IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING THE WAR IN IRAQ

Warblogcorner is probably the best place to follow the war. Heaps of bloggers are logging in and posting news. It seems that whole Iraqui armies have already surrendered -- as expected. And it seems pretty likely that the “Saddam” we saw on TV after the first strike was in fact a double.

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THE WAR FOR A FREE SOCIETY

There is a long and very scholarly article here that argues that European Post-modernism is the real enemy of the Anglosphere countries:

George Bush and Tony Blair's appeal to common ideals in their attempt to recruit Europe to the task of reshaping the Middle East is fundamentally mistaken: such common ideals do not exist. Indeed, I will argue that the Cold War is not over, that the U.S. has not won the "war" and that the battles that lie ahead will be far more difficult to pin down than even the asymmetric warfare of the Islamic terrorists. These battles will not be fought with guns and missiles but will take place in the sphere of ideology. The core issue around which these battles will be joined is the very definition of what it means to be a free society. Among the European masses and across the spectrum of academic intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, the position of classical liberalism - the founding ideology of the United States - has already lost.

The Post-Modern project enjoys both the energy of moral outrage and a philosophical cover for its errors to prevent anyone from undercutting the outrage. In this, it is enormously attractive to any party having a gripe against the modern world. Every failed state, every ethnic hustler, every ideological movement, every intellectual poseur, and every tyrannical thug has a stake in feeding and propagating this modern variant of Rousseau's Hydra. Its energetic rise in modern Europe will prove to be one of the great ideological challenges of the 21st century.

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THE FAT WARS

A reader writes:

In your recent posting featuring Paddy McGuinness's column on the "symbolic" legal cases being raised against fast food chains, McGuinness mentions that the scientific debate in this field is still pretty nebulous.

These two recent stories in "Reason" here and here give an airing to both sides of the "fat wars" in science . My guess is that we are still a long way from deciding these issues and my guess is that the methodological and modelling issues in nutrition science would make climatology look simple.

Food of course has been a major cultural and ideological divide for humans since the year dot, yet somehow McDonalds has become the prime symbolic target of choice for anti-globalisation protestors. A good example is French farmer and anti-GM food campaigner Jose Bove arrested for trashing a McDonalds.

The global spread of curry and thai food outlets, which vastly outnumber McDonald's franchise outlets are never mentioned or criticised by the anti-globos, who thanks to double think, often simultaneously imagine themselves as enjoying a "cosmopolitan" lifestyle whilst opposing globalisation. Did they protest the replacement of the humble Aussie pie by pizza? Or the ongoing demise of the traditional Aussie cake shop to the cambodian bread stall? For those who have already made up their minds on this issue, they can always quietly celebrate the 150th birthday of the potato chip.

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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Some interesting history of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division, known as the "Rock of the Marne," which "is likely to smash head-on into Iraqi defenses":

The 3rd Infantry Division's history dates back to World War I, when it earned its nickname, said Walter Meeks, the director of the division's museum at Fort Stewart, Ga. In northeast France, near the Marne River, American troops rebuffed a German offensive while two French divisions fled. The victory was credited with helping turn the tide in the war.

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ELSEWHERE

Here is a good description of the U.N.: The headquarters of global tyrant-appeasement evidently serves as a clubhouse in which butchers are celebrated, while Jews, Americans and women who are both, are not wanted.

Not so strange: As Americans braced in recent days for the war against Iraq, many Californians were feeling strangely out of it.

I like it: "A man protesting the looming U.S. war on Iraq fell to his death from San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday as he was hanging a banner"

Chris Brand continues the story of his intellectual development with some thoughts about aggression.

Michael Darby has news of developments in Romania and Spain.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I used to teach survey research methodology at university and I try here to educate some of my colleagues out of doing the silly things in surveys that they usually do.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO PRESIDENT BUSH AND PRIME MINISTER BLAIR

Against enormous opposition worldwide, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have pushed through this tremendous effort to bring down yet another enemy of the liberty and civility that the English-speaking people have always valued so highly. All best wishes for the American, British and Australian fighting men in Iraq who are fighting for civilization today. Once again, only the the English-speaking world has the guts to be the bastion and defender of liberty.

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FRENCH IMPERIALISM

The McDonalds’ restaurants worldwide often come under attack from Leftists as embodying American “cultural imperialism”. Yet there are probably even more French restaurants around. Why are they not a sign of French “cultural imperialism”? One would seem to be as logical as the other.

