high end of brain size. The authors below deny that greater brain size indicates greater intelligence but ignore most of the literature on the subject in doing so. Most research indicates a positive correlation of .30+
Students of ancient history will also be aware that Northerners have been invading the South for a very long time -- and usually leaving some genes behind. Germans have been invading Italy since the days of the Roman Republic (i.e. before the Roman empire) so Teutonic genes are undoubtedly widely spread throughout Europe today. So Northern brains too are undoubtably to be found throughout Europe these days.
************************
Norway could learn from Israel
Norway is in the top rank of nations in the number of books printed per capita and it is dedicated to encouraging democracy, responding to climate change and protecting human rights.
Oslo’s quality of life is so high that it has been recognised repeatedly by the United Nations as the best place to live in the world. The United Nations placed Norway at the top of women’s rights and the Norwegians like to exercise their influence through international activism predicated on a collective vision of the global good society.
This ultra-secularized and anti-nationalistic beacon has always been proud of its “lack of prejudice” and for decades it sponsored sex education, health care and freedom of expression. It’s a country that liked to call herself a “moral superpower”, that not only ranked among the world’s handful of richest countries, but also provided the world’s most generous welfare state.
With all this solidarity, why did nobody try to stop the killer, despite the island being crowded with 600 boys and girls in the same age category of the average Israeli who starts military service in the IDF? Is it possible that the Norwegian pacifist and tolerant utopia devitalized its population from the ability to fight back darkness and terrorism?
Only when the police finally got to the island (over 40 minutes after they were called) did the killer surrender.
The answer is deep and hard to measure. Have a look at Norway, many Europeans used to say, listen to their words: we have eradicated wars, nationalism and religion; we do not wage war (in Norway the policemen don’t carry guns); we negotiate; we are the moral country; we all want to make the world a better place.
A comparison can be made with Israel, a country so despised by Oslo’s governments and Norwegian elites and so similar to Oslo. Not by chance, the only two places in Oslo where the security measures stand out are the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community buildings.
Yet the Jewish State was recently ranked the 7th-most happy country in the world, just a few positions after Norway. The Israeli citizens live an average of 80 years, just like in placid and wealthy Norway.
Like Norway, Israel has a history of scintillating enlightenment.
Like Norway, Israel has one of the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world.
Like Norway, Israel is the second in the world for publication of new books.
Like Norway, Israel is the source of medical and scientific discoveries that are helping to change the course of history.
Like Norway, Israel has the highest proportion of university graduates and Ph.D.s in the world, per capita.
Like Norway, Israel is home to about ten Nobel laureates.
But in Israel, a mass terror spree like in Utoeya would have never happened the way it did. At the doors of supermarkets and department stores, theaters and cinemas, schools and synagogues, during the Second Intifada, an Israeli guard always looked through the bags of any suspect person who wanted to enter. Dozens of Israeli bodyguards have been killed or wounded while trying to protect other human beings, an Israeli brand of valor that has nothing to do with the myth-soaked heroism familiar to us from the propaganda of European fascism and communism.
It is not about gargantuan deeds by superhuman champions; it is family- and home-oriented, and rather intimate in tone. It has the face of Haim Smadar, a Tunisian Jew with a kindly smile and a big salt-and-pepper mustache who could have been an ordinary guard in Utoeya. He was adored by the parents of the autistic children at the school where he had been a guard for years. He was good with children, and had five of his own at home, two of them hearing-impaired. It wasn’t easy to make ends meet, so Haim took side jobs to supplement his income, like the one at the supermarket in Jerusalem.
Haim was a humble and quiet man. Life didn’t smile on him; it was hard to raise a deaf son and a daughter with hearing problems. But he was happy. He was killed by a suicide bomber who had the same dark smile of the Norwegian killer.
But Haim Smadar, with his own body, also saved the life of the two hundred Israelis in the supermarket.
So did young Natan Sendaka, an Ethiopian born immigrant, one of seven children. A graduate of Kfar Hanoar Hadati religious youth village near Haifa and a Border Patrol soldier, he jumped on a suicide bomber on a busy Jerusalem street as the terrorist put his hand to his belt. Natan absorbed the shock of the detonation in his lungs. His youth enabled the tissue to regenerate and although limping and scarred, he is full of hope and joy.
David Shapira, young father and army officer on leave, shot the terrorist who was machine gunning the unarmed Merkaz HaRav yeshiva students studying in the library. He ran across the street to the yeshiva when he heard shots, so did another citizen who shot at the murderer from the roof. Eight were killed, but it could have been eighty if not for their valor, had they hid or run away.
That’s the saddest question that separates Europe and Israel: are we today, we Europeans, really ready to consider our citizens more important than ourselves or our families?
The Jewish State created a new kind of citizen-defender as last line of defense. In the tiny island of Utoeya, that symbol of European weakness, nobody tried to save the innocent youngsters.
The world has a lot to learn from the tiny, besieged and boycotted Jewish State.
The Israeli children in wheelchairs, the disfigured victims of every age, the legions of mourners for family members and friends lost in a moment’s horror, the babies who have had their faces burned or their hands rendered useless, the trembling people who go insane and don’t want to live anymore because they are haunted by the sound of the explosion, are a living reminder of what is evil and why a modern democracy must stop it.
SOURCE
***********************
Doubling Down on Class Warfare
In the course of negotiations over the debt limit, President Barack Obama’s rejection of his own bipartisan White House debt commission’s recommendations has become complete. But of greater concern is his decision to double down on class warfare instead of pursuing the policy paths that lead to growth that benefits all.
The consensus position of the president’s fiscal commission was support for tax reforms that would create a broader base of payers paired with lower rates. The recipe makes sense--a broader base corrects the problem of too few Americans having skin in the game, while lower rates encourage the economic and job growth the nation so desperately needs.
In 1997, less than 20 percent of U.S. households owed no taxes to the federal government--today, 47 percent have no tax liability. This is a problem, and unless it’s corrected, the nation’s future is a picture of continued conflict between those who receive entitlements and those who fund them--between workers and those who do not work.
The left has no interest in ending this deadly cycle. That’s readily evident when you examine the deficit plan from the Center for American Progress, George Soros’s think tank in name only (it spends its days working to support whatever the White House wants it to). It is based on incredible expectations for the amount of blood one can drain from a stone.
CAP’s plan assumes tax revenue of 23.8 percent of GDP, achieved almost entirely through a swathe of new and higher taxes on high earners and corporations. Serious economists and historians laugh at these growth, tax, and revenue expectations as simply unprecedented in American history. As one economist pointed out to me, CAP is basing its solution for America’s fiscal future on the assumption that something will happen that has never happened before.
When something that farfetched is proposed, it usually indicates ideological social engineering, not analysis about what the nation truly needs. Republicans should know--they made the same mistake in the previous decade, and they are the most to blame for the current shortage of taxpayers.
One of the largest reasons for the growth in the percentage of Americans who pay no taxes is the increase in the child tax credit under George W. Bush. The initial $400 credit, created in 1998 under Speaker Newt Gingrich, was meant to be a small measure to lighten the tax load on working families. The credit accelerated dramatically in the next decade, with Bush more than doubling it at the prodding of social conservatives--a perfect example of social engineering.
The upshot? The number of taxpaying households has decreased steadily. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation reports in 2000–2004 alone the expanded child credit increased total nonpayers by 10.5 million, a 32 percent jump. The credit is the primary reason for the problem of too few people paying into the system.
Both parties use the tax code to remold society to their preference. Where Republicans erred in unintentionally increasing the number of nonpayers, Democrats are now making the same mistake on an ideologically opposite and much grander scale.
The left knows increasing taxes on job creators suppresses hiring and economic growth. Even President Obama admitted that back in 2009 in explaining why he would not propose new taxes during a recession.
Now the president has gone back on his word. There are no practical reasons to do so. Thus his decision must be based on an ideological conviction that class warfare and permanently larger government are good for the nation. The dismal economic numbers month after month are the direct result of this conviction, and Obama’s current gambit will make things even worse.
SOURCE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
PayPal boycott chops $1 billion off eBay stock: "Following the announcement of a boycott by hacktivist groups 'Anonymous' and 'LulzSec,' shares in PayPal parent company eBay plunged by over $1 billion in value before perking back up as opportunistic investors bought into the company in hopes of a deal. ... It was launched in response to the company's refusal to send donations to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. PayPal suspended all transactions headed toward WikiLeaks last year, in the weeks following their groundbreaking publication of secret U.S. diplomatic cables."