But as Don Quixote said: “Facts are the enemy of truth”. The Don was obviously a Leftist. Many of the targets that Leftists aim at are at least as silly as the Don’s windmills.

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ANTI-GLOBOS AS RACISTS AND NATIONALISTS

An Australian reader says that “Leftist” anti-globalizers and Australia’s most prominent anti-immigration politician (the “rightist” Pauline Hanson) both really want the same thing. They both want to retain a “national” identity and individuality:

I have been thinking about this doublethink amongst the anti-globos of late. I have a pain in the neck friend who is always on the latest lefty bandwagon. He hates Pauline Hanson and is afraid Australians are all becoming "xenophobic" but then is against "globalisation".

My argument is that if there is a problem with economic globalisation at all, (I am not convinced it is bad) it must apply to cosmopolitanism as well, something he and his ilk are always praising as a great social advance on the old Australian "anglo-celtic" culture. Thanks to cosmo, Sydney and Melbourne are now just like Vancouver, San Francisco and London. If it weren't for the climate differences you'd hardly know which one you were in. They all have the same big fast food chains, and Thai and Indian curry houses on every other corner. All these cities are "cosmopolitan" and the same at the same time. "Cultural Diversity" at the local level is paradoxically leading to homogenity at the international level. Sameness.

Luckily for us, Star Bucks has been slow to spread here... mainly because the Italians taught the Australians what constitutes good coffee, a lesson the North Americanos never really learned. Yet when my pro-cosmo anti-globo friend travels he prefers to visit places that are "out of the ordinary", culturally different, have their own culture and traditions.. the non-cosmo cultures. But isn't that the very thing he is preventing Australia from keeping and developing by opposing "Hansonism"? I enjoy the diversity of restaurants etc as much as the next guy but if we lose what makes Australia different and become just another cosmopolitan ant pile, with all the social cohesion of an international airport transit lounge.. we can't blame it all on McDonalds and The Simpsons.

Note that the famous French Leftist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1983) also justified ethnocentrism as a means of preserving cultural diversity.

Reference:
Levi-Strauss, C. (1983) Le Regard Eloigne Paris: Plon.

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BLOGGER.COM REALLY ARE THE PITS

Sorry to talk of mundane things in these dramatic times but it is rather forced upon me.

I am really happy with Blogger.com software when it works as it should. But hardly a day goes by when it does NOT work as it should. They seem to have got WORSE since Google took them over. For instance, today and yesterday I could not post to any blog for a couple of hours. When I got through at all, I kept getting absurd error messages (error 203) instead. I eventually emailed Jason Shellen about it and he got it fixed after about an hour. But it was exactly the same bug that I had encountered two days ago and it soon came back.

Anyway, I have decided to follow Instapundit and set up a parallel site that is completely independent of blogger.com and blogspot. You can see it here. It is a bit basic but it does the job. If you are a regular reader of this blog please bookmark the alternative site for occasions when Blogger.com will not let me put anything up.

In case I sound paranoid, note that there is one site here that I lost contact with months ago. I can no longer access it to add or change anything either through blogger.com or through an FTP program. I cannot even delete it! It would be most vexing if the same happened to this present site.

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ELSEWHERE

Wylie says: I have a feeling the names Bush and Blair will stand in history alongside those of Roosevelt and Churchill and Reagan and Thatcher in opposition to tyranny. And that's pretty heady company indeed.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of good reading.

Chris Brand comments on the latest bouts of paedohysteria and has some stories about the man that Leftists worldwide campaigned so hard for.

Michael Darby gives his predictions about the likely course of the Iraq war.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I take my academic colleagues to task for some of the absurd things they do when they purport to measure people’s attitudes and personality.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit HERE instead. My Home Page is here or here

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N.Y.T. “QUOTE OF THE DAY”

The New York Times email edition made the following expression of good sense and caution their quote of the day. How it must have hurt them to do so!

"In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now."
- PRESIDENT BUSH

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ANOTHER FALSE PAEDOPHILIA CONVICTION OVERTURNED

Jubilation in court as care workers freed. ON FRIDAY 14 MARCH, in the solemn surroundings of the High Court in London, the friends and supporters of two Merseyside care workers rose to their feet to cheer and applaud as Mr Justice Kennedy announced that the men's convictions were unsafe

Thank your lucky stars if you do not live in England. They specialize in jailing the innocent and ignoring the guilty there. More here.