What we don’t know about history can hurt us: "What liberates oppressed people? I was taught it's often American power. Just the threat of our military buildup defeated the Soviet Union, and our troops in the Middle East will create islands of freedom. Unlikely, says historian Thaddeus Russell, author of A Renegade History of the United States"
All talk, no walk: "President Obama portrays himself as the nonpartisan adult in the room in the struggle over raising the debt limit. In his nationally televised speech Monday, he placed himself above Washington’s 'three-ring circus,' as someone who has 'put politics aside' and is desperate for a bipartisan “compromise” between Democrats and Republicans. But is this the role Obama has actually played over the past few weeks, as the August 2 deadline imposed by his administration nears? Let’s look at the record."
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, 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)
****************************
I reproduce below the results of a small study of an old skull collection. Given the limits of the basic data, the generalizability of the findings is uncertain but they are interesting nonetheless -- in that they confirm other findings about the effect of latitude on IQ.
The authors were apparently rather embarrassed by their findings so they have presented their findings in a very politically correct way. A lot of the presentation is blatantly speculative and certainly over-interpreted. They talk, for instance, about Arctic brains in blithe indifference to the fact that they had zero data on Arctic brains! So I reproduce below only the more factual bits.
The finding that eyes are bigger in Northern latitudes is a genuine contribution to knowledge but saying that bigger eyes lie behind larger brain size is tendentious. The larger brain of the North is much more likely to be a result of the generally greater survival challenge in Northern latitudes.
In support of that it may be noted that the spectacular visual acuity of Australian Aborigines is found among a people who tend to have somewhat smaller brains than Europeans.
It should be noted that the present "native" population of the British Isles is of peri-Baltic origin (North German and Scandinavian) so should be at the high end of brain size. The authors below deny that greater brain size indicates greater intelligence but ignore most of the literature on the subject in doing so. Most research indicates a positive correlation of .30+
Students of ancient history will also be aware that Northerners have been invading the South for a very long time -- and usually leaving some genes behind. Germans have been invading Italy since the days of the Roman Republic (i.e. before the Roman empire) so Teutonic genes are undoubtedly widely spread throughout Europe today. So Northern brains too are undoubtably to be found throughout Europe these days.
People who live in high latitude regions have bigger eyeballs and brains than other individuals, according to new research.
The increase in brain and eye size allows people to see better in places that receive less light than areas closer to the equator, according to the new study, published in the latest issue of the journal Royal Society Biology Letters.
"People living at high latitudes have greater visual acuity than those who live at the equator," added Dunbar, who is head of the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
"The whole point is that they need to have better vision to compensate for the lower light levels at high latitudes, as indicated by the evidence we provide that visual acuity under ambient/natural light conditions remains constant with latitude."
For the study, Dunbar and colleague Eiluned Pearce measured the skulls of 55 individuals from 12 different populations, focusing on the dimensions for orbital volume and cranial capacity. The people lived about 200 years ago. Their skulls are now part of collections housed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the University of Cambridge's Duckworth Collection.
The researchers found significant positive relationships between absolute latitude, orbital volume and brain size. Eyeballs varied in size from around a quarter to a third of an ounce in volume.
The brains, in turn, ranged from about 40.6 ounces for Micronesians, on the low end of the size spectrum, and 50.2 ounces for Scandinavians on the high end.
As for the larger eyeballs, they permit smaller proportions of images to fall upon each photoreceptor field so that more details can be distinguished. The amount of light hitting Earth's surface as well as minimum day length decrease with increasing absolute latitude, so people living in such areas need the visual boost.
SOURCE
************************
Norway could learn from Israel
Norway is in the top rank of nations in the number of books printed per capita and it is dedicated to encouraging democracy, responding to climate change and protecting human rights.
Oslo’s quality of life is so high that it has been recognised repeatedly by the United Nations as the best place to live in the world. The United Nations placed Norway at the top of women’s rights and the Norwegians like to exercise their influence through international activism predicated on a collective vision of the global good society.
This ultra-secularized and anti-nationalistic beacon has always been proud of its “lack of prejudice” and for decades it sponsored sex education, health care and freedom of expression. It’s a country that liked to call herself a “moral superpower”, that not only ranked among the world’s handful of richest countries, but also provided the world’s most generous welfare state.
With all this solidarity, why did nobody try to stop the killer, despite the island being crowded with 600 boys and girls in the same age category of the average Israeli who starts military service in the IDF? Is it possible that the Norwegian pacifist and tolerant utopia devitalized its population from the ability to fight back darkness and terrorism?
Only when the police finally got to the island (over 40 minutes after they were called) did the killer surrender.
The answer is deep and hard to measure. Have a look at Norway, many Europeans used to say, listen to their words: we have eradicated wars, nationalism and religion; we do not wage war (in Norway the policemen don’t carry guns); we negotiate; we are the moral country; we all want to make the world a better place.
A comparison can be made with Israel, a country so despised by Oslo’s governments and Norwegian elites and so similar to Oslo. Not by chance, the only two places in Oslo where the security measures stand out are the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community buildings.
Yet the Jewish State was recently ranked the 7th-most happy country in the world, just a few positions after Norway. The Israeli citizens live an average of 80 years, just like in placid and wealthy Norway.
Like Norway, Israel has a history of scintillating enlightenment.
Like Norway, Israel has one of the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world.
Like Norway, Israel is the second in the world for publication of new books.
Like Norway, Israel is the source of medical and scientific discoveries that are helping to change the course of history.
Like Norway, Israel has the highest proportion of university graduates and Ph.D.s in the world, per capita.
Like Norway, Israel is home to about ten Nobel laureates.
But in Israel, a mass terror spree like in Utoeya would have never happened the way it did. At the doors of supermarkets and department stores, theaters and cinemas, schools and synagogues, during the Second Intifada, an Israeli guard always looked through the bags of any suspect person who wanted to enter. Dozens of Israeli bodyguards have been killed or wounded while trying to protect other human beings, an Israeli brand of valor that has nothing to do with the myth-soaked heroism familiar to us from the propaganda of European fascism and communism.
It is not about gargantuan deeds by superhuman champions; it is family- and home-oriented, and rather intimate in tone. It has the face of Haim Smadar, a Tunisian Jew with a kindly smile and a big salt-and-pepper mustache who could have been an ordinary guard in Utoeya. He was adored by the parents of the autistic children at the school where he had been a guard for years. He was good with children, and had five of his own at home, two of them hearing-impaired. It wasn’t easy to make ends meet, so Haim took side jobs to supplement his income, like the one at the supermarket in Jerusalem.
Haim was a humble and quiet man. Life didn’t smile on him; it was hard to raise a deaf son and a daughter with hearing problems. But he was happy. He was killed by a suicide bomber who had the same dark smile of the Norwegian killer.
But Haim Smadar, with his own body, also saved the life of the two hundred Israelis in the supermarket.
So did young Natan Sendaka, an Ethiopian born immigrant, one of seven children. A graduate of Kfar Hanoar Hadati religious youth village near Haifa and a Border Patrol soldier, he jumped on a suicide bomber on a busy Jerusalem street as the terrorist put his hand to his belt. Natan absorbed the shock of the detonation in his lungs. His youth enabled the tissue to regenerate and although limping and scarred, he is full of hope and joy.
David Shapira, young father and army officer on leave, shot the terrorist who was machine gunning the unarmed Merkaz HaRav yeshiva students studying in the library. He ran across the street to the yeshiva when he heard shots, so did another citizen who shot at the murderer from the roof. Eight were killed, but it could have been eighty if not for their valor, had they hid or run away.
That’s the saddest question that separates Europe and Israel: are we today, we Europeans, really ready to consider our citizens more important than ourselves or our families?
The Jewish State created a new kind of citizen-defender as last line of defense. In the tiny island of Utoeya, that symbol of European weakness, nobody tried to save the innocent youngsters.
The world has a lot to learn from the tiny, besieged and boycotted Jewish State.
The Israeli children in wheelchairs, the disfigured victims of every age, the legions of mourners for family members and friends lost in a moment’s horror, the babies who have had their faces burned or their hands rendered useless, the trembling people who go insane and don’t want to live anymore because they are haunted by the sound of the explosion, are a living reminder of what is evil and why a modern democracy must stop it.