For more on the madhouse of British Injustice see the post headed Gunman shoots security guard, Guard gets arrested for murder on PC Watch (post of 18th)

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SPAM

Most people seem to be groaning under the load of spam they get these days. I guess I delete about 50 of them from my inbox every day. If governments cannot do anything about it, they should declare all commercial spammers to be outlaws so that we can put a bullet through them anytime we find one. The amount of time people must waste deleting all the stuff must add up to a huge workload overall. A reader writes:

In terms of junk mail I have discovered that if you use those "remove me from this mailing list" things on the bottom of spam it mainly makes things worse. they then know that the e-mail address is active and send your more spam and/or sell your address to other spammers. Spam is the one form of free enterprise I hate. I really like this Cringely guy when talking about net stuff. He has a couple of articles on spam here and here and he refers to this WIRED story here which makes me feel that using remove pages is (was) a bad idea.

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NICE TOXINS

Quote from the science journal "Nature":

Dioxins, which are industrial by-products that at certain doses can cause cancer, can actually reduce tumour growth in some species. Similarly, small amounts of the toxic trace metal cadmium can promote plant growth

The great Greenie scare about all the "toxins" produced by industry is gradually becoming unravelled. The concept of "hormesis" (the therapeutic effect of things that can be poisonous in high doses) has been around for nearly a century and is in fact the basis of one form of "alternative" medicine (Homoeopathy). Once again we find that nature is unkind to simplistic formulations. It depends on the dose whether something is a "toxin" or not. Common salt can be a poison if you take too much of it.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The British Firemen have agreed to drop their outrageous pay claims. This is a victory for Tony Blair almost on a par with Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of the coalminers.

Alternatives to Blogger.com are emerging: Welcome news. The constant malfunctions of Blogger.com really are a trial.

I note that wine-drinkers who are boycotting French wines refer to themselves as The coalition of the swilling!

Timothy Noah says that France is America's NATO ally. With allies like those ....

British Leftist academic Tony Kushner (PDF file) thinks that scientists who say that there really are differences between the races should be subjected to something like Hitler’s holocaust. And they try to deny that Leftism is a religion of hate! Hitler, of course, was a good socialist.

Chris Brand says that he first became an hereditarian when he worked as a prison psychologist and noted that criminals all blamed their criminality on their families -- even though other members of the family were generally not criminal.

Michael Darby has the story about how it was only the incredible persistence of one man that overcame the bureaucratic hurdles that nearly prevented the development of a great Australian industry.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I look at the claim that people who are wary of AIDS victims are “authoritarian”. I point out that what the researchers have really found is that it is old-fashioned to be wary of homosexuals.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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SUPPORT SOLID IN AUSTRALIA

Americans might be pleased to hear that Australia's pro-war Prime Minister is miles ahead of his Leftist rival in the polls:

John Howard is winning the war for public opinion as Australia braces to invade Iraq by the end of the week. Despite nationwide anti-war protests, and Labor scrapping 30 years of bipartisanship on sending troops overseas, the Coalition has maintained an election-winning lead. Although Mr Howard's support as preferred prime minister has dropped to its lowest level since July last year, he still holds more than a 2-to-1 advantage over Simon Crean.

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CANADA SHOWS GLOBAL COOLING

The latest news now from the Canadian Ice Service is that Lake Superior is now 100% frozen over. In addition, Lakes Huron and Erie are also frozen tight. This is a rare and brief occurrence, the last events being in 1982 and 1994. The northern one third of Lake Michigan is also ice covered. Further east, the Gulf of St. Lawrence has 25% more ice than normal, and the Atlantic coast down to Halifax is covered with sea ice, a direct result of the deep winter freeze that has gripped Eastern Canada. Toronto recorded its coldest March day since 1868. This in spite of the `urban heat island'. The city has now had 63 days in which temperatures failed to rise above 0oC, more than double the number last year.

The occurrence of such a record-breaking freeze in these greenhouse times must raise questions as to the validity of the greenhouse warming theory, particularly its assumed magnitude, since the theory suggests that the greenhouse effect has its greatest leverage in the coldest places and at the coldest times.

Post of 12th from John Daly's site.

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CHIRAC THE STATESMAN

The BBC has a discussion going under the heading:

Jacques Chirac's domestic opinion poll ratings are as high as they've ever been, in a period when the economy is in a decidedly patchy state. Is Iraq a much needed panacea for the French President's popularity problems, or should his views on war be interpreted as a purely moral stance by a truly independent world leader?

I would not have thought that there was much to discuss there!

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THE CAUSES OF RACISM

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I look at how modern academic psychologists explain racism. For many years they pretended that racism was a form of mental illness to be found only among conservatives. Eventually, however, the sheer weight of their own evidence on the subject forced them to acknoweledge that racism in some form was in fact universal and normal.

This still however left the puzzle that some people appear to be more racist than others. Why? There are many pet theories about that now and in my paper I surveyed most of them and pointed out their flaws (which makes it a very long paper). What I pointed to as the best supported theory is that racism emerges as the result of culture clash. Different ethnic groups really are different in their customs and values so those who encounter people from groups with values that they would normally decry in anyone also decry the groups holding those values.

An excerpt:

More generally, in some cultures industriousness and hard work are much admired. They are seen as badges of responsibility and respect-worthiness. In yet other cultures, however, hard work is seen as something that any sensible person avoids wherever possible. When people from the pro-work culture are mixed in with people from the anti-work culture people from the anti-work culture must be looked down upon by people from the pro-work culture. For people from the pro-work culture to do otherwise would simply be inconsistent and discriminatory. People from the pro-work culture would think ill of themselves for being "lazy" so why should they not think ill of others who are "lazy"? To ask them to approve of laziness would be to ask them to be untrue to their own values and their own culture.

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ELSEWHERE

I got an amusing email today from a Leftist which accused me of being a Nazi and a Fascist for supporting REMOVAL of a Fascist (Saddam). There is just no such thing as Leftist logic. Emotional and irrational abuse is the best they can do. Facts and reality matter to them not at all.

An American college student (otherwise best known for burning U.S. flags in public) was killed while trying to block Israeli bulldozers in Gaza. Good riddance to an arrogant and hate-filled busybody.

China hand seems to have recovered from having his wife come to stay with him and is now blogging again. He has updates on the frenetic construction activity going on there and concedes that corruption is pretty bad after all.

Michael Darby notes that an Australian Leftist government has banned the public release of balloons!

The Wicked one has a joke with an unexpected moral to it.

Chris Brand sounds a skeptical note on what we know about Right-brain, Left-brain function.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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HAPPY ST. PAT'S DAY TO ALL

It's not a day I celebrate personally but I have plenty of Irish ancestry (I still remember my Grandmother Kelly quite well) so you will not find me saying a bad word about the Irish.

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U.N. -- R.I.P.

Jeff Jacoby says it as well as anybody can:

"The American people understand," President Bush said at his March 6 news conference, "that when it comes to our security, if we need to act we will act. And we really don't need the United Nations' approval to do so."

"And as we head into the 21st century, when it comes to our security, we really don't need anybody's permission."

What Bush knows but doesn't want explicitly to say is that the United Nations is finished. Oh, it isn't going to go out of business any time soon -- the League of Nations wasn't formally dissolved until 1946 -- but it is finished as a force of any consequence in world affairs, and it is finished as a body whose judgments serious people have reason to take seriously.

Last fall, Bush warned the UN that it would make its own downfall inevitable if it failed to support the US campaign to disarm and depose Saddam Hussein.

"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace," he said on Sept. 12. "Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

More here

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GREAT NEWS FOR FREE TRADE

US to rein in its farmers

THE Bush administration is prepared to confront Washington's protectionist farm lobby to secure a genuine free trade deal with Australia, the US Government declared yesterday

More detailed coverage here

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AUSTRALIA'S LEFT REVERTS TO FORM

We won't back war: Crean

LABOR has called for Australia's troops to be sent home and unequivocally ruled out supporting war in Iraq without UN backing.

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JACQUES CHIRAC OR SHEIKH IRAQ?

In the 1970s Chirac enjoyed a reputation as an amateur Arabist. The rising Gaullist star went so far as to take Arabic lessons and, in a clever twist on his name, earned the media sobriquet "Sheikh Iraq" for his close personal ties with Saddam Hussein.

That quote was written in 1995. See here.

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ELSEWHERE

DDT could save millions of Africans from dying of malaria--if only environmentalists would let it. See here.