SOURCE
***********************
Doubling Down on Class Warfare
In the course of negotiations over the debt limit, President Barack Obama’s rejection of his own bipartisan White House debt commission’s recommendations has become complete. But of greater concern is his decision to double down on class warfare instead of pursuing the policy paths that lead to growth that benefits all.
The consensus position of the president’s fiscal commission was support for tax reforms that would create a broader base of payers paired with lower rates. The recipe makes sense--a broader base corrects the problem of too few Americans having skin in the game, while lower rates encourage the economic and job growth the nation so desperately needs.
In 1997, less than 20 percent of U.S. households owed no taxes to the federal government--today, 47 percent have no tax liability. This is a problem, and unless it’s corrected, the nation’s future is a picture of continued conflict between those who receive entitlements and those who fund them--between workers and those who do not work.
The left has no interest in ending this deadly cycle. That’s readily evident when you examine the deficit plan from the Center for American Progress, George Soros’s think tank in name only (it spends its days working to support whatever the White House wants it to). It is based on incredible expectations for the amount of blood one can drain from a stone.
CAP’s plan assumes tax revenue of 23.8 percent of GDP, achieved almost entirely through a swathe of new and higher taxes on high earners and corporations. Serious economists and historians laugh at these growth, tax, and revenue expectations as simply unprecedented in American history. As one economist pointed out to me, CAP is basing its solution for America’s fiscal future on the assumption that something will happen that has never happened before.
When something that farfetched is proposed, it usually indicates ideological social engineering, not analysis about what the nation truly needs. Republicans should know--they made the same mistake in the previous decade, and they are the most to blame for the current shortage of taxpayers.
One of the largest reasons for the growth in the percentage of Americans who pay no taxes is the increase in the child tax credit under George W. Bush. The initial $400 credit, created in 1998 under Speaker Newt Gingrich, was meant to be a small measure to lighten the tax load on working families. The credit accelerated dramatically in the next decade, with Bush more than doubling it at the prodding of social conservatives--a perfect example of social engineering.
The upshot? The number of taxpaying households has decreased steadily. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation reports in 2000–2004 alone the expanded child credit increased total nonpayers by 10.5 million, a 32 percent jump. The credit is the primary reason for the problem of too few people paying into the system.
Both parties use the tax code to remold society to their preference. Where Republicans erred in unintentionally increasing the number of nonpayers, Democrats are now making the same mistake on an ideologically opposite and much grander scale.
The left knows increasing taxes on job creators suppresses hiring and economic growth. Even President Obama admitted that back in 2009 in explaining why he would not propose new taxes during a recession.
Now the president has gone back on his word. There are no practical reasons to do so. Thus his decision must be based on an ideological conviction that class warfare and permanently larger government are good for the nation. The dismal economic numbers month after month are the direct result of this conviction, and Obama’s current gambit will make things even worse.
SOURCE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
PayPal boycott chops $1 billion off eBay stock: "Following the announcement of a boycott by hacktivist groups 'Anonymous' and 'LulzSec,' shares in PayPal parent company eBay plunged by over $1 billion in value before perking back up as opportunistic investors bought into the company in hopes of a deal. ... It was launched in response to the company's refusal to send donations to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. PayPal suspended all transactions headed toward WikiLeaks last year, in the weeks following their groundbreaking publication of secret U.S. diplomatic cables."
What we don’t know about history can hurt us: "What liberates oppressed people? I was taught it's often American power. Just the threat of our military buildup defeated the Soviet Union, and our troops in the Middle East will create islands of freedom. Unlikely, says historian Thaddeus Russell, author of A Renegade History of the United States"
All talk, no walk: "President Obama portrays himself as the nonpartisan adult in the room in the struggle over raising the debt limit. In his nationally televised speech Monday, he placed himself above Washington’s 'three-ring circus,' as someone who has 'put politics aside' and is desperate for a bipartisan “compromise” between Democrats and Republicans. But is this the role Obama has actually played over the past few weeks, as the August 2 deadline imposed by his administration nears? Let’s look at the record."
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, 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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