The theory that Hitler's behaviour can be accounted for by him being ill with (say) syphilis has popped up again here. All the history showing that he was just another socialist dictator behaving as other socialist dictators do (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il etc.) no-one wants to believe.

Should there be a free market in organ donations? Shock! Horror! But this article points out that it could save thousands of lives. Is that not what's important? If it isn't, what is?

Chris Brand looks at genius, talent and creativity and concludes that IQ is still the biggest contributor to it but allows a contributory role for greater emotionality too.

Michael Darby is once again keeping us up to date with human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Odd that an old Tory like Michael should be doing this when the "compassionate" Leftists are silent! But then the oppressor in Zimbabwe is BLACK! And we know that in the twisted world of the Leftist, only sunlight shines out of blacks.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I criticize the idea of some other psychologists that a dislike of erotic imagery is "authoritarian" and point out that it is simply old-fashioned.

A great Oscar Wilde quote: I am not young enough to know everything

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IS SANITY BREAKING OUT IN GERMANY?

It shows what a deep hole the German economy is in that socialist Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has just announced the following policy changes:

Making it easier for employers to fire workers, reducing the length of time unemployed people can receive benefits and eliminating some of the costs of the vast national welfare system. The program also would increase public works spending, would make it easier for small businesses to hire temporary workers and would require unemployed people who have received welfare payments for a year or more to accept jobs, even if undesirable, that are offered to them by the state employment agencies.

The reforms are, however, long overdue. More here

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NEWS FROM SOCIALIST SCOTLAND

HEADTEACHERS are paying council staff up to 250 pounds sterling for an electrical socket to be fitted - more than five times the going rate - because they don't have real control over school funds, it was claimed yesterday.

That's about $500 for one power point. I think it cost me $50 last time I had one installed. Via Freedom and Whisky

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THE GREENIE MENACE

This is pretty scandalous. U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up Greenie groups that campaign against so-called “global warming” and the building of new homes

A sad article here. Scientists are intimidated against speaking up about Greenie lies.

Some Greenie scientists have recently claimed that evidence from an old sea-level indicator in Tasmania shows that there has been a big rise in the sea-level around Australian in the last century. John Daly shows that the scientists concerned ignore evidence that the marker was not originally placed where they say it was. He also looks at other evidence about sea-levels around Australia and finds evidence of only a tiny rise at best.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I look at the politics of environmentalism in Australia and find that support for mainstream environmental protection measures is general across the political spectrum. I also find however that agreeing with one environmental issue is a poor predictor of your agreeing with other environmental measures. So just because people want a clean and green environment, it does not mean that they support Greenie extremists like Greenpeace.

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FOOD ADDICTION: WHOSE FAULT?

Paddy McGuiness has a shot at the fee-hungry lawyers who are trying to make money out of proving that food is addictive. If you can blame McDonald’s for the food they sell you, what about banning all restaurants? Most of them sell lots of fatty food. And maybe your old mother is guilty for her choice of menus when you were a child too!

Tech Central Station has details on the latest lawsuit against McDonalds -- which claims that their food is full of chemicals. It is. Before you even dig it out of the ground, the average potato contains 150 chemicals for a start -- many of them toxins.

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THE DECADENT CHURCHES

Christopher Hitchens has an excellent column in “Slate” pointing out that the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other mainstream church leaders have come out in defence of Saddam -- and goes on to point out that this does more to damage the ethical authority of the churches concerned than it does anything else. How evil do you have to be before a mainstream church condemns you? Christ may have reduced the Ten Commandments to two but those who speak in his name these days seem to have redduced them to zero. I suppose if it is OK to force homosexual intercourse on little boys, anything is OK. I think that Christians these days who seek moral and spiritual guidance should stick to reading their New Testament. The churches have become a den of Pharisees.

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ELSEWHERE

Have you ever noticed how erratic are the results you get from Google? One day a new site will be listed and the next day it disappears again for a while? This article explains why. The upshot is that until a new site has been listed by Google for a month or more, a search may not always retrieve it.

Chris Brand thinks Britain’s new political party shows promise.

Michael Darby has a rather heartrending letter from a victim of a heartless “child care” bureaucracy -- the infamous New South Wales Department of Community Services. They really do kill kids by their negligence, unbelievably.

The Wicked one has some good jokes up plus another shot at the Pope.

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